36 18 APRIL 2024 Weekending DIANA HENRY ‘If you love lemon drizzle cake, try our new Lemon Drizzle Cake Dairy Ice Cream, with zesty lemon curd, sponge cake pieces and a sugar crunch’ TIM DALY Partner & product developer Ispent several months in hospital earlier this year. You might think this wouldn’t be the best environment in which to think about food, but the arrival of breakfast, lunch and dinner are high points in the hospital day. Apart from ward rounds, not much else goes on. Meals structure the hours. A bell – the kind that might be used by a town crier – was rung just before the tiered trolleys, carrying each dish under a plastic cloche, were wheeled around. The filling in of menus – you tick various options for the next day – was also a big deal. I was in a ward of six and we all discussed what to choose. This brought out kindness. We suggested dishes we liked but that others might not have tried. “Have that salmon Florentine,” said Ginny in the bed next to me. I thought that fish – since all the meals are reheated – would be nuked, but this dish became a regular for me. There were options that wouldn’t have been on the menu 40 years ago – chicken tikka masala and vegetable tajine with couscous, for example – and some that have been there forever. Instagram followers sent me direct messages, envious that I had daily access to old-fashioned British puddings. They exhorted me to try the ginger sponge and the blackberry and apple crumble while I had the chance. On bad days, when your health wasn’t improving and you thought you’d be in hospital for ever, crumble was a lifesaver. I would search for all the bits of tart fruit hidden under the thick rubble of fat and flour, ensuring every mouthful delivered a contrast. Because of my job, people were keen to know what I thought of the food. It was better than the school dinners I used to eat and less good than airline meals. Mind you, after three days in A&E, where you could only have white bread sandwiches, a plate of chicken tikka masala was manna from heaven. One positive, for me, was the timing of meals. You had ‘dinner’ at 5.30pm, then nothing until 7am. We were basically fasting. There was no snacking, no slices of buttered toast or chocolate digestives. I lost a stone in two months. I wasn’t well enough to go to the hospital café, but I thought about it. I knew they had ham and cheese toasties there. I also thought of the food I was missing most – pizza. I could taste my first bite of margherita on a rainy night in 1974, and could smell the charred crust. I thought about getting my son to pick one up from the pizzeria near the hospital, but I couldn’t break the camaraderie on my ward by ordering something nobody else could have. Eventually, I craved raw vegetables. Friends brought me plastic boxes of sweet carrot sticks, crunchy radishes and tubs of houmous in which to dip them. A couple of chef friends sent me a veritable field of stu – lengths of celery tied up with string, radishes, fresh peas, wedges of fennel – with a jar of garlicky yogurt. Because it’s been a hobby my whole life, I started to write down lists of what I wanted to cook when I got home. On my first night back, I made roast chicken stu ed with feta, tomatoes and oregano and a bowlful of crudités with houmous. On my second I went to the pizzeria near the hospital. It was bliss. Diana is The Sunday Telegraph’s food writer. @dianahenryfood Experiencing the highs and lows of hospital food We drink 100 million cups of tea a day in the UK – only Turkey and Ireland get through more brews – so it’s only right we raise a mug on National Tea Day this Sunday (21 April). You could go one step further, and celebrate with a tea-infused bake – this fruity Earl Grey tea loaf really elevates the citrussy notes in the Earl Grey and is a hearty partner for a cuppa. You can nd it at waitrose.com/recipes Get the kettle on
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDY5NzE=