Move over Gordon and Nigella

I'VE just had my tea. And I make no apologies, I cannot fashion any middle-class pretensions in our house.

There's breakfast, dinner and tea and that's it. No breakfast, lunch and dinner – because lunch (or 'lonch') is what you have on a Guernsey building site at 9.30am.

Whoever heard of 'lunch ladies' at schools anyway?

And there can never ever be a serious use of the word supper after the age of eight.

If someone says to you, 'You simply must come round for supper one evening', you should reply in no uncertain terms: 'Ra-ther. Should I bring the cocoa, malted milks and a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit?'

So I've just had my tea and I'm sitting at the table like Dirty Dick from The Dandy or Roger the Dodger from The Beano or even Hungry Horace from The Sparky, who have somehow, in the final frame of their comic strip, eaten an illicit solo meal of almost banquet-like proportions.

I've pushed away my empty plate and I'm hugging my overfull gut and by rights I should have my feet up, be chewing a toothpick and be staring straight at you, saying, 'Phew, what a feed, eh readers?'.

So was it chicken drumsticks, mountains of mash with bangers sticking out, wobbling jellies topped by cream and a single cherry and gently steaming mince pies that sated and tipped me into swollen-bellied repose?

Nope. A bit of salmon that's spent 20 minutes in the oven and a slab of dried noodles that have simmered for half that time in a saucepan.

I'm a man of modest tastes. Some might say that I'm a philistine.

I've always told folk that I endure food, not enjoy it.

But that's just because I believe that food is as personal to oneself as religious beliefs are. And I don't care what people's preferences are for either.

'Oh my God, I simply adore cheese. I just have to have cheese. I love ... cheese.'

I've always found something a little bit vulgar about the celebration of food, because along with the obvious (think of the oldest profession) it was surely one of history's first saleable commodities.

There must have been a point when early man came across a bush of berries, started eating them and, if he didn't die or start feeling poorly (it would have been so trial and error in those days: 'Ug's not breathing – move away people, there's nothing to see here'), he would have hung round the bush and taken it over as a sort of self-service fast food joint.

Then one day another person must have came up to the bush, rubbed his belly and pointed to his mouth.

'You sure can, bub,' our bush guardian would have said in early grunt speak. 'But in exchange you have to give me those colourful beads that hang so beautifully around your neck.'

The food industry was born. And when the bead-wearer brought his new girlfriend along to the bush that very same evening, the first restaurant was born (though perhaps it was a few nights later when the bush guardian first realised he could get away with a huge mark-up on seed pods full of rainwater and not long after that, quadrupling the price of fermented grape juice).

Don't get me wrong. This isn't an anti-restaurant rant.

Far from it. Guernsey has some of the best establishments in the land.

But it's just that wherever you go (and I imagine many a restaurant owner and even a celebrity chef will admit it), no matter how many stars a place has, there's always someone in your family who can do or has done it better.

I've been to Harry Ramsden's, the world-famous chip shop in Guisley. And no doubt to each and every one of those hundreds of thousands of people who have also visited the place over the years, it does the best fish supper ever.

But not to me.

That accolade goes to Grandma Shack. After the racing on a Saturday, in her tiny extension kitchen, she would fry up the crispiest crisps, the goldenest batter, the whitest, juiciest cod and the mushiest mushy peas this side of the Elysian Fields.

And she cooked them in beef dripping decades before Nigella extolled its virtues while pouting moistly at the camera.

Rice pudding? That was Granny Tostie's speciality.

Creamy, slightly yellow and pleasingly greasy with butter, with just the right amount of 'bite' to the rice and a perfect brown skin over it all, like a nutmeg-flavoured cataract.

My cousins, Gary and Lisa, would argue about scraping the bowl.

(Granny Tostie also made the best roast potatoes. You could tell they were good because even as a kid they were even better than the roast beef.

Aunt Bessie, however, is a heretic who needs burning at the stake. Though her Yorkshire puds do save so much time.)

And while we're on the subject of spuds – and I don't know if he still sells them at the roadside – but just up the Frie Baton, Joe Carre does the best-ever potatoes.

I don't know what type they are but they taste like the angels playing tig on your tongue. And if there is an afterlife, then God has Joe Carre's potatoes in His hedge veg.

Loganberries? My Auntie Hazel's.

Just add milk and a sprinkle of sugar and you have one of the best afters ever.

Cheese on toast? A little café in Morecambe, circa 1977.

I don't even know what kind of cheese it was, but I can still taste its tangy bitterness (Cheshire perhaps).

All I can remember is that it tasted great after an afternoon of soggily trudging up and down the wind-and-chip-bag-swept prom of Blackpool's refugee cousin.

And it was served by a waiter in a white coat who looked like Phineas from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

So there you have it. You don't need Ramsay ramming gooseberry fool down your throat or Worral-Thompson worrying you about the consistency of your jus.

And you certainly don't need Delia simultaneously teaching you how to boil an egg and your granny how to suck one.

Stick with granny, she knows best. The revolution starts here.