Jay Rayner is a novelist, journalist, musician and familiar figure on television (Masterchef, The One Show), as well as in and around Herne Hill. It would be difficult to mistake him for anyone else. A big man with big hair, he looks like someone who eats (and writes about it) for a living. You may see him in Dugards, where this little paperback is on sale, or in Mimosa, or even in Sainsbury’s. He is not shy, and his forthright views have no doubt made him more than a few enemies. It cannot be otherwise for a restaurant critic. Personally, I have found him to be approachable and courteous.
This book is as much about the author as about the business of eating food. He is frank about his less attractive traits. A fat child who was no good at sports, he found his macho side in swallowing, and enjoying, almost anything his parents put in front of him: snails, oysters... anything but baked beans - not through juvenile snobbery but because he did not like the taste or texture. He is greedy, messy, and a self-confessed “terrible Jew”, who adores chorizo, andouillette, scratchings, a bacon butty: pig-meat in any guise.
I enjoyed the witty and trenchant myth-debunking: ‘Thou shalt not cut off the fat’ (fat is where the flavour is, and eating fat is not in itself unhealthy), ‘Thou shalt not mistake food for pharmaceuticals’ (superfoods do not exist, and nothing you eat will prevent you from getting cancer let alone cure it), ‘Thou shalt always worship leftovers’ (“there’s only one problem with leftovers. It’s the word ’leftovers’”). There are straightforward recipes throughout that attest to his tastes.
Rayner writes thoughtfully about the moral and economic issues surrounding meat-eating. While - for most of us - meat tastes good, and is a key element of our diet, it is undeniably resource-heavy to produce. And not many of us would enjoy the prospect of slaughtering a lamb or a squealing pig. In any case we are going to have to get used to eating less meat as demand grows in Asia and inevitably forces prices up. So, eat more offal, and be more imaginative in the use of vegetables. In ‘Thou shalt not sneer at meat-free cookery’ he takes aim at the Quorn sausage and other so-called meat substitutes that constitute “a lack of imagination on a plate”. Surely better to enjoy a roasted cauliflower with cheese and almonds? Or a porcini risotto? And better still to admit that you don’t really like steak than ask for it well done and be served with a piece of shoe-leather that is an insult to the chef - and the cow.
Rayner urges us to shun the food Taliban, get stuck in with our fingers, eat a balanced diet, and enjoy our lives. It is, as the saying goes, “not rocket science” [pun intended]. Although he could pass for an Old Testament prophet in the right get-up, it turns out he’s not Moses after all. We are encouraged to make up our own commandments.
The Ten (Food) Commandments is published by Penguin at £6.00
First published in Herne Hill (the magazine of the Herne Hill Society) number 138, Summer 2017.
Colin Wight
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