Thumbing my nose

Tonight's meal is leftovers again for me: always dull to write about. So here's last night's meal described.

I had bubble and squeak (recipe earlier) and made what CJBS called "corned beef hash" for him. This wasn't what I would've called a hash, but he loved it as it replicated a school dinner of the 1960s for him. From that, I therefore understand that his school dinners looked like, and smelled of, cat sick. But there we go.

If you're insane enough to want cat sick for dinner, here's how it's done: boil and then mash or rice enough potato. Mince, blend or otherwise pulverise a tin of corned beef. Dice a carrot and boil it. Combine, sprinkle with a little grated cheese and bake for half an hour in a medium oven. Serve, then leave the room. As a starter, we had the last of the mushroom soup and the winter salad on the side.

In the meantime, two other culinary events have occurred. First, on opening the tin of corned beef (one of those wind-a-key-around jobs), the beef got stuck in the tin. I attempted to prize it out, and quickly and efficiently severed the tip of my thumb. This was painful, messy and is now disabling (you'd be amazed at the number of things having two opposable thumbs lets you do; and consequently the number of things that having just one on the "wrong" hand prevents you from doing).

In all the drama, I forgot to boil my stock pots. This evening, I went to boil them and lifted the lids first. Now, a useful thing when you're cooking is to trust your nose. Fundamentally, we're born able to tell when food is off. It's innate, a survival-of-the-fittest hereditary thing. Modern processed foods contain chemicals to inhibit mould and bacteria growth, but they also inhibit the smell of these things as the food goes off. Artificial flavourings also help mask the smell of bad food.

My stock pots contained nothing artificial. And they didn't smell "bad", just "wrong". There was the usual vegetable-soupy aroma to one and the slightly nastier meaty smell to the other. But underneath that was something else. Sweet? Sickly? A sugary note, of sorts. It was just something, not unpleasant, but... well, "wrong". That's all the clue I needed: both are now gone and I'll wash out the pans on the dishwasher's hottest, scrubbiest setting. And start again with new stock tomorrow.

Posh nosh

With snow on the ground (a rarity on the coast) I'm pleased not to have to walk the half mile to Morrison's or Lunt's. I also want something warming for dinner. What to do with a couple of pounds of potatoes, two carrots, an onion, a cabbage, some mushrooms and four (vegan) sausages for me and a tin of corned beef for CJBS?

Potato and cabbage automatically sing bubble and squeak, but I've got little to serve it with. The carrots and the onion as well, however, suggest colcannon.

Colcannon is "peasant food", used by poor people to make a lot out of a little (and all the more delicious for that) but of late it has had a makeover, becoming posh nosh. From a simple mashed potato, onion and cabbage it now appears on BBC Food with lashings of double cream and melted butter, and elsewhere with bacon and yet more butter.

CJBS's bacon ration is something he prizes highly for a lazy breakfast. My own vegan bacon is unuseful for baking, being designed to be fried and put in a sandwich - which to me feels like a waste of both bacon and fat when I'm so short. Butter just can't be wasted on melting to make something taste a bit better. Double cream? Yeah, okay if you can get it, but my own rules forbid me from getting it to use in such a damp way. Don't they know there's a war on?

I brought the peeled and diced potatoes to the boil with the carrots. When the water boiled, I put the cabbage in. Meanwhile, I heated a knob (about a heaped teaspoon) of butter in a frying pan and fried off the onion and the mushrooms. When the potatoes were soft, I mashed the contents of the pan with a little milk, then added the onion and the mushrooms. With the frying pan still hot, I cooked off the vegan sausages, then diced the corned beef.

I divided the mash into two, mixing the vegan sausage into one and the diced beef into the other. Then I put both into a slow oven - it needs to cook very slowly as CJBS isn't home until 7:30pm. The heat isn't wasted as I'll make croutons for the leftover soup from yesterday (these are just cubes of brown bread baked slowly for 15 minutes) as the oven cools.

The result, in theory, should be crispy on top but fluffy in the middle. Onion gravy, an easy standby since I have leftover gravy from yesterday, will help lubricate it.

Spam spam spam spam spam spam corned beef spam

One of the reasons CJBS is looking forward to our month on rations (and he now thinks that it should extend beyond if the following comes true and also if I introduce "points") is the prospect of getting the rare delights of stodgy comfort food from his school days. I'm familiar with this idea: my Dad, an essentially conservative man, had a very wide palate (he loved curry) thanks to my Mum and her superb cooking skills. But he continued to adore particularly the former British habit of serving something brown, something green and something off-white, smothered in something gravy- or sauce-like. If followed by a pudding that was 90% suet and covered in Birds custard, it would've been perfect.

CJBS loves the idea of school food, and the above describes it pretty well. Today I went out and bought some spam and some corned beef. He was delighted to see the tins in the cupboard. For him, cold spam with hot mashed potato and tomato ketchup would be perfection. If I could mash the corned beef into potatoes and serve with a limp gravy, well, he'd be in heaven.

This must be a thing of men of, er, a certain age. My late ex loved nothing more than mince and potatoes or a Vesta meal. My own creations were as nothing to what could come out of a 1950s-looking packet. For me, I drool over penne and tortellini, real South Asia curries and stuff with waterchestnuts and tofu bobbing about in them. Clearly British cuisine has moved on (and about time too) but a love of cheap food of the 50s clearly continues to dominate some people's palates.

I shall search for recipes that do a bit more with spam and a lot more with corned beef, if only to make either or both seem palatable now. But clearly I won't lose out if I just serve each out of the tin.

Points

Whilst I think on, I should clarify the mention of "points" above. Each ration book came with a page of non-specific coupons. These were called "points" and were designed to be effectively a second currency that the government could control. Every month, you accrued more available points. These could be "spent" (with the addition of actual money) on a range of goods, depending on what was in surplus and what was in short supply at the time. The government, via the Ministry of Food, set a points value on items that were in short supply but were not in themselves essential.

You could, if you so wished, use your points on basic rations, buying cheese or bacon "above the ration". But you could also use them on milk chocolate - a rarity that people really wanted - or on seasonal items like sprouts and mincemeat. Above all, they could be used on the items that came and went - often went for prolonged periods - like South African tinned peaches, a delicacy that still makes a 1940s or 1950s child drool. When in plentiful supply, tinned peaches could be bought for 3 or 4 points and the money the market asked (points goods were usually not price controlled). When they were in short supply, suddenly the points required would be 30 or 40, plus the steep price the market wanted. With 16 a month per person, the housewife - and it was a stupid man who tried to control these things, even whilst thinking nothing of controlling her money supply - could decide on that little treat this month and that store-cupboard item next.

Personally, as a lefty, I'd've preferred the government to have set price controls on these items and not bothered with points. But no housewife would've been without them in the 1940s.