AN EYE FOR A GIMLET

 

My pal Joel was over from Philadelphia with his wife Anne, and among his other British adventures he tried to order a gimlet in a pub, actually two pubs, one in Scotland one in London

 

He reports on Facebook:

 

‘ A pint and a vodka gimlet:

- Islay and Kilmartin: 6 pounds 50p, and taught bartender how to make gimlet.

- London: 13 pounds, 40p and bartender didn't know gimlet either, had no lime syrup or even sugar, settled for vodka tonic.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.’

 

I can’t say this lack of knowledge altogether surprises me -  ignorance seldom does - though most bars used to be able to provide you with a lager and lime – lager with a splash of lime cordial, which might or might not be Rose’s. It was how some of us learned to drink before we developed a taste for bitter.

Anyway thinking on this and digging around in the archive I discover I have quite a lot of gimlet–related material, some of which I’ve used before in this blog, but there’s still quite a bit that I haven’t.  

Much of it, I think, makes the gimlet seem rather more exciting than it ever is, than most drinks could ever be.

THE MIXING MACHINE

 If you go to see Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (and why the wouldn’t you?), you’ll  notice the presence of the Martini dispensing machine.

 

It’s a not a terrible idea and it’s certainly not a new one, and here of course it's fictional, but in the real world there have been all kinds of cocktail making machines and robotic bartenders, to serve different purposes, the Drinkomatic was obviously for small scale domestic use, 

 

while the “Cocktailmatic” introduced by Auto-Bar Systems in the early sixties was for large-scale commercial ventures, “where dispensing of drinks in a hurry is a problem” 

 

And so we come to George Jean Nathan – 1882 -1958 - drama critic and editor of The Smart Set and The American Mercury, the man who apparently said, ‘ I drink to make other people interesting.’ 

There is a story, apocryphal I imagine, that Nathan had a system or device or some Rube Goldberg-style contraption in his home that sprang to life when he put his key in the front door of his apartment building, so that by the time he got into his own apartment a martini had been mechanically and magically prepared.  If this is true I haven’t been able to find any visual evidence of such a machine.

But leaving aside whether the story’s true, I can’t help thinking that the real problem is that although making a martini certainly involves mechanical processes it also somehow requires some human intervention and intervention to make it live (though this obviously does not apply to, for instance, the Pina Colada).

 

It would obviously be ideal to have a loved one waiting at the door with a martini when you got home, possible a butler, 

 

or just conceivably Vincent Price.

 

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHOAN PERFECT MASH

 I’ve always had a fondness for the state of Idaho, and since I’ve never actually been there I suppose you’d have to say that my fondness is for the IDEA of Idaho.  And this fondness is largely because of the Idaho potato.  So when I saw a packet of Idahoan Perfect Mash, instant potato mix, ‘perfect in 1 minute’ in my local supermarket, well obviously I couldn’t resist.

Now, I am not foolish enough to believe everything I read on food packaging but wouldn’t the appearance of that word ‘Buttery’ on the packet above suggest to the unwary consumer that there might be some butter in there?  No, no, don’t be so naïve.  

    The small print on the packet says it contains rapeseed, coconut and sunflower oils, milk solids, cream and buttermilk, none of which seems like a bad thing, and of course the pack doesn’t actually say that it contains butter, just that it’s buttery – and you can see why they wouldn’t say ‘rapeseedy’ on the pack.

Equally you might argue that I could add my own butter, just as I would with actual mashed potatoes, but by that token if you have to add the butter yourself, then any food in the world could be construed as buttery.

And it so happened we had some savoury spicy mince in the fridge, left over from a not particularly successful Mexican taco adventure, 

so we spiced it up some more, made and added the instant mash, and put it in the oven to make a sort of Conjunto Shepherd’s Pie.

 

And then after a while as we looked it heating in the oven, we thought the potato topping looked awfully dry, at which point we decided to add a whole lot more butter.

 

The end result was perfectly OK – fusion you might say, but I wouldn’t.

THE CRICKETING LIFE

 “Have nothing in your mouth that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” ― I’m misquoting William Morris because I had a sandwich t’other day in Lloyd Park, currently home to the William Morris Gallery and once home to the man himself.

 

There’s a caff there too, run by Deeney’s which appears to bea two-establishment chain, with a Scottish vibe, famous for their haggis toasties such as the Macbeth - haggis, cheddar cheese, rocket, caramelized onion and mustard;  the Hamish Macbeth which has all the above for plus bacon; and the Lady Macbeth with veggie haggis and vegan mayonnaise, you know for the ladies, though I never imagined Lady Macbeth to be a picky eater.

 

I had the Macbeth (above), and I’m pretty sure I’d never had a haggis sandwich before, and it was very fine.  Whether it was better as a sandwich than it would have been with neeps and tatties is debatable, but I had no complaints.

 

How very different from breakfast next day at L’Hirondelle, also in Walthamstow. The sandwich menu looked like this:

and I concluded, perhaps hastily, that if they can’t spell sandwich they probably can’t make a good one, and is a wrap really a sandwich, anyway?.  So I went for the Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon which I know some people call a Royale.  It looked ok:

and it tasted like arse because the eggs were barely half-cooked, with globs of raw albumen.  Made me wish I’d had a sandwhich.

 

But then, OMG, a day later in Richmond, I encountred a kind of perfection, at the Cricketers pub: swings and roundabouts innit? There was whitebait. I can’t remember when I last had better:

 

and then there were Pork Belly Bites – deep fried I assume – melting fat and great crispy skin, with apple sauce.  Made me feel all Arts and Crafts.