‘My mother always makes her own brawn,’ said my husband warmly as I stood staring down into the old, slitty eye of half a pig’s head. ‘There are limits,’ I said, and I went out and bought a quarter of a pound, ready made, for ninepence. It was good brawn, which was a narrow escape for me because I am the sort who can’t even handle pigs’ trotters without feeling I am actually shaking hands with the pig.
Somehow or other, in my formative years, I didn’t have much opportunity to study meat cookery. In fact, the only cookery book I took with me into marriage was a floury little wartime primer full of clever things to do with those flavourless economy rissoles.
In my naive way I asked a butcher once why he didn’t put labels on the various joints so that inexperienced wives would know flank from silverside. I think I picked the wrong man because he became quite threatening with his cleaver and a whole shopful of housewives turned and curled their lips at me in unison while I backed nervously out into the street.
After that I became furtive on the subject and would point airily at pieces of beef, or lamb, or, quite possibly, pork, and take them home and hope for the best. This made mealtimes something of a surprise for all concerned.
In those days I always seemed to stand behind someone who was knowledgeably ordering things like a hand and spring, or loudly demanding a saddle. I felt very inferior. And I was amazed to learn that there is a verb to chine. I had always thought the word was a noun found along the cliffs at Bournemouth.
In desperation I went to a lecture given by a local butcher and made copious notes as he held great livers aloft like boxing gloves. But I wasn’t really at ease about meat cookery and when we found ourselves for a time in Canada, my husband joined the local hunting set. It was agony to open the refrigerator and be confronted by the latest bag of fur and feather, lolling there waiting to be stripped and dealt with.
One English lady used to buy whole cows to last the winter, which is where freezers really come into their own. ‘How do you divide it up?’ I asked, peering down into the vaporous depths. How, I wondered, does one select a joint from so much solid flesh?
‘Well actually,’ she said, blushing, ‘we just chip bits off as we need them and hope for the best.’
Things gradually sorted themselves out with the aid of cookery books, particularly the ones containing pictures of browsing cattle with discreet little arrows showing exactly where the unsuspecting beast carried his sirloin.
Fish I found relatively easy to cope with. I can even catch them sometimes if someone else will bait my hook. But then one doesn’t feel personally involved with a fish. Buying them is fairly simple, too. You choose the one with the brightest eyes (like puppies). If it also happens to wag its tail, so much the fresher.
Of course, I’ve had my setbacks. I did get rather carried away with herbs at one stage, and many’s the meat loaf we’ve eaten that smelled like a poultice. And too much thyme on the pork chops can get rather gritty. (‘I still don’t think that was thyme,’ says my husband, darkly.)
Then there was that moment of truth when I flung aside a one and threepenny tin of oxtail soup and resolved to economize by making my own. ‘I’ll have to order them specially,’ the butcher pointed out.
‘Make it two,’ I said, in ringing tones. I was terribly enthusiastic about the idea. I still think there was a mix-up somewhere. Could they really have cost me sixteen shillings?
Big, brown earthenware pots have given a picturesque quality to my efforts and I can get quite worked up these days as I mull over my moussaka. But I do still have my blind spots. Skinning a tongue is one of them. There is also a terribly macabre little paragraph in one of my cookery books which says ‘Soak half a calf’s brain in water till all blood is removed. Take the skin off gently plus any fibres.’
Gently! Ye gods, I have to take a couple of aspirin before I can even read about it.
And the very first Arab who sits down opposite me at a dinner party and deems it a compliment to lob me a sheep’s eye will see me running out into the night, screaming my head off.