One of the most glorious times was when my mother made welsh cakes – griddle cakes eaten warm from the pan - just about the most heavenly experience, even though if you consumed them too quickly you’d burn your mouth and get heartburn. Small matter.
On Saturdays I would offer to make lunch while Mum and Dad were busy in the bar – my speciality at age 12 was shepherd’s pie - at least my concoction of it. The dish centred around a rectangle of corned beef from the Argentine. The rectangular can came with a key and unless the key was properly inserted into the metal strip at the top of the can disaster would follow. Getting the corned beef out of the can with a regular can opener was next to impossible. Corned beef removed and chopped, I added fried onions and a can of baked beans, mixing up the concoction in a casserole dish. Topped with lashings of mashed potatoes and butter the pie would be ready for consumption when the liquid bubbled through the potatoes. It was served alone.
I suppose fried onions are a vegetable, but the notion of adding cooked "green" vegetables to a meal had yet to be conceived. Mushy peas and cabbage were the only green vegetables I remember with the family roast, but they were boiled until all trace of colour had gone. Dad, an army cook at one point in his life, subscribed to the principle that vegetables were not cooked until they were grey. He was particularly enthusiastic about mashing the cabbage in boiling water and despite its lack of colour the cabbage was always tasty because it had been cooked with fat bacon. The mushy peas were a sort of greenish colour, but not through any natural cause – the bicarbonate of soda added to the boiling water gave the peas that distinctive hue, best disguised in lots of beef gravy.
Mediterranean-style cooking had yet to enter my life.
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