Oodles of cream and personality
Andrew Barrow
TWO FAT LADIES: GASTRONOMIC ADVENTURES (WITH MOTORBIKE AND SIDECAR) by Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright Ebtay Press, £17.99, pp. 192 Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright are now the brightest and biggest stars in the culinary firmament. Those who missed the so-called 'roly-poly couple' on telly or who wish to have a go at their splendid recipes will turn hungrily to this book, which tells you how to cook every- thing from Marinated Mackerel to Parsnip Puree and throws in a lot of commonsense advice too: 'Crustaceans taste better at room temperature,—Don't be afraid of using your hands while cooking', and so on and so forth.
The book is inevitably somewhat over- designed — fancy bits of artwork here and there, fragments of dialogue from the series and perhaps slightly too many black-and-white snapshots of the intrepid pair — but the general effect is sumptuous. Huge, larger-than-life close-ups of the food itself make this one of the most accessible cookery books I have ever laid my hands on.
Everything looks delicious and sounds easy and fun to do. I am no natural cook but I have already tried making the Fish Pie, Real Scotch Eggs, Potted Shrimps and Lancashire Hotpot with reasonable results — a great deal better anyway than when Jennifer Paterson lunched in my Kensing- ton studio a few months ago. 'I don't know what you've done to these steaks,' she said glumly while I hung my head in shame.
Never mind about that. Both these talked-about and talkative ladies are not only superb cooks, they also write superbly about food, in gushing, slightly nannyish or nursery tones. There are passing swipes at supermarket fish Ca disgrace') and public house Scotch eggs ('revolting'), affection- ate references to stray figures like the 'beloved' A. N. Wilson and 'saintly' Cardi- nal Hume and all sorts of other useful information. I never knew that a rib of beef has a tackstrap' and I was intrigued to learn of a book called Goose Fat and Gar- lic by Jean and Paul Strange. Of the authors themselves, I was pleased to know that Clarissa has a bath laced in Epsom salts and that when Jennifer travels by British Rail she carries her own food and drink, together with ice and napkins.
Taken as a whole, this collection of recipes provides a most welcome and long overdue counterblast to the more tiresome refinements of modem cuisine: both authors are militantly anti-vegetarian and militantly anti-slimming. Cream, I noticed, features in no less than 19 dishes. Gigantic mounts of clotted cream are photographed on top of ginger cake and freshly baked scones. Butter is equally generously employed and several of the dishes are accompanied by fried bread.
Everything is delicious, everything is fat- tening, but perhaps the section on game is the juiciest of all: there are four pheasant dishes, one of which requires a whole pint of thick cream, four rabbit ones, two par- tridge, even one for 'dear little quail'. Alas, nothing at all for dear little snipe which, I remember Jennifer telling me, she loved to crunch as a small child: 'my greatest treat'. Also, alas, no recipe for bread sauce, which a Wiltshire neighbour once described to me as 'the only excuse for Sunday lunch'. Will these errors be recti- fied in the volume that accompanies the second series?
One does not dwell upon the character of Constance Spry or even Delia Smith when sampling one of their recipes, but this book is different, much more 'person- alised'. It will be impossible for anyone to cook, serve or eat any of this succulent food without thinking of Jennifer and Clarissa. Every dish in this collection is somehow blessed and adorned with their exuberant personalities.
To order a copy of this book at the special discount price of £14.99, call The Spectator Bookshop on 0181 324 5500.
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