Imperative cooking: picnic time
'WHY IS IT that everything seems to taste more delicious in the fresh air?' The picnic season is here and cookery writers are going on about picnics. Though we have all been having picnics for years and they have been writing about how to have them for years, they still feel obliged to tell us how to do them. Doesn't show much confi- dence in the worth of their last year's advice, if you ask me. Anyway, somewhere in. the column someone will ask the ques- tion about things tasting better in the fresh air. It's rhetorical of course. About all that's called for as a response, and is even supplied by some writers, is a variation on `mmmhm, delicious'.
Let me try one answer. In normal domestic dinners there is a special moment. After a few drinks, there comes a time when chaps go to table. A kitchen door and an oven door are opened or the lid removed from a casserole and suddenly the smell of sizzling roast pork or of oxtail in wine with pungent dried ceps wafts down the corridor and into the dining- room. Mouths drooping with drink or tedious conversation suddenly turn up. Nostrils quiver. Eyes sparkle. Here we go. This is going to be good.
First sights can provoke anticipatory delights too, if not as overwhelmingly as smells. Size is reassuring — a good 9-lb joint or a vast plate crowded with oysters. Girls like colours, purple aubergines, deep green olive oil. Personally, I am a bubble man, nothing better than a stewed mess of duck, mutton and sausage sending robust bubbles up into a layer of crusted butter- beans. You get smell as well when the bub- bles burst through the beans, sending spouts otsteam into the air and sometimes firing the odd gobbet of fat at a nearby guest.
These stunning smells and visions last but a few moments — with domestic din- ners. Not so with a well-managed picnic. Here we are up early and cooking. There are vast Spanish omelettes to be made, grey mullet to be grilled with herbs. The first smell and visions come when, as before, the oven doors are opened and lids are lifted. Bnt the memory of that smell stays all morning as we drive to wood, river or beach. And it is unblunted by actual con- sumption. And not just the memory. There's a whiff of duck and sage as the boot is packed and later unpacked. When that ghastly young person in an Escort cuts in on the AS roundabout and his betters are forced sharply to brake, suddenly the omelette asserts itself, the scent of goose eggs, olive oil, potatoes and onions seeping round the edges of the back shelf. The Gorgonzola is so quiet for the first 30 miles or so that we are worried we might have left it behind. But when the air-condition- ing is turned off, the windows opened and the sun gets stronger, it takes centre stage. For three hgers, we sit with increasingly empty stomachs being teased by delicious smells and thoughts of the visions of siz- zling fish and juicy ducks with crispy skin. And after this torture some idiot wants to know why the food we eventually get to eat tastes better!
Picnics only taste better, of course, if they are proper picnics. First they must be elaborate. Nothing is so absurd in the fresh air as simple food. What is needed are courses. Lots of them. If food tastes so deli- cious outdoors, then the pleasure wants to be prolonged not shortened. No quiches, pies or sandwiches. Who has ever smelt a ham sandwich? It has no teasing power at all.
Lots of courses and lots of things to be opened, carved, mixed. Oysters to be opened, mullet to be apportioned, ducks to be carved, salad to be mixed. The whole splendid show to go on as long as possible..
And one last condition of a good picnic. The grub must not be cold. I mean iced, refrigerated, cold-boxed. There is no taste to very cold food as anyone who has eaten a British Airways iced sandwich just before landing in New. York knows. All right, the oysters and salad can be a little cooler, but most meat and vegetable dishes should be as warm as they naturally can. At least no artificial methods should be used to cool them.
We are told by some food writers, the sort that think food is about health not pleasure and who have never discovered why food tastes more delicious out of doors, that warm food is dangerous. Well, Imperative cooks have been eating it for years both before and after the days of refrigeration and to no ill effect. Take those ducks straight from oven to boot. Food tastes better on the river or beach. And it smells stronger in the motor-car.
Digby. Anderson
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