In praise of custard

I'm serious, that's all this is going to be, like in Latin class when you had to read Catullus's 'Ode to a Wine Jar'.

On Friday, Karen came round and I made a blueberry pie and custard. She was surprised about the custard, but see, many Brits see pie as simply an excuse for custard.

When we were little, our mum used to have a tin of Bird's custard powder. It had magical properties, it looked white, maybe a vaguely off-white tinge, but when you added milk, it became suddenly yellow, like those books you used to have with outlined pictures and when you washed a paintbrush full of water over them, all the colours showed up. Only yummier.

That's what I have now. Custard powder, and glad to get it too.

I'm sure you can still buy custard powder in Britain, but there the supermarkets cater to our custard lust. Creamy, comforting custard. You can buy it ready-made in foil-lined cartons like orange juice. You can buy it in tins, or in packets to which you just add hot water. You can buy individual pots of it like yoghurt. Chocolate custard, toffee custard, strawberry custard. Original or low fat.
You can buy small fruit pies that have custard already in them, Mr. Kipling does indeed make exceedingly good cakes.
Bird's, Ambrosia, supermarkets' own brands. Most supermarkets also have an upmarket own-brand, fresh custard in a container like a 750ml yoghurt pot. Waitrose custard, pale, made with cream, speckled with fresh vanilla.

Now our problem is, do we eat it hot or cold? With hot pie you can just rip open a carton and pour it on cold. There's never enough. With cold sponge cake you can make a pudding by pouring on hot custard. Even the humble swiss roll can become a pud.
When I went over to see British friend Julie the week before last, we reminisced about bananas and custard, instant bliss, comfort food.

I like my custard thick so that it pours slowly and sets like blancmange, and I like it thin so that it pours easily and fills the bowl up.

Marks and Sparks custard tarts, set custard sprinkled with nutmeg in pastry shells. Treacle pudding or Christmas pud with custard running down it, jam roly-poly and custard.

At school you always had custard with pudding, maybe stewed apricots or apple crumble. Sometimes it was lumpy, sometimes pouring out in a stream the colour of egg-yolk, it didn't matter. You could just have a bowl of custard if you didn't like the pud, if the pud was stewed rhubarb perhaps, yuk.

Ah custard, how can I eat thee, let me count the ways. Oh, no, I've already done that.
That's all I have to say on custard, unless you have more....