大象传媒

Most of the ingredients of the food that appeared on my plate at dinnertimes were intended to be filling rather than satisfying. There was never so much food placed before me but that more wouldn鈥檛 have been welcome, but the feeling of a full belly when it was eaten and gone was what counted.
Whether or not the food on offer was 鈥済ood for me鈥� was not a subject deemed worthy of debate. What I was given to eat might be beneficial to my state of health or it might not. No matter, there was still a war on, there was food on the plate, it had to be eaten up, and I had no alternative but to get on with it. That was the mandate governing al my strictly scheduled mealtimes.
鈥淟eftovers鈥� weren鈥檛 allowed to exist. I couldn鈥檛 leave anything on my plate 鈥� well, not much anyway. On the occasions when the unpalatability of the offering of the day defeated all entreaties to me involving the currency of the war and the uncertainty of the immediate future, I was admonished for ingratitude and told in no uncertain terms that there was a child somewhere in the world who would be very glad to eat what was in front of me. 鈥淭hen why don鈥檛 we send it to him?鈥� was a suggestion I made that went down with those to whom it was addressed in a manner that was as acceptable to them as their inevitable follow-up clip to my ear was to me.
As a consequence, I perfected a sensory art that established itself as a committed habit, involving first sniffing the food, and then, if the odour was displeasing, rapidly shovelling up and swallowing the despised comestibles without permitting any portion of them to make contact with my tongue.
Once in a while I was forced to forsake food that I liked because I got too much of it to begin with. That didn鈥檛 happen very often, as the judgement of quantities was subject to forces beyond my control. If I didn鈥檛 seize what I could of what was available when I had the chance then I would lose out to someone else later on. I was accused of having 鈥渆yes bigger than my belly鈥�, but I didn鈥檛 mind that when the dinner was a good one.
When my Gran prepared a batch of stew in her big all-purpose blue enamel saucepan, cleaning up my serving was not only not difficult, it was accomplished with speed and vigour, permitting me to act like Oliver Twist and ask for more 鈥� provided I hadn鈥檛 been beaten to the mark by someone able to eat even faster than me. Once I knew for sure that there was no more in the offing, my ultimate act was to lick the plate shiny clean.
The licking process was carried out so industriously that Granfer told me he was worried that I was going to remove the pattern from the plate. However, he also said that licking saved on the washing up, so that was good enough for me.

Most of the Port Isaac people ate all their meals, breakfast, dinner, tea and supper (where applicable), at a family gathering seated around the home kitchen table. When a family assembled thus, the atmosphere surrounding the occasion was often rather more cloudy than sunny, especially when the edge of competition for the last few morsels was acute.
Going out to eat was an activity as unsought after as it was generally unknown where most of us were concerned.
The good old potato, normally known as a 鈥渢etty鈥�, was the quintessential back garden-grown centrepiece around which the majority of our dinners were constructed. We would not have survived long in the absence of a pile of tetties on the table.
Chopped up tetty formed the core of the pasties that we ate at least once a week. On the strength of that attribute alone a noble tetty needed to look at no greater claim to fame.
Given the scarcity of meat, tetties were influential enough to stand alone on a plate, sometimes mashed up, but generally boiled. Favoured tetty flavouring additives were, (when we had them) butter or grated cheese or chopped parsley. The three strappingly big Smith brothers were reputed to enjoy great individual batches of boiled tetties piled high in a basin with the product of a dissolved Oxo cube (what Granfer called 鈥渁 cow in a cube鈥�) poured over the lot.
The basic pasty ingredients were additionally combined to prepare the ever popular 鈥渢etty and turnip pie鈥� in a deep dish beneath a pastry crust. The piecrust was prevented from sagging by means of a strategically placed hollow china implement of support within which the bulk of the pie鈥檚 gravy had the habit of rising and collecting.
Yet another recipe involving onions and tetties (minus turnip) rendered down to a watery pulp in a frying pan and (hopefully) augmented by a couple of slivers of fatty bacon, was named 鈥渢etty uddle鈥�. It was served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon.
A Sunday joint, if we had one, lasted us for a full three days of dinners. It was roasted and eaten hot on Sunday, served as leftover cold meat with boiled potatoes on Monday, and (with whatever of it then remained) laboriously minced up as the basis for either cottage pie or (maybe) generic sausage-like 鈥渞issoles鈥� on Tuesday, when Granfer took the meaty remnants, of any cold vegetables (roasted or boiled) left from the two previous days, and ran the whole lot through a hand cranked mincing machine. Gristle snapped like a volley of gunfire as he laboriously wound the collation through the mincer鈥檚 revolving cutters.
The value of rissoles as sausage substitutes could not be overstated, much though we craved 鈥渞eal鈥� sausages. The latter were so difficult to come by that they were reckoned to be worth their weight in gold when we got them. The first task of any family group participating in the annual St Peter鈥檚 Church Sunday school outing to Plymouth was to traipse around any commercial sectors of the city that had not been entirely flattened by German bombs in a quest for half a pound of sausages. When (or if) located, the prize was snapped up with alacrity.
At Christmas we enjoyed the blessing of a chicken, as often as not thanks to the run of the cards at a whist drive attended by Gran and my mother. A chicken also provided us with three days of dinners. On Christmas Day it was roasted and eaten hot, on Boxing Day cold slices were served, and on the third day the fowl rose again to have its bones, with such attached shreds and traces of adhering meat or skin as were (improbably) overlooked on Boxing Day, boiled up to make a thick and luxurious stew in the company of tetties, turnips and suet dumplings.
Had there been an option for a fourth day chicken dinner it could have involved sucking at the ends of the chicken bones softened by the preceding day鈥檚 stew, had it not been for the fact that that sucking process had already taken place on the third day.
When Christmas past was but a fond memory and Christmas yet to come was still well out of sight in the unimaginable distance, Granfer told me all about 鈥渃hicken point鈥� and 鈥淩ussian duck鈥�, both of them useful as dishes for bridging the great poultry gap. Granfer said that if I pointed at my empty plate and imagined a roast chicken leg (or better yet a parson鈥檚 nose, my personal favourite piece) sitting on it, the conditions of chicken point would be satisfied. Russian duck demanded a more energetic preparation, and called for me to leave the kitchen for a moment, rush back in, and duck under the table.
Our butcher, Mr John Hicks, sometimes provided us with alternatives to meat that he loosely categorised as 鈥渙ffal鈥�. I tended to think of those cow related options as 鈥渁wful鈥�.
Pork offal was not quite so awful however, and if we got hold of some of that it was normally reserved for the preparation of brawn, a chunky conglomeration of well-boiled pig parts held in anonymous suspension in a matrix of yellow-brown jelly. Gran鈥檚 homemade brawn was wonderful, and usually remained uneaten for a lot less time than it took Gran to make.
Prominent varieties of cow offal were a much-dreaded trio comprised of liver, lights and tripe. Kidney might also have been a member of this awful inventory, but in its particular case it was so infrequently seen that anyone of us could be forgiven for forgetting about it.
A handful of kidney did come along on rare occasions to serve as a minor ingredient in a steak and kidney pudding, sometimes known as a suet pudding when the concoction was enclosed in a thick suet casing. The distribution of pieces of kidney in a suet pudding was similar to that of silver threepenny bits in a Christmas pudding, neither the meat nor the metal being easy to locate. The advantage held by the kidney over the coin was that a tooth couldn鈥檛 be broken on the kidney.
A suet pudding was constructed in basin, and then tied up for boiling in a muslin shroud. Inside the suet carapace the pudding contents were rich in gravy. When the pie was opened, the gravy began to sing, not very daintily, but fit for a king all the same.
My mother came home one morning with a tinned suet pudding, the first of such that I had ever seen. As dinnertime approached she placed the tin in a saucepan of boiling water, left it for a while, and removed it for opening when she judged the heating-up process had gone on for long enough. It would have been prudent if my mother had punched a pressure releasing hole in the lid at the outset, since at the first touch of a tin opener the lid blossomed and exploded in the manner of an oil gusher that I once saw head for the sky in a film starring Clark Gable up at Port Isaac鈥檚 Friday night Rivoli cinema.
The soaring burst of suet pudding was halted only by impact with our kitchen ceiling where it spread and clung in its entirety like a mat of streaky brown glue 鈥� apart from the few clots and drips that succumbed to the law of gravity. By the time the bulk of the errant suet pudding was safely scraped off the ceiling and gathered in it was well past dinnertime, but we ate the pudding all the same, and considering its adventures it didn鈥檛 taste too bad at all.

Roast heart of the cow offal variety appeared on our Sunday dinnertime table more often than I liked. In fairness, there may have been a point reached during the process of roasting a heart when the organ achieved its peak of edible perfection. That being so it was unfortunate that my mother never seemed able to hit it on the head. An underdone heart was an object that I wanted to flee away from with urgency, as a consequence of which my mother tended to overcook it well beyond the far limit of prudence. Her roasted hearts emerged from the oven bomb-like in shape, rock-like in texture, and knife bending in durability.
That was the problem with roast heart. For every roast heart that was more or less edible there were at least half a dozen others that weren鈥檛. Those of us who ate heart (or were rather compelled to eat it) were, when age finally equipped us with the power of choice, determined that no morsel of one would ever again pass our lips.
Where liver was concerned, it was interesting to me that the words 鈥渓iver鈥� and 鈥渓eather鈥� sounded very similar to one another, especially when spoken with a Port Isaac accent. No matter what was done to cook those shivering slabs of dense purple tissue, the invariable outcome was a product that offered a much greater benefit to the soles of boots than to the inside of a stomach.
The preparation of liver for consumption was a lottery that was lost more often than it was won. On the other hand, winning could bring good times. Fried liver and onions (the latter being liver鈥檚 chief associate as we knew it) was one of my favourites, always provided that the liver had been extracted from a younger than usual bovine. The pity was that all too often the cow supplying liver that we obtained from Mr John Hicks was, like John, an antiquated member of its species.
The very aptly named tripe was cut up into pale rubbery sheets, flat and shiny on one side, and coarsely furred with minute tentacles on the other. Tripe was the worst penance visited by cow awful on an unwilling palate. When tripe was cooked it turned oleaginous, deathly white, slick and slimy. At the least contact with a fork, a piece of tripe slid ominously on the plate as if it was intent on taking evasive action. The touch of tripe on the inside of my mouth was an abomination. I swallowed tripe without tasting it. It was the only way.
Cow鈥檚 lights were unpleasantly spongy pieces of lung. I didn鈥檛 know of anyone who ever sat down to eat lights on Sunday or on any other day for that matter, although that didn鈥檛 necessarily mean that there weren鈥檛 some people somewhere in Port Isaac who were so inclined.

The suet that enclosed bits of steak and sporadic pieces of kidney so as to successfully turn the ingredients into a steak and kidney pudding, also provided substance for the wonderfully formed dumplings that sat on top of so many stews. Sticky on the outside and firm at the centre, dumplings were a chewy, stomach-filling dream.
Shaped like a loaf of bread and studded with raisins or sultanas or currants (depending on availability), a dumpling mix was transformed into a legendary 鈥渇iggy duff鈥� - the ideal sweet/savoury sliced-up accompaniment to the delectable concoction of lentils flavoured by a bony knuckle of ham that was known as pea soup. Although there was a lot more bone than there was ham on any knuckle that went into Gran鈥檚 pea soup, Gran boiled the knuckle until the meat fell off the bone, so not a shred of ham was lost.
A steamed pudding with a suet base made a memorable treat, especially when it was capped with treacle. It wasn鈥檛 quite as good as rice pudding, but we were happy to live with the difference. The treacle (Lyle鈥檚 Golden Syrup with its unforgettable motto 鈥渙ut of the strong came forth sweetness鈥�) soaked into the summit of the pudding, and when the pudding was turned out ran down the basin-conjured side slopes like lava coming out of a volcano.
Jam was a reasonably adequate alternative to treacle in a steamed pudding. Lemon curd wasn鈥檛. Not for nothing was lemon curd known by us as 鈥減hlegm and turd鈥�.
On the other hand there was no doubt in my mind that the best dish for afters was a rice pudding with a spotty brown skin on top.
It was alleged that there were people in Port Isaac who 鈥渃ouldn鈥檛 knock the skin off a rice pudding鈥� - if such people existed I didn鈥檛 want to know them. In close proximity to a rice pudding, any boy worth his salt was prepared to fight for the privilege of knocking off the skin, and to gobble up and savour every sweet morsel that lay beneath.
The enamel dish in which a rice pudding was baked was the ultimate prize to be won, because it provided the opportunity for getting stuck into scraping away and revelling in the luxury of the melt-in-the-mouth curling remnants of the rice pudding skin fused to the edge of the dish. Those bits were so delicious that I would have scraped the enamel from the dish to make sure I didn鈥檛 miss a single speck of the bounty.

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