top of the pops and a childhood tv dinner: cheese béchamel with toast fingers

cheese béchamel

i know. you are wondering why i am giving you a basic recipe for a cheese béchamel. the truth is, sometimes the simplest of things are the most memorable. there is childhood pleasure in this pale ivory sauce whose colour attains a little depth from flour toasted in butter. it recalls a particular tv dinner on a weeknight when mama would allow us to eat in front of the television. the programme that warranted this special treatment was top of the pops (totp), which was broadcast on a local private pakistani channel called ntm. before that the public broadcaster ptv maintained a monopoly that equalled to boredom.

toast with personality + a recipe for 'accidental cardamom peach butter'

sunday afternoon with the observer + accidental peach and almond
butter toast

when i was little toast was limited in my imagination to slices of either dawn or continental white bread. the toaster would bronze their whiteness. it would crisp the epidermis while allowing the centre to remain a little soft. one had to be careful to not exert pressure on the slice given its unsubstantial thickness because unlike in england one could not get thick sliced bread in pakistan. brown bread made an appearance in the late 90s and was largely ersatz, merely coloured wheaten.