First Published a while back (Dec 2016). I’ve been meaning to do another food blog ever since but have never got round to it.
I do, however, continue to take eating very seriously.
Enjoy!
Mostly Concerning Food
Bumper Christmas Edition (Without any Christmas Food)
I like looking at fancy food and love even more being taken to a decent restaurant or two to enjoy something complicated made with great precision and skill. I’m incredibly impressed when fellow bloggers are able to emulate these recipes and even come up with a few of their own. But I don’t often cook this way myself. This diary is essentially a record of how I try to emulate the good working-class cook of the 1920s and 30s. My cooking idols are my late mother and her three formidable sisters. They were brought up on a smallholding in North Staffordshire and all learnt their crafts around the scrubbed wooden table in the tiny kitchen. (The house is still there, has been extended to double the size but it still baffles how a family of seven could have lived there on the proceeds of a few acres and a handful of cows).
They went their own ways before the war but to visit an auntie was to be immediately at home. The gardens bloomed with the same cottage flowers in huge swathes of contrasting colours, the decor was basic but the ornaments were all highly polished. A sepia print or two of the Lakeland hill farmers my grandmother was descended from and a photograph of a fine house near Kendal where the younger sisters were taken in after the early death of my grandfather. My Auntie Marie used to say that my grandmother’s greatest achievement was keeping her girls out of service.
The kitchen was always the active heart of the house. Always a fresh smell of baking (they all prided themselves on having a slice of freshly baked cake for any unexpected visitor), a large pan of soup was often on the go and, when it came to mealtimes, the portions would do justice to a banquet. You were never stinted with one of this sisterhood. Roasts, stews, cold collation, salads, pickles, jams, jellies and marmalades; it mattered not a jot if you were with Bunt, Marie, Mac or Mum. Rarely fancy (a baked Alaska was talked about for months afterwards), occasionally original, always tasty, always plenteous and always homemade. I veer into dishes they’d never heard of in the old homestead but the central core of my cooking is a conscious attempt to keep this tradition alive. I don’t know how long this blog will survive but while it does it is, in large part, a record and celebration of what poorer people who liked their food were eating in times gone by.
More and more of my time is spent on the computer. Working late into the night can be hungry work. A decent midnight feast helps. Cheese and crackers are an almost perfect combination but cheese and Christmas cake are even better. Should be Lancashire but you can’t always get good Lancashire cheese in supermarkets. Hawes Wensleydale is a close second. Here I’ve had to put up with a strong cheddar.
Ah, Jaquest. By far the best small food producer in this whole region. I’ve always sworn by kippers from Fortunes of Whitby but these match them for deep smokey flavour. (And they save a long trip to the coast). I’m still arguing with myself as to whether they are best grilled or poached. I don’t think there’s a lot in it taste-wise, or texture wise, but I think the bones come out easier if you’ve poached them.
My mother taught me how to poach an egg. I’ve never come across anyone who can do it as well as either of us. We never had asparagus as children. It was far too expensive.
Supermarket pastrami is very much the weak link here. Happiness is a baked potato, a sprinkle of salt, butter and a big pile of grated cheese. This is from Jaquest. Cave-aged cheddar bought in a proper sized piece. Jolly waited patiently under the table and was rewarded with the pastrami.
A handful of rocket helps no end; taste, texture and visually.
Apple pie fresh out of the oven.
Shortly afterwards.
Happiness has many forms.
Fishcakes with a runny cheese sauce centre tempted me when in Lidl. Not bad. Not worth travelling for though.
Good black pudding (Scottish…can’t remember the firm) with lightly pan-fried scallops on toast. My aunties didn’t often cook with scallops.
I’ve acquired a hand peeler that cuts carrots into thing spaghetti type ribbons. Blooming wonderful in a stir-fry.
Black pudding, fried eggs and brown bread and butter. Why don’t more hotels and B&Bs offer stuff like this instead of the inevitable “full English”. Less on the plate and tastier please Mr hotel keeper!
My favourite easy meal. Toasted cheese and tomatoes. Brilliant for late night working.
A handful of well-drained spinach adds enormously to a piece of poached smoked haddock.
A simple long grain rice chicken risotto. Doesn’t need the chicken. Spinach, peas and peppers have enough flavour between them.
A good sized fillet of line-caught wild Salmon on lightly cooked spinach and granary bread and butter. Just looking at that and remembering is going to require a pause and a trip to the kitchen. I don’t often get hungry writing these but I am hungry now. Given the choice, always choose the wild over farmed salmon. For so many reasons.
I could, and have, described so many foods as happiness on a plate but the true holder of this title in England is shepherd’s pie.
I married someone who put baked beans between the meat layer and the tatties. In this one I’ve stirred some spinach into the beef. It made a huge difference to flavour and made it much moister.
Another of my attempts at scones. The current Mrs Johnson does them so much better than me. It’s a case, along with Yorkshire puddings, of some people being blessed by the cooking angels. These aren’t bad but not a patch on T’s.
Spaghetti with aubergine in a tomato sauce. I’m a late convert to the aubergine. I blame writers of seventies cookbooks. We got ten years of bad advice and it put a lot of people off.
Pan-fried goose breast with a plate full of the vegetables you’d get round my aunties. You’d probably get a good dollop of gooseberry jam as well.
This was Sunday tea at our house. Most of it would have come from the garden in summer (just as it does now…the gardening genes have been passed on as well. Many of my own plants were taken as splits and cuttings from my mother’s garden).
A good pork pie is a good pork pie. A bad pork pie isn’t worth eating.
Poached eggs, poached smoked haddock. A perfect combination.
Cold collation with Jaquest’s award-winning cured pork. It is only one of many prize-winning (and we’re talking national competition here) products from this wonderful shop. If you’re anywhere close to Bolsover call in. I’m not sure if they do mail order. They’ve got a website though. You should be able to find it. Not many shops called Jaquest in the Bolsover area!
Like many, I can truthfully quote Oscar Wilde and say that I can resist anything except temptation. In the run-up to Christmas, chocolate biscuits are cheap, plentiful and very good. In my childhood, we’d very rarely see them, and if we did we’d get one, maybe two. I confess to being a complete pig for anything that was rationed (in our family…I’m a little too young to remember wartime rationing) as a child.
A pan full of spicy “Wagamama” type chicken noodle soup with peppers, chillis, bok choi, mushrooms and, in this instance, because I didn’t have any noodles, orzo. (pasta grains…looks like big rice)
A working lunch from the depths of the freezer. Sometimes I fancy what used to be called convenience food. Frozen Bird’s Eye fish portions with oven chips. 99% of our food as children was prepared in our kitchen. Sometimes we craved the stuff we saw advertised on the telly. Mum made it all herself because she could, because it tasted better, because she knew what was in it and, having 7 children and limited “housekeeping”, it was a lot cheaper.
Take a chicken fillet, lay it on a layer of spinach on puff pastry. Fasten it into a pasty with a layer of fried mushrooms on top. Bake for about 40 minutes and serve with couscous, green beans and a great deal of pleasure. I suppose its a sort of chicken Wellington. Whatever it was, it was blooming lovely.
There must have been a lot of those cheese sauce fish cakes. I was glad to see the back of them.
We no longer have a fishmonger in the village but we do have a travelling fish van that parks up every Thursday morning. It’s quite a treat to see just how fast the lady can dress a crab. £3.95 and done before your eyes. Fabulous.
A simple beef stir-fry.
If you buy Jaquest’s venison salami you are in for a treat of flavour. I can think of few foods that contain quite as much taste bud stimulation per gram as this. Truffles maybe. There is a skill to learning how to slice it. It’s worth mastering.
It’s too flavoursome to have on its own. With some good cream cheese (anything except Philadelphia) on blinis is good. The smoked salmon is also Jaquest and is as good as you can get. The out of focus ‘thing’ at the back of the photograph is a lemon. Honest!
De-boned roast shoulder of lamb.
With mint sauce.
Jaquest own dry cured unsmoked bacon with their smoked Halloumi cheese.
Makes a serious bacon sandwich.
Pasta is great. A few vegetables, some cream, some spaghetti. Quality food in 20 minutes.
More from Jaquest. These are simple potato fish cakes made with generous amounts of their hot smoked salmon. You’ll have to believe me (and I don’t often lie) just how good these are. I gave some to Steven and he agreed. And Steven never lies.
Cream of celeriac soup.
That’s the full piece of cave-aged cheddar I got from Jaquest. If you ever wish you could find food that tastes as good as you remember it from the fifties and sixties I seriously recommend you pay them a visit. This is wonderful cheese. The cold meat was not bad either. That was from M&S.
This was my attempt to try to make a proper Vesta curry using real ingredients. Anyone who remembers Vesta curries will realise that this is a contradiction in terms. The only spice I used was medium curry powder and the sauce is largely a packet of passata. It tasted rather nice. The rice is a variation on a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for Basmati rice and was wonderful.
Poached eggs on toast are a full meal in themselves. 
Chicken Kebabs on spiced Basmati rice.
Carrot cake mix. This is a Primrose Bakery recipe and worth buying the book for this alone. You will not find a better carrot cake. I’ve made it several times now and it is simply a Wow! cake. (Enough over for 9 carrot cake buns!)
I made a checkerboard cake for my birthday with white chocolate ganache between the layers and dark chocolate ganache to cover. A lot of work but worth it for when you slice it and a chess board appears.
The completed carrot cake with icing made from cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and orange zest. There’s over a pound of carrots in this baby.
My birthday presents.
Lots of orange zest needed for the two cakes means plenty of fresh orange juice.
Pasta, vegetables, creme fraiche. Delicious and easy.
Practice Christmas dinner number one. A glutton’s (mine) portion of roast chicken.
And yet more poached eggs to finish. This time with the spinach served on top.
Happy Christmas From
Simon & Jolly
This is a favourite. Unbeatable as a quick snack, a budget meal and a tasty treat; but also scores high on nutrition, sustainability and gastronomy. It’s the humble but very delicious sardines on toast. Can be made using a toaster but, like toasted cheese, is better using a grill. Toast the bread fully on one side and partially on the other. Butter (real butter please) and spread a couple of tinned sardines straight from the can. I prefer the ones in tomato sauce for this recipe. Sprinkle a few drops of tabasco sauce and return under the grill for a minute or two to finish. It’s one of those meals that don’t tempt until you’ve made it and then it is irresistible. What’s for tea? Sardines on toast. Can’t we have something better than that? Here you go. Any chance of some more?
The East Midlands hasn’t yet developed a strong reputation as a food capital. Some supposed lesser counties have become associated with fine food shops and innovative restaurants. Shropshire is now known for good eating as is Cumbria. But we do have the same supermarkets (for better or worse) as the well-heeled areas and we have a few gems of our own. Some brilliant farm shops and a local charcuterie and smoke house in Bolsover that trades under the name of Jaquest. This is a piece of smoked cod that is absolutely full of flavour. The firm is discretely sited and run by a modest man and wife team who pick up gold, silver and bronze medals for their products from food fairs around the country. This is as good as you’ll get anywhere in England and you’ll enjoy the experience of shopping with them. They are lovely people and to top things off, it’s superb value for money.
Their bacon is a treat. Several different cures. I usually choose the standard cure which gives you a flavour and texture from the past. No un-foodlike slimy white oozings from these rashers as they cook. This is the real stuff. It has so little in common with the pre-packed product that comes off the supermarket shelves (even the supposed dry cure) that it seems incredible that we give it the same name. The taste of bacon like this, cured by strictly traditional methods on a small scale by people who care about food, is what gave bacon its reputation. That rubbery, squirmy stuff inserted into a pappy bun, at all too many sandwich shops, isn’t bacon. It’s a horribly processed meat that we have learnt to tolerate. And we shouldn’t. This is like comparing a true stilton to Dairylea. Even the rind cooks perfectly and adds crunch and depth of flavour to the sandwich or the breakfast.
Jaquest also do a smoked Holoumi cheese. A single slice added to the nearly made bacon sandwich and then melted under the grill before eating turns a treat into a feast. 
There are as many different recipes for kedgeree as there are bogus recipes for Paella. It comes from the Raj and is obviously a dish prepared for people who are used to having servants and others to do for them. A real hotch-potch of ingredients. It all ends up in one dish but there is a lot of washing up with a kedgeree. I like Britain but its Imperial past isn’t an aspect that I feel any pride in. My recipe is the one I was brought up on. If any of my family made it to India it was as foot soldiers. Neither side of my family ever sat at the top table (on my mother’s side many were in service…my father’s side consists of miners, steel men and factory workers). My mothers favourite flavouring for fish and rice was parsley. I enjoy spicy kedgerees but given my druthers I’d always select this combination of Basmati rice, hard boiled eggs, poached smoked haddock (Jaquest), lots of black pepper and handfuls of chopped parsley. Serve with brown bread and butter. One of the great legacies of British imperialism is the wonderful multi-culutural society that parts of the country have become. My life has been enormously enhanced by this multi-culturalism.
Never had a fig until I was married with children. Only once had a pomegranate. We were told to use a pin to pick out the seeds. It took far too long and we lost interest. If you cut them in half and gently beat the outside with the back of a large knife the seeds fall out very easily. Suddenly the pomegranate is available in large numbers and low prices in most supermarkets. Visually stunning, as fresh as a morning meadow and apparently very good for you. To use the current stock phrase; what’s not to like?
I love bagels. Here the unusual combination of good cream cheese, capers and thin slices of venison salami (Jaquest gold medal winner, judged best salami in Britain). The salami is far too flavoured to over-indulge. It needs complimentary ideas and this works perfectly. I enjoyed these and then had two more!
This black pudding was delicious and I cannot remember who made it. It came from a supermarket and I deliberately kept the card container somewhere safe so I’d know to buy it again. I found a very safe place and hope to find it one day. Black pudding has become the both ends of the spectrum and nothing in the middle food. You’ll find it on the poshest menus and you’ll find it in working class greasy spoon cafés but you won’t often see it in the centre field.
Smoked rib of beef. I forget the exact name of the cut. Smoked to order by Jaquest, this isn’t easy to come by. I was lucky. Very lucky, this is a superb product. I simply took the proprietors advice and roasted it very slowly for 10 hours. I love cooking that fills the house with good smells. This was exceptional.
It produced several meals. At first the richest flavoured roast beef I can remember eating for a long time. Here served English style with new potatoes, carrots and kale. The gravy from the roasting pan was unbelievable. Fabulous on its own but once I added a little English mustard it sang to the four corners of my mouth.
I’m not a great multi-tasker. I do like the golden filigree on the bottom and edges of my fried eggs but I have to confess that I rather over-did these fellows. It made no difference. I call this a Morland breakfast because this is what Nicholas Jenkins and Hugh Morland had on a memorable occasion in A Dance to the Music of Time (one of the truly great sequences of novels written in English). Every time I have this most simple of breakfasts I’m reminded of so many things from my own past as well as that fabulous book.
Cold slices of smoked roast beef. Or roast smoked beef. Either way they made the most delicious sandwiches with some horseradish (T) and mustard (me).
I have a slight regret that I stopped drinking beer at the same time as the craft beer movement really took off. The regrets are minor. I’m happy with the improvement in the British banger over the same period. I have mixed feelings about middle class people with no experience setting up companies with the words artisan and provender in the titles. But I’m happy to eat a good sausage wherever it comes from.
The finest of many fine dishes to come from that £21 piece of beef. The bones were stocked for a number of hours and the stock made into a beef broth. Lots of the cold cuts plus onions, carrots and kale all supplemented with classic soup mix ingredients like yellow split peas, red lentils and pearl barley. This could have been made my my mother, my grandmother or my great grandmother…and that is the sort of food I like the best.
Another tasty breakfast and a morning with the newspapers.
As the only member of the family who likes seafood I suffer a feast or famine regime. Long periods of going without and then finding I have to eat enough for four or five. Mussels are sold in bags of about a kilogram in Britain. This moules mariniere meant I didn’t have to eat again that day.
Four oysters. Some pepper, some freshly squeezed lime. Another working class staple that has made its way up the food hierarchies.
I began this post with tinned sardines and now add a few fresh sardines. I head and gut them and fry them for a minute of two on each side and serve with bread and butter. Every bit as delicious as the earlier dish and just as east to make. (Both attract the attention of two cats and a sheep dog. I’m afraid there wasn’t enough to go round.
Perhaps I spoke too soon. Maybe this was the piéce de resistance of the smoked beef. There are many ways of attaining the depth of flavour that separates the really good chilli from the ordinary. With this beef it didn’t matter. The depth of flavour was there. Quite simply this was the best chilli I’ve ever tasted. Far too good to serve in any other way.
Remarkable how much a sprinkle of lime and a dollop of soured cream adds to the dish. Do you use the word dollop in Australia, New Zealand and America?
No month is complete without a simple steak dinner. It’s what I dreamed of as a boy and now measure out my happiness with.
A simple cake baked by T for a school baking festival. Wonderful balance between the flavours of the different elements.
How I plan to spend the winter. I travel a lot less in the darker months. I mostly work from home these days and once I’ve lit a fire I rarely move more than a few yards. Books, food, dog walks and music. Travel can wait until the days start to lengthen again.
Mind you. A family trip to York included breakfast at Bettys with David and Melissa made a very special treat.
And ice-cream in a York ice-cream parlour.
I wasn’t part of the big family trip to Harry Potter World. Jolly and I stayed at home and read a travel book by the fire. Before they set off I put in my biggest ever stint at the pancake pans. 2 pounds of flour, a dozen eggs made two large mixing bowls of batter and two pans going non stop for over half an hour. All our children with their partners filled the dining room with good cheer. It felt very quiet when they’d gone.
There was a birthday last month. We gathered to celebrate T’s anniversary and a family gathering will often involve a trifle. It goes back to when the children were very small. Trifle was a special occasion treat for a while in the seventies. It’s gone out of fashion. People tried to fancy it up – often with the addition of alcohol – usually sherry – but this doesn’t help. Sponge, fruit, good custard and whipped cream are all delightful ingredients in themselves. They don’t need jazzing up. I’m not a fan of adding alcohol to food. There is a real skill in knowing which alcohol, how much and what blend. Most of us don’t have this skill. I don’t drink alcohol these days- no longer like the taste – not sure that I ever did. I never much cared for sherry which is the drink that has ruined many an inoffensive trifle. By all means have a glass of sherry with your trifle. It’s like the English ‘artisan’ (translates as a middle class person who has decided they can set themselves up as a food producer) cheesemakers putting apricots and cranberries into the cheese. No!!! A hundred times no! Serve the cheese with anything you like but don’t incorporate it into the cheese. And don’t put alcohol into trifles. If you don’t like trifles without alcohol have a different pudding. (My blog; my prejudices!)
This was intended to be a fancy checkerboard cake but I couldn’t find the icing bags needed to create the pattern so I thought I’d attempt my own record for the highest Victoria sponge. The photograph doesn’t have anything to allow you to gauge the scale but take it from me, that is a big plate it is standing on. It was T’s birthday and a fun cake seemed to be in order. I’ve also just had a new cooker installed and sponge cakes are an excellent way of getting a feel of cooking times (every cooker is different). The jam is my own home made plum jam. The cream is shop bought double cream whipped.
Having been carried away by the delights of sour dough I have been a little negligent with yeast based bread. The day I made this loaf was hot and humid. The dough had been double proved and the loaves into the oven within 3 hours. The same process can take twice as long in the winter. In my new found love of sourdough I’d forgotten how nice this bread can taste. And it is perfect for sandwiches. Many restaurants and tearooms, including some very good ones, use sliced bread for sandwiches because it is impossible to cut fresh bread thin enough. (Paul Hollywood) Some leave the proper loaves until they are a day old. With well baked home made bread you can cut the bread as thin or thick as you like as soon as it has cooled to room temperature.
Uncle Bernard (sadly no longer with us) loved what he called comfort food. We all have our own definitions of comfort food. Fish pie is the epitome of it to me. It fills the kitchen with warm, safe, nostalgic smell, it evokes kind memories, is the sort of food you can eat on a tray in front of the telly in your dressing gown, and it’s so dashed tasty. This is as simple as fish pie gets. Cod fillets, parsley sauce and good mashed potato. I love frozen peas with many things but they fit the comfort food label perfectly. I felt a whole lot better after a portion (or two) and I wasn’t even ill before I began.
We’ve had another wonderful late summer. The sun was a long time coming this year but it is in no rush to leave. We’ve had a lot of meals in the garden this September. I really enjoyed this bowl of chilli con carne made with three different sorts of beans and good cubes of beef cut from a piece of topside and stewed slowly. A few tortillas and a dollop or two of Turkish yoghurt; and lots of late season sun. Blooming marvellous!
A plate of happiness. This was my platter for the rugby league challenge cup final. In previous years I’ve enjoyed hotdogs or burgers or a packet of crisps (chips) or a plate of chocolate biscuits to enjoy this essential part of Simon’s sporting calendar. Fruit, bread, cheese, cold meats and a cracking match between Warrington and Hull with the Humberside team sealing it with a breath-taking match-saving tackle in the last minute. Perfection!
Figs were things we never saw as children. The occasional mention in Bible stories at school and a place in an oft-used figure of speech “don’t give a fig” meaning “don’t care” “not bothered”. I was a parent before I cut open my first fig and saw this delightful sight. As good to look at as to eat and a real treat to do either. Here served with a Yorkshire curd tart. The sweet tartness of the fig off setting the creamy stodge (not often used as a compliment but very much so in this case) of the tart.
The bread is mine but everything else is from the deli counter. Do they do Scotch eggs in other parts of the world? Some people have passed unkind comments on the Scottish diet and perhaps this way of serving the humble egg says a great deal about Hibernian attitudes to food. Take a perfectly innocent egg and give it a thick jacket of sausage meat, roll this in breadcrumbs and deep fry it! If you make these yourself with good quality sausage meat they are wonderful. Occasionally you can buy a good one. More often than not they are a victory of hope over expectation.
Can’t remember whether this was breakfast of tea. The cups of coffee suggest it was the first meal of the day. Nice to see two coffee pots, a fresh pineapple and a jar of home made chutney in the background. I’m less impressed with the packet of pre-sliced cheese.
Comfort food part two. Spaghetti Bolognese as taught to us by our (English) mums. This was the first dish we (as a nation) learned when pasta first became readily available (in blue sugar paper packages in the early 60s) We’ve adapted it slightly and serve it with good Parmesan cheese these days, but it is otherwise unchanged from the way mother served it to a hungry family of nine.
I’ve featured quite a few cooked breakfasts in these blogs over the years. You are actually far more likely to find this on the Johnson breakfast table. I love fruit however it comes, and can think of no better accompaniment than yoghurt.
The simplest and perhaps the tastiest of the pasta dishes. Spaghetti Carbonara. Ten minutes well spent of anybody’s time. Beaten eggs added at the last minute and cooked in the residual heat of the pasta and sauce as it is stirred to thicken.
These innocent looking little treats should come with a health warning. Any actor needing to bulk up for a part would manage it in a month on croissants. They look light and fluffy, are oh so easy to eat, and the weight just piles on. A treat is a treat though. They are far too good to cut out all together. Impossible to manage on just one!
Home made vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries.
A writer’s lunch. A whole Camembert, a small French loaf and a few grapes.
In between jobs that have to be done I’m trying to find a couple of hours a day to practice the array of musical instruments I have surrounded myself with. In the foreground a fish finger sandwich. In the background, Worcestershire sauce, ukulele tutor, selection of picks and a harmonica.
Home made scones with my own gooseberry and apricot jams. These scones are my effort. I usually leave it to the current Mrs J and she does a much better job.
Not a vintage year for produce but we had plenty of broad beans, gooseberries, black and white currants, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers.
Home grown tomatoes (and chilli) on toast with bacon.
My snack tray for the Australian Rugby League Grand final. Cronulla just beating Melbourne while I eat crisps, mini salamis and apples.
No month is complete without steak. Yellow fat is almost always a sign of quality beef. This tasted superb.
Good mushrooms on good toast. What more do you want?
The greatest snack food of them all. Toasted cheese!
When we were young and courting I made steak with corn cobs and baked potato for T on her birthday. The tradition was in need of revival. 35 years on it is still just about my favourite meal.
Home made chicken soup.
Rack of lamb.
Ernest Hemingway’s favourite breakfast. Eggs sunny side up with fried potatoes.
Linguine with mussels and green peppers. I forgot to add that we try to use our own grown ingredients. No we haven’t got a mussel bed but we do grow a lot of peppers. This was a while back and I can’t remember whether the sauce includes fresh cream or creme fraiche. I’m very tempted by it. May very well make it again in the next few days. I love all pasta dishes but seafood pasta dishes are a particular favourite.
There we go. Mr Heinz originally marketed his tinned baked beans as a luxury item. These were intended for the sort of people who shopped in Harrods and Fortnum and Masons. I was shocked on finding out how much sugar he puts into them. These days I tend to go for the low sugar option. I can’t tell much difference in taste. W Somerset Maugham once wrote that “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.” It’s as much a damning statement of the fare on offer in the early twentieth century as it’s a celebration of this unbalanced, unhealthy, but oh so tasty, contribution to the world of food. I like a cooked breakfast but try to limit it to no more than once a week, often once a fortnight.
Salmon roe caviar on little bits of toasted bread with a decent cream cheese. By decent cream cheese I mean anything that isn’t and doesn’t resemble Philadelphia. It’s a wonderful State but a poor imitation of what proper cream cheese can be. Should be filed with Dairylea and McDonalds. Acceptable but only in emergency and when very hungry. And even then…only just.
Simple sourdough pizzas. Take a bit of sourdough. Work it into a pizza shape. Add some tomato sauce (your own preferably) and cheese. This cheese looks like cheddar. It’s ok for pizza so long as you eat it straight away. If you allow it to cool it goes a bit plasticky in texture. I like anchovies. They usually find their way onto my pizzas.
Desert Island food number one. Good bread (in this case home made sourdough loaf) with a selection of cheeses and some tomatoes. A grating of black pepper is all that is needed. This is food of the gods. Enjoyed at its best with tea served in cups and saucers and made in a pot. I don’t drink wine, in fact I don’t drink any alcohol. Tea does it for me! 
Desert Island Food part Two. Once again sourdough bread but this time with air dried Spanish ham and a strong soft French cheese. I cannot remember what type it was. I’d know it again if I saw it. Certainly if I tasted it.
Roast beef and lettuce sandwich with a couple of dill pickles. Seem to remember that this was while I was watching a match in the European Football Championships. The bread is shop bought but it made a decent sandwich.
Now there are only two of us at home I tend to cut the roasting joint in half and make a stew out of the remainder. Every country has its own dumplings recipes. A beef stew with dumplings is about as English as food gets. And about as tasty.
Serve it with new potatoes and green beans. Happiness on a plate.
Asparagus: the joy of an English spring. And a doping story that was quickly buried. Many were accused. They denied it. That’s alright then.
Lunch the next day. Nothing heats up better than a stew. The dumplings lose something in texture but nothing in flavour. One of the delights of the modern world is the easy availability of asparagus. During my childhood this was kept for the extremely rich and for landowners. If you’ve got the right soil and plenty of space it isn’t difficult to grow. I’m happy to leave it to the farmers.
There are a lot of variations on the English breakfast. The best is the simple combination of bacon and eggs with good bread and butter. It has to be butter.
Inside the box from Bettys is a Yorkshire curd tart. There aren’t many places to get these. Do not pass one without buying. It is a real pleasure to eat. My grandma used to make these and they were wonderful when still just warm from the oven. I’ve never tried to make one myself which seems something I ought to put right. I never go to York or Harrogate without visiting Bettys and I never leave Bettys without a curd tart; unlike Dr Spooner. Be careful what you order!
I set two starters off at the same time. One was just flour (wholemeal) and water and the other was white bread flour and also had a grated (organic) apple in it. One was kept in a sealed Kilner jar and the other in a bowl with cling film over it. Both were doing fine until the particular bowl I’d used was required for something else. I continued feeding the one with the apple in and it was soon reproducing itself in a manner that would interest a writer of science fiction. Every day or so you are supposed to discard half and add new flour and water. It’s rather like having a pet. Not as good as a dog or a cat but a darned sight better than a stick insect or a Tamagotchi.
How to make a sausage sandwich. Take a third of a baguette. Open it up and load with meaty sausages. Smear with English mustard and squirt with ketchup. Ideal drink: a mug of tea.
Couscous with peppers and duck. Ridiculously easy to make delicious meals with. If you gave a good chef some couscous and a few other ingredients on Ready Steady Cook they’d wonder what to do with the other 15 minutes.
In the foreground cauliflower cheese. In the background a really tasty, malty, seedy loaf from Lidl. Another way of reaching the culinary heights via the primrose path of dalliance.
The good, the bad and the Tall T. Untypical of my snacking food while watching westerns but nonetheless enjoyable …well, for the first five minutes… then the flavours seemed to change from those you’d expect to create in the kitchen to those you’d expect to create in the science lab. If you haven’t seen the film I recommend it.
This is more like it. Slices of baguette lightly toasted in the oven and served with Orkney crab paté. A squeeze of lemon juice does make quite a difference.
A bowl of porridge with Demerara sugar melting on top. (Not the same but very similar to a photo I put up a few weeks ago). I may well print this photograph and frame it and make it my entry for the Turner Prize. Entitled “Simple Happiness”.
Supermarket of current choice, Lidl, has much tastier and a better range of cured meats than any of its competitors. OK I didn’t try Fortnum and Mason’s or the Harrods’ food hall but they aren’t often seen as direct competition to Lidl in Darnall. It might be a loyalty thing but very few people seem to use both.
Savoury snacks from their bakery. That’s goats cheese on the left. Can’t remember what flavoured the twist but I can remember looking to see if I’d bought another. Very moreish.
I’m not sure but I think the chilli came out of a can. Not great on its own but not bad with rocket, grated Red Leicester cheese and soured cream in a tortilla. Eaten while watching The Good the Bad and the Ugly. A film worth making good food for.
They sell yoghurt by the pailful in Lidl and almost every customer (it serves a truly multi-ethnic customer base and is the happiest shop I know) buys a bucket of it. I’ve taken to doing the same. Next to porridge, yoghurt and fruit (in this case sour black cherries from a jar) is my favourite breakfast.
Croissants used to be my favourite breakfast but I found that one croissant was something of a gateway drug and soon I was gorging on three or four and finding (unusually for me) my stomach ballooning. I even used to load them with butter and jam. My hat! These bad boys are full of butter as it is. How on earth do the French remain so slim and elegant? If I was French I’d resemble Alec Baldwin.
So here is a photograph of some typical English health food. A venison pie with chips.
A second way of making a sausage sandwich. Toast pitta breads and open them up. Bung in a couple of sausages and garnish with Gruyere cheese. Eaten while watching 3:10 to Yuma.
Home baked wholemeal bread.
With cock’a’leekie soup with cream stirred in. Very nice.
And with cream drizzled. Much nicer.
A Monday roast dinner. One free range chicken spatchcocked and served Tudor style. It was never intended to all be eaten in one sitting. The birds actually made two other main meals. It was a very easy way to serve and added a little element of feasting. No bones were thrown over shoulder amid Brian Blessed impressions while eating this meal. (Even though a dog waited patiently just in case).
One of the other meals was this chicken risotto. Risotto is my current favourite meal. If heaven exists they will serve risotto.
Another of those special treat meals I make for myself when I’ve been working on the house or garden. Lamb chops with new potatoes, mange tout and mint sauce.
Seafood pasta. Tagliatelle with mussels, cockles, prawns and baby squid and creme fraiche.
I got the recipe for these off a fellow blogger who has an amazing site full of fabulous recipes for vegans. These are kale crisps. Lightly oiled kale leaves are roasted in a oven for 10 minutes each side and then sprinkled with sea salt. Very moreish!
Chicken and vegetable soup to fight off the January colds. I’m touching wood while I type but feel bold enough to say that I haven’t had a bad cold since I gave up smoking over six years ago.. They used to hang around from October to March. I can’t say that it is any more than coincidence. I’ve made a lot of other changes in my life during that time. One thing that doesn’t change is my love of a home-made soup. It’s like bread in that it is simple, wholesome, and as much fun to make as it is to eat. I prefer to keep it brothy rather than blend it. Sometimes it improves it to blend it, mostly, it seems to me, to be making it into baby food. I like to be able to enjoy the different elements. Not that there are too many here; onions, leeks, carrots and chicken stock with any meat that had been left on the carcass after it had already served as main course for two meals.
These are my secret treats. (Not so secret now as T reads these blogs). Bacon, fried eggs and fried potatoes with a mug of black coffee. This is a Hemingway style writer’s breakfast. I face it without Papa’s hangover and talent. The tray cloth suggests that I had minor aspirations to grandeur that morning. The plastic sauce bottles help to keep me grounded.
This used to be a real treat as a boy and a starter in restaurants that had heard of three course meals but didn’t really want to offer the customer too much in the way of clever cooking. Inexplicably people chose to have it. Some restaurants still try to get away with it, cutting it thin and fanning it out. Now that melons are available for under a pound all the year round it is the equivalent of being offered an apple. Very nice but not at £25 a head.
I try to finish whatever work I am doing by 4 o’clock and have a meal ready on the table for when T gets home. I’m currently going through bit of a chop phase. All of this plateful is nice. The Bramley apple sauce is but five minutes effort and adds so much. Freshness is all. The best part of the meal isn’t actually the chops but the baked potatoes with real butter.
The last of the chops pan fried with a couple of sausages (hence the black flecks on the chop) re-heated baked tatties and a greedy helping of grated cheddar cheese. My lunch the following day.
As you can see giving up cigarettes has not left me vice-free. I like my food tasty and I tend to enjoy a generous portion. In my defence (does pleasure need a defence?) my working day does consist of plenty of strenuous labour at the moment. And I don’t eat much for the rest of the day.
This is one of a dozen (at least) meals that I would call my favourite. Some crackers, some good Stilton cheese and some pears. Heaven on a plate.
Hotel room. Not sure why the shaving brush and bowl are there but there is limited space in a hotel room. We share a Danish pastry and an almond croissant. On their own they are nice. With a decent apple, they are even better.
One of my great regrets on leaving Exeter 20 years ago was that we were leaving behind a wonderful parade of shops on Magdalen Road. Some of the best have gone and been replaced by cafes run by people who are about as qualified to run cafes as I am to exhibit at the Tate. The best greengrocer in the West of England has closed since I was last there and that is a nail in the coffin as regards it being a world class shopping street. Happily the bakery is not only still there but hasn’t followed the trends into sourdough and wholesome or fancy. (I like sourdough and fancy, my gripe is against a particular type of cafe and bakery). They bake good bread and sell the same choice of cakes and puddings that they did in the eighties (and probably the fifties). Here we have a plum and almond cake and a lardy cake. Lardy cake was a fantastic treat as a boy and now has almost disappeared. This bakery has stuck by its guns and will outlast all of the fashion following rivals. I like my poetry written by poets, my food grown by farmers and my bread (when I don’t bake it myself) baked by a baker.
Not a traditional way of eating lardy cake. Ayrshire cheese, pears and figs. I don’t care, this was delicious.
These Buxton fish and chips were just about as good as they appear: more filling and thrilling. No complaints but no rush to go back for more.
But here is a fish meal that would tempt me back. Made by David and Melissa and the highlight of our visit to the South West. Baked smoked salmon with potatoes and a really delicious combination of vegetables flavoured with honey, balsamic and other ingredients. Very special indeed.
I’m not against well-meaning middle class people with the ability to bake from opening their own cafe. Amongst the many dreary efforts in Exeter are one or two that are superb. One goes under the cheerful but corny name of Cake-a-Doodle-Doo! It is on the Palace Gate end of Cathedral Green and is everything you want in a cafe. A limited choice of first class cakes and simple but tasty meals. (Too much choice is a great mistake in small cafes). All freshly made and served in a cheerful and tasteful atmosphere by the people who baked them. I was halfway through my coffee and walnut cake before I remembered that T had a camera on her phone. Also on view are the remains of a rich chocolate (gluten free) cake and the bottom third of a slice of Victoria sponge. Imagine you are able to sample the wares on the final day of the Great British Bake Off and you won’t be far out. Oh, and they served proper tea as well not a bag seeping in an aluminium pot.
Another meal that is a contender for my very favourite. Good bread, butter, cheese, ham, tomatoes and nothing else. Scientists have recently concluded that vanilla yoghurt is the food of happiness. I can only presume they forgot to test this plateful.
A bought Christmas pudding. One of many I’ve eaten this year. This one is made to look fancy by being topped with lots of glacé cherries and whole almonds. The almonds are ok but glacé cherries are no longer anyone’s idea of a treat. Just give me more plum pudding and don’t stint.
I’m not the biggest fan of supermarkets. I can’t see the little bits of good they may have done, in widening tastes and making foods available, has even come close to cancelling out the huge harm that they are responsible for. But they are here now and they aren’t going to go away. (Though I’m proud of the efforts of British people, in protesting about the market leaders showing that all they really care about is profit and dividends, and giving them a bloody nose). Tesco and Sainsbury’s have pretty much lost my trade until they show that service (to both supplier and customer) comes before the balance sheet. Waitrose bribes me (successfully) with free tea and coffee to go with a decent range of treats in their cafe as well as a free newspaper, but if their shelves didn’t hold better food than their bigger rivals I don’t think I’d bother. I’m still with the new guys. Not simply because they are cheap but because they have more exciting products. My current favourite is Lidl. The one I go to is in a run down part of Sheffield and my fellow shoppers are the displaced from the UK and all over Europe and beyond. It is the friendliest shop I know. It never fails to give me something I’d be prepared to travel a long way for if it wasn’t on my doorstep. Here are some delicious crayfish tails. I’m the only one in our house who likes shell fish. It allows for feastly portions. I made up a little creamy dressing to complete these sandwiches. I must have been a good person in a previous life.
Lidl also provided a tray of venison for the price of a pint of Guinness in a London pub. I know which I’d prefer. They were packaged as if they were steaks but on cooking they fell into these lumps. It said haunch of venison on the box but was more like hunks of venison inside. Still very tasty but not quite the Robin of Sherwood feast I had in mind.
Everything goes well with new potatoes and peas. No fruit and very little fat (venison is an extremely lean meat) to finish the post.
Wraps, tortillas and other flatbreads are now so popular in England that it is difficult to remember that they are a recent addition. You simply couldn’t get them in the sixties. In the seventies and eighties you needed a specialist food store. By the nineties supermarkets stocked them in most stores. Today there are racks and racks of them. Another new item are the bags of ready prepared salad. This is a tuna wrap. The tortilla takes a minute in a dry frying pan. A handful of leaves, a forkful of tinned tuna, a few slices of tomato and spring onion and a squirt of mayonnaise. Roll cut and serve. Tuna never was the food of poor farmers but was a staple during my younger days in bedsits and draughty, shared houses.
A rib-eye steak, flash griddled and sliced into strips, piled on top of salad leaves. Tomatoes and English mustard were added before the upper crust. This was my treat. There was no reason for the treat other than I fancied it. If my ancestors could have afforded to give themselves a good steak dinner I’m sure they would have. I’m certain they wouldn’t be-grudge me.
The sausages are from an independent farmer. The bread is a multi grain loaf from Lidl. Lidl is about the best of our supermarkets for quality and range of bread. This sausage sandwich looks good, tasted good and by golly I’m sure it did me good.
Slices of fresh baguette and Orkney crab paté with some grapes and some walnuts. All supplied by Lidl. It is a budget supermarket but it turns up trumps for tasty treats. This terrine might not be as good as you’d make for yourself but you’d need pretty advanced taste buds to tell the difference.
My favourite Sunday tea. Soft boiled eggs, good bread, real butter and mugs of tea. All that is needed now is a traditional Sunday cake.
Coffee and walnut cake. Walnuts are plentiful and cheap these days. It would be a pity not to take advantage.
Another Lidle treat. These are little ramekins filled with scallops and prawns in a white sauce. I wouldn’t serve them to guests but for a mid-morning snack when working in the office they are perfect.
Most of the sauce is hidden in this photograph. It’s made of onions, peppers, celery and mushrooms all sweated down. Add a big dollop of creme fraiche, season and serve with spaghetti and parmesan. Impossible not to have a second helping.
Ah liver. Lots of iron in it they say. In fact it is highly rated by nutritionists. This is my preferred method of cooking. Simply flash fry it in a hot pan and serve on toast with mushrooms and sprinkle with Henderson’s Relish and Tabasco.
The tortilla is made by mashing some left over new potatoes with a fork together with some cooked green cabbage. Beat in an egg and fry lightly for five minutes each side. The mixed grill is completed with flash fried liver, rashers of bacon and good sausages.
The very best part of a bowl of porridge is watching the demerara sugar melt on top, I prefer this to a creme brûlée. The perfect winter breakfast. This particular bowl was made in a microwave.
All that remains of a once thriving weekly market in our village is a visiting fish van. It loads up on the fish docks at Grimsby every day and has a weekly routine. Thursday is our day. The haddock was caught off the Faroes, the smoked haddock is cured in Grimsby. The eggs come form the chicken who live in Frances’ and Steven’s back garden. The parsley is from my window sill and the potatoes are from Aldi. A contender, along with rice pudding, for the title of the greatest known comfort food. Perfect at any time of year but even better in the winter.
Stew and dumplings is the most farmhouse of English farmhouse dishes.. The browning on the sides of the pan is the result of 10 hours cooking in a 100 degree oven. The dumplings get added in the last 20 minutes when the oven temperature is turned up. They rise into the lightest and most perfect accompaniment for slowly cooked meat. (In this case stewing steak and lambs kidneys cooked with carrots, onions and leeks.)
You have to have green vegetables with stew.
The final slice. Photograph taken within 24 hours of the cake coming out of the oven. A true sign of a happy home is a cake under a dome. Ours is a very happy home.
I felt I deserved more than one treat this week. Is there a more tempting sight to a meat eater than a plate of steak and chips? Asparagus is another vegetable that used to cost a king’s ransom and was only available in exclusive stores. Today it is cheap, plentiful and every bit as tasty as it was when it was considered a rich man’s delicacy.
To finish with, the ultimate poor person’s treat that has found itself shooting up market. Here is haggis (Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race). I have never been to a Burns’ Supper. I don’t drink whisky (in fact I don’t drink anything stronger than tea) and I don’t like bagpipes. I do like the poet though and have chosen to celebrate his birthday with a breakfast of haggis, beans and egg with toast. Haggis is made with every part of the beast that didn’t make the laird’s table. It is an almost perfect example of something special made from the cheapest ingredients.