Food and Wine (haphazard, meandering recollection in two parts)

 Part 1

Cooking for wife and children to fit in with the other facets of my life, has dictated that my dishes are of a simple kind - "throw in this or that" and, if the results do not always look like magazine photographs, the taste would be fine. So the French style of simple café and peasant cooking (small, plain, separate and unadorned) has been my theme at home and in both of my cookbooks.

This was exemplified when, looking after a recuperating friend of a friend, he announced at a meal: "This is peasant cooking." He was right.

As a child in the country, cooking was done for me. When even during those times of depression we were able to breed, harvest and preserve much of what we ate. Our chicken farm provided birds and eggs, and I was allowed to shoot or snare rabbits and decoy pigeons. Food was nourishing and plain with neither of my parents taking much of an interest in it. Wine was sparingly drunk by my parents. My father drank  "Tolly" beer, and we children were surprisingly allowed to drink cider - which must have given me a lifelong interest in alcoholic drinks.

I knew how to paunch, skin and cut up a rabbit and was astounded when my very grand grandmother, who came to stay, rolled up her city sleeves and did the same. I had the feeling then that handling meat might be in my genes. We never did find out about her Irish origins, wondering if she might, among other things, have been a butcher's daughter.

I was not inspired by school food, except for sausages. So, when I was living on my own during school holidays, I mainly ate fried food (eggs especially) cooked in butter over a gas ring. Oil was never used.

Food in America (where I learned to fly in the war) seemed wonderful and plentiful after UK rationing, but it palled after a while, through its blandness. I think that much of it came out of tins opened in the airfield's kitchen.

Back in peacetime England we were allowed out of the country with £20. And it was with that modest amount of money for hotel room and food that I could escape rationing and come to know and really enjoy the simple, if repetitive menus of French cafés.

A salade tomates was always a delicious way to start a meal. Then came steak (tough skirt as a rule), pommes frites, pork chop, tête de veau, boudin noir (always cooked in a tomato and onion sauce), fish, simply served, casseroles and a limited but excellent choice of main dishes. Vegetables and plain lettuce salads were always serves separately, which to me make sense. Plain salad with cheese, eaten with knife and fork, and Roquefort beurre, when one minced the two together on the plate to eat with bread, I offer to this day. And Mont Blanc (chestnut purée topped with sour cream) made a fitting end to many a meal. The house red was the only one ordered. This was either the cheapest plonk or a wine with which the patron was well acquainted with and proud of.

Eating out was special, but most food was consumed either in the room or in the Jardin des Plantes nearby. It was baguette bread, saucisson sec and red wine.

The hotel that I favoured in which to stay, usually with a current girl friend, was situated opposite a school. Carved into its wall in large capitals was: LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, DEFENCE D'URINER. 

The hotel, although without restaurant, did have a connection with food. A man kept his mistress there, and each Friday on his returning home he would stop off for his liaison. His mistress, beforehand, would well fry an egg and pin it to her blouse. He would appear, take a levered fountain pen from his pocket,  aim it at the egg and squirt the ink at it.  The pen would be returned to his pocket and he departed.