My Last Supper: One Meal, a Lifetime in the Making

Product Information

My father was not a big eater. “I’d be happy if I could just take a pill for my lunch,” he once told me, when I was eight or nine years old. I had already concluded that the adult world could be wilfully baffling, but this seemed unnecessarily provocative. It felt like a betrayal. As a child, an unfocused mess of fat-softened limbs and round edges, I knew that food was great. I loved bacon sandwiches on white bread and chocolate éclairs, and lived for evenings when my parents were short on time and dinner was the convenience of Findus Crispy Pancakes filled with delicious, if unidentifiable, brown matter. It led to a stint as a reporter for The One Show on BBC One, for whom I made more than 150 short reports. I came to love those which showed us exactly where our food comes from; not just the touchy-feely, niche artisan stuff of farmhouses and kitchen tables – although there was a bit of that – but the complex, large-scale business of freezing a pea crop within 45 minutes, or harvesting carrots in the middle of the night, when it is good and cold. I skimmed across a silvery Morecambe Bay at dawn’s low tide to fish for brown shrimps, and stood in a tank with a massive farmed halibut in my arms, while it was milked for its sperm. It was a varied life. A masterclass in both braising meat and reducing sauces’: Jay Rayner’s version of Gary Rhodes’s braised oxtail. Photograph: Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner combines personal experience and hard-nosed reportage to explain why the doctrine of organic has been eclipsed by the need for sustainable intensification; and why the future lies in large-scale food production rather than the cottage industries that foodies often cheer for. From the cornfields of America to the killing lines of Yorkshire abattoirs via the sheep-covered hills of New Zealand, Rayner takes us on a journey that will change the way we shop, cook and eat forever. And give us a few belly laughs along the way. Independent https://inews.co.uk/culture/radio/food-podcasts-five-best-cookery-out-to-lunch-jay-rayner-off-menu-496639 a good year for facial hair". Open Road. 29 December 2011. Archived from the original on 18 August 2016 . Retrieved 3 July 2012. Do you want a reliable recipe for a delightfully traditional pork terrine? Or a salade niçoise? Or petit salé aux lentilles? It’s here. While at Hilaire, Hopkinson had got to know the revered food writers Elizabeth David and Richard Olney, dishes from whom are also included. As a result, it acts as a golden thread, pulled through the post-second world war history of encouraging food in Britain. Henry Harris worked with Hopkinson at Hilaire and was his head chef at Bibendum (before opening his own much-loved French restaurant, Racine). “It’s simply the most important cookbook of the last 25 years of the 20th century,” Harris says. “Many people had been doing their twists on these dishes. Simon restored them to their original selves.” Bareham agrees. “Simon likes doing dishes over and over again. They may not be original to him, but he perfects them.” Rayner has also written for magazines including GQ, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and Granta. His first novel, The Marble Kiss, published in 1994, was shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and his second, Day of Atonement (1998) was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction. [8] His first non-fiction book, Stardust Falling, was published in 2002; this was followed by his third novel The Apologist, published in the US as Eating Crow, in 2004.The hospitality sector has been through a hellish 18 months. The combination of Brexit and the pandemic has challenged our food supply chain like never before. The climate crisis has raised serious questions about the sustainability of our agriculture sector. Too many people do not have access to enough good-quality food. All of these very real and important issues can make being enthusiastic about our food culture seem grossly inappropriate. I think that’s a mistake. The thing that would surprise the 16-year-old Jay the most would be that he became a restaurant critic. It had never been my intention – having been editor of the Leeds Uni newspaper I wanted to be a news reporter. He might be disappointed by that. I think he would have thought being a restaurant critic was a rather light and fluffy and unserious job for a person with loftier ambition. But he’d be wrong, because one of the brilliant things about food is it feeds into every element of life. It’s not just about how things taste, it’s about emotion and memory and sex and politics – it’s about everything. What really gives the volume its rolling swagger, though, is the outrageous text. “You’re buying White Heat because you want to cook well? Because you want to cook Michelin stars? Forget it,” the introduction begins. “Go and buy a saucepan. You want ideas, inspiration, a bit of Marco? Then maybe you’ll get something out of the book.” He was barely 30 and he was already talking about himself in the third person. One brooding White image is captioned: “At the end of the day it’s just food, isn’t it?” It’s food he’s willing to dismiss out of hand. “This is disgusting; it’s a horrible dish,” he says alongside a shot of his assiette of chocolate. “It’s vulgarity pure and simple. It’s a dish invented for suburbia; it should be called ‘chocolate suburbia’.” Hilariously, Harveys was located on a suburban shopping parade. He once announced that I was specifically not invited to his new restaurant in Cardiff’s Hotel Indigo

Hopkinson allows for additions, so I add a dollop of Dijon, a little grated parmesan and parsley’: onion tart. Photograph: Jay Rayner Rayner was born on 14 September 1966. [4] He is the younger son of Desmond Rayner and journalist Claire Rayner. His family is Jewish. [5] He was raised in the Sudbury Hill area of Harrow, London, and attended the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School. [6] He studied politics at the University of Leeds, where he was editor of the Leeds Student newspaper, graduating in 1988. [4] Career [ edit ] Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands? Soft, with an encouraging outer crunch’: slow-cooked pork belly. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer VIDEO: Masterchef star Jay Rayner brings foodie fun to Northampton". 12 October 2018 . Retrieved 2 November 2018.A huge raft of crisp and chewy meringue layered with whipped cream and noodles of boozy chestnut purée’: Mont blanc gateau. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer This article was amended on 16 January 2023 because an earlier version misnamed Julie’s restaurant as “Jules”. I have never hung around in Chinese restaurants for desserts and the two here – sesame rolls stuffed with red bean paste and the toffee-flavoured glutinous rice balls – do not detain me. Instead, we go next door to a branch of the ices chain Amorino. It does a good line in sorbets that also happen to be vegan. I don’t, however, end the evening feeling virtuous. I don’t glow with self-righteousness. I simply feel fed. News bites This article was amended on 24 January 2021 to replace the first recipe photo. An earlier version had a photo which was described as being oxtail, but in fact showed a different dish. Rayner hosts the Out to Lunch podcast in which he interviews a celebrity guest in each episode. [10] Personal life [ edit ]

The subject of what we eat, I realised, is not just about how things taste. It is about memory and emotion, about love affairs and sex and the two together. It is about family and education; the environment and agriculture. But success is never simple. Before long pressures draw them away from the comforts of their roots. They find themselves cutting corners, taking risks and breaking the law. Finally Mal has to confront his life, his friendship with Solly and where their very different ambitions have led them.

This was another age when words like biryani needed translation’:Jay’s lamb biryani, from Madhur Jaffrey’s book. Photograph: Jay Rayner

The Apologist is a deliciously funny satire on the complexity and greed of international – and personal – politics, as well as a powerful paean to the diplomatic role of a well-made almond soufflé. For the main, I choose his braised oxtail, another so-called “signature dish’ that at the time of publication was banned because of the BSE prohibition on beef sold on the bone. It requires braising the oxtails with vegetables that are then discarded as a mush, and replaced with more, freshly chopped. The recipe says it should take no more than two hours. It takes me closer to three, but it’s worth it. Rhodes’s oxtail is a masterclass in both braising meat and reducing sauces. I finish with his baked egg custard tart which, hilariously, demands 500ml of cream and eight – count them – eight egg yolks. Rhodes insists this should be eaten at room temperature and he’s not wrong. It puts the “call my cardiologist” into “lush”.In 1997 he won a Sony Radio Award for Papertalk, BBC Radio Five Live's magazine programme about the newspaper business, which he presented. He chairs a BBC Radio 4 programme called The Kitchen Cabinet. [9] I remained a reporter, investigating the tangled politics and economics of food supply chains and national health policy. It puts the “call my cardiologist” into “lush”’: Rhodes’s custard tart. Photograph: Sîan Irvine/BBC Worldwide Ltd