Taste The Difference

Nothing is more emblematic of the commodification of food culture than a sticker seen this very day (oh, the topicality!) on a Sainsbury's steak. Naturally, this being the hedonistic Noughties, this was not merely steak, but was Taste The Difference, 21-day matured, Rib Eye Steak, quite possibly with a photo of a presiding genius spirit of the kitchen (and, if so, it was probably Jamie Oliver) as a guarantee that this was better than every other steak sold in every other supermarket. The additional label, however, revealed the underlying paradox of this lauded piece of flesh: "Security Label: remove before placing in microwave."

That steak is now considered fair game for the criminal classes of Britain is itself fairly intriguing. Thwarted by security tags higher in the food chain of his previous desire to leg it with six bottles of Famous Grouse in his coat, William Sykes esq. has evidently shifted his attention to the 21-day matured. Like Jean Valjean with that fatal loaf of bread, Sykes has reasoned that surely Sainsbury's couldn't deny one of the undeserving poor a scrap of Taste The Difference. But no, that door has also been slammed in his face with a stern admonition to shoplift only from the Basics product line.

The fact of the security tag is less troubling, however, than the idea that people are cooking this finely-marbled, custom-aged, hand-cut, artisan-reared, free-range steak in a microwave in the first-place.

The kitchen (as we are endlessly told by aspiring couples seeking a second home in Norfolk or project managing a barn conversion in Sussex) is the heart of the modern home. The Aga Saga was once self-evidently a semi-rural tale set in the Cotswolds, but now that every home has a range cooker its descriptive value has been set at nought. The amount of marble hewn for the modern kitchen would have sufficed to face the brickwork of a small Florentine church during the sixteenth century. Lay all the breakfast bars in Britain on end and the first manned mission to Mars could be undertaken by hikers.

Yet at heart even J. S. Sainsbury is conscious that the only cooking surface really required by the modern Englishman is the cardboard one thoughtfully supplied by Dominos as an integral part of its boxes. While mother may aspire to having her husband, sons and daughters fawning upon her as she chops, peels and reduces, the reality of the matter is that they have already seen her pierce the film lid once and there's something more exciting on television. Quite possibly on the Parliament channel.

Now that the economy has collapsed and even our collective investment in Smeg and Miele cannot save our homes from depreciating more rapidly than a Ferrari on its way out of the showroom, we should at last admit that we could never really taste the difference in the first place. Home-made always came a distant second in our affections to matured, hand-cut, artisan-reared taken-away.