Warning: This is a rare post about which contains stuff about, ugh, 'feelings'. Those of a nervous disposition should look away now.
Been thinking about my parents a lot over the last few days. Not only because I've spent some time in the place where my mum's ashes were scattered - it's a lovely place and I would have gone anyway, while there I saw an infamous figure/cretin in British life walking along the beach - but also because I noticed in a bookshop a film tie-in edition of
Nigel Slater's rather excellent book, Toast. I don't normally go in for Top 10 Favourite whatever, but if I did one on books that would definitely be in there. It's a book about how Slater's formative years were shaped by the food he ate. Coming from a family of gluttons* I found loads of common ground with him in it. Apart from the fact that his mother was a terrible cook (it's called toast because the one abiding memory he has of her is scraping burnt toast) mine was absolutely fantastic. I think one thing people do when a family member dies is to talk about whoever it is whose gone and talk over the good times and good things. Most of our reminiscences came from the food Mum prepared. The thought that we'd never taste her macaroni cheese (pretty mundane but her macaroni cheese was gorgeous, great 'comfort food'), chocolate fudge cake, fruit scones, Yorkshire puddings, shortcrust pastry, ginger parkin, steak and kidney pie or trifle again made us shiver (well, just me on the trifle front as those two divvies don't like it). There was also the disasters but funny disasters, like when Dad, who didn't get a sophisticated palate until later in life, insisted that he'd only eat spaghetti bolognese with veg. Plates of spag bog with a healthy serving of boiled savoy cabbage on the side was duly delivered to the table. She'd also sneak carrot into lasagne and had this fetish for putting sultanas in curries. Years later, when I'd discovered curry houses, I pointed out to her that I'd never eaten in an Indian restaurant that served savoury sultanas, she laughed and told me that that's how she was taught to make curry...by an English chef.
You'd also never see her weigh anything - unless she was cooking for a competition, where strict rules applied - her skill was immense. I wish I could 'knock up a few scones' if someone gave us short notice that they were visiting or cook something delish for an ill or needy friend. Memories are all I have, like Slater.
On a slightly different subject, came back to find the
great Danny Baker has fucking cancer. I say 'fucking cancer' because that's what I call it after hearing Wilko Johnson call it that on an interview recently when talking about his deceased wife. Cancer's a murderer which takes good people before their time; like Mum, three grandparents, an aunt, an uncle and several family friends. I wish Danny well and nothing but best wishes. If you can spare a few pence for a cancer charity, please do.
*There's a great photo of Mum's twin brothers at a Christmas party in the fifties. Though facing the camera neither of them are looking at it, but follow their eyeline and they only have eyes for an enormous trifle on the table.
9 comments:
That's nice. My mum is a great cook too, and she always put sultanas in curry. Also on the table would be a dish of sliced banana and some dessicated coconut. I think it was a hangover from days of the Raj, and that's how they were all taught to cook it.
Please post that pic!
My mum:
Meat and potato pie
Suet pastry serve with gravy as a main course (Northern poverty cuisine)
Egg and bacon pie
'Fatty cake' - leftover pastry baked and served cold and buttered
Victoria sandwich
My dad:
Best Yorkshire Pudding ever
Bread like bricks, which I think he only ever ate out of cussedness
I too thought Toast was a fantastic, touching book (the passage about his Dad placing a marshmallow on his pillow at night in an awkward but heartfelt effort to replace a mother's kiss, brought tears to my eyes.). And the association between food and love is so close.
My mother, unlike yours, was a truly terrible cook whose rubber omelettes and stewed vegetables were legendary for all the wrong reasons. I used to feel embarrassed as a kid when friends came round for tea. Now I just feel sad. She was brought up in a dirt-poor, emotionally austere Irish household where food was just fuel, and expressing tenderness towards your kids was discouraged as it might 'swell their heads'. Oddly, her cooking got better as she got much older and became less repressed. Hmm.
It is indeed an excellent book. I still can't resist my Mum's roast potatoes and red cabbage to my Danish Grandma's recipe.
I only found out a few weeks ago that my mother makes tomato chutney to die for. Why didn't she tell me twenty years ago?
Lovely responses to a post I thought would be a tad schmaltzy for some tastes. What wonderful people you are!
FC - Funnily enough, the 'English chef' mentioned there had worked in India, you must be right.
Clair - My sister has that pic at the minute but sorting photos is one last thing that needs doing so I'll try and nick it.
ISBW - I hope this film version is fairly decent, otherwise it'll spoil it. Quick research tells me it's being made by/for the BBC with Helena B-C as Mum and Ken Stott (!) as Dad.
Great post. My mum, with the exception of her soups (Lentil, Yellow Split Pea), was not a great cook. Shanty Scottish fare. Yet that doesn't stop me getting regular cravings for mince & tatties. I can wolf down a plate in a matter of minutes. It's indecent.
Oh, and my Dad put sultanas in his curries as well.
Mum died last summer from cancer (dad 9 years ago, from heart disease). We've slowly been clearing out her house and using bits left in the cupboards. although her fearless attitude to sell by dates still raises an eyebrow and a smile.
It was so sudden, 10 weeks from diagnosis to death that she still had prepared meals in the freezer: spag bol, mince..We've been finishing these off, but feeling the pinch knowing we'll never have those same combo's cooked in the same way again.
She was a great cook: roasts, kidneys and rice, sausage toad, meat pies, apple pies, stew and dumlings and suet pud' in steamed in a discloth.
Her only real disaster was putting an Arctic Roll in the oven
Like others here, my mum is a great cook too. My favourites of hers are:
Rice Pudding
Stew and Dumplings (you'll note that both of these usually taste the best the second day!)
Scones
Tea Cakes
There's no wonder I'm not as slim as I should be
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