My mother certainly knew how have a picnic For the Ascot races or school speech day, she dressed the fold-up table with a crisp linen tablecloth, silver cutlery, china plates and stemmed. wine Delicious smells would escape from baskets as we packed glasses – often plates of tapas that she had fallen in love with since discovering the Moro cookbook – and popped champagne corks. Despite the formality of the presentation, the menu will be elegantly simple: crab dressed in the shell with its rich homemade mayonnaise, salad and torn baguette. Dessert will be bowls of warm ripe strawberries topped with gallons of double cream and a sprinkle of sugar. Then there would be coffee – strong and black, in small cups – and always a box of dark chocolate truffles. As she used to say without a trace of irony: ‘I like to keep it simple’.
Childhood by the river picnic There was more lightness: a rug spread on the grass, a wicker basket filled with roast chicken, sliced ham, potato salad and a savory tart. Even then, there was always a cool box full of beer and wine and we ate off pretty plastic plates. There will be summer fruit and cake to slice for pudding. Swim after lunch, then lie well on a towel in the sun until afternoon. Eventually he would bring a thermos of tea and we would cut another slice of cake.
That picnic sets a standard that’s hard to shake. There’s nothing wrong with an M&S ‘pick bits’ run – we’ve all done it and we’ll all do it again, usually in a car park 20 minutes before getting somewhere. But a well planned picnic with home cooked food is a different experience. Good bread, a well-chosen cheeseboard, a jar of pickles and mustard to go with the ham. cold roast chicken that you can tear apart and serve with aioli; The potato salad is dressed while still warm so it really absorbs the flavor; Cold drinks that are actually cold, not floating in a box of melted ice.
Effort, when it is made, always pays off. Eating out does something to appetite and mood that is hard to explain rationally – food tastes better, conversation flows more easily, time moves differently. The French have their grand traditions around, the Italians are their equals, but the British version – bleak, cheerfully impractical, aggressively determined to have fun despite the weather – has a special charm all its own.
These days, the picnics I make tend to emulate my mother’s on the more rustic end of the scale. I’m usually more pillows and cushions than silver service. The more you can eat with your fingers, the better. I recommend melamine plates over paper and glass or enamel for drinking. Now I always bring the table too – when I turned my back, a hungry whippet hoovered over an entire plate of Vitello Tonato.
