Pete Moody grew up in Delph and also lived in Diggle and Uppermill before going up to Lancaster to study English in 1996.
He taught himself to cook from the backs of cereal boxes, Chinese whispers and Youtube, deciding the long hours, crippling financial difficulty and a snooker-player complexion were preferable to a teaching career. He is currently starting up a business in Shrewsbury.
I’VE MISSED it! I’ve missed it before and I’ll miss it again. I’ve missed it when I’ve been there. This time I booked the wrong weekend and I missed it properly, and regrettably.
I’m talking Isle of Skye detours, beer in your shoe and Ravenswood; jitterbugging with your kids and finding your car parked in a different postcode.
Besides Oldham Wakes, Whit Friday is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to describe to anyone south of Ancoats.
“It’s the only day of the year where everyone you know cries at the sound of a tuba…. It makes itself ‘cos it’s got beer AND banners…. It’s the page in the bible where the ink ran.”
Remember it? If you don’t you weren’t there. 1983 and, peppered with black peas from a chewed peashooter, you climb on your dad’s shoulders and gargle a plastic cup of warm tea as thirty-odd brass bandits blow ancient melodies in your face.
Black peas/maple peas are traditionally bonfire night fare. They get stewed and vinegared and placed in small pots as an appetizer before the parkin comes out. These chewy nuggets ruined the digestive systems of most of my family’s friends.
Here’s how to cook them properly, for a cloudy summer.
Buy a bay leaf, some garlic, 700 grams of pork collar and ten small onions. Also buy two Braeburns and a kilo of tomatoes and a head of celery, 150 grams of black/maple peas and find some soft brown sugar and a bottle of vinegar from your cupboard. Also, buy a paper.
Preheat your oven to 160C and cover your pork in a decent sprinkling of salt and pepper. Put the peas in a pot and cover them generously with cold water and NO salt. Bring to the boil and turn down to a small simmer.
Peel and core the apples and chop them up roughly, and dice the onions and tomatoes. Put them and the sugar and vinegar in a pot and bring to a sort of sticky, bubbly simmer but still very low.
Put the pork in a small baking tray with the pepper and the salt and the garlic and the bay and the celery and a glass of water and cover pretty tightly with tinfoil and put in the oven.
Don’t attempt anything until your apples are a thick and sticky goo. Even then don’t. Let the stuff cool and let your pork cook and your peas cook for another hour and soften.
Then, a good hour later, combine. It will, I promise, taste better than a cold brass band. The apple chutney will be the vinegar for your peas and the fruit for your pork. And with the promise of summer ringing in your ears, close your eyes and think of the rushcart.
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