Culinary Misidentification

We’d done the sensible thing before we set off in the motorhome and I’d made a proper hachis Parmentier, the sort of slow cooked beef dish that sits there quietly proving you are, in fact, a competent adult. Something rich, deliberate, unmistakably beef. The kind of meal that does not invite debate about what species is involved.

Which is just as well, as it turns out.

Because one night is always given over to a Charlie Bigham. We call it a treat, which is a polite way of saying we’ve decided not to bother. Hay cooked one in the motorhome in Portesham, and it came out exactly as they all do. Golden lid, creamy interior, the visual equivalent of a reassuring nod.

I ate it quite happily. No complaints at all. And when I’d finished, I sat back and, with the calm authority of a man who clearly understands what he has just consumed, announced that it was a very nice fish pie.

It was not a fish pie. It was chicken and ham hock.

Now, that would be bad enough on its own. Confusing fish with poultry and pig is not a minor slip. It is a full category error. But the detail that really ought to concern everyone involved is this: I hadn’t just mislabelled the dish. I had actually eaten pieces of chicken and calmly registered them as prawns.

Not vaguely prawn-like. Not “something a bit fishy”. Proper chunks of chicken had gone through chewing, consideration, and whatever passes for analysis, and emerged in my mind as seafood. At that point we are no longer dealing with a simple mistake. That is a complete breakdown in quality control.

It is rather like lifting the bonnet, pointing at something entirely at random, and declaring the alternator has gone, only to discover the car is missing a wheel. The process has not just gone wrong, it has gone wrong with confidence.

And that, I think, is the interesting bit. The certainty. There was no hesitation. No cautious probing. My brain took a quick look at the situation, decided it recognised the pattern, and shut down further enquiry. Creamy pie, pale protein, eaten in a motorhome - close enough, move on.

Which does make you wonder how often this happens elsewhere. A familiar outline, a quick assumption, and then a firm conclusion delivered with just enough authority to discourage anyone from asking whether you’ve actually checked. Details become optional once the general idea feels about right.

In fairness, those Bigham’s pies do encourage this sort of thinking. They all arrive under the same polite golden lid, each one a variation on a theme of middle class reassurance. Once you’ve decided what it probably is, the rest of the evidence seems to be treated as an administrative inconvenience.

Hay, to her credit, handled this with admirable restraint. There was a pause, a look, and then the quiet correction. No fuss, no lecture, just the gentle dismantling of my entirely misplaced confidence.

Which leaves me with the slightly awkward conclusion that, given enough sauce and a pastry lid, I may no longer be able to distinguish between land and sea. A worrying development for someone who prides himself on knowing what he’s looking at.

I shall stick to the hachis Parmentier in future. At least then, if I insist it’s something else, we can all agree the fault lies with me rather than the evidence.