Sunday, April 17, 2011
Food matters
On Friday to the Antelope in Mitcham Road to see if they were still doing sausage rolls. This a pub which used to be called 'Jack Beards' and which before that used to be a den of iniquity & recreational substances. I can't remember what it was called for that portion of its life. But the Antelope was still there and was trying very hard to be the sort of pub that you now get in Clapham North. Warm sausage rolls still available, probably manufactured on the premises out of sausage meat and a very fatty variety of pastry; quite eatable in small numbers. Warm beer satisfactory. Along the way I was reminded what a huge place it is, with a large front bar, a back bar, a function room and now a smoking (gar)den. The back bar and function room being large & high and done out in rather tired, dark brown wooden panelling and such forth. Must have been quite the gin palace in its day, entirely in line with the more or less contemporary grade 1.7 listed picture palace up the road, now a non-smokers bingo hall. Oddly, as far as Mr. G. is concerned, the place is just a bingo hall. It seems to have lost caste as a monument of cinema history. Illustration from http://moblog.net/home/.Back home to start on the bread and sausage from the Smak of the previous post. Both satisfactory if not great. Sausage very like a thin version of French garlic sausage; entirely eatable but one would not want too much at one go. A bit bland, pink and fatty.
At which point BH had a brain wave. Why not make it into spicy lentil stew? This being her variation on the lentil soup which I make, culled from Sainsbury's recipe library (volume rice, beans & pasta) and which used to be made on a reasonably regular basis. Fry up some paprika, bacon, garlic and onion. Add red lentils and water. Add tin of tinned tomatoes. Simmer for half an hour - the lentils should be soft but still entire at this point - then add sliced sausage and simmer for a few minutes longer. Good stuff; entirely satisfactory destination for grade 1.7 listed sausage. But next time I make it - this dish having hitherto been a BH affair - I shall try using real tomatoes as I find the taste of tinned tomatoes a bit tinny and penetrating. Although in the this case, the interior of the tin was white not tinny. Perhaps the raw steel plate had been coated in some kind of cheap white plastic, rather than expensive tin. Not a tin at all.
After which one tucks into this week's TLS, which saw fit to carry a two page spread on the same Sybille Bedford who had been irritating me on 7th April. Great minds clearly moving in adjacent waters. Whoever wrote it seemed to have a lot of time for the lady, who managed, despite her unorthodox start to and continuation in life managed to live to something close to 100. I am also told of a particular celebration of food in 'The Legacy' which I had not read as a celebration at all; rather a report of something close to the obscene. Perhaps in working up the article the author had not troubled to check the context of the bit she was remembering. More interestingly, she reminded me of how, when drawing on bits from one's own life to make fiction, one does play fast and loose with the bits, sticking them together into an assembly quite different from that in life. The bit in this case being the father, down to a cellar full of old claret and having little besides, teaching his daughter the mysteries of his claret, in lieu of a of a more orthodox education.
All wrapped in a large picture of a famous poetess with a fag on, another coincidence to which I shall return shortly.
PS: back situation uncertain. A touch wobbly after mounted outings two days on the trot. Better give the Trek a rest for a day or two.
PPS: stumbled upon http://www.superscholar.org/features/50-most-influential-books-last-50-years/ this morning. I shall be reviewing their list shortly. Cunningly qualified by 'most influential', eschewing the more usual 'most great'. A much more flexible quantity.
# posted by Jim @ 12:44 AM 
