The countdown is almost over. Tomorrow, I'm off to the land of Bratwurst and schnapps.
On our previous visit, it was too early in the year – and far too cold – to sit out. So I'm particularly looking forward to is being able to lounge outside one of the cafés on Unter den Linden, with the Brandenburg Gate in view, sipping Weißbier.
The Berlin version of this is a low-alcohol (2.8%) wheat beer that can taste quite sour, so is often served 'mit Schuss Himbeere' or 'mit Schuss Waldmeister'. These are raspberry or woodruff (a herb) syrups, which turn the beer either red or green. Indeed, you can also order by colour – 'ein Berliner Weißbier, mit grun, bitte' or 'ein Berliner Weißbier, mit rot, bitte'.
It's around seven years since I was last in Berlin, and hard barely really started my journey to foodiedom. So there are plenty of culinary treats in store.
Delightfully, the spargel season is underway – it traditionally runs from mid-May until St John's Day, 24 June. Spargel is white asparagus, which is considered a national delicacy on the Continent, but isn't seen very often in the UK.
I'm hoping to try a famous form of German noodle called Spätzle – a German friend claims that, if a woman can make these well, she'll never lack for a husband.
There will be no shortage of wurst – sausages. But German wurst are made from good meat, not just off-cuts. So tomorrow night could well be bratwurst with salt potatoes, sauerkraut, pickles and sour cream, and good mustard. It might not sound particularly special, but done with good ingredients, it's excellent.
There should be some herring, but Germany's limited coast means that there's more freshwater fish in the national diet, including trout, carp and pike, plus some European perch. Now I already know that I enjoy trout, but have never tried any of the others. Yet.
Germany apparently has more types of bread than any other country in the world, with approximately 6,000 types of bread, plus another 1,200 types of rolls and pastries. And since I've never tried proper pretzels, that's on the list too.
There are, of course, loads of things that I'm looking forward to doing – including attending a concert by the Berliner Philharmoniker, which will include the world premiere of a new work for the orchestra's wind soloists by Siegfried Matthus, plus highlights of Wagner's Götterdämmerung for a burst of fabulously OTT German romanticism.
I may go to the zoo and see Knut, the world famous polar bear. And I want to head out to Potsdam and Sanssouci, the palace (and now the resting place) of Prussian king Frederick the Great. Then there'll have to be a shopping trip to KaDeWe – the largest department store in Europe, which is possibly under threat of being sold and partitioned off as a result of the recession. The food hall at KaDeWe is amazing – foodie heaven.
But I'm most certainly looking forward to enjoying a cuisine that is often overlooked when people discuss European food.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Spilt beans leave a slightly sour aftertaste
Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright
Partly because of my love of food, partly because of my love of English eccentricity, this was a Christmas present from my mother.Clarissa Dickson Wright is best known as one of TV’s Two Fat Ladies, the culinary duo that travelled the UK on motorbike and sidecar in the 1990s, but she has plenty of other claims to fame.
The youngest female lawyer to be called to the bar, Dickson Wright’s childhood was blighted by her father – a brilliant surgeon, but an alcoholic, brutally violent parent and husband.
But when her beloved mother died, Dickson Wright sank into an alcoholic spiral. She was debarred and ended up broke (having frittered away a lot of money) and homeless.
Getting sober, she helped to build up the London bookshop, Cooks for Books to its present fame, before going on to find TV fame and then becoming an ardent campaigner for the countryside (ie pro-hunting etc).
It’s an interesting book – deceptively light to read given some of the subject matter. But there is a feeling that Dickson Wright rather overdoes it on occasion. There’s no doubting her father’s brutality, but were she and her mother really nursing broken or bruised ribs on the sort of regular basis that she suggests? They’d scarcely have been out of hospital, yet medical treatment is never mentioned.
Having known Tony Blair as a law student, she gets tedious in the extreme over his record as Prime Minister. Castigating Labour voters in general, she claims not to have found anyone who voted “for Tony Blair”, even in Sedgefield. Well no dear, you wouldn’t. Because Westminster politics isn’t like that. Nobody outside of Blair’s constituency could vote for him – they could only vote for candidates in their constituency. And frankly, whether someone is a good constituency MP, representing them in the way that they want to be represented, is higher on many voters' list of priorities than a silly argument about their vote actually being for the party leader.
It’s the sort of disingenuous approach that one finds in rags like the Daily Wail. And from someone who supposedly understands the law, it's crass in the extreme.
And there are other irritants: quite frankly, if any working-class individual described the equivalent of the ‘jolly japes’ that she unapologetically recalls getting up to (or her own friends getting up to), then they’d be regarded as rude and inconsiderate.
Dickson Wright is to be applauded for overcoming many of her demons, and her descriptions of alcoholism and dealing with it, together with her descriptions of fellow alcoholics and their struggles, are informative and, in places, moving. They form the strongest part of this book.
But she’s remarkably quick to dismiss some things in general, such as emotional abuse and bullying. And she seems over keen to blow her own trumpet – yes, of course this is a memoir, but there does seem to be a lot of: ‘I was the first to do this’, ‘I take credit for that’, ‘it’s because of me that’ etc. Perhaps all the demons have not been exorcised – perhaps nobody ever manages that completely.
Dickson Wright has plenty of valid points to make about food, and has embraced the countryside campaigning with the fervour of a true convert.
All in all, interesting. But it doesn’t leave one with a sense of particularly loving the subject of the book.
Monday, 18 May 2009
A goddess amongst food writers
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David
Where does one begin? I've got four of Elizabeth David's cookery books, but haven’t really used them much. Yet I knew that I wanted to read this collection of her writings and reviews.Once in my sweaty palms, I imagined that it would make good bedtime reading – a couple of articles here, a review or two there before dropping off to sleep – but rapidly found that I didn’t want to put it down. And anyway, it didn't really prove to be very effective at sending me to the land of nod.
What makes it so good? Attempting to answer that is to attempt to answer just why David is so revered in the UK. When she rang Books for Cooks one day and spoke to then staffer Clarissa Dickson Wright (of TV’s Two Fat ladies), Dickson Wright was so astonished that she tried to explain to her caller that it was like picking up the phone to God.
There are plenty of myths surrounding David: for instance, that until she introduced the UK to olive oil, you could only buy it in chemists’ shops. Or that pasta was unknown here until she wrote about it.
These are, as mentioned, myths. But the reality is that her writing pointed many more people to go and find and use such products than had done so before, thus increasing their use (and availability) in the UK.
She was an early campaigner for ‘real food’ – her anger at standardised, flavourless tomatoes in this book will ring bells with anyone who has had the misfortune to eat tasteless fruits sold under that name. What is interesting is to realise that such a problem is not something that has only occurred with the dominance of supermarkets within the last 40 years, but pre-dates that. Which begs the question of why the British are prepared to put up with such foodstuffs.
There have been accusations of elitism in her work – primarily that she didn’t write specifically for the working class. But that strikes me as nit-picking. Should every writer of every genre attempt to write for every single social group (however those groups are defined)? Would it even be possible? Wouldn’t it be patronising?
And her approach to food is far from snobbish – she was incensed when one reviewer commented with utter disdain on her positive reports of the Catalan breakfast of bread that’s had garlic rubbed on it. The reviewer in question thought this awful, and in this collection, there is a piece where David berates such an attitude – including noting that such a food has similarities with such British foods as bread and dripping.
Indeed, David was a champion of simple food. Frequently, she upholds simplicity over fashionable, but overdone dishes.
However, what this collection shows, and what is almost certainly the main reason for the way in which she’s lauded, is that she was a brilliant writer – and not just about food, but also about travel and history.
This is full of the sort of evocative writing that can have you sitting outside a simple café in Provence, sipping good wine, reveling in the warmth and enjoying a dish of good olives, or wandering around a French market. You can almost inhale it.
She’s inspirational. You want to try more – to learn more. Very few writers of any genre leave you with quite that feeling.
Friday, 15 May 2009
Into the twilight zone
Philip Larkin put it so eloquently when he said that: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad."
Yesterday was a 'being fucked up again' day, as I visited The Parents.
First, I discovered that my father was to be at home for the entire day. Oops. Bad planning. He usually has some business to conduct, which avoids us having to sit in the same room together for any longer than a bit of polite conversation about football can fill.
However, he went straight back out to walk the dog. During which time, my mother had me explain to her how to switch the subtitles off on a DVD, and also showed me a bit of footage from Saturday's Rugby League Challenge Cup tie between St Helens and Catalans – or at least, the introduction to it. BBC presenter Clare Balding was talking about a new public sculpture in St Helens and my mother wanted to know if I knew anything about said scuplture. She also noted that, on seeing this at the time, my father had been concerned with only one thing: "She's a lesbian". Yes, I could imagine the judgmental tone.
Then he returned, left the dog and went back out for the papers. On getting back once more, he came into the living room and sat down, immediately starting to peruse the Methodist Recorder. My mother took slight umbrage – a guest also being present – to which he launched straight into a rant about how he wanted to see if the publication in question had anything in it about how "the BBC wants to put a Sikh director in charge of Songs of Praise ... it's dumbing down Christianity! ... " etc etc.
I waited until a break in this angry rant, before noting: "Nice weather we're having," which took some tension out of the situation.
Then, a short while later, he observed the book that I'm currently reading and which I had taken with me, Clarissa Dickson Wright's autobiography. He nodded sagely, and commented knowingly: "I like her. I read once that she said that, when he was a student, she thought that Tony Blair looked at the pretty boys a lot."
Oh yes – Blair might have been a warmonger and Dubya lapdog, but the really bad thing about him is that one could intrepret a comment as saying that he was gay.
At which point, I felt the need to slap down this sort of idiocy as quickly as possible.
"Oh for goodness sake: if you can't find something serious to criticise Blair for, other than a gossipy piece of tittle tattle implying that he might be gay or bisexual, then you've got as much of a problem as being more concerned that Clare Balding is a lesbian than that she's the best thing that's happened to BBC coverage of Rugby League for a long time!"
This, fortunately, shut him up. But this has to be done every time at some point. More than once in the last year, he's sat at the dinner table, banging his fist on it and shouting about how: "Brown and Darling are a pair of communists!"
To which there is only one possible answer: "Oh stop talking bollocks, Dad."
Yesterday, after I had established that I wasn't there to listen to his bigoted stupidity, he calmed down and we managed to get along politely until I left.
Indeed, I became useful. After he'd sat in front of the telly, pointing the remote at it to no avail for at least 10 minutes, it was me who had to make the rather obvious suggestion that he call the service provider. In retrospect, it was not entirely surprising when he walked into the room again, his mobile stretched out to me, so that I could do the geek speak with the service centre. And for a second call that had to be made.
Daughters have their uses when you can't even tell which is the DVD player and which is the digibox (after how many years?), but clearly they never know anything about 'morals' or politics and have to be lectured the rest of the time.
I survived.
Just.
But when I sat down on the train back to town, it was with the realisation that, even though the day was not a complete torture, I was mentally exhausted.
That Larkin bloke had it right. It's a wonder I have a working brain cell or a shred of intelligence left.
Yesterday was a 'being fucked up again' day, as I visited The Parents.
First, I discovered that my father was to be at home for the entire day. Oops. Bad planning. He usually has some business to conduct, which avoids us having to sit in the same room together for any longer than a bit of polite conversation about football can fill.
However, he went straight back out to walk the dog. During which time, my mother had me explain to her how to switch the subtitles off on a DVD, and also showed me a bit of footage from Saturday's Rugby League Challenge Cup tie between St Helens and Catalans – or at least, the introduction to it. BBC presenter Clare Balding was talking about a new public sculpture in St Helens and my mother wanted to know if I knew anything about said scuplture. She also noted that, on seeing this at the time, my father had been concerned with only one thing: "She's a lesbian". Yes, I could imagine the judgmental tone.
Then he returned, left the dog and went back out for the papers. On getting back once more, he came into the living room and sat down, immediately starting to peruse the Methodist Recorder. My mother took slight umbrage – a guest also being present – to which he launched straight into a rant about how he wanted to see if the publication in question had anything in it about how "the BBC wants to put a Sikh director in charge of Songs of Praise ... it's dumbing down Christianity! ... " etc etc.
I waited until a break in this angry rant, before noting: "Nice weather we're having," which took some tension out of the situation.
Then, a short while later, he observed the book that I'm currently reading and which I had taken with me, Clarissa Dickson Wright's autobiography. He nodded sagely, and commented knowingly: "I like her. I read once that she said that, when he was a student, she thought that Tony Blair looked at the pretty boys a lot."
Oh yes – Blair might have been a warmonger and Dubya lapdog, but the really bad thing about him is that one could intrepret a comment as saying that he was gay.
At which point, I felt the need to slap down this sort of idiocy as quickly as possible.
"Oh for goodness sake: if you can't find something serious to criticise Blair for, other than a gossipy piece of tittle tattle implying that he might be gay or bisexual, then you've got as much of a problem as being more concerned that Clare Balding is a lesbian than that she's the best thing that's happened to BBC coverage of Rugby League for a long time!"
This, fortunately, shut him up. But this has to be done every time at some point. More than once in the last year, he's sat at the dinner table, banging his fist on it and shouting about how: "Brown and Darling are a pair of communists!"
To which there is only one possible answer: "Oh stop talking bollocks, Dad."
Yesterday, after I had established that I wasn't there to listen to his bigoted stupidity, he calmed down and we managed to get along politely until I left.
Indeed, I became useful. After he'd sat in front of the telly, pointing the remote at it to no avail for at least 10 minutes, it was me who had to make the rather obvious suggestion that he call the service provider. In retrospect, it was not entirely surprising when he walked into the room again, his mobile stretched out to me, so that I could do the geek speak with the service centre. And for a second call that had to be made.
Daughters have their uses when you can't even tell which is the DVD player and which is the digibox (after how many years?), but clearly they never know anything about 'morals' or politics and have to be lectured the rest of the time.
I survived.
Just.
But when I sat down on the train back to town, it was with the realisation that, even though the day was not a complete torture, I was mentally exhausted.
That Larkin bloke had it right. It's a wonder I have a working brain cell or a shred of intelligence left.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
The school day that went with a bang
If I’d wanted to announce my arrival at my new school any more spectacularly, I’d have had some difficulty.
There I was, nearly 17 and having flunked most of my ‘O’ levels. The exams were taken a couple of months before the family moved from just outside Manchester, which had been our home for eight years, to Lancaster, somewhat further north.
My father, clearly so pissed off with the lack of academic achievement that would allow him to boast about my prowess, mentioned this to our family doctor, who in turn suggested that my exam performance had quite probably been hindered by the impending move after the longest period of stability in my life to that point.
Fortunately, this argument seemed to placate my parents. And the school that I had been intended to enter in order to do my ‘A’ levels took me on anyway – on the proviso that I did my fifth year and my ‘O’ levels all over again.
So I started at LGGS. And somehow – although for the life of me I can’t imagine how – found myself getting attached quite quickly to a circle of girls from various years, all of whom were linked by varying degrees of the sort of eccentricity that teachers at my previous school had so nervously reported to my parents as present in me.
And then, for some reason or other, in my third week at the school, I accepted a dare.
You used to be able to buy little twists of paper that had some powder in them, which would make a very pleasing ‘bang’ when dropped forcefully.
One day, early in the morning, I took three of these things and, using Blu-tac, attached them underneath the pedals of the grand piano in the school hall. Then I let events unfold.
Miss Owen, our headmistress, cut an imposing figure. Tall and rather large, she had permed white hair, wore thick-rimmed spectacles, had a booming voice and absolutely no taste in clothes whatsoever. A familiar ensemble consisted of a dress in wide stripes of pink and purple, with a red cardigan on top. And always, always a string of double pearls. Her geometry lessons were generally considered to be ‘character building’. Fortunately – or perhaps not – I escaped ever having my character subject to such an exercise in construction.
Biggo had a loyal deputy called Mrs Rigby, who was tiny and ran around the school in ‘badger boots' (black footwear with a white stripe down the middle). Riggers (or ‘Rigour Mortis’ as she was also known), usually wore an academic gown, which floated out, Batman-like, as she stalked the corridors hunting for girls whose shoes had heels that were more than the prescribed height.
She had a ruler for that purpose, and when fashion created heels that were deceptively curved, she changed it for a flexible ruler. You didn’t get much past Riggers – who was also renowned for wearing hats to speech day that looked like upturned jelly moulds or unexploded nuclear bombs.
Then there was Mr McKee, the music teacher – and obligatory eccentric conductor of the school choir and orchestra. He and Biggo were arch enemies – although to be fair, pretty much every teacher in the school was an enemy of Biggo: if she achieved nothing else, she united the girls and staff against her. Noel was just rather more obviously so an enemy and everyone knew it.
One of the most dismally flunked of my ‘O’ levels had been in music, but at that point, it was the one course that I absolutely did not want to repeat, having been constantly vilified by my previous teacher for what I later realised were her failings: I’d barely been taught half the course – which Noel went on to do in his spare time, helping me catch up and get my qualification. But that's another story. However, Biggo – possibly thinking that Noel could do with a particularly reluctant student – insisted I retake music.
One of Noel’s particular ways of irritating our esteemed head was to be rather clever with his selection of music to be played as we exited the hall after morning assembly. On one occasion, for instance, he crept behind his curtain and set the record player to blast out the can-can from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.
Biggo’s expression was one of horror when her girls gave in to the irresistible urge to grab skirts and kick their legs into the air.
On the day of my dare, Noel was seated at his piano, waiting to play the hymn, as Biggo marched from her office, up the stairs and onto the stage.
“We will now sing,” she intoned, before a single ‘bang’ interrupted her.
She looked around, unable to work out what had happened. In the gallery, one teacher turned to another and said (rather optimistically, I thought): “Someone’s shot Miss Owen!”
Biggo waited and then tried again.
“We will now sing hymn number …”
BANG!!
We did manage to get through assembly. Just.
A few days later, as I was carrying a record player from a classroom to the storeroom for Noel, he turned on me.
“You put snaps on my piano,” he growled. One of those who had dared me had, it appeared, squealed under pressure.
“Yes,” I said simply. Which considerably appeased Noel, who sniffed and said, with a modicum of respect: “Well, at least you’ve got the guts to admit it,” before informing me that, after assembly the following day, I was to join him for a visit to Biggo. It seemed that in the absence of any other culprit, he was in Biggo’s firing line.
The next day, somewhat nervously, I waited silently outside her office for my interview. When the little traffic lights outside eventually turned to green, Noel opened the dark door, ushered me in and, with the words “here’s our explosives expert,” left.
The thing was, if I’d been nervous, that comment left me struggling not to guffaw. I stared at the floor desperately fighting the urge to giggle. Biggo took that for embarrassment – or downright shame.
“I assume that this is the sort of thing that went on in your previous school,” she boomed from behind her desk. Oh if only she’d known – I’d never done anything remotely like that in my life before.
“So I’ll put this on your school record and we shall leave it there.”
I fled gratefully, hoping that it would all die down, and thinking I’d got off really rather lightly.
But in the coming weeks, the story did the rounds of the city. Biggo was a legend – and any such event took on legendary status too. Eventually – inevitably – it found it’s way to my father, who related it over dinner one evening to the full family. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, it turned out that that was one of a very limited number of occasions on which he was actually proud of me.
Break the rules and cause a stir in the city and, apparently, you’re in favour. Perhaps it was one of the few times when I reminded him of how he’d like to see himself?
There are many more stories from my days at LGGS, which were really remarkably like one of those old school books for girls, penned by Angela Brazil or Enid Blyton. But for the time being, suffice it to say that Noel became a good friend, that those eccentric girls became The Rat Pack and that that was far from the last of my encounters with the legendary Biggo.
There I was, nearly 17 and having flunked most of my ‘O’ levels. The exams were taken a couple of months before the family moved from just outside Manchester, which had been our home for eight years, to Lancaster, somewhat further north.
My father, clearly so pissed off with the lack of academic achievement that would allow him to boast about my prowess, mentioned this to our family doctor, who in turn suggested that my exam performance had quite probably been hindered by the impending move after the longest period of stability in my life to that point.
Fortunately, this argument seemed to placate my parents. And the school that I had been intended to enter in order to do my ‘A’ levels took me on anyway – on the proviso that I did my fifth year and my ‘O’ levels all over again.
So I started at LGGS. And somehow – although for the life of me I can’t imagine how – found myself getting attached quite quickly to a circle of girls from various years, all of whom were linked by varying degrees of the sort of eccentricity that teachers at my previous school had so nervously reported to my parents as present in me.
And then, for some reason or other, in my third week at the school, I accepted a dare.
You used to be able to buy little twists of paper that had some powder in them, which would make a very pleasing ‘bang’ when dropped forcefully.
One day, early in the morning, I took three of these things and, using Blu-tac, attached them underneath the pedals of the grand piano in the school hall. Then I let events unfold.
Miss Owen, our headmistress, cut an imposing figure. Tall and rather large, she had permed white hair, wore thick-rimmed spectacles, had a booming voice and absolutely no taste in clothes whatsoever. A familiar ensemble consisted of a dress in wide stripes of pink and purple, with a red cardigan on top. And always, always a string of double pearls. Her geometry lessons were generally considered to be ‘character building’. Fortunately – or perhaps not – I escaped ever having my character subject to such an exercise in construction.
Biggo had a loyal deputy called Mrs Rigby, who was tiny and ran around the school in ‘badger boots' (black footwear with a white stripe down the middle). Riggers (or ‘Rigour Mortis’ as she was also known), usually wore an academic gown, which floated out, Batman-like, as she stalked the corridors hunting for girls whose shoes had heels that were more than the prescribed height.
She had a ruler for that purpose, and when fashion created heels that were deceptively curved, she changed it for a flexible ruler. You didn’t get much past Riggers – who was also renowned for wearing hats to speech day that looked like upturned jelly moulds or unexploded nuclear bombs.
Then there was Mr McKee, the music teacher – and obligatory eccentric conductor of the school choir and orchestra. He and Biggo were arch enemies – although to be fair, pretty much every teacher in the school was an enemy of Biggo: if she achieved nothing else, she united the girls and staff against her. Noel was just rather more obviously so an enemy and everyone knew it.
One of the most dismally flunked of my ‘O’ levels had been in music, but at that point, it was the one course that I absolutely did not want to repeat, having been constantly vilified by my previous teacher for what I later realised were her failings: I’d barely been taught half the course – which Noel went on to do in his spare time, helping me catch up and get my qualification. But that's another story. However, Biggo – possibly thinking that Noel could do with a particularly reluctant student – insisted I retake music.
One of Noel’s particular ways of irritating our esteemed head was to be rather clever with his selection of music to be played as we exited the hall after morning assembly. On one occasion, for instance, he crept behind his curtain and set the record player to blast out the can-can from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.
Biggo’s expression was one of horror when her girls gave in to the irresistible urge to grab skirts and kick their legs into the air.
On the day of my dare, Noel was seated at his piano, waiting to play the hymn, as Biggo marched from her office, up the stairs and onto the stage.
“We will now sing,” she intoned, before a single ‘bang’ interrupted her.
She looked around, unable to work out what had happened. In the gallery, one teacher turned to another and said (rather optimistically, I thought): “Someone’s shot Miss Owen!”
Biggo waited and then tried again.
“We will now sing hymn number …”
BANG!!
We did manage to get through assembly. Just.
A few days later, as I was carrying a record player from a classroom to the storeroom for Noel, he turned on me.
“You put snaps on my piano,” he growled. One of those who had dared me had, it appeared, squealed under pressure.
“Yes,” I said simply. Which considerably appeased Noel, who sniffed and said, with a modicum of respect: “Well, at least you’ve got the guts to admit it,” before informing me that, after assembly the following day, I was to join him for a visit to Biggo. It seemed that in the absence of any other culprit, he was in Biggo’s firing line.
The next day, somewhat nervously, I waited silently outside her office for my interview. When the little traffic lights outside eventually turned to green, Noel opened the dark door, ushered me in and, with the words “here’s our explosives expert,” left.
The thing was, if I’d been nervous, that comment left me struggling not to guffaw. I stared at the floor desperately fighting the urge to giggle. Biggo took that for embarrassment – or downright shame.
“I assume that this is the sort of thing that went on in your previous school,” she boomed from behind her desk. Oh if only she’d known – I’d never done anything remotely like that in my life before.
“So I’ll put this on your school record and we shall leave it there.”
I fled gratefully, hoping that it would all die down, and thinking I’d got off really rather lightly.
But in the coming weeks, the story did the rounds of the city. Biggo was a legend – and any such event took on legendary status too. Eventually – inevitably – it found it’s way to my father, who related it over dinner one evening to the full family. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, it turned out that that was one of a very limited number of occasions on which he was actually proud of me.
Break the rules and cause a stir in the city and, apparently, you’re in favour. Perhaps it was one of the few times when I reminded him of how he’d like to see himself?
There are many more stories from my days at LGGS, which were really remarkably like one of those old school books for girls, penned by Angela Brazil or Enid Blyton. But for the time being, suffice it to say that Noel became a good friend, that those eccentric girls became The Rat Pack and that that was far from the last of my encounters with the legendary Biggo.
Monday, 11 May 2009
Office lunches, plotted and potted
The weekend's culinary exertions have paid off! Finally, I have worked out a way to bring in great packed lunches to work, for little effort.
Inspired by reading the section on potted meats and fish pastes in Elizabeth David's An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, I decided to pot myself some fish. Initially, I had the project in mind for easy, midweek suppers, but then it occurred that individual ramekins would make perfect lunches for work.
After coming up blank at my usual two sources of kitchenware, John Lewis and Lakeland Plastics, I finally found muslin for sale at that unlikely source (to my mind), Amazon, and two packs hit the doormat late last week.
Thus on Saturday, my trip to Broadway Market included a lengthier visit than usual to Vicki, the fishmonger. Not only was there my own dinner to cater for that night (The Other Half was on Rugby League duty 'ooop north', so I only had my own tastes to consider), but I also bought dressed crab, smoked haddock and salmon and to pot.
After The Other Half had departed, I took to the kitchen. I'd intended to put some music on, but the peace and quiet, broken only by the sounds of food preparation and the occasional meeped comment from The Queen B, was delightfully soothing.
I've never cooked from one of Mrs David's books before and indeed, some people complain that her recipes are not always easy to follow. But this was incredibly – almost outrageously – simple.
The salmon (cut off the fish in front of me) was placed in a suitable dish, dotted with butter, covered in buttered greaseproof paper and popped in the oven at around 140˚. I'd bought two dressed crabs and took the meat from just over one of them (the rest was for my dinner) and mixed it with paprika (Mrs David used cayenne), lemon juice and black pepper, and pressed it firmly into two small ramekins. Melted butter was then poured over the crab mixture and the little pots were placed in a bain-marie and joined the salmon in the oven. They had around 25 minutes to cook, the salmon about 40.
After that, I drained the salmon and let the potted crab cool. Then the salmon was flaked and mixed with lemon juice, more paprika and some drained green peppercorns (the last one being my idea: capers would do just as well), before packing more of the little dishes. Three and a half dishes, to be precise. The final one was topped up with flaked smoked haddock, which I'd popped into a pan with some boiling water and left (not on any heat) for 10 minutes. The final pot was packed with smoked haddock alone, seasoned only with lemon juice.
All bar the potted crab then had greaseproof paper squares placed over them and were weighted with assorted tins that fitted just inside the ramekins, then placed carefully in the fridge. The potted crab were sealed with clarified butter straight away – the rest were done the next morning.
I used Mrs David's method of clarifying the butter – hence the muslin – and that worked easily too. I'd never realised just how much butter splits.
So now I'm sitting at my desk in the office, with a little pot of salmon, together with a little tub of cherry tomatoes and green olives stuffed with garlic.
My colleagues have declared this is really rather sophisticated. And my editor is contemplating whether such a display of chic gives us an edge in our perennial battle with the press office.
But it took little over an hour to prepare the heart of seven lunches. It will work out as costing less than lunch every day at Pret a Manger (which is just about the best option around the office) and it gives me real quality.
One can only wonder at why so few people do such things.
Inspired by reading the section on potted meats and fish pastes in Elizabeth David's An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, I decided to pot myself some fish. Initially, I had the project in mind for easy, midweek suppers, but then it occurred that individual ramekins would make perfect lunches for work.
After coming up blank at my usual two sources of kitchenware, John Lewis and Lakeland Plastics, I finally found muslin for sale at that unlikely source (to my mind), Amazon, and two packs hit the doormat late last week.
Thus on Saturday, my trip to Broadway Market included a lengthier visit than usual to Vicki, the fishmonger. Not only was there my own dinner to cater for that night (The Other Half was on Rugby League duty 'ooop north', so I only had my own tastes to consider), but I also bought dressed crab, smoked haddock and salmon and to pot.
After The Other Half had departed, I took to the kitchen. I'd intended to put some music on, but the peace and quiet, broken only by the sounds of food preparation and the occasional meeped comment from The Queen B, was delightfully soothing.
I've never cooked from one of Mrs David's books before and indeed, some people complain that her recipes are not always easy to follow. But this was incredibly – almost outrageously – simple.
The salmon (cut off the fish in front of me) was placed in a suitable dish, dotted with butter, covered in buttered greaseproof paper and popped in the oven at around 140˚. I'd bought two dressed crabs and took the meat from just over one of them (the rest was for my dinner) and mixed it with paprika (Mrs David used cayenne), lemon juice and black pepper, and pressed it firmly into two small ramekins. Melted butter was then poured over the crab mixture and the little pots were placed in a bain-marie and joined the salmon in the oven. They had around 25 minutes to cook, the salmon about 40.
After that, I drained the salmon and let the potted crab cool. Then the salmon was flaked and mixed with lemon juice, more paprika and some drained green peppercorns (the last one being my idea: capers would do just as well), before packing more of the little dishes. Three and a half dishes, to be precise. The final one was topped up with flaked smoked haddock, which I'd popped into a pan with some boiling water and left (not on any heat) for 10 minutes. The final pot was packed with smoked haddock alone, seasoned only with lemon juice.
All bar the potted crab then had greaseproof paper squares placed over them and were weighted with assorted tins that fitted just inside the ramekins, then placed carefully in the fridge. The potted crab were sealed with clarified butter straight away – the rest were done the next morning.
I used Mrs David's method of clarifying the butter – hence the muslin – and that worked easily too. I'd never realised just how much butter splits.
So now I'm sitting at my desk in the office, with a little pot of salmon, together with a little tub of cherry tomatoes and green olives stuffed with garlic.
My colleagues have declared this is really rather sophisticated. And my editor is contemplating whether such a display of chic gives us an edge in our perennial battle with the press office.
But it took little over an hour to prepare the heart of seven lunches. It will work out as costing less than lunch every day at Pret a Manger (which is just about the best option around the office) and it gives me real quality.
One can only wonder at why so few people do such things.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Rugby League changed my life
I like Rugby League. No, it isn't my favourite sport, but it's one I enjoy – and I've certainly got a lot to be grateful to it for.
It was three years ago Easter just gone that St Helens and Castleford Tigers played their first Super League matches against the then newcomers to the competition, the Catalans Dragons. And since there was barely more than a week between those two visits to the south of France, The Other Half and I decided to arrange our main holiday of the year around the games.
Travel on the Friday, watch the Dragons v Cas in Carcassonne on the Saturday, then travel to Barcelona for a week on the Sunday and back to Perpignan on the Easter Sunday for Saints' visit on the Monday, followed by a TGV journey to Paris and then home 36 hours later via the Eurostar.
It was to be a revelation of a trip – possibly even a trip that was life-changing.
Rugby League is, in essence, a working class sport. It split from 'rugby' in 1895, after the powers that be, based in the south of England, created a by-law to stop northern clubs in working-class districts paying their players 'broken-time' money, to compensate them for the wages that they lost when they took breaks from their jobs in the mills and mines to play.
Outside the north, players came from a different background and didn't suffer financially through playing. Thus was born Rugby League – the other code is Rugby Union, which only became openly professional around 15 years ago. They found plenty of ways to pay players via the back door over the years – thus it was known as 'shamateurism'.
But it's also an illustration, generally, of why amateurism in sport is elistist.
In France, the sport suffered miserably at the hands of the ruling elite – not least during the war years, when the Vichy government actually banned it and stripped clubs of all their assets. The French RL is still campaigning for official recognition of the wrongs done to the sport – and for some sort of compensation.
The introduction of the Dragons into Super League was not without controversy – plenty of fans in England didn't want them. But it was a major chance to help build RL in the part of France that had once been the heartland of the country's game.
And so we made our first trip to southern Europe.
Downside? Having to fly out by Ryan Air. Which I hate. But Perpignan airport is a small one and you have that wonderful experience of walking across the tarmac to the airport buildings themselves. Heat welcomed us, together with the sight of the Pyrenees, rearing up on the horizon.
That night, we joined other fans in a short bus trip to nearby St Esteve. A small town, we'd been invited to visit the Rugby League clubhouse, where a barbeque had been arranged. It was a most convivial evening.
Saturday's match was an evening one, to which we would travel by coach. In the morning, therefore, we joined a minibus to take a tour of the coast. As we headed down the motorway, toward the mountains, the conversation from our fellow explorers was most illuminating.
"We got to the hotel yesterday," said a male Yorkshire voice. "And the receptionist said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And she said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And eventually she got the idea and said: 'Hello'."
Oh, what a victory for perfidious Albion.
Then one of the women traveling in their little group: "I mean, it's very nice, but it's not a real Rugby League town."
No – it's not in the bleak industrial north of England, where manufacturing is all but dead and the towns are dying dumps.
Our first stop, winding down a hairpin road, was Collioure. We had an hour – and in that time, we were well on the way to falling in love, wandering along the seafront, gaping at the menus of all the restaurants and at the view in general.
Our fellow travelers, it should be noted, didn't bother looking around, but simply headed to the first bar that was open.
Then on to Argelès sur Mer, slightly further back up the coast. We had a little longer and, while the others headed straight for another bar, we ambled to the seafront, dipped our feet in the Mediterranean for the first time and basked in the spring sunshine. A couple of the seafront restaurants were already open for business and, while looking at the menu of one, the waiter drew us in. Not that there was much "in". The tables were set out on a deck, but the canopy overhead had been drawn back and we sat with the sun burnishing our skin and penetrating to cold, northern bones, drinking sangrias that came compliments of the restaurant for being two of the very first customers of the new season.
The Other Half had a spaghetti carbonara. I had huge gambas, shells blackened on the fire and served in warmed olive oil, infused with garlic. Within seconds, I'd given up any remote efforts to be 'ladylike', getting my fingers as greasy as possible as I tore off the shells and relished the firm, tasty meat of the vast prawns, and the flavour of the oil. TV chef Rick Stein, on a culinary trip through France, once commented that, in England, he'd seen people try to eat such food with a knife and fork. You can't. It demands to be handled – and such an earthy approach is wonderfully sensual.
The third and final stop on our little tour was Canet. It took us only a very few moments to decide that we won't bother going back there: an artificial creation of high-rise, concrete hotels and 'trendy' bars, it was far from the sort of place that we like. The others thought it brilliant – and found a bar straight away.
The next day, after a match that had seen Cas lose, we caught a train south. It was a long, slow journey in a very basic train, and by the time we reached Barcelona, it was evening and we didn't feel like venturing far from the hotel.
The next day, however, was a peach, with visits to Sagrada Família and then on to Las Ramblas, where we peeked just inside La Boqueria, one of the most famous markets in the world, and then relished a sumptuous lunch in a restaurant right next to the market. I had deep fried squid to start, followed by bacalao, cooked in a an unbelievable amount of olive oil, with peppers and garlic by the ton, and all served in the pan. Wonderful. And accompanied by a gutsy Tempranillo – The Other Half asked for the house red and the waiter brought a bottle and poured us each a little, with his towel obscuring the label.
"Tempranillo, si?" I managed. He was impressed. The Other Half was even more impressed. It's possibly the only wine in the world that I can recognise. I felt chuffed.
But that gives you an idea of what was to become one of the dominant features of that week – the food. A wonderful restaurant down the road from our hotel, Els Barrils, specialised in Galacian-style fish. I had padron peppers as a starter – lovely little jewels of green peppers, around 4.5cm long; they're fried very quickly and then served with a garnish of course sea salt. You pick them up by the stem to eat, and about one in 10 packs a serious pepper punch. They're delicious. I followed that with my very first lobster, and then a lovely chocolate and orange icecream for dessert.
Moon became a regular late-evening venue after walking off dinner, with good beers and tapas for the really hungry.
There was another restaurant where the young waiter was trying to open our bottle of wine and the cork broke inside the bottle. The maître d came over, and in a dumb show of pure comic genius, rolled his eyes, gave us complimentary tapas as a starter (little black puddings) and then, when he'd produced a new bottle of wine, rolled it slowly and with great drama on our table to help him ease the cork out. Later, he insisted on my having a complimentary dessert too – as though they had anything to apologise for. And the food itself ...
I had bacalao again, but this time in a sauce of honey and pine nuts. Fabulous.
At yet another restaurant – a very smart and modern one – I had the mesclun salad, with strawberries and nuts, followed by caramcitas – baby squid, perfectly cooked, the ivory pockets arranged like a star on my plate, and dressed with warmed olive oil, infused with garlic.
A few days later, in Paris for the first time, I had a wonderful pave of salmon, served with a small ratatouille and new potatoes, and followed by a dreamy crème brûlée that had me oozing 'tres bons' to the waiter.
Just over three years have since that expedition, but I remember those meals as though it were yesterday. I don't have to think hard to recall them or even refer to the diary in which I noted them in detail at the time. In Barcelona in particular, I found the most wonderful food that I had ever eaten.
Food that was full of colour, bursting with freshness and flavour. Perfect ingredients, wonderful simplicity. Meals that were so balanced and perfectly proportioned that even I – who normally can hardly manage two courses in the UK – could eat a full three. Eating had drama about it, and pleasure and pride for those who cooked and served it as well as the pleasure of those who ate.
We've spent a further week in Barcelona since, and visited at least three of those eateries again (Els Barrils twice more, while I ate exactly the same salad and squid at that restaurant as 18 months earlier). And then last year, in desperate need of a total break, we spent 10 days in Collioure. The food, again, was bliss.
We will return this September for a fortnight, staying not in a hotel this time, but in a cottage. I have always derided self-catering – my mother could turn it into a nightmare. But now – now, I am going to be able to shop and to cook in France. I'm already excited.
So no, given my tastes and how they've developed even since then, I don't think it's too much to say that that trip was a life changer.
So thank you Rugby League.
It was three years ago Easter just gone that St Helens and Castleford Tigers played their first Super League matches against the then newcomers to the competition, the Catalans Dragons. And since there was barely more than a week between those two visits to the south of France, The Other Half and I decided to arrange our main holiday of the year around the games.
Travel on the Friday, watch the Dragons v Cas in Carcassonne on the Saturday, then travel to Barcelona for a week on the Sunday and back to Perpignan on the Easter Sunday for Saints' visit on the Monday, followed by a TGV journey to Paris and then home 36 hours later via the Eurostar.
It was to be a revelation of a trip – possibly even a trip that was life-changing.
Rugby League is, in essence, a working class sport. It split from 'rugby' in 1895, after the powers that be, based in the south of England, created a by-law to stop northern clubs in working-class districts paying their players 'broken-time' money, to compensate them for the wages that they lost when they took breaks from their jobs in the mills and mines to play.
Outside the north, players came from a different background and didn't suffer financially through playing. Thus was born Rugby League – the other code is Rugby Union, which only became openly professional around 15 years ago. They found plenty of ways to pay players via the back door over the years – thus it was known as 'shamateurism'.
But it's also an illustration, generally, of why amateurism in sport is elistist.
In France, the sport suffered miserably at the hands of the ruling elite – not least during the war years, when the Vichy government actually banned it and stripped clubs of all their assets. The French RL is still campaigning for official recognition of the wrongs done to the sport – and for some sort of compensation.
The introduction of the Dragons into Super League was not without controversy – plenty of fans in England didn't want them. But it was a major chance to help build RL in the part of France that had once been the heartland of the country's game.
And so we made our first trip to southern Europe.
Downside? Having to fly out by Ryan Air. Which I hate. But Perpignan airport is a small one and you have that wonderful experience of walking across the tarmac to the airport buildings themselves. Heat welcomed us, together with the sight of the Pyrenees, rearing up on the horizon.
That night, we joined other fans in a short bus trip to nearby St Esteve. A small town, we'd been invited to visit the Rugby League clubhouse, where a barbeque had been arranged. It was a most convivial evening.
Saturday's match was an evening one, to which we would travel by coach. In the morning, therefore, we joined a minibus to take a tour of the coast. As we headed down the motorway, toward the mountains, the conversation from our fellow explorers was most illuminating.
"We got to the hotel yesterday," said a male Yorkshire voice. "And the receptionist said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And she said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And eventually she got the idea and said: 'Hello'."
Oh, what a victory for perfidious Albion.
Then one of the women traveling in their little group: "I mean, it's very nice, but it's not a real Rugby League town."
No – it's not in the bleak industrial north of England, where manufacturing is all but dead and the towns are dying dumps.
Our first stop, winding down a hairpin road, was Collioure. We had an hour – and in that time, we were well on the way to falling in love, wandering along the seafront, gaping at the menus of all the restaurants and at the view in general.
Our fellow travelers, it should be noted, didn't bother looking around, but simply headed to the first bar that was open.
Then on to Argelès sur Mer, slightly further back up the coast. We had a little longer and, while the others headed straight for another bar, we ambled to the seafront, dipped our feet in the Mediterranean for the first time and basked in the spring sunshine. A couple of the seafront restaurants were already open for business and, while looking at the menu of one, the waiter drew us in. Not that there was much "in". The tables were set out on a deck, but the canopy overhead had been drawn back and we sat with the sun burnishing our skin and penetrating to cold, northern bones, drinking sangrias that came compliments of the restaurant for being two of the very first customers of the new season.
The Other Half had a spaghetti carbonara. I had huge gambas, shells blackened on the fire and served in warmed olive oil, infused with garlic. Within seconds, I'd given up any remote efforts to be 'ladylike', getting my fingers as greasy as possible as I tore off the shells and relished the firm, tasty meat of the vast prawns, and the flavour of the oil. TV chef Rick Stein, on a culinary trip through France, once commented that, in England, he'd seen people try to eat such food with a knife and fork. You can't. It demands to be handled – and such an earthy approach is wonderfully sensual.
The third and final stop on our little tour was Canet. It took us only a very few moments to decide that we won't bother going back there: an artificial creation of high-rise, concrete hotels and 'trendy' bars, it was far from the sort of place that we like. The others thought it brilliant – and found a bar straight away.
The next day, after a match that had seen Cas lose, we caught a train south. It was a long, slow journey in a very basic train, and by the time we reached Barcelona, it was evening and we didn't feel like venturing far from the hotel.
The next day, however, was a peach, with visits to Sagrada Família and then on to Las Ramblas, where we peeked just inside La Boqueria, one of the most famous markets in the world, and then relished a sumptuous lunch in a restaurant right next to the market. I had deep fried squid to start, followed by bacalao, cooked in a an unbelievable amount of olive oil, with peppers and garlic by the ton, and all served in the pan. Wonderful. And accompanied by a gutsy Tempranillo – The Other Half asked for the house red and the waiter brought a bottle and poured us each a little, with his towel obscuring the label.
"Tempranillo, si?" I managed. He was impressed. The Other Half was even more impressed. It's possibly the only wine in the world that I can recognise. I felt chuffed.
But that gives you an idea of what was to become one of the dominant features of that week – the food. A wonderful restaurant down the road from our hotel, Els Barrils, specialised in Galacian-style fish. I had padron peppers as a starter – lovely little jewels of green peppers, around 4.5cm long; they're fried very quickly and then served with a garnish of course sea salt. You pick them up by the stem to eat, and about one in 10 packs a serious pepper punch. They're delicious. I followed that with my very first lobster, and then a lovely chocolate and orange icecream for dessert.
Moon became a regular late-evening venue after walking off dinner, with good beers and tapas for the really hungry.
There was another restaurant where the young waiter was trying to open our bottle of wine and the cork broke inside the bottle. The maître d came over, and in a dumb show of pure comic genius, rolled his eyes, gave us complimentary tapas as a starter (little black puddings) and then, when he'd produced a new bottle of wine, rolled it slowly and with great drama on our table to help him ease the cork out. Later, he insisted on my having a complimentary dessert too – as though they had anything to apologise for. And the food itself ...
I had bacalao again, but this time in a sauce of honey and pine nuts. Fabulous.
At yet another restaurant – a very smart and modern one – I had the mesclun salad, with strawberries and nuts, followed by caramcitas – baby squid, perfectly cooked, the ivory pockets arranged like a star on my plate, and dressed with warmed olive oil, infused with garlic.
A few days later, in Paris for the first time, I had a wonderful pave of salmon, served with a small ratatouille and new potatoes, and followed by a dreamy crème brûlée that had me oozing 'tres bons' to the waiter.
Just over three years have since that expedition, but I remember those meals as though it were yesterday. I don't have to think hard to recall them or even refer to the diary in which I noted them in detail at the time. In Barcelona in particular, I found the most wonderful food that I had ever eaten.
Food that was full of colour, bursting with freshness and flavour. Perfect ingredients, wonderful simplicity. Meals that were so balanced and perfectly proportioned that even I – who normally can hardly manage two courses in the UK – could eat a full three. Eating had drama about it, and pleasure and pride for those who cooked and served it as well as the pleasure of those who ate.
We've spent a further week in Barcelona since, and visited at least three of those eateries again (Els Barrils twice more, while I ate exactly the same salad and squid at that restaurant as 18 months earlier). And then last year, in desperate need of a total break, we spent 10 days in Collioure. The food, again, was bliss.
We will return this September for a fortnight, staying not in a hotel this time, but in a cottage. I have always derided self-catering – my mother could turn it into a nightmare. But now – now, I am going to be able to shop and to cook in France. I'm already excited.
So no, given my tastes and how they've developed even since then, I don't think it's too much to say that that trip was a life changer.
So thank you Rugby League.
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