by Ed Balls
Happy as those Saturday nights were, I do look back on this period with a heavy heart. I tried to be a good dad when our kids were young, and I think they appreciated the shopping and the cooking. But I know I didn’t do it well enough, and I know I wasn’t there enough. It’s a fact of life that the peak period of so many careers, the time when you have to work hard to make progress, is also the time your children are young and need you most. Doubly so if you live in two places and both parents have busy jobs.
I had experienced a temporary reprieve from the treadmill for nine months a few years earlier when, in 2004, I was selected to be a candidate to stand for Parliament and try to be elected as a Labour MP at the election the following May. I had to leave my Treasury role as a result, but I didn’t really make the most of the time it gave me. Yes, I dropped off and picked up our son from nursery school, but when I think about it, I should have been taking him on trips to galleries or museums, on boats and buses, to lunchtime clubs and children’s playgrounds. I did a fair bit of that with him and the other kids at the weekends. But during the week, I always felt I needed to be ‘working’, one way or another, even when I was technically between jobs.
I do believe in life that it’s important not to have regrets, to look forward, to be proud of what you’ve done. But if I could have my time again, I would choose to spend less time at work and more with all our kids during that magic time when they need a parent to take them out and enjoy the world. After 2015, when I lost my parliamentary seat and my life of regular nine-to-five employment ended, I did have lots more time at home with the kids, playing, cooking and chatting with them. But teenagers only want to spend so much time with their parents, no matter how much you want to spend with them and how many lost hours you’ve got to make up.
Back in my Treasury days, I persuaded myself that it was the quality of the time I spent with my kids that mattered and not the quantity. I suppose every working parent must believe that to an extent, but when I think back to the extra hour in the office I spent versus an extra hour at home, I wish I’d gone in late and left work early more often. And those pangs of guilt feel strongest when I think of how much my own parents sacrificed for me, my sister and brother. Before I was born, they were a globe-trotting young couple, living in America and Switzerland, enjoying new cultures, experiences and cuisines, and – after a 25-year gap – they were off again to Italy as soon as we’d all flown the nest. But during that period when we were growing up, all those desires and ambitions were put to one side, with not so much as a holiday abroad.
Looking back, their great luxury – not that they ever portrayed it as such – was paying for my brother, sister and me to attend the Nottingham High Schools. When restaurant meals were dismissed as an extravagance, that was where the savings were going. So when I feel bad about dragging our three kids around the country and regret those extra hours in the office that I could have spent at home, it doesn’t help either of those feelings to reflect on how my own mum and dad always did the exact opposite.
However, I console myself with a broader truth. I look at my three kids now and I wouldn’t wish for any aspect of them to be anything different. And I think – aside from my brother’s vegetarianism – my mum and dad would have said the same about their three. So, however differently we approached the job of parenthood, and however differently I might do it if I had my time again, it all worked out in the only way that counts: the kids turned out OK and, in both households, extremely well fed.
TEXAN STEAK WITH CAJUN BEANS
Serves 4
I’ve tried cooking steaks entirely on the griddle or under a grill, but I think this griddle and oven combination works best. It’s not how they do it in restaurants, but I think this is the most reliable way to cook steaks at home. The beans here are truly magical: rich because of their bacon base and chicken stock, and spicy because of the Cajun spice mix. And like Jack’s beans in the fairy tale, something amazing happens to them overnight, so leave some in the fridge for wonderful beans on toast in the morning, and pop some in the freezer too for an emergency snack that keeps really well.
INGREDIENTS
4 thick steaks – sirloin or rib-eye
6 potatoes, chopped into chunky cubes
8 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
A handful of fresh rosemary, chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
FOR THE TEXAN DRY RUB
2 tbsp chilli powder
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp dried coriander
1 tbsp yellow mustard powder
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper
FOR THE CAJUN SPICY BEANS
1 tbsp olive oil
3 rashers of bacon, diced – I use unsmoked
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped green jalapeño chillies (from a jar is best I think)
2 × 400ml can of black-eyed beans
400ml can of pinto beans
1 litre chicken stock – or 500ml stock and 500ml water
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp Cajun Spice Mix (see below)
1 bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped
FOR THE CAJUN SPICE MIX
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
¾ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp garlic granules
1 tsp onion powder
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
METHOD
Mix the Texan dry rub together, sprinkle liberally over one side of the steaks and leave them to sit for at least 30 minutes. Douse the potatoes in the oil, garlic and rosemary and leave them to absorb the flavours.
Then, to make the Cajun spicy beans, first heat the oil in a heavy pan and fry the bacon for 3 minutes. Add the garlic, onion and jalapeño and fry for a further 3 minutes. Drain and rinse both types of beans and then add these to the pan. After 2 minutes, add the stock, lime juice and all the spices and bring to the boil. Simmer for at least an hour to thicken, checking the liquid to make sure the beans don’t go dry. With 10 minutes to go, stir in half the coriander and sprinkle the rest on the top to serve.
Once the beans are simmering, turn the oven on to 190°C/375°F/gas mark 5 and heat a baking tray with a little more olive oil. When hot, tip in the potatoes, garlic and rosemary and cook for 50 minutes, turning once.
Then, with the potatoes in the oven, heat a ridged griddle pan for 10 minutes until it is very hot. Cook the steaks two at a time for 2 minutes on each side and then transfer to a baking tray. (Beware: The dry rub will smoke and make your eyes water.)
Cook the steaks in the oven for 4 minutes for medium-rare, 5 minutes for medium and 8 minutes for well done.
When cooked to your liking, rest the steaks on a plate for 15 minutes covered in tin foil. Reserve the juices and pour over the steaks when served, or you could put the juices back in the ridged pan and add a good pour of cream plus salt and pepper to make a sauce.
PANCAKES
Serves 4
Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) was the best day of the year in our house when I was a child. Just once a year, we’d cook pancakes, thin and silky, and then wolf them down, always with lemon and sugar. It still feels like a big event every time I make them. But for our kids – who will never understand the puritanical world I grew up in – it’s Pancake Day all year round, and Yvette’s mum, June, is the reason. She is an expert, and she uses the same thin batter recipe that my mum always used when I was young.
I love a traditional English pancake – they were the only type my mum ever made – but after years of living and travelling in America, I do have a soft spot for their more cakey, squidgy kind. Once you’v
e had an International House of Pancakes (IHop) breakfast stack with lashings of maple syrup and streaky bacon on the side (yes, bacon and maple syrup do go great together), you never quite lose the craving for an American pancake. Little Chef have done a similar US-style pancake for years which our kids also love – good, but not quite up to IHop standards if you ask me. There are many fancy ways to make American-style pancakes, including with cottage cheese and buttermilk, but I have an easy and reliable recipe that I always use.
June advises that it’s the pan that makes or breaks your pancake making. Pancake pans are cheap to buy, but don’t last very long, especially if they are used for non-pancake frying. So she says we should keep a dedicated pancake pan and not be tempted to use it for anything else – wise advice all too often unwisely ignored.
GRANDMA JUNE’S PANCAKES
INGREDIENTS
100g plain flour (or 6 heaped tbsp)
1 egg, beaten
250ml whole milk (or 1 mug)
Butter (for frying)
Toppings – lemon and sugar, maple syrup, Nutella, strawberries, ice cream (or all the above)
METHOD
Sieve the flour into a large bowl, make a well in the middle, and pour in the beaten egg. Slowly pour in the milk while whisking until combined, then sieve the batter into a jug. (June says at this point it’s a good idea to put your bowl and whisk in some hot water to ease cleaning later on.)
Put a knob of butter in a frying pan to melt and then pour a ladle-full of the pancake mix, just enough to coat the pan, and cook one pancake at a time on high heat. When you want to flip the pancake, remove the pan from the heat to allow it to cool slightly, which should help with the turning process and give it a jiggle first to make sure the pancake is moving freely before you flip. This amount of batter should make eight pancakes, but Grandma advises that the first one usually goes wrong.
AMERICAN PANCAKES
INGREDIENTS
2 eggs
½ tsp salt
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp caster sugar
30g melted butter
225g plain flour
METHOD
Put all the ingredients into a bowl or blender and mix to a smooth batter, then pour into a jug. These pancakes are better cooked two or three at a time in a hot, buttered pan, 1 minute per side. This recipe will make 12–14 smaller but thicker pancakes.
8 FOOD POLITICS
I think many interviewers fancy themselves as amateur psychiatrists, and one of the questions I was sometimes asked on the metaphorical media couch was how I felt when Ed Miliband and I were labelled ‘sons’ of Gordon Brown. I can understand the question because Gordon does exude a paternal authority; but the truth is my actual dad always had quite enough of a fatherly influence on my life, and an entirely welcome one too. I didn’t need to go looking for anyone else to play the part.
There is one big thing Gordon has in common with my dad, however, aside from their shared intellect and their mutual love of football, classical music and family, and it is something I’m very glad that neither of them managed to pass on to me. Down the years, at least until my dad was forced to experiment by the lockdown, they have both been terrible creatures of habit when it comes to food, liking everything to be the same as normal – and as plain as possible – when choosing their ideal meals.
Indeed, during the thirteen years when I was working alongside him in the Labour Party and then at the Treasury, Gordon didn’t need to choose his meals if I arrived at a restaurant first. I knew exactly what he’d want. French restaurant: a well-done steak with chips. Chinese: lemon chicken. Indian: lamb bhuna with a Peshwari naan. Italian: spaghetti bolognaise. And Japanese… come on, can you imagine Gordon Brown eating raw fish?
I did once get the ordering badly wrong. One of my first duties with Gordon, before his wife-to-be Sarah had properly entered his life, was to help make him have a holiday for a few days, usually in the South of France or the Algarve. The only way to do that was for someone to go along with him so he still had someone to talk to about work. I could drive a car, play tennis and discuss economics and politics, so I was quickly judged to be an ideal holiday companion. On one occasion, we travelled down to the French coast for an evening meal and I quickly plumped for the prix fixe set menu for two, featuring entrecote steak frites. I didn’t pay much attention to the starter course, and wasn’t sure what ‘huitres’ were, but I was sure they wouldn’t detain us long before the main event.
Ten minutes later, the waiter plonked a huge metal contraption on our table decked with a dozen big, raw oysters, milky and fresh from the sea. Gordon looked at me in horror – he had never eaten an oyster in his life and wasn’t about to start now. I managed to wolf down half of them and was starting to feel queasy, but the maître d’ refused to take them away. Each time he glided by and saw the uneaten oysters, he just said something incomprehensible and disapproving, shrugged his shoulders and walked away. What became abundantly clear was that we weren’t going to get our steaks until all the oysters were gone, so gradually it wasn’t just the waiter but Gordon too, looking daggers at me, urging me to get on with it. I held my breath and slurped on.
Once we got into government in 1997, Gordon’s simple tastes proved more of a challenge – not in the Treasury itself, where he would happily make do every day with the stodgy canteen lunches or his fridge-load of mince-based ready meals, but at the sheer volume of official lunches and dinners he’d have to attend, especially at foreign summits. Personally, I loved all these occasions: our counterparts across the world showcasing the very best dishes their countries had to offer; working lunches at 11 Downing Street welcoming foreign dignitaries; or slap-up meals at official functions in the City of London. For any of that to be part of my official job was a dream come true. But for Gordon, it was usually a nightmare of tiddly starters, haute cuisine main courses and fancy desserts.
Fortunately, one good thing about having an intense personality like Gordon’s is that he could happily spend half an hour ignoring his Fugu sashimi or Matsutake mushrooms at the G7 dinner in Tokyo, while talking vigorously to his neighbour from Canada about the need for reform of the World Bank. When the offending dish was taken away untouched, it would just be written off as more evidence of how driven Gordon was by his work, not as some flagrant rejection of Japanese hospitality likely to cause a major diplomatic rift. Some people clearly got the message, however, and there was a notable increase in the number of business functions back home which started serving some simple combination of beef and potatoes if Gordon was the guest of honour.
Our first monthly lunch with the Bank of England governor, Eddie George, was such an occasion. People forget that – before we made the Bank independent – these lunches were major political and economic events, the informal meeting at which the chancellor and governor in theory decided together whether interest rates should go up, down, or stay the same. Perhaps because he knew these lunches would soon be a thing of the past, Eddie made the most of our first one. He preceded it by drinking a rather strong-looking martini, and then drank the lion’s share of a bottle of claret from the Bank cellar to go with his roast beef. The pink-coated waiter then brought round a box of untipped cigarettes and another bottle of red wine to go with our coffees. Gordon’s principal private secretary, Nick Macpherson, and I accepted both, sacrificing our health and sobriety for the good of Treasury–Bank relations, and Eddie visibly relaxed. Gordon was happy enough with the food, but clearly found everything else unacceptably decadent.
While fatherhood eventually forced Gordon to learn the kitchen basics, he had Sarah to thank before then for any catering he did at home. The Downing Street parties they threw together in those Treasury days, usually to celebrate a successful Budget or to thank all their closest staff at Christmas, were tremendous fun, with Gordon showing a side of himself – leading the singing and telling uproarious jokes – that the public never got to see.
Gordon knew by then that I wan
ted to stand as an MP myself, and his ambitions and expectations for me were always – if anything – one step ahead of my own, perhaps another trait he shared with my dad. But while he repeatedly told me his long-term goal was to install me as his chancellor when he became prime minister, the time was never quite right. In 2007, when he dangled it in front of me, I told him I thought it was too big a job to give someone as their first Cabinet post and – at the time – I was secretly relieved when at the last minute he changed his mind and I ended up taking charge of the newly created Department for Children, Schools and Families. It was a departure from the traditional Department for Education, rooted in the simple idea that if you are going to have a coherent strategy for how the government should support the upbringing of children in our society, it should not start only when they enter the school gates each day, and stop as soon as they leave.
Looking back, I am even more glad that was the post Gordon gave me, because – at forty years old – it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I had a stammer. As a teenager, I’d sometimes struggled to get my words out in class, especially when I had to read something out, and that had happened every now and again when I was at the Treasury. It only became really noticeable, however, when I first started doing regular TV and radio interviews after being selected to stand as an MP. After an appearance on BBC’s Any Questions, my dad called me and rather unhelpfully said: ‘You’ve got the same problem as me with your speech, but I don’t know what it is.’