Читать книгу Class of '79 - Chris Rooke - Страница 24

Meals in my new lino house therefore consisted of such culinary delights as beans on toast, fish fingers, sausages, fried eggs, canned soup and a variety of packet and ready-to-cook meals (all of which were totally inedible). Note that the vast majority of my meals involved frying something, as frying was pretty simple (I don’t think I actually ever even opened the oven door; that was just a bridge too far), and whilst microwave ovens had just begun to appear in homes around the country by this point, they were still very much new technology that could only be found in some of the wealthier or more modern homes – and certainly not in my family home in Oxford or in any house I ever lived in as a student!

Because I was frying most things I bought some lard in a plastic tub, and used this for frying, as I’d seen my mum do. After the frying was finished, I would then pour the fat from the frying pan back into the tub of lard, again as I’d seen my mother do. I’ve no idea why mum ever did this, but in my case it was about the only thing I knew about cookery, and it saved me money. However, one day I realised that the boiling fat I was pouring back into the plastic tub, had actually melted and ruptured the walls of the tub, and horrible, hot, greasy lard was oozing everywhere! That put an end to my attempts at saving money by re-using lard, or using lard at all (thank heavens!)

I also bought a selection of ready meals in tins or packets or whatever, and I found them all to be absolutely disgusting and inedible, without exception. They seemed so convenient and easy, but the promise they offered of delicious meals that were easy to make, was illusory. One of the worst incidents I had as part of my great culinary exploration was with a Fray Bentos meat and potatoe pie. These came in saucer shaped tins (and still do I believe) and all you had to do was to pierce the lid in a few places and then put it on top of a saucepan full of water and steam it for about half-an-hour or so until cooked. Simple. However, one day I tried this on a seemingly delicious steak and kidney pie that I’d bought - but forgot to pierce the lid of the tin first! I left the pie steaming over a pan of boiling water and left it for a while. When I came back into the kitchen the once saucer shaped tin was by now almost completely round! Without any holes in the lid, there was nowhere for the heat and steam inside the tin to escape, and pressure had built up inside, forcing the tin into a spherical shape. Oh, dear, what to do about it?

The obvious course of action would have been to allow the tin to cool and then throw the whole thing away, but this was far too obvious and sensible an option. I decided to open the tin and see if the pie inside was still edible. I found the can opener and after quite a bit of a struggle, due to the deformity of the tin, I finally managed to get the can opener onto the rim. I squeezed the levers of the opener together and turned the key on the side and managed to puncture the tin and make a hole. I knew that I had managed to puncture the tin because a terrifying spray of steam mixed with gravy and generally liquefied beef and God knows what else came shooting out of the hole! I leapt away in surprise and shock, and this meant that the pie was no longer being held in place! Because the tin was now spherical, it could move easily, and being propelled by a jet of steam and liquefied pie, it span around wildly on the kitchen worktop, spraying the whole kitchen and myself in boiling liquefied pie. Eventually it literally ran out of steam and came to a rest next to the sink.

I paused for a moment and looked round at the complete devastation it had caused, with bits of pie dripping from everywhere and the room full of steam and condensation. At least I wasn’t burned. Having looked around the kitchen at what had come out of the tin I decided not to try and open the rest of the tin, but did what I should have done initially, and threw the whole thing away. I cleaned up the kitchen as best I could (thank heavens for that lino! Ha!), and then went and had a good wash and changed my clothes. No more pies for me.

There was also some culinary invention going on as you had to use whatever ingredients you happened to have in. This led to my amazing invention of the Banana Omelette! All I can say is that is that it was a culinary delicacy best consigned to the annals of History!

Then there was another time when some friends came round and we got the munchies. All I had to offer them was spaghetti - nothing else, just plain spaghetti with no sauce or anything. It was the only time I ever longed to eat Banana Omelette again!