Eccentrics in the world of food

Why is it that the world of food and dining is littered with eccentrics? There are some truly wonderful and yet truly strange personalities associated with dining and eating. There are some very determined people out there.

The people we hear about today, for instance, are non the less strange than those of former generations.Take Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for example, he of the famous "chicken out" campaign. He began his career with conservation work in Africa and then became Sous Chef at River Cafe before he became a journalist. Do you remember his "Cook on the Wild Side" programmes where he picked up road kill and cooked it? I remember a recipe for squirrel and he ate from hedgerows.

Another of my favourites is Marguerite Patten who worked for the Ministry of Food and broadcast advice and ideas on BBC radio during World War 11 in a programme called "Kitchen Front". She had been cooking for her family since she was 13 years old when her father died. Bearing in mind that during the War in 1942 a typical week's ration for a man was 2-4oz cheese (50-100g), 4 oz marg (100g), 1 egg, 2-3 pints milk, 4 oz (100g) bacon then compiling her recipes was no mean feat. Yet they say we were far healthier during the War than we are now.

I also find Delia Smith quite an interesting character. She is the U.K.s best selling cookery author and, indeed, her books helped teach people in this coountry how to cook. She left school at 16 but didn't pass a single "O" level and started her restaurant career washing up. She is joint majority shareholder of Norwich City.

Perhaps the most celebrated celebrity chef of all time , though, should be Alexis Soyer who was the chef of the Reform Club in London. In 1848 when the Irish potato crop failure had caused widespread famine, thousands of people were dying of hunger, Soyer set up a public appeal to fund his soup kitchen.

He went to Dublin and set up a huge tent which contained a coal-fired boiler which held 1360 litres of soup. When ready the first batch of soup was ladled into eight large saucepans. The queue was allowed in 100 people at a time. Each person was given 6 minutes to eat 2 pints of soup, clean their bowl and spoon and leave. In this way he managed to feed 1000 people an hour for 8 hours a day. Those who were too ill or frail had their food delivered to them in carts. Soyer published recipes for cheap and nourishing food and even suggested that vegetable peelings should never be thrown away.

I guess that in his own way George lV was another eccentric who , in his own way, has added to our dining experience. It was he who transformed the banquets from messy medieval-style to the style we know today. Without him the Queen's dinners would look positively dull. It was he who put together the 4,000 piece Grand Service which makes every banquet at the Palace so special. It is made of silver gilt and includes 140 dishes, 288 dinner plates and a huge inventory of knives, forks, spoons, marrow scoopes, ice spades and table sculputures.

Leading from this , our great cutlery manufacturers lead the way in the manufacture of fine cutlery. Arthur Price used to work so hard in his tiny workshop that his wife used to walk round their little garden with him late at night to help keep him awake and eventually his beautiful cultery was being used even as far away as Russia. His family still run the country's best know cultery company to this day.
There are also our great potter such as Wedgewood....I could go on and on.

Finally, I just want to mention a pair of newcomers to the culinary scene. I am mentioning them because I admire their detirmination (and determination is what all the people above have in common. ) They are Kim McCosker & Rachael Bermingham who wrote a cookery book called "4 ingredients". Every recipe in the book consists of only 4 ingredients. It is simple to read, easy to follow and you find you often have the 4 ingredients in stock anyway. They sent their manuscript to every publisher in Australia and not one of them was interested. Undaunted they re-mortgaged and printed the book themselves. They had delivered the books and self-funded book signings all over Australia. Today they have become the number one selling book in Australia and have their own T.V. show. .....so it all just goes to show what a little determination can do!

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