A TRIBUTE TO MY FATHER

My adopted father died on Sunday. He was described by an old friend thus: ‘so sartorial, such a thinker and dreamer, of impossible dreams and a teller of tales…the ideal of everyone’s uncle – kind, concerned and always up to giving one a very good lunch!

On becoming a widower, one of the first things my father did was to purchase an ice cream churn. I arrived home one day to find him making chocolate ice cream. No fuss, just two melted bars of dark chocolate and a pint of double cream. He ate the lot with brandy snaps and caster sugar sprinkled on top.

Dad loved ‘grub’. But like most men of his generation he was a creature of habit. Every morning he had a soft floury roll baked in the top oven of the Aga for a few minutes and rather lavishly buttered. This would be followed by two oatcakes with Dark Breakfast marmalade and Indian tea without milk, preferably stewed in a little metal teapot on the hot plate.

During the Second World War he served in the North West Frontier of India. But of course despite the dust and artillery shells, mess dinners were as English as possible and his tastes remained utterly conservative. Thin wafers of ox tongue, steak and kidney pie and very well hung, almost maggoty game were his favourites. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, this nursery food remained the mainstay. And of course it was in plentiful supply at his various London clubs.

When I found him making ice cream, I encouraged that new-found independence. He was reclaiming territory around the house from which he’d always been banished. And he wanted me to teach him how to cook all of his favourite things.

First he learned to make soup and then roast potatoes in goose fat. Apple pie, omelette, lamb stew and mince came next. His biggest triumphs were Scotch broth with a real mutton bone, Roast Partridge and Rhubarb Crumble with home-made custard. Each took a few failed attempts and considerable carnage around my mother’s previously spotless kitchen. But what he acquired was a confidence born of necessity. He taught himself to shop, read recipe books and once he even cooked for friends.

Having lost all the women who cooked for him and being too old to acquire a new model, he briefly became a reconstructed modern man, ready for jolly new adventures in the kitchen.

In his own decline he became more obsessed with food. Packages from Amazon would arrive at his nursing home with the latest celebrity chef title. And the greatest surprise of all was that after 60 years of The Telegraph he announced disparagingly, ‘I am simply bored of reading what I already know’ and promptly switched to The Guardian. For the food writers.

We used to talk a lot about food and he was an eager pupil, learning fast and fearlessly. He encouraged me to write a book from the perspective of men who knew nothing and needed quick and easy ways to succeed in the kitchen. A book for sons, fathers, husbands and boyfriends who miss the cook in their lives. The book I am writing at the moment Cooking for Menis that book. As for the ice cream. It will forever be known as Dad's Choc Ice.

TENDER WORDS

Tender (2009) tells the story of Nigel Slater's love affair with his garden in Islington and the many seedlings he has raised in his box-hedged vegetable patches. It’s a magnificent volume, like a medieval knightly treatise with pictures of his Eden, its produce and many of the recipes he has created from them.

23 May, 2010

FOOD FROM THE HEART

Cooking is a basic human instinct. We’ve been eating, chopping, shaping, flavouring, enticing ingredients into something delicious since time began. But as the way many of us live has changed, the basic skills we require to cook, are no longer valued and it’s often easier to let others take control of what we eat.

21 April, 2010

IN A RIGHT FISH STEW

This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming from your pot.

15 March, 2010