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Imperative cooking: the faggot divide
e0 t IT'S the combination of Jolt Cola and a weekend in Cheltenham that explains the current English culinary problem and spells out the solution. First, the cola. There's this American company selling a new — or perhaps old cola called Jump, Jolt, Bounce or something like that. They are marketing it with the slogan, 'All the caffeine and twice the sugar', or is it the other way round? Anyway, we could be in for a whole rash of new messages; 'Beef with no fat removed -- at last the joint which cooks properly', 'Our calves' brains are pure cholesterol', or menus with the warning 'This restaurant is strictly for those who enjoy food — no hawkers, persons without shoes or Healthists admitted.' The Jolt business is said to be part of a move, in the United States and starting here, back to 'real' food: London restaurants are teasing up their nouvelle menus and cook- ing their ducks properly again, even serv- ing adult portions.
Now, while anything which gets away from the ravings of the Food Leninists is to be encouraged and while one is instinctive- ly sympathetic to any change which is reactionary, a word of caution is necessary. It is quite one thing for the French to have a reaction against Nouvelle-ism: they have a sound tradition to go back to. It is quite another thing for the Anglo-Saxons. I'm all for abolishing mange-touts but less sure about reinstating potatoes, parboiled then roasted in rancid lamb fat with overdone meat, 17 other vegetables, many diced, and all swimming in 'gravy'.
In fact, it's even more complicated because there is, unfortunately, no need to reinstate 'traditional' food. It has never been displaced. The great. David revolu- tion, rather like the English Reformation, left the daily practices of most English people largely unchanged as even the shortest visit to Cheltenham confirms. There are many streets full of shops where people — far from lower class — can be heard-buying the lamb and vegetables to overcook. What seems to have happened is that, aspects of Davidism and the later Healthism have been incorporated in and smothered by the horrid parts of the English tradition resulting in the worst of all worlds.
Thus, at the White Horse, a few miles outside — but it could be any one of a hundred pubs — the menu has become not only Continental but Meridional, even far-exotic with lasagne, pizza and chilli. Healthism is there in the obligatory wisps of tasteless lettuce and heavy sweet brown bread but all are served with the inevitable potatoes and several veg, topped off with bottled sauces, pre-made mustard and sneezing powder and followed by sweets with ersatz cream.
There are 'traditional' faggots and peas. But the faggots are not small balls of pig belly, liver, lungs and melts, minced and wrapped in caul fat, cooked in pork or chicken stock and served with dried peas soaked then boiled, again in stock, accom- panied solely with freshly made mustard. They are nothing more than meat balls, boiled in powdered stock mix, frozen then microwaved and served in a sort of bowl with eight once-frozen peas on top. The bowl sits on a plate, surrounded by three tenth pieces of tomato and the obligatory lettuce wisps which are wilting under the influence of a 'baked', that is microwaved, potato in its jacket. Dotted about are various tiny packets of New Zealand but- ter.
There are, to be sure, a few good English dishes to go back to: faggots is one. But these are not what the people in Cheltenham were buying: little sign in their butchers of melts, caul, tripe and no sign of ladies, of any social class, rushing to buy their dried peas before they run out.
There may well be a move 'back to real food' or 'traditional food' but that food is not going to include proper kedgeree, marmalade pudding, stewed pigeons, home boiled crabs, wild rabbit pie and eels, mash and liquor. More likely, it will be a slogan used as an excuse to dump the minimal salads the English have temporari- ly been forced to pretend to like or an excuse to re-write culinary history to make oven chips traditional.
I'm sorry but there is no getting away from it. It has to be faced and is better faced fair and square and without equivocation. English Imperative cooks cannot subscribe to reaction — any more than progress. Their first concern must remain the conversion of England to for- eign — French and Italian — ways, albeit reactionary foreign ways. Our true goal is not reaction but treachery.
Digby Anderson
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