Country life
Cooking up trouble
Leanda de Lisle
When I was single my Sunday lunch was Palma ham and melon — an excellent hangover cure. When I first married and had the time to extend my near non-exis- tent culinary skills, it was some exotic dish from a distant part of the world. A few years later, exhausted by the demands of small children, I preferred to produce a simple roast. But now, with all these stages behind me, the time had come to throw a proper country house Sunday lunch party.
I've often had between ten and 20 thir- tysomethings and their children for lunch, but in the main they were house guests and Sunday lunch was a very relaxed occasion, designed to help people recover from the excesses of the weekend. A proper Sunday lunch, on the other hand, required the attendance of local friends from all genera- tions except the youngest. Those children that had to come — my own for example — being relegated to the kitchen. It meant scratchy tweed suits and big hair and, hav- ing made the decision to throw such a party, I thought I might as well arrange two.
I have a lot of invitations to repay and it seemed to me that a lunch party would not pose many problems. I didn't have a cook, but I didn't think that would matter as I'd cooked for lots of people so many times before. However, the trouble is if you want something to be smart it will inevitably degenerate into farce if there isn't some cool head about to see things run smoothly. Take the 'simple' roast. For the first lunch I ordered a huge leg of pork which, I dis- covered on the Saturday night, weighed almost as much as I do. At 30 minutes to the pound, it would take a lot of cooking.
I put the pork in the oven at 6 a.m. and staggered back to bed vowing to have beef next time. By noon it had mysteriously shrunk to the size of a chicken drumstick. I prayed the guests wouldn't be late, but at five to one, not a soul had arrived. Then, just as I had happily resigned myself to the fact I'd got the date wrong, a dozen people appeared at the front door. Thankfully, Peter had decided it would be too compli- cated to offer them a choice of drink and they all seemed happy with champagne. I say 'seemed' because during the course of lunch it became clear that the local land- owning fraternity were taking the boycott of French produce very seriously.
Sipping South African red wine with their shrivelled pork our guests discussed the need to stock their cellars with wine produced anywhere save France and when the cheese came round they studiously ignored the Brie in favour of the Stilton.
I silently recalled that at the Calf and Lamb Society dinner the yeoman farmers who are bearing the brunt of the agricultur- al depression had told me they found the boycott rather irritating. It reminded them of how the Conservatives railed against Europe during the BSE crises, but failed to help them make their goods marketable. Ordinary farmers are deeply suspicious of nationalistic outbursts.
However, the land-owning fraternity aren't ordinary farmers. While we are feel- ing the pinch along with our poorer brethren, as families we all earn money outside agriculture. Wives have successful careers of their own, homes double up as conference centres and gardens as winter wonderlands.
They may be angry, but they are not des- perate and it is the angry not the desperate who take the trouble to buy beef on the bone — as I did for my second lunch. But it proved a worse disaster than the pork, since the children had their revenge for being downgraded to the kitchen by using up all the gravy before it reached the din- ing-room.
I tried not to fret but, choking on my desiccated Yorkshire pudding, found I just had to. Looking back, I thank God the party didn't fall on the weekend before last, when we put the clocks forward an hour instead of back and had Bloody Marys with our house guests at 10.30 in the morning, followed by lunch at 11. And next Sunday, I'm tempted to revert to Palma ham and melon.
'Hi, I'm on the train.'
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