The Prawn Cocktail Years by Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham

I’ve had this book by my favourite English food writer (SH) on the shelves for years and opened it for the first time at breakfast the other day. A homage to the food they were brought up on, it got me thinking about a dinner we hosted on Saturday night. We decided to go for a seventies vibe. Chicken vol-au-vents for a starter. Then boeuf au daube – I used the Reader’s Digest cookbook for this, published early seventies, so it’s exactly the right vintage – and we had potato gratin (Stephanie Alexander’s) on the side. Caprice brought apple crumble for dessert and Sheila brought a seventies cheese platter. Jatz crackers, of course, none of this lavosh crackers with olive oil and rosemary, no siree. And a nice touch was an orange into which she’d poked a lot of toothpicks, each of which was headed by a teensy pickled onion…