Food 17: buy it in

more snippet of memoir than recipe post this week

Emmett’s in Peasenhall, Suffolk, est. 1820 and source of many a no-cooking lunch component. They’re the oldest artisan ham and bacon providers in the UK. Image: The Shopkeepers

My paternal grandmother was Belgian, a keen eater - like I say, Belgian - but not a cook. She’d never learned because her family was rich and didn’t do their own cooking. Her father, my great-grandfather, owned what became the largest wallpaper factory in Europe (in 1921 it employed a young René Magritte as a graphic designer).

The factory. It had its own football team.

In 1979 the factory, which had always provided the family with a lavish income, went bankrupt. My grandmother, unlike her four sisters, had married a not-rich working-class man - a bookish, extremely good-looking soldier who she’d met during the war (objective opinion. That my grandpa looked like Adonis is a fact of life). By the time of the bankruptcy, he had a whole chestful of medals and an army pension, and that was it.

My grandmother, far right, and her sisters. Look at the massive cigarette box on the table. I don’t know when this was taken. Late 60s/early 70s? The husband of Tante Denise, second from right, drove much too fast in his topless car and used to shout COMMUNISTE! at anyone who got in his way. In the summer we’d whizz about at the seaside, he yelling insults, square little me thrilled by this outlaw behaviour.

If this were a novel, after the initial shock of the money being gone my grandmother would dry her eyes and stiffen her spine. She would go into the kitchen (in those Ferragamo shoes with the grosgrain bow) after decades of barely setting foot in it. She’d peer around curiously. She’d open the unfamiliar cupboards and hold up, say, a whisk, with a puzzled look on her face.

And then, slowly, egg by egg, she would find not just herself but her true calling. Within a year or two she would be producing absolute feasts. Word would spread far and wide. Her dinners would become legendary. And then… Maybe a little bistro? Maybe two or three? Maybe a chain of them! Family finances restored, daughter of privilege morally redeemed through hard work, many lessons learned, narrative arc completed, et voilà.

This is not what happened.

She mourned the loss of her fortune intensely and at length, and the fact that my grandfather was not materially minded became a constant irritation. She was never at home in the kitchen, and remained completely inept at cooking - she could slice the saucisson and cube the cheese to have with drinks, but that was it. She was, she said, too old to learn.

Her remaining asset was the apartment she and my grandpa lived in. She sold half of it and they squashed up and lived off the proceeds, in much reduced circumstances but hardly destitute.

She re-hired her old cook, Anny of blessed memory, one day a week. This was Wednesdays, a half day at school, when Anny would make a huge lunch for all of us children and grandchildren - always roast chicken, frites, the most delicious dark-brown chicken sauce (but thin and intense, not like gravy), green salad, cheese, tarte aux pommes - still my platonic ideal of a perfect meal.

On the other days, my newly-frugal granny went shopping for food, very locally, with her basket. After moving to London - which Anny had warned against because English people ate jam with meat - I still regularly went to Brussels to stay with my grandmother, whom I loved passionately, until her death in my twenties. We always ate like kings - because of the shopping.

She became really, really good at buying food. She was picky. She asked to try things. She was happy to trot about - here for the lemon tartlets (they said Citron on them in thin chocolate italics), but here for the baguette. She didn’t go anywhere smart. The grocer across the road, who had hair like Tintin, sold good butter, good coffee, excellent vegetables. He had a small display of ready-made things - vegetables à la Grecque, glazed baby onions, mushrooms in olive oil - and his wife made a couple of pâtés every week.

The fish shop had ready-made coquilles St Jacques au gratin, among a ton of other things. The butcher had big, fat stuffed tomatoes that only needed to go in the oven, and hachis Parmentier, like a more refined cottage pie, and always waterzooi, a delicious kind of Belgian chicken stew. And so on and so forth. All this before she even got to the proper traiteur.

And now we get to the point (my God, finally). When it’s too hot to cook, as it has been for a couple of weeks here in the UK, judicious shopping is the answer. Actually, it’s part 1 of the answer. Part 2 is feeling no embarrassment about not cooking. It doesn’t matter. What matters is giving people nice things to eat. Who cares who made the things? Cooking is of course great, but there is an almost equivalent skill in shopping well for food.

Now, obviously, the food culture of Belgium and France was at the time - and largely remains - completely different to the food culture of the UK. Traiteurs, shops selling only ready-made food, have existed since the 18th century. After we moved to London and I went to see my Belgian family in the school holidays, my mother would send me to Wittamer in the place du Sablon to bring back a couple of quiches Lorraines. Unlike my granny, my mother is an excellent cook but I can’t tell you the reverence and ecstasy with which those quiches were greeted and eaten (I feel the same way about Sally Clarke’s tarts. Sometimes I gingerly transport them from Westbourne Grove to rural Suffolk as if they were treasure, which they are).

A tomato, basil and parmesan tart from Clarke’s. Before I got okay at cooking, I’d cross London to buy two of these, make a salad and call it a dinner party. Perfect meal.

Growing up, there was absolutely zero shame attached to producing a lunch or dinner that has been entirely bought in, though you’d be expected to make a decent green salad. In my entire Belgian life, I don’t remember a single one of my great-aunts, aunts or cousins ever serving a home-made pudding - why would you, when patisseries existed and charged fair prices? The two coastal great aunts who split their time between Brussels and the seaside produced endless unbelievably delicious croquettes aux crevettes (number two platonic ideal, with deep-fried parsley on the side) that they bought from the fishmonger and reheated at home. On Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve everyone served lobsters and home-made mayonnaise. Literally no cooking whatsoever. Lobsters aside, none of this food was expensive. Sure, some traiteurs were grander and smarter than others - but most were just normal, frequented by ordinary people on their way home from work.

Croquettes aux crevettes. Go to Belgium and eat them. Think croquetas, but with little grey North Sea shrimps inside. See also croquettes au fromage, made with comté and parmesan. The crispy parsley is not negotiable.

No one cooked if they didn’t want to - and everyone who came round had a lovely time and went home feeling they’d eaten wonderfully well. The idea that anyone would sniff disapprovingly and mouth ‘shop-bought’ would have struck people as hilariously mad, and yet some people do still sniff in the UK. I always thought this at school bake sales when my children were little - like, I’m busy, I work, I’m tired enough, why would you sneer at a perfect lemon drizzle from a shop when my own lemon drizzle would be significantly inferior? You don’t get extra points for sending your child to class in a home-sewn uniform. Why would you over cake?

All this nostalgia made me want to show you Café Vlissinghe in Bruges, which my father loved. It’s been there since 1515. I wouldn’t eat there, mind you. But I would sit with a drink and a book, especially in winter when that stove is going, though there’s a charming courtyard for summer.

I’ve had such a nice time writing this post, though I feel bad about not giving you any recipes. But I haven’t been cooking, and there’s no point in pretending that I have. Not cooking is absolutely fine, is what I wanted to say, because it’s too hot or because you simply don’t want to. Everything we’ve eaten in the past fortnight has been brought from a shop, ready to unwrap and eat. I’ve bought cheese, bread or crackers, smoked fish, anchovies, and picked salad from the garden. I’ve bought chicken turnovers, sausage rolls, olives and mozzarella (to have with tomatoes), and Greek yogurt. I’ve bought thinly sliced salami to put in a baguette with a slab of butter, this being my favourite sandwich. I’ve grilled things on the barbecue - my one tip there is to thinly spread mayonnaise on fish or meat before you cook it. I know this sounds utterly gross but it’s life-changing, especially with fish because it makes the fish non-stick. Don’t just take my word for it. Australians do it!

The most cooking I did was shave a perky fennel with my mandolin, and we had that with olive oil and lemon juice. I made Ed Smith’s tomato tonnato for the millionth time, which involves slicing tomatoes and sticking a few things in the Magimix. I made Smitten Kitchen’s Obsessively Good Avocado and Cucumber Salad - it is correctly named - also for the millionth time, and absurdly low-effort. My courgettes/zucchini have started to arrive - they are so tiny and delicious that I just shave them into ribbons with a vegetable peeler, douse them with olive oil and salt, and eat them like that (ambrosial). But really, other than that - nothing. It’s been heaven.

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