Shooting the Cook. David Pritchard

in Somerset, fishing on a reservoir near Wiveliscombe, and me, with my friends, Bob Lipscombe and his brother Michael, fishing on parts of the River Itchen that flowed from beyond Winchester to Southampton. Subconsciously, I think this was why we filmed so many cooking sequences outside. It was never really discussed; it just happened.

      I think the Itchen is the most beautiful river in the country with its gin-clear water and waving beds of weed, the perfect environment for the handsome speckled brown trout which would lie almost motionless, save for the movement of their tails keeping them in position against the swift current. On weekends and summer evenings the three of us boys would spend our time playing on the banks and fishing. We had to pluck up courage because we weren’t supposed to be there. The river was strictly off limits and could only be fished by very rich people who paid to use large stretches of it in the summer. Technically we were poachers, albeit small time, but nevertheless we were breaking the law of the land. We local lads thought it our natural right to catch the odd trout from the river that flowed past our homes, even if the landowners and their water bailiffs didn’t see it that way.

      One of the most feared water bailiffs was called Arthur. He had a large white Alsatian dog and was thought to carry a shotgun in which the cartridges were loaded with salt crystals instead of lead shot. The word was that they stung mightily. Arthur was the keeper of the salmon pool—this was where the freshwater of the River Itchen met the salty water of the Solent and it smelt of seaweed. Sometimes, through chain-link fencing, we’d watch the people who had paid for the privilege of fishing this magical spot as if they were an exotic species in a zoo. We could see that some of them weren’t particularly fussed about fishing and would prefer to sit and chat over sandwiches or a cigarette. What a waste of precious time.

      Sometimes the silvery salmon would jump clear out of the water and, as if in slow motion, they would almost come to a stop before they fell back into the dark waters. We would watch like cats gazing at birds through a window, shivering with excitement. When the temptation proved too much the three of us would go out in the early morning to fish the water meadows that ran for miles along the banks of the Itchen. They were crisscrossed by small streams and sometimes little bridges made out of red brick overgrown with grass. Other times the water would be forced through a series of sluices before it rushed into a deep pool fringed with yellow and purple irises and kingcups.

      In this flat landscape we could see for a mile in any direction. Any figure we spotted on the horizon made our hearts beat faster. A dog, especially a black Labrador or an Alsatian, might mean a bailiff was close by and it was time to run, though, fortunately, this stretch of water was off limits for Arthur and his fearsome white dog.

      By baiting a small bronze hook with a worm and gently trotting it downstream underneath the overhanging blackthorn bushes, we could catch brown trout. They weren’t very big, about half a pound, but they were strong fighters and it was a pleasure to land them.

      Once we’d caught two or three we’d to go back to the den we’d made from old bits of corrugated iron and tarpaulin. It was in a wood close to where we lived, next to a muddy, scruffy tidal tributary of the Itchen, where people used to dump their old prams. We’d thread sharpened twigs through each trout from head to tail and grill them over a camp fire, turning them so the skin cooked evenly.

      To eat with them we’d make a thing called a twist. We would mix up some flour and water and knead it to make a dough. Then we’d twist it round a stick—hence the name—and put it over the fire where it would bubble and blister and eventually go smoky black. We’d cut it up with our sheath knives, sprinkle the pieces with salt, add a knob of butter and wow! If my mother had served up hot black dough and undercooked fish at home I’d have seriously considered running away, but out there in our beloved camp with our eyes stinging and streaming from the smoke, they tasted wonderful. Such are the pleasures of eating outdoors.

      I think my fixation with food began in the days of rationing shortly after the war. Rationing continued for nearly ten years after the war had ended; in effect, the first ten years of my life. There wasn’t much food about, apart from parsnips, tripe, rissoles, rabbits for those quite wonderful pies, herrings and pilchards. I had no idea what rationing was, of course; the only thing I knew was that food was to be eaten and not necessarily enjoyed—although for the most part I did enjoy it—and that the little buff-coloured ration book was the source of my mother’s culinary woes. I suppose this was the period of the line ‘You’re not going to get down from the table until you’ve eaten every last thing on your plate.’

      There were exceptions to this rather dull food. Sometimes my mother would be given a couple of pounds of pork chipolatas by the local butcher. (She played in the local whist drive with his wife.) Other times we would catch the bus and visit one my mother’s friends who lived in the country. This was an altogether better world where we’d be given boiled ham with parsley sauce and fresh broad beans from their amply stocked garden. The people who lived in the countryside were a lot better off than those in the towns and cities. They would feed their hens with boiled peelings from the vegetables, mixed with bran, and the malty smell was overwhelmingly delicious, just like the smell from a brewery. I couldn’t resist trying the mixture. It would have been better with a little butter and a dusting of white pepper, but it was better than tripe and better than liver. Lucky hens.

      These were the days of tripe and offal, sticky spoonfuls of malt, concentrated orange juice that came in medicine bottles with corks, tins of condensed milk (a luxury), and cod liver oil; but from time to time something rare and beautiful would appear in the middle of the dining table: steak and kidney pudding, in a big white bowl covered with a tea towel, tied with string. It was a memory I’d play over and over just before going to sleep: the sight of a large spoon disappearing into that pale golden suet pastry and then coming up with a steaming mound of steak and kidney in rich velvety gravy. It was the stuff of my dreams.

      My earliest memory of food was when I was learning to read. It was an illustrated fairy tale about a village that grew a giant turnip. It grew and grew until it overshadowed the cottages. In the end the blacksmith made a huge cauldron and the whole village feasted on a delicious turnip soup for days to come. The illustrations looked so lovely, with bits of the purple and yellow turnip, with its green leaves, simmering away while the villagers sprinkled it with pepper and gazed longingly at it and drooled. Even reading books like Treasure Island stimulated my appetite when, in the opening chapter, Billy Bones, a drunken pirate captain, stops at an inn and asks for a plate of bacon and eggs. Apparently that’s all he wanted to eat, a plate of bacon and eggs, and a bottle of rum. Forget the rum, I used to spend some time conjuring up what a plate of bacon and eggs would look like. I don’t think four ounces of rashers, the permissible weekly amount then, would have covered the plate.