BIG GLASSES FOR BIG LASSES

I see that Kate Moss and her breasts were in the news this weekend.  Apparently “British artist” Jane McAdam Freud (yep, one of those Freuds) came up with the idea of manufacturing champagne coupes based on the shape, and I suppose size, of Kate Moss’s left breast.  It could be that her left breast is much superior to her right but I’ve found no evidence of this, and a pair of perfectly, or even imperfectly, matched Kate Moss coupes would surely have had double the appeal. 

But of course Moss and Freud tell us that the design was “inspired” by Marie Antoinette who also had champagne coupes modeled on her own left breast.  If you wanted to argue that wasn’t an inspiration but exactly the same idea, well I think you might have a point.

They had a launch party apparently where the likes of Rita Ora and Jade Jagger supped from Kate Moss coupes. I’d definitely have gone if they’d asked me.  However, even the most casual observer will note that neither Kate nor Marie Antoinette are (or were) every big lasses.  Couldn’t Ms. Freud the have found a more voluminous model, thereby offering the drinker a bigger pour?  Sounds like the kind of thing Helen Mirren would have been up for.

Also spare a thought for the late Rita “The Champagne Girl” Alexander, no longer able to model “live” as it were, but if she had been, blimey you could have got your fair share of bubbly.

Stashed away in the back of a kitchen cupboard somewhere I do have a penis-shaped glass flask that looks very much like this:

        I can’t quite remember where it came from – Czechoslovakia would be a good guess – and I think it contained some pretty rough old brandy.  I can’t say that pouring (as opposed to drinking from) a penis-shape bottle added much to the experience.  You would in any case have had to drink from the "wrong" end. 

           I’m pretty sure nobody modeled for it.

FOOD FIT FOR SUPER KINGS

Not so far from where I live there’s a Super King Supermarket, part of a local chain, one branch of which which famously, a couple of years back, paid over half a million dollars in a settlement with the Orange County Superior Court for selling halal meat that wasn’t.  I sure don’t want to get involved with that whole halal ball of dripping, but I suppose whether you’re for or against halal slaughter you’re equally entitled to accurate labeling.  In any case the branch that paid up isn’t the branch I go to.

As far I’m concerned Super King is the place to go to buy octopus, lamb, goat, really good feta, and the like.  And there’s always something unexpected there: goat butter for instance.

Turns out that goat butter isn’t nearly as rare as I’d thought (and why should it be given the ubiquity of goat milk and cheese?) but this one was English, all the way from Yorkshire, so you know it must be good.  

I’d imagined it would be gamey and tangy (I suppose you might say goatish) but in fact it was actually quite mild, and some might find it a little under salted, but the best thing about it was the look: pale, edging into translucency.  And very fine on a piece of toast.  Has the great American toast novel been written yet?

The other thing to be had at Super King, which was not pale, though certainly translucent, was this amazing stuff: Zwack. 

Again it isn’t as obscure as I thought – 7 million bottles are sold in Hungary every year, though rather fewer in non-Hungarian parts.  It’s a herbal liqueur (and evidently some kin of Jägermeister) with claims to be both an aperitif and a digestive, though its sweetness makes it the latter in my book.  It’s supposedly made using over 40 herbs and spices, and I would tell you what they were if I could.  The recipe is secret, dating from 1790, handed down from generation to generation, hidden from the Nazis and the Russians and now divided into 3 sections and kept in 3 separate bank vaults. 

My guess is that Zwack contains some citrus, maybe liquorice, something from the cinnamon/mace/nutmeg end of things, maybe juniper, maybe ginger, but I wouldn’t want to but money on it, and I know that leaves me short of 30 plus ingredients.  Maybe bar syrup?

But it seems I’ve been serving it wrong – clearly it should be served by three rather sour-looking east-European models wearing all black, including cheap plastic aprons.  What doesn’t taste better when served by three rather sour-looking east-European models wearing all black, including cheap plastic aprons?

BITCHES BREW, INDEED

Until recently I’d never given much thought to the origins of the word “hipster,” though I’ve certainly had my eye on the way the word has changed from once being essentially a compliment, to now being a casual and sometimes filthy insult. 

Certainly the term “hipster restaurant” has become a catch-all term for establishments that are trying way too hard.  And that’s definitely part of the problem.  Striving to be hip is no good: it’s got to come naturally.  Think about Miles Davis.  In the beginning it all looked so effortless:

But as the years went by, though he never stopped being hip, it looked like he was really having to work at it.

But one thing about Miles takes us back to the origins of the word “hipster” – he was a junky.  And this, according to some sources, is how the word came about. When you went to an old school Chinese opium den you propped yourself up on one elbow and one hip (and I suppose calling yourself an elbow-ster would have been just stupid).

And now I see a headline in the South China Morning Post: “Chinese restaurant owner laced noodles with poppy to get customers addicted.”

The story runs in part, “A noodle shop owner was detained after he was discovered to have been adding parts of a poppy plant – from which opium is made – to food so that customers would keep coming back.

The noodle shop’s owner was held for questioning and confessed that he purchased 2kg of poppy shells (the bud of the plant in which poppy seeds are found) for 600 yuan in August.  (That’s about a hundred dollars)

He secretly added it to the food to lure in more customers.

The owner was detained for 10 days. Poppy shells used to be an ingredient in a popular hot pot sauce until the product was banned, according to previous reports.”

*

The restaurant customers were becoming hipsters unknowingl, and against their will!!

Now, this story sounds a lot like bull to me.  Why don't they name the restaurant? It also sounds a lot like that Seinfeld episode, you know, he one where Elaine tests positive for opiates because she’s been eating poppy seeds muffins.  I was never really convinced by that plotline either.

And I think the real credibility problem with the Chinese restaurant story is that however keen you are to get repeat business, possessing opium in Chinese is a pretty high-risk activity these days.  I mean they even arrested Jackie Chan’s son, and he could be executed if he’s convicted (though something tells me he won’t be). 

You know what else is addictive that you could give away free to your customers that would keep them coming back for more (and it's legal):  alcohol!! 

Incidentally, I like to think that Miles Davis, however much he had to work at it, was far, far too hip ever to drink from a mason jar.

GEOFF DYER'S HAND

I’ve been reading, perhaps after everybody else, Geoff Dyer’s book Jeff in Venice, Death in  Varanasi.  I will say this: it’s very odd to read a book by a man called Geoff about a hero named Jeff, when you yourself are also called Geoff, especially when that hero is having so many thoughts similar to ones you’ve had yourself, especially about what constitutes success or failure for writers.

Photograph by Jason Oddy

I don’t honestly know how much of an eater or drinker Dyer is.  He’s certainly, by some way, the thinnest author I’ve ever met, and I assume he didn’t get that way by knocking back pies and pints, but there’s a great scene in the book where his (highly autobiographical) hero thinks about alcohol as a Tracy Emin-style art project.  Thus:

         “ ... if he were an artist he would build a one-to-one model of all the booze he’d ever poured down his gullet. Beer, wine, champagne, cider, the lot.  Christ, he’d need a gallery the size of an aircraft hangar just for the beer, the pints, the tins, the bottles.  It would be a portrait not simply of his life but of his era.  Some of the brands he’d started out with had since disappeared: Tartan, Double Diamond, Trophy, the inaptly named Long Life.”  He is describing my past here as well as his own.

I also discovered a piece by Dyer in the Wall Street Journal  “In this monthly feature, we send a bottle of spirits to a writer who is tasked with getting to the bottom of it.”  Tasked indeed, although to be strictly accurate Dyer doesn’t get sent a bottle of spirits – he gets sent some Blue House Citra Pale Ale from the El Segundo Brewing Company.  Being sent free booze by a newspaper, or by anybody, would constitute cosmic success for most writers I know.

I suppose the WSJ also paid him a decent fee because he gives full value in the article and writes about the horrors of American beer as perceived by British beer drinkers, less true these days I think, when pretty much every pub in England can serve you an icy, tasteless Bud.  Anyhow, the thing you see above is a quotation from Dyer, “I like beer that is tasty but not too strong so I can drink a lot of it.  I am one of life’s gulpers.”  So I suppose that trim boyish figure of his must be down simply to good genetics.  Or worry.

Jeff in Venice also contains, in passing, a great description of an almond croissant, “the size and complexion of a small roast turkey.”  I found this so moving that I felt I had to have a croissant for lunch today, though I avoided the almonds.  The resemblance to a roast turkey was slight but I did slice it open and stuff it, and it was pretty good, but somehow it tasted better in Geoff Dyer’s description.

And what did I stuff my croissant with?   Well, with cheese (“Organic Valley, hand-selected, rich and flavorful, raw sharp cheddar, made with milk from our pasture-raised cows") and some sliced chicken (“Oscar Meyer’s Selects Gluten-free Rotisserie  Seasoned Chicken Breast” – and no I don’t know what “rotisserie seasoned” means any more than you do).

But I do wonder, is it possible that as the Western world becomes ever more illiterate, that the marketing men, and perhaps even the customers themselves, think that the MORE words there are on a piece of packaging (regardless of what the words actually mean) the better the product must be.  Oh lord, that’s depressing – makes you long for a Younger’s Tartan Bitter of yesteryear.