In the business of dinner, patience is not a virtue. Patience is proof only of a distinct lack of interest, and where eating is concerned that can never be a good thing. It displays itself most readily at a very middle-class type of dinner party, the sort almost nobody invites me to these days. Just because I'm a restaurant critic they assume I will be rude about their cooking. I always protest. I always say that what really matters to me is the conversation, the people and the banter. This, of course, is a lie; I am incapable of switching off.
But if it means I escape the sort of dinner party where you turn up and are ushered into the living room, only to find the cook sitting there, knocking back the prosecco like a toddler on the Calpol, then that's fine with me. At first it's OK. There are introductions. There are nibbles. There is chat. And then a second bottle is opened and still the cook doesn't leave us. Now my anxiety levels rise. Surely, at some point they'll want to go and do something with food. I know I would. But no. The glass is emptied. A third bottle is opened. Somebody says something that reveals them to be an unreconstructed bigot. Now I am drunk. And hungry. As the Hulk never said: don't make me hungry; you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry.
Eventually, of course, the cook saunters off to the kitchen, but by then I already know the pickings will be dismal. Because nobody with a real instinct to feed, which means someone who cooks out of their own greed as much as everybody else's, would have been popping the corks in the living room. They would have been by the stove, cooing over their bubbling pots, wet-lipped with eagerness. In these circumstances patience is never its own reward. It is a punishment for some nameless crime.
The curious thing is that I actually have no problem waiting for food, as long as I know how long I have to wait. One recent Sunday, for example, I got up and, while still in my dressing gown, seasoned and seared two joints of pork. That is not a euphemism. I fried some lardons with a mirepoix, then deglazed the pan with white wine and stock. All that took about an hour. I returned the meat to the pan and let it braise for another five hours on a low heat. I removed the meat and let it cool for an hour or two, while reducing the liquor by a third. I cut the pork into inch-thick slices, and seared them in hot salty butter so the edges were crisp. Finally I returned them to the pot, alongside a lot of cannellini beans. A few sprigs of fresh thyme, and a mere eight hours after I had begun, our dinner was ready. It was worth the wait.
The point is that I had always known it would take eight hours, had calculated it all into my day; I also knew that there would be important but distracting things along the way, like breakfast and lunch. By contrast, waiting just 20 minutes longer than could ever be considered reasonable in a Devon pub recently left me furious and evil. So what if they make their own terrific pork pies? So what if they make their own marvellous charcuterie, and their own glorious sausages and their own fabulous bacon from fat and happy pigs? Being forced to wait too long for any of it left me with a nasty taste in the mouth. And that's no way to start lunch.
