About four years ago, I took a stab at writing a cookbook...
Well, everyone seemed to be doing it, up to and including Nanny Ogg. The title was going to be Extreme Cuisine – Food that Bites Back (not a very original title, as any look at Google will tell you, though my attempt was slanted towards amused and amusing, rather than works which seem to rely on entrail-slurping, pet-chomping gross-out.) The project went nowhere – apart from anything, working on Ring des Nibelungen (or Sword of Xanten, or The Dragon King, depending where it was shown) took over with a rush; though I did accumulate a bunch of odd recipes. I was paging through them this evening in a not-looking-for-anything-much sort of way, when I found one of my Mum's from the middle 1950s, for "Italiana Soup". This was included in the oddities section because it was so obviously someone trying to recreate a dish they knew well, but without most of the proper ingredients...
Great Britain didn't completely end wartime rationing until 1954 (yup, nine years later...), and Northern Ireland probably compounded the situation by being as conservative about food as it is about, um, other attitudes. Things have improved in many ways on all fronts; when Diane & I are up in Belfast for MeCon next week, there are several eateries in Belfast we plan to visit that would never have existed even as recently as my Uni days. Amal Naj, author of Peppers – a Story of Hot Pursuits (Knopf 1992) (an entertaining read on a subject close to my heart, or at least stomach) went to Queen's University only a few years before me, and writes that:
...There was little one could do during those days in Belfast to mollify a palate craving for flavour, for aroma, for a zing, for any kind of zing. It was the early 1970s, and the beleaguered city, electrified by Bernadette Devlin and Ian Paisley, was the last place on earth that enterprising Chinese and Indian restaurateurs would look upon as suitable for new business opportunity. The grocery shops and supermarkets weren't any help either; when I inquired about dried red peppers – whole or crushed, anything – I received blank stares or crushed black pepper. "I don't think, lad, I ever seen this stuff red. Always black," a corner grocer once insisted as he handed me a small jar of peppercorns...
Well, it makes a good yarn, but unless there was a sudden spasm of foodiness between his time at QUB and mine (like the later one which created what’s now known as The Golden Mile) I don't remember Belfast being quite such an ethnic-food desert as that. Besides, if Mr Naj was in such chilli cold-turkey straits, he could have taken himself to Sawers; it’s now a smallish shop in College Street's Fountain Centre, but was originally, from I think in the late '50s or early '60s, a much bigger establishment at the corner of Fountain Street and Castle Lane, near my Dad's office in Norwich House. Long gone now, I'm sorry to say. Their staff wouldn't have given him any blank stares, but would have wondered why this Indian chap was asking for "peppers" (roasted, in jars, from Italy) when what he obviously wanted was "chillies". But maybe his student's budget didn't stretch to even crossing the threshold of what was, after all, an expensive city-centre shop selling expensive imported goods.
That soup recipe probably dated to before Sawers opened their doors; Mum got it from Signora Battisti, whose husband ran a chip-shop halfway down Bridge Street. I've often wondered whether the family came from Italy after the war, or if they spent 1939-45 interned as enemy aliens. The information was never offered; Mum only settled in Lisburn in 1953 after marrying my Dad, and as she rightly says: "It's not a question I'd ask somebody I'd just met. And since she didn't tell me herself, I didn't ask afterwards either."
I have no idea what the original soup with full Italian ingredients would have been, but probably one of the many variants on Zuppe di Pomodoro. However, Norn Iron in the 1950s required the following changes: instead of fresh or tinned Italian plum tomatoes, Heinz Cream of Tomato soup from my Grandad's grocery shop; instead of Italian Extra Virgin, medicinal olive oil BP (British Pharmacopeia, not British Petroleum) from the chemist; instead of any number of fascinating pasta shapes, plain macaroni, the boring short kind from the shelf with the bags of dried lentils and barley. It also included diced potatoes, which prompted some sarcastic comments from teenage yours truly (despite having contentedly eaten it for years, but if you can't makes smart-alec remarks when you're a teen, then when do you start?) along the lines of "Oh yeah, two sorts of starch in one dish, how dumb, just to keep us locals happy." (Not so wrong, though. You can still end up getting chips with lasagne if you're not quick and careful...) I was, of course, in error, because the soup wasn't for sale in the chip-shop, it was for Battisti family consumption, and they most definitely weren't locals.
I've eaten my words long ago, seasoned with sauce à l'embarrassment, because there are any number of Italian dishes which use potatoes and pasta together – they're of the "hearty" persuasion, meaning stuff that'll stick to your ribs, keep you warm and stop anything short of a hurricane from blowing you away. Include some stock, some chopped onions and garlic, garnish the finished product with parsley (perhaps torn fresh basil in the original) and you're done. And yes, apparently NI had garlic back then. When I questioned this, thinking that there couldn't have been much call for it, Mum gave me one of her Looks. Uh, right. No further questions, Your Honour.
Now, despite all the substitutions and a slight air of desperation, this stuff is absolutely great! During the past hot spell I've learned - from Mum - that it works ice-cold as well, a sort of Tuscan gazpacho; I tried it, found it good, and then added a generous squirt of lemon juice and a splash of balsamic vinegar; the result has a fascinating sweet-sour tang. Whenever any of the family had a cold coming on, Mum would crank up the garlic from about four cloves to as much as a dozen(!!) and it always seemed to work, probably by keeping either the germs or their carriers at a respectful distance. Since the weather has indeed changed a bit – the hot spell hasn’t broken yet, but cracks are visible – I might throw together a pot of this for supper. The result depends on which my fingers contact first: the tin of Roma tomatoes or the trusty Heinz.
Rest assured, either one will work.
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