Dishy Stories

By Ian Grierson

Dishy Stories serves up a smorgasbord of culinary delights, from the exotic Hungarian cherry soup and French potato classics to the comfort of British and Irish game birds paired with fruit. While many dishes like chip butties, sausages with dumplings, and cheese on toast are everyday favourites, they each carry a rich history that often goes unnoticed.

This collection is more than just recipes; it’s a journey through the unique and captivating tales behind the foods we love. From the familiar to the gourmet, every meal has a story to tell. With each chapter ending in a recipe, Dishy Stories invites you to explore the origins and narratives of dishes that grace our tables, offering a fresh perspective on the heritage of these kitchen staples. Enjoy the tales and tastes that have woven their way into our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398497979

Ian Grierson

Ian Grierson is an ocular scientist who has helped us understand the disease processes of the aging eye. He is emeritus professor of ophthalmology at the University of Liverpool. He also runs a consultancy firm, advising on vision and nutrition, and is an enthusiastic home cook who has written four recipe books to date. In his writing, he combines his passion for food with his research background to investigate the history and origins of the foods we eat.

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About the Author

Ian Grierson is an ocular scientist who has helped us understand the disease processes of the aging eye. He is emeritus professor of ophthalmology at the University of Liverpool. He also runs a consultancy firm, advising on vision and nutrition, and is an enthusiastic home cook who has written four recipe books to date. In his writing, he combines his passion for food with his research background to investigate the history and origins of the foods we eat.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my mum, Gwen Grierson, who taught me to cook, to respect food and always to write down my recipes as she always did.

Copyright Information ©

Ian Grierson 2024

The right of Ian Grierson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398497962 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398497979 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Angela Reidy who has helped throughout and my son, Matthew Grierson, who has read all that I have written. Also, I thank the Wirral Society of the Blind and Partly Sighted (WSPBS), who first encouraged me to write about cooking.

1. Coronation Chicken

Surely it can’t be as bad here as in the last place? I say to myself as I order up my Coronation chicken panini from a nearby sandwich shop. The bread is buttered, OK so far, but then a dollop of putrid yellow chicken lumpy goop, black speckled with dry currants, hits the bread and spills out staining the worktop. The top is put in place, the sandwich sliced on the diagonal, then packaged. Enjoy, remarks the shopkeeper but I’m not sure whether her statement is followed by an exclamation or a question mark.

Coronation chicken, as a sandwich or hot potato filling, is everywhere in the UK these days. However, it is a much more effective as a hard to remove stain on clothes than a gourmet treat that it once was reported to be back in the mid-twentieth! Without a shadow of doubt, Coronation Chicken is universally established within the English-speaking world including USA. Ina Garten, an American food writer, specialty food store owner and TV cook, promoted her version of Coronation chicken as curried chicken salad during the early 1980s with great success. These days, despite our familiarity with Coronation chicken, it no longer sends the pulse racing as it once used to do to gourmets. In fact, here and abroad many see it as a retro dish more at home in bygone times.

The Coronation where it first appeared was that of Elizabeth II in 1953. It was still a time of post War austerity and rationing had entered its 14th (and thankfully) final year. I was a tubby 5-year-old who, at the street celebrations in south London, tasted egg and cress sandwiches for the very first time. Mine was not a poor family but precious eggs (rationed to one per person per week) were not up until then to be wasted frivolously between two slices of bread! Some way north of us in the Guild Hall, Queen Elizabeth and her guests were sitting down to a luncheon prepared by Rosemary Hume and staff. Rosemary was the head and leading light of the London Cordon Bleu School of Cookery. One course was her famous curry and mayonnaise chicken preparation that was accompanied by a cold rice pilaf doused in French dressing.

Nothing to write home about—well, it’s all about time, place and context, isn’t it? Even the well-to-do only ate their rice, if they could get it, as a pudding. It you wanted olive oil you went to the chemist shop and few except the very well-travelled knew of mayonnaise but Brits did have salad cream out of a bottle! Rosemary Hume’s cooking was strongly influenced by France and, as was the English tradition pre-War also in the fifties and for some time thereafter, her menu was in French. Coronation chicken was entitled Poulet Reine Elizabeth and chicken Queen Elizabeth only became Coronation chicken in 1956 when Constance Spry put Rosemary Hume’s recipe collection into print. It was a hugely influential publication called the Constance Spry Cookery Book—all the more remarkable given that Constance Spry was a florist not a cook. This pink-coloured hardback, my copy looking rather battered these days, still has considerable kitchen wisdom to offer.

The whole Guild Hall luncheon was an outstanding success but it was Coronation chicken that became the talk of London and then the whole country. Questions abounded like when last did you have chicken?, how do you make that mayonnaise stuff? and I thought it was only Indians and ex colonials who ate curry? The Constance Spry book significantly was published after the ending of rationing so over the following years Coronation Chicken could be tried at home and adapted to what was in the larder. Essentially the recipe if it remained faithful to the principle of mixing cooked chicken, mayonnaise and curry powder together then it was in essence Coronation chicken. As a result all sorts of combinations nestle rather unattractively or attractively under the Coronation umbrella but are not by any means the real thing as sampled by the select few in 1953.

The foodie worm inside my head asked what is the difference between Rosemary Hume’s original Coronation chicken, the Ina Garten curried chicken salad and modern commercial preparations. Best start at the beginning, I guess, and I admit not to have followed Hume’s actual recipe for decades. The first thing to say is it requires plenty of kitchen time but the end result is worth it! I boiled the chicken the day before in a more complex bullion than Rosemary used just to push in extra flavour. The Hume sauce is not just mayo and curry but a complex creation combining an onion, curry powder, tomato puree, red wine reduction and others, with a dry apricot-based puree and mayonnaise thinned with lightly whipped cream (12 constituents in all). Calorific but extraordinarily tasty especially when mixed with chicken made juicy from poaching rather than just using left over roast chicken that is inevitably on the dry side.

Ina Garten’s version involves roast chicken, celery (not traditional), shop mayonnaise, lots of mango chutney (her addition), white rather than red wine, chopped spring onion in the sauce not just white onion in the infusion, lots of raisins (where did they come from?) and nuts like almond flakes or chopped cashews (crunchy but not traditional at all!). Once the whole chicken or chicken parts are roasted and cooled, the salad involves mixing constituents but no further cooking. I found the Ina Garten recipe both easy and quick to prepare, remarkably quick as it happens and, only when the ingredients are of decent quality, nice to eat. Of course, Garten’s shop in the Hamptons was about selling food but also shifting baguettes and wraps with interesting fillings. Her recipe was, and still is, an ideal one in that respect whereas the Rosemary Hume original is much cheffier.

I bought a Coronation chicken salad box from my local deli and some readymade sandwich fillers (in packet and even tin) from nearby supermarkets. The Hume creation in my hands was a subtle brownish pink (from the red wine and tomato paste), the Garten version was a rich cream colour whereas all of my bought Coronation chickens were yellow, some vivid yellow! Presumably turmeric was to blame? If so it is definitely not traditional. My commercial fillings ranged in taste from grim to just about OK. All had currants or sultanas and there was the unavoidable presence of mango chutney ranging from a background hint to totally overwhelming. If there was apricot in with the rather dry tasteless chicken I could not pick it up. It seemed to me the dried fruit, chutney and curry were there in abundance to disguise the poorness of the meat. The Garten, and particularly the Hume, sauce recipes were far more subtle and balanced so serving to enhance their chicken component not to over whelm it completely.

There is nothing wrong with the Garten recipe, I make something similar frequently only cutting out the mango chutney and substituting apricot puree. I believe the Hume recipe however has been lost to many of us. Here is my version that uses a richer bullion to poach the chicken and lower the calories in the sauce by dropping the whipped cream and replacing it with plain yoghurt.

A Version of Rosemary Hunt’s 1953 Coronation Chicken Creation; Plenty for 4 Meals:

Chicken

1½ kilo chicken

250ml red wine and water to cover

3 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 1 onion

1 chicken stock cube

Bouquet garni with additional thyme

Salt and pepper

Place the chicken in a deep stock pot and cover with wine and enough water to top off the chicken. Add in the vegetables unpeeled and roughly chopped, the chicken stock cube plus bouquet garni, thyme and seasoning. Bring up to simmer and cook for 60 minutes but make sure it is at least 45 minutes. When cool, remove the abundant juicy meat and place in a bowl.

Sauce

15ml (1 tbsp.) oil

1 onion fine dice

15ml (1 tbsp.) of medium curry powder

5ml (1 tbsp.) tomato puree

200ml red wine

1 bay leaf

5ml (1 tbsp.) lemon juice

2 fresh apricots (or 4 dried ready to eat apricots) chopped

150ml mayonnaise

100ml plain yoghurt

Cook the diced onion in oil for 3 minutes, add curry powder cooking for 2 minutes more. In with the tomato puree, red wine and bay leaf; then simmer for 5 minutes. Strain and let the curry liquid cool to room temperature. Puree the apricots with lemon juice using a hand blender and place in a bowl adding the mayo and yoghurt, mix well then add curry liquid. Adjust as required—extra mayo makes the sauce creamier, yoghurt thins the sauce while more lemon juice sharpens it.

When ready, mix some sauce with the chicken, add more until the chicken is coated but not swimming in sauce. Serve with green salad or sliced tomato as a tasty lunch. Alternatively plate out with pilau rice as a main meal and chopped fresh mango on the side.

P.S. Fresh apricots are very seasonal so if you use dried apricots, make sure they are the softer, ready-to-eat version, and soften further in lemon juice and blitz.

2. Keema Peas

Keema, in the Indian Subcontinent, is ground meats or mince while peas are muttar in Hindi. Keema muttar is not however a curry you would find in many restaurants over there because, when eating out in India or Pakistan, the customers generally want something a little more special to dine on. There, as is the case in many other places, mince is just a way of using up the less desirable fatty cuts of meat. Consequently our economy dish is eaten as a common homemade meal particularly in the northern regions of India such as Kashmir and Punjab also in the countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. On the other hand this curry is rare or absent from the middle regions of India and even more so down in the predominantly vegetarian southern Indian states.

Spicy mince probably did not originate in the Indian Subcontinent but more likely came from the kofta (meatball) and kebabi traditions of Iran and Turkey. Definitely brought into this part of the world by the Moguls who first arrived in Northern India in the sixteenth century. However this dish may have arrived well before that time. Surprisingly keema was considered a luxury item among the Mogul princes of Northern India so keemas must have been made from the best cuts of meats in those days specifically for princes. The word keema most likely is derived from the Turkish kiyma meaning chopped or minced meats. For instance the famous Adana kebabi was also called kiyma kebabi. If kiyma is mixed with chopped vegetables it is called kiymali such as for example the Turkish pizza with a mince and vegetable topping known as kiymali pide. Our keema matter is a close relation to these Turkish delights. As also is the case for the mince dishes of Iran/Persia such as lobia polo (mince and green beans), lamb mince pilaf and kabob koobideh (minced meat kebabs).

The mince curry is usually mutton, lamb, beef (in Pakistan) or even chicken in some places. Traditionally it is spiced with plenty of green chillies, turmeric, ginger, cumin, coriander, lots of garlic and garam masala so it usually packs a powerful and quite complex flavour punch. Lots of onions and some tomatoes are essential constituents but green peas (muttar) are the dominant vegetable by far.

Indian restaurants have been in Britain for some time but were a rarity and mostly limited to London. Then in the 1960s, with the huge influx of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis throughout the country, an explosion in the numbers of so-called Indian restaurants took place. Often they were owned and run by Bangladeshi chefs. The curry houses, providing inexpensive sit-down meals or takeaways, became extremely popular. By this means Brits, particularly young adults, became familiar with kormas, biryanis, butter chicken, madras curries, tandoori, rogan josh, jalfrezi, tikkas and the like. The brave, or the foolhardy from the effects of strong drink, might take on the ferocious vindaloo or thali dishes, usually with regret but only the next day! However even in the cheapest of curry houses, it was uncommon to find our keema muttar on the menu. Presumably this lowly staple meal must have been thought by the restaurant owners not to be sufficiently attractive to their predominantly white British customers.

Back in the days of the late 1960s and the 1970s there was one city of exception, a mince oasis in an otherwise virtually barren United Kingdom. That exception was Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland where during those decades, curry central was Gibson Street in the West End. I was an undergraduate at Glasgow University and stayed on to do my doctorate at the Western Hospital during that time. When in the Student Union on a good day the smell of curry from nearby Gibson Street was frequently over powering. My top curry shops were the Shish Mahal where I had my first curry (a lamb biryani) and the Koh-I-Noor, which was on the other side of the street.

I always thought the Shish had the better range of curries but the Koh had superb keema peas (as they called the dish on the menu). Very soon after my introduction to curry shop curries, I found keema muttar. Although I enjoyed a wide range of different curries, a mutton keema was my default meal of choice especially if it was visiting a new place and curry shops were popping up all over Glasgow, not just in the West End. I think I tried most of them in my time and they all had keema muttar, some bad, others good but none as good as the Koh. That aside, my point is that almost every Glasgow place had a mince curry on offer of some sort or another. I left Glasgow in 1978 for London and one of the many shocks was that East End, West End, North of the river, south of the river plenty curry shops but no keema muttar. Not even Brick Lane had my favourite supper listed on those comprehensive and extensive menus.

Many years later I moved to Liverpool and Merseyside, halfway home and very decent sit down or takeaway curries but no keema mutter anywhere I could find. Over 20 years later, we finally moved back to Scotland. I never lived in Glasgow again but where ever we settled keema peas or keema muttar was on every large and small town curry shop menu. I have one of my favourite curries back again but I ask myself how do they compare to the diamond one at the Koh-I-Noor? I go to Glasgow regularly because one of my sons lives there but unfortunately that gem of a curry shop, the Koh no longer exists. One stormy night towards the end of the 1970s the curry shop collapsed into the adjacent River Kelvin and was no more. It did relocate but by all accounts was never the same again and has recently closed (2020). Its rival the Shish also relocated but as yet I have not been there at its present site.

Why would spicy mince curries be so popular in Scotland and must less so in England? Perhaps, might I suggest, we were almost there with one of our classic Scottish dishes called beef mince and tatties (potatoes). Essentially, in terms of English cuisine, mince and tatties is deconstructed cottage pie. Mince in Scotland, especially beef mince, is usually a quality product—lightly ground rump steak is frequently the basis of Scots steak mince. Why is beef mince seen in Scotland as something special but not elsewhere in the UK? Again it is historical, Scots, with their fluoride free water and an enthusiasm for sugar, had poor teeth. Only a little before my time in Glasgow, a 21st birthday present was to get bad teeth removed! You need decent teeth to eat a steak but not if it had been turned into steak mince!

Classic Scots mince is cooked with sliced onion and chopped carrot then served up with mashed potato and processed peas. Adding a good dollop of mustard, Worcestershire sauce and/or Tabasco (see later 28. Worcestershire and Tabasco) is an often-used trick to enhance the beef mince and give it a bit of a kick. As a result you can appreciate that the jump from a local spicy mince, tatties and peas dinner to exotic keema muttar, a curried mince and peas special from faraway places, is not as large a one as might be supposed.

In the midst of curry shop keema free years in England, I came up with my own home cooked dish that I hope you try.

Home Made Keema Peas (For 3 or 4)

30ml (2 tbsps.) oil

6 black peppercorns

1 onion chopped

2 carrots chopped fine

2.5ml (½ tbsp.) ginger paste

5ml (1 tbsp.) ground cumin

5ml (1 tbsp.) ground coriander

2.5ml (½ tbsp.) ground turmeric

3 garlic cloves crushed

2 green chillies chopped

2 bay leaves

500g lamb mince (butcher shop best quality)

200g tinned chopped tomato (½ tin)

200ml lamb stock

200g frozen peas

5ml (1 tbsp.) garam masala

45ml fresh chopped coriander

Heat the oil in a pan and add the peppercorns, onion and carrot and cook for 3 minutes. Add in the spices, crushed garlic, chillies and bay leaves and fry for two minutes more. Mix in the mince, break it up and let it colour for 2 or 3 minutes more. Now in with the tomato and stock and cook in the pan with lid on, stirring now and then for 30 minutes. Add in your peas and cook for a few minutes (3–4 minutes max) with lid off to reduce the liquid and bulk up. Put in the garam masala 2 minutes before the end. Scatter on the coriander and its ready to serve up.

Good with basmati rice but better with breads such as poppadum, chapattis, rotis or naans whatever you like best. For me I always have a paratha as a base with a portion of keema muttar on top—great.

P.S. I enjoy my keema muttar and paratha, with a side dish of Bombay potatoes (Bombay aloo) now and then. It reminds me of a spicy mince and tatties with bread on the side—the old Scottish stand by. Indeed mince and tatties come together in a common Pakistan variant of keema muttar called aloo keema.

3. The Chip Butty

My grandpa, whether at home or in a restaurant, loved steak pie, peas and chips but he needed to have several slices of buttered white bread on the side. Onto these he shovelled his chips, much to my Grannie’s dismay whose scolding only made his illicit chip butties all the more desirable to him. For me, as a small boy watching on, the chip sandwich became magnificent but contraband all at the same time. Needless to say, after this negative family conditioning, the chip butty was, and still remains, a treasured treat. If ever I am eating a chip butty, I apologise to anyone who is near at hand in a vain attempt to convince them I don’t eat such ridiculous carbohydrate overkill very often. Then I guzzle into the soft buttery bread that combines divinely with the salty chips to create a masterpiece (a joke if you know that the Scots word for a butty is a piece). I devour my butty like a solitary ravenous wolf, partly because it tastes so good but mostly because it is such a sinful treat and someone might see me.

The idea of combining one lot of starch with another to make a delicious, filling and inexpensive meal has its roots in the heavily industrialised North of England of the nineteenth century. Precisely where the chip sandwich came into being is obscure although there are strong claims from either side of the Pennines. In Lancashire, packets of chips were being sold to workers long before the opening of the North’s first fish and chip shop in Oldham in 1863 (making it the second in the whole country). Recorded evidence of chip barms was missing until the twentieth century, however it is more than likely bread with a chip filling was around before then. I know I’m being picky but it has to be said a barm is a roll not a sandwich. Even to this day if you ask for a chip butty in chip shops in Merseyside, Lancashire and elsewhere for that matter you get chips in a roll.

A chip roll is OK but a chip sandwich made with thick fresh white bread is better. If you only have brown bread please make some other sort of sandwich—the chip butty is not for you today! Lancashire’s claim would be disputed by Yorkshire where as many or even more chip butties were (and still are) devoured. Indeed butty is Yorkshire slang for buttered sandwich. So the ideal chip butty to my mind is two very thick slices of white bread, liberally spread with plenty yellow butter.

Onto one slice goes a pile of hot chip shop chips, a lashing of salt (you can’t live forever) and plenty vinegar. On with the top and pour out your tea, coffee or soft drink—wait a little, just a little! There is chemistry going on in your sandwich, the butter is melting into the bread and coating the chips. Your chip butty must not get cold so the warm butter can dribble down your chin on the first bite. What about ketchup or brown sauce? Not for me, they detract from the flavour. To my personal taste, fat chip shop bought chips are better in a butty than homemade but that is up to you.

Do other countries eat chip sandwiches? Yes they do, Scots, Welsh and Irish like the odd chip butty but further afield the chip sandwich tends to get more complicated. For example Australians like their chip sangas (chip butties to we Brits) but tend to add more than tomato ketchup ranging from processed cheese right through to that very Aussie construction called vegemite. While in New Zealand they also know of the hot chip butty as a fatty friend. Whereas in USA, fries accompany cold or hot meats and salad in some of their massive sandwich creations but they are never the main players. Although if you ever visit Belgium, the home of chips, you might come across the killer of all chip butties. I believe in the French speaking part of Belgium you have the ultimate chippie creation they call the mitraillette (submachine gun).

Your submachine gun is a massive calorie hit available in every friterie (chip shop) and even some cafes particularly in the Capital Brussels and throughout the southwest of Belgium. The chip monster is thought to have originated in Brussels although this is disputed by some foodies. Certainly it is not restricted to the Capital and even spills over into North East France where it may be called a mitraillette but more likely it is l’americain. Not that the butty is American but reminds the French of the giant sandwiches Americans like to eat!

The main stars are the baguette and the mass of chips but there are extras including meats (mini burgers, sausage, meatballs and even steak for example), vegetables (lettuce, sliced tomato, fried onion and even cabbage in the form of sauerkraut) and, this being Belgium, there has to be sauce (ketchup, mayonnaise, garlic mayo, curry sauce, mayo mixed with pepper puree and so on). For that matter, there are so many versions each friterie has its own signature combination it seems at least to me. Why is it called a submachine gun? The best guess is that the baguette looks like the barrel of a submachine gun and that being so the massive bulk of chips are the bullets.

UK Mitraillette for 1.

1 baguette (size depends on you)

Squeezy curry ketchup

3 supermarket mini burgers (sliders size) grilled

3 slices of tomato

Shovel full of hot chips

Squeezy mayo or garlic mayo

Take your baguette and slice off each end and open up along the middle then place on a warm plate. Squeeze plenty of curry ketchup on the base of you sandwich now in with the warm burgers forming a row and top each with a tomato slice. Pack in as many hot chips as you can until they are spilling all over the plate—spilling out is usual! You will not be able to close the baguette easily, if you can there is not enough filling! Before you try closing up the beast, squirt in a good measure of mayonnaise then devour the thing best you can. I must warn you that after a bite or so your jaws will ache and there may be a trickle or two of mayo and curry ketchup down your sleeve!

P.S. if you have access to square (flat) sausage or frikadellen then they work just as well as mini burgers. The Belgian mitraillette is a different beast from the English chip butty. The former is complex overkill and indulgence whereas the latter is carbohydrate simplicity. Both designed to make your short life a happy one!

4. Salade Nicoise

I do like a tasty salad, how about you? We all have ones we prefer over others of course. That might be Waldorf with its nuts and apples, Caesar rich in Romaine lettuce, creamy anchovy sauce and croutons or just a simple red salad with tasty tomato and sliced red pepper dripping in dressing. I like all of those and many more but for me, given a choice, it is easy. If salad Nicoise is an option then that is for me please! Given you have a nice summer’s day, then forget the sandwiches or hot food, a salad is an obvious lunch. As I am invariably in default mode, the result is a Nicoise or something close to that construction. I think it is the perfect salad as I have always believed salads are all about flavoursome taste combinations and essential freshness. Further I have the absolute requirement that my salad needs to be an interesting merger of textures combining the best quality ingredients I can afford. Cheap tasteless tomatoes, bitter cucumbers and dull wilting lettuce don’t do anything for a salad’s reputation.

Salade Nicoise ticks all of those taste and texture boxes including a few more besides in my own opinion. Looking at Google on line I see that invariably it is listed as one of the world’s top salads and I have no doubts what so ever that it is exactly where this salad deserves to be. It is enjoyed by normal folks but tends to have lots of detractors among chefs and food writers. The salad comes from the city of Nice and the surrounding region of Provence. Our Nicoise is French of course but Provence, and Nice in particular, have extremely close associations with Italy so our dish has hints of both countries’ cuisines.

Ok here comes the kicker. I have waxed lyrical about Salade Nicoise but every time I have it in a restaurant, it is a lottery—I have no idea what I’m going to get. If you find two recipes anywhere that have exactly the same constituents and dressing then I will be amazed. Historically and geographically (both inside and outside Provence), it is a chameleon capable of infinite alterations. I quite like that and as I enjoy most of the combinations so it isn’t an issue for me. On the other hand there are loads of chefs and foodies who get hot under the collar about this salad and what should go into it. Others just think that Salade Nicoise should only be referred to if preceded by rude words. Elizabeth Luard in her book called European Peasant Cookery she said of Salade Nicoise, this is one of the most abused salads ever devised.

One problem is that back in the late nineteenth century, when Salade Nicoise came into existence, our dish was a starter or more correctly, a hors d’oeuvre. As a result the originally small salad had few constituents and even they were not fixed. As the salad grew to a lunch size, over the years, different folks bulked up their salad in a variety of ways with numerous additional constituents. Others hated what they were doing. Recipe stability is often brought about by the premier chefs of the day having a uniform approach to a given dish and that is especially the case in France. None of this happened for Salade Nicoise there was no consistency then and even less now. Therefore it is not a salad for the purists, the food historians or the fixated but despite its massive variability in constituents it has loads of fans including me. Essentially the salad can have between 3 and 5 basic elements although that can rise steeply to 20 plus but not without a great deal of controversy I would suggest.

The basic components to my mind, based on Provencal thinking, is to have canned tuna or salted anchovies but not both and never fresh tuna steaks. I’m not too sure about versions of the dish that contain fresh salmon or trout either. These rules are invariably broken elsewhere in France and the rest of the world. Certainly fresh tuna and salmon for that matter fail to integrate into the salad so at least to me the fresh fish is a waste of time whereas professional chefs and food writers have an aversion to canned tuna even the good stuff. On the other hand I think it essential and since I love anchovies, my salad of preference has both. I read but don’t understand that surveys published in newspapers and the internet put anchovies towards the top of their lists of most disliked foods in Britain—extraordinary! Since Julia Child, who enthused Americans in the 1960s and 1970s about the French way of eating, has in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking a Nicoise recipe involving both anchovies and tuna I am in very good company.

Sliced tomatoes, black stoned olives and some garlic are essential constituents but there are those that argue about whether the tomatoes should be French or Italian, skin on or skin off or even whether they should have the pulp removed (what is wrong with these people?). Uncooked green beans are central to the dish but should they be broad (fava) beans or French beans (haricots verts)? I go for French beans every time but in Nice it is fava beans that are favoured. Slices of cooked waxy potatoes are also an option. Indeed the great Escoffier, who came from the Nice area originally, first introduced us to potato and green beans as Nicoise ingredients. In addition, a scattering of uncooked young artichokes (very Italian, too fussy for me and a fuff finding them in most British stores even in season) plus a scattering of sliced green peppers (yes they work fine in this dish) complete the vegetable contribution. The traditional dressing is good olive oil and red wine vinegar but mustard dressing and all sorts of combinations are used at times depending on the chef or food writer.

The fish, the salad vegetables and the dressing make up the basic salad. If you are struggling getting to grips with what is and what is not the makings of an authentic Salade Nicoise. The good news is that everyone struggles and preference should rule over fact (given there are so few real facts)! The bad news however is that there are a host of other additional salad ingredients to consider but the most prominent are eggs (hard boiled, definitely not poached) and spring onions. Are they essential? You bet they are—to me both are vital. On the other hand some include lettuce leaves, which are not for me in this dish. If you want to go down the lettuce route then cos lettuce is optimal. In addition, I remember my first memorable Nicoise was not in France but in Canada (Vancouver) and it had fresh baby spinach.

It is a salad of infinite possibilities and alternative—a charm or a curse? I believe there are still those who think our salad should remain a hors d’oeuvre while obviously the lettuce, hard boiled eggs, green beans and potatoes bulk Salade Nicoise out into a substantial lunch or a decent supper (I’m all for that—and what is there not to like among these particular ingredients?) For what it’s worth, here is my ideal salad.

Salade Nicoise (For 4 to 6 People Depending How Hungry You Are)

1kg of baby potatoes

3 eggs

1 clove of garlic

6 vine tomatoes sliced

200g of French beans sliced long ways

2 green peppers, thin sliced

8 spring onions chopped

120g black olives stoned

15 anchovy fillets or so chopped

250g of good quality canned tuna

90ml (6 tbsps) extra virgin olive oil

30ml (2 tbsps) red wine vinegar

Do not peel the potatoes but half them, particularly the larger ones. Place in boiling water in a large pan on the hob and cook for 15mins. After 5 minutes add in the eggs. Strain and let the potatoes and eggs cool. Rub the garlic over the salad serving plate. Spread the sliced tomato over the plate, also the sliced beans, spring onions and olives. The cooled down potato now goes into the salad mixture. Drain the tuna, break it up and mix it into the vegetables while doing the same with the chopped anchovy fillets. Peel the eggs, quarter and place on the dish. Grate any remaining garlic into the dressing mixture of oil and vinegar and pour the dressing onto the salad. Enjoy, some foodies say only the ignorant enjoy a Salade Nicoise—I’m delighted to be an ignoramus.

P.S. There are clearly chequered opinions about this salad and the requirement that if you are using tuna (and I do) it should be canned. However despite it being canned you should use the very best quality you can afford. That also (if more so) applies to the anchovies given that they are a dominant flavour.

5. Noodles in an Instant

Spaghetti was not an Italian invention; they were quite late on the noodle scene as it turns out. Some say Marco Polo brought noodles back home from China but there is no written proof of that and so it is likely to be another Marco Polo myth. What is well documented however is that spaghetti-type noodles first came to Europe from North Africa not via Italy but, at the time, the independent kingdom of Sicily. In the twelfth century, Sicily was Norman and when ruled by Roger II, the Kingdom was an eclectic mix of Europeans and North Africans.

Arabs brought in pasta and taught the locals how to make this staple. Given there were Arab invasions of Sicily from the ninth century onwards, pasta might have been around on that Island before Roger. Once and whenever the Sicilians had their pasta, they converted what essentially was a sweet product to a savoury one made from their local durum wheat flour, eggs and water. Soon they were exporting their creation to other Mediterranean Islands and to the Mainland itself.

On the time line of pasta eating, the European experience started 900 years ago or so whereas pasta making and eating goes back, based on scientific findings, thousands of years! The source of that original pasta was far away China. A group of Chinese archaeologists uncovered a bowl of noodles in a settlement on the Yellow River that they carbon dated to being 4,000 years old! Remarkable in itself if this was the beginning of pasta making but clearly by that time a bowl of noodles was an established meal. Therefore logically the origins of this foodstuff must go further back than that! It is believed that the ancient bowl of noodles had been used in a burial ceremony suggesting that early pasta was a treasured delicacy perhaps?

From China, noodle eating spread quickly to surrounding countries with the exception of Japan. Progress westward also took place such that pasta noodles were in the Middle East somewhere around 500 AD. They reached North Africa later and were an established food by the time of the Arab conquests in the seventh century. Although we don’t associate pasta dishes with Modern Middle Eastern cuisine, they are there to be enjoyed if you want to find them. Pasta salads of various types are throughout the region and I have had pasta with yoghurt sauce in Turkey (not just as a novelty dish because pasta also is found in neighbouring Countries). North Africa likes pasta even more than the Middle East and that is particularly the case in Tunisia where the pasta intake per head of population is on par with Italy itself! They call their pasta makrouna (macaroni?) and have countless lamb, chicken, seafood and vegetarian options.

However let’s return to the Far East and China’s neighbour, Japan. These Islands isolated for centuries adopted Chinese noodles around the twelfth century (coincidentally about the same time as spaghetti was in Sicily). Once noodles were integrated into the culture they were made in a bewildering number of forms and incorporated into a multiplicity of dishes including soups. The most famous noodle soup, ramen, came to Japan much later in the nineteenth century also from China. Chinese dockside labourers in Japan’s largest ports fed themselves on ramen as a cheap meal. By the start of the next Century, ramen was mainstream and ramen shops were mega popular. Noodles were enjoyed in Japan but rice was the traditional staple.

All changed in the aftermath of WWII when Japan’s infrastructure and food supplies were in ruins. America supplied food but it was wheat not rice that was shipped to the starving Japanese. Noodles aplenty but little rice to go round. When Japan became affluent, rice abounded but noodles still remained very popular and a plethora of noodle and ramen soup dishes were created or reinvented. In the mid-twentieth century, enthusiasm for noodles grew throughout the Far East and South East Asia. In the case of Taiwan and South Korea it was due to the economics of conflict that Japan had struggled with in the past.

Noodles and particularly the noodle rich soup ramen now have a worldwide popularity because of three partly related driving forces. The three happen to be a desire for a more-healthy lifestyle, the need for cheap, tasty meals and the drive towards convenience foods. Fresh ramen in particular was a great hit in the West from the 1990s onwards as a healthy brew that can be costly in up market restaurants. Another direction was far more dynamic and populist and that was the creation of instant ramen noodles. The best-known name in this field by far is Momofuku Andu, a Japanese born in Taiwan, who started to produce dried noodles that could be reconstituted in a bowl with boiling water. Momoofuku’s motivation was that he saw instant noodles as a simple way of feeding Asians impoverished by war. Instant noodles was therefore intended to be a cheap calorific meal.

It took some time however for him to get to market so by the time of the launch of instant noodles in 1958, Japan was well on the way to recovery. So Andu missed the boat? Not a bit of it. To busy Japanese, the instant part and the convenience meant that they could eat a hot meal in no time and get