What’s in your kitchen?

The great many things include almost all conceivable long-life spices. A jar of chicken and meat cubes (for saving time). Lots of smallest tins of tomato purée and a few tins of whole tomatoes, all handy for so many sauces. Half a dozen medium-sized tins of various fruits such as peaches, pears, for the very rare occasion when we suddenly run out of fruit (I cannot live without lots of fresh fruit, my staple, daily after-dinner treat). Eight different sizes of kitchen knives (preferably Sabatier), and very sharp kitchen scissors. The most important of innumerable pots and pans is a thick, heavy iron saucepan, never washed up but thoroughly dry-wiped, used preferably for omelette-type dishes. A bread-making machine almost constantly in use – the strictly daily freshness of bread (used no sooner than 3-4 hours after baking) being essential.

What’s your food philosophy?

As we eat out more than most people, for home cooking we choose dishes that are time-saving to prepare. But in any case I love very simple meat or fish: for example, a double lamb chop or single veal escalope (the latter occasionally floured, egged and bread-crumbed); grilled pork chop, precisely timed, slightly salted and with 2-3 turns of a roughly set pepper mill, so giving absolutely top-quality meat a chance to shine. And the same applies to fish - sea bass, turbot or strictly "wild" salmon being our favourite, accompanied by an equally simply cooked, very fresh vegetable (definitely green) and potatoes (mostly "new" but not too small, ie. not tasteless), or simply cooked rice (simmered strictly for 30 minutes after having turned it for 30 seconds in a very little hot olive oil) perhaps sparsely coloured with a small handful of peas mixed in.

How has my attitude to food changed?

Having grown up surrounded by numerous relatives, all in catering, originating from my grandfather who built a 120-room hotel in 1910, my indication in the previous paragraph of my food philosophy developed during my teens and has not changed an iota and never will.

What annoys you about food in Britain?

It’s a shame that, in a growing number of restaurants, what you have ordered or think you have ordered is difficult to find when your plate arrives. Too often you have to search for the item you have expected and peel off the various goodies (or not so goodies) under which the food chosen from the menu is hidden. It is doubly a pity when so much trouble may have been taken with it all, mostly to good effect as far as the eyes are concerned – while your palate is a different matter. Kitchen hands are turned into sculptors, painters, decorators, the essential subject being unrecognisably disguised.

What is Britain’s best kept food secret?

One could quote several, including some which sound ordinary, yet to put it on the menu let alone order it, is a dull idea. A good, perhaps even the best, example is a very, very light (an absent characteristic of this dish) bread-and-butter pudding. A really top-rate one is extremely rare so that the very name provokes ridicule abroad.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?

Eating out is, of course, my preference. After my many decades spent visiting restaurants, entering one for the first time still gives me a thrill, arouses my curiosity and fills me with expectations. Naturally a possible disappointment is all the greater. So my sometimes strong language when I write about it stems from my being not just disappointed but positively cheated. My anger is not put on but deeply felt.

What is the next big food trend?

More and more menus are going farther and farther East all the time. More significantly, they are going constantly deeper into the variety of food offered in the Far Eastern countries, for example, China and India, whose food now turns out to be (on our menus) increasingly varied. It has its annoying dangers: the British public tends to be delighted with anything completely new even when it turns out to be third rate. As I have been preaching for many years: gastronomically speaking, food has no nationality; it is either good or it isn’t. Anyone thunder-struck by its "newness" alone is the worst kind of ignorant food snob.

Copyright by Egon Ronay ©

More Real Food Pioneers

Times Recommends

• Britain's Top 20 seaside fish and chip shops
• Ice cream makers: the scoop of the century
• British berries make super sorbets