I have followed several interests in my long life; one of them is cooking, particularly of main course savoury meals. There is at present a ‘cost of living’ crisis, growing food poverty and a questioning about how often we can afford to cook because of rocketing fuel bills. I’ve chosen therefore, for this series, recipes for some of the most economically priced and nourishing meals from my collection. Most of them contain at least one spice. Spice cookery features in the cuisine of the rich; it also has an unmistakable presence in the ‘street food’ of the poor.
The story of spices is a long and fascinating one, going back thousands of years and there are many books on the subject. Until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the East Indies were the main sources. Then European navigators discovered in the Americas a whole new series of different spices. In 1493, Christopher Columbus was the first to bring chilli seeds to Spain. Until the Portuguese took chilli and other New World spices to the Indian sub-continent, curries there were ‘hotted up’ with ginger and black pepper. During the Middle Ages, because of their high cost, spices became a kind of currency. Finchale Priory, Durham, owned the living of the ancient parish of Giggleswick. Langcliffe paid its dues in cumin, Stainforth in ginger and Giggleswick in pepper. Not many know that many spices including the ‘hot’ ones, chillies, paprika and cayenne pepper, as well as the sweet peppers are rich in health-giving properties. Spices were used for medicine and in the cuisine of the rich, while the poor ate mostly vegetable ‘pottage’ flavoured with herbs which are from the leaves and flowers of plants, spices being from the fruits and roots. We can still see on the hilly edges of our Dales villages, the medieval lynchets, the strip cultivation, where our forebears grew their vegetables, barley for beer and oats for bread and gruel.
From the end of the seventeenth century, spices and recipes for spiced meals were brought from India by members of the East India Company and later, by officers of the British Raj. Chicken curry was on the menu of a London coffee house in the 1740s. Recipes appeared about the same time. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century with the influx of workers from the Indian sub-continent, that curry and spicy meals became popular foods with many, especially with the young of the population.
At the end of WWII, my mother (a Scot) procured some long-grained rice and some curry powder and was able to make again a basic kedgeree, a mildly curried, simple and cheap fish dish brought to Scotland from India. Its main ingredient was smoked haddock. Now I often substitute the flesh of a poached kipper (as here), or a tin of sardines, or mackerel, and choose broccoli instead of spinach. Kedgeree then is a cheap and nourishing meal.
My first experience of eating curry regularly came when from 1957-9, I was teaching at a union missionary training college in Eastern Nigeria. For social occasions the missionaries took turns to invite the rest of us for dinner in their compounds. The table was always beautifully laid and we went in our best frocks. The main meal was usually a ground nut stew or a curry which we ate with little bits of fruit and nuts. I remember one occasion when the location was a remote station. We ate at a table on the verandah amid the disturbing night sounds of the African bush.
Some months later, I attempted to introduce a home-made curry to my just married husband. The reaction was unexpected, “I’m not eating a mush that smells just like the medicine given to sick cows.” He soon changed his mind. That initial reaction was understandable. He had been a farmer, before becoming a teacher. Every Sunday, his mother, roasted a huge joint of meat which they ate hot, and then cold the rest of the week. The farm had no refrigeration and the shops were nine miles away. My mother-in-law’s collection of recipes included those for cakes, biscuits, buns and scones, but not one for a savoury main course. The choice reflects the needs of the time, but the complete silence regarding mainstream cookery left no tradition of skills to pass on to the next generation.
Is the art of cooking then becoming the sole preserve of the elderly, affluent and leisured?
By Kathleen Kinder
RECIPE: KEDGEREE
Ingredients (for 1 person)
1 kipper, head and tail removed
1 hard-boiled egg
Handful of spinach
1 small onion
Juice of a lime (or lemon)
½ teaspoon each of mild curry, cayenne pepper and nutmeg
Oil for frying
60g long-grained rice
Method
Slice/chop the onion finely and fry lightly in oil.
Add the rice, and spices.
Stir and fry for 1-2 minutes.
Remove and cook mixture as you would boil rice (I use the short microwave method).
Hard boil and slice the egg, and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.
Keep the above warm as you poach prepared kipper for 4-5 minutes.
Remove kipper flesh and discard the bones, and sprinkle with lime (or lemon) juice, and mix with spiced rice and boiled egg slices.
Keep all warm as you steam the spinach and integrate with the rest.
Enjoy!
