FROM SOUP TO NUTS

I’ve been thinking lately, the way you do, about the Bucklands, father and son, William and Francis. William (1784-1856) was a geologist, the first man to identify what we now recognize as a dinosaur fossil, though he used the word megalosaurus. That's a pair above. This is him below:


His son Francis (1826-1880) was a surgeon, then a naturalist, and an important figure in the history of fish farming,nd here he is. The thing in his left hand is a tile for cultivating oysters.


Both of them were zoöphages: animal eaters, who tried to eat their way through the entire animal kingdom. No Leviticus-style prohibitions for them, and William was indeed a clergyman. As the crown of creation, man was obviously entitled to eat all the other creatures on earth, though some were a lot more palatable than others.

Between them they certainly ate giraffe, leopard, porpoise, hedgehog, puppy, rhinoceros, elephant, and eland, among a menagerie of others. And William certainly once, experimentally, and slightly accidentally, tasted bat urine. For a long time he said the mole was the worst thing he’d ever tasted, though he later decided it was the bluebottle.


In February 1868 Frank organized a horse-flesh dinner at the Langham Hotel in London, and served horse in various form to 160 people. It wasn’t a great success apparently, and it surely can’t have helped that they passed round a photograph of one of the horses before dinner.

Buckland concluded “Among the better classes the flesh of horses will never become popular; for in the first place cooks will not cook it … in the second place, the ladies will object to it; and thirdly the master of the house will find it vastly inferior to beef and mutton.”


Of course, once in a while, I think of eating my way alphabetically through the animal kingdom, and I start out pretty well, having eaten alligator, bear and camel, but I can’t get any nearer to Z than whelk, which you could argue isn’t really an animal, anyway.

Waverley Root in Food, and Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food, both start with the aardvark, Dutch for “earth pig” and which Davidson says is porky tasting. At the other end of the alphabet Root’s last entry is zebra, which his pals tell him is “more palatable on the plain than on the plate.”


Davidson also includes zebra but goes as far as the zebu, the African and Asian hunchback cattle. He doesn’t say how that tastes, but perhaps it’s not so different from any other cattle.

Both Waverley Root and Alan Davidson mention the eating of rats - the latter gives a Maori recipe, which is a kind of confit- but neither specifically discusses mice. William Buckland would have thought this a serious omission. He evidently served mice to his guests. John Ruskin wrote, “I have always regretted a day of unlucky engagement on which I missed a delicate toast of mice.” Good for him, you’d have thought Ruskin might be a bit squeamish in these matters, but no.

I don’t know anywhere that serves a good dish of mouse on toast, but there is a place here in LA where you can at least go to look at one, and that’s the Museum of Jurassic Technology. A couple of mice are displayed there in a vitrine, laid out on a slice of toast, not as an example of a culinary treat but as a cure for bewetting. The mice have to be eaten whole, fur, bones, head and all; I’m sure the Bucklands, father and son, would have had it no other way.

SMALLER POTATOES

And speaking of potatoes, it probably won’t surprise anybody that I have a taste for eccentric and vaguely ludicrous cookbooks, and that I have a smallish collection of them.


And one of my favorites is The Rock & Roll Cookbook, by Dick and Sandy St. John, aka Dick and Dee Dee, edited with the help of Pamela Des Barres. The idea is that rock and roll folk - or at least somebody in their press office - come up with recipes that seem vaguely to fit their persona or the title of one of their hits.

So Bobby Vee, who had a hit with The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, comes up with The Night Has a Thousand Island Dressing: and Jan and Dean have Dead Man Curve’s Spaghetti Pie. You get the idea. But two potato-related dishes particularly catch the eye.


One is Peter Frampton’s, slightly hesitant, recipe for roast potatoes, seen above. He may have cooked them once, but by now he’s forgotten how long you keep them in the oven cook. This at least sounds authentic.


The other is Sex Pistols Steve Jones’ recipe for Pie and Mash. I’m not sure if this is for real, or if somebody just came up with something that seemed “appropriate” for Steve Jones. The references to weird old minced meat and eating with your fingers, just seems to be trying a bit too hard.


In any case, the years of potato eating have been a little kinder to Frampton (above) than to Jones (below), but I don’t blame the potatoes. I blame genetics.


The recipe of her own that co-editor Pamela Des Barres includes in the book is for Pamela’s Morning-Aphrodisiac Brew Ha Ha (For Two) – it’s a smoothie, basically.


Now it so happens that I once ate breakfast with Ms. Des Barres in her hotel in London. It wasn’t the morning after anything. I was interviewing her for a men’s magazine, and she was hard work. But I’ve never forgotten what she had for breakfast: kippers smeared with HP sauce. I’ve never seen anybody else do that. I guess it was a bit rock and roll.

BIG POTATOES

Well it seems I’m back at the trough, blogging again, if for no other reason than even when not blogging I still seem to be writing about food.

I’ve just written a piece for Tin House about food and class in England and America – and yes, yes, I know it’s a PhD topic, but I managed to cover it in 1500 words.

I’ve also been asked to write something for Lotus magazine (as in the car) on the subject of whether or not food is cool. Simple answer, yes, but they want a little more than that.

And to cap it all I got an email from Erica Zora Wrightson who asked to interview me for her occasional column “Meet Your Food Blogger” at the LA Weekly, so I guess I’m back in the game.

One of the things I read while away from the table, was an article in The New Yorker about Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo – the guys who run the restaurant Animal in L.A.. It seems the New Yorker is very interested in LA food – what’s that about?

In the piece Shook talks about how he came to cooking. He washed dishes in a restaurant in his native Florida, and he loved it, because he says, “They used to feed me. My favorite dish was a mashed-potato sandwich, ‘cause they had French bread. That might have been the first time in my life I had French bread and real mashed potatoes.”

Now I can just about there are parts of Florida where French bread is unknown; but no real mashed potatoes? That’s what I call a deprived childhood. And I was reminded, obliquely, of Gene Kelly.


Now, I don’t know if you own a copy of the Official Special Olympics Celebrity Cookbook, the 1979 edition, but if you don’t, then you should really think about acquiring one. In it you’ll find Betty Ford’s recipe for Chuck Roast with vegetables, and Erik Estrada’s Pernil, which is Puerto Rican roast pork.


But best of all, along side these, you’ll find Gene Kelly’s recipe for True Old Irish Potato Sandwich. That's it above and if you click on it, it'll become legible. And as you'll see, he likes it pretty rough, cheap white bread, day old potatoes, onions, lot of butter and salt; eaten with a beer. Gene Kelly always looked pretty good on it, but I guess his dancing burned off a lot of calories.

And then, I found myself in LA’s Little Tokyo at the Yamazaki bakery where they were selling their own version Japanese version of the potato sandwich.


This one, illustrated above, is a buttered roll, with a potato croquette, cabbage and Tonkatsu sauce, which was sweet and sticky and I wouldn’t have been able to identify the ingredients, but various websites tell me (at least a homemade version) is a blend of ketchup, worcestshire sauce, sake, mirin, sugar, ginger and garlic, and it’s usually eaten with pork.



I like the Yamazaki bakery, not least because they sell something called British Bread. It bears very little resemblance to any bread I’ve ever eaten or seen on sale in Britain, but knowing that there’s a market for it, and that somebody somewhere thinks a food's Britishness might be an attraction, is incredibly endearing.

AFTERS

I have noticed that Psycho-Gourmet has somehow ground to a halt. I don't exactly feel that I've abandoned it - a blog is surely forever - but right now I've slightly lost my appetite, and I need a pause y'know to cleanse the palate. I'm sure I'll be back.

In the meantime, have a pizza, and speak fondly of me if you speak of me at all.

Best

Geoff

LATE NIGHT CLOWNISHNESS

One of my regular readers, name of Lydia, points out that Conan O'Brien has been twitting about Circus Liquor, in North Hollywood, at the corner of Burbank and Vinleand Boulevards. I know it well, and drive by it once in a while, and I had thought of including it in my post about clown-related consumption.

The reason I didn't was that I don't have a my own picture of the sign, and although there are many fine ones online, most of them are very recognizably the work of particular photographers and I'm being careful about just filching things off the web.

Howeevr, since Conan's giving it away for free on twitter, here it is.

Conan's caption reads, "This is down the street from where we're rehearsing. I guess nothing sells liquor like a maniacal circus clown."

By the standards of some of the clowns on cereal boxes, it seems to me this this guy looks amazingly benign.

THROW UP THE CLOWNS

Before I move on from cereal, a small thought about the imagery and characters companies use to sell their food products.


We all know that millions of dollars go into marketing, market research, focus groups, and whatnot, but in advertising agencies the world over, after all the time, money and effort has been expended, somebody in the office evidently says, “Ah screw it, let’s just stick a clown on the packet.” And everybody else says, “Sure, why not?”

Obviously it works pretty well for cereal, so why wouldn’t it work for other things?

Why not cotton candy?


Why not imitation raspberry drink mix?


Why not Pepsi?



And, above all, why not hamburgers?


As the picture above shows, McDonalds weren’t the first to come up with a hamburger-related clown. This one is in Fort Worth and seems to be a local landmark, though I I’m not sure it’s still it’s in business anymore.

And of course clown-related pushing of food to kids reaches a kind of apotheosis with the Simpsons’ – the KrustyOs “a nutrition-free food” and Krusty Burger “If you can find a greasier sandwich, you're in Mexico!”


I suppose advertising guys know what they’re doing, but the thing is, I used to be a kid, nd I remember what it was like. And I remember that I HATED clowns, and asking around, I’m far from alone in this. I wouldn’t want to eat a product just because a clown endorsed it, but actually EATING a clown, as below, oh yes – I’d be prepared to do that.


You’ll note that it contains preservative and colour - now there’s a surprise.

KILLER CEREAL

A more worldly set of kids would have realized that the Top Cat theme would have been unlikely to celebrate the joys of dripping. Hanna-Barbera were the go-to guys when it came to providing cartoon characters for sugar-rich, child-targeted cereal. I admit I fell under the spell.

My memories are imperfect. I do recall various cereal boxes with Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Quickdraw MacGraw on them, but I have no memory of which character went with which cereal. I’d have said Yogi Bear was associated with Sugar Smacks, but it seems I’m just conflating bears and honey-eating. He was actually on the Cornflakes box, but we never ate cornflakes in our house: not sweet enough.

However, he was also on the OK cereal box, which I think we did have in the house, but I have no idea what it tasted like. Apparently it was Quickdraw MacGraw who was on the Sugar Smacks box. The association between children and any kind of “smack” of course now seems blissfully decadent.

I can’t really understand why I ate this stuff with such enthusiasm, because I wasn’t a big fan of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Even as a kid I could tell there was something a bit crappy about those repeating backgrounds and the canned laughter. When I got to know Jay Ward’s Rocky and Bullwinkle, it was obvious that here was something far smarter and more grown up.

Rocky and Bullwinkle, I discover, appeared on packs of Cocoa Puffs, Cheerios, Trix and the alarmingly named Sugar Jets. I’m pretty sure Cocoa Puffs and Trix were available in the UK though I don’t recall seeing any Rockie and Bullwinkle packs, the rest may not even have been available there. Boris and Natasha appeared on Lucky Charms from 1950 to 1962, Sherman and Mr. Peabody shilled for Wheat Hearts. Again, these were unknown quantities in my childhoods, and possibly only sold in America. If I’d known about them I’d definitely have wanted them.


Visiting my local supermarket here in LA the other day I discovered no sign of Rockie and Bullwinkle but Cap’n Crunch (another of Ward’s creations) is still very much with us, now with added peanut butter. There were also the Flintstones, Tony the Tiger and the Snap, Crackle and Pop kids.

The amazing thing is that these characters are about 50 years old. Where are the modern replacements? Sure the Simpsons have appeared on Butterfinger, and Sponge Bob seems to have some special relationship with Burger King, but when it comes to cereal it’s all very old school.

Partly, I’m sure, it’s because cereal companies have decided that trying to fill the kiddies with sugar isn’t the most caring, health-conscious marketing strategy right now. Life cereal (which I confess I’d never heard of) makes some claims for healthiness and has real live children on the box rather than cartoon characters – I can’t work out if that’s more or less exploitative.


But my great discovery in the cereal aisle, and I now know that this has been much mocked elsewhere, was the kashi-based cereal called Good Friends. Again the boxes feature real live humans, and they seem to be promising racial harmony and (very possibly) miscegenation. What kid wouldn’t want that?

DRIPPINGS

You’re probably too young to remember the Hanna-Barbera TV series Top Cat. It was made for a surprisingly short time, I discover, just 30 episodes in 1961/2, but I watched it avidly at the time. Imdb tells me it was called “Boss Cat” in the UK but I’m pretty sure we all referred to it as Top Cat, not least because of the theme song. There was a UK brand of cat food called Top Cat, which I suppose may have been the reason for the title change.


Like everyone else I had trouble understanding a couple of lines in that theme song. The first line “Close friends get to call him T.C.” is clear enough, but the line that comes after was notoriously impossible to make out. Thanks to the internet, of course, no such problems need bother us anymore. The line is “Pro-vi-ded it’s with dignity,” which still isn’t a model of clarity but we know what they mean.

Back in the day one of my school pals suggested, with at least some degree of seriousness, that the line was “Step right in, there’s dripping for tea.” We were in Yorkshire, the home of dripping, and dripping was to be had for tea, and just about any other meal. It was spread on white bread with a lot of salt shaken over it. What could be better for a growing lad?

Wikipedia says that Yorkshire folk call bread and dripping a “mucky fat sandwich.” Well, they’ve never called it that in my hearing, and my Sheffield friends agree. Julia, who originally came from Hull, says she’s never heard it called that either. Leeds however is a different matter. The mother of a friend, born in that fine town, says she’s very familiar with the term. What they say in posh places like Harrogate and Beverley is anybody’s guess.

I’ve never claimed any great expertise about dripping, and I’m sure that every family eats its dripping in its own way. The blessed Fergus Henderson (may his tribe increase) recommends it on toast, which strikes me as just not so good as having it on fresh Mother’s Pride, but I’m sure it’s all about what you’re used to.


As far as I can see “mucky fat” includes the brown jellyish substance underneath the solid lump of lard, and these days I think it’s the tastiest part, though when I was a kid I liked my dripping sans muck.

Anyway, since the loved one and I were cooking roast beef over the weekend, I decided to collect the dripping(s) and have it (them) on bread. I know there are those who prefer pork dripping, but I was happy with what I’d got. I had it for yesterday’s lunch. It looked like this.


It’s much darker than the dripping of my childhood, but the loved one is a great believer in starting meat at a high temperature, and I’m sure this had its effect.

Anyway, it was just bloody wonderful, as they say in Yorkshire. Eating this bread and dripping, knowing that my arteries were being clogged, that my cholesterol levels and blood pressure were sky-rocketing with every mouthful, well, that felt so good, so damn wicked, so utterly forbidden. I imagine it was a little like eating the last dodo, although I’m sure it tasted a whole lot better.

Top Cat, as we see below, despite being a cat and living in an alley, seems to have eaten rather well.

THE POTATO EATERS

I’ve always thought that two of the most extraordinary-looking women in the history of the world were Kay Kendall, see below


and Slim Keith, also below, who was also known as Slim Hawks for a while when she was married to movie director Howard.


Both women had those fine chiseled angular faces that don’t seem to exist anymore, and it’s hard to believe they ever did. Now, it doesn’t surprise me to discover that Kay and Slim knew each other. But given their ethereal slenderness I never imagined they were great eaters. But now I find this in Keith’s autobiography “Slim: Memoirs of a Rich and Imperfect Life.”


She writes, “Kay always supported my theory of entertaining. That is, the greatest compliment you can give your guests is to serve them what you most like yourself. If you love brisket of beef or corn beef hash, that’s what it should be. … In Kay’s case, I always served the same thing whenever she came for dinner: smoked salmon with hot boiled potatoes served in their skins with hickory salt and two small dishes on either side, one of sour cream and the other marinated raw onions. Kay would at this dish for first course, the main course and for dessert.”


I’m not sure what I find more amazing, that Kay Kendall and Slim Keith ate a lot of potatoes or that they didn’t worry if their breath smelled of raw onion. Either way, I very much like that in a woman.

LUNCHEON ON THE ASTROTURF

There’s one thing that’s probably even less satisfying, and far more trouble, than breakfast in bed, and that’s the torturous ritual known as the picnic.

Eating outdoors in itself is fine - whether it’s sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich or on the terrace of an outdoor restaurant - but once you call it a picnic there’s all that organization, all that business with hampers and special plates and cutlery rugs. It sucks the fun right out of it.

I’ve been thinking about this because the current issue of Gatronomica also has a piece about the later years of Lee Miller. We all know about her days as model and muse, and then as war photographer, but who knew that she ended up living on a farm in east Sussex, married to Roland Penrose and engaging in “defiant” cookery”? Well, many people I suppose, but not me.

I found myself thinking about that famous photograph Miller took in Picasso’s garden, in 1937, titled “Picnic at Mougins.” See below.

© Lee Miller Archives, England 2010. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk

The cast, left to right, is made up of Nusch and Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Man Ray and Ady Fidelin. It’s always seemed a little dubious that the women are topless and the men fully clothed, something to do with the male gaze, artists and models, nature and culture. And the fact that it’s all a knowing nod towards Manet’s “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” doesn’t really change things much.

Knowing that the photograph is taken by a woman, changes things just a little, but of course Lee Miller was never exactly reluctant to take her top off, and I just discovered this picture (below) of the occasion, taken by Roland Penrose, proving that, yes she was nude model as well as photographer.

© Roland Penrose Estate, England 2010.The Roland Penrose Collection. All rights reserved.


“Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” has surely been parodied and pastiched more than any painting except for the Mona Lisa; in other paintings, in photographs, cartoons and album covers and whatnot. Even Picasso had a crack at it.



I’ve been peering at reproductions of Manet’s original, trying to see what they actually had to eat at their picnic. It’s hard to tell. There’s bread and fruit, but I can’t identify all those fruits, and perhaps surprisingly, there’s no wine. And certainly there isn’t any eating going on – they obviously have other things on their minds.

At least it looks as though the Lee Miller crowd have eaten well, and had a bottle or two of wine, but since their plates are conspicuously empty we don’t know what was on the menu. In the Penrose picture some of the plates have been cleared away. They also, of course, have a table, which seems way, way too much trouble for a picnic.

I have only one picnic picture from my own life, fully clothed, here with my mother somewhere in Lincolnshire in the late 1960s, and although my mother’s having a cup of tea – in a real china cup note, - I’m very conspicuously not have anything at all. Even then I probably thought it was too much trouble.




And just to add, the Lee Miller Archives have been more than fair and generous in allowing me to use the relevant images.  They have asked me to add the information that "The home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, Farley Farm House in East Sussex is open for guided tours being April and October each year.  Please contact Kate: 01825 872856 "  I am very happy to do so.