Lockdown’s tough? It’s not rationing...
AT LEAST we haven’t had real food shortages in lockdown. No shortages at all except for that brief loo roll kerfuffle, which now seems history. That’s a big difference between the crisis now and what it must have been like in the Secondworldwar. I have a tattered book (price three shillings and sixpence) called War-time Kitchen by Helen Burke published in the fourth year of the war, a time when (as she writes in her introduction) food shortages really began to bite.
Initially, for example, rice had been readily available, its use encouraged by the Ministry of Food. But when the war extended to the Far East rice became another food on “points”. Yet life was better than for housewives during the Great War when queues and inflated prices were the norm. “Rations have been fair,” says Helen firmly. “There has been no question of one law for the rich and another for the poor. The King and his humblest subject have been rationed equally.”
It’s noticeable what tiny amounts of ingredients are listed, an ounce or two of grated cheese, onion “scrapings”, a single rasher of bacon. Dried eggs are much praised for their versatility and a whole section is devoted to fun ways with stale bread. There’s an “eggless and milkless” chocolate layer cake which today would be celebrated as “vegan”. There’s a lemon sauce with no sign of lemon and something called “Mock Cream” which is blancmange, margarine and sugar beaten to death.
Rabbit À La King is a “party dish” and Helen urges the reader to “give even the most simple dish as pleasant an appearance as possible”, so red and green peppers, “now unobtainable”, are replaced by strips of carrot and leek.
The author is on the side of “the British housewife” particularly over vegetables. “The smugness and self-satisfaction of the Continental cook and her attitude of superiority
■ towards the British housewife’s methods of cooking vegetables have been entirely misplaced,” she says sniffily.
Our national reluctance to use herbs is explained away thus: “The herb bed in our garden is usually too far away from the kitchen and no housewife can be expected to run up the garden during wet weather.”
But Helen is strict when she has to be, saying. “Even during the war there is no excuse for making a paste more suitable for applying wallpaper and calling it white sauce.” And the reluctance of Britain’s women to give up white bread for the far healthier wheatmeal bread is “entirely reprehensible”.
There are many perfectly reasonable recipes but I don’t suppose many of us would fancy Calf’s Head with Parsley Sauce.“split the head open. Remove the brains and stand them in salted water to be cooked separately or later on. Now give the head a good washing, paying particular attention to the ears and nostrils.”
Bon appetit!