Delicious Food

My younger daughter tells me she looks for two things in a book: a mischievous, iconoclastic hero or heroine – and descriptions of wonderful food.

She eats like a bird, so I can only assume this is wish-fulfilment.

Anyway, tonight I happen to be cooking that old British favourite, sausages with bubble-and-squeak.  (Recipe attached, see foot of post!)  It’s cold weather food.  And following on from my blogs about books to read in snowy weather, I thought it might be warming to remind ourselves of comfort food in books.

I was pretty sure that bubble and squeak makes an appearance in “The Wind In The Willows”, and so it does.  The jailer’s daughter, pitying poor Toad, in jail, brings him: “bubble and squeak, between two plates.”  This alone is not enough to rouse Toad from his misery, however, and she has recourse to:

“…a tray, with a cup of hot tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb.  The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad…”

As well it might.  Anyone rushing off for a piece of toast, yet?  Stay a while…

I read John Masefield’s “The Box of Delights” to both my daughters when they were small.  There’s a point when the hero, Kay, despairs of ever managing to get through to the warm-hearted but slow Inspector (who breeds Belgian hares) that his friends are in danger, and that the villain (and wizard) Abner Brown is masquerading as the principal of a nearby religious college.  The Inspector attempts to reassure him:

‘You get that good guardian of yours to see you take a strong posset every night.  But you young folks in this generation, you don’t know what a posset is. Well, a posset,’ said the Inspector, ‘is a jorum of hot milk; and in that hot milk, Master Kay, you put a hegg, and you put a spoonful of treacle, and you put a grating of nutmeg, and you stir ‘em well up and then you take ‘em down hot.  And a posset like that, taken overnight, will make a new man of you, Master Kay, while now you’re all worn down with learning.’

Both daughters immediately insisted that I make it.  I did: and it’s delicious: and they had it often over the years of their ‘school learning’…  Try it yourselves!  For treacle, I’ve always used what in England is termed ‘Golden Syrup’; not molasses.

What about other books?  My husband insists that the bear steaks with apples that the children eat in ‘Prince Caspian’ sounds pretty good to him:

“Each apple was wrapped up in bear’s meat … and spiked on a sharp stick and then roasted.  And the juice of the apple worked all through the meat, like apple sauce with roast pork…”

I’m not quite convinced.   To me, C.S. Lewis actually manages to make the earth, which the trees eat at the banquet in the same book, sound much more delicious:

“They began with a rich brown loam that looked almost exactly like chocolate…When the rich loam had taken the edge off their hunger, the trees turned to earth of the kind you see in Somerset, which is almost pink.  They said it was lighter and sweeter.  At the cheese stage they had a chalky soil and then went on to delicate confections of the finest gravels powdered with choice silver sand.”

I was with him through most of that, but he lost me at the gravels.

Here’s the recipe for Bubble and Squeak:

450g/1lb potatoes, peeled and diced

salt and pepper

70g/1 ½ oz butter

250g/8oz cabbage, shredded

3-4 tbsp oil

1 onion, diced

Cook the potatoes in salted water till done, then mash with 2oz of the butter.  Season with salt and pepper.

Melt the remaining butter in a large saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water and add the shredded cabbage.  Cook gently for 10 minutes until tender.  Drain, and mix the cabbage and mashed potato together.  Season to taste ( I like to add a grating of nutmeg).

Heat half the oil in a frying pan.  Add the onion and cook, stirring, till softened.  Add the potato and cabbage mix, pressing down with a wooden spoon to make a flat, even cake.  Cook over medium heat for 15 mins till golden brown on the underside, and place on a large plate.  Add the remaining oil and cook again on the other side till golden brown.  Cut into wedges (or scoops) and serve.

Happy eating!  Any more delicious book food you can remember?

Wintry Books For Curling up With

It's snowing!

I know this may be unexciting news for anyone much north of Oxford, but although it's been freezing here since Christmas, these stray flakes are the first for me.  So I'm inspired to recommend my favourite wintery children's books to curl up with - if you can - ideally on a deep window seat with the dusk falling and a real fire flickering in the room, watching the world outside turn white.

My first is John Masefield's 'The Box of Delights', given me as a present when I was seven, and re-read constantly ever since.  It's a wonderful, exuberent mixture.  Young Kay Harker, coming home for the Christmas holidays to his rambling old house of 'Seekings' encounters a mysterious Punch and Judy man who tells him, 'the Wolves are running'. From then on it's a mixture of magic, ancient history and modern villains as the wizard Abner Brown, in charge of a band of international jewel thieves, serially kidnaps the Dean, Bishop and entire chapter of Tatchester Cathedral in an attempt to capture the marvellous Box of Delights.  Snow, firelight, winged taxis, Arthurian camps and utter magic!

My second comfort read would be Alan Garner's 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' - especially the part where the children, Gowther and the dwarves are fleeing through the Cheshire landscape pursued by the terrifying mara, while their supernatural enemies call up the unnatural Fimbulwinter.   There's a brilliant description of the discomforts of clambering through rhodedendrons: and the final stand on Shuttlingslow is terrific.

My third - all these are books I adored as a child and still love - is 'The Silver Chair' by C.S. Lewis.  My favourite of the Narnia stories, and perhaps the least problematic, it too has wonderful descriptions of a cold and miserable journey over snowy moors, and then the children and Puddleglum arrive at the deceptive comfort and security of the giant's castle at Harfang.  I always wanted to try a giant bath large enough to swim in, and to get dry by 'rolling around' on giant towels in front of a fire large enough to burn a young oak tree.

On the same lines, I'd recommend the attempted journey over Caradhras in The Fellowship of the Ring'.  Nothing like reading about avalanches to make you feel cosy, curled up in a warm armchair: and you can follow the Fellowship on into the dark halls of Moria...

Coming more up to date, Garth Nix's 'Sabriel' is great for - again - atmospheric and arduous journeys through the dangerous death-haunted snows of the Old Kingdom: and if you haven't read his account of the nine other-worldly river gates leading into Death, do go and find it.  Nix writes amazingly well and his monsters are unusual and convincing.

B.B.'s 'Brendon Chase' is a charming book about three boys living wild in the woods, and the writer was a naturalist and can transport you outdoors into the snow or the summer with the utmost ease.

Finally, 'Jane Eyre' is another comfort book - Jane's privations at Lowood Academy, the Gothic darkness at Thornwood Hall, the meeting with Mr Rochester and his black dog on the icy road, her flight across the moors - what are you waiting for?

Let the snow fall!  Happy reading!