The day we ate the cheese

Day six in the 1942 kitchen and it's the weekend. Which means two things. Nobody has to go to work, and lunch comes out of our rations.

I've been saving the cheese ration all week for today. It's funny really, usually we have cheese in the fridge (we even have a seperate "cheese fridge" to age homemade cheese, but that is another story). Usually, though, that cheese has no particular purpose. It just sits there, and it's very easy to cut a bit to put on some bread, or just eat with an apple, or maybe without the apple. What can I say, we do cheese. Which would make you think that sticking to a cheese ration would be difficult, even a relatively generous ration as it was at this point. But it was easy. When I planned the meals I decided exactly when the meat would be used, and when the cheese would be used. That cheese had a place, an important job to do, it wasn't just sitting there with no purpose. And I had plenty of filling food so I was never prowling around the cupboards looking for something nice. Not once was I tempted to eat that cheese, even though it sat there for almost a week.

But today was the day. Today we had cheese cutlets for lunch, and very nice they were too. Basically they consisted of mashed potato (what else?) mixed with grated cheese and flour. I added chives but you could also make cheese and veg cutlets by adding peas, grated carrot or whatever else you had. The cutlets are then shaped, dipped in batter and fried. Crispy on the outside, melty on the inside, and jolly nice served with a salad.

I was wary of this evening's meal. I tried to make mock fish in week one and it was a disaster. It refused to thicken no matter what I did, I got more and more stressed over the silly thing and we ended up eating a barely recognisable version at about 9.30 at night. I was slightly traumatised by this. I sort of felt I should give it another go, but I really wasn't looking forward to it. Guess what? It was easy. Really easy. Done in about ten minutes in fact. I can't get over how easy it was, it just worked! I may even make it again! You boil milk with ground rice, leek or onion, anchovy paste and margarine until it thickens then take it off the heat and beat in an egg. Spread it out on a plate, cut to shape, coat in breadcrumbs and fry. It really does taste like fish, although it doesn't have much texture, but some crispy fried potatoes and crunchy veg solved that problem.