Postscript . .
'Any type of fish front any sea can be used for this age-old dish . . . place about 1 lb. pre- pared and skinned fillets (fresh or frozen) in an oven-proof dish 'Open a can of any type of fruit .
These are the opening sentences of a couple of recipes picked almost at random from a book that came out last week under the title Traditional English Cooking (Angus and Robertson, 25s.) and they provide a sufficient answer to those people who, whenever English catering standards are criticised, sound off with a lot of emotive words about the Roast Beef of Old England (which comes, as likely as not, from the Argentine, is basted with anonymous grease from a packet, and served with Yorkshire pudding made from a batter mix, peas—called `fresh garden'—from a deep freeze, and bottled horseradish sauce con- taining mock cream and gum tragacanth. In many
'Call me Sir.'
restaurants it has been cooked the day before, allowed to get cold, sliced wafer-thin on a machine, and warmed up with 'gravy' that also comes out of a packet).
I was taken to task last week in the Guardian by Jack White, in his engaging weekly article from Dublin, because of a couple of pieces I was commissioned to do recently for the Observer describing the gastronomic adventures of a Guide Michelin inspector in a tour of five English restaurants.
Mr. White's objections are strongly held and amusingly expressed, if not entirely logical: he said that food is for eating not for talking about, and then rhapsodised about `the tradition of good food in these islands . . . built around tea . . wholemeal bread, rich and nutty, with the kind of butter that you can eat for pleasure.' And complained about elaborate business lunches that are charged to expense accounts. The whole point of writing in the public prints about good food, and criticising restaurant standards, is that it is precisely the vulgar, greedy, ignorant, money-no- object expense-account guzzler who ruins stand- ards, and if standards are debased in the ex- pensive restaurants they tend to fall elsewhere. too.
It is not a coincidence that Raymond Post- gate, the editor of the Good Food Guide, who has done more than any other man to try to establish a standard of public catering in this country, is a good Socialist, as I hope I am : Postgate believes, and so do I, that only the best (of its kind) is good enough—not for rich expense-account belly- worshippers, but for working journalists like our- selves, who have to eat in country hotels and provincial restaurants, for commercial travellers, who suffer the same privations, for factory hands in their canteens, and for office-workers in tea- shops. I am sure that Mr. White wouldn't sug- gest that the horse-power and braking efficiency of Rolls-Royce motor cars are unimportant, be- cause only rich businessmen use them, or that you could ignore Rolls-Royce standards and still expect good workmanship of its kind in a Morris or an Austin. The reason why a French lorry- driver eats well is because so does the rich Parisian.
I come myself from a high-tea-eating district such as Mr. White waxes lyrical about, and I remember the scorn expressed by my mother (a Jewess, with a vestigial Central-European table tradition, and precious little money) over the tinned-salmon-and-vinegar, tinned-peaches-and- custard-powder-sauce high-tea dishes of our neighbours. I suspect that the phrase 'rich and nutty' that Mr. White applies to his wholemeal bread comes from the advertisements : a recent bulletin of the Advertising Inquiry Council re- ferred to a loaf called 'Steven's Farmhouse Bread' and described as 'old-fashioned bread, made from the cream of the wheat, with that true country flavour' which is, in fact, made out of commercial white flour in a mass-production steam-bakery in Bermondsey.
The tradition of English cooking, alas, has long been broken (I don't know about Irish cooking; I expect they're as good as ever over there at their grocery-shop bread, margarine, shop jam and strong tea), and the job of people who write about food is to try to establish the principle that what cooking we do turn our hands to ought to be done properly, with honest ingredients, whether it's for tycoons or for typists. To say that you dbn't mind what you eat seems to me no more commendable than saying that you don't mind who you go to bed with. There is no virtue in unfastidiousness as such.
More news about my two favourite luggage' manufacturers. On July 7 I told here how the handles came off two new Revelation holdalls belonging to colleagues of mine. A week later came a letter from a public relations firm, on behalf of Revelation, saying that it was true there had been a faulty batch, but the handles of Revelation holdalls were now secure. I replied that it would be nice if those customers who had bought the faulty ones could have them replaced. No answer.
A couple of months later I mentioned the Revelation handles again. This time it was the company secretary of Revelation who took a week to write to me. He said that he was 'not complaining' about my reference; repeated that there had been a faulty batch, but that a new type of handle had been designed; and would I accept one of the new holdalls for my own use? I said no, that I wouldn't accept one, and repeated Or suggestion that the aggrieved customers should have their faulty holdalls replaced. No answer.
The point of my second reference was that the handle of my own new Antler case also came off, the first time it was used. It took the Managing' Director of Antler six days to write to me about it, and another eleven days to answer my letter explaining what had happened. When the case was examined, the Managing Director refused to accept responsibility, but did feel obliged to send me a new one in place of it (which is more than Revelation offered to do to my unhappy col- leagues). It would arrive, he wrote to me, 'either Wednesday or Thursday of this week.' It didn't come on Wednesday or Thursday or, indeed, on Friday, and neither did any postcard or telephone call of apology or explanation. It came the fol- lowing Monday.
* So unnerved am I by Mr. White's puritanisms, that all I can commend as my wine of the week is Hedges and Butler's 1959 Gewiirztraminer Cuvee Reservee at 18s. 9d.—an Alsatian 'wine of the century,' and just the thing to go with the trufiled goose-liver pâté that the same firm imports from Strasbourg. A sealed tin of the pâté, enough for four people, with two bottles of the GewiirP traminer, in a gift hamper, all for five guineas, gives a rough idea of what I mean by the best being good enough. Let Mr. White spread it on his rich and nutty wholemeal bread.
CYRIL RAY
Previous page
