Creating a strong food culture
What is needed is create a strong food culture?
Great produce? Great Restaurants? Or a food culture at home?
One of the positive impacts of Covid was that more people “reconnected” with cooking and food. Once again families came together, spent time together and there seemed to be a genuine reconnection between food, produce and family time.
EP carried an article a few years ago from a leading French culinary expert which noted that that the French would smile as London boasted of how it had become a gastronomic capital as, although true, it had less developed its own food styles but rather become a centre of all international cuisines. London, therefore, had become an international capital but it had no claim to possessing its own unique style.
The expert went on to note that, in France, recipes would be passed down from one generation to another and that there would be regional differences. This is what many regional cooking of such importance to families and cultures.
Of course, this was traditionally the case in the UK as well but arguably has lost its importance or is it, as some hope, how beginning to rebuild and will this see stronger importance with the cost of living crisis?
What creates a strong sustainable food culture?
John Harris, Founder Let’s Confab, would often talk about his roots with food which we thought may be of interest and illustrate the story:
John Harris’ Mother
“Family traditions – from Italy to Scotland
Every Christmas Eve at between 11 o’clock and midnight, my mother and I would start producing the small ravioli which were the start to our Christmas lunch. There would be at least 12, or up to 16, sitting down each year. The ravioli were always served the same way in simple chicken broth made from what my mother referred to as an old boiler. This being a redundant laying hen from our local market gardener who once a week would turn up at the back door about 10 o’clock at night. He was given a list and would disappear into his old van to get what we needed including a few items for upsale. Half an hour later he’d be back with the order plus a couple of rabbits or half a dozen pigeons, which he maintained were shot from his bedroom window with him in his pyjamas and slippers. He argued that if they went past his window they were probably on their way to doing damage to one of his crops, so they were fair game – he always kept a loaded shot gun next to the bed for this purpose. Strange looking back on it, but it was the 70’s.
Regularly the gardener, Mr Frampton by name, would turn up with one of his old laying hens. He judged them fit for purpose by how many eggs a week they could be persuaded to part with. Once the eggs given dropped past a profitable level the poor bird would be considered no longer viable, and so was unceremoniously despatched with a confident quick flick of the wrist breaking its neck. They arrived at our back door plucked but not cleaned; the remains of the feathers would need burning off and they normally had a few half formed eggs in them. As a kid I got a biology lesson as well as learning how to remove the innards, not the most pleasant job, but educational. Mr Frampton standing on the threshold of our kitchen, smiling showing 1 or 2 of the remaining teeth left in his mouth- “want one of these Mrs?”, knowing my mother was one of the few customers he had who knew what to do with these old birds that nobody else was interested in.
Mr Frampton was very old school with the thickest Dorset accent, flat cap and a smile reminiscent of a Hitchcock character from The Lady Vanishes. My 12 year old self found his six foot countenance standing at our back door terrifying. Truth be told he was a kind old Dorset farmer, his proudest achievement being the Dominos pub champion of The New Forest area which he had held for a number of years beating of all comers. It was all taken very seriously. His wife held the record for being the fastest Turkey plucker in West Dorset.
Cooking one of his ‘ex-layers’ took a lot more than just sticking it in a hot oven with a few potatoes for Sunday lunch. It would go in a large pot with onions, leeks, carrots, celery, bay and a little garlic. The pot would sit on the top of the stove simmering away for the whole day. It was then left to go cold and the bird removed. The remaining stock had a flavour unlike anything that we make today, much more depth and darker in colour. The meat from one of these long lived fouls had a different quality from a normal roasting bird. Even after a whole day’s cooking it would still have enough bite in the flesh to hold up. I used to love it in a sandwich, cold with a bit of lettuce, garlic mayonnaise and loads of ground black pepper.
The broth would then be cleared, not clarified, just tidied up. The ravioli would be filled with one part minced chicken, one part minced chicken liver and one part minced veal. Then seasoned with parsley, a little lemon peel salt, pepper and a touch of garlic. Cooking them in the broth just before the whole thing was going to be served. A very simple dish, but as with a lot of the simplest dishes, in reality a lot of work. Depending on how many people were having lunch there would be at least 100 ravioli to make. The last job on Christmas Eve would finish in the small hours of Christmas day. As I wearily climbed the stairs realising I had to be up in a couple of hours to go to Christmas Day Mass I’d wonder why we never seemed to be able to start them any earlier? After a number of years it dawned on me that this was just the way it was, then I started to enjoy the ritual of it. In the end it was just one part of our family Christmas.
Food originates from family routines
The finish to our Christmas dinner was always my mother’s version of a crossover dish (Zuppa Anglaise and Sherry trifle). This spoke of my mother’s Italian roots crossed with her life in the UK. Starting in the small mining town of Ayr where my grandfather had taken the family from the hills of Tuscany to the constant rain of Scotland. He did what all discriminating Italians did on arriving in pre-war Britain, he set up an ice-cream parlour; there was one flavour, vanilla. He took the recipe to his grave.
Mum and I at the end of Christmas lunch, taken after the Zuppa Anglaise!
My mother’s hybrid trifle went into family folk lore, fantastic but deadly. One portion would be enough to put you over the limit, containing a combination of rum, Tia Maria and sherry. Sleeping through Christmas afternoon telly was kind of an excepted pass time in our house. Once, aged four, my sisters realised I’d had a bit too much trifle as I spent the entire afternoon rolling around on the floor giggling at anything anyone said to me. I was eventually taken upstairs to bed to sleep it off.
This to me is the start of understanding great food: not the latest thing but food that is more than just how to cook. It contains shared memories and knowing how to make it is more than just showing off your understanding of the latest technique. A hot water bath does not guarantee a great plate of food; liquid nitrogen doesn’t make great ice cream (no seriously, it doesn’t). My mother had a vast understanding of food, but she never really thought so, she was doing what she felt had to be done to look after her family, using the experience passed on to her from mother to daughter. Then adding it to her experience of running the kitchens that were needed for my grandfather’s expanding Scottish catering empire (well a cafe/tea shop and ice cream parlour in a small grey southern Scottish town). She grew up running the kitchen. It became her role in the family business. By the time she started her own family we had ended up down on the south coast of England. Another story, but those strong food values had been embedded in her memory and this is what she passed onto me, and so the knowledge carries on: shared memories means those things she showed me keep on.
Time to rethink ‘foodie’
If family is where great food starts, where does it go wrong? What makes us take a wrong turn? Sometimes it’s just how we choose to describe something. One desperately overrated and over used term, is ‘a foodie’. I always cringe when I hear someone use it to describe me, but more often it’s about themselves or reference to “oh old so and so he’s a real foodie”. What does it really mean? Great cook? Discriminating eater? I just don’t know, these days maybe we need to come up with something new, looking at what we all eat now. We do seem to love to bandy around that word, ‘a foodie’.
It is clear that food is vessel by which so many of us centre our memories and traditions. From elaborate celebrations to everyday family dinners, is there importance in preserving traditions as well as striving to explore innovative new foods?