My last 12 months’ have hardly reached the epicurean heights, but what I can say is that I have had some jolly good home cooked nosh, firstly because I love cooking and secondly because the ingredients have never been better. One meal we enjoyed almost more than any other was a defrosted half-lobster and some sliced-in-half king prawns, thrown into a wok of bubbling butter and sunflower oil, along with a few tiny button mushrooms, some chopped garlic and lemon juice. After less than two minutes a good long squeeze of lemon juice, a quick stir and on to the plates, where a creamy pea risotto cooked in fish stock awaited. Just for once in the year I really let the butter and cream rip.
Among the memorable meals was the one presented by a dishonest hotel chef. He passed off a commercial ready cooked meal of braised steak in red wine as his own, telling us of the hours it had cooked slowly in the oven. I wouldn’t have known for sure it wasn’t his had I not seen the caterer’s van outside the hotel next day and had a chat with the driver. He told me his firm provided all the food served in the hotel.
Ready meals are huge business. They range from your High Street Chippy and Chinese to supermarket ranges of all kinds. And they include, I would guess, the majority of dishes served up in pubs. From Land’s End to John o’ Groats you can be sure that the Beer Battered Haddock & Chips has been bought in ready to de-packet or de-frost. We actually encountered a Pub in Suffolk that couldn’t even heat this dish through properly – presenting a sorry soggy plateful.
It’s easy to spot when ready-meals are on offer. All too often the chef or management are not bright enough to select items to comprise a menu that might just look as if a chef is at work. Instead they offer one or more curries, several Italian specialities such as lasagne, unusual fish like red snapper or shark, lamb shank and moussaka – a range that NO chef could have fresh. It’s everywhere it seems – at was, a few years ago, a typical small town hotel not far from where we live, with a chef who could serve steaks, chops, pies and dishes like beef casserole, the management has succumbed to ready-meals. Outside the hotel is the fulsome and appetising-looking menu with all the tell tale signs.
“Where are young chefs going to learn their trade?”, we asked ourselves.
Memorable! In rainy June we found ourselves in the café at the top of Mount Cairngorm. Nothing but cloud – Scotch Mist? – outside so we opted for the black-boarded “Haddock and chips”. Here, we said, it will be for sure a ready-meal. But no, through the open kitchen door a young chef, no more than 19, could be seen taking fresh haddock fillets, patting them dry, then dipping them in a bowl of batter and pan frying them. As they were cooking he shook his chip basket. They were very good fish and chips. I hope he goes far in the business and continues to cook rather than heat-up.
The best food “out” is where the chef is whole or part owner of the place. But what hard work it is. I take off my hat to them all. We should support them. I shall do my best by compiling a list of good and trustworthy places in East Anglia, indicating published Guides or reviews that recommend them, and where possibly my own and my readers’ opinions. My emphasis will be on “good food” and I intend to treat with circumspection the phrase “fine dining”.
Just before Christmas at a local restaurant at the outset of a fairly good meal, the young server delivered two rolls with a flourish: “Hot from the oven”, he said. As I bit into a leathery piece, I thought to myself: “You missed out a word there, son – ‘Microwave’”.
