Sam's Kitchen

In my never ending search for the perfect menu, I’ve reached a bit of an epiphany, which is fairly apt considering the time of year.  Guess it is partly the New Year cold light of morning feeling plus that peculiar stage of having just got over having a baby and reality kicking back that I’ve gone a bit nostalgic. 

Glancing over the shelves of my cookery library – I say shelves advisedly.  I have well over 300 cookery books plus an entire filing system of recipes cut from magazines.  Some call it a hobby, others mutter about obsession that has structural implications on the house.  Anyway, I happened across an adopted grandmother’s (another hobby of mine is collecting random people and adopting them as relatives…) set of 1960’s Cordon Bleu books. 

Now apart from the bizarre adverts and the odd advice column to encourage husbands how to boil and egg (both of which deserve a chapter all to themselves!) it got me thinking.  Many of the recipes contained rang little bells in my head in much the same way that current trendy Italian and Spanish ‘childhood’ food books must remind natives of happy al fesco meals en famile.  Admittedly, I don’t remember sitting eating Chicken a la king on a big table in the garden surrounded by siblings and a grandpa called Don something, but I do remember desserts inexplicably called Charlotte and Steaks called Diane. 

Deciding that 72 copies of the Cordon Bleu monthly just wasn’t enough, I ventured onto Amazon to see what other culinary gems where to be had.  Now, I’m not sure exactly why or even how people sell books at 1p (£2.75 for P&P but even so!) but thank the lord they do, as several days later books by the likes of Robert Carrier, The Family Circle and a Daily Telegraph book by someone called the Bon Viveur, drop onto the potwash table that poses as our letterbox.   

The Telegraph book was a revelation and if it wasn’t out of print, Tesco’s would be putting an injunction on it.  This delightful little tome wasn’t really a cookbook at all but a diatribe of how to select produce (and indeed grow it yourself which is bang on trend 60 years later), how to harang merchants who won’t let you handle their goods, a ‘you should value yourself more’ psychobabble section, how to brew the perfect cup of coffee without any ‘new fangled’ machinery, a glossary of terms and finally, a bit on cooking itself. 

The very best part was the passion in which it was written.  Take Delia, add a lot more than a soupcon of  Margaret Thatcher and a pinch of John Humphries and you might be partly there.  I finally went back to the introduction in the hope of finding a clue to the author this Bon Viveur of the late 50’s….

It was thus I found myself back in my kitchen making a ‘beche’  from scratch with dried bay leaves from our garden, fresh milk, black peppercorns thickened in the age old way with homemade butter, local flour and a lot of arm aching beating to avoid lumps  It was amazing.  I hate béchamel with a vengeance but this book, with it’s authoritarian instruction and it’s total self belief, had not only inspired me to make it but actual appreciate it’s lightness, buttery more-ishness and bayleafyness in a way I’d not tasted it before. 

Just a simple white sauce but it just forced me to pull the facial expression usually reserved for a really good pint.  Ok, so  I spoiled the moment and added some 1000 year old comte I happened to have lying in wait for such a moment and it ended up on the menu as a very proper old fashioned cauliflower cheese.   I did however steal some to feed the children the following day and for once actually felt like I’d reached omnipresent earth mother status. 

Oh and the author?  If Fanny had been looking down I’m sure she would have expected nothing less!