Convenience combinations provide food for thought

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Before we all lost the run of ourselves with all this fusion dining and crossover cuisine, the height of sophistication in any kitchen was the Vesta curry, a boil-in-the-bag proposition that relied less on actual meat and more on monosodium glutamate for its unique flavouring.

This truly was the cutting edge of cooking – a smorgasbord of spices from the Far East, by way of the Bachelors factory in Cabra.

And best of all any eejit could master this new art – open two sealed plastic bags, empty contents into saucepan full of boiling water and leave to either simmer or explode.

Better still, with the advent of new technology these Vesta curries became the mainstay of the microwave home – now you just had to pierce said bags and make sure to open with the aid of a dish cloth in case you soldered the hand off yourself from the heat.

The rice had a sort of stodgy feel to it – like an oil leak on a flock of seagulls – and the curry contained things that defied identification. But the taste – that heady mix of herbs and spices was so far ahead of what we were used to that none of that really mattered.

Of course they still make Vesta curries – largely for the sophisticated palate of our friends across the water – and undoubtedly the formula has evolved over time into something more nutritious and sophisticated to suit the modern palate.

But back then, the ready-made meal was in its infancy as was the taste of the Orient, and convenience food was bread with jam or ham on it.

The only time anyone mentioned fusion was with a ‘con’ in front of it and the Far East was a magazine from the missions that had a column in pigeon English was Pudsy Ryan.

Then came another milestone in the story of Irish food – the arrival of 4F pub grub, a phenomenon which removed Tayto as the only thing you could eat in an Irish bar.

And again it was so simple that it was spellbinding.

All you needed was a microwave and a decent-sized fridge. Into this fridge you put dozens of small plastic bags containing a choice of burger, steak and kidney pie or sausage roll.

The beauty of these burgers was that you didn’t have to waste time chopping lettuce or dicing onions – this burger was self contained between two halves of a bap; you simply pierced the bag and put it into the microwave to nuke it within an inch of extinction.

The hungry customer was only thrilled with this frazzled patty but you had to be very careful not to burn the entire roof off your mouth – because these things came out of the microwave at temperatures not seen outside of the earth’s core.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.