The Apocalypse Chef

Ha ha ha.  Remember when this guy had his finger on the button..?  No no, the one on the right.

For many years I have wrestled with the most thorny of questions.  What practical skills would I bring to a post-apocalyptic future? Living through the 1980s it was a question I thought long and hard about.  It was a time when "hitting the red button" meant something far more hideous than a bit more Lee Dixon on Saturday afternoon telly.  For crying out loud it was a decade when the foremost childrens' illustrator, the man who created The Snowman and Fungus The Bogeyman, wrote and illustrated a cartoon detailing the misery, despair and skin disease of a lovely husband and wife in the aftermath of a nuclear strike.

Well, the apocalypse is back only this time it's much worse because this apocalypse is going to mean the end of comfy sofas, Saturday night telly and michelin starred cookery.  Thanks to those crazy bankers, we'll all be living in caves and eating raw dog before you can say 'collateralised debt obligations'.

So, what will I bring to the dystopian future..?  Well, I’m no good with my hands so I can’t build anything.  My knowledge of flora and fauna is non-existant so I couldn't cure ailments with nettles and I have little upper body strength so would be useless as part of an axe-weilding mob.  However, thanks to my mother-in-law I now have a purpose, I’m going to cook food for everyone.  All hail the apocalypse chef.

I love odd cookbooks.  I have a stupendous barbeque cookbook from the 1970s where a plate of brown food is never without a carved tomato garnish.  I have a cookbook called ‘Gourmet Cooking’ where a dish called ‘Pacific Pie’ is topped with broken ready salted crisps (gourmet indeed).  Last week my MIL gave me a cookbook called ‘Cooking In Times Of Emergency’. It was published during WW2 and it is incredible.  There is a whole chapter called ‘Air Raid Interruptions’, which details what you should do to a cake or stew if you have to get to your Anderson shelter mid-meal.

By the time you read this we may well be in the throes of autumn fever.  You might be thinking about roasting a shoulder of something or braising the cheeks of whatnot.  However, if you're stuck for something tonight then why not serve up some delicious savoury tripe casserole, followed by some Brains au Gratin and finish the meal of with prune pudding?*.

If you want to throw a dinner party that your friends will never forget then just message me and I’ll send you the recipes.  And should we ever experience an apocalyptic event that plunges the world into a pre-industrial dystopia then come on over and I’ll pop the kettle on.

*yes these dishes are all real