Last week on BBC iPlayer I blubbed my way, from start, almost to finish, through the dramatised version of Nigel Slater’s childhood autobiography, Toast.
Nigel’s beloved but culinarily challenged mother died when he was around 10 years old with his father remarrying the blousy cleaner soon after. He disliked his step mother but her effortless triumphs in the kitchen set him on the course to become a chef.
Young Nigel was played by the adorable Oscar Kennedy. I think it was the combination of watching his splendid performance, imagining my own little boy being left on his own and a close friend having lost his mother at the same age that really got to me. Either that or the Dusty Springfield tracks played throughout.
Is it just me or do lots of us have horrid childhood food memories of some sort? I have plenty of good ones but they are balanced with the bad. Warm third pint milk bottles stabbed with thin green straws (I didn’t quite vomit all over the teacher like the young Nigel Slater but I came extremely close). I also shared Nigel’s memories of dinners of incinerated fish, in my case fish fingers – my mother stands accused here and will deny all knowledge in the comments below. But most unforgettably, my father unintentionally using emotional blackmail that the canned sardine in tomato sauce on my plate would have “died for nothing” if I didn’t eat it. It’s a wonder I didn’t become vegetarian over night.
As a teenager given free range in my father’s glorious (sarcasm alert) kitchen I regularly concocted a bolognaise sauce of some description into which I would throw pretty much anything. Unable to cook much else but desperate to avoid the threatened combination of watercress and canned sardine in tomato sauce that were the frequent alternative, I’d pretend to be a grown up in Safeway and come back with bags of mince, onions and five varieties of tinned vegetable. Baked beans were usually included. And grated cheese. Fortunately my father was a great deal more appreciative than Nigel’s eternally grumpy dad as portrayed by Ken Stott.
Now Nigella Lawson’s Rapid Ragu may sound a darn sight more stylish with it’s panetta and canned puy lentils but it’s not a million miles from those meaty (and slightly freaky) pasta sauces I used to cook up on the kind of cooker that now belongs in the Geffrye Museum.
With Ted’s “help” I brewed up a Rapid Ragu using some pancetta left over from Christmas. It also features my favourite caramelised onions from Waitrose.
This time round I added an extra ingredient, a blend of Hunter’s Spice Mix given to me by Kavey at a food bloggers’ meet up late last year alongside Meeta, Jamie, Hilda, Jeanne, Anne, Michelle, Julia, Catty, and Eunice.
It’s an aromatic blend of cumin, mustard seeds, paprika and chilli and I look forward to rubbing it into steaks next. Kavey had the lovely idea of giving us all a bag of spices to concoct a special dish to mark our get together. I still have plenty left so this won’t be the last you see of it.
Here’s a view below without the cheese. You can get the recipe from Nigella.com , my only amendment has been to throw in a generous quantity of Kavey’s hunter’s spice mix.
Pssst! It’s the last couple of days to submit your entry to my new blog challenge Forever Nigella!
Now you’ve made me hungry…..
Great post! I cried like a baby too. The saddest bits for me were when he so desperately tried to make the bolognese for his mum and Dad and they didn’t eat it, the mother trying to make the mince pies with him just before she died and when he bought the fish for his dad with his pocket money and then it burnt. I’d read the book but I think they did it really well.
Even though I knew Nigel Slater’s story, when I watched Simple Suppers the other night (coveting his kitchen)and saw him in his garden, it made a lot of sense.
My own bugbears growing up were liver and onions. I think I was served them two or three times in a row. Cruel!
I must admit I laughed when his dad said the powdered parmesan smelled “like sick” because actually that stuff in tubs does and bears no resemblance to real the real thing. My mother used to serve it all the time… another thing I can tease her about, well it was the 80s.
Raw celery in salads served with smash at primary school. I used to hide the celery in the smash. Both were an abomination and should be outlawed.
Ted is lovely, and I am insanely jealous of his eyelashes.
I adore the Geffrye Museum, everyone shoud go.
Well I’ve no problem with celery or smash but I certainly wouldn’t want to eat them together, that’s plain weird.
I think I’m envious of Ted’s eyelashes too.
I have to watch this flick, lovely pictures – the texture of the dish is lovely.
Thank you, you won’t be sorry. It’s well worth 2 hours.
Oh that first picture is just gorgeous, would look lovely printed on a canvas hung in the kitchen!
I love ragu, but more importantly so does my son so I’m sure this would be a hit at home. We also loved Toast, stumbled upon it by accident and were sucked in from the word go.
My worst childhood memory was boiled sweet potato with absolutely no seasoning and no draining. Absolutely vile!
Thank you! That’s a good idea. Boiled sweet potato? What a waste! Having said that, my son turned a baked one mashed with butter down tonight. Can’t think why.