104. It’s 1973 And There’s Something Nasty In The Fridge

Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco José de Goya, 1820-23.

  When the 1974 Michelin Great Britain and Ireland Guide was published, the first edition since 1931, I had little interest - probably none at all - in good quality food. I was a student and most evenings on returning to my flat which I shared with three other non-foodies I cooked myself an omelette and ate it with some warmed up baked beans (Heinz so I suppose I must always have had some appreciation of fine food at whatever price) and fruity brown sauce. I can’t remember seasoning my omelette but I suppose the brown sauce - also Heinz I think and not obtainable for a long time since though Branston Fruity Sauce is a worthy substitute - must have been all that was needed as a condiment for my own particular signature dish.
  My flat mates were very divided on food and the big kitchen in the flat was necessary to encompass the multiple meal preparations taking place simultaneously - one flatmate was addicted on an almost daily basis to a Birds Eye or perhaps Findus boil-in-the-bag fish in white sauce, the second co-habitant existed largely on a menu of unaccompanied bars of chocolate, glssses of milk and some cheap cereal pre-bed and the third - a large young man from Bradford distinguished by a vast mop of thick, wiry and unruly hair which seemed uncombable - saw everyday, unlike we others, as a potential culinary adventure which usually involved some unspeakably unpleasant-looking and vaguely malodorous piece of offal which culminated one afternoon in we other three returning home to open the door of the usually near-to-empty fridge to be greeted by the menacing and somewhat stomach-turning sight of an enormous uncooked bull’s testicle laid out on a large plate awaiting the attentions of our Masterchef with the uncontrollable hair. There was a general gathering in the kitchen to watch the ceremony of the cooking of the testicle and to listen unbelievingly how the chef considered it to be an excellent dish (though I have shut out from my memory quite how he prepared the dish). So excellent was it that rather surprisingly no other gigantic bull’s testicle ever again was known to materialise in our communal refrigerator though we three unwilling observers of Unruly Hair Cuisine have long suffered a form of post-traumatic stress since the revelation of what was lying on a plate in the fridge that day.

Something nasty in the fridge

  Someone rather foolishly had the idea that we should have a communal meal and each of us in turn should cook for the others. My cuisine was limited to omelette and beans and my flat mates made it clear that I would have to try harder when it was my turn to cook though I would have thought that the effort involved in preparing a decent omelette was no lesser than that involved in unwrapping a bar of chocolate or dropping a plastic bag of fish in sauce in a pan of boiling water. To make the point one of my flat mates handed me his cookbook which his mother had forced on him when he first came to university and which had not been opened up till then. It all looked far too wearisome to me and I didn't like the thought of either the cost of, or the handling of, raw meat which, though we as medical students were currently involved in dissecting human cadavers, lacked appeal to me.
  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I discovered a dish which was entirely made up of vegetables and had the intriguing name of Mock Goose and this clearly met my needs to enable me to present to my flat mates a dish which had required preparation and cooking without stretching a very limited budget and get involved with raw meat. It basically involved slicing up three or four types of root vegetables and apples and braising them in the oven for a period  of time. The result was not a happy one and played a large part in putting a stop to the fantasy of the desirability of communal eating in our four-man community. Though the recipe was about as straightforward as you might hope for it became obvious that I had neither sliced the vegetables finely enough nor did I leave them to braise for an adequate length of time and the result was a meal reminiscent of that cooked by one of Celebrity Masterchef’s loopier first round contestants - inedible, tragically undercooked, thickly sliced vegetables and nothing else.
  At least we were spared our wiry-haired flat mate’s Offal surprise as a result of my Nul points effort and so on balance I feel my flat mates had something to thank me for after all.
  But outside of our grubby little flat (actually it was really quite clean and surprisingly acceptable but you would be disappointed for that to be true of a student flat in the early 1970s, when everyone still looked very much like characters out of Withnail And I) the British food scene was coming alive and Michelin was thinking that the Ingleesh might possibly have one or two dining establishments around where a Frenchman might find a passable meal if he were unfortunate enough to find himself in this uncouth benighted country though they would have to be establishments run by and cooked in by Frenchmen or at least be places where some form of continental European cuisine was being served.
  And that brings me to the subject of this piece - was anywhere in Birmingham recommended by Michelin in Birmingham in the 1970s when the first editions of the Michelin GB Guide reappeared? The answer is revealed in Blog 105.

Footnote - For anyone wanting to experience for themselves the unimaginable hedonistic pleasure of Mock goose it’s worth noting that in some ways this is a hoary and venerable British dish originally recorded in 1742 in the cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse. She described a dish in which pork knuckle was stuffed with sage and onion, salted and peppered and served with gravy and apple sauce though why this should be called Mock Goose or Poor Man’s Goose is not entirely clear to me (why not just called it pork with sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce?)

  Later, in 1897, the dish had devolved into sausage removed from its skin baked in layers with mashed potato and again seasoned with finely chopped onion and sage (actually that sounds quite good, I might make it sometime). No mention of apple here but I should think an apple sauce would be an excellent accompaniment.

  By the time of the Second World War, with meat heavily rationed and the population glad to eat almost anything, a version of the all-vegetable Mock Goose surfaces and that, I think, was the basis for the dish outlined in my flatmate’s student cookbook and with which I regaled my house companions with such great and appreciated success.