The Fat of the Land

I've been thinking about lard. Then lo and behold, I receive an email about it - an announcement, in fact. How spooky is that? "I need lard".

Not many people do need lard, nowadays, do they? Is it a dreadful mark of old age that I can remember when it constituted a core element of the weekly shop? The soft white block in its crinkly white-and-blue paper wrapper was an indispensable ingredient for pastry (no vegetarians or Jewish friends or halal issues to worry about back in Yorkshire in the 1970s, not where we lived anyway). I'm definitely giving my age away now, of course, referring back to the time we used to make pastry, rather than buy it ready-rolled, trimmed into neat circles in the chiller cabinet.

Lard was also used for the roast potatoes. I loved putting a chunk into the smoking hot roasting pan and seeing it disappear into liquid the very second it hit the blackened surface. Raymond and his ilk favour goose-fat now for their roasties (Tesco Value Lard is 28p for 250g, Tesco Finest Goose Fat is on special offer at £2.00 for 200g....) We fried our breakfast in lard, even the bacon and sausages. We fried a couple of slices of bread (white, Mother's Pride) in the pan afterwards, so as not to waste all that lovely fat.

Do you remember, we fried our chips in it? And it would harden in the chip pan, with little brown crumbs embedded in it, until it was time for the next batch a few days later. I never liked the look of it, with all those sinister dark bits and pieces, and the basket embedded at a slightly crazy angle like a ship in the ice. It made my stomach shiver. I didn't stop eating lovely home made chips though - just stopped looking at the pan.

Lard is deeply unfashionable now. We wouldn't have used olive oil - because we didn't like olives. They were Foreign. We actually used to talk about going out for a "Foreign Meal". Sesame oil, ghee, bouillon even - all indescribably Foreign. Aren't we cosmopolitan now?

The other out-of-fashion foodstuff I was thinking about, a cousin of lard, is suet. How would we make dumplings, jam roly poly, steak and kidney pudding without it? Oh, I remember, we don't eat those things much any more either. Which is a shame, really. Suet is mostly found in the animal feeding section at the supermarket now, tastily blended with linseeds and suchlike for the birds, although Atora Light Vegetable Suet (vegetable suet???) is still a seller. Albeit rather a contradiction in terms. What Light dishes are made with suet, I wonder?

I was in Melton Mowbray as I pondered these matters, considering the fate of the humble pork pie. Snack size pork pies are a great way to get your fat allowance for the day all in one go, and therefore appeal to my sense of efficiency. They are made from fatty cuts of pork (the pink parts), mixed with pork fat (the white parts). That jelly round the edge of the meat, that's fat. And the pastry contains both lard and suet. Job done.

Pork pies are enjoying something of a resurgence, and bucking the healthy eating trend, big time. The UK market is worth £130.9m with potential for further growth (she discovered, nerdishly, here). Along with pasties, their status as a historic artisan local food is seeing them served on the menu at some of the very finest restaurants.

It's just not right. Pork pie, a slice from a big one, should be eaten with a big pickled onion and a half of bitter in a Yorkshire pub after a long breezy walk. Followed quite possibly with jam rolypoly, home made custard and a little snooze. Ah, those were the days.