Cold war and school dinners

It's not all sex, drugs and roll'n'roll with me and food, you know. Whereas the food I often crave is high octave stuff - not in terms of it complexity (Michelin star plates leave me cold somewhat), but its impact (fat, offal, cream); today I've had the most warm and cuddly lunch possible:

...a school dinner par excellence - the Roast dinner with (many) trimmings.

The bestest school dinner: Roast chicken with stuffing, roast potatoes, steamed broccoli and carrots, with gravy

Not just any old school dinner, a very special dinner of Norfolk free-range chicken with local veg and a beautiful oaty apple crumble with grapes grown in the school's own garden (the M & S ad voice seems somehow inappropriate here due to its overt sexuality, but you get the picture).

You see, I happen to work for a project that aims to 'transform' the food culture of this country. Yes, as grand as this. You probably remember Jamie's attempts a few years back to get kids eating 'proper' food, instead of the infamous turkey twizzlers (although I'm quite intrigued by the latter, actually makes me thing of the 19th century fad to make 'things', fabulous, magical things out of foods)? Well, Food for Life (the name of this grandeurs endeavour) started there with Jamie and school dinners. Then the grand dame of the British food world - the Soil Association - took over, got some funding, and made the whole thing bigger and better.

The most important people in the school: the dinner ladies.

Today over 5000 schools across England ate their Roast Dinner simultaneously, in an attempt to break the Guinness record for the most number of schools serving the same dinner at the same time'! These schools were also making a point, a stand if you like, to 'save the school dinner' in view of all the mortifying budget cuts so thoughtfully put upon us. Go dinners, go!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to be a little helper for a morning, and boy did the smells and sounds of that bustling school kitchen bring a tear to my sceptical eye. Inevitably, I remembered the days full of buckwheat smells and the looks of the wobbly semolina porridge...

Soviet dinners, sans beer for the little ones.

In those far-away Soviet days of communist cheer and seemingly unspoilt ration feeder I would very often take my obed (a more substantial version of the Western lunch if you may) in the kindengarden where my mum worked as a teacher. In those days Soviet kids used to study in shifts in schools, ie either study from early in the morning and be done by early afternoon, or start at about 1pm and finish at 6. So I would come to visit my mum and be fed after my daily Lenin's 'study, study, study'.

Oh, the sweet memories of those wholesome meals...

I remember getting down to a bowl of watery but brilliantly red and delicious borsh, following it up with a plate of mash potatoes and kotlety (often translated as burgers into English, but really, how can you compare those little dense flat patties of course pork mince and chunks of onion to a mere burger?!) and finish it off perhaps with a bowl of zapekanka with kisel' (a warm baked cheesecake with raisins, served floating in a fruity, thick drink)...

The most quintessential English pud - apple crumble with custard.

I'm not going to go all nostalgic on you and say that the food in all schools and kindergardens were this good, but the food I remember was ordinary and boring, 'real' as we love to call such food these days, made without any pre-packaged sauces (they were none to choose from), totally from scratch on that day. There were no choices ('Vegetarianism does not exist in the USSR'), no allergies (you go a bit red, so what, a normal child reaction), no care for the provenance of your meat (you probably didn't want to know).

...'We have made extraordinary into ordinary' said the head at the school about their school dinners. Sounds damn pompous, but makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I ate diligently my full plate of the Traditional Roast dinner, finishing it off with some crumble and custard - not far at all from my beloved kotlety and zapekanka, are they, really?

What is your favourite memory of the school dinner?

Quince

Quince (aiva in Russian) is a visual hybrid between an apple and a pear; it has a tough pale-yellow skin and an astringent or tart flavour. Following my promise earlier in the blog, this month's pick up from 'Turkit' - my neighbourhood Turkish grocery shop - is this curious little fruit, that is as widely eaten in Turkey (see my travels in Turkish Cappadocia last year, where quince trees are in abundance in the wild, surprisingly similar in taste and look to the cultivated variety sold in shops here), as is in Southern America (made into dulce de membrillo, a paste-like substance often eaten with bread and cheese) and Britain - where it's most commonly cooked into the quince jelly.

I have had the pleasure of encountering this heavy, scented fruit, still on its tree, at Brogdale, the Natural Fruit Collection in Favesham, Kent - one of the largest collection of temperate fruits in-the-world (!). The visit was the first 'field trip' as part of my course in the Anthropology of Food at the University of London - twenty of us travelling to this 'garden of England' (as Kent is often referred to), on a rainy and muggy day, with our little writing pads and big cameras. We wanted to know everything there is to know about The Apple and its siblings - from its origin to its environmental and political story, but the main activity of the day was of course the tasting (in fact, so much and for so many hours, that I was dreaming of apples, pears and quinces later on at night!).

There are over 3000 types of fruit there - just apples come to 2200, but plums, nuts, gooseberries are also in their hundreds. One of the main activities of Brogdale is to collect and conserve the varieties (although the history is tangled and the current situation where the land is privately owned and a number of businesses, rather unrelated to the orchards, are let out on the farm, is rather confusing, making the future of the place quite uncertain...).

Many of the types here are indigenous to the British Isles (such as the omnipresent in supermarkets Cox Orange Pippin and the most popular dessert apple - Russet), but there are many that grow predominately in warmer climates (such as the 'Asian'- very sweet and Russet-looking small apple often grown in Japan, and Decio - an old variety, originated from Italy, pale and delicate, it needs lots of sunshine to be a real contender).

I particularly liked the look of Jonathan:) - apparently, one of the most successful varieties grown in the States. I'm afraid to me this Jonathan tasted a bit too bland and uninspiring - why couldn't they give this name to a big and bouncy, full of flavour and complexity apple I ask!


And the best discovery was a pear from Ukraine - a large and bulbous fruit with intensely lime-y smell and very crisp but juicy flavour. The tree itself is the biggest, the widest, in the collection. Some interesting images pop into mind of broad and steady Ukrainian lads...:)


Despite the fact that the collection is not organic and so the trees are routinely sprayed with chemicals (the fact of which the lovely guide Joan had calmly and openly disclosed - the way that merited a discussion, but not an argument, a rare quality really), I, all of us really, couldn't stop admiring the sheer diversity of the humble apple (and quince, and plum) tree, feeling like small children in a sweet shop, overwhelmed by the choice of colours, shapes, smells and alluring names.

By back to the quince - the tour had started in fact with this tall and leafy tree. The fruit is so under-appreciated in this country apparently that the tree stands outside the main orchard, completely unguarded, all laden with fragrant fruits and looking melancholic under British drizzle. The guide had said firmly that quinces are not be eaten row and that it needs to be shaped into jellies and pastes. I had to disagree! The quinces I had been buying in my 'Turkit' (really not that dissimilar from the ones on display in Kent) were beautiful sliced thinly, to expose the velvety texture of the fruit, the pleasure intensified by the enormity of the quince - one could slowly devour the fruit, a few slivers at a time, several days in a row (as long as one doesn't mind the discolouration caused by air).

I also have a memory of putting dark and syrapy quince jam (pieces of quince almost translucent from the long cooking) onto a warm toast - in Crimea, southern Ukraine, the jam made by my grandmother in chunky three-litre pots. The Crimean climate must be perfect for this hardy fruit - freezing cold in winter and hot and sunny in summer - but strangely I do not recall seeing quinces or its jam since those early days.


I have also stewed sliced quince briefly at home, in a bit of butter, with lots of cinnamon, to be eaten with cold vanilla ice-cream, or - to make use of all the different varieties of apples I picked up walking through Brogdale (above) and to make the tummy of the Englishman warm and happy - cook the chopped quince with sugar and a bit of water to layer the Crumble, the ultimate autumnal pudding...

How do you eat your quince?