Sorry to bore on about Back in Time for Dinner, but it really is one of the best programmes that has been on television recently, and just seems to get more and more interesting by the episode. The third episode in the series brought the Robshaw family forward to the 1970s, a decade which saw huge changes in the way people shopped, cooked and ate, particularly with the increasing availability of frozen foods and home freezers, and the arrival of all manner of convenience foods to supermarket shelves, such as boil in the bag fish suppers, arctic roll and, of course, the Pot Noodle.
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| Rochelle with a very 70s celery jug with a face on it. We used to have exactly the same one at home. |
Having taken on a part-time job like many women at the time did, mum Rochelle found herself freed from the shackles of the kitchen for the first time in their time-travelling experiment - albeit to a minor extent. It was still widely expected at the time that women would come home from work, put a meal on the table, and run the household, creating an increasing feeling of pressure to be able to be a Wonderwoman and do everything. So it seemed like a godsend when, in the early seventies, along came Delia Smith telling women that it was ok to cut corners sometimes. Her book “How to Cheat at Cooking” provided a range of recipes which made use of many of the new ready-made convenience foods on the market to cut down on preparation and cooking times, while fooling dinner guests into thinking that their hosts had spent hours in the kitchen.
In the episode, Rochelle was given the challenge of preparing a meal from Delia’s book for Giles Coren and guests - using almost entirely tinned ingredients. Still struggling with the tin opener though, at first it seemed doubtful that the recipes would save her any time at all: “This is just ridiculous. I’d have to start doing this on the bus, coming home from work...I’d like to shake the hand of the person who invented the ring pull can - probably done more for women’s liberation than anything.”
Thankfully after getting over the hurdle of opening the tins, things were a little more plain sailing. The carrot and potato soup - made from a tin of consomme, tinned potatoes and tinned carrots, with added cream, butter and herbs - was quick and easy to prepare, and went down a treat with the dinner guests, who declared it “delicious...it’s clearly all made from scratch”. The cottage pie fared less well however. Made from tinned minced beef, tomatoes and Cadbury's Smash (which in the 70s came in a tin too), it looked somewhat gloopy in consistency. When Rochelle admitted to the ingredients, the restaurant critic in Giles came to the fore - “Oh fine. So the fact that it’s absolutely disgusting is absolutely normal...I wouldn’t put this out to poison the foxes...it’s absolutely honking”.
However bad it may have been, I must say I’m more than a little tempted to track down a copy of the book and give some of the recipes a try myself. Or of course there’s always Delia’s 2008 return to the idea, with a book of the same name, providing a new set of ‘cheat’ recipes using the convenience foods of the new millennium. But that’s something for another time, and another blogpost.
Later on, the episode looked at how scientific research had shaped trends in food during the decade, particularly with the development of artificial flavourings. Visiting an expert in the field of flavour technology, food historian Polly Russell was shown how to make liquid smoky bacon flavour for crisps, a delightful-sounding cocktail of acetic acid, dimethyl sulphide, furfuryl mercaptan, guiacol, ethyl guiacol and isovaleric acid, of which the last of these apparently smelled “quite sweaty - an armpit meets roadkill”. Together though, they miraculously produced a clear solution that was both a pleasant-smelling and tasting approximation of bacon. “It’s lovely and smoky,” said Polly.
Watching this reminded me of a tin I’d had in my stash for a while that needed to be sampled. Soon after Heinz brought out their range of flavoured beans, Tesco responded with their own versions of the cheesy, curry and barbecue flavours, which being blatant copies I saw little reason to buy or try. But they also introduced one or two completely unique flavours, including Smoky Bacon Beans, which clearly I had to have.
A look at the label revealed that the beans do actually contain smoked bacon, suggesting to me at first that the flavour would be a little more natural than the crisps of the 1970s. Also present on the ingredients list however were Paprika Extract, Capsicum Extract, Cinnamon Extract and the ominously non-descript "Flavouring", none of which I was entirely sure as to whether they could be said to be natural or not, and making me wonder what concoction of chemicals I might have been about to ingest.
On removing the lid (trying not to be complacent about the ring-pull and the central role it has played in women's liberation), I was struck by both the both the number of pieces of bacon at the surface - far more than for some reason I expected - and the strong, rather appealing aroma. "It's lovely and smoky", I thought. And thankfully, not a hint of either armpit or roadkill.
I couldn't think of an appropriate type of bread to toast and serve them on, as I had with the Heinz beans, but a plain old jacket potato didn't seem quite right either. So, given that it had been learning about the production of smoky bacon flavouring for crisps that reminded me of the tin, I decided to have a go at making my own. Well, not so much "crisps" as "slightly crisped potato slices", but since I was baking them in the oven rather than deep-frying them, that's not really surprising. Still tasty though.
Tasty too were the beans themselves, though the smokiness wasn't as intense as I was expecting and indeed hoping for from the initial smell. I think part of the problem was that the tomato sauce was rather overly sweet, as it can so often be in tins of beans. Perhaps a little less sugar would have brought the smoked flavour more to the fore, without having to resort to any dubious chemicals other than perhaps a little more of the good ol' sodium chloride.
That said though, there is a fair old whack of salt in the beans already - half a tin provides nearly a quarter of your daily recommended intake, so it's probably for the best that I hadn't made my crisps too 'ready salted'. As mentioned, there was no shortage of bacon bits, which although not providing as much flavour as I'd have like, did give a different, slightly chewy texture in contrast to the soft beans.
All in all, they're not too bad, and perfect for those who don't have the time or patience to cook bacon AND beans to go with their full English breakfast - they can 'cheat' by opening a tin of these. I like to think Delia would approve.
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