2011 Picnics: There's Still Time

As we have been experiencing a bit of autumnal great weather I thought I'd bung down my favourite picnic ever.  Actually, it's not strictly speaking my picnic, it's the picnic that the anonymous family set out on their rug in Ted Hughes's beautiful The Iron Man. 

 One day a father, a mother, a little boy and a little girl stopped their car and climbed the hill for a picnic.  They had never heard of the Iron Man and they thought the hill had been there for ever.

They spread a tablecloth on the grass.  They set down a plate of sandwiches, a big pie, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk, a bowl of tomatoes, a bagful of boiled eggs, a dish of butter and a loaf of bread, with cheese and salt and cups.  The father got his stove going to boil some water for tea, and they all lay back on rugs munching food and waiting for the kettle to boil, under the blue sky.

For my money this has everything a good picnic should have.  It’s heavy on the meat, you need to take knives to cut the bread and chicken and you boil the water for tea in situ (let’s face it a teapot on a picnic blanket is a thing of beauty).  It’s simple but it feels loving and generous.

It was an absolute doddle to make, the only cooking required was the chicken and eggs.  I roasted a free-range, ethically farmed chicken for an hour and a half at 200C.  As always I shoved half a lemon and some whole garlic cloves up its arse, rubbed olive oil over the skin and sprinkled with salt and pepper.  Easy.  While the bird was in the oven I boiled three eggs for 8 minutes then held them under cold running water until they were cool. 

The sandwiches were a blank canvas as their flavour is unspecified.  I wanted to make them reasonably traditional so peanut butter and banana was out.  After six days of agonising I plumped for ham, mustard and tomato with ham and tomato for the kids.

The pie was a classic pork pie from my butchers and I could have baked some bread I suppose but I wasn't going to kill myself over it.

So, here’s the family verdict on The Iron Man picnic.  It is a picnic from the recesses of the British psyche.  Every aspect of it is wonderful but what I really like about it is how uncompromising it is.  I know this sounds like a small detail but the fact that the chicken is whole, the eggs unpeeled, the bread and cheese uncut really focusses the picnic on the food.  It is fast food but slow fast food.  Food that has to be deliberated over, the ceremony of the unwrapping, the carving, the brewing all adding to the drama and theatre of the meal.  It is much more than the sum of its parts and it was delicious.