Enjoy the cake and stop feeling guilty

Cake in Venice: how much marg do you think it contained?

If ever there was a revealing comment about food and varied national relationships toward it, it came on Wednesday night in the shape of BBC4’s Patisserie with Michel Roux Jr.

It was an interesting programme anyway, ranging from the revolutionary work of Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833), the first celebrity chef – who also wrote books that included the immortal phrase: ‘You can try this at home’ – to some of Paris’s finest pâtissiers plying their skills today.

One, for instance, works with a top perfumier to create new delicacies.

But as was pointed out, if you think that’s a bit outré, Carême was playing similar games himself, filling the display stands of patisserie with scents such as rose water in order to appeal to the nose as well as the eye.

However, in one of Paris’s tea salons, Roux met American Francophile Dorie Greenspan for hot chocolate and sumptuous-looking cakes.

Greenspan has written several books about patisserie and she observed that, back in the US, she only ever heard people discuss cakes in terms of guilt: “‘It’s so good, but I really shouldn’t have this’,” she said was what she would hear from fellow Americans when she was back in the US, before then noting that there was no comparable comment that you’d be likely to hear in France.

The French, she suggested, “have a special relationship with indulgence”: they understand that a little regular indulgence is part of living a good life.

It may seem odd to think that we still harbour such a puritanical attitude in the UK, where consumerism seems to be king and where religiosity has declined in recent years, certainly in the mainstream, but we will all have heard similar attitudes voiced.

But as I’ve touched on before, our search for the ‘body beautiful’ creates a secular version of guilt, with new year’s resolutions and then Lent and then preparing for the beach – and then for the winter party season – all pressuring people to give up some foods (the ones that generally are most enjoyable) and, if they don’t, feeling guilty again.

Decades of poor diet advice has added to the guilt and the social pressures that exist around the subject.

So perhaps those are part of the reasons that we have hardly any of the sort of patisseries that you can see on so many French streets, and that instead, as Roux pointed out, we have solid Eccles cakes or Bakewell tarts handed to us in a brown paper bags, as though we’re as embarrassed as if we were hiding an adult magazine.

The French have patisserie shops that are as astonishing as any top-end boutique in the way in which they display the products for sale. And it’s not just Paris – even Collioure has one such shop, plus at least one more patisserie that I’m aware of.

There are little moments of hope: only yesterday on Twitter, ligging into the revival of baking and the apotheosis of the cup cake, Flora had paid to promote a tweet advertising Flora Buttery to bake said morsels.

Now, it’s worth noting that when an advertiser ‘promotes’ a tweet, it gets charged for any responses.

Within moments, as well as the sort of positive responses that Unilever was happy to respond directly to, others were urging people to use real butter and not something full of additives. The myths are being challenged.

For clarification, Flora Buttery’s list of ingredients runs thus:

Vegetable Oils (Seed Oils 82%), Water, Buttermilk (10.5%), Salt (1.5%), Emulsifiers: Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Lecithin, Flavourings, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Vitamin E, Vitamin B6, Colour: Beta-Carotene, Vitamin A, Folic Acid, Vitamins D and B12.

There are no ingredients lists for a pack of unsalted butter and when making butter (which you can do in your own home) you don’t have to invent a method of making liquid solid, as you do with vegetable oils if you’re going to market them in a tub as something that can be spread as well as used in baking.

But Flora’s marketing is partly based on guilt – and a concomitant belief that using a butter substitute can make you feel less guilty by making you think that what you are using is more healthy, not least if you are feeding it to others as well as to yourself.

Of course, the entire fat-is-bad-for-you myth has been particularly successful in the US and UK.

Fat – the food type that makes for wonderful mouthfeel; that makes food tasty and which helps sate you far quicker than a whopping big bowl of cereal.

The French – who recognise that a bit of regular indulgence is good for you – also consume more dairy than anyone else on planet Earth and, in the south west of the country, have wonderfully fat-laden foods such as duck confit and foie gras available as part of the regional cuisine.

Somehow, I doubt very much that when a French pâtissier makes an Opéra – described by Larousse Gastronomique as “an elaborate almond sponge cake with a coffee and chocolate filling and icing”, any of it will have been made with margarine.

And yet – and here is the supposed ‘French Paradox’ – the French still have lower rates of heart disease than in this country or the US.

It wasn’t before time when, just a few weeks ago, Sweden because the first country to change its diet advice from a low-fat diet to a low-carb diet – a major crack in the wall of the myth that has built up over the last 40-50 years.

The British – and US – attitude is one of fear for health that ties very neatly into a guilt at culinary pleasure (indulgence), which itself is a residue of the puritanism that has affected both countries.

And because we have that deep-seated fear of ‘indulgence’, we distrust anyone who treats indulgence with a certain seriousness and as a genuine and wonderful art, and then when we do indulge, we overdo it (leading to more guilt – see new year’s resolutions again) and often do so on rubbish.

Not that the French are alone in creating such fabulous cakes – the Italians aren’t exactly bad, for instance, while the Austrians would probably make the list too.

But would it be stretching things too far to point out here that these countries, and France, have not suffered from puritanism or any other forms of non-conformist pleasure-hating denominations in the same way as the UK, US and others have.

While it produces plenty of its own psychological problems, Catholicism is rather more understanding of of ‘sin’ and pleasure and indulgence – and no, that’s not a pun on something Luther got in a huff about.

The sooner we all learn that a spot of regular indulgence is good for us, the better we’ll feel for it.

Never mind chewing the cud - chew the cow

According to a news report yesterday, organisations representing just about every single doctor in the UK have decided that obesity is a big problem and it needs tackling.

“News”, did I say? Sounds more like history, given the popularity of the subject in the mass media.

Well okay – all these organisations have agreed that it’s a problem and needs dealing with.

But the answer is surely simple? According to a billboard advert in Gloucester earlier last week, if you’re not ready to “meat your maker”, you should go vegan.

And as if that were not enough to make you split your sides, it was illustrated by a picture of a coffin-shaped pie.

The advert had been funded by campaign group Peta, which had chosen the city because a new mortuary that can take corpses of up to 50 stone had just been opened there.

According to reports, Peta’s Yvonne Taylor said the ad was designed to highlight a link between meat pies and pasties with obesity and other ailments.

With enormous panache and sensitivity, she continued: "The best thing that coffin dodgers can do for their health and to help animals is to go vegan.”

Ah. That’ll be the animals that won’t exist any more if everybody stops eating them, will it, Yvonne? What would sad people like you actually do with your lives then?

The thing is, if people want to be vegetarian – or even vegan – then fine and dandy.

Just don’t behave like a bunch of religious fundamentalists nuts and try to convert everyone else with claims that are, at the very best, spurious.

Mind, the advert did actually have an amusing aspect, since historically, pie crusts were known as coffins, but one doubts that Peta activists actually have this sort of knowledge and intended such a play on words.

It is, as I’ve said before, one of a series of new forms of Puritanism. And its followers are every bit as boringly intolerant and bigoted as those who believe their version of god is the only one there is and everybody else is wrong.

The claims that eating meat is the cause of obesity and assorted illnesses is piss poor – the French Paradox alone is evidence to the contrary.

But like religious fundamentalists, facts and evidence are not the strongest suits of Peta and its ilk, preferring the sanctimonious statements of faith of the truly saved.

Few people would claim that rising obesity is not an issue – but this is about as useful a contribution to any discussion as a Daily Mail article claiming that neon lights during night shifts give you cancer (but only during a month with an 'r'). It makes government policy on public health look coherent by comparison.

Anyway, I know that other people were irritated by the advert. And I suspect – with a wry smile – that it is exactly the sort of thing that produces the opposite effect that was intended.

Apart from anything else, going around telling people that pies and pasties are bad for you (ignoring ones that don't contain meat) is a bit of a stupid attack on a UK cultural icon.

From a personal perspective, I made sure to schedule plenty of meat for the weekend. Just to make sure that I die – and that I get fatter than I am and get lots of illnesses.

Yesterday – and utterly apt for a day of sport – I settled on good pork bangers from Henry Tidiman, which were cooked gently in a little lard and served with boiled spuds and peas, bot of which came with butter.

And today, after spending further hours in the garden, it was time for a steak and ale pie, with top-notch braising steak from Richard at Wild Dartmoor Beef.

Excellent beef – and even grass finished, unlike some other producers that make great claims.

The recipe came from the Hairy Bikers.

I sliced an onion and chopped some de-rinded, smoked streaky bacon, and cooked them gently in a little lard, before adding a finely chopped clove of garlic.

When golden, this was scooped into a casserole and replaced with the diced steak itself (around 450g for the two of us).

That’s browned and added to the pot. The frying pan is deglazed with approximately half a bottle of ale and this goes into the pot too.

Then the rest of the ale and a little beef stock, a tablespoon of tomato purée, a couple of bay leaves and some thyme are brought to the boil and join everything else in the casserole.

It’s covered and goes into a pre-heated oven (160˚C fan) for at least two hours until the meat is very tender and the ale has sweetened.

Take it out, add a little cornflour that's been blended with water and pop back to thicken.

Then add some halved or quartered chestnut mushrooms, let it cool and decant everything into a pie dish. Roll out some puff pastry and top with that. Brush with whisked egg (Argh! Another dead baby non-human critter!) and bake at 180˚C for 30-35 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Consume with something apt like mushy peas on the side. Go on – a few vegetables every now and won't do you any harm.

And as if that were not entirely bad enough, then later this week I shall be eating Bambi.

It all put a contended smile on my face.

But then, I’d be prepared to wager that Father Christmas isn’t a vegan either – and look at him for longevity.

The pleasure principle

With The Other Half traveling to northern climes for more rugby league yesterday, I did a few bits and pieces in the kitchen in the afternoon and then I sat down, with camomile tea and chocolates, to watch Julie & Julia.

Nora Ephron’s 2009 film weaves together the story of Julie Powell’s blog project to cook every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a single year, with dramatisations of Child’s own life in France in the 1950s, where she studied French cooking, through to the publication of her book.

Child was to US cooking what Elizabeth David was to the UK.

I searched for YouTube for footage of the woman herself, just to verify that Meryl Streep’s performance wasn’t completely over the top. It wasn’t.

Setting aside how irritating one would find the fluting loudness of her voice and an almost boyish physical clumsiness, it’s a charming film that, at it’s heart, celebrates the pleasures of life: not just food, but also sex – both couples seem to have plenty of that as well as good food.

This relaxing viewing came at the end of the week in which Oliver Thring’s article on lard appeared online at the Guardian and triggered not only a wave of nostalgia, but also the arrival of another of the food fundamentalist brigade, shrilling that we should all stop eating all fats – there are enough in vegetables and fruit to keep us healthy (no mention of happy); olive oil is processed/refined, and potatoes can be cooked and eaten without any fat involved, so bid farewell to mash with cream/milk and butter.

“You get used to it” apparently – which begs the question of why you’d want to. Health is what is always cited.

Child herself lived to 91. She never skimped on the cream or butter. Her husband lived to 92.

Eleswhere, an article on the paucity of good food programming on British TV mentioned the execrable Man vs Food, where the presenter travels around the US taking on eating ‘challenges’ to see just how much he can stuff into his face in a single sitting in places that specialise in massive portions.

It’s on the Good Food Channel, despite pretty much being the antithesis of good food – indeed, it could be seen as the other side of the coin that produces the streak of food puritanism that, on Facebook, saw me effectively branded a murderer because I am not a vegan.

Is this an indicator of dumbed-down education, the ‘nanny state’ or an illustration of how, with the decline of conventional, mainstream religious observance in the UK and the failure and/or apparent abandonment of left-wing political alternatives to what seems to be the current political and economic orthodoxy, a void has been left?

A void that, in so many situations, seems now to be being filled with a variety of extremisms, from fundamentalist versions of traditional religions to other sorts of ‘faith’, but all sharing a complete moral certainty, an evangelical fervour and pretty much total contempt for anyone who dares to disagree.

The Facebook incident was amusing in some ways: it was on a page for a campaign against plans for a dairy factory farm in the UK. I 'liked' it some time ago and have signed the odd petition and whatever else. But at the news that the application for planning permission by the 'farmers' appears to have been dropped, the vegan fundamentalists were out, having a go at those who, unlike them, are not vegan.

I pointed out – entirely politely – that we're not vegetarians, but omnivores. I don't remotely have an issue with veggies and vegans – just don't lecture me about how I should become one.

I also gave an illustration of the advantages of meat for me personally (not even mentioning the pleasure). This involved a portion of liver or kidney solving occasional bouts of monthly anemia. Iron tablets bring me out in a rash. I was told off and informed that I obviously 'hadn't tried hard enough' to find an alternative – Guinness works, apparently – to murdering animals.

Yet this was from a supporter of the same campaign! They don't seem to realise that, were it not for human consumers of dairy and meat products, there wouldn't be any cute animals in fields for them to get pseudo-religious about – never mind being able to cope with the fact that many meat and dairy eaters actually care about husbandry and animal welfare.

One of the things that Thring’s article notes – and he also mentions Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes, which is currently sitting in my kitchen waiting to be read – is that a lot of myths have been spun and fat in food – yes, even saturated fat. Indeed, the rise in obesity has come as we eat less saturated fats in the form of butter (replaced by the dreadful margarine) and, of course, lard.

We take less time over food, considering it instead to be primarily a fuel, the preparation and consumption of which merely interferes with other things. This isn’t unique to the UK’s food culture, but it is a reality. And yet as this happens, the weight is packed on.

Is this, as some people have suggested, beneficial to the extreme ends of neo-liberal economic set ups? Is that why such an approach to food has become so prevalent in the UK and US? It's certainly something that Stewart Lee Allen posits in the enjoyable and informative In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food.

In a climate where instant and repeated consumerist gratification is essential to an economy that has become hugely reliant on retail, to the extent that, in recent years, quarterly retail figures have become a regular and important part of news programmes, isn't it better that we spend our time and money in the shops or buying online – and, indeed, grabbing a bite at our desks in work rather than going out for a proper lunch. Further, if we do the latter, do we not also fill space in an outlet that sells food than if we merely walked in, bought something and took it back to our desks?

There's a Pret a Manger near where I work. It's certainly better than the 'deli' at work itself, but it's far from cheap. A sandwich or salad and soup will set you back well over a fiver. On the other hand, if you take the time to make a lunch, you can eat better and far, far cheaper (and this is partly a recurring memo to myself). And of course you get to control what you eat.

One of the things that I discovered a few years ago, in the years immediately following my own decision to give up the cycle of dieting and putting more weight on, was that one thing that saturated fat does is comfort and sate us. And it does so far more quickly than, say, a plate of complex carbohydrates – pasta, for instance. And in substituting the latter for the former, we can end up consuming more calories in order to reach a point of being sated.

A few weeks ago, I bough lamb chops and grilled them. For some time, I haven’t been able to eat crackling, but that evening, I could. The chops had a thick layer of fat, which crisped up, beautiful and golden.

It was a divine taste. And, by the time I’d eaten that, I felt almost full – and also utterly satisfied by the taste experience.

Personally, the older I get, the less certain I am about so many things. With the exception, perhaps, of food and even of life: enjoy it. There’s no second chance. And life is really far too short to eat mashed potatoes with no butter.

What's wrong with pleasure? Outside of religious extremists, when did we start to see pleasure in food as something 'wrong'?

The new puritanism

How would you define a ‘vice’ – in a food sense, that is?

After the pantomimic howls of indignation over foie gras by some Guardian readers the other week, I’m delighted to report that it’s not just sandal-munching, museli-reading lefties who get in a lather about such things.

Over at the Telegraph, a report into the slow food movement in Italy provoked the following: “is there anything more absurd than being a ‘foodie’? it is remarkable how humans can turn a necessity into a vice.”

And this comment had then, apparently, been ‘recommended’ by four other people.

As an aside, apparently we have former New York magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene to thank for the term ‘foodie’.

But back to the subject at hand: what makes anyone get their sackcloth knickers into such a knot over food? Or more to the point, over the pleasure that other people take in food?

And when did the enjoyment of food become “a vice”? Or to put it another way, at what stage does enjoyment in food turn from something acceptable into something unacceptable? Where is the gastronomic rubicon? And who gets to decide?

Now I obviously don’t know for certain, but somehow I just cannot imagine this happening in France or Italy or Spain – unless possibly in direct connection to certain interpretations of religious behaviour.

Yet judging by what I’ve seen in recent weeks over here, there is no religious aspect to the disapproval that a number of people appear to have for other people’s enjoyment.

Is this one side of the increasing secularism in society, whereby people are filling the void of conventional religious belief with some sort of other religiosity?

More than one contributor to these discussions threw out the logic before posting. There are people around, for instance, who think (in a somewhat loose sense) that if someone loves food, then that is their entire life and their entire life can be judged accordingly.

The condemnation by a surprisingly large number of people of the idea of taking (excess) pleasure in food seems to have its roots in the puritanical aspects of our past.

Be unhappy with other people eating animals; be unhappy with farm production methods; be unhappy about all sorts of things, by all means. Explain your reasons; put your arguments; campaign.

But why be unhappy about people taking pleasure in something?

Mind, I’ve found myself also considering my own responses to a couple of issues too.

A couple of weeks ago, I bemoaned the reported demise of some of our culinary heritage.

But times change – if they didn’t, we’d all still be swinging from the trees and, even if shoved into a room by the thousand, wouldn’t be able to come up with Hamlet.

But here’s the balancing act: times change, but does that mean baby out with bathwater is always positive?

Some of the dishes I touched on in that post are good enough to make it into Larousse. Yet we don’t value them widely on this side of the Channel. What does that say about what we do value of our own heritage and culture?

And what happens if we simply let our heritage and culture die away in a rush to try different things? Why is heritage and culture important? In part, because of our sense of roots, of belonging, perhaps? These things are part of us – they don’t exist apart from us.

It isn’t a question of believing that nobody should try anything new, whether a whole cuisine or an ingredient. But it’s about not throwing everything out in the rush to try something new, like a spoiled child who wants a new toy every week.

I also found myself wondering if I myself wasn’t a little susceptible to the ‘how dare you enjoy yourself doing this’ mantra, when a colleague announced that he was going to The Fat Duck for a slice of the Heston Blumenthal experience.

I’d touched on the madness of the £200 Christmas pudding here, but I must say that Jay Rayner hits a number of nails on their respective heads in this piece in the Guardian (which comes complete with puritan comment warning).

So, what is my problem with Britain’s top chef? Is it jealousy? Question with a question: of what? Is it a puritanical belief that, assuming they’ve got the dosh, people shouldn’t spend it on whatever they like? No. Apart from anything else, that would be massively hypocritical of me.

Trying to put it clearly, my problem with Mr Blumenthal is not actually Mr Blumenthal, but the way in which the pseudo-worship of what he does seems to be another fad.

To try to explain more clearly: take El Bulli, the Ferran Adrià-run restaurant home of molecular gastronomy near Barcelona. This home of gastronomic experimentation sits alongside a wonderful local cuisine; a cuisine that is valued and vital and fabulously alive.

Here, The Fat Duck doesn’t do that because it can’t do that, because no such situation exists in terms of an indigenous cuisine. So it just seems to me to be one of many distractions from something that has much to offer, but is being neglected, partly because of faddiness and partly because of a lack of interest in the pleasures of food generally.

No, that’s not quite the puritanism I mentioned above, but more the culture of not enjoying food enough to resist the pressures to eat mass-produced fuel in front of the telly, instead of taking time to sit down to a meal with family and/or friends.

Is it too big a leap to suggest that, if as that brief sketch implies, we are becoming more and more alienated even within our own homes, our apparent willingness to dump our culinary heritage is actually linked?

I’ve had online conversations with people who have suggested that there are no objective standards for judging food; that one foodstuff is no better than any other.

That leaves you with a belief that there is no qualitative difference between, say, a Pot Noodle and a chateaubriand steak.

Or as one of those online puritans that I mentioned at the top of this piece suggested, there is no difference between animal and fish produce and vegetarian alternatives: the textured vegetable protein burger and the real burger are no different.

Is it also, therefore, too big a stretch to suggest that, in a time when big business and finance (including the major supermarket chains) hold such sway in the country, such a puritanical rejection of pleasure in food, whether deliberate or not, is useful?

I don’t know the answers and I’m am not about to start positing any glib ideas. But it increasingly seems to me that denying gastronomic pleasure is a stance with more widespread ramifications than we might imagine.

A feast for the eyes and the mind

Babette's Feast (1987 Denmark)

In 19th century Denmark, a refugee arrives from the violence in France.

Babette has been sent to the bleak, windswept Jutland coast by a friend, to ask two elderly sisters if she can stay with them, offering to keep house and cook for them in return.

They accept, and instruct her in the cooking that they’re used to and that they also prepare for the poor of their small community. It’s joyless food – mere fuel. The sisters are pious Christians, upholding the legacy of their late father, a pastor, who had founded their strict sect.

In their youth, both Martina and Filippa had turned down suitors or the chance to embark on a singing career, preferring instead to stay with their father.

Then, as their anniversary of his birth approaches, Babette’s ticket comes up in the lottery – her one remaining link with France. And she asks the sisters if she can prepare them and their little congregation a meal for the event.

Director Gabriel Axel’s 1987 award-winning film, from Karen Blixen’s book, is an unmitigated delight, somehow remaining as light as soufflé, even given the subject matter.

Here we have, yet again, a look at the conflict between sensuality and religion. The fear of Babette’s guests as they realise the treat that they are being given is funny – but utterly tragic and wasteful too. They vow, before the meal, to ignore what they will eat; to not contemplate. Only the old soldier, the unsuccessful suitor of Martina decades before and now returning to visit, appreciates the magnificent fare.

How can one be so afraid of pleasure? Why is sensuality so threatening? Why is life itself so threatening? For those who believe, how can locking away of oneself from vast areas of the creation that they believe is God’s be anything less than an insult to that god? Is their god really so cruel as to demand that they ignore his own creation, that he put in place merely to tempt and torment them? Or is Satan a creator too – in his case, of all sensual pleasure and the means to gain those pleasures?

The austere Jutland coast, which matches so well the Puritanism of the sisters and their fellow congregants, is beautifully photographed.

And Stéphane Audran is wonderful as Babette – a delightfully subtle and warm performance.

In some ways, Babette’s Feast is an incredibly simple story. But told like this, it is an exquisite paean to the pleasures of food, and of life itself.

It might as well be spring

It wasn’t even 10am, but while there was still a spring morning nip in the air, it was glorious; a clear, blue canopy above and the symphony of birdsong all around.

Sitting outside with a good coffee (single estate from somewhere or other, via the local French deli), I tried to see everything, smell everything, hear everything. Tried to process it all in the mind, putting words to everything so that I might hope to hold on to it.

A church bell tolled from the Anglican convent just across the small park that sits behind; not a peel of bells, but a steady, monotonous call to worship – the sort of sound, in fact, that makes the advertised act seem so much less of a joyful one than sitting outside and drinking in the beauty of the morning.

Life is an ephemeral thing, and yet people go and sit inside gloomy churches rather then relish the glory of the world that they claim their god created. How perverse, when everything around you – particularly at this time of year – screams of creation and life. The sap is rising, blossom, flowers and leaves are bursting their bonds and flooding the world with colour and scent.

I might not, any longer, be able to fathom the churchgoing (although perhaps I never could, but merely went along with it unthinkingly), but I did manage to discipline myself into a brief spot of spring cleaning, washing down windows and sills in the kitchen, and clearing out a cupboard where there was an infestation of tiny bugs that seem to thrive on flour.

They’re flour weevils apparently, and seem to have been breeding in a bag of their favourite snack that was hidden from my vertically challenged view at the back of the top shelf. I only found it with the aid of the ladder.

As part of my efforts to keep them at bay – or better yet, get rid of them altogether – I’ve got an order of storage cans and tubs arriving on Tuesday. The flours can all go in stainless steel canisters, while the plastic tubs will be useful for storing – and organising – a whole range of things, including bags of nuts and dried mushrooms. Old 200g instant coffee jars do very nicely for storing assorted sugars.

It’s one of the things about enjoying cooking – no matter your initial antipathy to cleaning up, you start to get more and more committed to it. I do more washing up these days than I’ve ever done in my life, but it doesn’t feel more onerous. Now I simply understand it as a necessary part of the process, and I want my utensils as clean as possible.

And then armed with the satisfaction of such cleanliness and organisation, I went to sit outside, sporting a sleeveless t-shirt and squinting at the pages of a book as the warmth started to seep through to my bones.

By the time the clouds drifted into view, I didn’t even feel too great a resentment and, with thoughts of lunch drifting from my stomach to my brain, donned a baggy old cotton sweater against the cool and headed for the kitchen.

In River Café Two Easy, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers present a series of soups, explaining that Italian soup is usually very rustic and chunky – not pureed within an inch of its life. Knowing I still had an odd courgette around the place, I thought I’d try and courgette and pea soup.

Talk about easy. Chop garlic and soften in olive oil, before adding chopped courgette. After a few minutes, tip in some peas (frozen ones are fine) and then a little stock. Let it simmer until the peas are cooked, then pop into a blender and pulse briefly – it needs to retain plenty of texture, not become smooth. Reheat with some basil leaves in it. Serve with grated parmesan.

I made some minor adjustments, adding a few fine because I had some left over and because it ensured that lunch would supply me with three portions of my fruit and veg.

The cupboard was bare when it came to basil, but I used the cheese as directed – and added a garnish of toasted pine kernels.

And the result? Lovely.

The big question in my mind now, though, is Easter. What am I going to cook? I’d scarcely given it a minute’s thought until yesterday, when it suddenly dawned on me that it was almost upon us.

I do want to try to make my own hot cross buns for the first time, but I’m struggling at present to think what else to cook.

Chocolate has to be involved somewhere.

It’s too early for the first lamb of the year (that’s actually best in August anyway). But possibly I’ll consider a leg of lamb anyway. If I can get decent quality, then I might do it with garlic and rosemary – or even dried lavender.

I gave up thinking about it after a while. I’ve done a basic order of core ingredients online, but I’ll give other things a few days to ferment, as it were.

So I’m left with this evening’s meal. Okay. We return to the River Café book. I got a dressed crab from Broadway Market yesterday. I’ll cook it gently with chili flakes and lime juice (and possibly some fennel), and serve with pasta.

Simple – and great flavours.

It’s been a good day thus far. The Other Half’s team won (it’s a cup weekend, so this is knock-out Rugby League) and Les Catalans won too (we both have a very large soft spot for the French side). And whilst my football team lost yesterday, my RL team won today, against the other strongest team in the country. So I'm reasonably happy. And Granddad would be proud.

Just occasionally, I wish that the whole idea of heaven and eternal life were true – not because I dream of eternal purgatory for nasty people, but because I wish that, somewhere, my grandfather was still around – even if only in the ether. But then again, what always brings me back down to Earth is the realisation that if that were the case, and if it were as the churches proclaim it to be, there would be no place for my grandfather. Or me. We'd be destined to meet in the nether regions of eternity.

And I look out at the dusk, and I see such life as spring takes control. And on this Palm Sunday, would I really like to be with Christ in Paradise?

I’ll leave you to consider the answer to that.

Chelsea flowers show

Spring is sprung! As these beautiful blossoms show so clearly. And look at that gorgeous blue sky. It was warmer in London yesterday than it was in Istanbul. Amazing.

The picture was taken in Fulham, west London – but since it was right next to Chelsea Football Club's ground, I'm going to stick with the pun at the top of this post. It's just too good to resist.

Daffodils are out in the park – it gives humble Hackney a Wordsworthian tinge. The weeping willows in the park are taking on their green veil.

If it stays this warm, it won't be long now before we can cast off all those heavy winter clothes and let the sun bathe our skin.

I used to hate the spring and summer – I much preferred to hide away in the shadows of shorter days and longer nights, buried beneath layers and layers of cold-weather clothing.

If there's a mark of how far I've come in the last decade, perhaps it's that I love the sun so much now.

It won't be long now before I can go for a sauna – and wander out into the walled garden to dry off in the altogether. A blissfully liberating feeling. Which isn't very English of me, I'm afraid.

A great many people who go to saunas in the UK insist on wearing a swimming costume. They're so inhibited by their own nakedness, that they do something inherently unhealthy. Wearing a swimming costume – rarely made of natural materials these days – stops the sweat being able to flow away freely, particularly from areas such as the groin and under the breasts. That can bring about fungal infections. But no – nakedness is bad and they continue to sauna in a costume.

I, I'm afraid, go the whole hog – and I really don't care who sees or what they think.

The first steps I took sans clothes came in our tiny back garden on summer days when I wasn't working, and gradually I edged out there, working out how to stay out of any neighbour's sighlines, but enjoying more and more the freedom. The skin is such an extraordinary organ – and so, so sensitive. And then there was one spring day when it rained and I felt an overwhelming urge to stand in the rain with no clothes on. It was the most extraordinary feeling and I stood there, outside the patio door, (probably) just hidden from view, laughing like a giddy child.

I read an anthropologist's explanation recently of our embarrassment about nudity – that humans have evolved to be embarrassed because it's part of what keeps couples together in the monogamous, long-term relationships that are perfect for bringing up children.

Presumably then, for this observer, no family units in the developing world where people are less embarrassed (if at all) by their bodies can provide secure homes for children?

I'm not about to go wandering around Hackney in the altogether – but it seems to me that it's an infantile attitude to be so scared of the naked body; that in part at least, it owes much to Victorianism and the prudery that we still suffer from in the UK (combined with an extreme prurience that's just as unhealthy – and don't they make an unholy combination).

All the world's a stage

The Mossley years gave me many things – and not least amongst these was an abiding love of theatre.

In 1968, when I had just turned six, I was taken to the Scala in London as a birthday/Christmas treat. The theatre is gone now, but it was near the Post Office Tower. The show in question was Peter Pan, with Wendy Craig as Peter and the late, great Alastair Sim as Mr Darling/Captain Hook.

We sat on the front row of the dress circle; my knuckles turned white with the tension, gripping the railing, when it seemed that Tinkerbell was going to die, as I screamed back at the stage that ‘yes’, I really did believe in fairies.

I remember the colours – the vivacity of the blues and greens that lit the stage; the red and gold of the seats and the walls and floor. It was beautiful and it was magic.

It was also unusual, since my family didn’t ‘do’ theatre. Father, with a background that included a number of Plymouth Brethren amongst his relatives, considered it downright immoral – particularly for women, who were invariably rendered ‘loose’ by association with it.

There were no problems when I appeared in school plays at primary school in London – but then again, I hated the obligatory experience. Clumsy and with a voice that squeaked, I was on the receiving end of audience giggles – for all the wrong reasons – and was appropriately mortified.

The problems started when I stopped hating it. It was the end of my first year at Fairfield. I’d struggled to make friends, was seen as something of a swot and had been pretty much sent to Coventry. For some reason or other, our class decided to stage a play. We wrote a version of Cinderella – I was cast, in a act of overt bitchiness, as an Ugly Sister. Out of this, however, came the revelation. Something had happened in the intervening years – and people laughed for all the right reasons. I was a hit – and I loved it.

Now the trouble with that was that I was then supposed to become the school joker, but it was better than having nobody talk to me.

And of course there was the inevitable declaration at home that I wanted to be an actress.

I can’t recall the initial response. But the drip-drip efforts to put such a crass idea out of mind began shortly thereafter.

“You’re not pretty enough to be an actress,” said my father one day, as he drove me to Ashton for a Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme event.

My mother, hearing this many years later, huffed in annoyance – and promptly informed him that there were plenty of successful actresses who were not pretty, citing the likes of Edith Evans and Flora Robson and Hattie Jacques. She was trying to be supportive, but somehow …

Indeed, over the coming years she revealed one major concern: “But what would you do if a role demanded nudity?”

Funnily enough, I never had to make a conscious decision on that score – but some years later, when playing Mozart’s wife Constanze in an award-winning production of Amadeus, I fell out of my corset every night when Salieri pushed me away. And I lived to tell the tale.

After a full school production one spring (a sort of music hall), my father’s famous backhander was heard for the first time: “Hm. I never thought you had it in you.” I wonder sometimes what he ever did think I had in me?

Since being allowed to join the local drama group was out as it rehearsed on Sundays, it became an annual war to be allowed to audition for the school play. Since I wasn’t a tall, leggy blonde, character roles came my way.

In between, there developed the perhaps unusual habit of singing for my supper. Or put another way, I’d do impromptu lunchtime shows in vacant classrooms – singing and stuff – for a few coppers. Teachers found out. I was described to my parents as “eccentric”. They bore this news to me from parents’ evening, wearing concerned expressions. I looked up the word and worried too.

Then I got a date wrong. I gave my parents the wrong date for the annual school speech day. When I found out and gave them the right day, my father went ballistic. Having got home late at night, he stormed into the bedroom and blew his top, waking both me and my sister. The problem, it appeared, came down to the fact that: “You only want to be an actress – and that’s nothing better than a prostitute!” Goodness knows what would have happened if I’d actually really done something naughty.

But I looked up ‘prostitute’ in the dictionary too. And worried some more.

I never did quite make it as an actress – or ‘actor’, as is the accepted usage today (precisely because of individuals like my father, who would revel in ‘the actress and the bishop’ jokes or assume that ‘actress’ meant whore and the casting couch).

But it provided an escape and, as I got old enough to make my own mind up about rehearsing on Sundays, it provided the one place where I could ‘break out’ in guilt-free manner. Perhaps it’s no surprise that I made tarts – with or without a heart of gold – my forte.

College and a degree in the performing arts eventually beckoned. A paternal great aunt, ringing from Plymouth to wish me luck, happened to make the mistake of asking what course I was actually going to do.

“I’d rather die in a toilet than in a theatre!” was her really rather random exclamation on hearing the news. I was subsequently ticked off by Dad for pointing out to her that if, as she claimed, she’d never been into a theatre, then she didn’t know what she was talking about. He already had half an eye on any will she might have made.

A career on the stage has eluded me – and discovering writing eased the need to get up and perform so publicly. But I still remember the roar of the crowd and the smell of the greasepaint. And in remembering those things, something in me – some ambivalent, anarchic, vagabond quality – skips a beat and reminds me it’s still alive and that I don’t want to get too fond of respectability.

You get Mardi Gras ...

... and we get Shrove Tuesday. And pancakes.

Don't get me wrong – pancakes are great. But compared to Mardi Gras ... well, one can't help feeling a little shortchanged.

The English, being a people of obvious restraint, don't do fiesta at any time. The idea of authorised anarchy – that chance to really let down the hair, with permission – isn't one that we know.

We don't get to go wild before Lent (or at any other time): we get to use up our eggs and flour before 40 days of denial.

Not that I personally do the denial bit, you understand. But I did the pancakes – after a few beers and rather a lot of white wine.

I sifted the flour, à la Delia, then whisked in eggs and milk and a little water. I'd never made pancakes until last year, but was inspired to do so by the purchase of a very good, copper-bottomed French omelette pan.

Melt a knob of butter and get it piping hot. Ladle in some of the batter and swirl around to thinly cover the base of the pan. You know it's ready to turn when you see the edges lifting away from the metal.

Squeeze fresh lemon juice on them and sprinkle with sugar; roll up and eat. Delicious.

There was some criticism last night that I don't toss, and was using – what a culinary faux pas! – a metal spatula to flip them over, but the results were tasty enough to earn thanks.

But why don't we English do fiesta – Mardi Gras?

Perhaps if we had those moments, we wouldn't have the distinctly unauthorised drunken brawling that characterises most English town centres every weekend.

Perhaps, because we're still not over the prudery and Puritanism of the Victorian era, we go to extremes more often in an effort to escape it?

Still, at least such attitudes don't invade pancake making.

Risotto, for me, used to be the Protestant work ethic transferred into the kitchen. Taking cookery books as conveying a literal truth, it was probably the one dish that left me with a real sense of having had to work at it.

You chop, you peel, you grate – and then you stand over the stove and sweat for 20 minutes as you stir stock into the rice.

It's only recently that I've discovered that risotto can be made much more easily – that it (and cooking in general) doesn't have t feel like such hard work in order to be good.

So tonight, in my continuing search for culinary simplicity (particularly in the middle of the week), it's going to be some of the weekend's left-over roast chicken, with a salad of a few boiled potatoes, some grapefruit segments and thinly sliced red onion, all served on a bed of lamb's lettuce, with a classic dressing of grapefruit juice, virgin oil and dry mustard.

It might not be Mardi Gras, but it's not the stifling refusal to enjoy life either.