Food on an imaginary island

Joan Aiken writes of a historical period which never existed, where descendants of James II were on the throne and there is a Hanoverian plot to get rid of them. In “Limbo Lodge”, her main protagonist, Dido Twite, and her companions are spending the night in a slightly grand but sinister stone house. They are provided with a meal “which was unexpectedly good”. This is what they are given to eat:

...thin, bitter soup, pancakes, some game-bird roasted with rice, peppers and garlic, and cups of hot drink served in small metal cups”.

Peasants’ salad

Roughly chopped cherry tomatoes; a finely-chopped shallot; a slosh of white wine vinegar; a glug of extra virgin olive oil; fiercely ground rock salt; freshly ground black pepper; basil leaves; and a slice of baguette torn into the bowl with the other ingredients. All stirred vigorously together so the juices flow and soak into the bread.

Fish restaurant

A new fish restaurant was opening somewhere in London; as a stunt, the guests invited to their opening night all had names related to fish; and my mother had received two free places. Not that her name has anything to do with fish. Instead she had been given them by a Mr Herring, who was, I seem to remember, a colleague of my father, who was in Glasgow and could not go. To make up for her somewhat suspect credentials, my mother chose as her dining companion her old friend Sue Tirbutt: homophonically at least she accorded with the rules.

Sue’s name made no difference as it turned out; at the tables in the restaurant, there were place cards: one for “A. Herring”, where my mother sat; and the second for “Friend of A. Herring”. Sitting next to my mother was a Reverend Salmon. He had come equipped with an autograph book, which he handed round to the guests on his table. At least my mother shared an initial with the absent invitee with the piscatory name. She promptly signed  the book “Ali Herring”.

A Present from Africa

We were collecting my father from Kennington tube late one evening in my mother’s brown mini. Standing at the domed entrance with my father was another man, a stranger. My father came over to the car apologetically. “Can we give him a lift to West Norwood. He’s just landed at Heathrow and there are no buses.” My mother agreed and both men got into the car. The traveller was carrying a huge cloth sack and I wondered what was in it but didn’t like to ask. He had flown from somewhere in Africa and was here to see his family. The journey was curiously punctuated by a pattering sound. It was ignored, we dropped our new acquaintance, thanking us energetically, at a house in West Norwood, and headed home. In the morning, my mother realised the source of the pattering sound. The floor of the car was strewn with dried white beans.

Three golden days

In August 1984, I was in that rare position of being between schools. It was a time for looking back and forwards; it was a gap when nothing mattered because all was to begin again; and it was a hugely long summer holiday. We spent it partly in France, staying in a caravan in Fréjus.

Our friends, the Watsons, were staying in another campsite nearby. Chris Watson had first met my mother at work when she was pregnant with me, and had offered my mother her daughter Kate’s outgrown baby clothes. My mother had recently been told that I might be twins, was overwhelmed with the prospect and gratefully accepted the offer. Thus I began my life wearing girls’ clothes. Chris's husband Dave had won my father's admiration early on by repairing his car. There the friendship had started and we had holidayed together many times, with my brother William and Kate's sister, Emma, not long following their elder siblings. "The littleuns", Kate and I had used to call them with great superiority.

The campsite where the Watsons were staying was in a place called Roquebrune, near a lake. We drove there one morning. Those were the days before mobile phones and the plans had been vague: so there was that wonderful tantalising question of whether they would even be there; and the half surprise when we found one another.

I was swiftly given an opportunity to show off my recently acquired Common Entrance French. My parents went off on some errand leaving my brother and I with the Watsons. On the way to the lake, we passed a fruit stall and Chris liked the look of the apricots. “Des abricots, s’il vous plaît”, I said to the stallholder, receiving from Chris and Dave, whose schooldays had finished years before, looks that made me blush with pride.

The Watsons introduced us to their new friends, near neighbours in their campsite: the Ranges. Peter,  a gravelly accountant, Eileen, an amateur singer with one of the most infectious laughs I have ever known, and their daughter Sarah who would one day become a solicitor who instructed me and a great friend. Not yet though; the age gap of about three years was far too great and I don’t think we addressed a single word to one another during the holiday. Instead she and Kate sunbathed silently by the lake, turning away in horror and shielding their faces whenever my father’s video camera went anywhere near them. When my father got round to editing the holiday video, setting it to music, he pointedly set shots of the two teenagers refusing in the embarrassed way to engage with his filming to a song which went “Building a wall to surround you, gathering all your treasures around you, building a life apart...” Peter and Eileen were less reticent. “Isn’t it lovely?” mused Eileen on camera.

It was. The three families spent three golden days by the lake in Roquebrune. When the video later emerged, my father had included our munching on baguette with saucisson to the Beatles’ “Have you seen the little piggies?”

The first night Chris and Dave entertained us next to their caravan and Chris produced a most extraordinary food which she had bought in the local market, “to try it”. My mother’s conclusion: “If you'd mixed a white sliced loaf with a tin of Kit-e-Cat and shoved it in a pig's bladder, the result would have been about the same.”

The following night my parents entertained the Watsons and the Ranges in their caravan. I cannot remember what we ate but my father managed to persuade Dave that evening that it really would not take him as long as he thought to drive back to Calais and home and that the Watsons should really stay another night. As an added incentive, if one were needed, Peter and Eileen invited us all to a barbecue on what would be our third night.

The next day, disaster struck by the lake. Peter had been showing us all the art of windsurfing. Patient though he was with me, I realised quickly that this was yet another sport at which I would never even achieve even the most basic skill and retired to read with the others. Meanwhile, my father was swimming in the lake. His goddaughter, Emma, was floating on an airbed and he thought it would be amusing if he swam underneath the airbed and popped up the other side to surprise her. As he slipped below the water, he felt his glasses go ... and they were a murky shadow before him that he was unable to grab as they sank to the bottom.

Those who could swim went out to join my father. I felt inadequate and wished I could have been among them. They all returned, but it was not a joyous swim. They had taken it in turns to dive for the lost glasses but without success. My father, without his glasses, looked worn and fragile.

Eventually, we returned to the campsite. There had been adult talk of our needing to begin our drive back to England the following day. My mother would need to drive all the way. The idea of finding an optician’s in France was, curiously, not discussed.

The barbecue went ahead, the mood a little more sombre than it had been for the past three days. Eileen cheered us by producing a bowl of what she persisted in calling rat-tat-tat-touille. The loss of the glasses did not prevent my father from filming; on the contrary, he told us wryly that he could see quite well through the viewfinder. And he was to be rewarded. Later on that evening, he reached into his video bag for a spare battery or something and found ... his spare pair of glasses whose existence he had completely forgotten. Someone produced a still camera and he capered around for the shot, losing years, and everyone around him was grinning with relief. The end of three golden days.

Another gingerbread house

In 1982, my brother, Will, had an au pair called Lotta. She was from Stockholm and introduced us to gravadlax and Swedish meatballs. We, in turn, introduced her to marmite, which she could not bear or even comprehend. We put a small jar of it into her stocking and my father filmed the look of horror that crossed her face when she unwrapped it.

The same Christmas, she had made a traditional gingerbread house for us. It had wooden figures, toadstalls and candles. Cotton wool snow. I arrived home from school to be told of these wonders and my mother took me into the dining room to inspect it. She struck a match to light the candles; but the head of the match flew off and hit a collection of Pampas grass that was in a vase behind it and the Pampas grass started blazing. My brother burst into tears; my mother picked up the roaring Pampas grass and carried it through the hall and out of the front door into the garden. Crisis averted.

Back in the dining room, standing next to a patch of scorched brown flowery wallpaper, Lotta was surveying ruefully the remains of her gingerbread house: collapsed walls; a strong smell of melted sugar; charred cotton wool snow, singed figures and blackened toadstools. A combination of the Wizard of Oz and Hansel and Gretel...

Hot cross buns

The mistake I used to make was to toast these until brown. In my view, they should be toasted until hot and no more. Then spread thickly with butter. The best hot cross buns I ever encountered - full of fruit - were in Hyderabad, India (one of the largest Moslem centres in India), on a Good Friday.

There is a wonderful episode in Frances Hodgson Burnett's "A Little Princess" where the ravenous heroine, Sara Crewe, discovers a silver sixpence dropped in the gutter, asks at the baker's whether anyone has lost it, then, reassured, buys six currant buns warm from the oven and, finally, gives five of them away to a beggar girl who is "even hungrier" than she, Sara, is.

Chip buttie

My mother introduced me to these in Coventry. I wonder how she discovered them. Our local chippie was at the bottom of Earlsdon Avenue. I do not remember whether we acquired the butties in the shop itself or whether they were made when we got home. At all events, it proved to be a wonderful and curious mixture of fats and carbohydrates: butter, salt, vinegar, bread and chip.

Many years later, I overheard two of my teachers at prep school talking in surprised disgust at the conduct of a visiting teacher from another school - there for a football match presumably - about how he put his chips between bread and butter. I was longing to contribute to this adult conversation by explaining that this was a chip buttie but was frostily excluded.

Twiglets

A memorable moment in Mr Bean came when he invited some friends for drinks and then realised to his horror that he had no snacks. So he leant out of the window, plucked a few twigs from the tree, dipped them in marmite and then put them in a bowl. The friends left shortly afterwards.

Twiglets are not in fact made from marmite. But they are designed for marmite addicts. And, if uneaten, they last for a very long time.

Crab soup

The first time I ate crab soup was in Deal, round a kitchen table, made by my mother with crabs I had caught off the pier. I would have been under five. Whether my memory of the soup's appearance - pink-orange - and flavour - salty and comforting - is real or a made-up memory I will never know.

Eight courses

Parma ham

Tomato mozzarella and basil

Gnocchi with pesto

Scallops with bacon and cream

Beef, Kangaroo and Ostrich with Gratin Dauphinoise and sugar snaps

Rhubarb and maccaroons

Caramelised oranges with clotted cream

Chocolates

Stuffed Mushrooms

I recall first eating these shortly before a trip to the theatre. An early evening meal. My younger brother and I had been required to spend the afternoon asleep so as not to be too tired for the evening, and we were in that halfway frame of mind between sleep and full wakefulness. It was winter.

They were large, flat mushrooms. My mother talked about how she had first decided to make them. "Life is too short to stuff a mushrooom" was the quotation at the beginning of Shirley Conran's "Superwoman" - a twentieth century version of Mrs Benton. And the quotation had got my mother thinking. Not along the lines the quotation was suggesting, but "What a good idea to stuff a mushroom". So she did.

INGREDIENTS

As many large flat mushrooms as there are people.
Chopped bacon or lardons.
1 Chopped onion.
1 finely chopped clove of garlic.
Breadcrumbs.
Olive oil.
Salt and pepper.
Parsley.

The mushroom stalks should be removed and finely chopped and added to the other ingredients which are the stuffing. The inverted mushroom caps should be stuffed to the brim and beyond with the stuffing ingredients. Bake in the oven until piping hot and oozing. Eat.

Lunch at HMP Holloway

From David Ramsbotham's Prisongate: "Our first stop was the kitchen, where the self-confident catering manager, his white, aertex, trilby hat stuck at a jaunty angle, asked me whether I would like to taste lunch. When I said yes, a generous plate of hot and appetising chicken, covered with gravy and accompanied by roast potatoes and vegetables, was produced. He then asked if I would like to taste the vegetarian alternative, an equally acceptable nut cutlet. The inspection team told me later that the prisoners they saw had lukewarm and unappetising stew."

Kedgeree

I recall from when I was young a rhyme that began "Have you ever seen a fly with an eyeglass in its eye?" and which included the line "a plate of kedgeree". I have been unable to find the poem in question but kedgeree goes back a long way in my childhood. It was what we would usually eat for supper on Christmas Eve before the ritual of hanging our stockings. For a few years, after my mother had made a trip to America, the kedgeree was replaced with chowder, until my father realised that the cost of the fish involved was more than the cost of the turkey or the goose the next day: and this was supposed to be an abstemious meal ahead of the gluttony!

Kedgeree can be disappointing. I have had it, stodgy and lukewarm, help yourself from a metal serving dish, at one of those Midnight Breakfasts at an all-night Ball.

That stalwart, Elizabeth David, has a splendid recipe in one of her books, Spices, Salts and Aromatics in the English Kitchen. She calls it "Quick Kedgeree" and, unusually for her, is relatively relaxed about what goes into it. "You can apply the same system", she says, "to prawns, mussels, vegetables, chicken, meat". She has one proviso: "Good-quality rice, either long-grained Basmati or the hard round-grained Italian variety is essential. Soft pudding rice will turn to just that - pudding."

INGREDIENTS

Ingredients are 3 smoked haddock fillets, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 medium onion, 4 heaped tablespoons of rice, a scant teaspoon of curry powder, 2 tablespoons of sultanas or currants, seasoning, 2 hard-boiled eggs, parsley, water; a lemon and chutney.

METHOD

First pour boiling water over the haddock fillets. Leave them two or three minutes, drain them, peel off the skin and divide the fish into manageable pieces.

Heat the oil in a heavy 10 inch frying or sauté pan. In this fry the sliced onion until pale yellow. Stir in the curry powder. Add the rice (don't wash it). Stir all round together. Add the washed sultanas or currants. Pour in 1 pint of water. Cook steadily, not at a gallop, and uncovered, for 10 minutes. Put in thee haddock. Continue cooking until the liquid is all absorbed and the rice tender - approximately 10 minutes. But keep an eye o it to see it doesn't stick, and stir with a fork, not a spoon which breaks the rice. Taste for seasoning. Salt may or may not be required. Turn on to a hot serving dish. On the top strew the chopped eggs and parsley - and, if you like, a nice big lump of butter. Surround with lemon quarters and serve with mango chutney.

Roast lamb with flagelets and anchovies

Ingredients


Half a shoulder of lamb (about 750 g)
A tin of flageolets (drained)
A tin of anchovies (drained)
A clove of garlic (chopped into pointy chips)
A scattering of dried rosemary
Olive oil


Smear the lamb with olive oil. Then spread the anchovy fillets evenly, top and bottom. Spear the lamb with the point of a knife and insert the garlic chips. Scatter the rosemary on top. Roast for about twenty minutes at about 220 degrees. Then put the tin of flageolets around, but not on top of, the lamb. Cook for another twenty minutes. Eat.

Containers

Guacamole in a tub is not worth eating. Pesto in a jar is not worth eating. Foie gras in a tin is not worth eating.