Imperative cooking: the wedding breakfast
JANET is to be married the last Saturday in June and wishes to prepare Richard's breakfast on the Sunday, the first day of their life together. The trouble is she can't cook. Can I advise? I don't give these mar- riages much hope. The couples seem to be showered with advice on everything from mortgages to condoms but how on earth they can struggle on till death them do part without any decent grub, I can't see. To stand before an altar and promise to take care of a chap when one hasn't bothered to learn the basics of shopping and cooking seems to augur ill for all.
But, charitable as always, here we go, though best keep it simple: fried eggs.
Tuesday must be spent telephoning all local friends to learn where you will find the shops and farms to buy what you need. Wednesday, a lightning visit to a delicat- essen. Wear blinkers. The only thing these dreadful places sell that you will ever need is fresh yeast. Next, the Asian shop: black peppercorns, chapati flour (No.1) and dried red chillies, either long or round. Then a supermarket for sugar, salt, plain flour, red wine vinegar (plain and above all not balsamic or anything in odd-shaped bottles) and extra virgin olive oil (better in some Greek or Italian shops).
Now off to the country. That is where eggs come from. You must find a farm sell- ing hens', ducks', geese's or bantams' eggs. You do not buy the eggs today. The beloved does not want to start the course on stale eggs. You are here to make sure which type of eggs you will be able to get when you return early on Saturday before you get dressed for the wedding. The point is that ducks' eggs are best cooked in duck fat and hens' or bantams' in chicken fat.
Wednesday afternoon, you spend practis- ing making flat bread — the easiest. Crum- ble the yeast into the bowl, add a pinch of sugar and half a cup of warm water, leave for 20 minutes, add half plain and half cha- `Are you talking to me or chewing a brick?' pati flour, salt, a tablespoonful of olive oil and water, kneed into a dough. Leave it two hours. Put some olive oil into the iron fry- ing pan, roll out the dough into a circle and put it in the pan on a gentle heat, turning occasionally. It will be done in ten minutes. Use a pound of mixed flour and cook in about three batches for an average sized frying pan — but leave a knob of dough in the bowl. The first two or three times it will go wrong. Thereafter, unless you are very stupid, it will get better and better.
Thursday make bread again, but this time, don't use the yeast and sugar, use yes- terday's knob. Same on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, by which time the bread should be passable.
On Thursday, buy a boiling hen (from an Indian shop or a farm) and a duck (from a farm or a butcher). It must have the guts in. Keep it till Saturday, then eviscerate it, take the skin off and any fat you can find, heat skin and fat to make cooking fat. You could cook the bird as well to make some more and have a decent elevenses before the cer- emony or give it to the chief bridesmaid for her dinner. When you have made the dough on Saturday, made the fat, cooked the bird (if you wish) and gone back to the country for the eggs, you can get dressed with a clear conscience.
After the wedding, the reception, the night of bliss, you are up bright and early on the Sunday making your dough. On return from church, you roll it out, make the bread and keep it warm. Pound black peppercorns and chillies in the mortar to make Stendhal and fry the eggs, three each (one if geese, six if bantams) in lots of fat. Serve this simplest of dishes — fried eggs swimming in delicious fat — with Stendhal and warm, fresh bread. You will at least have done your duty for the first few hours of married life. Lunch, dinner and proper breakfasts are of course more complicated. There is much more to be learned urgently. You can't build a marriage on one meal.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Some chaps like a bit of bite to sharpen up the fat. When you have served the eggs and fat, clean the pan with a tablespoonful of wine vinegar and serve it sizzling over the eggs.
Digby Anderson
Previous page
