itinerant foodies

This is the story of a cookbook. It’s a long story and it’s a juicy story and I ask you to bear with me.

The cookbook.

It was the summer of 2000. I’d spent a few months in London, carousing, working and sometimes sleeping. My friend Ricky and I were sharing a four-story flat at King’s Cross with five other people. It was during my last week of work at Mezzo, a restaurant in Soho, when Maya came into town. She’d somehow convinced someone out there in Grant & Scholarshipland to give her free money to “experience culture,” and so we decided to go to Spain for the remainder of the summer.

The kitchen was the dining room, living room, laundry room and the napping room.

Mezzo (now Meza), owned and designed by Sir Terence Conran, was unlike any restaurant I’ve ever experienced in my food service career. (Short history: Prime Tyme, Olive Garden, Spageddies, The Worthington Inn, Mezzo.) In England, serving is a Profession with a capital P.

A few bullet points about Mezzo before I move on to my soliloquy to a cookbook:

• All employees had our own locker rooms and laundry service. We were only responsible for our shoes, socks and trousers. Our jackets were cleaned and pressed nightly by someone else. And we were subject to “sock checks” at the beginning of each shift. If we were caught wearing anything but black socks, we were written up.

• There was a bar in the back of the house just for servers. Not for us to drink, but for our tables. No wading through people sitting at the bar to get drinks to our tables. This was especially nice on busy nights and weekends.

• We were reprimanded if we allowed a customer to only order a side dish or appetizer. (I remember getting in trouble because a friend came in and ordered only a drink and green beans.)

• There were video cameras everywhere to keep the staff from stealing. If we wanted to eat the remains of an untouched roll or crème brûlée , we did so in the fourth stall of the employee restroom – we weren’t allowed to use the same facilities as the guests – where we were certain we wouldn’t be caught.

It’s because of this last bullet point that on my final day, my assistant manager pulled me aside, gave me the cookbook I’d been eying from the restaurant’s retail shop, and instructed me to stick it inside my jacket as I left the restaurant. The staff member that was paid to watch the security cameras never saw me steal my copy of The Conran Cookbook.

And so I spent my first free afternoon dragging a jetlagged Maya around London, trying to find the ingredients for my first-ever dinner party, with recipes from the beloved cookbook. It turns out that fresh crabmeat is (or was) extremely difficult to find in central London.

Everything that you could ever want to know about poultry.

Let me tell you a little about this cookbook, which was my first and is still my favorite cookbook. It’s divided into three parts: The purchase and preparation of food; Equipment: How to choose it and use it; and Recipes. This cookbook taught me (and is still teaching me) a lot of what I know about food. And I will forever connect it with one of my favorite parts of food: people enjoying it together.

Things I still can't afford to own.

That evening, even though Miss Maya was exhausted, several of my flatmates and Maya and I shared a table, a meal and many a laugh together. That meal – this cookbook – represents, to a certain extent, the beginning of an amazing friendship.

And finally, the recipes.

Dear Mr. Conran. I stole morsels of your food when I worked in your restaurant. And with the permission of a manager, I stole your cookbook. And in stealing your cookbook, I stole your knowledge. And I now I’m allowing others to steal your knowledge, by publishing one of your recipes. And I don’t regret any of it. I know that your legal team is way bigger than me, so Please be nice and don’t sue me. You see, I’m extremely grateful for all of it.

Conran Cookbook Crab Cakes
From The Conran Cookbook by Caroline Conran, Terence Conran & Simon Hopkinson

4 oz. day-old white bread, crusts removed
12 oz. fresh crabmeat
2 oz butter
1 onion, grated
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
2-3 generous pinches of hot paprika or cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
salt
a little plain flour
1 lemon, quartered

1. Moisten the bread with a little water and crumble it into a bowl. Stir in the crabmeat.

2. Melt half the butter in a small pan. Add the onion and garlic and sprinkle with the thyme and paprika or cayenne. Sweat until the onion is soft and translucent. Drain off excess fat and stir into the crab mixture. Mix in the parsley and a little salt.

3. With floured hands, form the crab mixture into small cakes. Fry in the remaining butter until golden brown on both sides. Serve with quarters of lemon.