El Pa Y All
Having supper with my friends Micheál and Sonya last night I was offered a starter of startling and delicious simplicity.
They sliced pieces of French loaf along the length and then grilled these on top of their range.
Then they handed these around with a supply of halved but unpeeled cloves of garlic, some halved sweet cherry tomatoes , some good olive oil and the pepper grinder.
They explained to us that all we had to do was to rub the grilled bread with the garlic, then with the tomato, sprinkle over the oil and then grind over a little black pepper.
The result was so fresh and delicious that we all managed to consume far too many.
I knew that I had come across this before and a little research into Elizabeth David this morning gave me the reference.
She gives this recipe in French Country Cooking which was first published in 1951, fifty five years ago.
I will quote the entire directions she gives;

El Pa Y All
The breakfast dish of the Catalan peasants in the Roussillon district of France.
A piece of bread fresh from the baker( or sometimes fried in oil or pork fat) is rubbed all over with a piece of garlic, as little or as much as you like; then sprinkled with salt, then a few drops of olive oil , and then the Pa y All is ready

What could be simpler or more delicious.

The further point of interest is that Ms. David comes back to the recipe in an article she wrote in 1963, this was not actually printed until included in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine in 1984.
Writing about Pa y all she has this to add;

“When the book first appeared in 1951, one reviewer remarked rather tartly that she hoped that we British would never be reduced to breakfasting off so primitive a dish.
I was shaken, not to say shocked- I still am- by this smug expression of British superiority and by way of revelation, unconscious, of the reviewer’s innocence.
Believing , no doubt, that a breakfast of bacon and eggs, sausages toast , butter, marmalade and sweetened tea has always been every Englishman’s birthright.”

How much more supercilious does that reviewer seem in 2006.
And how very tasty and indeed healthy does the Catalan breakfast seem today,especially when compared to the British Fry.

But now the eagle eyed among you will be wondering where are the tomatoes as eaten last night.