Spectator Life

There is something very equalising about a street party. At one gathering I attended last year on a central London mews, a trust fund baby peered nervously out from his living room window before deciding to emerge, carrying two bottles of champagne and a flower vase filled with a tumultuous mess of a Platinum Jubilee trifle. When the lemonade for the Pimm’s ran out, the champagne was mixed in instead. He didn’t seem to mind. It’s good for us British to be thrust into these social settings. I get the impression that some of the Mediterranean peoples do this sort of thing every weekend: long balmy evenings help I suppose. But we are less accustomed to letting strangers in on our mealtime rituals.

The big bank holiday weekend is about to begin. You’ve made that spinach and broad bean quiche. The bunting’s ready for your street party. You’ve crafted a coronation drinking game. But there’s something missing, isn’t there? An itch that just needs to be scratched. Where’s the pizazz? Where’s the cake? As the oft-misattributed quote goes: a party without cake is just a meeting. I know, I know: a quiche can be fun, but is it celebratory? No, what we need is a good old over-the-top, lily-gilded showstopper of a cake, that you can cut into with appropriate levels of pomp and circumstance. And, boy, do I have the pudding for you. It’s hard to think of a more appropriate pudding to celebrate the coronation of a King called Charles than a Charlotte Royale.

Lots of things seem to get described as ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences nowadays, but for many of us the coronation really will be just that. So, how to make the most of the historic long weekend? Clock off from work at a reasonable time on Friday and while getting dressed into your glad rags pour yourself a glass of English sparkling wine. Nyetimber and Hattingley Valley both have appealing coronation edition cuvées. Have some friends over – as with Christmas or new year, I think the tantalising eve of the big day is always the most fun time for a party. Serve some nibbles, such as Tyrrells's coronation chicken crisps, and a Jack Russell cake from the Waitrose coronation collection (at £24.99 their Leckford Estate Brut is also worth getting as a good-value English sparkling).

There was nothing actually wrong with coronation quiche, Buckingham Palace’s suggested dish for a coronation lunch. Spinach, broad beans, cheddar: all fine. The trouble was, it wasn’t coronation chicken. When you’re following an actual classic, it’s impossible not to be overshadowed. And coronation chicken is that marvellous thing, a recipe which feels as though it has always been around because it’s so right as a combination of flavours and textures. But like every classic dish, it’s been traduced: take commercial mayonnaise, stir in curry sauce and a bit of mango chutney and a few raisins… and it’s cropping up in all sorts of weird combos now (CC scotch egg, anyone?).

Tea drinkers erupted in a fit of caffeinated rage on Monday; kettle cosies were dashed across the kitchen, bone china was placed down hastily and many people were all very cross. Twinings sparked the uproar after axing its Lapsang Souchong tea and replacing it with something called ‘Distinctively Smoky’. It has been met with near universal disapproval and branded a stain on the company’s 300 year history. Famously Winston Churchill’s brew of choice, Lapsang Souchong is a centuries-old tea thought to have originated in the Wuyi Mountains in the Fujian Province of China, with the first record of it in 1646. Legend has it Wuyi locals fleeing Qing soldiers dried fresh batches of tea over fire to expedite their escape.

The English Breakfast Society has cancelled the hash brown, calling it a ‘lazy American replacement to bubble and squeak’. Guise Bule de Missenden, the society’s founder (sounds European to me), warned that giving hash browns the stamp of approval would only encourage the adoption of other ‘unsuitable fillers like chips’, or worse ‘fish fingers’ and ‘kebab meat’. (Seriously Guise, unless you are an infant or a drunk, the latter two are not part of any normal diet.) The boffins at the English Breakfast Society need to get with the times ‘Someone has to draw the line and say no to hash browns,’ he said. ‘They are served by those who lack pride in the full English breakfast tradition.’ Well, I've had enough. I’m taking a stand.

I'm standing in my kitchen aiming a hairdryer at a pan of uncooked brownie batter and feeling like I might have finally lost my mind. I’ve done a lot of strange things in pursuit of recipe perfection, but even for me, this is an odd one. Brownies are a funny old beast. We think of them as quite straightforward, both in the making and in the eating. But actually, that’s not fair. There are countless variables which can produce anything from a dry chocolate cake to uncooked fudge. And – more importantly – for a glorified traybake, they’re pretty damn expensive to make. A whole pat of butter, lots of chocolate, anything from three to five eggs, a boatload of sugar (rarely simple granulated). It’s a commitment.

When it comes to Easter cake, there are two possibilities. From the home front, there’s simnel cake, which has 11 marzipan balls on the top – one for each of the apostles, apart from bad Judas. Or there’s colomba, the Italian dove-shaped panettone-style cake, with all its symbolic resonances. Not that the colomba actually looks like a dove, unless you try very hard – more like a cross with round ends (the wings and tail) and a wonky top (the head). Anyway, that’s the idea.  Colomba cake [iStock] So, which is the more perfect? Simnel cake is a lightly spiced and fruited cake, with marzipan in the middle as well as on the top. Made with homemade marzipan, which is easy, it’s a thing of beauty.

In a world of ultra-convenience, I think making the argument for home cooking is important. Because a lifestyle of takeaway delivery apps, ready meals or eating out every day is not a recipe for health and happiness, no matter how easy the modern world makes it.   One of the downsides of the cult of the ‘foodie’ is that it can make food and cooking more intimidating than they need to be. If you’re a Londoner, invite friends over for a dinner of lasagne and garlic bread and you’ll have one guest asking if the pasta is fresh or dried and the other telling you to try roasting the garlic for 24 hours in a low oven next time to unleash its inner umami. It’s enough to put anyone off.

I am pretty capricious when it comes to puddings. I'm always ready to declare my most recent success the king of all desserts, swearing blind I will never make anything else, and just falling short of sending a newsletter to my entire address book informing them of the new love of my life – only for a new pretender to take its place a week a later. So you would be forgiven for feeling a little dismissive when I crow about my new favourite pudding. But listen, this really is my new favourite pudding. Maybe I will never make anything else again. Baked custard pots: richer than a crème caramel, but without the distinctive brittle ceiling of the crème brûlée, these are a make-ahead wonder, fantastically impressive, and really, completely delicious.

In June last year, King’s College Cambridge made more than £1 million from an auction of just 41 lots from its wine cellar. Not bad for a college that until just a few years ago had a hammer and sickle flag hanging in its student bar. But the Marxist sympathies of some of its legendary fellows and students stand little chance against the viticultural genius of the cellar’s buyer: Peter de Bolla, a scholar of 18th century literature and aesthetics. Included in the bonanza sale were 12 bottles of 1999 Echezeaux, an apparently legendary grand cru from Henri Jayer, for which someone bid £100,000. De Bolla had bought them on release and, to give some indication of the return on his investment, when he bought the 1996 vintage he had paid £31.11 per bottle.

Anyone who finds themselves gazing at a parliamentary samosa for two minutes or more (me, for the avoidance of doubt) probably has a problem. Sadly, this is what my life has become since the Twitter account @Parliscran arrived on the scene. The reason the samosa was so mesmerising is because I was trying to work out whether it had been covered in balsamic glaze, a long-held obsession of mine. The sauce, dark and sticky as it appeared, was more likely to be some sort of tamarind situation, but nevertheless I found it beguiling.  https://twitter.com/ParliScran/status/1625869677711839232 A cursory doom-scroll through Parliscran would be a cathartic deviance to anybody who enjoys food.

London has always been dogged by the canard that the Guinness here can’t compete with what’s served across the Irish Sea. It is certainly difficult – perhaps impossible – to replicate the quality of the pints in Mulligan’s on Dublin’s Poolbeg Street, or at the Gravediggers by Glasnevin Cemetery. However, there are pubs here that do it admirably – if you know where to look. Whether you’re a lifelong aficionado, or you’re merely observant on St Patrick’s Day, these are some of your best bets for a great London Guinness: The Auld Shillelagh, Stoke Newington A stone-cold classic of a pub, the Auld Shillelagh’s deceptively small frontage on Church Street leads to a longitudinal bar that serves some of London’s finest pints.