Salad Cream

We've recently returned home from a trip to Old Blightey to visit my grandmother. I should mention, as I have been explaining over and again since our return, that there was not "an internet" to be found anywhere. My dear grandmother lives on a farm in the rural south of England; access to the information superhighway is the least of her concerns.

In an effort both to digest and to provide a digest for this past week of British culinary delight, I will focus, uncharacteristically, on two restaurants we visited.

My grandmother "does not cook," which is to say that most of her meals consist of oven-ready specialty dinners from Waitrose's. The notable exceptions are her own casseroles: beef, chicken, or (this time) lamb stews made with her own tomatoes and onions (and her own carrots, too, I think) as well as a heavy dose of good wine. These are humble but quite spectacular. And let's not even talk about how marvelous it is to visit England during my grandmother's strawberry season (she grows them in a greenhouse): fresh strawberries with English pouring cream make my socks roll up and down.

But with our family of three visiting her for a week, she limited her non-cooking to the mornings and evenings, and we yanks found ourselves exploring the countryside for lunch.

Twice we visited a local pub called the "Boar's Head," an old family favorite; I characteristically ordered things like Steak and Kidney pie, which is, sadly, so hard to find in the US that I order it serially and obsessively every time I visit the UK.

I love kidneys. Really: don't get me started. Or else I'll sound like a bad audition for the part of Leopold Bloom in the stage adaptation of "Ulysses: the Musical."

But the grandest revelation of the pub luncheons were not the standard pub fare, but instead the humble little sandwiches we ordered for A. I naturally ended up polishing these off in a fit of plate-cleaning parental gluttony. The first was a crusty roll with bacon and brie. The crusty rolls were freshly baked; the brie was lightly melted on the inside. And the gammon bacon was deep fried, and thus, of course, unspeakably delicious. The second version was the crusty-roll rendition of the old pub favorite, the cheese-and-pickle. Grated cheddar with Branston pickle has never lit up like it did on a fresh, hot crusty roll.

The child was lucky that I didn't push her out of the way to get at her food. It never came to this, however, since there were more interesting objects for her to explore. For one, we dined in the pub's garden, which opened onto a pasture with cows and donkeys. Even in repose, farm animals are more dynamic than inert luncheon fare-- at least from the point of view of a two year old. At the table, too, she was more enchanted with the condiments than her food, and I can't say I blame her. For on the table was a box filled with brightly-colored packets, which included English and French mustard (we weren't all that far from Hastings, after all); various mayonnaises and tartar sauces; the almighty yet vaguely mysterious "brown sauce"; and, best of all, the unnervingly-titled "salad cream."
The salad cream found its reprise, incidentally, at a Sunday barbecue at the nearby home of Aunt V. and Uncle N., where we were presented with a garden table laden with British wonders: grilled country sausages, a slow-grilled local chicken, allegedly spicy kebabs, and a green salad garnished with boiled eggs from the family's hens. For some reason I forgot to dress the salad with "salad cream." Dang.

Our second flight of restauration (as the French call it) took place during our cheap-day-return pass through London.

H. had the marvelous idea of paying a visit to Wagamama's, the now-ubiquitous noodle bar chain that started near the British museum and, like those other clean-food chains such as Pret-a-Manger, have taken over the country. And rightly so, to a certain extent. The food is clean-tasting, rich and flavorful while refreshingly free from oversalting. The service, too, is stridently professional: efficient yet friendly. They handled a nap-bound two-year-old with panache and grace, providing not only a wonderful children's menu: not pandering to her with hamburgers and spaghetti, but offering simplified versions of their own dishes. And special child-friendly chopsticks.
A clean, clean restaurant. A franchise, yes. But a rhizomatic franchise: a flower that has spread throughout the garden. Has it choked out other flora? It would be more accurate to say that it has simply taken over some open space, and made it pretty.

Of course, given that the dollar has turned into the chump-change of Europe, such "reasonably priced" lunches as pub fare and fast-food noodles have become, quite literally, the kind of meals one writes home about: a simple lunch for two, with one child's meal, and no hooch, ended up costing something in the range of 85 dollars.

We should have smuggled out those packets of salad cream, just to get our money's worth.