SUBURBAN NOODLING

It’ll come as no surprise to you that I take Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of my role models.  And this being so, and taking into account the above image, I thought I might shelter from the pandemic by making a not especially in-depth study of ramen, or as we more often call it in England, pot noodles.

For a while, every time I went in a supermarket I bought a different variety with the result you see below.  Eleven pots - enough for eleven nights.

Did I expect to find culinary delights in these pots? Well no, not really, and I started with the one I thought would be the least enjoyable, so that I could get it out of the way.  This was the Naked Noodle Thai sweet chilli – described as ‘egg noodles in a sweet, tangy garlic and chilli sauce.’

Man, I had no idea how bad it could be.  Imagine you’ve just dissolved some sweet miscellaneous-flavoured jelly cubes in hot water and then tossed in some noodles and then added more sugar. Even with the addition of soy sauce and lemon juice to make it less sweet, it was truly revolting.  In fact it was so bad I haven’t dared taste any of the others as yet, but when I do you’ll be among the first to hear.

And then, I just so happened (on the recommendation of my psychogeographic pal, Mr Anthony Miller) to be reading the JG Ballard short story titled ‘The Enormous Space.’  In fact I think I was probably re-reading it, but it’s so archetypally Ballardian I couldn’t be absolutely sure.  Either way, it’s a great story for a lockdown.  A man living in Croydon, is having a mid-life crisis following a car crash and being abandoned by his wife for ‘a tedious sales manager,’ and decides to stay in his suburban house, never leave, and sever all connections with the outside world.  Rather touchingly, and I’d say improbably, his estranged wife, before leaving, ‘has stocked the freezer and refrigerator with a fortnight’s supply of eggs, ham and other bachelor staples.’  Whether bachelor staples includes pot noodles, I can’t say.  Inevitably the food soon runs out and our hero turns to that old Ballardian standby and staple - the dog.  ‘I returned to my lunch of poodle pie.’ It’s not clear where he gets the pastry, not that it matters much - before long he’s eating the man who’s come to take down the TV aerial.  Of course, this story was written in the days before Ocado.

TIPPLING WITH TONY

Sometimes I worry that taking photographs of what you’re eating is an incredibly lame and naff thing to do, and there’s certainly a level of good bar or restaurant where I wouldn’t dare do it, but I’m slightly cheered by an interview with Anthony Bourdain in the Daily Beast. 

The interviewer is Noah Rothbaum who writes, “That, of course, brings up the question that puzzles many diners of the smart-phone age: to Instagram or not to Instagram? I’m expecting a monumental outburst about bad manners in restaurants, but instantaneous documentation is no longer an issue for Bourdain. ‘All I can say is, get with it, grandpa,’ he says. ‘I go out to dinner a lot with large groups of chefs and every one of the sons of bitches pulls out their phones, and we’re all taking pictures and we’re all tweeting each other at the same table and commenting on each others Instagrams of the same plate.’”

But it’s a small consolation because then I wonder whether taking photographs and writing about, and even just being interested in food and drink, is perhaps an irredeemably decadent and effete waste of time.  And I think I’m not the only one who worries about this.  All that shouty, sweary, testosterone-fueled, “bro” school of cooking and writing – everybody from Gordon Ramsey down – that’s just compensating, right?

And I certainly sometimes wonder about the essential masculinity of sipping a dry martin.  Lowell Edmunds, a classics scholar at Rutgers, in his book Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail has a chapter titled “The Martini is a man’s drink, not a woman’s drink,” – I think he’s being ironic at some level, but still  ...

 More reassuring perhaps is this picture of Anthony Bourdain and Josh Homme – the latter a man so secure in his masculinity that he can call name his band Queens of the Stone Age.

To shore up my own insecurities I made a martini in proximity to an ironic Arnold Schwarzenegger avatar – The Gnominator:

And I wondered if there was room in the world for a cocktail named the Martini-nator but I suspect that’s trying too hard, and in any case I think Arnold is and always has been, a beer drinker (although it occurs to me the in the lower picture he may be swigging some kind of protein shake).

And then I had a sandwich (see below).  Is this a measure of rampant sexuality or of profound phallic neurosis?  I don’t have to decide right now, do I?