( Imperative cooking: below thirty-two Fahrenheit
Mo sooner is it British Summertime, 11 than Harold Stephenson holds his first dinner party with drinks 'outside'. I don't mind the rain too much but I do not enjoy sitting in Harold's garden staring at his Volvo. He keeps it there. If you want to see plants, you have to go to the kitchen. There are trailing green things in hanging baskets, yuccas on the sill, flowers on the draining board, and a cutlery drawer full of secateurs and soggy green stuff. For all I know there's a pond in the larder. The same perverted principle operates upstairs. There are no books in Harold's 'study': they're all in the lavatory. In my more charitable moments I suppose all these misplacements are part of a regressive chain caused by the deep freeze. That occupies the garage.
Josephine Stephenson says it's invalu- able. She cannot think how she ever managed without it, especially when enter- taining. She tells us her secret. We 'im- agine' the casserole we're eating was pre- pared that afternoon — not so. Once every ten years, she buys a Volvo bootload of beef, a sack of onions, and a catering-size stock cube. Then she makes a huge stew and freezes it in aluminium containers • which hold enough for six persons, 'I expect you've wondered why we are always six for dinner, now you know'. Not to be outdone, Harold has converted the garden beyond the Volvo into a vegetable patch in which he grows stringy runner beans. These he overboils and freezes in eight- pound bags. We eat them with the cas- serole.
You still want a freezer? You, unlike the Stephensons, will use yours sensibly. You will have to do three things. First, move, as far away from a good fish shop as you can. There are delicious varieties of fish which are nearly always sold frozen: red mullet, snapper, tuna. So, if you can find a house more than two hours' drive from a fish- monger who sells them, if, then you might have found a justification for keeping your own frozen.
Or you could buy an acre and keep pigs, poultry and rabbits. We had lovely pigs.
One, the Borough Surveyor's Office, drank beer ullage and ate the plastic washing-up bowls in which he was given food. Some animals, ducks, did freeze well. The pigs, who, plastic bowls apart, lived off scraps and potatoes, certainly tasted better than bought pork even when frozen. But there again, if you can be bothered to keep them, you can be bothered to salt them, turn them into salami, raw ham or bacon. The 20th century is unique in inventing a method of preserving which adds nothing to that preserved. Think not only of charcuterie but of those Italian peppers, artichoke hearts and aubergines bottled in oil or wine vinegar and then think of a bag of Harold's frozen stringy beans.
Or you could develop a liking for out- ings. Deep freezes provide Puritans who need one, with an excuse for an outing. Try `Sacred and Game', `St Bartholomew's Eve' and 'Harbour Lounge'. 'S and G' is an early winter morning drive to Norfolk, accelerated pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham and ransack of butchers' shops for stewing partridge, hares, pheasants and wild duck. `St Bart's' in- volves finding an egg farm which keeps hens in deep litter. Once the hens' laying average falls (age 18 months plus) the farmers sell them cheaply. Wring the necks, pluck them 'hoe (much easier), hang them for a few days, gut and clean them. `HL' is no more than hanging about the harbour and buying from the fishing boats the fish the English are too stupid to want. Cuttle fish is usually free. Local restaurants only want crab claws, so the backs, with the excellent dark meat, can be had for next to nothing. Other customers are usually inept and have to ask the fishermen to clean their fish (always cod) so there are always cod heads free. We always return with a sack of fish and miscellaneous ingredients for a fish stew.
The Puritans' reasoning seems to be this, that a deep freeze allows you to buy more on these outings and 'save' more to justify them. Once we took a man with us who talked all the way about how much it `would' have cost if . . . . It quite spoiled the thing. Forget the freezer: better bring home the day's plunder, have two or three splendid meals and give the rest to friends (who have their own outings and bring you their different plunders).
That leaves the distant fish shop as the only reason for any self-professed cook owning one of these frightful things. I'm as fond of mullet as the next chap but not if it means Iris Murdoch in the lavatory, Oasis in the kitchen and an advanced safety- touting chassis on the croquet lawn.
Digby Anderson
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