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Mandira Moitra Sarkar Cooks up a Story



The Bourbon Era
Boarding school mealtimes were memorable in more ways than one. We would file into the large Refectory four times a day usually famished and sit down at long allocated tables - about 15 to a table organised by age. Groans of despair could be heard from all around almost immediately - those meals were probably the worst I have ever eaten - cold, congealed and tasteless.
However to compensate for being away from home for over 9 months and make meal times more palatable our mothers armed us with survival kits at the beginning of each term - amazing Tuck Boxes! These were large tea crates crammed with gorgeous home-made goodies which we unpacked and stored in the large deep wooden cupboards or wire mesh cages dotted all around.
Tuck rules were strict and even 30 years later remain indelibly etched in my memory. You were allowed to take out certain things during specific meals -no idea when or who had set these up but we faithfully followed them - a bit like the gospel lessons.
Breakfast allowed you cheese, butter, milk powder, the ubiquitous "Bournvita" etc to make that watery liquid and soggy sponge squares passed off as milk and bread more palatable whilst lunch and dinner allowed pickles, squash and fruit that was stored in the wired cage in the corner. (Fruit usually lasted a week into term).
Tea times were a lot more flexible - that's when the cakes, biscuits and other treats made an appearance. Everything that was taken to the table at tea time was supposed to be passed around which meant that usually by the second or third week into term we were back to the meagre bread and butter rations served as staple. After that we did have some sort of saviour in the form of Radharani stores where generous parents had a tab running for their perpetually hungry children.
The store proprietors knew this and kept both prices and service equally high. At the age of eight, this offered us great freedom of choice that we exercised unwisely and I for one remember large bills my mum signing off at the end of term before embarking on our long journey back home. The sole contents of those hugely inflated bills consisted mainly of chocolates, Bourbon biscuits and "jhal chips " all of which had zero nutrition but 100% taste. However even today chocolate filled "Bourbons" remain a firm favourite so here goes ... As in those days - both the nutrition content and taste remain unchanged!
Ingredients: 

250 gms plain flour
125 gms unsalted chilled butter
125 gms caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
50 gms cocoa powder
1tsp soda bicarb
3 tblsp milk
Filling: 75 gms unsalted butter
125 gms icing sugar
15 gms cocoa powder
 Method: Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Combine all the biscuit ingredients in a food processor until lumpy and then tip on a work surface and bring together. Roll out dough on a sheet of parchment keeping it rectangular and dusting with flour. Trim to approx a 23 x 30 cm rectangle.
Cut into 3 even strips and then at 2.5 cms. Mark five dots on each. Chill for 30 min. Bake for 25 min, carefully remove and separate the biscuits. Leave to cool. Make the filling by combining all the ingredients and sandwich the biscuits together. Stays for five days if you can manage to keep it that long!

5 comments:

  1. Boarding school meals! How we loathed them. They made home cooked food taste like 5 star, gourmet stuff.And tuck taught us the joys of sharing. Those were the days worth remembering.

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  2. I remember the deep lockers lining the refectory bursting at the seams with tuck at the beginning of school year. A meal fit for a king was a slice of bread smeared till dripping with condensed milk, cans of which I used to cart literally cartloads to school in a parallel black trunk thanks to a generous dad with North Point boarding experience!
    Think our tables sat only 8, and a drawer at one end housed our napkins neatly scrolled into an assortment of napkin rings. Mine was a sturdy silver specimen with my name engraved on it....darlng father again!
    I'm speaking of LCD.....and you?

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  3. My boarding school had more solid Indian meals, with major trading of yogurt and sweets for all sorts of things! And, the dares one took on for said trades...ah! Tuck shop was once a month int he girls' hostel and limited to Rs. 5/- back then. Ah, RV!

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  4. The very word 'tuck' conjures up images of hungry schoolgirls/boys digging into tinned fruit and sponge cakes over midnight feasts! Delightful tale & thanks for sharing the Bourbons recipe!!

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  5. I'm reading this article along with the comments five years after they were published. Rather late in the day 😀.
    However for those of us brought up in boys school, our tuck usually disappeared about a fortnight into term. One was usually cajolled, threatened or sweet talked into parting with whatever Elmac or the like were packed in our trunks. School grub, as I understand was unpalatable all over, but nowhere else have I found grown up ex boarding wallas banning squash and pumpkin from their households forever.

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