For anyone who likes to think about food, read about food, cook it, damnit yes, even eat the stuff, there's nothing more guaranteed to lift the spirits than a new book by the incomparable Nigel Slater. After the anecdotal intimacies of the award-winning Toast, the mouth-watering riches of The Kitchen Diaries, here at OFM we're absolutely thrilled to be extracting his brilliant new book Eating for England.
What is it about the British and food? From Caerphilly to Kia-ora, from Hovis to haddock and from Bovril to bacon sandwiches, it's an alliterative heaven! But for me it's all about detail. Look at the Sunday roast for example. It's a thing of beauty and a joy forever of course but can turn to gall and wormwood without a decent gravy. Lots of it. All in a good sized boat of course. And thick. Very thick.
And then there's the majestic bacon butty. For anybody with an IQ above that of a biscuit, the perfect superfood is the bacon sandwich. For starters, you can have it any time of day. Should it be bread or toasted? White or brown (no room for argument there, it's got to be white). Nice and crispy or is that just overcooked? And of course, the eternal dilemma, ketchup or HP. Forget the future of globalisation, it's the nature of the perfect bacon sandwich that is the debate of the modern age.
And of course there is no doubt what you drink with your bacon sandwich. It's got to be tea (though I'm aware that there is a case that can be made in the highest courts in the land for champagne). We might not grow tea in Britain, but we are the only people who can make a decent cup. The Americans can't be bothered, and the Europeans persist in dishing up ludicrous amounts of black tea. I bow to no one in my belief in the near biblical properties of a mug of hot sweet tea. It served me well standing on the side of countless wet hillsides, and I wonder whether the mystical powers of tea, like the great verses of Homer, are somehow passed down through the generations. I can remember umpteen years ago, when my brother accidentally opened the door on my hamster's cage. We were downstairs having breakfast - Golden Grahams quite possibly - (don't get me started on the British and the breakfast cereal) when a dull thud on the hall floor announced the arrival of the hamster who had taken his new-found freedoms too far and hurled himself off the landing. We rushed outside, he lay on his back with his little legs pointing in the air. It was clear he was my former hamster. My mother appeared with a shovel to prepare a full military burial when I noticed a twitch. Mother immediately returned with a little saucer of hot sweet tea and within moments the little fellow was as good as new. Unlike my brother.
But apart from brilliant Nigel, OFM is proud to announce the first Food Agony Aunt. She's the multi award-winning Jan Moir, and there's hardly anybody I trust more to find her way around a plate of food. This month, she ponders the age old problem, of how to have a row in a restaurant. I'm not the rowing kinda guy myself - why waste a good meal - and prefer to walk off, but Jan has a far more interesting approach. Find out what she has to say in this issue.
