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One of Britain's most well-known cooks
describes his personal culinary odyssey, from dangerous encounters with
his mother's weevil-seasoned cakes to being harangued by readers who
think he deliberately styles Yorkshire puddings to look like a woman's
private parts. This book aims to capture 30 years of British cooking and
the recipes that we have grown up with since the days when a grilled
grapefruit was the last word in dinner party chic. Everyone has gorged
on cake mix, endured disastrous dinner parties, and put up with the
loved one who can only ever produce burnt toast. Nigel Slater is no
different. Accounts of hotels modelled on Fawlty Towers, the mystery of
the disappearing condom and the seafood cocktail, and many more, take
readers behind the scenes of British cuisine to reveal the unlikely
origins of one of our foremost cooks.
(Excerpt)
There were only three of us at school whose house wasn’t joined to the
one next door. Number 67 Sandringham Road, always referred to as ‘York
House,’ had mock-Tudor wooden beams, a double garage of which one half
doubled as a garden shed and repository for my brothers’ canoes, and a
large and crumbling greenhouse. I was also the only one to have tasted
Arctic Roll. While my friends made do with the pink, white and brown
stripes of a Nalitan ice-cream brick, my father would bring out this
newfangled frozen gourmet dessert. Arctic Roll was a sponge-covered tube
of vanilla ice-cream, its USP being the wrapping of wet sponge and ring
of red jam so thin it could have been drawn on with an architect’s
pen.
In Wolverhampton, Arctic Roll was
considered to be something of a status symbol. It contained mysteries
too. Why, for instance, does the ice cream not melt when the sponge
defrosts? How is it possible to spread the jam so thin? How come it was
made from sponge cake, jam and ice cream yet managed to taste of old
cardboard? And most importantly, how come cold cardboard tasted so good?
As treats go, this was the big one,
bigger even than a Cadbury’s MiniRoll. This wasn’t a holiday or
celebration treat like trifle. This was a treat for no obvious occasion.
Its appearance had nothing to do with being good, having done well in a
school test, having been kind and thoughtful. It was just a treat,
served with as much pomp as if it were a roasted swan at a Tudor
banquet. I think it was a subtle reminder to the assembled family and
friends of how well my father’s business was doing. Whatever, there
was no food that received such an ovation in our house. Quite an
achievement for something I always thought tasted like a frozen carpet.
Excerpted from Toast: The Story of a
Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by
permission. All rights reserved.
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