The B Word 2

I used the B word earlier – b for baguette, which somehow defines French culture even though it is nothing more than bread.

There’s another B word which defines culture, British this time. Indeed, it’s the only part of British cuisine which is truly special. The American’s try it, but it’s not the same. I’m talking about bacon.

The so-called traditional English breakfast dominates memories of boarding houses, where the incomparable smell of frying bacon permeates everything. Camping – what would it be without that incredible thrill of frying bacon early in the morning? And the little ceremonies we have with the meal of breakfast, so unoriginal, but so special: Sunday breakfast with the papers, bacon and eggs.

Of course, bacon is everywhere these days. Even in places as unlikely as Bali we were treated to bacon and eggs – annoyingly referred to as “full American breakfast”. The international hotels in Addis Ababa, Accra, Dar es Salaam and Lusaka all serve bacon – of a sort. Half cooked, lying in a watery substance at the bottom of a bain marie it is hardly deserves the name bacon. Flaccid and pale, this stuff neither looks like nor tastes like the real thing.

In French speaking countries bacon hasn’t caught on, and Kinshasa is no different. The breakfasts there consist of fruit, baguettes, cheese and salami, croissants and other pastries. And lots of coffee.

Adapting to the culture is surely a GOOD THING. But occasionally, for a treat, it is nice to revert, or is relapse the word? to something really disgusting like a fried breakfast. In Kinshasa there is a supermarket which caters, because of its prices if nothing else, to the international set. They have a huge range of imported produce. Brie? Foie gras? Herring? Strawberries? If it can be imported it is there.

When we first arrived we knew that they would have bacon. It is surely just a matter of finding it. But even after a month, and the exercise of much detective skill, we draw a blank.

It was a couple of weeks later when we came across a much less pretentious place with an equally wide selection of imported cheese and charcuterie. And there, nestling between the saucisson de this, and the salame de that was a chunk of uncut bacon.

People who are as old as me will remember the old-fashioned grocer’s shops where the bacon was cut to order with a hand operated circular slicing machine. As he discussed the weather for the hundredth time that day, the grocer would turn the handle with his right hand, and push the bacon piece with his left, intuitively counting the number of slices as they fell onto the piece of butcher paper on the tray below. With a deft flick of the hands the little package would be wrapped and weighed.

I’VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU! With the exception of feeling the need to discuss the weather, the same tradition survives in Kinshasa.

“I’ll have 200 grams of the bacon,” I say. “And can you make it thin?”

It is unceremoniously taken from the cabinet, plonked on the slicer, and cut so thin that after about 15 slices, I say: “Stop. That’s enough.”

It is weighed – only 155 grams.

We are used to prices in South Africa where bacon is pretty big. No self-respecting boarding house would dream of providing breakfasts without bacon and egg. It’s an industrialised watery product which cooks either as a rubbery sheet or a hard slab. It costs between $3 and $3.50 for 200 grams, which is normally, for some reason, 9 slices. In Kinshasa we paid less than $2! It just goes to show you can’t make assumptions.

Now for the test. It cooks beautifully, crispy, quickly. No watery exudations. And tastes just right.

There’s only one thing missing now: the Sunday papers. I don’t think even Sherlock Holmes would find them.