Tuesday, April 29, 2008
E-number pie
Following another tip from Tooting tried another new recipe yesterday. Get pie dish and cover it with large peice of tin foil. Take a slab of stewing beef, not too lean and with a bit of connective too, maybe 1.5 inches thick and weighing about a pound. Place it in foil. Surround with quartered onion. Pour on a mixture of three tablespoons of Theakston's XB and three more of Watkins' mushroom ketchup. (The wrapper on this last explains that this is what the Victorians used to gee up their pies and stews - in the days before proper E-numbers were invented. Never heard of the stuff before). Close up the foil and put in oven at 130C for four hours. Serve with entire boiled potatoes, beet spinach and Budweiser (Mortlake tinned variety, not the posh stuff from the Czech republic). Every bit as good as it was claimed to be in Tooting. Texture and taste of beef excellent.
Continuing to re-read Huxley in the intervals of Simenon. Done 'Point Counter Point' and now into 'Eyeless in Gaza'. Not for the first time, I wonder what on earth I could of made of them when I first read them as a child - no doubt prompted by my mother, for whom Huxley was one of the heroes of her young-woman-hood. I had not remembered how autobiographical they were - which must have been rather a pain for his nearest and dearest. Or how interested he was in mothers generally - having lost his much loved mother around the age of 12 - and in older, experienced women having affairs with younger, inexperienced men. Mother substitutes (surrogates?), no doubt. And despite the rather dated ambiance and clever-cloggery, there is still a lot to learn from him. Not least, being reminded to have a serious listen to the third movement of the Op132 string quartet which figures at the close of P C Point.
During which, I came across our copy of Uncle Remus. Looks as if it was new in the fifties, published by one P R Gawthorn of Russell Square (never heard of them, so presumably now defunct), and having passed through the hands of Bowes and Bowes (now also defunct) at some point. Can't find any date of publication in it. I remember reading some of it to one or other of the sprogs - who did not care for the lilting manner of reading which I liked to get into - a trick which seemed to make the thick accents of the fictional narrator more intelligible. The stories are wonderful - but I wonder what the nannies would make of it all. One rather suspects that they would condemn the whole book of Uncle Tomism if not racism. And blacks might well find it offensively patronising. Which is a pity because some good things come out of bad. If I remember, I will see if our library carries it in their childrens' section or their black studies section. Or at all.
Continuing to re-read Huxley in the intervals of Simenon. Done 'Point Counter Point' and now into 'Eyeless in Gaza'. Not for the first time, I wonder what on earth I could of made of them when I first read them as a child - no doubt prompted by my mother, for whom Huxley was one of the heroes of her young-woman-hood. I had not remembered how autobiographical they were - which must have been rather a pain for his nearest and dearest. Or how interested he was in mothers generally - having lost his much loved mother around the age of 12 - and in older, experienced women having affairs with younger, inexperienced men. Mother substitutes (surrogates?), no doubt. And despite the rather dated ambiance and clever-cloggery, there is still a lot to learn from him. Not least, being reminded to have a serious listen to the third movement of the Op132 string quartet which figures at the close of P C Point.
During which, I came across our copy of Uncle Remus. Looks as if it was new in the fifties, published by one P R Gawthorn of Russell Square (never heard of them, so presumably now defunct), and having passed through the hands of Bowes and Bowes (now also defunct) at some point. Can't find any date of publication in it. I remember reading some of it to one or other of the sprogs - who did not care for the lilting manner of reading which I liked to get into - a trick which seemed to make the thick accents of the fictional narrator more intelligible. The stories are wonderful - but I wonder what the nannies would make of it all. One rather suspects that they would condemn the whole book of Uncle Tomism if not racism. And blacks might well find it offensively patronising. Which is a pity because some good things come out of bad. If I remember, I will see if our library carries it in their childrens' section or their black studies section. Or at all.
# posted by Jim @ 12:53 AM 
