At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Great Britain: Wales

Annie Levy

Tea with Jayne and Wyn Evans brings their large family together at the end of each day to share food that is cooked with love. The family includes Thomas, age 2; Annabelle, age 4; Emma, age 6; Freddie, age 13; and Esme, the oldest, at age 15. The Evanses “really like their food” and feel that eating together is an important ritual of daily life. Jayne regards her commitment to cooking as traditional. Wyn’s mother cooked, and so did her own mother. It’s “just tradition really.” “A farm house wife” never stops, she laughs, referring to her “workaholism.” Annie, visiting the family, feels as if she has walked into an idyll of rural Welsh farm family life in a contemporary context. Reading Welsh history, one glimpses rural households that are either poor or rich, and this lifestyle feels very middle class in the sense of being comfortable but not excessive, a feeling of plenty that is accompanied by a Christian gratefulness. There’s an international awareness too, and many worry that the European Union might change farm subsidies that for now help to stabilize the income of many farming families.

The Evans family lives in a new modern house with a rustic feel that they built in proximity to the land where Wyn raises sheep and cows, not far from a market town where the children go to school. On the days Jayne works in another town, she stops in larger supermarkets such as Aldi and Tesco for club-card points and orders Asda online for many staples; on other days she gives her business in the local town to the proprietor-owned vegetable shop Tonks and the Williams Family Butchers. The shopkeepers all know her and appreciate her regular business.

Jayne and Wyn have built their house themselves with great attention to energy efficiency (with solar, wood, underfloor heating, and plans for future hydro) and physical and aesthetic comfort. They designed their kitchen to reflect the needs of a busy family, and Jayne continually expresses gratitude for the large double-door refrigerator, still an unusual luxury in the United Kingdom, with the outside ice dispenser sitting on top of server freezer drawers and for the large electric Rangemaster with the glass top and the slow-cooker oven feature. The kitchen is large, perhaps a third of it a play area with couches and toys overlooking an inglenook fireplace. In the middle stands an island that functions as a surface for fruit bowls filled with diverse fruit (oranges, melons, apples, grapefruit, bananas) for cooking and as a staging point for serving dinner. On three sides the island is surrounded—the sink/cooker/fridge triangle design.

Albala

A Welsh farming family eating a traditional tea. (Courtesy of Susan Bound)

On the fourth side is the long rectangular kitchen table, covered with an oil-cloth tablecloth with a black-and-white kitten motif and surrounded by a combination of chairs, some of sleek black leather or vinyl and others in an updated country-kitchen carved wood style. Jayne’s taste reflects her desire for a sense of light and uncluttered space (versus the dark and heavily patterned interiors that were a feature of her parents’ generation) while maintaining a feeling of coziness.

Refrigerator

Refrigerators were only made practical for home use in the early 20th century, gradually replacing the icebox, which was just that: a block of ice in an insulated box. Freon was the key component that made refrigerators affordable. Through the 20th century, refrigerators, often combined with freezer units, became bigger and bigger, allowing people to shop for more groceries at a time. They also became the center of the household, its focus, replacing the hearth. Here people would place pictures and notices and often hang out in the kitchen around the fridge rummaging for snacks. Eventually refrigerators were fitted with ice and water dispensers and even smart applications that could adjust the temperature of various sections and suggest when food should be used before spoiling.

Annie was invited for a 6:30 meal (an aspirational rather than exact time). When she arrives at 6:00, Jayne and her two younger daughters are preparing the batter for the Yorkshire puddings. Annabelle and Emma are standing on stools, helping their mum with small whisks in hand, mixing the Dove’s Farm gluten-free flour with salt, milk, and eggs in an old-style pottery yellow-ware Mason bowl in the classic 1901 pattern. “The batter feels too loose,” said Jayne, adding more flour by feel for “the right consistency.” She melts lard from a paper-wrapped block, pours it into muffin tins, slightly smaller and deeper than Yorkshire pans, and pops them in a hot oven. When the fat is hot enough, Jayne adds the batter, and the tins go back in the oven. The secret to Yorkshires is hot fat and a hot oven, she instructs.

The vegetables have been prepared earlier in the day; even the children often help with peeling carrots and potatoes. The roast potatoes are leftovers from Sunday lunch (we’re on a Tuesday), some of which have been mashed, and others of which will be served in chunks. The roast went in the oven at 9:00 p.m. the previous evening; it’s a special LMC cut (beef “leg of mutton”) that is rare to find these days but is specially ordered from the butcher, who has also scored the joint to suggest the correct angle of cutting for optimal tenderness. This cut requires such a long, slow cook that most people won’t buy it these days. But Jayne has her slow-cooking oven and cooks the joint with a little stock from vegetables, and a longtime favorite product named Browning that now must be bought at small specialty shops, as smaller supermarkets no longer stock it; it contains salt, glucose, and coloring and gives that good flavor and deep brown hue to stocks and gravies. Jayne shares Wyn’s mother’s trick for smooth and perfect gravies: dissolve corn flour (cornstarch) in hot water and add to the cooking stock from the vegetables and drippings and pan juices from the roasting meat (plus a little Browning).

“Be careful with the Browning, as it can stain things—a few drops work brilliantly,” Jayne tells me later. “My mum used to keep the bottle in a plastic cup to stop marks. I just wipe the drips!!!”

It is difficult to estimate how much time Jayne spends cooking. Jayne’s cooking life is one in which food prepared in intentional volume as well as leftovers from one meal form a portion of another. Clearly, she does kitchen tasks throughout the days when she’s home and bits of shopping on the days she’s working or is otherwise out. She’s thinking about food a lot of the time and cooks Wyn “dinner” at midday—always home-cooked, though occasionally she will use curry sauce from a jar, for instance, or recipes from Slimming World. Wyn works hard, and Jayne feels that he has high expectation for meals. And, he expresses his pleasure and gratitude for her cooking. She will sometimes have cooking days and prepare meals in advance, which she stores in the freezer drawers. Jayne and Wyn seem to accept their roles responsibly and appreciate what the other does in a reciprocal relationship, and this forms the basis of home and family in which the food is central.

Jayne speaks with concern about food and health issues. She avoids gluten, is deficient in B12, and requires supplements to keep her levels up. She is wary of adding too much salt, as her family as a history of heart disease, though for Wyn, “Mother likes salt” and believes it’s a natural human craving (and why junk food is so successful, because healthy food is nowadays undersalted when it arrives at the table). Jayne gives the little ones apple and orange juices diluted with water—Vitamin C for their runny noses but aware that the acid and sugar are not so good for their teeth. The rest of us will be given large glasses of ice water with our meal.

When Wyn comes in at around 6:30, he begins to help. At the kitchen island, he slices the joint of beef with an old bone-handled carving fork and a modern high-tech designed knife and puts a slice or two on each white porcelain plate, which Freddie had counted out for everyone (except the little ones) and placed on the table. Freddie also had put sturdy contemporary stainless forks and knives and large glasses of ice water on the table. Jayne lays the hot saucepans on well-used laminated cardboard place mats in the center of the table, commenting that if this was a more formal meal, she might use serving bowls. The small children each have plastic Disney character beakers and special plastic bowls that Jayne’s mother enjoys giving as gifts, and these are useful because they don’t shatter if they fall to the floor. It’s a table that reflects an aspiration for things to look nice and somewhat unified but accepts that old items (the trivet place mats) and gifted items might be practical even if not a visual match.

As Wyn carves the meat, he jokes that they should be serving Welsh lamb, since they farm it. He carries the individual plates to the table.

Jayne portions out the vegetables so that everyone is guaranteed a bit of everything and nothing runs out. “My rule is to eat everything on the table, but there’s some give and take.” At the same time, she cooks so as to please the diversity of ages and tastes in her family, hence the number of separate items. She places careful amounts in the little children’s bowls so they eat enough but not too much is wasted. She pours gravy in the little kids’ bowls, and everyone else pours their own from a stainless steel gravy saucepan with a special lip for pouring.

Freddie is at one end of the table, and Wyn is at the head, next to Thomas. The rest of the group is sitting around the table, with Jayne closest to the kitchen surfaces in case she needs to get up. She serves me a plate piled with food; the meal feels like Christmas, but they all assure me that there is even more variety, loads more, at Christmas.

While everyone is sitting quietly, Freddie says a brief prayer thanking the Lord for the lovely food and “Jayney” for doing all the cooking and requests good results on his recent exams. Everybody chuckles with him on this.

The vegetables consist of boiled carrots cut in coins, broccoli, peas, roasted potatoes (mashed and others in chunks), and mixed butternut squash and sweet potatoes roasted with garlic granules. But the meat is central, and the gravy unifies everything on the plate with that savory and slightly salty character. Thomas is crazy about broccoli and clamors for more, which his parents are happy about. Annabelle seems to be feeling tired or poorly and doesn’t eat much. The meat is indeed very tender for having slow-cooked for 22 hours!

Slowly the children get up from the table, not having completely finished their bowls. Thomas starts circling the island on his little toy car with wheels and then his blue bouncy cow. Annabelle and Emma are running around too. There’s lots of laughter.

Freddie has begun to clear the finished plates and stack them on the side next to the sink. It’s the job of the older children to clear and clean at this meal. Esme will rinse and place all the plates in the dishwasher and wash up the saucepans. Jayne feels strongly about the work being shared between children and adults and in this case across gender.

Everyone slowly gathers in their seats again. Or rather, two are on laps, Thomas on Wyn’s, who with a fork feeds into his little boy’s mouth the remainders from his bowl and some extra broccoli, and Annabelle on Esme’s lap, as Jayne tries to get a little more of the potatoes and vegetables into her little girl’s tummy.

Jayne gets up and puts little cakes on a plate—treats of gluten-free cornflakes mixed with Nutella, placed daintily in white fluted paper cases. She brings these to the table and gives each diner one as a small sweet to end the meal.

Freddie goes upstairs to shower, puts on his pajamas, and comes back down to finish clearing. Jayne makes a milky, chocolatey Nesquick in a sippy cup for Annabelle; she usually wouldn’t offer chocolate at this time—a strawberry milk would be better—but is concerned the girl isn’t well and hasn’t eaten properly. Annabelle is also munching on carrot sticks, and Jayne will offer these as well as fruit, cherry tomatoes, and red peppers for snacks. Evening eating is not strictly regulated, though it irritates Jayne if Freddie eats standing at the island.

There’s not much left over from the meal—some carrots, some gravy, a few potatoes, and some meat—and with these tomorrow Jayne will make a beef and onion pie with choux pastry, gluten free of course. She shows off her well-loved Mcdougall’s Better Baking pamphlet, cherished recipes from a large UK flour brand that she’s had for so many years its lost its cover, and flips through the pages, showing me all the recipes she needs, good traditional British fare.

Soon after the meal Wyn will go out to tend again to the sheep and cows. He doesn’t participate in the clearing or cleaning of the meal. Esme goes upstairs to help the little girls get to bed. Freddie watches the television. Jayne is ready to wind down. This has been an example of a real Welsh meal of meat and vegetables, one that reflects a contemporary economy in which farmers are able to make a middle-class income, especially when supplemented by another income, such as Jayne’s in an office. Their traditional foods are prepared with modern notions of healthy eating and convenience products where appropriate. And Jayne, even as a working woman, accepts some gender division for herself and Wyn yet insists that her older children, a boy and a girl, have equal duties in the kitchen.

Gluten-Free Yorkshires (Yorkshire Puddings)

If you’re Jayne and have a big family, double all your recipes!

1 teaspoon of lard

½ cup gluten-free flour

½ teaspoon salt

4 eggs

¾ cup milk

1.Preheat oven to hot, 400°F.

2.Melt the lard from a block in each cup of a 12-cup muffin tin. Place tin in oven.

3.Mix gluten-free flour and salt; beat in eggs and milk. Judge whether the consistency feels correct to you. Remember that you are using a recipe for white wheat flour and adjust your flour quantities accordingly to get the batter to feel similar to pancake batter.

4.Remove the muffin tin from the oven and pour batter equally into the cups. Bake for 20 minutes, hoping your puddings will lighten, turn golden, and rise.

5.Serve immediately.