My boiler has broken and I’m finding solace in a slice (or several) of toast | Rachel Cooke

There are whole chapters in cookbooks dedicated to it and now an endless variety of new things to spread on top, including butters with a waiting list

My subject today is toast, which is much on my mind right now, a buttery ticker tape that calls me constantly to the kitchen. Our boiler has packed up, the new one won’t be installed for a week, and though it’s only the central heating that’s down (the cooker’s fine), the freezing cold has turned me into a toast monster. It’s all I want, a feeling I haven’t had since I was a student and living in a house that was so badly insulated, we sometimes had to break the ice on the water in the loo. How many loaves can a person get through in a week? Come back to me in a few days for an answer. I’ll give you a tour of my chilblains at the same time.

What is amazing about toast is the way it has lately become so pimped. This started a few years ago: I first noticed it in Moro Easy by Sam and Sam Clark, a cookbook that came out in 2022 and whose opening chapter is devoted to the matter (toast with pepper, anchovy and chopped egg; toast with chorizo, tomato and chilli; toast with crab, oloroso sherry and alioli). The Clarks’ book came out of the lockdown, so this fixation made a lot of sense; these were recipes born of enclosure and experimentation. But since then, it has become a thing. Go to a certain kind of restaurant, and something-on-toast is a dead cert as a starter.

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