CHRISTMAS TRIMMINGS

One year, when I was a kid, I was ill on Christmas day morning; nothing really alarming and with no obvious cause, but I was feeling totally out of sorts.

My family used to spend Christmas at my grandparents’ house. Various aunts, uncles and cousins lived very near by - and over the course of the morning quite a few of them trooped in and stared at me and said how ill I looked and how they hoped I'd be able to manage a bit of Christmas dinner.  And one uncle said, ‘Well perhaps he’ll be able to have a bit of turkey, even if he can’t manage all the trimmings.’

 

And this dismayed me because when it comes to Christmas dinner I liked the ‘trimmings’ much more than the turkey. It was the stuffing and the cranberry sauce, the pigs in blanket, and of course the roast potatoes, that really tickled my fancy. 

 

Well the years have gone by and my feelings about the trimmings haven’t really changed, but fortunately since my mother’s no longer in charge of things I don’t have to eat turkey.  This year’s bird was a mighty duck, from Creedy Carver of Devon – ‘reared for flavour’ – well, why not?

 

The inamorata and I worked diligently, and you know, it all went as well as it possibly could have, and I ate it with enthusiasm; duck, trimmings and all.

And as you may have spotted, this year the trimmings  included red cabbage.

 

Oh yeah, and there were martinis too.  We didn't have those at my grandparents' house.

A DUCK WITH MY NAME ON IT (MORE OR LESS)

 

ANY PAL OF YOURS ...

Choosing a name for your line of food products can never be easy.  But if Peel Pal is the number one choice, you have to wonder what was 'number two.'  You see what I did there?

ONE THOUSAND NOT OUT

If Blogger’s counting system is to be believed, this is my 1000^th Psychogourmet blog post, to which ‘OMG’ seems a very reasonable response.

 

It all started when I said to my American book editor, Geoff Kloske, the man who edited The Lost Art Of Walking, that I thought I might like to write a non-fiction book about food, and Kloske said, ‘Well, get famous first.’ So I wrote freelance articles about food and food matters for the New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Daily Telegraph, Gastronomica, Gourmet and others, and I started this blog.

 

This all went perfectly well, but I didn’t exactly become famous for it, I mean not Nigella Lawson famous, but then who the heck is?

 

Nevertheless, famous or not, somewhere along the line blogging about food seemed a reasonable and enjoyable end in itself, and so here we are at post number 1000, and to celebrate, here’s a noirish picture of a pleasant old geezer pouring martinis in the comfort of his own bar.  

Photo by Caroline Gannon

THIS 'N THAT 'N A MARTINI

 I am, of course, a fan of Bette Davis: what sentient human being isn’t?  Well, Faye Dunaway probably isn’t, but that’s a different story.

 

And it so happened that the free library in my local train station had a copy of This ’n That, a 1987 book attributed to Bette Davis and Michael Herskowitz, a second volume of autobiography that’s a sort of update and recap.  (You can find the Faye Dunaway story in there.)  So, of course I snaffled it up, not least because it contains this picture, which is very probably my favourite ever photograph of martini drinkers:

The book also contains a description of what, in other circumstances, I might have thought of as a perfect mother and daughter relationship. Bette says, ‘I would come home from the studio when B.D. (that’s the daughter, Barbara) was growing up, and from the minute I came through the door, no one spoke.  B.D. had a drink prepared for me.  I would sit down, finish the drink, and that would relax me just enough to be ready for a conversation.’

 

Sounds fine to me, though B.D. did write a couple of unflattering tell-all books about her mother, and now, as Barbara Davis Hyman, is a pastor in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Go pick the bones out of that one.

 

This ’n That also contains another very impressive martini picture of Bette drinking with Kim Carnes, of 'Bette Davis Eyes' fame.  Oh boy!

SIPPING WITH CAITLIN (THEORETICALLY)

 You know, if I didn’t read Caitlin Moran’s Celebrity Watch column in the Times every Friday I’d be even more out of touch with the modern world than I currently am.

 

Thanks to today’s column I’m now aware of something called The Broctail, the invention of one Jack Sotti who’s sometimes described as a London cocktail guru, which is apparently a thing.  The Broctail looks like this:

 

It involves blanched florets of tenderstem broccoli shaken with tequila, lime juice, olive oil, sugar syrup and ice, so it’s basically a magararita with a bit of veg in it.  Why not a Brocarita? 

 

Caitlin who refers to me (and a few others) every week as her ‘dearest reader’ suggests a development of her own – the cabbagetini. A bunch of booze with some cabbage in it.  And I tried to think of what might be usefully added to a cocktail, any cocktail,and I thought whimsically and improbably that maybe some mushrooms would do the job.  

Man, am I late on the scene.  The internet is awash with mushroom cocktails of one kind or another, most of them involving some fairly run of the mill concoctions with a slice of shiitake or lion’s mane tossed in, but this one in ‘Barrows’ Intense’ actually uses cognac, orange liqueur, lemon juice and savory mushroom syrup.  The Mushroom Cognac Crusta.

 

   I didn’t know there was anything such thing as mushroom syrup although I was well aware of John Cage’s Mushroom Dogsup: as opposed to catsup – get it?  His recipe involves mushrooms, ginger root, mace, bay leaf, cayenne and black pepper, allspice and brandy and should apparently be kept a year before using.

 

You might think the presence of brandy would indicate that it’s some way towards being a cocktail already but Cage’s recipe only calls for one teaspoon per half pint, which is not going to get the job done.  But put it a dirty martini or a Gibson, and you’d definitely have something worth drinking.

 

John Cage obviously regarded mushrooms as a serious business

 

Though he could see the funny side.