Spectator Life

Old recipe books have a deceptive frankness to them, with their terse introductions, blunt instructions and dependence on store-cupboard staples like onion, flour, butter and milk. Even so, the typical modern cook will soon run into trouble. Unless, of course, he or she knows how to tell apart – and take apart – cuts of meat, isn’t afraid of lard, congealed fat or jelly, and can cope with fish in all its forms. It’s the loss of this latter set of skills, filleting in particular, that has coincided with the shrinking of our seafood horizons, recently published research suggests. Dr Ruth Thurstan, an Exeter academic, scrutinised 1,192 fish and shellfish recipes published in Good Housekeeping magazine over the last century.

The perfect drinking companion is a difficult thing to acquire. Over the last two years, I’ve cycled between Nottinghamshire communists, a Wrexham-born investment banker, a Dulwich College-educated think-tanker and a few others in between. My quest has not been successful, despite the relentlessness with which I’ve pursued it. Perhaps the perfect drinking companion is not a fellow human, but rather man’s best friend. I’ve considered a public house having its own dog a sign of a decent enough boozer for a while, but there is a phenomenon I’ve been noticing more and more of late that I’m unsure of the meaning of. Pub cats. The perfect drinking companion is a difficult thing to acquire. I am not sure when the cat entered the pub.

Last week, Ryan Reynolds and his fellow Wrexham owners bought The Turf, the pub where the football club was founded in 1864. They’ve promised to preserve its character and keep the longstanding landlord behind the bar. Reynolds is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party, but it’s hard to imagine a more conservative act than guaranteeing a pub’s future. Sir Ian McKellen, a man who prides himself on voting Labour at every election, admitted as much when he took on the 500-year-old, Grade II-listed Grapes in Limehouse: ‘Dickens wrote that "it had outlasted and clearly would yet outlast many a better trimmed building"... I wanted to make sure it continues to do so.’ Celebrities are our new aristocracy British pubgoers, too, are natural conservatives.

You know what, I was looking forward to Reform’s party conference in Birmingham. Up there as a journalist, not a member, mind you. Yet you hear a lot of sighing and moaning from journalists about going to these things (never mind the fact that many would kick off if their editors didn’t let them go). What’s the matter, guys? It’s a trip away, lots of mingling, lots of material. But there’s not much in the way of good food. Not to sound like a child emperor demanding a veal sweetbread at every meal, but the offering at these things is really, really bad. And I think Reform needs to sort it out. Reform-coded conference food could be very good.

My early days of baking coincided with the early days of dating the man who became my husband. It is no coincidence that many of those dates revolved around cooking together, shoulder-to-shoulder in his too-small south London kitchen. He was a pretty competent and confident cook; I was an eager and naive idiot, but keen to learn. Slowly (very slowly) his knowledge and skill rubbed off on me. There were some unmitigated disasters (the less said about our Scotch egg attempts the better; did you know it is possible to cock them up in five separate ways?). Others were qualified successes (a coffee and walnut cake which slopes at a 45° angle is still a coffee and walnut cake). But the first ever cornbread I baked was glorious on our first attempt.

Man is born to lunch, and everywhere he is eating al desko. According to research by Ocado, the online supermarket, the number of office workers making packed lunch is surging. Polling suggests that 46 per cent of professionals have started bringing their food from home more regularly over the last year. The reason why is obvious: cozzy livs. Around three quarters of those surveyed believe that buying lunch around their office has become too costly and that bringing their lunch from home helps them to keep a handle on their finances. It’s bye-bye to the Pret a Manger salad and toodle-oo to the Greggs sausage roll; bring out the Tupperware.

Last month, I attended the International Chicken Gastronomy Festival in Twickenham. There was some questioning as to why I would want to spend my weekend gorging on fried chicken. None more so than from my significant other, a vegetarian. Part of the reason for this life choice (so she tells me) is that she once owned three pet chickens, Little Ginge, Gonzo and Mabel, who met their natural end in the food chain: being eaten by a fox. Despite becoming a cheap option on the high street, chicken is also the trendiest ROOST, as the event is known, is devoted to celebrating the humble chicken in all its fried, saucy and increasingly elaborate forms - ‘bird cookery without borders’.

Well, I’m still full. That’s the first thing to know. -Probably will be at the time you read this too. It’s 16 hours since I finished dinner at Kid, and I think I might be ready to eat again at dinner tomorrow. So was it worth it? I’m writing this more quickly after the meal than usual. Why the rush? This is because, for one time only, I wanted to be the FIRST critic to review a HOT NEW OPENING. There was nothing in the papers last week, so I think I’ve done it… although the Times puts Giles Coren online on a Wednesday, and as I have to write on Tuesday, I don’t know yet. It’s an utterly pointless thing to strive for, but you’ve got to show commitment.

To experience the Big Apple properly, you don’t just take a bite: you take a carbohydrate-laced mouthful. Think smoked salmon bagels thick with cream cheese or $2 pizza slices dripping with grease. Think warm, salted pretzels, or frankfurters from a street kiosk, or steaks as big as the genetically modified cows from whence they came. Even so, for the full I <3 NYC gastronomic voyage, there’s only one restaurateur whose bagel-crumb trail is worth following: Anthony Bourdain, of course. The ‘bad boy’ Big Apple he represented is a city long devoured and spat out Why, eight years after his death, are we still feasting on our obsession with ‘Tony’ (as last month’s biopic would have us call him)?

I recently found myself forced to endure a picnic. A first-world problem, to be sure. But at Glyndebourne (where I was going with friends to see Tosca, my favourite) there was no restaurant option. It was either picnic, or go hungry. The posh-off with our neighbours had begun Four of our party of six arrived at the grounds, to meet our two highly organised and super-punctual friends.They had insisted (because they were driving) on bringing the bulk of the picnic. All the rest of us had to do was rock up with Tupperware containers of appetisers (plus booze) to add to the fine array arriving by car. As we entered the covered picnic area, we were surprised to note that the table they had rented remained unoccupied.

My kitchen is not ready for blackberry jam. I am not ready for blackberry jam. The heat of summer is still beating through my windows; the grass is still a brown dust; I haven’t corralled my jars or set aside preserving time. Nor have I turned my thoughts towards the fruit. I still think of blackberries as a back-to-school fruit: a signifier of autumn and all that goes with it. It just doesn’t feel like blackberry season. But it is, and the brambles wait for no woman. For several years now, the blackberries have been coming earlier and earlier. Right now, the ones near me are at perfect ripeness. A few days ago, they were tight, reluctant to let go of their star-like calyx. They may have looked dark and inky, having changed from their earlier pallid pink, but they weren’t ready.

‘Expect David Cameron to be there.’ This was the main thing I had been told before I went to Four Boys in Rock, Cornwall. As I arrive, it makes sense. This is a Cameron-y sort of place and not just because every man in here looks a bit like David Cameron. Why? Well, Cameron’s big idea as leader of the Conservative party was to modernise it. ‘We’ll get elected if we hug hoodies and manage to not pull a face when we see an avocado.’ Four Boys, with its awareness of fashion, is doing something similar. I notice something at the top of the menu when I sit down. ‘We recommend sharing our food.’ What? Small plates?! Sharing?! I’m trying to get away from east London! Yet all has been done judiciously.

I've been spending a lot of time standing in Soho this summer. No, not leaning on a lamppost next to Walker's Court and the staircase that says ‘girls upstairs’. Instead, outside my favourite pub, with a whiskey in a plastic glass, getting grumpy that there's nowhere to sit and the music inside is too loud. I'm only thirty-five but after nearly twenty years working in hospitality, can I please just have a chair? Around me everyone else is perching, leaning, shifting from foot to foot, vapes in hand, moaning about the security guards. But we put up with it. You'll probably find us there tomorrow.