The Good Life
Doorsteps on my plate
Pamela Vandyke Price
The public school system may not always have triumphed conspicuously on field, pitch, course or even the green baize of the council chamber lately, but it can smirk complacently from the champs gastronomiques. The rectangular 'doorstep', sliced from the cutter, pallid as to, crust, scraped grudgingly with a fat euphemistically referred to as 'butter', which augmented our school fare, has now lumbered onto the side plates of most British eating places. Last week I was entertained to lunch in two that would without pretension consider themselves as in the luxury category — and lo! the 'brown bread and butter', so traditional and graceful an accompaniment to those British specialities, smoked fish, was precisely this quarter inch thick, pre-sliced sog, besmeared with barely perceptible grease. It was no more 'brown' than most commercial 'cream' is cream coloured, but it reminded me •of that fawn stockinette underwear fabric of my childhood. Perhaps it was? Science can achieve much and possibly some pre-war cache of stockinette has been reconstituted as fodder.
Why are we so insensitive to bread and its gastronomic charms? I know many of us have to resist it, but why can't we be discriminating about it on occasions? 'Brown bread and butter' should be of a brown that sets off the butteriness of the butter as a man's evening dress sets off a woman's frock, of a size of slice that tempts one to take more instead of sating the appetite by • merely seeing its stolid rectangularity and, whether you like it crusted or trimmed, it should be thin so that its texture is a mere accompaniment to the succulence of smoked salmon or trout, the pink twiddles of the potted shrimp, the delicate freshness of the cucumber. Any visitor to these climes would wonder why we ever formed an affection for such a partner to certain of our traditional specialities if the only brown bread and butter he or she had were catering establishment standard. I hnow, it's hard to cut wafers of bread but, if you don't have the time or the right knife — those on which my father taught
me to slice bread were, I believe, trimmed-down bayonet steel — then sepfe wholemeal rolls or chip toast,. but never, please, psendp plastic fawn stockinette. !. 4
Visitors from many .,Latin countries will possibly he unfamitt: iar with brown bread any,vilayol and, at least once a week .orlionia party, a choice of bread on-boardti or basket is a small and9Art-!. expensive addition to a mealy We
might, too, revive the notion of the savoury which is, as far as I call discover, a purely British cu linary creation. There's one well known — perhaps I should say notorious — London restaurant which includes'savoureaufon the French menu it tells me its customers require. To my meek suggestion that 'savoury' is an English word and untranslatable, rather in the same way as beurre maitre d'hotel, the French person who presides in their kitchens informs me that he is living in Eng land for forty years and he knows. (We should never. have let that country go). But I have never encountered a savoury in my rootlings among the cuisines, and, if you make one the centrepiece of a snack supper instead of the end of a dinner, you can, because many savouries are uncomfortable partners to wine, serve British beer or cider. Alter natively, as many savouries are good cold, they are excellent as canapes, tapas, cocktail snacks — or whatever fine old British name we ought to invent for preprandial blotting-paper. Again, because of their piquancy, they'll usually stand up to spirit-based drinks.
The Taunton Cider COmpany, whose Autumn Gold and Dry Blackthorn ciders are about as English as possible, have recently brought out an excellent leaflet of'
recipes, in which is included something that is a first-rate cold :snack, .sandwich filler, or British houcheeJ,, Withycombe Spread.
Y,ou cream oz. unsalt9-.1 and '5 oz:' grated CheddaitfAri-Ahouse of course), with 4 table
spoons of Dry Blackthorn Cider, a few drops of Worcester Sauce and then beat in l oz. cooked ham, finely chopped. You can spread this on buttered bread (I hope needn't specify what kind), or use it to fill rolls or sandwiches. (To obtain the leaflet, write, with stamped addressed envelope, to The Taunton Cider Co., Norton Fitzwarren, Taunton, Somerset.)
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