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| Lamb Shank and murdered beans at a restaurant in Cornwall. |
The loathing probably started with school dinners. If I close my eyes I can picture them now; brussel sprouts on one side of the plate and anemic-looking carrots on the other, kept apart by a lavish helping of mashed potato. I take a fork and squeeze a sprout, which deflates as water flows out, diluting the gravy. Giving the carrots a similarly gentle caress, I discover that watery mashed carrot, when mixed with mashed potato, is just about palatable. Just about.
At home things weren't a lot better. I grew up in a hotel in the 1960s, when everyone (so it seemed) liked their vegetables boiled soft. My job was often to assist with the washing up and I remember thinking that there was as much goodness in the boiled water I was throwing down the sink as in the veg on the visitors' plates. Little wonder, then, that in my teenage years greens were endured, rather than enjoyed. The only veg servings that I really relished were mashed potato, mashed swede, peas and (of course) chips.
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| Botallack Count House |
Ann went on to become a Masterchef, and never was an honor more fittingly bestowed. In particular (for the purposes of this blog post) her vegetables were always cooked to perfection and, for the first time in my life, I discovered the delights of crisp courgettes, broccoli and carrots. They tasted wonderful!
Suffice to say that never again were 'soft boiled' carrots and sprouts served in my house. And over the years I've noticed that the trend in pubs and restaurants is definitely in the right direction, so that I've been able to order vegetables with my meals, with more than a modicum of confidence that they will be edible.
Which is why those murdered (or should I say 'drowned'?) runner beans in a mid-Cornwall restaurant, owned and run by a national chain of brewers, came as a surprise. Quite like old times, in fact.
That's surely a rare thing nowadays (overcooked tasteless vegetables), as properly-cooked and delicious food, especially comfort food, is very widely recognised as a winner. And Cornwall is an exceptionally gastronomically-aware county.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember when I last had an unappetising pub meal. Indeed, my usual complaint is that the servings are too big and yet so yummy that you stuff it all in!
Lucy
Two aunts came to visit and insisted in cooking a meal for us. They took my whole tender cabbage crop into the kitchen, boiled up a cauldron of water then set about "preparing" the veg by throwing away the outside two thirds and dropping the inner leaves into the water as they "progressed". The first leaves were cooked before the second lot joined them and there were many more yet to be done! My mother tried to get me to eat courgettes, we lived surrounded by allotments full of fresh veg, I had no idea that they did not have to be nearly burned on each side... They prided themselves on their cooking, no wonder that it took until I could cook for myself before I really knew what vegetables should be like.
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