One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 133 ….. messed up food

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Dad, 1962

Now our Dad, had embraced all that the 20th century had to offer.

He had been born in 1908 when the motor car was still in its infancy, and holidays were still only for the wealthy.

But rather than go on to grammar school, like Toad of Toad Hall he fell in love with all things motorized, starting work in 1922 as a “motor boy” for Robinson’s who were a “paper Manufacturer in Newcastle.  

From there he went on to drive for a series of different coach companies before leaving for London in the 1930s and joining Glenton Tours who specialized in taking the comfortably well off on tours across Britain and the Continent.  

It was career and a company he stayed with until his retirement.

Equally he was totally at ease with “living out of wedlock” both for himself and indeed for all of us.

So when I asked if he was comfortable with me and my girl friend sharing a bed back in 1972 when were down from Manchester he just smiled and said “ask your mother”.**

But on one thing he stubbornly remained in the 19th century, and that was his approach to food.

It will have been on one of my trips back to Eltham from Chorlton that I offered to make spaghetti carbonara, which I reasoned should go down well given that he had spent most of his working life driving coach loads of passengers on tours across Europe.  He ate it, said he enjoyed it, but delivered the killer blow that while “it was nice he didn’t like his food messed about”.

Italian Pie, 2022

It is a moment I often return to and no more so than at present when we have Tina’s mum with us who was born in Naples, now lives in Milan and has taken over the job of resident cook.  

Much of what she makes comes from southern Italy and the meals are a pure delight. 

But occasionally I will offer up my own “Italian take”, and last night it was “Italian pie” which I found in an old Marks and Spencer cookbook and has been an old friend since the kids were born.

It is simply layers of sliced cooked potatoes, and mozzarella cheese, topped with tomato sauce and a lavish dribble of olive oil.

It is a simple dish and like many simple dishes it works perfectly.  Neither Tina or her mum recognize the dish but it scored a hit with Rosa and has always been a favourite of Tina’s.

Most of the world’s cuisines will have something similar, and like many it is meat free, which for most people through most of time was how must meals were.

Now I have no idea what Joe and Mary Ann who lived her for 50 years would have made of Italian pie or spaghetti carbonara, but in many ways they were ahead of the majority.  They had a telephone in the 1920s, a TV in the 50s’ and may have dispensed with the old kitchen range in washing copper soon after the house was built in 1915.  Indeed, there is strong evidence that while both were installed in the other houses in the terrace, Joe went straight for a gas cooker and used a local laundry.

Cooking their way, 1950-2000

I will never know if they adopted “messed up food”, but I know that my friends who briefly lived here in the mid-1970s, and of course us who date from 1976 certainly did.  We were that post war baby boomer generation who came to maturity as the consumer revolution with its supermarkets, international food, freezers, and microwaves offered up fascinating meals from around the world.

To which the TV cooks and their cooking manuals told us how to make everything from French onion soup to a curry or a paella.

Location; Chorlton

Picture, Dad, 1962, Italian pie, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and cooking their way, all of which  have themselves past into history.

*The Story of a House, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**To which mother had already said “ask your dad”.