Rosemary's ham

How many recipes, I wonder, are said to come from the author's grandmother? Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. One pictures a white-haired old lady stirring a bowl of cake mixture, following a secret recipe which, perhaps came from her own grandmother. My first memory of home-cooked ham came from my grandmother. She would spike it with cloves, boil it and smother it in some unknown brown spice, and we would eat it over several days, accompanied by salad: lettuce, washed and dried in a salad spinner; hard-boiled egg, sliced in an egg slicer; cucumber with the peel chopped off; tomatoes which were sometimes skinned; beetroot in vinegar; spring onions; sometimes a tiny bowl of potato salad. There was salad cream in those days, although as the seventies turned into the eighties, she gradually switched to mayonnaise. Olive oil was used only rarely, for extra-special salad dressings, made in a vinaigrette and shaken vigorously before each meal. Slices of brown bread. Once upon a time I would have eaten the last ever slice of ham which had been cooked by her, but, like many firsts and lasts, I cannot pinpoint that moment.

Bolst's mango pickle

Bangalore is a city named after food. It means "Beans Galore" or "Full of Beans". And it is the place where the Bolst Family used to make their famous Mango Pickle. My father once told me that he thought the Foster Family knew the Bolst Family. That may well be true because, about a hundred years ago, the Foster family lived in India, in Bangalore itself. It was there that my grandfather, Donald, was born, in 1914. He went to Bishop Cotton’s School there before he sailed to England to go to school in Canterbury.

Bolst’s Mango Pickle used to come in a glass jar with a red lid and a white label with red writing on it. On the lid was a scrawly white signature: Bolst. When the jar was new and opened for the first time, the pickle underneath had a film of orange oil floating on the top. Over time, the label on the jar would become greasy and grimy with the oil. The pickle underneath the oil was most unlike what you would normally expect a pickle to look and taste like. It was coloured dark brown and had a slightly granular consistency, almost like brown sugar which had had a little water added. One of the main ingredients was indeed sugar. There were no chunks of mango to be found, although occasionally there were what looked suspiciously like bits of mango skin. Over time, the bottom of the lid would turn black: corrosion, I think, caused by the pickle. But the pickle was so full of chillis and sugar that it would never, ever, turn bad.

A family tradition with Bolst’s was that we would eat it with Shepherd’s Pie. And when Grandfather made one of his chicken or beef curries (which Mum called one of his "watery curries" and she actually liked very much), out would come the jar of Bolst’s for those who wanted it. Granny used to tell me not to put too much on my plate and end up leaving it…and some of us would end up mopping up the dollop of pickle on our plates with a piece of bread.

But not everyone liked Bolst’s Mango Pickle. My brother Will always preferred Patak’s Mild Lime Pickle and he used to enjoy eating Mum’s game pie with it, which she always made at around Christmas time. Mum occasionally said that she was not convinced that it was a particularly good idea to mix her delicious pie with Lime Pickle but I think she got used to the concept and it, too, became a family tradition.

When I was growing up, there was no problem finding Bolst's Mango Pickle. But gradually, probably as the Patak and the Sharwood Families became more and more popular, shops stopped selling it and people stopped buying it. It was a vicious circle.

I managed to find a supplier in an Indian grocery not far from West Croydon Railway station. I must have visited the shop on about three occasions and each time, bought up their entire supply of Bolst’s Mango Pickle  and, sometimes Bolst’s Lime Pickle which was similar to the Mango but not as good. But the last time I visited the shop they had none left. Lots of other pickles but no Bolst’s.

 

Towards the end of Grandfather’s life, when he had run out of Bolst’s Mango Pickle, I wrote to a company in Enfield, Middlesex called "Bombay Emporium". Their name and details were on the last jar of Bolst’s Mango Pickle in our possession and they were the agents for Bolst’s in this country. I pleaded with them to tell me where I could find their supplies of Pickle and I got a kind letter back from them enclosing six free jars and saying, "I am sure your grandfather will be delighted!" I think he was – even though, by then, only the Hot Mango Pickle was available when he preferred the mild version.

Grandfather died in 1999 and at his funeral, among other things, we ate Samosas which Mum and I had bought the day before at the Indian restaurant at the end of my road in Leyton. They did us proud and had them set out beautifully on foil trays so we were able to set the trays out without any further work when we got them to Kenilworth. No Bolst’s pickle to go with them but there was no need. Happily,  there was still about a jar remaining of Bolst’s Mango Pickle so Grandfather never ran out. There were also some jars of Bolst’s Curry Paste which I don’t think Grandfather ever opened. They were still sitting on the shelves in Kenilworth in 2010, twelve years later because I think Granny found it very difficult to throw them out – perhaps because she thought it would upset me if she did so.

 

Mum knew about my love of Bolst’s Mango Pickle and she occasionally used to visit Bangalore herself. She managed to find some jars of the hot variety and brought them back with her, sewn up in a wonderful parcel made of hessian. I think I distributed some of the jars among family members who were particularly fond of it. I think I even gave another jar to poor Granny who was probably, by then, sick of the stuff.

But then, disaster. Mum made another trip to Bangalore and got a colleague of hers to get hold of some of the pickle. Again, it arrived in one of the exciting hessian parcels. But when I looked at the jars, the contents looked nothing like what I was used to. They looked instead, like the contents of a jar of Patak’s Pickle. And when I opened the first jar, my suspicions were realised. They had changed the recipe completely! So all that we had left were the remaining few jars of the original Bolst’s Mango Pickle: possibly the only remaining jars in the world.

 

Then came another disaster after my mother died. We were sorting out her belongings and I was hovering in her kitchen wondering what to do next and said, "If anyone sees the jar of Bolst’s Mango Pickle, please make sure it doesn’t get slung. It will be well past its best before date but it’s one of the last remaining jars!" My sister-in-law looked at me rather sheepishly and said, "Lynda and I were going through stuff in the cupboards and we threw out a lot of stuff." Although I didn’t hunt through all the cupboards, it seemed pretty obvious what had happened. Among the collection of old, mouldy, unwanted, inedible jars, packets and tins, had been Mum’s last jar of Bolst’s Mango Pickle. And the pickle had probably been washed down the sink while the jar had gone into one of the glass recycling bins. I can even imagine the conversation: "How revolting!" my aunt Lynda would have said. "I don’t think there’s any chance of anyone missing that".

 

But I said it was a disaster. Not entirely. I may, one day, write to the people in Bangalore and see whether they could tell me the secret recipe or send me some more jars. Or I might see whether some of my friends in India – or some of Mum’s friends – could help and get in touch with people I might not have spoken to ever again as a result.

 

Blyton breakfast

"Porridge and cream," said the woman. "And our own cured bacon and our own eggs. Our own honey and the bread I bake myself. Will that do? And coffee with cream?"

"I could hug you." said Julian, beaming at her.

***

A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

"It's like magic!" said Anne, staring. "Just the very things I longed for!"

***

"Toast, marmalade and butter to come, and the coffee and hot milk," said the woman, busily setting everything out. "And if you want any more bacon and eggs, just ring the bell."

"Too good to be true!" said Dick, looking at the table.

The Wonderful Soup Stone

"I swear you could taste
The Chicken and Tomato
And the Noodle and the Marrow bone.
But it really wasn't nothing
But some water and potatoes
And the wonderful, wonderful soup stone."

A song I recall from my childhood, by Dr Hook: simple, evocative and telling a story. The song goes on to reminisce about the singer's own childhood ("back in the hard time days") and his mama and, "whenever things got tight", production of the magical soup stone:

"Mama boiled up some water, put in the stone and said "Let's have some soup tonight!""

It is a somewhat less cynical version of the "Stone Soup" fairy tale which I also first read as a child. It concerns a wanderer who arrives at the hut of a man who, rather ungraciously, agrees to offer the traveller lodging for the night. The traveller has seen through a window that the hut owner has a larder full of food. But all he is offered is some dry bread. So he offers to make soup with his magic "soup stone". Delighted at the prospect of a free dinner, the man agrees and the traveller begins cooking. Presently, he suggests that some potatoes would be a good addition; and how about some chicken; and if the man happens to have any herbs, that really would make it not just a good soup but a superb soup. Eagerly, the man empties his cupboard and the soup is made. The following day, the traveller reluctantly agrees to sell his stone to the man in return for his gold hoard. There is another version of the story called "Nail broth".

One of the worst meals ever

It all started so well. We had had drinks elsewhere on the harbour in the tiny village in Crete where we were staying, and decided that the sunset was so splendid, like something out of "Oklahoma!", that we wanted to prolong the experience and have dinner. The waitress greeted us warmly and ushered us to a table right by the sea.

Things started to go wrong when we inspected the menu and noticed that ALL the fish dishes - this, I remind the reader, was a restaurant right next to the sea - had an asterisk beside them, indicating they were frozen. It has to be said: were we from this moment on setting the place up to fail? I do not think so.

Bread came, entirely properly, with oil and vinegar. There was nothing wrong with the oil. The vinegar looked like Malt. It was foul with a curious sickly-sweet taste. The wine was even worse. It had, I said, a "very curious perfume" and the perfume stayed even after we had gulped a whole glass in the hope that it would taste slightly better. When the waitress came over and asked whether the wine was good, with British aplomb, my conpanion said, "Er....yes..." How British.

When ordering, my companion commented on the fact that all the fish were frozen. The waitress told us, "We have lots of other lovely traditional dishes - all home made". When my companion chose Moussaka, the waitress went into raptures at her choice. I, foolishly, chose something called Chicken Gyros. My companion tried to warn me that it was essentially a Donner Kebab but I ignored her.

We waited for our food, in slight trepidation. The Moussaka arrived, a square slab in a round dish. She stuck a fork into it and managed to lift it out of the dish intact. She then managed to excavate a chunk of solidified bechamel. At this point, fairly convinced this was all a terrible mistake, I took a mouthful of my Chicken Gyros. It was dry and flavourless. My companion and I agreed that we would leave. I went to ask for the bill, and there followed an embarrassing diplomatic incident, involving the waitress scurrying backwards and forwards, refusing to accept that we just wanted to leave. Eventually, the proprietess arrived, clearly angry. "I made it with my own nails", she assured us. This did not provide us with any reassurance and we paid the bill (not waiting for change) and left. We felt vindicated when we saw the kitchen on the way out, which contained a bank of three microwaves...

Bacon and avocado

Philip was the inspiration behind this piece. See my entry called Ethiopian restaurant for more about him. He suggested an entry on "the mystery of why bacon and avocado combine to so sublime an end". Not one to mince his words when it comes to food. He is right.

I first encountered this combination when working over the summer for British Telecom in Crouch End. I should at this point say a bit about Julian Santos who was unique in my experience of bosses. On my first day there, he said this or words to like effect: "We have times when we are exceptionally busy and then I expect all hands to the pump. Equally, there are times when there is nothing going on, and I don't expect you to have to pretend to be busy. Feel free to make as many personal telephone calls as you wish. Or you've got free access to the computers. You might want to train yourself up on something." The most enlightened boss I have ever had. I learned how to touch type that summer. As a result, he got us all to work harder and more contentedly as a result. The sole woman in the office was Miss Moneypenny to his James Bond, sighing adoringly about him whenever he was out of the building.

Not far from the building where we worked was a perfectly good sandwich shop. Hardly worth a mention but for the fact that it was here that I discovered the bacon and avocado sandwich, which rapidly became my lunch of choice that summer. Hot bacon, ripe avocado; these are essential. Mayonnaise. Probably white bread is best on the blotting paper principle.

Ethiopian restaurant

The restaurant Philip introduced me to about twelve years ago lay somewhere in the outer reaches of King's Cross. It was on a grim arcade of shops. This start, so unpromising, should have been the precursor of an extraordinarily good meal, the talk of smug dinner parties to come. Instead, it was one of the worst meals I have ever eaten.

Let me try to recapture it. Spread out over our plates like damp carpet underlay, flavourless bread, grain unknown. That was the only thing worth eating on the table. There followed bowl upon bowl of nondescript sludge: vegetable matter so overcooked that it was impossible to tell what it had once been, to distinguish one dish from another or even, I confess, to determine whether certain dishes were animal, vegetable or mineral. Nothing tasty. Just a general sense of suspicious flavours, wetness and nastiness.

The conversation, on the other hand, was lively. Philip tells the story of how one of his dining companions, choking with rage, but still wishing to keep to the rules of dining propriety, hissed at him: "What is this degrading filth?"

Bombay toast

Between finishing school and going to university, I spent four and a half months in India. Many years later, I read a book by William Sutcliffe called “Are you Experienced”. William Sutcliffe was born in the same year as me. His hero, Dave, like me, travelled to India in his gap year. Dave, like me, was about to read English at university. Dave, like me, was going to York University. I assure the reader of “Are you Experienced?” that my experiences were very different to those of “Dave” and that I have never met William Sutcliffe in my life.

“Dave” does not encounter “Bombay Toast” on his travels. I discovered it in about my second week in India, at St George’s Anglo-Indian School and Orphanage, Madras, where I taught for a couple of months. It was Tory, one of the other volunteers at the school, who described it to me when a stack of it arrived at breakfast time: “Bread dipped in a pancakey mixture and then fried”.

The key thing is that it should resemble a pancake, not an omelette. Unlike some versions of French toast, it is definitely sweet, not salty. This version is based on a recipe for “Pain Perdu” by Rachel Khoo. I leave out the fruit compote. The point of this is simplicity.

Ingredients:

1 egg.
100 ml milk.
1 tablespoon sugar.
4 slices of brioche bread (this is closest to the Indian version of Western style sliced bread).
1 tablespoon butter.

Method:

1. Beat together the egg, milk and sugar and pour on to a flat dish.

2. Place the brioche in the mixture and soak for about thirty seconds on each side.

3. Heat the butter in a large frying pan on a medium heat.

4. Add the brioche and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until golden, then flip the slices over and cook the other side. Eat immediately. Cold Bombay Toast isn’t worth eating.

I discovered that Bombay Toast was readily available in the "Indian coffee houses” dotted around South India and it became my breakfast of choice on my travels. I associate it particularly with a breakfast by a lake in Ooty (official name: Udhagamandalam). There were a number of different versions of Bombay Toast, some, it has to be said, inferior: sometimes too thickly covered in batter; or with insufficient batter and tasting only of the oil in which it had been fried. Worst of all was the version available on Kovalam beach which was smothered with coconut and banana. On another occasion, in Mahabilapuram, I ordered four slices. The proprietor, possibly wilfully misunderstanding me,brought eight slices on the basis that a normal portion consisted of one slice cut into two. In other words, I had eight slices of Bombay Toast to get through.

Bombay is now officially known as Mumbai. "Bombay Toast”, on the other hand, has not been renamed “Mumbai Toast”.

The Crab House

Some meals are memorable. This one was in the US, following the only time I have ever been in a train crash. It happened on our way from Charleston, South Carolina to Florida. Just outside Jacksonville, we came to a standstill with a jolt, having hit a car which, inexplicably, was on the track. Unlike the ending of “Back to the Future 3” in which the time-travelling DeLorean is hit by a train and destroyed, no damage seemed to have been done. No one, the driver assured us over the PA, was seriously hurt. We copied everybody when our train arrived in Orlando three hours late and walked over the rails towards the taxi rank.

As it was Florida, we should probably have looked for a restaurant serving Alligator. Instead, we headed for somewhere doing seafood. It was called "The Crab House”, on International Drive, halfway to Disneyworld and in the midst of Universal Studios. Other attractions included a “Just can’t believe it museum” where even the building itself was skew-wiff – a bit like the old King's School shop in Canterbury, only more so.

While waiting for a table in the restaurant, I went over to inspect the “unlimited salad bar”: masses of shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams and crabs. Seated and with our menus, I plumped for “half a lobster with snow crabs” while Mum chose “snow crabs and garlic crabs”. Our waiter did not approve and told us they were “not very good”. So I chose the unlimited salad bar instead, which the waiter seemed to think was a brilliant idea. Mum’s second choice, broiled shrimp, he didn't like either, and told her she could have “unlimited shrimp” on the salad bar. So Mum took the hint and chose that too and the waiter put on a broad grin and said in a drawn-out way, “Alright!” We speculated after he had disappeared that the menus were phoney and that the only thing available was the salad bar. The waiter soon brought us plates which we went and filled. More than once. As I stuffed myself with shrimp, Mum commented that she could eat the oysters almost as quickly as the man at the salad bar was opening them. Shortly after this, the waiter came over bearing a slightly anxious look on his face and a loaf of warm bread, which he urged us to try: “It’s really good”. But we were not as interested in filling ourselves up on the bread as he was keen to persuade us, and, instead, we took a further trip to the salad bar where we loaded our plates with seafood for a third time. Finally, we were defeated.

It all reminded me of the bit in Ian Fleming’s “Goldfinger”where James Bond, forced to spend the night in Florida, is treated to a meal at "Bills on the Beach” in Miami. Junius Du Pont, a man whom he met in the first Bond book, “Casino Royale”, is his host and does the ordering:

“Stone crabs. Not frozen. Fresh. Melted butter. Thick toast. Right?”

When the food arrives:

“With ceremony, a wide silver dish of crabs, big ones, their shells and claws broken, was placed in the middle of the table. A silver sauceboat brimming with melted butter and a long rack of toast was put beside each of their plates. The tankards of Champagne frothed pink. Finally, with an oily smirk, the head waiter came behind their chairs and, in turn, tied round their necks long white silken bibs that reached down to the lap”.

Bond considers it the most delicious meal he had had in his life:

“The meat of the stone crabs was the tenderest, sweetest shellfish he had ever tasted. It was perfectly set off by the dry toast and slightly burned taste of the melted butter. The champagne seemed to have the faintest scent of strawberries. It was ice cold. After each helping of crab, the champagne cleaned the palate for the next. They ate steadily and with absorption and hardly exchanged a word until the dish was cleared.”

MOT

Stands for marmite, onion and tomato. That doesn't do it justice. Let me do some explaining.

First, good bread: one of those slightly dry "pain de campagne" or a baguette. Lightly toasted. Then spread marmite thinly on it; butter underneath the marmite if you wish. Finely chop some cherry tomatoes, or any other kind of tomato, provided it isn't Dutch. Then finely chop a shallot, or about a third of an onion. Mix with the tomato and squeeze on some lemon juice. Scatter it on the marmited toast. Scrape the tomato juices and any stray pips from the chopping board on to the bits of toast as well. Eat.

Taramasalata

Taramasalata is a lovely word. I used to pronounce it stressing the RAMA bit (to rhyme with farmer) and the LATA bit (rhyming with starter). Sounded like the name of a glamorous Russian villainess.

Anyway, I was wrong in my pronunciation. The woman in the shop opposite my school - Maggie her name was - insisted that it was in fact TA-rama, the stress on the first syllable and ram as in the animal.

A little more about "Maggie". She called all of us schoolboys "Darling" and had no objection to our doing the same to her in return. Tough, feisty, heavily made-up, a heavy smoker and, I suspect, baggage-laden lady, who probably thought we all had plums in our mouths.

Taramasalata, then, was one of my luxuries at school in Canterbury. Fifty pence for a quarter of a pound, it came in a white polystyrene tub into which Maggie had scooped it from a larger bowl of the stuff. Some years before I arrived at the school, they had stopped providing tea in the afternoons and, as a sop, there was a twice-weekly bread delivery to our dormitory or study. So, sitting on my bed, I would eat the salty, granular, ice-cream pink taramasalata on white sliced bread.

It was on the island of Skopelos that I tasted the best taramasalata I have ever eaten. Patrick Leigh Fermor called the island "a lobster's song" (did the name remind him of the noise a lobster makes?) and it was a glorious place. No airport, so you had to get there from the neighbouring island of Skiathos by hydrofoil. It was on the island that I tasted the bitterest cucumbers I have ever eaten: someone told me vaguely that it had probably been fertilised incorrectly. Happily, the rest of the food I ate was memorable for quite different reasons. Including the taramasalata, on the menu in a restaurant in Glossa, on the other side of the island from where we were staying. Not pink but white and served with pitta. Much better than caviar. The photo below was taken not in Skopelos, but in Crete, fourteen years later. Trying to recreate an earlier dish rarely works...

Mortadella

I first visited Italy on 11 September 2001. Cousin Pen took us there by motorway from Lorgues in Provence to just over the border: Ventimiglia. The purpose of the trip was to go to the post office to pay a parking fine that one of my other cousins had incurred. It was a good excuse.

As we drove through the tunnel at the border, I concentrated, hard, on the fact that we were entering Italy. On the other side, we descended into the town.

The so-called purpose of going, the post office, was quickly over. Of much greater interest to us all was Pen's favourite food shop.

You know how many supermarkets in England have a cheerful "Try before you buy" sign at the delicatessen counter. I always feel slightly guilty for asking and, when I do, it becomes such a big deal to produce a wafer thin fragment of ham or whatever, presented to me on a cocktail stick, that I end up buying some. Possibly the point.

The lady behind the counter in Pen's shop had a different approach. I would express the vaguest interest in a particular salami or some Parma ham and she would immediately seize the article, rush to the slicing machine and produce enough for all three of us to have a large mouthful. Of course, we would end up buying some. A lot. Possibly the point. But the feeling in that shop was one of generosity. (Later, Pen would reveal that the woman running the shop may in fact have, dishonestly or otherwise, charged us incorrectly and in the shop’s favour – but let me give the shopkeeper the benefit of the doubt. I warmed to her.)

The title of this piece is Mortadella and that is one thing I did not buy at that shop in Ventimiglia. But I saw it for the first time I can remember. Not surprisingly. It was the largest sausage I have ever seen. Slightly off-putting.

Since then, though, I have grown to love it. As cousin Pen told me later, it is great picnic food. Folded into good bread, with slices of tomato, lettuce and a little mayonnaise , its moist slightly bland saltiness is welcome at the edge of the road on the way, say, from Rome to Lorgues.

But be warned: there is plenty of rogue Mortadella out there. I would say as general rules:

Only buy it loose, never in packets.

The bigger the better.

It should be studded with peppercorns and either pistachios or pieces of truffle. If not, avoid it.

If it looks particularly dry, don't bother - one of the exceptions to the rule of dryness in sausages. Having said that, once the outer slice has been removed, it may be better within. It will be a good test of the integrity of the person trying to sell it to you: does that person try and include the first slice in what you're being sold, or discard it?

Ask for it to be sliced thinly.

Eat it quickly.

If you are disappointed, don't give up on it. It is variable.

Part 2 of the trip to Ventimiglia to follow.