Wine and food
Blue cooking
Robin McDouall
The Ruislip-Northwood Conservative Association has just produced The True Blue Cookery Book, 'an assembly of recipes contributed by Congervative Mem- bers of Parliament and their wives' and Right Way Books have published it at 50'p. It is an admirable collection of recipes from ladies whose husbands come home at all hours, who mostly have no servants, who make do with short cuts and live with as much elegance as one can in 1977.
As an old-fashioned purist, in theory. I disapprove of short cuts — such things as ready-made pastry, tinned soup, stock cubes, bought dried herbs, frozen kipper fillets, 'boeuf stroganoff sauce mix', But I realise that MPs' wives often don't know when their husbands are coming home and the soufflé kind of cookery — though there are good examples from Mrs Julian Critch- ley and Mrs Torn Normanton — is best kept for the weekend.
The 'true blue' title might put people off, but nobody could call it a snobbish book. There is no suggestion of a cook, let alone a kitchenmaid, in the kitchen, though many of the recipes imply the existence of a liquid- iser or blender. A concession to middle- class nomenclature is to describe 'first courses' as 'starters' but I am glad to see that 'puddings' are called 'puddings', not 'sweets'.
Mrs Thatcher contributes a delicious fish-pie. Mr Heath's housekeeper, Mrs Crawford, contributes an onion-nut souffle which I haven't tried but which sounds dull- ish and a pear tart which sounds delicious.
Norman St John-Stevas contributes a dish which he calls Lettuce au Harold Wil- son, As shadow Minister of Education he should know that one says 'au whisky' or 'au rhum' but a la Richelieu or a la Mirabeau, not implying a sex-change, but an abbrevi- ation of a /a maniere (or facon) de. In any case his reason for the title, 1 am told, is that it can he made with wilted lettuce. Many adjectives have•been applied to Sir Harold but 'wilted' does not seem to me very apt. His name might more appropriately, be attached to Lady Gilmour's excellent Let- tuce Soup of which she says, `even slightly bolted lettuces of any variety will do.'
From its very first pages, I have found ideas in the book that have never occurred tome and which I have not seen in any other cookery book: Mrs Peter Walker put curry powder in her parsnip soup, Mrs Tugendhat makes a cold soup with tinned consomme, Philadelphia cheese and curry powder, Mrs Patrick McNair-Wilson puts orange-juice into her onion and carrot soup, Mrs J. Vau- ghan put Philadelphia cheese into her taramasalata, Mrs Michael Jopling makes a
cucumber dish which sounds more Leban- ese than Westmorlandian. The recipes are far from conservative in the derogatory sense: Mrs John Stanley rightly calls her dish Esoteric Kippers. If Tory wives are so progressive, can their husbands be far behind?
In politics, I hope not but, male chauvin- ist pig that I am, I regret to say that the chaps do not show up well in the book. Apart from Mr St John-Stevas, Mr Charles Irving offers what he calls a 'risotto' which sounds exceptionally nasty, and Mr William Benyon a Chinese dish called Nasi Goreng which at first I thought was meant to be a joke. To be fair, though, I must not be totally uncritical of the women. Let me therefore ask Mrs Anthony Fell —elsewhere excellent — to think again about her spaghetti dish, looking up how to spell both Gritti and Palazzo and remembering to offer some Parmesan.
Apart from these minor complaints, the book is so good that I hope it will not only have a great success in the Ruislip- Northwood Association, but that cook- hostesses and cook-hosts all over the place will take it up and make use of it: it is admirable.
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