by | May 3, 2012

Rhubarb rhubarb


April 1971 – I drive the mini traveller back to Kettering for free food from my grandmother’s garden. She forces pink rhubarb  under old, metal buckets, with holes punched in the top to let in light. These tender delicacies are only for the family but now she’s happy to let me pick from the huge clumps  which thrive on her compost heap. I cut armfuls with leaves and all.
Grandma is worried.

‘Jenny- rhubarb leaves are poisonous. You can die if you eat them.’

She tells me about someone who ate the cooked leaves as a vegetable and was so ill with stomach pains that they had to go to hospital. Grandma boils rhubarb leaves in water to clean her saucepans. If they strip your stomach in the same way that they bring a shine to her aluminium pans,  that could be painful.

‘Don’t let those children have the leaves. They could get into all sorts of trouble.’

‘Don’t worry grandma – I’ll tell them all about it.’

Grandma knows about London children. During the war, evacuees from the east end were billeted with her, and they thrived on her cooking and helped with her garden. She’s proud of her certificate from  Queen Elizabeth 11 thanking her for this service which she keeps in a faded envelope with its official stamp.

Back at my London school, I plonk my huge pile of rhubarb with its massive leaves on my demonstration table.

‘OK class – first to warn you – these leaves are poisonous. They can give you stomach ache, make you feel sick and some people have even died from eating them.’

The death story may not be true but it’s  a good start to the lesson. I have their attention. They are curious.

‘How do they poison you, miss?’ Bert isn’t usually concentrating this early in the day.

‘The leaves contain oxalic acid which is toxic. That means they are dangerous. ’

‘But miss, why can you eat the stalk  and not the leaf – why does the poison just go into the leaf?’

There is no Google search for the answer, and Bert has a clever point. I’ll have to ask the biology teacher later.

‘Miss, what do you have to do to poison someone?’

Ah ha! I can see where this diversion is leading. Bert’s after my rhubarb leaf mountain. We’ve just had the school acid attack when someone sat a boy in concentrated sulphuric acid. It burnt the backside off his school trousers and he had to go to Whipps Cross hospital to have his bottom checked. Now it could be the rhubarb poisoning scandal. And it’s all my fault.

‘Bert, I’m taking these leaves home, so let’s get on. Today we’re going to make Rhubarb fool.’

‘First we wash and chop the stems and cook them in a saucepan with a little water and the lid on until they are soft.’

I’ve learnt to give clear cooking instructions after many disasters. Last week I told Robert to boil his potatoes and he stuffed them unpeeled into the electric kettle with some water and clicked it on. We had the devil of a job poking out the mushy bits. I pass round a dish of grandma’s soft, pink cooked rhubarb so they can see.

Now for the  custard. There is a magic moment when you mix custard powder with gritty sugar and milk. Suddenly as you stir in the milk, the pale peach powder turns to bright yellow  – a chemical mystery which probably holds its truth in tartrazine.

‘To make the custard, pour in the hot milk into this yellow mixture and stir until it thickens.’

A delicious, golden, glossy custard magically emerges in the bowl.

‘Add your cooked rhubarb, some red colouring then whisk an egg white and carefully fold it in. Spoon into the glass dish and top with a glacé cherry.’

I haven’t  told them that the cochineal red colouring is made from crushed beetles. Imagine the screams.

‘She’s making us eat beetles! Mad teacher from the north! We ain’t eating beetles!’

Tiny bottles of artificial colours and flavouring line my storeroom shelves to prop up our culinary skills and lack of tasty ingredients. Red for rhubarb and strawberry tart glaze. Green for anything made with gooseberries or cooked apples.
Vanilla essence goes in sponge cakes, drops of almond essence mix with the semolina that we use instead of almonds for Bakewell Tart and the ultimate sin, rum essence, is dribbled onto rum babas or into chocolate truffles. How I long to taste the real thing.

They chop, cook and stir and thicken and my table soon has a display of glass dishes in various shades from pink to plum. Each on a saucer with a frilly d’oyley. Always a bloody d’oyley!

The lesson is over. And we have  all made a potion of rhubarb with enhanced colours and flavours which richly deserves the name fool.

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by | April 5, 2012

Invalid cooking


Why, oh why do we have to teach Invalid cooking? Is it a spill over from Victorian days when women had the vapours and collapsed on the chaise longue to be attended by servants and nurses? If so, Invalid cookery ranks even lower than Awful Offal in educational pointlessness. We’re supposed to make our lessons real and relevant to teenage needs, but I’m teaching the skills of Mrs Beeton. And she died at 28 so clearly wasn’t a great success at making invalid food.

Tasks for the exams go something like this:

‘Plan a meal for an invalid. Lay the tray with a starched tray cloth and serve the meal.’

So not only must we make a meal that will slip down the sick person’s throat but we will starch and iron a traycloth, stick a flower in a vase and arrange an invalid tray with food.

As a working woman of the 70’s, I have little time for sick leave, and anyway, I’d be left on my own in my flat with a cup of tea. No invalid food in sight for me. Really serious invalids are hospitalised and attached to drips, providing rehydration and nourishment. And hospital food is notoriously disgusting.

O level Cookery tells me

‘The main aim of invalid food is to build up wasted tissue and give a supply of protective food’.

Invalids, it seems, start at the very sick stage with a liquid diet of beef tea and barley water. As a young child, when I was ill, my mother made me banana custard before she cycled off to work as a teacher. My grandmother would pop in and check if I was still alive, but I was otherwise left alone and we had no telly for comfort. If I was really ill, the banana custard had a bright red glacé cherry on top. If my mother did that  today she’d be accused of child neglect and struck off from teaching.

Onto today’s lesson. What shall we cook?

Cookery for Schools has a list of invalid dishes which fill me with dread.

Egg nog, beef tea, lemonade, junket, egg jelly, savoury custard, baked fish, cheese pudding, apple snow and fruit fools.

For some reason the examiners think white food is best for the sickly.

They gather round my table, hoping to learn something interesting.

‘OK class – you have to plan a meal of soft food for this invalid. Something they don’t have to chew. I’m going to demonstrate steamed fish, white sauce and cauliflower.’

‘Don’t invalids have teeth miss?’ Jessica is always concerned about people, and will make a good nurse or social worker, so this lesson may have some purpose after all.

‘Me nan never puts her teeth in when she eats.  Only when she goes out for Bingo and then she takes her curlers out and puts her teeth in.’

Bert is clowning again, trying to raise our spirits. I imagine his nan, reminding herself before she goes out.

‘Teeth in, curlers out, fetch the Bingo money.’

I have to get this lesson over with.

‘Look! Invalids need nourishing food that is easy to eat like steamed cod in white sauce with well cooked cauliflower.’

I show them a picture from the Good Housekeeping recipe book

‘But that looks like sick miss – who wants to be served sick food when you’re sick?’ Jessica is alarmed.

‘Look – we’ve got to do it – it’s in the exam. But first I’m going to show you how to make the junket.’

This is like going back a hundred years. I’ve never heard, eaten or seen junket.

‘Watch while I demonstrate.’

They like sitting on stools and watching me cook.  It’s a time for jibing and jollity and a chance to tease and test my patience.

‘Warm the milk to body temperature – dip your finger in the saucepan and when it feels warm, it is ready. Now add the rennet. That’s from the enzyme, rennin that comes from a calf’s stomach. It clots the milk and makes it set.’

The group is aghast. Why should they put the contents of a calf’s stomach into milk? Their mad cooking teacher has landed from Planet Pointless again, demanding that they use suffering animals to make inedible food that will be thrown into  nearby gardens when they get out of this crazy lesson.

The junket is poured into a cut glass sundae dish and presented on the pastel blue Berylware saucer with a frilly d’oiley.

Resentment is brewing.

‘ Miss, we ain’t making that – when do we move onto cakes and stuff?’ Alan folds his arms defiantly.

‘ Please class – it is in the exam – you have to know about it!’ I beg with increasing despair.

‘And why must sick people eat white food miss? I had mashed baked beans and Angel Delight when I had me tonsils out.’

Bert is right. Perhaps the Victorians thought coloured food was too much of a shock if you were sick. Would the sight of bright red tomatoes raise blood pressure?

Did green cabbage make them feel nauseous? The smell of it boiling for our school meals at nine in the morning certainly makes me feel sick.

We need to get this over with. I tip the cauliflower florets into boiling water, put an enamel plate with a tiny piece of cod on top, and cover with a lid to cook. Bert helps me make an all in one white sauce and the room smells of boiled fish and cauliflower. Just like teh school kitchens at nine in the morning.

I tell them the Rules for laying a serving tray for invalids, using the gospel of Cookery for Schools. I read to them as Bert cooks on.

‘When the doctor orders the invalid to have a light diet, the meals must be served punctually, as they are the main interest of the day. If the invalid does not want to eat at the appointed time, remove the meal and re-serve it later.’

Now that could make you ill, eating food that has been kept warm and then re-served. Imagine as your food is shuffled backwards and forwards all day and being told

‘Eat it! This is your main interest of the day!’

The invalid is promptly sick into a bucket, and their carer offers encouragement.

‘It’s OK. I’ll come back and serve you later.’

The white meal is ready and I arrange the cod and cauliflower on my blue Beryl ware plate.

The book bleats on with advice on how to lay the invalid tray. Some of my students don’t have a dining table but they know about trays as they use them for their TV dinners.

My invalid task must finally prove to them that I have landed from Doctor Who’s Time Machine. From an age long ago when we all lived on turnips.

‘Make sure the patient has all the accompaniments salt, pepper, butter and add flowers in tiny posies in small low vases which cannot be knocked over, or single blooms such as roses which can be tucked into the table napkin.’

Oh great. The school gardener with love me as his borders are raided for the posies to plonk on the bloody tray. Perhaps they can snap off some rose buds as they walk to school.

The CSE exam has one more rocky horror story for them to practice. We have to wash and starch a traycloth using powdered starch, blended with cold water and then boiling water. I can’t bear the screams of shock as they discover, once again we are practising homecrafts from a museum age.

‘First starch your traycloth. You dip it into this bucket of starch, wring it out and then iron it.’

‘What! We’ve got a Formica table – why can’t they eat off a plastic tray!’

‘What’s a traycloth?’

Alan is fed up. He loves cooking but this phaffing to pass this awful exam just takes the biscuit.

Please let this lesson end!

I haven’t got a traycloth so I starch one of my tattered teatowels instead. The iron is plugged into one of the black overhead cables which dangle from the ceiling. The boys frequently  swing these clonking cables in the direction of their latest enemy.

I read on.

‘We need a traycloth and napkin, matching china and cutlery, cruets, butter dishes and a small posy, and use a tray of suitable size and arrange all serving dishes so that they are ready for use. Tea pot and milk jug on right hand side, cruet etc on left hand side.’

So that’s a tray the size of a small table. And we’ve got flowers and food as well.

Gawd almightly!

I place the steamed cod and cauliflower, junket and a glass of water carefully on the tray and IT’S DONE.

We’ve DONE invalid cooking. But there’s still two questions for their homework from the wonderful Cookery for Schools.

  1. State six points that should be kept in mind in the choice, preparation and serving of foods for invalids. Give reasons.
  2. What differences in diet would you suggest for a) a bed-ridden elderly person, b) a convalescent from pneumonia?

I can imagine some of the answers.

Would anyone would like my cod and cauliflower?

Alan sums up the feelings for the rest of the class.

‘Na thanks miss, no-one is sick in my family at the moment.’

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by | March 2, 2012

Mock Home Economics exams


January 1973.  It’s the mock Home Economics CSE exams.

Judgement time for me.  And judgement time for everyone  I’ve taught for just one term. In two hours they must spill out the limited knowledge that I have drilled into them over the past few months. They may be able to cook two course meals and serve them with a flower arrangement , but if they don’t pass this theory exam all is lost. And some of them can barely read or write. Failure for them is failure for me. Results matter.

Mr Nunn comes into my room as I’m scrubbing down cake encrusted baking trays in the deep butlers sink.

‘Jenny – can you take the invigilation session this morning? The other teacher’s not turned up.’

Bloody hell. It’s not fair. I’ve longed for this free morning and a chance for some staffroom gossip when I’ve done my chores. And now I’m going to be stuck in a freezing, dingy hall watching the torment of my classes as they struggle to answer the questions that I’ve set for their exams.

‘You’ll be on the stage and supervising the morning.’

Mr Nunn gives me a confident smile and leaves for his cup of coffee.

Oh that’s great. No early warning to bring long johns and fingerless gloves for this freezing task. Instead I’m in my shortest mini skirt and will be perched on stage above a group of bored teenagers.

I gather some marking and set off to the examination hall.  As chief invigilator,  I walk sternly past my chattering groups, through the doors and down the neat rows of hard chairs and splintery desks, which the caretaker puts out especially for the exams.  Their wooden tops are scratched with years of frustration. Bill woz here,  I hate maths.  Get me out of here!

And other fierce gouges too rude to mention made with a frustrated penknife or compass point.

Then up the stairs to my position at another uncomfortable desk, centre stage.

So many desks, so much responsibility.

I call to Martin, the teacher who is helping me invigilate.

‘Open the doors, Mr Page, and let them in.’

The shambling queue idles through the doors and there’s a lethargic search to find their names.

This is quickly followed by cries of

‘Miss I ain’t got a ruler. ‘

‘Miss me pen won’t work!

‘Miss I need to go to the lav!’

I hand round the spare emergency tools that I keep in my handbag, and let Lenny go to the toilet.

It’s time to start but several desks are still empty.

The rowdy, naughtier boys have not turned up. Nor have Liz and Cath. Those two are probably out making babies and the rowdy boys think exams are a waste of time.  Just messing about before real life begins.

‘OK it’s time to start. You have two hours. No talking and you can’t leave the hall until the time is up.’

‘Ugh’ groans Gary. ‘This is the only exam I’m doing. Ugh I hate exams.’

‘Turn your papers over read all the questions and please do your best.’

I want to add ‘For me, please try. “

Beth and Alice start writing furiously.

The ancient hall radiators ooze out little warmth on this freezing day. It’s like sitting in a fridge.

Martin paces up and down the rows. The metal studs on his boot heels click on the wooden floor.

Gary is sharpening a pencil and coils of wood spiral onto the floor. I glower at him. My mouth commands a silent ‘Get on!’.

Gary continues his sharpening.

Suddenly the hall doors burst open.

Kevin,  Gavin and the rest of the gang explode into the hall.

‘Miss,the bus! Sorry we’re late.’

More likely they’ve been puffing fags behind the bins and deciding if they’ll do a bunk.

Martin scowls and gives me  a ‘Shall we let the buggers in?’ look.

I nod and he raises his eyebrows in despair. The late comers smirk their way to their seats, clatter down and rustle for writing tools.

‘Get started!’  I mutter in desperation and bang round some pens from my store.

For the next half hour boys and girls scribble away and a cold calm descends on the room.

From my exposed perch I watch and wonder how I’ve taught them so many words that I will now have to mark over the weekend.

From a desk beneath me a handsome boy with dark floppy hair glances up.

He’s one of the sixth formers taking mock A level maths.  Bright boys don’t choose my classes. They are siphoned off to study more useful subjects. The boy must be nineteen and nearly a man and he has the most startling grey eyes.

‘Stop it!’ I admonish myself. Must be boredom to notice a boy’s eyes.

I push my mini skirt firmly down my thighs and hope the ribbed top of my tights is not showing.

The boy smiles and looks down and resumes his calculations.

Pull yourself together! Stop dreaming. Handsome young men who are four years younger must not be considered. I’m sad and single but I’m the teacher. If such thoughts became actions I could lose me my job.

An hour passes. Martin has stopped click clacking and leans despondently against the exit door. Invigilation is incredibly boring and we’d both rather be drinking coffee and smoking in the staff room than pacing this dreary place.

By now many of group are stretching, packing their bags and yawning for attention.

They mouth ‘Miss let’s go! It’s done.’

Martin slides over to the noisiest.

‘Have you finished?’

Yes! Yes!

‘OK, go quietly and don’t disturb the ones still working.’

They lumber out, leaving the earnest behind.

The next hour passes slowly. There’s no point in dreaming of plans for my weekend. I’ll be locked away with piles of marking, no wine bars or parties for me.

‘Time’s up, pens down.’

‘Miss I haven’t finished ….’

‘Too bad, pens down.’

They file out and I gather and stack the piles of answer papers.

As I leave the hall the boy is waiting round the corner.

‘Hello.  Are you a new teacher?  We haven’t met before.’

He towers over me and looks delicious. If he was four years older…

Don’t be stupid. He’s a student and you are the teacher.

‘Yes. I mean no.’  I reply.

‘Yes, I’ve been here just a term. ‘

He wanders off smiling, then turns round with a knowing glance.

Cheeky boy! One day he’ll break someone’s heart. But it mustn’t be mine.

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by | December 8, 2011

Peppermint creams – Christmas lesson 1972


For days pungent smells of cinnamon and nutmeg have wafted out my cookery room as we mass produce mince pies for carol services and staff Christmas parties. We’ve had lessons making marzipan fruits, coconut ice, chocolate truffles and Christmas logs to take home as special gifts, but the most spectacular treats were the rich, dark fruit cakes stacked in my larder ready for their final shroud of marzipan and icing.

The class had strict instructions to decorate the top with green holly leaves and blobby red berries and to finish with a shiny red ribbon tied in a giant bow. But Jessica plonked a grubby plastic Father Christmas on his reindeer sledge on top of her cake and put a glittery tinsel band around its circumference.

‘We always have ‘im on our cakes, miss and decorate it like this.’

Mr Bush the headmaster came in to judge the Best Christmas Cake competition – I’m trying to show him that I don’t spend my lessons cooking for my supper. And Jessica with the plasticly decorated, rather common Christmas cake won. Some people have no taste.

For this last afternoon of term, my class of noisy boys is going to make peppermint creams as a Christmas present for gran – or more likely they will eat them on the way home.

Gavin is back from his suspension and arrives late in bullish mood. I’ve been dreading the moment I have to start educating Gavin again. Well not exactly again. I can’t make any claim to have educated Gavin.

‘Hello everyone, and welcome to the peppermint cream lesson. Get yourselves ready and start to sieve your icing sugar into your bowls.’

Peppermint creams

Gavin thunders down to my desk and towers over me.

‘I’m going to make rum creams, Miss. Don’t like peppermint. And anyway rum is more Christmassy.’

He eyes me provocatively and sways unsteadily. His right hand clutches a bottle of rum. Half of the contents are missing. I wonder how Gavin knew what we were cooking today. I imagine he grabbed the smallest boy and threatened to throttle him if he didn’t disclose the information.

‘Tell me what she’s cooking else I’ll kill yer’ might have spluttered from his lips.

Through clouds of sugary dust I watch the class busying themselves and I sense their nervousness. A confrontation is imminent.

‘Gavin – get ready to cook and leave the bottle of rum on my desk.’

To my amazement, the rum is placed next to my pile of marking and Gavin ties his apron over his school blazer.

‘Gather round class – I’m going to show you how to crack an egg to separate out the white.’

Gavin has disappeared. Thank God. Perhaps he’s gone home. The bottle of rum looks out threateningly trying to find its owner.

Cracking eggs to separate the whites is a delicate task and large clumsy boy hands frequently break the yolks and we have to start again. I sometimes wonder if this is a ploy to use the spoilt eggs for making omelettes at the end of the lesson.

A sudden movement catches my eye. Gavin rises from behind his table and starts to attention. On his head like a helmet is one of my large pudding bowls and his right hand is raised in a Nazi salute.

‘Achtung! Miss I told you I am using rum!’

The group is silent. No one wants to be noticed. Especially not by Gavin.

‘Gavin – we can’t use alcohol in the classroom. It’s forbidden and anyway you are under drinking age.’

‘Miss, you let the girls put brandy in their Christmas cakes last week – are you picking on me?’

Gavin puffs up like the Green Giant on the adverts for those tins of sweetcorn. Only Gavin is bigger. And not jolly, not green and not friendly. And certainly not singing ‘Ho, Ho, Ho.’

But he’s right about the brandy, and surprisingly quick witted now he’s drunk. But Gavin’s wrong that I would choose to pick on him. Not unless I had two beefy minders with me for protection and a clear running track to the exit.

Gavin stumbles to my desk and grabs his rum. The rest of the group squeeze the icing dough, and roll and cut out shapes. A factory line of peppermint creams is under production in a kitchen silent with tension.

I must face my fears and deal with Gavin. He thuds his great body weight down in my chair and lets out a gigantic yawn. A quiet mumsy approach might work here.

‘Gavin – the room’s hot – you must be tired. Put your head down and just rest.’

Obediently he spreads his giant fleshy arms on my table, rests his head on his bulging forearm and begins to doze.

I turn to the class, industriously packing up their sweets and clearing away. We smile conspiratorially together. The mumsy plan has worked. Peace is restored. I have won. And next week it is the Christmas holiday.

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by | September 28, 2011

Angel Delight and all that


In 1972 Angel Delight is a magical new food and we’re making Angel Delight tart  for  our lesson on Convenience Foods.

I’ve told them to bring in the flavour of their choice or  a packet mix of something that they think saves cooking time.

Instant goodies line up  on my table. What a feast we are going to have.

Packets of Instant Whip, Bird’s Chocolate Blancmange, and Green’s Sponge mix.

Someone’s even bought in an empty packet of Vesta Beef Curry which still has a whiff of curry powder when you sniff the cardboard carton. What an introduction to the foods of India, and so easy to cook by just adding water to the dried ingredients!

I’ve added to the collection with an empty can of Campbell’s Condensed Mushroom Soup which we use straight from the can as a vol-au-vent filling, a packet of Quick Jel, a can of Carnation Evaporated Milk, bottles of Heinz Salad Cream and Tomato Ketchup and a packet of Butterscotch Angel Delight.

Angegl Delight advert

I’m so in love with Angel Delight, especially the butterscotch flavour. What a magical new product this is! All you do is add milk to the powder, then whisk until it thickens to peaks of buttery, sugary, foamy chemical alchemy. What could it be made from? Why should I care? There’s no ingredients’ list, just claims of deliciousness, which I fully support. I sent a coupon for a free packet to my mother and urged her to try it as it takes under a minute to make. She hasn’t mentioned it in any of her letters and I wonder if she’s thinking ‘muck’ like she did for my French dressing.

For the students who haven’t brought anything to cook, although cook is rather a grand term for this lesson, I’ve bought in some ready baked pastry shells, and they’ll fill them with different flavours of Angel Delight – vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and the perfect butterscotch. We’ll sprinkle Hundreds and Thousands on the top – another brilliant new product that comes in loads of bright colours and gives a crunchy, sugary topping to this delicious dish. My mother would be horrified.

Alan puts his hand up as the rest get ready.

‘Yes Alan – what now?’

We’re impatient to get on and Alan can ask irritating questions.

‘Miss, me mum says you’re supposed to teach us cooking, not opening packets.’

The others nod wisely, but remain quiet. In my lessons they like the mystery of making things from scratch yet at lunchtime they pop into my room with their instant food.

‘Can I mix this packet soup with hot water, miss, for me lunch?’

But Alan needs an answer.

‘Look, all of you. We have to learn about convenience foods and things like Angel Delight are perfect for easy to make puddings.’

My brain cells scream a question. There is no food yet invented that looks remotely like the creamy, soft foam of butterscotch Angel Delight. It is not a convenient way of inventing anything, just a spectacular triumph on its own.

The electric beaters are busy frothing the powder and milk into foamy peaks.

‘Pile the Angel Delight into the pastry then come round for a mark.’

A mark is a joke for following instructions from a packet of chemistry but we’re eager to eat.

Sylvia puts the kettle on for tea and eases a slice of pastry with beige topping onto my plate. A spoonful of froth melts in my mouth and fills it with caramelly flavours. Thankyou Mr Food Chemist for this taste sensation.

Nutritional value of this pudding – bah humbug! Who cares!

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by | August 10, 2011

Teaching bread


My first full time teaching job in 1970 was in a large north London comprehensive school, just east of Finsbury Park. Schools in inner London were under the control of ILEA – the Inner London Education Authority, and I’d been interviewed for the role at their vast headquarters at County Hall over the river, opposite the Houses of Parliament.

County Hall London

The walk down the endless, gloomy corridors to the interview room was long and daunting but my interview was quick and the result instant.

‘Do you want a job teaching home economics in London?’ said the people behind the desk.

‘Yes’, I replied.

‘Can you start in this school in September?’ said the people.

‘Yes’ , This interview was quick and easy.

‘Then we will find you a school and send you the letter of appointment with the details.’

No more questions, no interrogation, no ‘come back next week for your second, or third interview’, and certainly no ‘will you teach a sample lesson for us.’

I was ushered back down the corridors, past the benches of other interviewees sitting in the dim light and out into the summer sunshine, beside the sparkling river Thames, ready to start my new career.

No-one in authority had asked me if I knew how to cook, nor if I was good at keeping discipline in the classroom.

My new students challenged my ability to keep order, and my classes were known for being noisy, which I felt was just teenage excitement and my enthusiasm when we produced something edible. The families in the north London catchment area came from many parts of the world, especially Trinidad and Jamaica, and I wished someone had educated me more about the culture and recipes of the Caribbean. Students told me of their famous dishes of ackee and salt fish, rice and beans, jerk pork, curried goat and cassava dumplings, and I longed to try these out in the classroom. But I had to stick to the recipes from our class sets of Good Housekeeping Cooking is Fun with its endless cakes, biscuits and scones.

Good Housekeepings Cooking is Fun

The bread lesson is the one of the first tests of my limited culinary skills.

I’ve never cooked bread before but as the new teacher in the department, I don’t want to show my ignorance in front of the team of very experienced cookery teachers. They already find my miniskirts and noisy classes bothersome.

On my way to school I pop in for advice from the Jewish baker who works at the Manor House Bakery. He’s swaddled in large white overalls, and wrapped with a floury apron.

‘Help! Please help me with this class – how do I make bread,  how do I use fresh yeast and have you got any for sale?’

The baker knows many of the students I am teaching as they surge into his bakery before school, hungry for bread and cheese rolls and doughnuts for their breakfast.

He opens the huge fridge and takes out a beige yeast block carefully wrapped in soft white paper.

‘Just crumble a piece of this it into the bowl of flour and salt and mix it to a dough with warm water.  And keep all the windows closed. You need a really warm room for the bread to rise.

Good luck Jenny– let me know how you get on.’

Fresh yeast has a strange smell like the whiff of a damp basement. I break off beige crumbly lumps and line them up on a tray. In ILEA schools we provide all the ingredients and students pay ten pence a lesson. Everything must look the same in size and shape otherwise there is a squabble.

Fresh yeast

‘You chose the boys first, last time. The girls should be first this lesson.’

Grace lives up to her name, but she sometimes has a fierce side.

‘His is bigger than mine, Ma’am, it’s not fair.’

Tex is bigger than anyone, but he’s not going to bully me into a larger lump.

For some reason female teachers in inner London have to be addressed as Ma’am. If the entire class is calling for me, it sounds like a sheep field.

Ma’am, ma’am, mum….’

The class gathers around my demonstration table, waiting for instructions. There is the usual well meaning pushing, but they are eager to get on.

‘Weigh out your ingredients and take a piece of fresh yeast. Make sure your hands are really clean – any muck will get into the dough.’

They crumble the yeast into the flour, and add warm, sugary water which is carefully measured.

‘It smells like me dad’s beer kit’.

Dan sometimes helps me clear up after school.

‘The yeast is fermenting with the flour, Dan, to make carbon dioxide and alcohol, so it’s like beer making.’

‘So can we get drunk on bread Ma’am?’

Dan and friends chuckle at the prospect of an alcoholic snack.

‘No – as it cooks the alcohol evaporates.’

‘Shame that.’

‘Now class, work this dough with your hands. The more you squeeze and knead, the better it will be.’

For boys this squelchy stage is magic. Girls would rather stir elegantly with a wooden spoon. Sticky, doughy hands are distasteful.

‘Tip it out onto a floury table and knead it.’

I demonstrate how to pull and push the dough. The room warms as they punch and stretch the mixture.

‘Ma’am, help it’s slimy.’

Tex as always has not followed the recipe, and has taken more than his share of flour, and then guessed at the amount of water he needs to make the dough. His great sloppy mixture oozes over the table. I shake on more flour as a rescue remedy, but this means that Tex gets more cooking for his money, something his classmates have come to resent.

‘Now divide the dough into six and roll into balls to make your bread rolls.’

I’d forgotten to say divide equally. Balls come in all sizes.  We end up with bread rolls the size of ping pong and tennis balls but it’s too late.

‘Onto the baking trays and cover with a wet teatowel. Then into the drying cabinet to let the bread rise.’

My gas drying cabinet looked nothing like this!

These are the days before tumble dryers. Schools have large gas fired drying cabinets where I hang washed teatowels and dishcloths each night to dry. One weekend I was sure I’d left the gas cabinet on and couldn’t get back into school to check. I was right and on Monday morning my teatowels were crisp and dry – but also burnt to a brown crisp. I was lucky the school buildings didn’t join them.

My recipe bible, Cooking is Fun, says that when the rolls double in size, they are ready to bake. Someone has scratched out the word Fun and written Cooking is Horrible on one of the book covers. By the end of this lesson I might agree.

Under the teatowels, nothing is happening, but we must get baking.

‘Put your rolls in the oven and sit round my table.’

In this stonking hot room inside a London school surrounded by busy roads, roaring traffic and concrete buildings, I bring out my bundles of wheat, barley and oats picked from the quiet Northamptonshire summer fields far away up the M1.

‘Class, where does the flour come from that we use for our bread?’

They gaze back silently. We can smell the bread baking.

Barley

I hold up the stems of wheat.

‘See the grains in the top?’

I squeeze them out and pass a handful of seed around the group.

‘We crush them to make flour.’

More silence.

‘Have any of you ever seen barley? It’s used in beer and whisky making.’

There is a mild rustle of interest.

Barley is golden and spiky and the spikes make good darts which stick to your clothes, but I’m not telling them that.

‘Do you know what this last cereal is called?’

This stem is tall and dangly, with the seeds hanging on tiny threads.

Not a glimmer.

‘Oats. You know about oats?’

They do, but they’re not letting on what kind.

‘Made into porridge which you might have for breakfast.’

Breakfast? What’s that?

Enough! The rolls must be ready. They take solid, crisp lumps from the oven and put them on wire racks to cool.

‘This bread ain’t much good Ma’am. It’s too hard.’

Dan is fed up. He is proud to take his cooking home and this time it’s awful. The whole class has baked awful, hard lumps of dough. And it’s my fault.

They bag up the hard balls, pack them in their satchels and shuffle out the room. I hear the boys scuffling in the corridor and see a lump of dough arching into the air.

On my way home, I pop into the bakers.

‘How did it go?’ he asks hopefully.

Sadly, I show him the lumps from my demonstration which I plan to throw out when I’m far away from school.

‘Jenny, you didn’t prove them properly’

I explain about the hot drying cabinet and the rush to get things cooked before school ends.

‘Turn the cabinet temperature down next time and don’t be in such a hurry.

Letting bread rise is like life. Take it nice and easy and you’ll get a good result.

Rush at it and it just gets hard.’

At home, I toss my bread rolls into the garden. Even the hungry pigeons peck and go.

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Filed under Foods of the 1970s, Jenny Ridgwell, Uncategorized

by | August 8, 2011

My grandmother taught me to cook


Grandma in the 1970s

My grandmother is the only person that really showed me how to cook, and her recipes were trapped in a time warp and taken from the Bero Home Recipe book with its battered cover

Bero Home Recipesand sticky pages, which hung from a piece of string from a hook in her kitchen.

Born in 1883, she lives very frugally on her small state pension in the terraced house in Kingsley Avenue, Kettering which her husband bought in 1920 after coming back from the war. Before her marriage she worked as a laundry maid in a large house in Wimbledon, and once went on a day trip to France with the family, where she learnt her only French word, fromage.  This was the only time in her life that she travelled abroad and she is proud that she can still remember that one foreign word.

The great joy of my grandmother’s life is her large garden, and as a child I spent many hours with her when she looked after me while my mother cycled off to her busy job as the needlework teacher in the local secondary modern school. Together we’d gather, prepare and cook the fruit and vegetables that she grows.  Grandma has no fridge and no freezer, and stores perishable things like milk and butter in the cool of a lead cabinet on the marble shelf in her larder. Her spare fruit and vegetables must be made into jams, chutneys and pickles if they are to last more than a few days. In the autumn we’d peel her hard, green Conference pears, stack the

Kilner jars of pears

long slices tidily in large glass Kilner jars then top up with hot sugar syrup spiced with dark brown cloves. They stood proudly in her larder next to the jars of bottled pink Victoria plums, waiting to be made into puddings when the garden is quiet. Her cooking apples were made into chutney which joined the glowing pots of crab apple jelly, raspberry jam and pickled onions. A feast ready for the winter to tide us over until the garden comes to life in the spring.

In early March we pick the first leafy shoots of the mint, chop them finely with sugar, then mix them with pungent Sarson’s vinegar. Grandma only uses cooking ingredients with the best trade names.  Be-ro flour, Saxa salt, Lion brand white pepper, Colman’s mustard, Tate and Lyle sugar, Bisto gravy powder, Borwick baking powder and Bird’s custard. She never trusts anything else, especially not the new own label products sold in our supermarkets. Perhaps it’s her wartime memories when the quality of ingredients such as National flour plummeted.

Borwicks baking powder

We make fresh mint sauce just before her soft, succulent, slow roasted shoulder of lamb is lifted from the oven, and the banquet is complete with crispy roast potatoes and Bisto gravy and boiled cabbage.

March also brings delicate pink rhubarb, forced under large flower pots and old buckets, so that it grows sweet and tender. We pick, chop and stew it with sugar and eat it with bowls of thick, yellow Bird’s custard.

Spears of asparagus poke through the ground in early May and grandma cuts the stems with her sharp knife and pops them in a pot of boiling water. We hold them rudely in our fingers and dip the stalks in melted butter. For several days my wee smells of asparagus but I never ask grandma if she suffers too. I wonder if grandma really likes asparagus as most of it remains uncut and bolts into ferny fronds that she uses for flower arrangements.

By mid-summer her garden fills with ripening gooseberries, red and blackcurrants. We sit together in the sunshine on her wooden kitchen chairs ‘topping and tailing’ the spiky ends into an aluminium bowl. A task which takes many hours. The fruit is stewed for pies and crumbles or made into dark purple blackcurrant jam ready for winter toast and butter around her fire.

In high summer there’s strawberries, which grow through layers of dry, yellow straw, and are covered with black cotton net.

‘Tread carefully and don’t squash them, Jenny. Pick only the red ones and put that bird net back and peg it down. We don’t want that blackbird pecking our fruit.’

Birds and cats get shouted and clapped out of her garden. Persistent cats are targeted by hurling the small stones that she keeps for this purpose piled by her back door.

Strawberries are a summer treat and only grow for a few weeks and we hull, slice, and sprinkle them with fine sugar mixed with thick Jersey cream, then eat them in the sunshine.

Next to arrive are the raspberries, grown in a cage covered in a fine green net, which still traps the birds inside, who feast on the fruit, making Grandma jump around clapping her hands in fury. Grandma’s raspberries are full of tiny white maggots but she believes that pests on plants are harmless food. The delicious raspberries served with sugar and the top of the creamy milk often come with a garnish of greenfly and assorted crawling things.

‘They won’t harm you – they’ve only been eating raspberries, and they’ve got extra protein’ she’d say kindly.

Maggots in the raspberries

I squish them under my seat rather than pop them in my mouth.

In early autumn, before school starts, grandma’s trees hang with pink, wasp infested Victoria plums, and her ancient variety of mottled cooking apple which cooks to its creamy pulp which she makes into buttery apple charlotte.

October 1966 is a date for Grandma to remember. I bring my friend Tony, the only black man in Kettering, to help me gather her fruit. He climbs up the ladder propped against her giant Conference pear tree as she gazes up after him.

‘I’ve never had such a big black man pick my pears before’ she confides as we help fill baskets with hard, dark green pears which we will bottle later.

I discover later that grandma has never met a black man before.

When I leave to go to university and then onto London, grandma is sad. She rarely leaves the house now, but is always happy to see me when I visit.

Evacuees leaving London

‘ I had three London children to stay here during the war as evacuees. We had to manage on food rations then so my garden was really useful. I know they can be cheeky but you’ll get the better of them soon and they love to cook! They came up from London once to visit me and bring their own children here. I hadn’t realized how many years had passed.’

On my regular trips home as I fill my Mini Traveller with her apples, pears and rhubarb for my lessons it seems funny that we Londoners are still sharing the fruits from her garden.

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