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For my birthday I was given perhaps the finest cookbook I've ever read.
And I do mean read - I'm slightly strange in that I like flicking
through cook books from cover to cover but this is more of a memoir
interspersed with recipes.
W.M.W "Willie" Fowler is a man who should be held up as an example to
all young oiks and sprogs from an early age. An ex RAF Bomber pilot and
a detainee at Stalag Luft (where he cooked the commandant's cat with a
black market onion remarking "Well, we can't dig tunnels all the time")
he has writtena book "for men. Men who, through choice or circumstance,
live on their own, so that thye can give a small dinner party and at the
same time remain on speaking terms with their friends".
As a small boy he was bought up (during term-time, natch) in a hosuehold
where "the strange late-Victorian theory prevailed that it was infra dig
for the girls of the family to concern themselves with the mundane
matters such as the selection, prepation and cooking of food".
The book itself is split into chapters - "the Pheasant", "Grouse and
Partridge", "Pigeons, Waders and Rook" and, being written during
rationing, often concerns itself with not only how to cook your
ingredients but, the best place and time of year to shoot them (Never
shoot duck during the summer since they'll taste like "the smell of a
horse pond" - instead wait until harvest time when they'll be fat on
corn) and thence to pluck and gut them. There's even advice on what to
do in the event that you buy a goose and it is delivered, still alive,
in a sack - "Don't let it out of the sack. Invariably some one will want
to keep it as a pet and you'll end up with the bloody thing in your back
garden for the enxt two decades".
Interspersed with these are anecdotes of his childhood and time in the
service. Notable examples include shooting rooks for the pot with the
Bishop as a child and taking advantage of his childhood rival bending
over to fire a buckshot at his arse with a catapult (including
instructions of how to build a catapult and then practice with it).
All in all it wins on several accounts - for a start it's an immensely
enjoyable read and a candid look at a period of history that was both
interesting yet seldom spoke about. As a character Wilie is fantastic -
clearly intelligent, supremely funny in a bone dry martini way whilst
remaining self effacing. In all his anecodtes the only time he seems
perturbed is when he's stuck cooking the Christmas dinner.
The recipes on the other hand, whilst basic, are emminently practical
and straightforward. And, best thing of all, they're like wot a proper
recipe should be - vague on specifics. Ingredients are often described
using 'about' or 'a handful'. Roasting times are given in comparison to
other meat (a fully stuff goose takes about as much time as similar
sized mutton, for example) or as a description of how it should look
("roast on a lowish heat until the skin is golden and cripsy and the leg
pulls easily away from the body").
I'm only about a third of the way through the book but I felt compelled
to write it up here - I'm loving it so far and I think that it jolly
well deserves to have it's trumpet blown, so to speak.
Pip Pip,
Simon
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