Ahhhh.... Bisto!

One of the things I brought back with me from blighty this last trip was a package of Bisto gravy granules. Not as exciting as custard I agree, not even as necessary, Kevin and I between us have made some pretty damn good gravy, but there's something about seeing that box in the cupboard and knowing that Bisto gravy is only the boil of a kettle away.

I think to some extent, British cooking has done a full circle, we went through a time of ignoring the humble gravy boat for more exotic sauces, but now it's back there in its rightful place, sometimes there are tomato and mascarpone days, sometimes korma or jalfrezi days and sometimes you just want gravy.

Back in simpler times, when I was like seven, there was a very limited array of sauces. You had the bottled ones, HP and tomato, maybe a dash of Worcestershire, then there was cod in cheese or butter sauce and gravy. Food in our house was definately simple. Unlike my friend Karen's mum who used to make the kind of dishes you had to use recipes for, and who knew what a garlic clove was, my mum gave us fish fingers, cod balls and always roast on a Sunday, a rotation of chicken, lamb, beef. You can see why gravy came in handy.

I wasn't bullied at school, I was reasonably happy there, but school dinners at primary school were nightmare territory. Flat meat. Meat pie, steak and kidney pudding with a suet crust. Stew. Boiled cabbage and cold gravy. The best you could hope for were the ice cream scoops of mashed potato.

My mother's generation had lived through the privations of the war and so had little sympathy for my refusal to eat meat pie and stew, although she didn't try to feed me kidney, my reaction to that was far more immediate, at the smell of it I would retch and I could do nothing about that.

Then we got freezers, now we were sentenced to eat ice cream for pudding. And meals came to include curry pies. Just curry, generic, basically cumin and fenugreek, maybe a little chilli but not much. Then there were Findus crispy pancakes, not pancakes as we know them Spock, but greasy little pockets of meat and peas or cheese. But still the same rota of chicken, lamb, beef for Sunday lunch.

And through it all...ahhh...Bisto. Not the easy gravy granules of today, but a rectangular box containing a mixture (I imagine) of cornflour, seasoning and browning. There was still a great deal of scope for lumpiness when mixed.
On TV the ads had people drawn by the visible smell of Bisto gravy.
In competition was the oxo family, Katie and husband... Phil? We saw them grow up, always crumbling oxo into everything, over the years, as with my mother's cooking, Katie's repertoire increased, you could use oxo in spag bol, in other European favourites and now Phil (or whoever) was doing some of the cooking. The children grew up and left home. Katie and husband were always loving, flriting with each other, no doubt kept together by their use of and love for oxo cubes.

Both oxo and Bisto have branched out in recent years, offering a range of products, different gravies for different meats and oxo does a range of granules for other sauces.
I don't sell it well I know. The savoury smell of Bisto floating like an unseen mist to wherever I am sitting and making me say 'ahhhh...Bisto' as it brushes past my nose. Those little gravy pixies with the spoon that was bigger than them, were they related to the rice crispies elves I wonder?
Even my own children, brought up with a much wider range of food and recipes, fight over the gravy, there's never enough because someone always overflows their plate with it.

Last night we just had chicken and veggies with Bisto gravy, Kevin likes to season chicken when he cooks it, but sometimes I just want it plain so that I can have the gravy.
Funny what you miss when it's not in your cupboard.