An evening with Grace dent and Deborah Frances-White at Union Chapel, London.
This was a “conversation with” Grace Dent to promote her new book Comfort Eating: The Joy of Secret Snacks and Naughty Nibbles – ready for the Christmas book race. This book is very much a tie in with her podcast “Comfort Eating”, currently running it’s 8th series, where she interviews actors, musicians and other various “celebrities” about their own comfort foods and pays “homage to the less celebrated food in life”
Along with award winning podcasting, Grace Dent is also well-known and loved for her restaurant reviewing columns in The Guardian. She reached national fame as judge on BBC’s MasterChef and her stint in the jungle in “I’m a celebrity get me out of here” amongst many other TV appearances.
In the grand Union Chapel in Islington, Dent’s conversation partner was comedian Deborah Frances White. They chatted about food, life, about the book, Dent read an extract. The evening was rounded off by a Q&A with the audience – where we got some light gossip about Dent’s food critic colleagues. Just as with the podcast, DFW brought her comfort meal and shared it with Dent. It was a concoction of shop bought chocolate biscuit dipped in cherry wine, brought together with whipped cream. The prefect corner shop treat! It’s at that point the combination of the industrial chocolate with some booze made me longed for a defrosted Sara Lee black forest gateau – a delicacy I discovered age 13, as a French exchange student lodging with a family in Kent.
Two themes really stood out for me during the evening and no doubt permeate the book: guilt and nostalgia.
Dent puts in opposition those “fancy, finicky” meals that she eats as an adult and restaurant critic and those simple, often industrially made foods that she had as a child. She rates the later as superior for the most part. The guilt seems almost to be transpiring from an inner class struggle: how to reconcile this position of being fortunate enough to partake in culinary delights of the few whilst longing for ultra-processed food of yesteryear with a side of nostalgia.
The same sentiment is present in the podcast where she’s never happier when a “celebrity” with all the money and access to great stuff admits to favouring baked beans on toast to a diner at Nobu. Oh “The things we eat when nobody’s looking” she coos!
At some point, Dent even extends the guilty feeling to eating full stop when she recalls “my mum and I were always on a diet”.
Dent is echoing a familiar sentiment prevalent in the UK I feel. It is all about the conflict between good/virtuous foods versus unhealthy foods (UPF), abundance (Christmas gorging) vs abstinence (veganuary, meatfree Monday?), fat free vs full fat or posh nosh vs working class grub.
Why does it all have to be a battle between wagyu beef and hula hoops or between spirulina and ice cream? Why should there always be an element of guilt and conflict in our consumption of food? This feels slightly disordered.
As for nostalgia, there is tons of it or “dollops” as Dent likes to say. I connected with this part the most. We all probably enjoy revisiting our childhood via our taste buds; provided the childhood was not a rotten one. Of course, Marcel Proust, the 19th century French writer, springs to mind with his famous madeleine moment in “Swann’s way” (in the books of “In search of lost time”). In fact, I found this passage is impossible to quote in a short and sweet way in as it goes on forever reflecting the minutia of his recollection.
Back to modern day north London and Dent talks about keeping a “draw of deliciousness” containing “Frozen Mccain chips, birdeye potato waffles, Asda garlic ciabbata slices, magnums and Warbutons toatie white loaf”. Her putting together “Mc cain chips, with malt vinegar, jar of bisto, blob of mint sauce” sends her back to her “mam’s Sunday dinners”.
Frankly that list of beige items from the freezer made me wince with heartburn. It was a very poignant moment in the evening though as Dent’s revealed that she lost both parents recently. Frankly who cares what comfort food is yours, as long as it does the trick and draws that veil of nostalgia over reality and the present time for a short moment. But please no guilt, it’ll cause acid reflux!
After all this, I think I might hunt for a black forest gateau – preferably of the frozen kind- so I’m off to Iceland – the shop the not the country.
PS: oh dear! I just found out that Sara Lee Black Forest Gateau has been discontinued for a long time already. I shall seek a replacement or make my own. Here’s one that was made of me for my 21st Birthday :-)).
Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody’s Looking by Grace Dent
Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9781783352876
