Woman: Would you like to order, sir?
Thatcher: Yes, I will have a steak.
Woman: How do you like it?
Thatcher: Oh raw, please.
Woman: And what about the vegetables?
Thatcher: Oh they’ll have the same as me. Spitting Image, ITV
Have you ever tried pilchard curry? Play for Today: Abigail’s Party, written & directed Mike Leigh, starring Alison Steadman ***** Angela to Beverly, BBC 1977
Elwood: Got any white bread? I’ll have some toasted white bread please. No, maan, dry.
Jake: Got any friend chicken? Bring me four fried chickens and a coke. The Blues Brothers 1980 starring John Belushi & Dan Aykroyd & Steve Cropper & Donald Duck Dunn & Murphy Dunne & Willie Hall & Matt Murphy & Carrie Fisher & Ray Charles & John Candy & Aretha Franklin & Twiggy & James Brown & Henry Gibson et al, director John Landis
Men have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the big birds has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavour.
The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits; nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells and always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce.
But men who graft the trees and make the seeds fertile and big can find no way to make the hungry eat their produce.
A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene spread over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back. They come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes flow by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze.
And in the eyes of the people there is a failure and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
With regular food supplies the population explodes. James Burke, Connections s1e1: The Trigger Effect, BBC 1978
And so the little villages grew with their huts and their granaries. ibid.
Compared with the razzle dazzle of the modern world the past was really pretty colourless. And in spite of what you might think, the food in that picnic was monotonous, limited and bland. James Burke, Connections s2e19: Better than the Real Thing, BBC 1994
I am not a foodie, thank goodness. I will eat pretty much anything. A lot of my friends are getting incredibly fussy about food and I see it as a bit of an affliction. Alain de Botton
Modern agriculture has been accurately described as a way of turning oil into food. As the price of oil continues to rise, so will the price of food. Jeremy Grantham
I haven’t got a clue: I know you put it in the oven and wait for it to rise. The Call Centre V, Hayley plans to bake cakes for tea trolley, BBC 2013
All-American High: can fast food alter your brain in the same way as tobacco and heroin? New Scientist front cover
Eating at fast food outlets and other restaurants is simply a manifestation of the commodification of time coupled with the relatively low value many Americans have placed on the food they eat. Andrew F Smith, Encyclopaedia of Junk Food and Fast Food, 2006
Tempura! Just half each. This is unbelievable. Do you know what it is eh this tempura like, shall I tell ya? Battered veg. Battered veg. Veg battered. Oh listen to this. Seriously, a blob of jam ... The dirty bastards. The Catherine Tate Show, Janice and Ray
Belulah, peel me a grape. Mae West, I’m No Angel, film 1933
A white truffle (tuber magnatum pico) weighing 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) was sold in November 2002 for a record £35,000 (£22,011). Guinness World Records 1985 (50th edition)
Big Donga: Oh I like pies. Pies are my life. See, pies – to me a pie is a work of art. When I see a beautiful pie, tears pour down my coupon. And why? Because pies are my livelihood.
Son: And drugs.
Big Donga: Oh aye, pies and drugs.
Son #2: And brothels.
Big Donga: Oh aye, pies and drugs and brothels. But oh boy, the greatest of these is pies. See, eating a pie while snorting Charlie from a prostitute’s belly-button is my idea of quality time. Rab C Nesbitt: Lord of the Pies, BBC 1996
Where else can you get a fish supper at nine o’clock in the morning? John Sergeant Meets Rab C Nesbitt, Rab, BBC 2011
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
I’ll have the flesh! Terry-Thomas, to waiter and slavering over woman at dinner table
The brain of the calf, the liver of the chicken, the legs of the frog, the hoof of the mountain goat in jelly … ibid. Terry-Thomas to Ian Carmichael at table
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. James Joyce, Ulysses
Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted, mostly. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Food first then morals. Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Of course, I never follow a recipe, I just improvise as I go along. A little bit of this, a spoonful of that ... it’s much more fun, really. Madame Seignobos, Comment en Forme unto Cuisiniere
A lot of people think it’s easy to lift recipes out. Elizabeth David, cookery writer
To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean. Elizabeth David, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine
In the case of mayonnaise the damage may have been done by the commercial firms and their bottled products which were already on sale by the mid-1880s ... By the thirties there was already a vast public brought up in the belief that mayonnaise was a sauce which could only be produced in a factory. ibid.
Michelin awards Madame Barattero two stars. Now, although Michelin one-star restaurants are very much on the chancy side, both as regards quality and price, and such of their three-star establishments (there are only eleven in the whole of France) into which I have penetrated, either a little too rarefied in atmosphere for my taste – or, as Raymond Mortimer observed recently of a famous Paris house, the food is too rich and so are the customers – it is rare to find the two-star places at fault. As far as the provinces are concerned these two-star establishments (there are fifty-nine of them in the whole country, about twenty of which are in Paris) offer very remarkable value. ibid.
It is hard to envisage any cooking without lemons, and indeed those of us who remember the shortage or total absence of lemons during the war years, recall the lack as one of the very worst of the minor deprivations of those days. ibid.
Provence is a country to which I am always returning, next week, next year, any day now, as soon as I can get on a train. Elizabeth David