Sleepovers

As a child, the closest I ever got to sleeping over at friends’ was spending a few murky hours in a tent, pitched in the back garden of our next door neighbour’s house. Camping at dusk sounded fun. However, not when you are laying top-to-tail with your best friend’s little brother who just happened to own the smelliest pair of feet in Bolton. Poking my head through the flap was sweet relief but gazing through the privet hedge and beyond at the warm light surrounding my mother’s silhouette at our kitchen window was unbearable. I was soon through the gap in the fence and mewling like a wet cat waiting to be let in at the backdoor. The door would open, in I would slink and Mum would smile, “I told you so.”

If a more comfortable arrangement had been offered would I have wanted to spend the night with any of my friends? I’m musing... I’m thinking... probably not. Let’s see... there was Joanne across the road. Now her mother was a notorious brag - forever boasting to my mother about “our Joanne” and how her “bedroom was a children’s paradise.” And it was true – Joanne’s bed was as soft as duck down and she was always the first to own the latest creation from Mattel. Her Barbie, it was said, and I can confirm, owned more outfits than Joan Collins. Joanne, however, had one fatal flaw. She didn’t like cats. I’m pondering... sharing a bed with Raggedy Ann and Andy or a big scraggedy ginger tomcat? No contest.

Susan, my next door neighbour friend, liked cats. We would sit side-by-side on the front step. She with her fat ginger tom and I with mine. Like companionable chimpanzees we would thumb through their thick sandy fur and pick out fleas holding each doomed finding aloft against the sun before remorselessly pressing their blood-bloated bodies against our thumb nails and relishing the snap. When daylight began to fade, however, and the air cooled, Susan would take her love of the macabre just a touch too far and regale ghost stories until I became benumbed by fear. My nervous disposition could never have dealt with a full night of ghouls and vampires; witches and warlocks.

Deborah was another friend and she lived lower down the street. She had a back garden swing. I  wasn’t allowed inside her house (so a sleepover would have been nigh impossible), but occasionally, throughout the long summer holidays, Deborah was able to play outside; she would sneak me in through the back gate and I would swing to and fro while she watched timidly, hands clutching the swing’s rusted frame, refusing to take part in who-can-reach-the-highest. Her mother, you see, would go demented if Deborah dared dirty the seat of her dress. I knew and feared the tyrannical authority of a stern father, it was my norm, but to have a strict mum was unthinkable. My mother’s voice was as soft as whispers and never minded that my socks were soiled or my shoes muddy. No - to be scrubbed clean and ordered to bed at 7pm every night while the birds still sang and before the TV watershed would have provided poor ingredients for sleepovers.

Decades have now passed and I’m delighted to announce I’ve found the perfect companion for sleeping over. We stay up late and watch Laurel and Hardy films. We press our cheeks into the cats’ fur and listen to them talk. Real speak not spit and purr. We read Flower Fairies and then sleep comforted by the night light. We wake with a need to be in the kitchen. We laugh a lot while we bake muffins and eat them whilst they are hot from the oven.

Meet my six year old niece, Rebecca.

Face Paint

I am your Auntie Littley. You say my name like it’s an unwrapped sweet – sticky on your tongue. You hold out your hand and in it I see a little monkey with big bug eyes. I take it from you and stare into its face. I see you as a baby. Pushed from your mother’s womb too early. A bag of sugar dressed in candy pink. Swollen eyelids struggling to contain eyes as bright and round as marbles. Your life is reduced to a glowing rawness. I visit you in your warm limbo between unborn and born. I try not to wonder at your pain. I wonder if you cry. I touch and go. I leave you to your world of whooshing voices and booming machines. Your new world of foggy colour and giant hovering limbs. We wait for you to incubate.

You grow and smile and laugh.

You link my arm as we watch the clowns. One fat; one thin. I ask which you like best and you need seconds before pointing at Stan. I am surprised. I thought it would be Ollie. I smile at your concern for the underdog. We are side-by-side in our sleepover and I tell you about the poppy fairy. We read Cat Tales. You share your doll and tell me her name is Rosy. Boo sings us to sleep.

It is 8am and you are awake. I envy you your wide awake eyes and goddess-beautiful tresses. I show you how to poach eggs as Uncle Biggy brews tea. You feed toast soldiers to the cats. Now it is time to make muffins. There are too many hands measuring out the ingredients; the worktop is powdered brown and white. Your cuffs are covered in cocoa and the cats have flour on their whiskers. We are laughing so much that we forget about the melting butter spitting on the heat. You ruffle up your nose as I let you smell the buttermilk’s sourness before it pours into the bowl. You shake in the chocolate chips and say it’s ready.  The smell of baking makes us hungry and we eat muffins straight from the tin.

The cats watch mesmerised as you cover your fingers in paint and dab colours on the egg box. They need to join in and sniff at the paint pots. Uncle Biggy places a blue bowl of water on the worktop so you can clean your hands. A craft feather lands in the bowl and I say it looks like feather soup. You are inspired. More and more feathers are used to make a thick colourful feathery broth. I don’t mind the waste. It has made you happy. You stick spongy letters on the gift bag: MUM – we can’t find a D so you stick on TOM and you wait for the muffins to be put inside. You smile; you like to give presents.

It is 3pm and it is time for you to go. Your dad eats a muffin from the gift bag and we wait to hear him say yummy. Your mum pats her tummy and says she is being good. She has a new dress and can’t eat any chocolate muffins. I watch as your face smiles through the car window. We wave goodbye.

Becky-Boo’s Chocolate Muffins

Having a six year old chocolate girl come to stay does have its drawbacks. Four years ago, I resolved to give up chocolate for good and I lasted out a good long while. If not pleased then I’ll say I’m somewhat reluctant to announce that I have reintroduced chocolate into my diet. Not huge brick-sized bars of it. That would be greedy. But there can’t be anything wrong with the odd sampling of a child’s home-baked chocolate chip muffin, can there? My reasoning may only be queried if you saw how many spoons of cocoa powder and shakes of chocolate chips went into these dark little domes.

We needed a somewhat hardy recipe to withstand Becky’s abuse of all things chocolatey and so used Nigella Lawson’s recipe for blueberry muffins as our base. Taken from her baking book How to be a Domestic Goddess - these are beautiful baked just as she intended with 200g of fresh plump blueberries instead of the cocoa and chocolate chips. Nigella uses buttermilk in her recipe to dampen the texture of her muffins and offer up a lactic tang which, in our adapted version, helps cut through the dense bitterness of the cocoa.

75g unsalted butter

200g plain flour

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

75g caster sugar

Pinch of salt

200ml buttermilk (or 100g yoghurt and 100ml semi-skimmed milk)

1 large egg

Packet chocolate chips (or to taste)

2-3 tablespoons (heaped) cocoa powder

12 bun muffin tray lined with 12 paper cases

Begin by melting the butter and setting aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

Combine all the dry ingredients (apart from the chocolate chips).

Beat together the buttermilk, egg and melted butter in a separate bowl or jug.

Mix the milky ingredients in with the dry using a wooden spoon.

Add the chocolate chips (saving a few to decorate the tops).

Spoon into the muffin cases and decorate the tops with the remaining chips.

Bake for 20 minutes until risen and firm to touch.

You can eat them warm or cold as you desire. Becky split hers open as you would a sponge pudding and ate it whilst steaming with a dollop of chocolate chip ice cream melting on top. Yes, impressive and all before 10am.

Artwork by Rebecca Gradwell
Face paint and hospital images by Tom Gradwell

For want of a butter knife...

In my kitchen’s space, I’d looked far and wide. Drawers - ransacked, cupboards - scanned, fridge - scoured, dishwasher - emptied. Where had it got to? My favourite piece of cutlery. Part of my kitchen family since Christmas 2004. Star of so many blog postings. So elegant and perfectly formed that a friend of mine thought it French – I can’t remember whether I informed her of its more humble origins: from BHS as part of a cheese and chutney set bought for me by my mother.  A woman’s instinct whispered in my ear and led me to her husband. That very same husband who had worked through an entire collection of dainty pink Laura Ashley wine glasses managing to crack each in turn. The very same life-partner who had pulled the sink unit door from its hinges just by leaning against it. Yes and wasn’t it he who chipped a hole in our granite hearth? The voice continued to nag.  And how can I forget the perfect circle of singe on the mantelpiece, left by a conflagration of candle flame. Not to mention the gaping hole in the bathroom sink – the aftermath of his (note the masculine pronoun) tumbling pot of night cream.

“What has happened to my favourite butter knife?”

“Oh, that. Sorry, I forgot to mention – it came apart when I was washing it. I threw it away.”

It was a good enough reason for embarking on our thrice-yearly trip to Bygone Times. A gigantic warehouse crammed full of just about anything: from wonky-keyed pianos to West German pottery; from naked baby dolls with drooping eyelids to aged macramé hanging baskets.  A veritable cornucopia of clutter awaits you (and us) as we began our journey, on a mist-filled rainy Sunday, in search of a replacement butter knife.

I take my camera with me today. I must add here that I harbour neither the boldness nor casualness required to capture those truly dynamic snapshots of urban life. Indeed, the subject-ready hustle bustle of shoppers and eagle-eyed stall-holders only serve to douse the tiny bit of camera-confidence I may hold and so, surreptitiously, I unpick my lens cap – look cautiously from left to right and then up and down before pointing and shooting at a beautifully wrought fat lava jug just an eye-blink away from being sold.  What should only happen in episodes of Mr Benn descends upon me and as if by magic the shopkeeper appears. He is intrigued and asks why I am taking shots of his beloved West German pottery. I am pleased I have been caught, as I find him an entertaining promoter of his wares. As I learn of its origins I respectfully put on my reading glasses and take a closer look at the pictured jug with its heavy glaze and pleasingly pitted surface. The magnified price tag tells me the jug cost £27.50 not the £7.00 I thought I’d read in my un-spectacled state. And so I must save my pennies for I do so love that little speckled jug.

Stuart’s stall is the first you see as you pass the entrance desk; his gaudily coloured pots stand out against the drab and ramshackle displays of his fellow stall-holders. Yet on these dusty shelves, among the cracked teapots and long-ago-loved china, I know I will find what I’m looking for. I always do. And for the loss of one, I gain six: taped carelessly to the fragile ochre silk cushioning of a tatty dark case lie a set of modest dark green-handled butter knives. Their plainness and therefore functionality suggests they began life in the 1930s but this notion only derives from impressions I may hold of that dark and frugal decade wherein my mother was born.

Satisfied with my find, we make our way to Martin’s favourite stall where, amid the scent of days gone by, you can be intoxicated by the new age waft of incense and perfumed oils. This stall is strewn with packets of joss sticks, miniature bottles of essential oils, crystals and beads, tarot cards and runes. Martin is as predictable in his choice of incense as he is in his choice of underpants. He reaches for three packets of patchouli and ignores my requests for the more sensual ylang-ylang or invigorating clove. I do not argue. There is an unspoken rule in our house that man shall be master of his own groovy vibes.

Books. There are more books than you can waft a joss stick at in Bygone Times: from antiquated folios to Haynes manuals; from The Complete Works of Shakespeare to The Viz Bumper Book of Shite; poetry and prose; fact and fiction – it’s all here in varying states of newness and decay. Although I do love the look and feel of books brand new: their creaseless jackets and hot-off-the-press perfume and that sense of discovering uncharted territory – there are equal pleasures to be found in their pre-owned condition. This is particularly so with cookery books. Open any second-hand Delia and the spirit of the cook spills out, an eager and reassuring kitchen companion in the guise of a food splodge: a streak of tomato juice, a smear of butter and all those fading teardrops of a good red wine – each are whispering secrets for a perfect recipe.

Before we make our way to the purchase desk I see another kitchen must-have: the ubiquitous Mason Cash stoneware mixing bowl – so ubiquitous in fact, that I (a so-called veteran cook), have never owned one. A fine web of cracks decorates the bowl’s interior but the butterscotch-beige sides are unblemished. A perfect baking heirloom. I take it to the till.

And home I go with my husband, his incense, a small canteen of cutlery and a universally-loved mixing bowl.  

Irish Soda Bread   

For want of a single butter knife I now have no fewer than six - accompanied by a well-used mixing bowl. It goes without saying that I’m inspired to cook. Or rather bake. And what better way to utilise these nascent treasures than to produce a steeped-in-tradition loaf ready to slice and spread thickly with salted butter. Nigel Slater’s Lazy Loaf seems perfect. The following recipe was featured on BBC TV’s Simple Suppers and I recall watching with delight as Nigel patted his dough into a neat cushion before placing it tenderly inside a pre-heated casserole pot. Snug and warm like a sleeping kitten.  I was eager to try out this well-petted soda bread and have made it many times since. Nigel admits to throwing his first loaf away – a brittle mound dropped on the lawn for 'daws to peck at. I would like to announce (rather smugly) that the rooftop jackdaws squawked in temper the first time I baked this bread. I shared not one crumb.

225g (8oz) Wholemeal flour

225g (8oz) Plain flour

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

350ml (12fl oz buttermilk)

1-2 tablespoons of oats (optional)

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F (gas 8). Place a large casserole dish (cast iron works perfectly) and its lid into the oven.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the flours, oats (if using), salt, sugar and bicarbonate of soda together with your fingers. Pour in the buttermilk, bringing the mixture together as a soft dough. Working quickly, shape the dough into a shallow round loaf about 4cm/1½in thick. The recipe asks for haste as the bicarbonate of soda starts to react with the buttermilk immediately. However, don’t worry if it takes a little time to extract the sticky dough from your fingers and amalgamate it with the rest of the flour.

Remove the heated casserole dish from the oven and dust the inside lightly with flour. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with a few oats (if using) then lower the dough into the pot. Cover with the lid and return to the oven.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it stand in place for 5 minutes before turning out and leaving to cool slightly before eating.

Once the lid is lifted and as the steam heats your face you may introduce yourself to a perfectly baked soda bread. And although the original recipe does not call for oats I think their addition today adds a deeper bygone charm to an already rustic bread. I slice into the thick nutty loaf, spread it with an obscene amount of butter and savour its grainy chewiness.

Auntie Bessie's Beef Stew

Mine came first, honestly she did. Before Tryton Foods  thought up the idea of producing fare from a bygone era, plumping it up with unsustainable  fats, sealing and freezing it and sending it to our supermarkets and urging us to buy it with Aunt Bessie’s promise of good old fashioned flavour. This roly-poly pastry-faced aunt, arms cradling an earthenware mixing-bowl - grinning with a mix of gentle mirth and culinary competence - from the red and blue packaging. Hers is a sweet guise to lure us into believing that what’s inside is a much sought-after family recipe passed on through generations of food-loving relatives; a secret so treasured that it would have taken endless hours of persuasion over buttered scones and pots of good strong tea before rising from its warm fleshy lair and slipping into our ovens at 200°. A perfect accompaniment to our Sunday roast, glistening (no, it’s not palm oil - honestly) with the moistness of the bosom from whence it, so grudgingly, yet so considerately, came. Beware that lady - who delights with her deep-welled Yorkshire puddings and boasts with her (short-lived) fame of starring in Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking - she is an imposter, a lying interloper. I should know, the real Auntie Bessie belonged to me – yes she did – and she made the best beef stew in Bolton.

Auntie Bessie circa 1950s

This stew was prepared in the tiniest of galley kitchens; a shoebox-like addendum to a two-up two-down terraced house nestled alongside the cosily situated Burnden Park - home of Bolton Wanderers' Football Club on Manchester Road, Bolton. Although miniscule, the kitchen was never dingy on account of it containing a wall of un-curtained windows. And through one of these you got a good view of the fuel bunker always freshly laden with an amorphous mass of glittering blue-black, headily-scented coal. On our visits I always demanded the job of hauling in these heavy jewels – I suppose having four brothers had made me competitive and would generate a whole lifetime of proving that women could be as strong as men. Auntie Bessie understood and didn’t bat her eyelid when she witnessed her diminutive, yet muscle-bound great niece struggle through the backdoor, shovel overflowing, wavering slightly, but moving determinedly toward the fireplace. It didn’t matter that I’d left a trail of dust and coal behind me, her scolding was as gentle as her cheek and the grin she wore beneath it: “Watch her, Audrey,” she would say to my mother, “she’s as strong as an ox.” My mother became relaxed at Auntie Bessie’s – comforted in the knowledge that her young children would be fed well and able to be themselves instead of freakish mutes who craved meat and mushrooms and hid behind living room doors. Mum and her aunt were able to squeeze free from their pointy shoes and warm their stocking-clad hereditary bunions (indeed compare bunions) by the cheering glow of a Lancashire hearth, man-less but whole.

I would keep my shoes on long enough to perform a snappy sounding mini tap-dance routine on the faux pebble encrusted linoleum – a pathway that led you heavenwards and beyond and into the aromatic warmth of that tiny kitchen.

Auntie Bessie circa late 1960s

The chunkily cubed steak simmered in the oven extremely slowly along with a chopped onion and ladlefuls of water in a tray covered with a dinner plate masquerading as a lid. The liquid transformed into the tastiest gravy as the meat and onion released their respective juices. Auntie Bessie would not use any thickening agent, what she served us were tender melting-moments of beef paddling in a pool of trickle-thin jus that would surely be the envy of any Michelin starred restaurant kitchen. Envious they would also be of the accompanying chips, stocky and un-stacked yet somehow suggesting that a bold culinary dexterity had been at work as their crisped and gilded edges sopped up the meaty stock. Occasionally, if she felt like it, Auntie Bessie would open a tin of garden peas: dull khaki-clad gate-crashers – they certainly had no business showing up at all.

Another aid for soaking up those precious juices were wedges of doorstep-sized white bread - hand hacked by Auntie Bessie from a freshly baked loaf bought that morning from Sutton’s Bakery. To pile chips onto this platform of soft, doughy bread thickly spread with real butter and then attempt to make the two ends meet was some challenge. But I was always satisfied with my docker’s butty and would then drench the crusty edges with gravy and cram bread, chips, drips and all into my gaping mouth. As I write this I can’t think of any other gastronomic experience that has ever come close to biting into that clumsily constructed yet exquisite mass of moist bread and butter-greasy chips.

Auntie Bessie circa 1975

After our dinner plates had been cleared, we were ready for our dessert. Auntie Bessie took out her best glassware from a display cabinet in the room she referred to as ‘the parlour’. Small ruby red fruit bowls which lit up with reflected firelight before being filled with tinned fruit salad and a generous pouring from a tilted can of Carnation milk. It was easy to believe that God had smiled down on me, one of his little children, on those late Saturday afternoons, for it must have been His benevolent hand that threw the solitary glacé cherry my way. Feeling quite special, I would save this waxy, yet softly disintegrating crimson-red bead until last, and then with a sly grin for my cherry-starved baby brother, I would pop the fruit onto my tongue, clamp my mouth tight shut and savour its momentary perfumed sweetness. In later years the cherry seemed to disappear from this syrupy concoction of fruit cubes: perhaps it was due to a lackadaisical attitude at the canning factory? Or had the manufacturers been bombarded with letters of complaint from angry mothers accusing them of inciting sibling disharmony? Maybe my little brother had developed a degree of wiliness and sneaked out the cherry without me knowing.  Whatever the reason was, the remaining medley of fruit, by then, had certainly begun to lose its appeal. And on reflection - it was probably no coincidence that around that time I started to question the existence of God.

There is no recipe to accompany this posting. I know that whatever I produce in imitation of what I tasted on those magical childhood Saturdays would, like the ‘Aunt Bessie’ products from our supermarket freezers, be an inferior copy of its original. I prefer to retrieve the essence of those wholesome filling meals from the packed store that has now become my memory. But, of course, I am saddened that I will never taste such food again.

Me, Auntie Bessie's backyard circa 1975

Toast (BBC1 Thursday 30th December)

Almost as good as watching a  much-looked-forward-to-TV-drama is reading A A Gill’s scathing Sunday Times’s TV review the following week. He didn’t disappoint with his review of the BBC 1 Christmas drama, Toast. Although Gill is admiring of the ‘beautifully realised set’ and ‘fine cast’ and he is clearly sensitive to the ‘empty pastry cases’ being a ‘sobbing metaphor of loss, death, gayness, etc. etc’ he finds himself unable to respond to the drama’s comedic elements. Indeed he renders this particular biopic as ‘unrelentingly miserable.’ Mr. Gill, get thee to your iPlayer, and view this drama anew and then review your review for there is much in it to delight the comedy-hungry viewer. Possibly, after the Christmas I had, I was more in need of humour than most and perhaps that’s why I tucked into the funny side of Toast. Ah well, here goes:

I’m sure we’re all guilty of it - whatever social class we belong to, rich or poor, young or old - when we come into contact with something inferior to our tastes we brand it, with our curling lips, as ‘common’. My mother thought sterilised milk was ‘common’ and also ‘common’ were the people who used the term ‘pot towel’ instead of the more demure ‘tea towel’. Not long after I married Martin I contemplated his ‘commonness’ when he left clothes pegs attached to the washing line after the clean laundry had been brought in: “My God, only ‘common’ people do that,” said I. When it comes to food matching my particular refinements there is a whole host of provender I might turn my nose up at – pork pies being one of them. With this in mind I was in complete agreement with Mrs Slater (Nigel’s mum) when she explained to the nine year old Nigel that he couldn’t have a pork pie from Percy Salt’s grocery store on account of it being ‘common’. She then went on to ask Mr Salt for some ‘nice dairylea slices.’ Simple irony always manages to make me smile.

Well now, Mrs Slater dies and Mr Slater employs a cleaner, Mrs Potter (played by Helena Bonham Carter), to take care of his domestic needs. It comes as no surprise to learn that young Nigel has inherited his late mother’s turn of phrase as he lets Mrs Potter know, quite soon after their first meeting, that she is indeed ‘common’. The thing is − how well does Ms Bonham Carter do ‘common’? It’s her rear end we first see, sticking out from inside the Slaters’ kitchen sink unit as she frenziedly scrubs its grubby interior. Her compromised position and the fag lolling from her bottom lip along with her cursing regional accent certainly do supplement Nigel’s blunt summation. And yet I couldn’t help but detect, despite the tart-blonde wig, an unscrubbable veneer of sophistication. Surely after years of hot-stove slaving and the wielding of mops this woman would show some signs of wear and tear?  Instead she moved through the rooms she cleaned with the ease and grace of a prima ballerina, prim and neat-waisted, and perhaps safe in the knowledge that underneath it all she was a bit of ‘posh’ roughed up a touch for art’s sake. Of course, it was this notion that made Bonham Carter’s portrayal of Mrs Potter all the more hysterical.  Perhaps that’s what A A Gill meant when he referred to her performance as ‘perfectly hideous, with a marvellous, stifled comedy.’

Stifled while simultaneously being ludicrously unrestrained was Mr Slater (played by Ken Stott) and his temper when dealing with the young Nigel’s finicky eating habits. In the drama’s source text, Nigel Slater’s autobiography, I recall Mr Slater force feeding his son a fried egg. In adaptation, the fried egg becomes a Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie – grey and flaccid and totally inedible to a child who, earlier on in the drama, had tasted the gardener’s firm and juicy slice of pork pie. And - in a previous scene, while holidaying in Wales, Mr Slater finds himself wrestling a rising hysteria as he watches his son pick off the tinned ham’s accompanying jelly before eating. A vicarious satisfaction washed over me as exasperated father gave vent to his rage: “For Pete’s sake!” he shouted as he threw plate, ham and jelly halfway down a pebbled beach. I felt for that man; there is nothing I hate more than a faddy eater.

Yes, there was a lot not to like about Nigel Slater as a nine year old boy, and I would partly agree with A A Gill’s definition of the ‘fictional Slater’ being a ‘selfish, self-pitying snob’ but there were moments in the drama when I did warm to his character. Who could not admire a child who isn’t afraid to exchange his school milk for a glimpse and perhaps a feel of his school pal’s willy? And this was after he turned his back on a peek at a girl’s knickers. The look of disgust on this miniature temptress with pigtails was priceless. Indeed, the interaction between these child characters held some of the funniest moments in the drama. Take Warrel for example. In his book, Nigel Slater offers a list of attributes for his friend: ‘Smug, arrogant, stubborn, boastful, impatient and ugly.’ If the real Warrel is anything like his screen presence I would certainly insert greedy. In each of Warrel’s scenes he offers precocious counsel to Nigel on anything from sex to toad-in-the-hole and always with his mouth full of something sweet: “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” he advises, his nose buried in a Tunnock’s teacake.

Of course, a story depicting a boy who loses his mum and then commences battle with a wicked stepmother is bound to contain some moments of pathos. Yet the whole mood of this drama was anything but miserable. It was altogether a hopeful work; a nostalgic look back on food and how it can represent emotions while offering us a glimpse of the future, and what it might contain for someone who is not afraid to follow his passions. The TV camera takes us back to the 1960s where we witness the young Nigel Slater biting into a perfect slice of toast. The child’s voice-over describes the sensations of tucking into “the rough, toasted crust, the doughy cushion of white bread and the warm, salty butter” and then he glances briefly at the camera. We smile back, sharing his secret. We know that this is the authorial voice; it is Nigel Slater the established food writer and TV cook, perfectly at peace with what he does best. Unrelentingly miserable ... Get a life!

Pheasant

Having spent most of my working life in an office I feel I’m well equipped to offer up some insight into the worlds and minds of the people who work there. Take me, for example: a diffident school leaver at 16, sporting only the very basic of academic qualifications, entering office life without effort in an elevator fuelled by just the teeniest touch of nepotism. My weekly wages brought me the latest fashions, the fanciest make-up (I was never a Boots No. 17 girl), and later would pay for giddy nights out with friends of both sexes. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that (despite my expensive taste in cosmetics), I was unremarkable; my needs, wants and desires were as typical as the Alison, Sharon, Debbie or Karen that sat opposite me, twirling their hair with soon-to-be-engaged fingers and giggling at the office manager’s new tie. In office life you may occasionally come across an Alex who treads the Cumbrian hills at weekend or a Nigel who has joined a camera club and is eager to show you his prints or even a Celia who claims to have a season ticket for The Octagon but it is rare, extremely rare, to rub shoulder pads with anyone quite like John.

He must have been in his mid-fifties and I in my mid-thirties when we were introduced – he, as the new Area Sales Manager for the South West, and I, as one of his Sales Administrators.  His accent was thick and bristly as well it might be as he came from the deepest, darkest, most secretive part of Herefordshire where, I later found out through his poetry, he would take his pet bull terrier for walks on the grassy heaths. Yes that’s right, John was (indeed, still is) a poet. Not only did he pen his thoughts through rhyme and metre and then regularly regale them to me over the office telephone system, in addition he would share his tales of army life, his days as a woodwork teacher, his craft of wood turning and his love for Rock and Roll. John had found himself an audience, not a collective one whose appreciation would result in roisterous applause, nor a fawning one who would gasp and coo at all he told but a quiet, singular, respectful one and one who has remained so right up to this very day. In exchange for my pliant ears, John would drive up to Bolton bearing gifts. These were not flowers, potted plants or chocolates. No, his gifts held not the remotest resemblance to any token of gratitude that a Sales Representative might hand over to his office staff. And indeed for that I shall always be thankful for it was John, with his penchant for outlandish treats, who first introduced me to pheasant. Before I unfurl my musings on phasianus colchicus let me go over just some of the booty brought in by John and why I was such a deserving cause.

The first couple of years of the new millennium was a tumultuous time for me as it was during that period I left my first husband and took refuge at my mother’s house. The pending divorce brought with it an uncertain future and any glimpse I caught of it had me slinking for cover. And so I became the student I never was and studied nightly behind my teenage bedroom door; books and words becoming an anodyne to keep the pain at bay. Mum would cosset me with brews of camomile tea and we would lament over the shocking state of the male species. A divorcee of twenty years or more and a veteran man-hater, Mum was adequately qualified in offering an illuminating contribution to such discourse. It could only ever have aroused in her a deep suspicion of motive, then, when she learned the source of the gigantic bag of apples I heaved over the back step one evening after work, huffing and puffing like a weary coal merchant with a thunderous sack of coal. It is a well known fact that anyone suffering from melancholia, or indeed any other form of sickness, might benefit from a trip to the countryside, but if you can’t get to the bucolic idyll of your choice then why not let it in through your own back door? John had brought me a taste of rural Herefordshire in the form of a massive amount of the most rosy-smudged, cheek-twanging apples I’d ever seen or tasted. They tumbled out of Mum’s tiny fruit bowl, littered the worktop in a cheerful haze of green and pink, some rolled into the sink merrily while others fell to the floor with a bruising thud. I sat in my favourite dining room chair and watched as Mum trailed after the recalcitrant apples. Just at that moment, the back door opened and my youngest brother, Tom, emerged, his eyes stumbling over the landslide of rose and green fruit before him as he hunted for the right words: “What ...why ...where...have they come from?” Mum was speedy with a sarcastic retort as she glared over at me, her failing divorcee-in-training, “Oh these are just a few apples that a man at work has given Wendy,” and more damningly, “if you ask me he’s obsessed with her.” “Well” cautioned Tom “if his depth of obsession equals the amount of apples he has a problem; has he seen a psychiatrist?”

After the apples and my protracted consumption of them, John regularly supplied me with yet more rustic fare. I gladly became the recipient of a deep burgundy-hued loin of venison, whose length and breadth was the size of a generously proportioned Christmas log and served a dinner party for six effortlessly.  Shortly after that I was given cubes of healthy pink rabbit meat which I subsequently braised in cider with chunks of carrot and celery. The pheasant arrived later in the year on a freezing night in December and, although plucked and ready for the oven, this bird offered me the fiercest culinary challenge. I followed John’s gruffly given instructions to, “Roast it like a chicken, Rum*” and remembered his suggestion of “Smearing it with butter to help keep the meat moist”. My hands, greasy with butter, shoved the messy bird into the oven’s pre-heated cavity and there it roasted for ... err..., as long as it would take a chicken, of course. After well over an hour I lifted out the sizzling roaster and stifled a burgeoning hysteria as I began to wonder how this shrivelled body might feed four hungry mouths. What were once, presumably, the bird’s juices had become sticky deposits as black as tar and it soon became obvious that no amount of de-glazing the tin with wine would ever produce a pouring of gravy. “Find me your sharpest knife, Mum” I ordered as I scrabbled in her cupboards for a packet of Bisto. I piled four plates with roast potatoes, braised red cabbage and honeyed parsnips, and then attempted to carve the pheasant. The knife could not find purchase anywhere, not just because of its blunted blade but due to the fact that underneath the bird’s crackled skin was a shaming lack of meat. What had happened to the tender gamy slices that John, just hours earlier, had promised would tantalize my guests’ taste buds this evening? I jabbed the carcase furiously with a fork and pulled at the parched remains which clung loyally to the bird’s ribcage. Both legs were tugged free and thrown as bony scraps onto my brother Tom and his wife Deborahs' plates. Mum and I had to make do with the residual withered flesh. The look on Tom’s face told me everything I needed to know: that pheasants are best left to roam the scrubby farmlands which embroider the West Pennine Moors where perhaps the cock’s coppery plumage and scarlet cheeks can be viewed respectfully through the lens of a scope.

At 9.05 the following Monday morning the office telephone rang and as expected John’s voice asked me how well the pheasant had gone down. I answered lightly: “Oh well, not too bad ... although I did find it hard to cut, perhaps I should invest in a sharper knife. How do you carve yours?” Was it my imagination or did John’s answering cackle transmute eerily into the briskly whirring ‘Kor, Kor’ of a mocking pheasant before it jolts from the grasses and staggers into hurried flight.

I would not give up on pheasant and resolved that one day it would be the plump and tasty table centrepiece that John had so boasted about. Although some years did pass before I purchased another bird. By then I was happily married to Martin, who was always eager to share new experiences in dining. I found Mike Robinson’s novel way of cooking pheasant while browsing the internet one afternoon and tried it out for our evening meal. It was a struggle to remove the bird’s backbone and I found that the rosemary, olive oil and lemon marinade was just a touch too summery for this most seasonal of meats. My next foray into pheasant gastronomy was last December when I took advantage of an amazing offer displayed at one of Bolton market’s meat stalls: three pheasants for £6.00. My family were coming round for dinner that evening and I decided I would try casseroling the birds. I found a suitable recipe here in Gordon Ramsay’s World Kitchen: pheasant Casserole with winter vegetables and calcannon.  I duly jointed the pheasants, browned them in batches and filled my casserole pot with a medley of cubed carrots, parsnips and celeriac before pouring in the required amount of honey and red wine. My kitchen was filled with a deep and satisfyingly rustic aroma as I allowed the dish to cook for Gordon’s prescribed time of one hour and a quarter. Although the flavours married well, I was still not totally satisfied with the pheasant’s unyielding flesh as I watched yet another bewildered brother pull bones as sharp as needles from his teeth. This time it was Mr. Ramsay who had let me down with his promise of succulence and moistness. Was the temperature too high? Should the birds be cooked slowly at a lower heat? There was something I was doing wrong and neither I nor any future pheasant of mine were going to be beaten; these beautiful birds deserved to be savoured.

Another cold December; snow has fallen and outside our front door is a scene from Narnia. Martin and I have been stocking up our freezer with fish and meat. Our favourite stall on Bolton Market has extended last year’s offer; this time it is four plump pheasants for £10.00. I could not resist and now feel satisfied that, if more snow should descend and we are not able to venture out on Christmas Eve for our festive turkey, we have a couple of pheasants to serve us heartily for Christmas dinner. Yes I am deeply satisfied and this is because, after many years, I have found the perfect way of cooking pheasant. Thanks to Nigel Slater.

*My married name was the snigger-inducing surname of Rummery, shortened merrily by John to the more pleasing nickname of Rum.

  

A pot-roast pheasant

This recipe has been adapted from Nigel Slater’s pot-roast pheasant with celeriac mash featured in that king of cookery tomes Tender: Volume 1. I say adapted only because I did not have the sage leaves, pancetta or dry Marsala stipulated in Nigel’s ingredients list. Instead of Marsala I used dry cider and in place of sage leaves, I added sprigs of thyme. Although Nigel announces that, “Pheasant and celery get on rather well,” and that, “Celeriac seems to be one of the most successful mashes to serve with the mildly gamy flesh of this bird,” I served it with plain old mashed potato and felt it to be a fitting partnership. Perhaps the creamy blandness of my mashed whites took nothing away from the, dare I say it, moist and succulent (and here I should add juicy) pheasant flesh that took its rest on my dinner plate.

Serves Two

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 oven-ready pheasant

2 garlic cloves (finely sliced)

A few sprigs of thyme

200ml dry cider

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed casserole over a medium heat. Add the pheasant and allow to colour evenly on all sides. I would recommend taking some care over this as you don’t want the skin to crisp up too much and yet it does need enough time to become a pleasing golden brown. Add the garlic and thyme and then pour in the dry cider allowing it to come to the boil. Cover your casserole with its lid and place in the oven for no longer than 40 minutes. You may turn the pheasant once during cooking.

Place the pheasant on a chopping board and cover with foil allowing the bird to rest for at least 10 minutes before carving.

Nigel recommends halving the bird with a heavy cook’s knife. I simply used a sharp carving knife and separated the legs from the body and carved the remaining flesh. Ceremoniously, I carried my platter of pheasant to our dining table and served it with buttered carrots, steamed broccoli, mashed potato and the spooned over hot juices from the pot. Finally I had mastered the art of pheasant-roasting.

It is clear to me now what had gone wrong with my previous birds. I had cooked them for too long in either too much liquid or, with more disastrous results, not enough. The 200ml of dry cider barely lapped at the bird’s thighs but was just enough to steam the tender flesh to perfection. And although Nigel does not request you rest the bird before carving, I felt that this procedure helped gain the succulence I was so desperate to achieve.  I will leave this blog posting by adding that the flesh of this particular pheasant must easily rival that of the most expensive and perfectly cooked free-range organic chicken. Meaty, rich and with a depth of flavour that makes you gasp with pleasure. Merry Christmas. 

  

Mushrooms

“Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.” So wrote Shirley Conran in her 1970s bestseller Superwoman, a book brimming with advice for women on how to dodge domestic drudgery.  If Conran believed that snapping off a mushroom’s stalk, then laying it cup-side down on a baking sheet with a dab of butter and a sprinkling of bread crumbs was a scandalous waste of womanly time, then how would she deal with the notion that somewhere in the heart of a Lancashire kitchen there existed an overworked housewife painstakingly peeling a bagful of mushrooms in readiness for her husband’s supper? That housewife was my mother and her dexterous peeling formed part of the mushroom broth ritual. My father waited languorously, sequestered away from the kitchen in his comfy chair as haughty and distant as a Roman Emperor, while his tender slave-girl  daintily rid the mushrooms of their skins. I looked on, enthralled, as Mum would produce two neat piles: one of peeled mushrooms, creamy in their nakedness and soft to touch like newly shorn lambs; the other of silky peel, curling in tranquil layers as delicate as the palest, softest rose petals. Mum would then pull off the stalks and cut the mushrooms into small dice. I once asked if I could have the stalks: “Can you fry them for me and make me a mushroom butty?” The answer was a firm “no,” Dad would know if his mushroom broth contained only the cups. Not I, or any of my siblings, would ever deliberately risk provoking my father’s wrath and so I didn’t ask again.

In a frying pan she would then melt a thick slice of butter, and while it foamed would tip in the mound of mushrooms, there seemed such a feast but Mum always appeased my hungry eyes by assuring me that the mushrooms would shrivel, and that there would only ever be enough for Dad. With her thumb she would depress the silver cap from the milk bottle, welding it to one edge of the glass rim so she could pour a generous amount of creamy milk into the pan of mushrooms. Stood on a chair by the stove, I would stare into the pan; like magic, little beads of golden fat appeared on the surface as the milky broth rose to a simmer. Mum gazed into the pan too, but not with my wonderment, she was only anxious for the milk not to boil over. In a large bowl, she would then decant the pan’s contents, and I would blink away tiny droplets of mushroom soup as it sputtered its way into the dish. Complete with spoon, Mum would gently carry the steaming bowl up the hall and into the living room. I followed and waited at the door until I heard Dad say, “Ta, love” in a gruff but satisfied tone. I would then dash back into the kitchen and wait for Mum to clear up the waste. Did I say waste? Well that’s what it was. If Mum had inherited any of her previous generation’s wartime thrift instead of exploiting 1970s profligacy she would have sautéed that mushroom peel, spread it onto a slice of bread and satiated her little child’s desperate craving for mushrooms. Instead she swiped up the peel, screwed it into a ball with the brown paper bag and threw it into the bin. I sat patiently, nibbling my fingernails in anticipation of any dregs left in my father’s supper bowl. On occasion there would be a tiny fleck of mushroom to tease out and lick from my finger in the manner of a clever cat. Sometimes there would be a spoonful or two of buff-coloured milk, tepid and sweet, which I would drink from the bowl savouring it as any modern day child would a McDonald’s milkshake.

  

Last week, I resurrected my mother’s mushroom broth. I tired easily while peeling the mushrooms and just managed enough to conjure up the image of lambs and rose petals. And as I skated the slimy mushrooms around the pan of melted butter and just before I poured in the milk, my culinary instincts kicked in: mushrooms, milk, butter ... that’s only ever going to taste like, well ... mushrooms, milk and butter. All soups, surely, cry out for a background note of onion, a grinding of black pepper or at least some other less milky form of stock? But I chose to ignore this accumulated knowledge of soup-making as I stirred in the milk, gritting my teeth at a peevish need to rekindle my so-called mushroom-deprived childhood. There seemed to be an immense amount of mushrooms (was my mother lying when she said they shrivelled?) bobbing up and down in their liquid like shiny ornamental pebbles and sure enough - tiny buttery bubbles visited the surface obediently, assuring me that my memories, at least, showed some signs of validity. In an aging Virago paperback novel  I remember once reading the phrase: “Consummation can never fulfil the glory of desire,” and so too this soup, this magical edible potion of my childhood appeared in front of me, glistening with all the promise of a taste of paradise, and then swamping me with disappointment. I sat down, spooned the soup into my mouth and felt a crazy sadness. Sad for my mother who once asked me why I always needed to refer to cookbooks. Sad also for my father, punished with senility, as he waits patiently in the tiny room of a care home for yet another bowl of slop.

Looking back it seems easy for me to understand why a nature-loving six year old might be charmed by a mushroom. And not just for its sweet and nutty flavour. It smells of the forest floor after rainfall – dank and earthy. It rolls in your palm like a chubby dormouse and yet is as light as a fir cone. Upturn it and there you see a dusky underskirt of frills, packed tight like hundreds of tiny feathers. I can only sit now and wonder why, when Mum’s back was turned, I didn’t steal a mushroom from the bag and sneak it into my bedroom for hiding under the bed along with my shoebox of half dead butterflies and match-boxed caterpillars.

Mushroom Pâté

 My pâté of choice would either be smoked salmon or smoked mackerel but I felt I had to create this vegetarian starter when some friends came round for dinner during the summer. Not that they are vegetarian, I might add, it was just that I had a hunch that they would have some sort of aversion to smoked fish. I still don’t know what feelings they have for smoked fish but what I did find out that night was that they liked this pâté and even asked me for the recipe.

So, here it is:

1 Onion (chopped)

1 Garlic clove (crushed)

1 tbsp oil

300g Mushrooms (chopped)

Juice of one lemon

225g Full fat soft cheese (eg. Philadelphia)

Salt and ground black pepper

Chopped parsley to serve

Serves 4 – 6

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook gently until the onions become soft and almost translucent, this may take about 5 minutes.

Add the chopped mushrooms, lemon juice and seasoning and continue cooking for another 5 minutes or until the mushrooms have cooked through.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool before tipping into a food processor along with the soft cheese. On a particularly health-conscious afternoon, I tried making this dish with low fat soft cheese and was disappointed with the resulting mousse-like texture. Lesson now learned I would always, always (even if my waistline felt a little stouter than usual) use full fat cheese for pâté.

Blend the mixture until fairly smooth and spoon into a serving dish. Cover and keep refrigerated until needed.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley just before serving.

Yesterday I ate my pâté with plain old white bread toasted as this picture illustrates, it was good but not half as good as the bread I toasted today: Irish Wheaten Soda Bread made with buttermilk, thickly sliced and placed with care (it crumbles) on the grill pan. This bread makes the perfect toast precisely because it doesn’t toast perfectly, if you get what I mean. And this is because the buttermilk ensures the bread stays moist and crumbly, only crisping the crusty edges while it heats up under the grill. The added joy is, that while grilling, this wheaten bread lets out a sweet and comforting aroma like a wholemeal scone being freshly baked.  I sat by the window, spread my hot soda bread with its perfect accompaniment of thick, slushy pâté and watched the snow slide from the rooftops. Bliss.