If muesli, redolent of tie-dye and sandals, epitomised the late 1970s, and sexy, bronzed horns of croissant pastry were the power breakfast of the mid-80s, a bowl of creamy, soothing porridge seems to sum up neatly the mood of the nation as we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
Suddenly an old-fashioned fry-up or a pain au chocolat seem like folly, as indulgent and unwise as an MP's expenses claim. Call it nostalgia, or a childish longing for comfort food, or a rampant fear of cholesterol, but everyone is going to work on versions of oats, water and salt. While other fashionably healthy breakfast notions have come and gone – spirulina smoothie, anyone? – one of Britain's oldest and most pragmatic dishes has metamorphosed into the morning meal of the moment, eaten by pop stars and politicians, suits and surfers, models on castings and actors on film sets, schoolchildren and ladies who breakfast (lunch, in the wake of expenses cutbacks, just doesn't hack it these days).
The most recent figures suggest that we get through 47m gallons of the gloopy stuff every year. Popularity has soared among the lucrative 25- to 34-year-old market and sales have grown by more than 80%. Last winter the Quaker Oats factory in Fife had its biggest sales increase in its 149-year history.
Madonna, Nelson Mandela, Nigella Lawson, Nicole Kidman and Bill Gates are said to eat it every morning for breakfast. Even Kate Moss, although I have trouble picturing her stirring a pot of oats at the hob. Maybe she gets the instant stuff – Quaker reports a whopping increase in sales of the just-add-boiling-water sachets.
David Cameron recently claimed in the House of Commons that he "almost choked on his porridge" over some bust-up with Gordon Brown (surely also an oats man, although judging by BiscuitGate we'll probably never know which brand). Meanwhile Tony Blair, I'm reliably informed by the former executive head chef of the Gleneagles Hotel, waved away the three-course lunch when he returned there in the middle of the G8 summit, the day after the London bombings in 2005. He ordered instead a bowl of their extra-special deluxe porridge served with cream and Drambuie-laced raspberries. Perfect, one presumes, for a national emergency.
At the Wolseley, that ornate temple to breakfast in central London, the first morning rush at 6am is for porridge, served in traditional high-sided bowls. "It is, dare I say it, the VIPs, the businessmen, who are very regular clients who come all the time who order porridge," says Julian O'Neill, the head chef. "They eat out so often they know they need something healthy." Some request unmanly soya milk, though I detect a tiny note of disdain when O'Neill tells me this.
Brought up in the suburbs on cornflakes and Sunblest sliced bread, I used to think of porridge as the vile, stomach-churning runny snot of elderly slugs. The very thought of this lumpy slurry was repulsive. I changed my mind on a work trip to a fashionably tortuous boot camp in the hills north of Malibu five years ago, the kind of place frequented by Hollywood film stars in need of rapid weight loss. The near-starvation diet consisted mostly of miniscule china dishes of porridge, which we were allowed to eat with chopsticks (to prevent gorging). Hungry and homesick as we were, porridge suddenly seemed like a fine delicacy – almost as delicious as wodge of cake – and I've eaten it most mornings ever since.
Its resurgence can be dated back six years to the launch of the GI diet in America, which argues that food like porridge keeps blood- glucose levels low and that this is the key to avoiding binge eating. Since then it's been talked about as a kind of heroic superfood, able to do everything from hoover up cholesterol, boost testosterone levels, fend off heart disease, suppress the appetite and beat depression. Amounting to a mere 171 calories, a bowl of porridge can keep you going without snacks until lunchtime (or precisely 4 hours and 21 minutes, according to the Quaker Oats website.) A report from America last year even suggested that the humble oat can increase intelligence in small children, which might account for the fact that thrusting mothers in south-west London can often be spotted buying the stuff by the SUV load.
I travel up to the village hall of Carrbridge in the shadow of the Scottish Cairngorms, where porridge-makers from as far away as America and Canada have flown in to compete in the annual world porridge-making championships. It's a surreal event, part MasterChef, part Vicar of Dibley, in tartan, but the business of the porridge is taken very seriously indeed. Contestants cook their own recipes, including braised pigeon with porridge (not to be recommended) and a porridge spotted dick, with spices and dried fruit (surprisingly delicious). This is made by a bonny young woman who, she tells me, eats porridge three times a day. Occasionally her boyfriend is allowed toast.
I'm joined by one of the competitors, Camilla Barnard, who along with her husband Nick set up Rude Health breakfast cereals at their kitchen table in Wandsworth in 2005. Camilla is competing with her recipe for knickerbocker banana porridge, a vaguely healthy concoction if you ignore the flambéed banana and the Cointreau. Barnard is not your clichéd hippy type – Camilla used to work in the City, her husband flies stunt planes for a hobby – but she was galvanised by the fact that she could not find delicious yet healthy breakfast cereal.
"I felt passionately," she says, "that breakfast needn't be dreary gruel; that there was a way to make porridge into something delicious, and that it is something everyone can make." She argues that people all too often sleepwalk down the cereal aisle of the supermarket. Four years later, their £4,000 start-up investment is now a turnover in the region of £1.5m, and fans include Elizabeth Hurley and Sheherazade Goldsmith. They sell their porridge, which comes in cheeky packaging and flavours like Top Banana and Fruity Date, in Waitrose and, recently, Tesco.
If you're a recent convert, beware the porridge pedants. Rather like driving, everyone, it seems, thinks that their way of making porridge is best. Pinhead oats or rolled? Steel cut or roasted? A dash of salt or a pinch of sugar? Purists take the austere route favoured by the Scots – oatmeal, water, salt, preferably stirred in a clockwise direction with a wooden implement called a spurtle.
Henry Dimbleby is one of the co-founders of Leon, the healthy fast-food chain which gets through about a tonne of porridge a week. They have served porridge since Leon's launch and have been followed by many high-street fast-food chains including McDonald's, Pret a Manger, Starbucks and Eat. At Leon the first job of each day is to start the porridge – a traditional mixture of oats, water and salt which they cook on a very low heat in baking trays. Dimbleby recalls childhood holidays in Scotland where the porridge was made in the Aga overnight. "In the morning the leftovers would be put into a drawer and allowed to set," he remembers. "In the afternoon the contents would be turned out – shiny slices of cold porridge, perfect for the afternoon walk."
The alternative is posh porridge. At the casually stylish Modern Pantry in east London I'm served jumbo and rolled oats in a moat of cream with crunchy dark muscovado sugar scattered on top, the swirl of dark sugar contrasting with the off-white puddle of cream. We're in Farrow & Ball shades of taupe, not the brash additive-fuelled orange of the cereals of my youth. It's so soothing it has quite possibly the opposite effect that it's meant to, and I long to return to bed and watch Nora Ephron films back to back.
The Modern Pantry is not the first restaurant to cotton on to the fact that staying open for breakfast every day of the week is a way to make money in the recession (and the mark-up on a bowl of porridge, however luxurious, must be huge). In the same way that the sign of any good chef is their risotto, they all seem to be experimenting with how to sex up oats (many tell me that they eat porridge all day long – it's the perfect way to survive long days in a gruelling restaurant kitchen).
At Ottolenghi in north London, porridge is a recent addition to the menu. They serve it with roasted nuts, maple syrup and fresh blackberries for a little bit of tartness. It's been such a success they've started cooking it up for smart breakfast meetings. But the poshest porridge I come across is at The Providores, right in the middle of Marylebone's yummy-mummy set in the centre of London. Co-owner Peter Gordon tells me that the recipe – a mixture of brown rice, stewed apple, maple syrup, soya milk and white miso – is lusted after by the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst. For a while they took it off the menu but they received so many complaints they had to put it back. This is seven quid porridge so postmodern it doesn't even include oats – but they call it porridge nevertheless. Clearly, they know when they're on to a good thing. OFM
