How Much for a Memory?

Anyone who has read a few of the posts here will realize that we are not living austerely. We try to make the most of what we have, which is plenty; to reduce waste; to grow many of our own vegetables; and to eat fresh foods freshly cooked, rather than rely on cook-chill crap. I cook and shop carefully because that is the way I'm made, not because we are skint. But when we feel the need to do so we push the boat out, and Friday was one such occasion.

Last year we didn't have a single BBQ as far as I can recall. The weather for the last two weeks has been so good that we have eaten half our evening meals outside, and on Friday I thought it was time to fire up the charcoal. We don't have a good butcher nearby, though Booth's supermarket is not at all bad. I headed instead for a farm shop about five miles away, knowing they would be likely to have T-bone steaks. They did.

If there is anything that cooks better on a BBQ than T-bone I have yet to find it. It helps that the fillet is tender to start with; the bone somehow keeps the meat moist; and the fat around the sirloin caramelizes superbly. You may start with knife and fork, but unless you are totally po-faced you end with fingers, gnawing at the bone.

Behind the extravagance was the thought that this was buying a special moment for us and our son. I have a terrible feeling that our climate has changed, with a mild wet season having replaced summer as it used to be. Let's hope that is wrong, but meanwhile nothing is lost by surfing this heatwave, beyond a rather eye-watering £34 for three huge steaks. Which is still cheap for a memory. 

Austerity and Aligot

Last week I was on a press trip to the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, and very enjoyable too. During the four days we visited six Michelin-starred restaurants. This was a privilege, though the urge to be different produces such horrors as foie gras with raspberry sauce alongside works of perfection like a coddled egg in an asparagus crust, the yolk when cut oozing unctuously into a morel sauce.

But that is clearly not austerity fare (though a variation on that egg dish, effectively a subtle scotch egg, could be). Aligot, however, most certainly is. At the market in Rodez we tried this local speciality, which is simply very smooth mashed potato blended with melted cheese (young Tomme d'Aguiole or Cantal) and garlic. Happily the last Michelin-starred place we visited served some with a beautiful piece of lamb, a real bow to culinary tradition. That I think had a bit of cream in it, not a heresy but a variation, perhaps a refinement, and still traditional. They matched perfectly, unlike the foie gras and raspberry car-crash.

A bit of research shows that the proportions potato to cheese are 2:1, with garlic to taste and likewise seasonings. An acceptable-ish substitute for the Tomme would be Mozzarella, or a mixture of that and a harder cheese like cheddar, melted before marrying. I will be making some soon, either to eat on its own (now that is comfort food Nigel) or to accompany lamb. It forms strings as you try to fork it up from the plate. Huge quantities are not needed, such is its richness.

The Anti-Health-Fascist Hero

Writing about the Jersey-based thriller writer who dined (dines perhaps, it may be that the author in question  still lives) on eggs, bacon and champagne daily brought to mind another gourmand hero, Viscount Castlerosse, who in the thirties and forties of the last century wrote a celebrated gossip column for the Sunday Express.

Castlerosse and austerity were not bedfellows, but my excuse in writing about him is that his most famous regular lunch (or it was reported to be so) is the antithesis of the joyless fare and attitude becoming so prevalent today. Pleasure has to be a part of eating for me, or it is just re-fuelling and only machines run on fuel.

The lunch for which he gained notoriety was a magnificent statement about enjoying life, and about how some things are so good they need no adornment. He would eat a whole York ham, washed down with half-a-dozen bottles of good claret. Superb. I spent 20 years in a previous career travelling the globe on expenses, but would never have got away with that, which is what he in fact did - his caviar and foie gras predilections were paid for by his paper, such was the pull of the 'Londoner's Log' society guff he churned out (and it cannot have hurt that he was a friend of the proprietor).

The alcohol in that single lunch by my reckoning comes to 54 units, so almost exactly double the upper recommended weekly limit set forth (with good reason of course) by doctors now. And if we are to be limited to one rasher of bacon a day or the equivalent in other preserved meats, I hate to think what a whole York ham works out at - several months' worth surely?

It is hard not to admire the man.

Such tales usually end with something along the lines of 'and he lived to a ripe old age.' Not this: he died in his early fifties, extremely fat. But I bet he crammed more pleasure into his curtailed span than an entire conference hall of mirthless brown-rice-and-sandals advocates.

The Opposite of Austerity Thinking

I am a confirmed observer of other people's trolleys in the supermarket, and of buyer behaviour. Something I saw recently rather bothered me, trying to work out what was going on in one young woman's mind. Not from the rest of her shop and her outfit well off, she was doing what looked like a weekly run, but included in it were several packs of sandwiches. She was obviously capable of making butties, and a pack of sandwiches isn't cheap - she could have bought the makings and made the same for half the price or less in minutes. I don't think I am mean, but I don't understand such thinking unless she was heading off somewhere immediately afterwards, but given she had shopping to unload her schedule can't have been that tight.

Are some of us now so alienated from the kitchen that a sandwich is beyond us? Sadly I can see the time when some perky celebrity chef has a series on how to make sandwiches, so we can relearn the lost art. To preempt that: take two slices of good bread, butter each of them on one side, put a filling of your choice such as cheese, or cooked ham, on the butter side of one, dab on mayo if liked, and then close the sandwich by putting the second piece of bread butter-side down on top of the filling. It's not too difficult is it? Next week's episode of 'Jamie's Italian-style Sandwiches': how to use salad leaves: "Nice bit of cheeaarghbaar'er. I like to dob on a bi'er rocket, bosh, like that. Pukkah." Book of the series available in all good stores for just £25. I despair. Not at someone who obviously cares about food making a fortune out of it (though am hugely jealous of course), but at our slide into a world where such books are needed.