EATING AND DRINKING WITH DAMES

A new collection of Muriel Spark’s essays has been recently published: that’s it above The Informed Air.  One of the essays is titled “A Drink With Dame Edith,” the dame in question being Edith Sitwell. 

After a bad meeting with a literary agent, Spark went to visit Edith at the Sesame Club, 49 Grosvenor Street, London, where Edith lived at the time.  This must have been the early 1950s.  Spark writes, “She wore her usual loose dramatic robes, her high Plantagenet headdress.”  Edith was attended by “a junior editor from Macmillan, an alcoholic who thought nobody knew.”  But Spark did know, of course, not least perhaps because her own mother had drunk a bottle of Madeira a day to “steady her nerves.” 

Spark continues, that Edith “asked me what I would drink, suggesting her own preference, gin and pineapple juice,” which seems a cocktail that doesn’t have a name, or at least I haven’t have been able to find one.  I’d have thought Dame Edith might have been more of a one for, oh, I don’t know … malmsey?

         Edith too was an alcoholic.  As Roger Lewis put it, she was crushed by  “debts, drink and simple loneliness.”  Edith’s own mother, Lady Ida, had been an alcoholic too, and Edith said she once had to pawn her mother’s false teeth to buy brandy.  I’m prepared to believe the story, but I’m not sure how much a pawnbroker would give you for a set of used choppers.

Anyway, back in the day, after my father had died, I’d regularly go up to Sheffield to visit my mother on the weekend, and we’d drive out to some pub or other in Derbyshire for Sunday lunch.  One time we decided to try the Sitwell Arms, a pub in Renishaw, that had a “carvery.”  Renishaw was, and is, the location for Renishaw Hall, the Sitwell family seat.

We decided to book a table, and I looked up the phone number in Yellow Pages (the way you did back then) and there, one above the other, were the numbers for the “Sitwell, Arms” and for “Sitwell, Reresby” – Reresby Sitwell by then having inherited the Hall from his unmarried uncle Osbert. 

Sometimes I imagine that at some level it can’t have been entirely accidental, but I “inadvertently” dialed the wrong number and found myself talking to some crusty old boy, who had no idea what I was talking about.  When he finally did realize, he sounded deeply offended, even outraged, and I couldn’t help thinking this was a bit of an act.  Surely I couldn’t have been the first person ever to get the numbers mixed up.  I imagined he might spend a certain amount of time fielding enquiries for the pub down the road.

Anyway, in due course, I called the Sitwell Arms, booked a table and my mother and I had Sunday lunch there, which if nothing else I can honestly say was unmemorable.  The website suggests the place is still very much I business, and the Wild Boar Restaurant still offers roast beef for Sunday lunch.  They also offer “Beer Battered Cod Loin
 With Mushy Peas and Garlic & Truffle Oil Chips.”

I think my mother would have been horrified by garlic and truffle oil.  I think Dame Edith might have raised an eyebrow too, although her eyebrows always did have a "life" of their own.

EATING UNPECULIARLY

And of course while in England I ate what the English would call potato crisps, and what my American neighbors would call potato chips.  I selected these two as a couple of interestingly similar examples - both sausage and mustard flavour.

You’ll notice that Corkers don’t immediately declare themselves to be either crisps OR chips, but rather “Natural British Crunch” which sounded to me like a euphemism for some sort of chemical construct, although the promise of East Anglian spuds on the packet was vaguely reassuring, and indeed potato crisps is what they are.

Both varieties definitely seem to be peddling some dubious version of British nostalgia.  Corkers have silhouettes of phone boxes, Minis, cricket bats and whatnot.   Tyrell’s have happy girls, perhaps from the farm, perhaps from the factory, and they tell us, just in case we’ve been living in a bunker for the last 30 years, that crisps go well with a pint of ”ale.”

I can’t say I’d ever heard of Ludlow sausage – there’s no mention in Antony and Araminta Hippisley Coxe’s Book of Sausages  (which is my bible in these matters) but of course it’s declared online that they’re part of a long and noble tradition.  This may just possibly be true.

In any case I didn’t get a strong sausage taste from the Tyrell’s, more of an all-purpose savory flavor, and they were perfectly fine, and no doubt better still with ale (perhaps in a flagon for old time’s sake).  The list of ingredients runs as follows, “Potatoes, Sunflower Oil, Sausage and Wholegrain Mustard Flavour (Lactose, Sugar, Salt, Mustard Powder, Yeast Extract Powder, Onion Powder, Sage, Spice Extract, Pork Powder, Citric Acid, White Pepper, Garlic Powder, Flavouring, Colour: Paprika Extract)” which leaves me wondering whether there’s any actual meat or sausage in the mix.  Again, I had never heard of pork powder, but I now know it’s a pork-free seasoning, containing hickory smoke, dried jalapeno and a bunch of other things.

Corkers tasted far more like the real deal.  There was a big tangy burst up front, which I suppose was the mustard, though if I’d had to guess I might have said it was vinegar, and then at the end there really was a genuine, intense, lingering pork taste.  How they managed that, I’m still not sure.  The pack lists as the ingredients as “Potatoes, Sunflower Oil, Yeast Extract Powder, Potato Starch, Whey Powder (from Milk), Salt, Wheatflour, Sugar, Spices (including Mustard), Natural Flavourings, Herbs, Onion Powder, Natural Colour: Paprika.”  So again no obvious presence of meat or sausage, unless sausage can be construed as a “natural flavouring.”

And finally, for those who want to believe that British food is a series of unnatural shocks that flesh is heir to, may I present the Very Peculiar Marmite chocolate bar. 

Now, I think anyone who goes out of their way to proclaim peculiarity is already trying too hard, and so it was here.  It really wasn’t very peculiar at all.  It tasted fine, rather like one of those bars of chocolate with sea salt.  I got the savoriness, and once you know it’s Marmite then you can taste it quite clearly, but really I’m not sure I’d have got it in a blind tasting.

The problem I think is that it’s 98% chocolate and only 2% Marmite, and I reckon 2% is way too low.  As a man who tends to have both chocolate and Marmite in the house I shall be doing some experimenting – 3 per cent, 5 per cent, spreading Marmite thickly across a chocolate bar as though it were a slice of toast.  Hey – don’t judge me!

MASH AND SUCH

When I first moved to London I was aware there were establishments called “eel and pie shops,” though I didn’t really know what they were.  I liked pies and I thought I probably liked eels, though I’d never had any (my childhood was both sheltered and deprived).

     So I went along to an eel and pie shop: I think it was Manze’s in Islington, but I could be wrong about that; it was a long time ago.  And I imagined that I’d be ordering a pie filled with eel.  This wasn’t the case.  You could buy jellied eels, but I didn’t, and instead I ordered what turned out to be a fairly standard meat pie with mashed potatoes on the side. 

The unique selling point however was the intense green parsley sauce that accompanied the pie and mash, the liquor as the man behind the counter called it, and in fact, traditionally the name is eel liquor, because it's made from the liquid the eels have been cooked in, though I had no idea about that at the time.  The pie, mash and liquor was good, but not quite the brand new experience I’d been hoping for.  I had, after all, eaten plenty of meat pies in my life.

         
Now, reading a bit of history, I discover that in their Victorian beginnings eel and pie shops really did sell eel pies, but over the years eels have become ever more of a rare and expensive delicacy.  These days not all the surviving pie and mash shops even make authentic eel liquor, but one that does is Goddard’s of Greenwich and it so happens that I was recently at a launch/party/exhibition (for Bleeding London - go look it up) at the Cave in Greenwich, where Goddard’s pies were served.

Now you and I might think that this (below) is the way to serve and eat a pie:

But in this case we’d be quite wrong, apparently.  According to tradition and custom, the pie has to be inverted, pierced with a fork to open up the insides, and then vinegar is shaken into the crevices along with the liquor. So that it looks like this:

The shrewd observer may also note that two kinds of pastry are involved in the pie: the top is short crust, the bottom is made with suet.  Suet pastry – hallelujah!

I’m not sure this is a dish that would convert many Americans to the joys of British food, but I thought it was just tremendous.  There was liquor galore (which might almost be an Ealing comedy) both authentic eel, and vegetarian.

 I suppose this was “low” food, though when you consider the Rex Whistler Restaurant is serving faggots, and Fergus Henderson is serving potted meat, who knows if that term means anything anymore?  The meal I had in London that best covered the high/low spectrum, was the Plateau de Fruits de Mer at the Bibendum Oyster Bar, though there was nothing low about the setting. 

Up at the top end were langoustines and crab and oysters, in the middle were Atlantic prawns and brown shrimps, and at the “bottom” were winkles and whelks.  Photo by Del Barrett (who also, most generously, bought the meal):

 I’ve written elsewhere about the role of whelks as a signifier of masculinity in northern England in the late 20th century.  As I was growing up, my dad was the whelk-eater, and as the lad I only ate cockles.  I can’t say I was craving whelks all through my boyhood - they looked vaguely unpleasant and had the texture of rubber - but I could see that eating them was somehow synonymous with passing through the portal of manhood.

The Bibendum whelks came in their shells, unheard of in the Sheffield fish market where I used to see my dad eat them, and here they were accompanied by lemon wedges, again unheard of: in Sheffield it was vinegar or nowt.  There at Bibendum, squeezing my lemon wedge, I felt secure in my manhood, while still aware that there might be certain old school northerners who’d think I’d turned into an effete southern softy.  They don’t eat many jellied eels up north either.

CHEESY AMERICA

Some people, i.e. anybody with a grain of sense, find themselves offended by the crassness of the souvenirs available in the gift shop at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York: hats with the FDNY symbol, cuddly stuffed dogs with a search and rescue bandanna around the necks, and so on.   Some people, of course, are offended by the mere existence of a gift shop at the site.  I am prepared to be counted a member of both groups, without being much surprised by any manifestation of human crassness.

And yet and yet; I see (above) they’re selling a cheeseboard in the shape of the United States (though without Alaska and Hawaii naturally), and I admit I found myself wanting one. It seemed, at first glance, inoffensive, but then I noticed the three hearts indicating where the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place, which of course makes it utterly untenable.

So I went online to see whether you can buy a cheese board cheeseboard in the shape of the United States but without three hearts indicating where the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place, and it seems you can – there are various versions available including this one found on Etsy, made by AHeirloom.

It doesn’t seem crass at all.  Before long however this version of America may well become stained, greasy and a little bit cheesy.  Go pick the symbolism out of that one.