Get those gams out

Has retro food ever had it so good? After all, at the top of the pile there’s Heston Blumenthal himself with his restaurant Dinner, which serves ‘meat fruit’ amongst myriad other reinvented dishes.

And it was accorded official approval by the award of a Michelin star less than a year after it opened in early 2011.

Elsewhere, Marcus Wareing is guiding the Gilbert Scott along similar, if less outré, paths, with a range of dishes that pay homage to English cooks of yore, including Mrs Beeton, the patron saint of English cookbook writers (even if she did plaigerise).

But celebration of the past doesn’t have to be limited to the fine dining end of the food scene. Indeed, there are one or two dishes that were perhaps most in fashion in the 1970s and which linger on – but could seriously do with a bit of a boost.

Scampi is one – done properly, it can be very, very good. But all too often, it’s just an excuse for an eatery to be lazy – not least by everything having come out of the freezer.

Only the other day, The Other Half commented that a fondant potato on Masterchef: The Professionals looked overcooked – then Michel Roux Jr complimented it.

The thing is, we’re so used to the utter insipidity of frozen and oven-cooked chips that we’ve forgotten that a deep golden colour on a fried potato dish is not an indicator of it being burned.

But another retro dish that is failed badly by being cobbled together from inferior ingredients is gammon steak.

Let’s face it, on most occasions that it’s served, it’ll be a piece of pink rubber in a suspiciously regular shape, served with pale chips and frozen peas; possibly with a fried egg on top, and with brown sauce or ketchup on the side.

Yet like so many things, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Last weekend, I decided that it was worth doing it differently. On Broadway Market on a Saturday, one of the stalls is Downlands farmers/butchers.

They specialise in pork products and, recently, we’ve had their sausages and bacon a couple of times. And by gum, it’s good.

They also sell gammon steaks – but they’re nothing remotely like those regular discs of pink you’ll find in the supermarkets.

I bought two. And last night, they were given the Voluptuous Manifesto test.

They each come packed in vacuum bag, with a suggestion that they be blasted fleetingly in a seriously hot pan, before a little water is added, the pan is lidded and the meat is allowed to steam for five minutes.

Now these are farmers, and if they say that – as opposed to one online source suggesting sticking them under a hot grill for 10 minutes a side – then I’ll go with the farmer. He (or she!) probably has a clue, which doesn’t involve killing the cut.

So that was what was done.

Some heat, a little water and then a five-minute wait.

In the meantime, I’d peeled and par-boiled some new potatoes, before finishing them off in the oven in a little duck fat. To accompany this was a mix of red and white cabbage, cooked à la Robuchon and, being very retro (and because The Other Half thinks it essential) a couple of pineapple rings on top.

Gammon is from an old northern French word ‘gambe’, meaning the hind-leg of the pig, or ham.

But over the years, eateries have denuded it of any real class, serving it as a processed, tacky dish – the sort of thing you eat in desperation.

Done this way, using quality – real – gammon steaks, it’s a real pleasure.

The toast sandwich challenge

The latest Christmas advert from Waitrose features Heston Blumenthal as a Harry Potteresque magician, creating his pine-scented mince pies as though by magic.

But if the country’s number one exponent of molecular gastronomy makes you wonder at the blurring lines between food and science, then try this.

One group of scientists has decided that the cheapest meal that you can manage in these austere times is a toast sandwich.

But the rather strange confection isn’t new, as it first appeared in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management 150 years ago.

Now, though, it’s been revived by the Royal Society of Chemistry with the claim that, at 7.5p, it’s the cheapest meal possible. They’re so confident that they’re offering a £200 prize to anyone who can beat it.

The sandwich is a slice of toast between two pieces of buttered bread, seasoned with salt and pepper to taste.

RSC employee Jon Edwards said: “In my student days, I thought a meal of 9p noodles from Tesco was thrifty – but a toast sandwich is tastier, quicker, has more calories and comes in at just 7.5p.”

That gives us a quick idea of just what the society’s criteria are: calories per penny, in effect.

In a press release, Dr John Emsley of the RSC said: “We could have gone for one of the thousands of recipes that Mrs Beeton employed, most of them being table-groaning creations full of meats.

“But, given the stern days we are yet to experience, we decided to go for an unknown dish that requires little money and little time, and which she devised to cater for less well-off people.”

After the cost, what are the nutritional benefits, according to the society?

The basics: 3 slices of white bread = 240 calories. Butter = 10g = 90 calories
Total = 330 calories

Toast sandwich nutrients
Protein = 9.5 g
Fat = 12 g
Carbohydrate = 55 g
Fibre = 4.5 grams
Calcium = 120 mg
Iron = 2 mg
Vitamin A = 90 mcg
Vitamin B1 = 0.25 mg
Vitamin B2 = 80 mcg
Vitamin B3 = 4 mg
Vitamin D = 0.08 mcg

Well, I actually think that I can meet this challenge. And my idea is only a slightly modernised take on an old food.

I give you toast and dripping with yeast spread.

Although not that modern: Marmite was launched in 1902 in Burton-on-Trent, while the basis for it had been discovered in the late 19th century by German scientist Justus von Liebig, who had discovered that brewer's yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten.

First, how to do it: take two thick slices of white bread. Toast them. Spread dripping on one and scrape some yeast spread onto the other.

Put them together.

Eat.

Now let’s look at the ingredients, with a cost and nutritional analysis.

For prices, I used tesco.com today. Let’s take a thick sliced, white loaf (own-brand) at 47p for 800g. A slice is apparently 44g.

So on that basis, there are 18.1 slices in a bag. For my ease at least, let’s call it 18, which makes it 2.61p per slice.

Tesco has dripping at 72p for 500g (£1.44 per kg). This is cheaper than lard, in case you’re wondering.

Thus 1% of the packet – 5g – is 0.72p.

The best value Marmite is 500g for £4.99 (£1 per 100g) – this is cheaper than smaller bottles.

However, Tesco’s own-brand yeast extract is 240g for £1.89 (79p per 100g).

In which case, it costs 0.0315p for a four-gram serving.

So, two slices of bread costs 5.22p.

Let's say a scraping of yeast extract (2g) costs 1.575p

And 10g of dripping is 2.16p.

So, the total costs of the sandwich – the “meal” – would be 8.955p.

At this point, I’m losing on this basis.

But let’s look at the nutrition next.

The bread works out at 110kcals per 36g slice, so 220kcals for two slices. It has 21g of carbohydrate per slice (so a total of 42g here) and 1.1g of fibre (total 2.2) with a little sodium of 0.2g per slice (so 0.4g), 0.07g fat (0.14g) and 3.6g of protein (7.2g protein).

The dripping is 135kcals for a 15g serving. There’s 15g fat, but no proteins, carbs, fibre or sodium.

One serving (2g) of the Tesco yeast extract provides 5kcal, 1.6g protein and 0.3g carbs (of which only a trace sugars). There’s only a trace of fat and fibre, 0.2g of salt, but 0.15mg of vitamin B1, 1.5 of niacin, 25.0µg of folic acid and 0.15µg of vitamin B12.

As a slight aside, Marmite has half a calorie per 2g and fractionally more protein and carbs, plus 0.14mg riboflavin.

So, the total of calories is 355kcals,
Protein = 7.4g
Carbohydrate = 48.6g
Fibre = 2.7g
Fat = 15.14g.

Calories are up and fat is up.

Now as we know, fat is not bad – our parents and grandparents didn’t have an obesity epidemic while eating bread and dripping. Indeed, this is a combination of that traditional dish and Mrs Beeton’s lesser-known idea, plus my own yeast spread twist.

The fat helps to ensure the eater feels sated. It provides good mouthfeel too and it has plenty of nutritional benefits, such as helping the body absorb plenty of other nutrients, including a number of vitamins.

The yeast spread adds nutrients that the salt and pepper don’t provide, but does give a similar seasoning.

Now, I don’t have the data on iron and calcium (or various other nutrients) for my version of this – and I’m no chemist – but I would suspect they’d be similar at least.

And remember – the challenge, as set out by the society, was not for what is regarded as ‘healthy’ eating these days, but – in effect – as calories for your penny.

There is more fat in my version – but since it’s dripping, it’s a lot, lot cheaper than butter or marg.

If I'd kept it to bread and dripping – and how much more traditional can you get> – that would have been cheaper, but the yeast spread adds an interesting touch and quite a lot of nutritional benefit.

I actually tried a toasted dripping and Marmite sandwich this lunchtime (with wholemeal sliced bread) and I have to say, it was not unpleasant at all.

Mind, this is austerity food – with a royal society uncovering it and promoting it for exactly that reason. It’s not supposed to be about taste. And it's difficult to see how anyone could come up with more calories for less.

But the mood of culinary pessimism seems to be spreading, with a recent article looking back at George Orwell’s comments on British food in the 1940s.

It’s all as depressing as a royal society finding it as appropriate to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Mrs Beeton’s book with a recipe for austere times.

Two puddings and some bread (but no bread pudding)

As the week draws to a close, finally there is the space to breathe again. Don’t take that as a complaint – I’d far rather have work than not – but it’s been a busy old week.

But now to look back a little and complete some stories.

First, there was that starter dough that I mentioned making on Saturday. The following morning, it went into the mixer, along with the rest of the bread ingredients. It was the first time I’d used a mixer for making bread and Raymond Blanc’s instructions are helpfully exact: five minutes on the lowest speed and then 10 on the next speed up.

Boy, does it make the machine work. Washing machines rattle around and vibrate like mad, but I’ve never wondered whether they’re about to break. The dough, clinging to the hook as it’s bashed around and around in the bowl, makes the mixer jerk a bit and left me slightly nervous.

It baked fine though and is probably my best effort at bread thus far. Previous attempts haven’t been bad, but this had an evenness (the mixer, presumably) that was much better. And a good taste too.

And so to the steak and kidney pudding. Browsing through Kitchen Secrets the night before, I’d been amused to discover that Blanc has a recipe for this – albeit with oysters added. Interestingly, his proportions of offal to beef were closer to my kidney-loving ones that most recipes I’d seen.

I used his recipe for the dough – easy to make but really quite awkward to roll and handle. Still, we got there. Indeed, my circle of dough (with a quarter cut out) was so big that I didn’t really need to make a separate lid, but just folded it over and carefully trimmed and sealed it.

For the filling, I’d halved, cored and then halved again the kidneys. The beef came ready diced. It was mixed together in seasoned flour and then packed into the dough-lined bowl. I went along a little further with the Blanc recipe in taking a very small amount of red wine and briefly boiling it – taste and then give it 10 seconds and then taste again: the difference is amazing. You want to boil off some of the alcohol but not all of it or too much.

I added that to a little beef stock (out of a bottle, I’m afraid) and then, remembering the recipe for the sausage and kidney turbigo, squeezed in some tomato purée. This was mixed together and poured over the meat until it was almost but not quite at the top. Then the pud was closed.

Pleated foil was then wrapped over the bowl, allowing space for expansion, and tied with string. It went into a large pan, on top of an upturned saucer and with enough water to reach half way up the side of the bowl. The water was brought to the boil, the lid went on, the heat was turned down and it stayed that way for a whopping five hours, with just occasional checks to ensure that the water hadn’t boiled away.

Five hours! I’ve been vaguely looking into slow cooking for a while, but most recipes seem to be barely over two hours. Heston Blumenthal’s nine hours for belly pork is an exception rather than a rule.

It didn’t come out of the bowl completely cleanly – but it hardly mattered. And the taste was truly divine. I had actually managed to cook something that gave me an eyes-closed moment.

The chocolate delice, which we tried after The Other Half was back in town, was also a hit – although I think the Cornflakes need to be crushed a bit more. Easy enough to remember for next time.

But in many ways, what pleased me most this week was the rhubarb jelly.

A week or so ago, while trawling Amazon, I’d come across a book called Black Pudding and Rhubarb. Written by chef Paul Heathcote and food writer Matthew Fort, it’s more than just a collection of recipes, but is about seasonality and cooking with regional produce in Lancashire.

Out of print, I’d found a dirt-cheap copy – at 1p, the postage was considerably more than the book itself – and ordered it. But when it arrived, there was a little disappointment on finding that there was no mention of a dish of black pudding and rhubarb.

After all, when you think about it, it would be a perfect combination, with the tartness of the vegetable cutting through the sweetness of good black pud.

The mind started chugging away at this. The conundrum was how you would serve it: you wouldn’t want a stewed pile of the stuff, plonked next to the pudding and I didn’t think the rhubarb gravy was what was needed either.

And that was where the idea for the small rhubarb jellies was born. Two slices of black pudding, grilled, and sandwiching a jelly. Okay, maybe not quite “sandwiching”, but you get the drift (and served with some tinned new spuds, drained, dried and then pan-fried in duck fat, plus some butter beans in tomato. The drizzle, which went a bit awry, was raspberry vinegar, to add another tart taste).

The Other Half – who is, after all, my only judge on most of my culinary efforts – was impressed, although he thought that there were too many green peppercorns in the jellies. But the idea works: I can technically achieve it and the idea behind the flavour combination is sound. I am chuffed.

Finally for today, I had better explain the picture at the top of this post – or does it really need an explanation?

Anyway, the idea had been buzzing around for some time and I finally set it up. I’m not sure about the reflections on the egg shells – and may yet remove them. But generally speaking, it’s not bad at al.

You see – I didn’t spend quite all last weekend cooking.

It's not something to trifle with

It was no trifling matter to whip up dessert on a day of what was really rather old school on the eating front.

We probably all imagine that a trifle is a quick and easy thing to knock up, because let’s face it, most of what we get to eat under such a name is hardly great.

Indeed, if one were suffering a touch of pedantitis, then the mere name ‘trifle’ could be taken to suggest that time and effort is a contradiction in terms when it comes to this famous (infamous?) British pud.

But having once mentioned it to The Other Half, and having my suggestion met with enthusiasm, it dawned that I’d better work out exactly what it was that I had airily declared could be on the menu for New Year's Day.

I picked Jane Grigson’s English Food off the shelf as an obvious place to start. Sure enough, there was a recipe, together with a rant about the worst sort of trifles – 'mean travesties' containing “poor sherry” and “powdered custards” … you get the drift. A woman after my own heart. Although in the interests of chronological accuracy, it's me that's the woman after her heart.

Now trifles are another of those dishes – like Lancashire hot pot or cassoulet – where there are as many different versions as there are people who make it.

There are important questions to be asked about this multi-layered confection:

• will it have jelly;

• will it have booze;

• what sort of booze;

• what sort of fruit and in what form;

• what sort of base?

I vaguely remember my mother making trifle occasionally. I don’t recall any booze, but there was jelly – and I strongly suspect that the custard was from a packet. Or rather, from a tin of Bird’s custard. And the base would be those sponge fingers that, if I'm reading correctly, are what Mrs Grigson refers to as "boudoir biscuits", noting that: "The French have always been more enterprising with boudoir biscuit cakes than we have." Bedroom biscuits? Excuse me while I shut the door before the double entendres gallop in.

But then things got slightly more complicated. It emerged that The Other Half does not believe in boozy trifles – he has even sneakily tried to suggest that booze is to a genuine trifle as inauthentic as booze is to a genuine tiramisu.

I’m having none of that. If I'm going to all this trouble, there's going to be alcohol involved.

The best option seemed to be to make two.

Mrs Grigson’s recipe suggested macaroons for the base. Now, I’ve got a crush on these delightful little things at present and a recipe in Mousieur Roux’s Eggs book has been tempting me. However, that is for raspberry-flavoured delights and as such, isn’t in season.

So when I got into baking mode yesterday afternoon, I added vanilla seeds to the mix instead of dried and powdered raspberry.

Unfortunately, the mixture turned out to be rather more liquid than it should have been (perhaps, in reducing the overall amounts, I’d still added too much egg white – it’s not easy to divide an egg in two).

It started dripping straight through the icing bag as I filled that, and then sort of merged together on the lined baking tray to form a large, irregular splodge.

Fortunately, when you’re planning to use the end result to line the base of a trifle, this doesn’t actually matter too much.

I baked it anyway, let it cool and stashed it away until today, when it was scraped off the baking paper and deposited into large glasses. One portion then had orange juice added to soak the macaroon mixture. The other had Fino sherry.

And so to the custard. Using Mrs Grigson again, I took a whole egg and one yolk and beat that into some flour (she didn’t say what sort, so I plumped for plain), heated single cream, poured that over the egg mixture, poured it all back into the pan and then stirred away in the expectation of a stiffening custard. One was then supposed to add caster sugar to taste.

Impudently, it misbehaved and turned into something more closely resembling lightly scrambled eggs.

I tried again, using cornflour instead of plain flour and taking even more care than before. The outcome was the same.

I walked around the corner and bought more cream. And turned to the goddess of culinary reliability, Delia.

Now Delia’s trifle isn’t to my taste – I am absolutely not including bananas, for instance.

But her custard looked far more sensible, with three yolks, cornflour and 30g of sugar all beaten together and then heated double cream added to that.

It worked. And was duly deposited as carefully as possible into the glasses and allowed to cool.

Next stage – the easiest one: a layer of raspberry jam (good French stuff). Then, for the topping, back to Mrs Grigson, who recommends using Elizabeth David’s ‘everlasting syllabub’.

Now I have no idea whether this syllabub really is ‘everlasting’ and, to be frank, I had no desire for it to everlast. All it had to do was wait around patiently for a few hours before I could dip a spoon into it.

So, sugar, cream and booze. What’s not to like? Well, if you’re The Other Half, the booze bit, obviously. So more orange juice and some grated zest were whipped into cream and sugar and went on top of his trifle. Mine, whipped separately, involved more Fino.

This is fiddlier than making a crème brûlée, for goodness sake! But at last the trifles were ready.

For a first course on this day of old school eating, I’d planned belly pork. I'd been in luck at Borough Market yesterday, getting my hands on one of the last pieces available.

Scored and with salt rubbed into the skin, I peeled some garlic, pulled the leaves off some sage and rosemary, grated some zest from a lemon, added the juice and some olive oil, and pulsed the whole lot together, before spreading it over the meat and then placing that on a rack in my roasting tray, with a little water below.

It went in at 180˚ (my fan oven) for 30 minutes (should have been 20, but no recipe ever accounts for my oven), after which the temperature was reduced to 150˚ and it was left for a further two hours, with occasional checks primarily to go ‘Oooo’ and ‘Ahhh’ and ‘Ummm’.

For the side, there were mashed potatoes and peas. Suitably old school.

Belly pork is one of those dishes that is a slow cook. Somehow, though, I feel that it should be slower than almost every recipe I could find.

Okay, not the nine hours recommended by Heston Blumenthal on the Waitrose website, but more than two and a half hours. I finally found a couple of recipes this afternoon for four hours, but by that time, it was too late for today – I didn’t want to delay eating that much.

I don't know why, but the crackling refused to crackle – perhaps it really does need at least another two hours. I suspect that most recipes have worked it out to around two to two and half hours because, by our modern standards, that's very slow cooking.

Still, it was very tasty – and the trifles afterwards were equally tasty.

But I'll give you all a guess which one Otto decided she should be allowed a taste of. And no, it wasn't the one with orange juice and zest involved.

A French chef cooked WHAT?

Let's be honest. When you pick up a book of recipes by a serious chef – and perhaps particularly a chef from Frenchland – you do not generally expect to find a page devoted to explaining the best way to make ham and egg.

Okay, you might expect it from Heston Blumenthal, but then he's not French and besides, in his world, the eggs alone would involve frying the white and yolk separately.

But no: this is Michel Roux we're talking about and he has ideas about exactly that humble dish – and they work really rather well too.

The Other Half fancied ham, egg and chips and, seeing as we had plenty of ham left and I'm an obliging sort (some of the time), I decided to do just that.

But browsing through the Roux book on eggs (it's in danger of already becoming a household bible), I spotted that the man himself had written down a recipe for the dish I was intending to toss together.

Now, I don't know whether it's just me, but it would not even have crossed my mind to warm the meat. My approach would, simply, have involved plonking some cold-cut ham on a couple of plates, frying eggs and serving them atop the aforementioned meat. Simples, as the meerkat says.

But Monsieur Roux was having none of that. He suggests that you heat some butter gently in a pan, then warm the ham for a minute on one side, turn and gently place an egg (from a ramekin) onto each piece of ham and give it until it's cooked to suit your taste.

Taking account of his general instructions for fried eggs, I lidded the pan at this juncture, allowing steam to help cook the eggs. It's obvious when you think about it. And the result was excellent – eggs beautifully cooked, but not crozzled. Ham warmed through nicely.

On the side, chips à la Delia as is my usual – in other words, twice fried. And earlier in the day, I'd made mayonnaise for the first time. Yes, I've made aïoli often enough, but not 'original' mayo. And given the menu, I like mayo with my fries.

My introduction to mayo with chips wasn't in France, but some years earlier in Amsterdam – where you can also get sauerkraut with hot dogs as an example of really top street food. Once I'd tried the mayo option, though, I've been addicted to chips this way since.

Having long put off making my own mayo – the process seemed rather more complicated than that for aïoli – I decided to follow Joël Robuchon's instructions. Yet again, it seemed far easier than I had assumed.

Take an egg yolk, a teaspoon of mustard (I used a medium German one rather than Dijon), a pinch of salt and pepper and a few drops of any vinegar (a white wine one with tarragon, in my case) and then mix together. One of those hand-held electric whisks makes really light work of jobs like this.

Once it's all mixed together, start slowly adding a neutral oil (sunflower), just a little at a time. Once the emulsion has come together, you can add more, a little more quickly.

Mayonnaise is one of those things that does actually cost more to make your own than to buy. But having said that, what you get in a jar bears little resemblance to what you can produce yourself.

Decanting the unctuous mixture into a jar, I was close to scoffing the lot in the sort of foodie 'oh-my-god' state that is not a million miles removed from orgasm.

So, ham, egg and chips – the posh version. Or not, really. This latest batch of books is proving a revelation, starting to close a gap that exists in my mind between Good/Proper Cooking and 'ordinary' cooking.

Not that the day's fodder was all quite so down to Earth. The same Roux book also brought forth another dessert: this time, a chocolate and orange mousse.

In the morning, I actually left the flat and pottered up to Broadway Market – almost blinded by the natural (albeit rather grey) light – to pick up a few bits and pieces, including liquid glycerine from the chemist (The Other Half suggested I might find some there). It's the first time I've purchased a product that declares itself as being for "skincare and food preparation".

However, one tablespoon was added to two yolks and two tablespoons of warm water.

150g of good, dark chocolate is melted gently in a bowl over hot water, while 150ml of double cream is mixed with 30g icing sugar.

Then put the egg and glucose mixture into the chocolate mixture and, once that's combined, gently add the cream and sugar, decant into containers and chill.

Clever clogs here mixed the cream alright, but forgot to add the sugar (and probably over-mixed the cream itself too).

Now the original recipe also involved creating a syrup with the zest of an orange and putting a couple of 'layers' of this in with the finished chocolate mix, before topping with more of the same.

My deliberate deviation from the written word saw me scrub an orange to get rid of any wax (and release the lovely scent) and then finely grate it, stirring most of that into the chocolate mixture and leaving just a little to garnish.

It gave a wonderful flavour, although the mousse itself was so dense that it was more like a torte (probably either my forgetting the sugar, over-whisking the cream or a combination of both). But then again, I'd eat a chocolate torte with no complaint, so it was hardly to be consumed under sufferance!

So, the lessons of the day:

1) 'chef' food isn't all complicated and fiddly stuff that's just for 'special' occasions, while there's something else called 'ordinary' food for 'ordinary' days;

2) read the bloomin' recipe carefully – several times before you start and then carefully again while you're working from it!

When the chips are down

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I was Heston Blumenthal’s greatest fan: any interest I might have entertained in the man frequently described as the country’s ‘best chef’ was pretty much finished off by his Guardian column some years ago, which notoriously included a recipe for fried eggs that involved cooking the white and the yolk separately.

And I cannot claim to be particularly inspired by the sort of dishes that are served at his highly lauded restaurant, The Fat Duck. Snail porridge is one example.

And then there are what I think of as the gimmicks: for instance, serving a scallops dish with an iPod in a conch shell playing sea sounds for the diner.

‘Molecular gastronomy’ is apparently the name for the cooking bit of this – a term coined in the late 1980s by French scientist Herve This and Oxford University professor Nicholas Kurti.

Perhaps the most famous exponent is Ferran Adria, at El Bulli near Barcelona (he spends six months of the year in a laboratory in the city, apparently), while such luminaries as Wylie Dufresne at wd-50 in Manhattan, and Grant Achatz of Alinea and Homaro Cantu of Moto, both of which are in Chicago.

I suspect the thing about the fried egg annoyed me so much because this really is everyday food: I’m quite prepared to spend hours in the kitchen for things that require it, but a fried egg never has been, is not now and never will be haute cuisine: it’s quick, everyday fodder.

Earlier this year, “the UK’s top chef” joined up with Waitrose, a chain of quality supermarkets that are part of John Lewis – in other words, a co-operative. Delia Smith was also part of this big new advertising campaign – Britain’s “best-loved cook”. An intriguing combination.

I was browsing the Waitrose site the other week and came across a Blumenthal recipe for cream of mushroom soup that actually caught my attention.

It caught my attention particularly because of the garnish – dried mushrooms that have been roasted, then blitzed and pressed through a sieve to leave a powder.

The thing is, you look at that and think: ‘Well it’s hardly complicated and I can see that it would add a really intense zing to the final soup’.

So I tried it today. I modified the soup a little – not completely puréeing it, as The Other Half prefers his soups to have some texture – but it had oodles of flavour and the powder really did add something.

For dinner, I’d decided to do chips. Now this might seem a rather strange way to plan a meal, but faith needed to be regained for the humble chip.

Yesterday’s lunchtime had demanded something more substantial than soup or a sandwich since we were meeting a friend for a post-work drink. So I nipped down to the North Sea Fish Bar to pick up chips (one portion between both of us), a chicken and mushroom pie for The Other Half, scampi for me and a pot of mushy peas to share.

As always, I soon wondered why I'd bothered. The art of the hand-cut chip seems to have disappeared and the scampi wasn’t anything to write home about. Yet this has a reputation as a good fish ‘n’ chippy, with an attached restaurant that does good trade (and isn’t cheap).

But frankly, it’s no better or worse than Faulkners in Hackney, which has also somehow acquired the status of being excellent.

The last time I had really good fish and chips was some years ago in Hull, in a really old-fashioned place, with plastic gingham tablecloths, thick sliced bread to make chip butties and tea in white mugs. The fish was sensational; the batter superb. The mushy peas hit the spot exactly and the chips? Well, needless to say, they weren’t out of a freezer.

There used to be a brilliant chippy next to the bus station in Piccadilly, Manchester, but that’s gone the way of all flesh, replaced by characterless glass and polished metal.

My father would sometimes drive to a chippy in Mossley to bring back fish and chips for a Saturday lunch. I remember it as a glorious treat.

But somewhere along the line, the English have gone off fish and chips – or at least lowered their ideas of what is good about it. A world of fast food outlets, with their skinny ‘fries’, has left us with barely even a memory of what good chips are.

Gastro pubs do their bit. But I’d decided to cook my own – something that I probably only do about two or three times a year.

I don’t follow Heston’s recipe – which involves cooking them three times. But I do use Delia’s method, which means cooking them twice.

Peel your potatoes and cut them into chips – not too thick. Pop them in a bowl of cold water and leave for half an hour – this gets rid of some of the starch and also helps plump them up. Drain and dry thoroughly.

Get your vegetable oil (or lard) hot enough that a cube of day-old bread with brown in it in a minute. Put the chips in carefully and cook for around 4-5 minutes. Remove carefully to a plate and then let the oil get back to its previous temperature. Pop the chips back in and cook for another 2-3 minutes – watching that they don’t get over-cooked.

Remove them to a plate with kitchen paper on it and serve as quickly as possible – chips don’t take kindly to being left around.

Lovely – soft and fluffy in the middle, beautifully crisp on the outside.

That meant that this morning’s main shopping question was what to serve with them. Now I didn’t want to deep fry fish too, but was wondering about grilling or roasting some fish.

Then, as I was walking up Broadway Market, Andy waved at me from the new game stall and I popped over for a chat.

Inevitably, I also found myself looking at the produce and, when I spotted venison burgers, the choice was made.

As I mentioned in that post about game, many people believe it's all – and always – expensive. These burgers were four for £4. Two were more than enough for us for a meal, so the others have gone in the freezer.

Now apparently, a spot of Googling informs me that the price of a McDonalds burger meal is nearly a fiver, which people seem to consider is cheap (it comes with ‘fries’, a drink and your bun, after all).

But let’s see: £1 for a meat patty made from top-notch meat, plus a few pennies for the potatoes, a bit more for the oil to cook the chips (about £1.50 per person and assuming it only gets used once) and let’s be generous about the frozen peas I served (it was a generous portion) and say 50p per portion. If I’d wanted, we could have each had a top-brand fizzy drink for 50p (assuming I hadn’t bought in bulk).

So being generous in my estimates, our meal was less than a McDonalds meal and would still have come in cheaper even if I'd added a liquid equivalent – so why do people think that McDonalds is expensive, but that markets such as Broadway Market are insanely expensive?

And that’s without even mentioning the issue of quality – and honesty, I’d back my chips against McDonalds’ ‘fries’ any time!

When and how did this massive con happen?

In his very entertaining and informative In the Devil’s Garden: a sinful history of forbidden food, Stewart Lee Allen discusses (amongst many other things) the issue of ‘appropriate’ foods for the working class. Some were banned because they were seen as likely to produce sloth (although they were fine for the aristocrats, on the grounds that they were entitled to a life of doing nothing – France and white bread is a perfect example of this).

But the thought of the plebs getting the idea that food could be sensual and wonderful was not to be tolerated.

Just as ancient Sparta, with its national dish of ‘black broth’ – pork stock, vinegar, blood and salt – “banished citizens who enjoyed eating”, Allen suggests that “both today’s fast-food outlets and Spartan mess halls are/were designed to discourage lingering over dinner and eliminate the need for people to “waste” time cooking for their family.

“And, like the Spartans’ legendarily bad food, many of these convenience foods are so unpleasant they even make work look good. They’re also immensely profitable for the corporations who produce them.

“Perfect: American workers now pay more money for worse food so they can hurry back to jobs they hate.”

He has a point about the big con at the heart of all this.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard people in my little bit of Hackney complaining about Broadway Market. Local Trotskyists, showing a remarkable lack of interest in actual facts, spent ages shouting about how the council – which had not set it up, had not funded it and doesn’t run it – should have built a community centre instead. ‘Instead of what?’ one asked.

There was no ‘instead’. A group of private individuals and traders and producers got together and got the market going. It didn’t replace anything. Apart from dodgy property dealings by our local council, which saw two long-term shopkeepers pushed out (and which market stallholders helped campaign against), nothing has been lost.

Local people now have more choice than they had six and a half years ago when, as a famous bit of local graffiti had it: "Broadway Market – not so much a sinking ship as a submarine". In those days, if you couldn't get what you wanted at the one butcher, one chain baker, one very limited fruit and veg stall and the one independent general store, you had no choice but to tramp to one of the supermarkets that have taken over the area. Now, we have a realistic choice of where we shop, because we have genuine alternatives.

Yet some continue to believe the myth that it’s all criminally beyond their means. Unlike McDonalds or any other fast-food joint. Obviously.

Why do I bet that the con isn’t as effective across the Channel?