James’s egg mayonnaise

My uncle James used to make this every Boxing Day and bring it from Orpington, where he lived (and lives) with his family to East Dulwich, where we lived. He would bring it in a patterned brown rectangular pottery dish with a lid. The eggs with their mayonnaise coating, stained with paprika on top. Unctuous and delicious.The recipe came from Delia Smith. Unlike me, James would make the mayonnaise in a blender. One year my grandmother told us darkly on arrival that there had been problems with the mayonnaise that morning. It had curdled - possibly more than once. But when James arrived, he came with the usual brown dish and the eggs mayonnaise were as good as ever. The last time I recall his making it was when I was unwell in hospital and he brought a dish of it for me to sample. It did the trick.

I have not found Delia’s recipe, as such, but she describes what is required. “But oh, the real thing! Eggs boiled not quite hard but still a little creamy, and a proper home-made mayonnaise flavoured with garlic and looking like thick glossy ointment - there’s a rare luxury indeed. Serve the halved eggs, 1 or 1 1/2 per person, on a bed of sliced pickled dill cucumber and garnish with thin strips of anchovy and small black olives.” I am not convinced by the bed, with its additions, and James did not bother with them. Here, though, is the mayonnaise recipe.

INGREDIENTS

2 large egg yolks

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 heaped teaspoon dry mustard powder

1 level teaspoon salt

Freshly milled black pepper

10 fl oz groundnut oil  (275 ml)

White wine vinegar

METHOD

Mix the egg yolks, garlic, mustard powder, salt and pepper. Add the oil, to begin with, drop by drop, either in a mixer or do it by hand (my preference). Add the vinegar towards the end, and you can, as the mixture thickens, add the oil in a steady stream. Keep it looking yellow, my mother would always say.

Crustacea

I have never quite understood the difference between a shrimp and a prawn. "I'm not a shrimp” a character called Jimmy Brown said indignantly in one of Enid Blyton’s Circus books. "Well maybe you're a prawn then.", replied the circus man, quick as a flash, demonstrating, in Blyton’s world, the ready wit of circus folk. Blyton knew the difference, but I still don’t. And what are Dublin Bay prawns? And scampi? And what is the singular of scampi? Apparently, it’s scampo. I used to eat scampi out of a basket in pubs in the late 1970s. Here, though, are two plates of deliciousness from about thirty years after that. An oasis in East London. Red wine, not white.

Midnight Feast

My mother was at boarding school and had a most unpleasant-sounding headteacher who everyone called "Hetty". The girls in her dorm organised a midnight feast one night and Hetty got wind of it. At midnight, when the girls were about to creep down for their feast, in walked Hetty. She turned on the lights and commanded the girls to get dressed and walk downstairs. In the dining room, she had laid the table and put out all the food that had been gathered for the midnight feast. The girls had to eat it all in dead silence, with beady-eyed Hetty sitting at the end of the table, having sucked all the joy out of the escapade. At one point my mother picked up a slice of what she thought was cheese and ate it only to discover it was a piece of margarine. She did not even dare to giggle. At the end of the "feast", they had to clear the plates and then go upstairs and put on their night things before the light was switched off. Not another word was said about it.

Cold curried apple soup

Just the name of this appears in my mother's recipe book, as though she had eaten it and wanted, at some stage, to write down the recipe. But she never did.

Austerity Soup

 This is Austerity Soup. The recipe: as with any good hearty soup, start with the Holy Quadernity of onion, celery, carrot and leek. Add chopped broccoli stem, the green tops of leeks and spring onions, the outer leaves which surround cauliflower, the tops of carrots, turnips and beetroots. Add any vegetables which are getting a bit past their best, and sweat until soft and sweet. Add a handful of frozen peas (protein content 👍) with stock or bouillon and water. Simmer for 10 minutes then blend smooth and add seasoning to taste. 

This version has fried chorizo and oil on top, because Julien believes any soup is improved by a bit of porkiness. In the case of green soup, I would have to agree, though it does perhaps reduce the thriftiness of this soup!

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.

Poached eggs on ham

Breakfast or brunch. Three elements: buttered toast; a thick slice of ham; a perfectly-poached egg on the top, with freshly ground black pepper. This used to be a Christmas morning tradition and I can recall it being followed in Winchester ten years ago. My brother Will had cooked the ham, baked the bread and poached the eggs. He had not supplied the newly-laid eggs, though; they had been brought by me, a parting gift the day before from some friends who kept chickens in their garden. Crumbly home-cooked ham. Orange egg yolks. A very late breakfast after church. A good start to the excesses of Christmas.