wimpy ideologue: The perfect picnic | Life and style

Spicy chickpea eggs will liven up any picnic

A couple of weeks ago, as weak sunshine dribbled through gusty clouds, I?walked through a park at lunchtime. The grass, straggly and still damp after the long winter, was none the less playing host to numerous office workers, perched awkwardly on their coats, grimly enjoying an al fresco lunch. The British don't let a little thing like weather spoil a picnic. indeed, in hot Mediterranean climates, when everyone with any sense retreats indoors for lunch, you'll often find familiar-looking families happily taking their ease in the midday sun. nothing gets between us and the tupperware, not even sunstroke ? our commitment to the rug in defiance of all good sense is one of our most endearing national characteristics.

Happily, it looks like it's brightening up at last, but, although the sunshine does make everything taste nicer, there's no harm in seasoning proceedings with a pinch of expertise.

Pick your spot carefully

Delia Smith manages to make picnicking sound utterly joyless: "In French films," she writes in her Complete Cookery Course, "picnics are all about rivers and willow and punts. In Britain, the hot tarmac of the zoo car-park will do, or a patch of grass with four lanes of traffic on either side." Ah, the romance. If you can't find any hot tarmac, a beauty spot will work better. An American household manual from 1900 suggests ensuring a "reasonable freedom from tormenting insect life", but advises against settling in the shadow of some lofty peak, or famous cave, on the grounds that: "One does not feel too comfortable when banqueting in localities where Dame Nature has had her queer moods, and has left imprinted certain too observable evidences of her freakiness." That's my local park out then.

If you're just shouldering a few sandwiches and an Enid Blyton-esque rosy apple, then make straight for the hills, but those going all-out on catering should stick close to a friendly car park or railway station. In the event of uncertain skies, a canny picnicker will select a spot near a hospitable pub.

Travel light(ish)

Ideally, all picnics would be conducted around the capacious wicker baskets that Elizabeth David describes as having "an aura of lavish gallivantings and ancient Rolls-Royces". However,, unless you've got a vintage sports car to cart them about in, they are hopelessly impractical; better to go in what the 1908 New York Times Cookbook calls "light marching order".

Even if carrying it all in an old knapsack, real cutlery, plates and a jaunty woollen rug preferably with a waterproof back,are still a must for atmosphere. Corkscrews, bottle openers, wet wipes and a sharp knife are also useful. And mustard. You can't have a picnic without mustard.

Food and drink

Mrs Beeton suggests: "A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, 2 ribs of lamb, 2 shoulders of lamb, 4 roast fowls, 2 roast ducks, 1 ham, 1 tongue, 2 veal-and-ham pies, 2 pigeon pies, 6 medium-sized lobsters, 1 piece of collared calf's head ?" just for the meat course.

Thankfully, times have changed. Hilda Leyel, author of the magnificent 1936 work The Perfect Picnic, wisely observes that "the art of arranging meals is to choose dishes that are better cold than they would be hot". For her, this means cream of rabbit, spaghetti and truffle salad and devilled lamb with a nasturtium sauce. The modern reader should infer salads (indeed the Girls Own Paper of 1880 advises that 'a cucumber is indispensable! The picnic would not be a picnic if it were absent'), pies, cheeses and the like, but, as David says, keep things simple. "Foie gras and lobster patties ? seem to lose their fine lustre out of doors," she writes (and I sense you all nodding in agreement), before grandly conceding that "sandwiches, I rather like". Bear in mind probable temperatures: it's all very well serving pink champagne, lobster and caviar if you're Keith Floyd on a boat at the bottom of your garden, but if the food and drink is going to be sitting around, cider and a nice ripe brie will go down better.

David suggests "visiting the site of the intended picnic some days beforehand" to bury the champagne. I'm not sure I'd give White Lightning 10 minutes unattended round my way ? so if you can't keep white wine cool en route, choose something else. She suggests m?con or chianti, but I fear the art of drinking strong reds in the sun is a dying one. Frankly ale, cider ("many women like cider," Leyel helpfully observes) or good lemonade are better bets on a picnic, and, "if a liqueur is wanted, cherry brandy is a very appropriate one". Hear hear.

Perfect picnic recipes