tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47494104841546083692024-03-14T03:58:21.246-07:00Geoff Nicholson - PSYCHOGOURMET Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1020125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-24258851203840988022024-03-12T06:05:00.000-07:002024-03-13T08:59:32.214-07:00CANNY EATING I’ve been reading The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird, an anthology edited by Zara-Louise Stubbs for the British Library. I think I understand what’s meant by ‘the uncanny gastronomic’ but I’m not sure I’d know how to use it in a sentence, apart from this one.There are some big names in the anthology including Saki, Mark Twain, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-12025124998948704222024-03-11T03:28:00.000-07:002024-03-11T03:28:17.115-07:00SANDWICH MEN (AND WOMEN)I used to say, and it’s become an ever less impressive boast as the years have gone by, that I thought I’d read every word Jack Kerouac ever published. Unfortunately, at a certain point, if your reading career has been as long as mine has, you start to forget as much as you remember. Even so, picking up Jack’s Book: an oral biography of Jack Kerouacby Barry Gifford and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-82027878242054553162024-03-07T02:53:00.000-08:002024-03-07T02:53:50.332-08:00NOSE TO TAIL, AND BACK AGAIN And speaking of artificial food, there’s currently an exhibition on at London’s Japan House titled “Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River.” It’s about life and culture in Hokkaido, the island at the far northeastern end of Japan; and life and culture of course includes food. So there are some representations of the local cuisine, including sito – that’s millet Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-30809909791971162052024-02-29T06:20:00.000-08:002024-02-29T06:20:48.655-08:00THE CHEESE AND I It takes a brave man to admit that he’s been inspired by the food at a Wetherspoons, but I am such a man. After I had my cheesy chips at the Peter Cushing in Whitstable last week, which were perfectly good, I still thought more could be done. Essentially I thought the chips could be cheesier and the cheese could be pokier – it tasted like fairly mild cheddar. So I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-41427778976957954892024-02-27T02:16:00.000-08:002024-02-27T02:35:49.042-08:00VERY SIMILAR FOOD There was a great article by Fuchsia Dunlop in the Financial Times at the weekend, headlined ‘Stone Feasts: Verisimilar meat, fish and poultry carved from rocks are part of a long Chinese cultural tradition.’ I don’t believe I’ve ever seen ‘verisimilar’ used in a sentence before. Now, Fuchsia Dunlop appears to know pretty much all there is to know about Chinese food and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-504211027580344762024-02-21T03:45:00.000-08:002024-02-21T03:46:26.107-08:00SPOONS AND CUSHINGWhy do Wetherspoon pubs get such a bad rap? I mean I know that the owner Tim Martin supported Brexit but then so did many millions of others. And Wetherspoon pubs do have some reputation as the home of ‘bad behavior,’ but you know, I suspect there may be one or two other pubs in Britain to which that may apply.Of course I know that Wetherspoons (and no, I don't know why Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-12574782524492979062024-02-14T06:58:00.000-08:002024-02-14T06:58:19.243-08:00VALENTINE CRUNCH Does anything say “Happy Valentine’s Day” quite like a helping of Black Country Pork Crunch in a heart-shaped bowl?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-31735066323466064862024-02-12T03:42:00.000-08:002024-02-12T03:42:45.997-08:00RIDE LIKE THE WYND I know my readers are a cool lot, so I expect many of you are familiar with Viktor Wynd, he of the Last Tuesday Society, his museum of curiosities – skeletons, taxidermy, (separate) jars containing Amy Winehouse’s and Kylie Minogue’s poo; and much else besides. And then there's his Absinthe Parlour. pic by Caroline GannonYou may also be familiar with food and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-53853131607758145482024-01-30T11:44:00.000-08:002024-01-31T01:36:52.175-08:00THE HAGGIS RACE Pic by Caroline Gannon, as are most of the others.Race is a difficult matter when it comes to food, but I think we’re reasonably safe with haggis. It may be, as Rabbi Burns, puts it ‘great chieftain of the pudding race; but it isn’t repressing any other race, and you know, maybe it’s a metaphor anyway. Ours was a Ramsay award winning 'Ball Haggis' - it said Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-45850969593821428262024-01-25T08:56:00.000-08:002024-01-25T08:56:04.693-08:00THE SAMPHIRE OF LOVEApparently this is a thing: the samphire martini. And all I can say is, ‘What took us so long?'Samphire is bloody brilliant stuff. It is, famously, a salt-tolerant plant which means it grows by the sea on rocks or by salt marshes and therefore tastes salty, and I’m more than happy to eat it raw. So how could it not go nicely in a martini? And it Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-36382703865085375642024-01-25T00:28:00.000-08:002024-01-25T00:28:11.773-08:00BUT THERE WILL BE FOOD AND DRINK, RIGHT? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-37300738175347379322024-01-23T02:05:00.000-08:002024-01-23T02:05:42.436-08:00CRACKING CRACKLING In recent months I’ve eaten a fair bit of Ramona’s Heavenly Humus, which tastes fine and os less than half the price of the other humus in my local supermarket. I always go for the plain stuff, but I add lemon juice and turmeric because, you know, I’m a gourmet. But it never occurred to me that there was as actual Ramona. But there is and she looks like this: Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-51355302060497731802024-01-17T04:12:00.000-08:002024-01-17T04:15:02.417-08:00MUCHO MUSSOI once saw Sally Kellerman in Musso and Frank on Hollywood Boulevard. And then I saw her in an episode of 90210, in a scene filmed in Musso and Frank. Art imitating life imitating art. Like this: Another time I was there I saw Tim Curry sitting at a table right by the front window so that anybody passing in the street could see him. I suppose Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-17942121996191719422024-01-12T08:17:00.000-08:002024-01-12T08:17:08.117-08:00COSMIC CONSUMPTION I’ve been reading Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith by John Szwed. I’ve always been fascinated by Harry Smith, whose I first encountered as an avant-garde filmmaker. Only later did I realize that he was an anthropologist, maker of field recordings, artist, collector, the man behind The Anthology of American Folk Music, and a man regularly referred Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-31723526556881117062024-01-08T07:37:00.000-08:002024-01-08T07:37:42.491-08:00SQUID-U-LIKE Just before Christmas a friend sent me an article from Esquire magazine titled “The Best Martinis in America, 2023.” Some of these sound great, some sound a bit odd, and I’d say a fair proportion aren’t martinis at all, but I’m old school in these matters. The oddest, to my mind, was the Dirty Pasta Water Martini (above), served at Fiorella in Philadelphia, which looks the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-46177597051653883062024-01-05T10:04:00.000-08:002024-01-05T10:06:02.142-08:00THE ACCEPTABLE VEGAN SANDWICHI was in the café at the Photographers’ Gallery in Soho, on my own, and it was more or less brunch time and without giving it too much thought I picked a sandwich from the display case. The sandwich contained – I made a note - humus, tomato, pickled onion, raddish and mixed leaves. Conceivably there might have been something else in there too, but if so I didn’t Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-58398271166451011822024-01-02T01:27:00.000-08:002024-01-02T01:34:35.017-08:00SOME THINGS I PUT IN MY MOUTH - 2023 EDITIONAWAY FROM HOME: A Negroni at Iberica, Victoria.*A sausage roll at Delice, Lloyd Park – beef sausage for some (in fact I suppose fairly obvious) reason. *A pasty on an appealing plate, at the caff at the East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden.*Toasted sandwiches served on slate at the Copr Bar, Swansea, though I actually forget what was in them:*Zestily presented sausage bap and chips at the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-15698241254221049662023-12-28T03:36:00.000-08:002023-12-29T23:50:32.438-08:00CHRISTMAS TRIMMINGSOne 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-66372725681275523932023-12-25T03:53:00.000-08:002023-12-25T03:53:55.405-08:00A DUCK WITH MY NAME ON IT (MORE OR LESS) Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-23250514283156770962023-12-19T07:38:00.000-08:002023-12-19T07:38:17.238-08:00ANY 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?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-35773976650405436982023-12-17T01:19:00.000-08:002023-12-17T02:18:37.003-08:00ONE THOUSAND NOT OUTIf Blogger’s counting system is to be believed, this is my 1000th 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-42932914976063305072023-12-12T08:58:00.000-08:002023-12-13T08:21:18.201-08:00THIS '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. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-46393017035572299712023-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:002023-12-08T08:00:29.053-08:00SIPPING 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-7125260672139446702023-11-30T03:35:00.000-08:002023-11-30T03:35:13.197-08:00FAR FROM WASTED The first time I had a margarita I thought somebody was having a laugh, either that or they were trying to poison me. It was in a bar in New York, and I was with people I didn’t know very well, and I couldn’t believe that any sane person would put salt around the rim of their glass. Well the years go by, our taste buds change, and these days I think the salt is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-66475806730372335032023-11-18T06:46:00.000-08:002023-11-19T00:19:20.501-08:00THE FOOD TRIALThe inamorata and I have been on the road in California (briefly) and in Arizona (mostly). We didn’t expect it to be a foodie trip (which was just as well) but of course we did a fair amount of eating and drinking, not least these salt and vinegar flavoured crickets, bought in the gift shop of the Phoenix Botanical Garden. They were fine, because most things in this Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0