Toast

Can we talk about toast – just for a minute?

I never realized till quite recently (when The General was sighing about my “toast rules”) how particular I really am about this ubiquitous breakfast item. Or, how many times it has featured in my life from childhood to present.

Firstly, the way toast is prepared in the UK and the way it is done elsewhere is vastly different. Perhaps because the toast was traditionally fetched from a far off, frigid area of the house and often shuffled into a toast rack, (something I have always yearned for) somehow, the British toast often seems to end up on the coolish side. And, if the bread is thin and therefore tending to be crispy, I actually prefer this temperature: the toast is now a more solid vehicle for – let’s just say it – more butter (and Marmite!) and much less prone to collapsing into itself like other more pillowy, gummy breads tend to do. (Apologies to any ‘Texas Toast’ fanciers – but I.just.can’t.)

Of course, this is where my toast contrariness begins.

If toast is being served with a cup of tea in the afternoon or if I am too unwell to face anything else, then yes: piping hot, with melted butter is the only civilized way to present it. Similarly, if an egg of any kind is involved? Obviously, the toast must also be warm. To me all this makes perfect sense.

When I was a teenager I worked in the kitchen of a large nursing home and one of my duties for the breakfast shift was preparing toast, loading slices of bread that tumbled predictably through a variety of wire squares in a machine not unlike a small elevator system. I started at 5am so the warm smells from this contraption were enticing to say the least and as I scraped whipped butter across with a palette knife, I could hardly wait to have my own during break, thickly smeared with slightly bitter marmalade and cut on the diagonal.

During my formative years, the familiar yet unwelcome smell and sound of toast being burned and subsequently scraped over the bin often awakened me on weekends. This was a source of grave disappointment not only to anticipate those bits of black dust still clinging unappealingly to the side of my plate but also my mum’s happy shrug and sheer lack of repentance as she lit a cigarette and settled down with the paper.

The cremation of hot cross buns was almost a tradition in our house and usually blamed on The Grill aka The Broiler. Burnt raisins turned to carbon grit and sinister mixed peel still haunt my dreams.

Shortly after Frasier, my first son was born, a heavenly older nurse brought a tiny tray bearing a cup of hot, sweet tea and a fluted blue plate with buttered toast triangles. In my memory there were no crusts. Regardless, never has anything before or since tasted so scrumptious.

At home, if it was just my mum and me, we often had a variety of things “on” toast: tinned spaghetti “hoops,” scrambled eggs, crumbly sharp cheese-on-toast (so different than the North American grilled cheese) baked beans and sometimes even asparagus spears.

(And I made the toast.)

In more recent years, when The General and I went on our first vacation together in Charleston, South Carolina we had glorious toast at this establishment of the same name!

Nigel Slater of whom I am a huge fan and admirer entitled his food inspired biography Toast and there is a BBC film of the same name both of which are excellent and hilariously poignant.

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