Simon Hopkinson is one of Britain’s most genial, unpretentious and esteemed chefs. As a young man, he became a particular pet of the late, great Elizabeth David – especially as he had the sense, in her presence, to never to mention Robert Carrier, a name guaranteed to have her chewing carpets.
Carrier, a plump and fruity American with a weakness for cashmere sweaters, was Britain’s first great celebrity chef, made far more money than cookery writer Mrs David – and, worse still, shamelessly nicked her recipes.
And in 2005 – and to widespread astonishment – a Waitrose survey of Hopkinson’s peers found his 1994 tome, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, ranked as ‘the most useful cookery book of all time.’
Eclipsing Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and even Delia. But what does Hopkinson like to fix up for his tea when not on duty? Why, a tinned Fray Bentos steak-and-kidney pie, of course.
He is in surprisingly good company. As one of her pilots once let slip, our late Queen was also partial to this delicacy in flight. As, to this day, is her unfussy daughter, even when entertaining friends at Gatcombe Park.
Nor was it unknown for Her Majesty, on her annual Balmoral sojourn, to send out to the Ballater chippie for a soothing fish supper.
Our grandmothers, of necessity, cooked every day – even when, till very recent decades, most homes lacked a freezer, a microwave or even any sort of oven.
Most of us do not. Most of us are ‘hobby’ cooks, happy of a weekend to prop open the pages of a Jamie or a Nigella and make something special from scratch.
Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories was ranked as ‘the most useful cookery book of all time’
Otherwise I tend to abide by the Elizabeth David maxim: that bread, cheese and fruit is a complete meal – and generally stay clear of the sad realm that is the TV dinner, in its tragic little plastic tray, or the clammy supermarket sandwich.
Serious cooking can, of course, be great fun. A few days ago I whipped up my chicken Forestière, a delicious one-pan feast, finished in the oven, with mushrooms, shallots, garlic, a splash of white wine, a slosh of stock, the vital sprigs of thyme and, finally, some emulsifying cream.
The French recipe is uncannily similar to an Italian one, pollo alla crema di funghi, and is even better when you leave half of it to chill overnight and further develop flavour.
But we all occasionally slum it, be it a hankering for Heinz’s cream of tomato, hotdogs in a jar from the supermarket (not that the ingredients bear close scrutiny) a bag of cheesy Wotsits or hitting Just Eat to order takeaway.
When I have a hankering for glorious trash, my go-to at the moment is Southern fried chicken. Crumbed and spicy thighs and drumsticks from Tesco, moreish French fries from the Co-op, and a KFC-style chicken gravy I whip up myself.
I melt a generous tablespoonful of butter in a pan, add another of plain flour (with half a teaspoon of onion or garlic salt) and, this roux complete and the flour ‘cooked out,’ then slowly blend in a pint of hot stock.
Made from two cubes – not those little plastic bobbles – and, critically, one beef and one chicken, even as the oven tends to the fries and fowl.
A twist of pepper in the gravy, and that’s a tasty, if frightfully common, feast on the table before you can say Colonel Sanders. Any gravy left over will keep happily in the fridge for up to five days.
All our kitchen exploits are shaped to greater or lesser degree by broader circumstances.
Unless you stay in a major city, you will struggle to source, say, fresh tarragon, Italian sausages, banana-shallots, cured ox tongue, or the exotics essential for a Thai curry – keffir lime leaves, their distinctive basil, and galangal.
Not that I ever venture a Thai curry myself – though Nigel Slater made a brave attempt, even he struggled to minimise the long, long list of ingredients.
Though I can vouch for the ease and excellence of two Indian recipes – chicken tikka masala, and chicken korma – in Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food, a cookbook rather brilliantly framed for people convinced they cannot cook.
I do frequently whip up a pan of cream of mushroom soup from scratch, because no one sells a good one and it is rare, these days, to spot it on a restaurant menu.
I like to make gooseberry jam, in high summer, not just because it is so easy to make (needing no added pectin) but because it is so hard to buy.
And I remain a purist about Christmas dinner, even though – absorbing as is the execution of Jamie’s Get-Ahead Christmas Gravy – I know in my heart of hearts you can buy something just as good in a tub from Aldi.
I occasionally lament our lost ingredients. Tinned clams are now all but unobtainable in this country and, though Robert Carrier decreed cans of it for your emergency larder, turtle soup vanished from our shelves decades ago.
Though I do have a recipe for it. ‘Procure a fine, lively fat turtle… kill it overnight so that it may be left to bleed in a cool place…’ The dish, a particular favourite of King Edward VII, also calls for a leg of beef, a knuckle of veal and one old hen.
Not for nothing did his friends (behind his back, of course) talk affectionately of ‘Tum-Tum.’
Dining is not just food, of course: it is ritual. I have to eat off a white plate; it must be prewarmed, if the course is hot; and I always eat at the table.
Scoffing something off a tray, as you veg out before the telly, is distinctly Wayne and Waynetta. And, if cheese is part of my dinner, I prefer the civilised French custom of enjoying it after the main course but before any pudding.
I do mean pudding, not ‘dessert,’ – properly, dessert is a final course of fruit, nuts and petit fours, enjoyed with a glass of port and which I am unlikely to meet till my first invitation to Birkhall.
The other course that has long vanished from formal dining is the savoury, largely because the dainties had to be prepared at the last minute and no one, these days, has the staff.
‘The savouries acceptable at a dinner party are very few,’ harrumphed Elizabeth David in 1951, ‘should be very hot and preferably composed of cheese…’
She did make reluctant exception for ‘the delicious Angels on Horseback, oysters wrapped up in the slimmest slices of bacon, threaded on skewers, grilled, and served on squares of freshly fried bread.
‘Which rules them out for the cook hostess who does not wish to leave her guests while she disappears to the kitchen for ten minutes, emerging breathless and crimson in the face.’
However you cook – or, better still, entertain – the important thing is to relax.
The ability to cook even two or three dishes to entire perfection has cemented many a host’s reputation and, as long as you go all-out on the main course, no oner will judge you for a quickly assembled salad or a tub of bought, high-end ice cream.
Vaunting his 30-minute chicken korma, Nigel Slater once wrote reproachfully, ‘Some will find my version pure heresy.
‘I am only making something for supper, you know – not entertaining a Moghul emperor.’
