Day 121: I Wonder About Pickled Eggs

What with conversations with the people I know being what they are, I was reminded (yet again) of "pickled beet" earlier today. Assuming that "beet" (when spoken of in the Colonies) is the same as our "beetroot", I then set to thinking about things preserved in vinegar and decided that they were, on the whole, a particularly bad thing.

A roast beetroot is a nice thing. A beetroot in a soup is a nice thing. The colour of beetroot is pleasant, if unbelievable. An onion is vital, some would say, and life would be immeasurably sadder without an egg or two. But put all these things in vinegar and they become strange. Then again, I can sort of see why someone would put an onion or a beetroot* in vinegar; but eggs? Why would a person do this thing?

Look at this! Publicans can get 2.25kg jars of pickled eggs to put on their bars, selling individual eggs to happy punters at 20p a pop. (There's even a strong possibility that people buy whole jars for themselves and put them in the larder to have As A Treat after a long day at work.) This means only one thing: that someone somewhere is boiling eggs and preserving them in vinegar. Mr Driver (the creator of the pickled eggs you see in this charming photograph), pays his mortgage and the salaries of his egg-pickling employees with money made from pickling eggs. But no egg-pickling would occur if it wasn't for the fact that PEOPLE ALL OVER THE COUNTRY ARE EATING PICKLED EGGS. (This is something to do with the Economics - suppy and demand, market forces, that kind of thing.)

Who are they? Where are they? Why are they doing this strange thing? Eat Scampi Fries instead, my strange pickled egg-eating friends. They too are illogical, but somehow more logical than a pickled egg.



* Pickled beetroot exists to stain clean shirts and tablecloths, and make all the other food on your plate a shade of purple that Food Should Not Be. Pickled onions exist to make your breath smell like Satan's sputum once you have drunk 12 pints and realised you are not going to pull.

Day 121: I Go Out To Lunch

In the olden days, when Polos cost 5p a packet and you could travel anywhere in the United Kingdom for £1 if you had the Correct Travelcard, Proper Italian Restaurants existed. In them, Italian waiters (who were in fact from Dagenham and called Dave), wielded enormous pepper mills the size of Sicily whilst they served food that included Saltimbocca and fire-hazard aniseed booze. On a Saturday night, they ferried in their Welsh uncle, re-christened him Giovanni, and got him to sing Italian love songs by the light of a poorly-executed mural of the Pontevecchio. Sometimes, a rose would be offered "forthelaydee".

Time passed. Elizabeth David came and went, alarming the British with her talk of garlic and seasoning. But still we soldiered on, grating cheddar on our spaghetti bolognese, believing in our cold Anglo-Saxon hearts that a bottle of Chianti encased in raffia was the Last Word In Sophistication and using olive oil (bought in tiny bottles from Boots the Chemist) to put in our ears, but not on our food.

More time passed. Buitoni parmesan could be found in small pots on dusty cornershop shelves. It smelt of sick and tasted of salty sawdust; but use it we would, sprinkling it on our tinned ravioli whilst we considered going to That Abroad for the first time.

Then The River Cafe (run by two women called Rose and Ruth) happened, a few years after Habitat, but some years before the EasyJet. It went on for a bit (and still does). They made big cookbooks full of fancy talk about wood fired ovens and ingredients so expensive that cooking a risotto cost no less than £450. People started spending more money on a bottle of olive oil than they did on their houses, and to Sainsburys came real Parmesan and pasta in over four million different varieties. Italian Food was Fashionable, but only working class Italian food, roughly hewn from Fresh Ingredients and Jamie Oliver's tongue. People went to Tuscany and came back weeping, for they had had The Best Food They Had Ever Had in a tiny little trattoria just outside Siena. And no, they couldn't remember the name; all they knew was that the pasta was fresh, the wine good, the boar angry and the experience genuine.

Today I met two Dear People. Not quite ex-colleagues; but not-quite-not. We went for lunch. We swore not to drink. We went to the last remaining bastion of Old Fashioned Italian Food in That London, where the food was cooked in butter and cream, the owner called Luigi, and the pepper grinder the length of my arm.

Now, call me old-fashioned, but people in Ruislip have been wheeling out virgin olive oil with a bit of balsamic vinegar in it to dip their shop-bought focaccia in since 1991, believing that it is the Last Word In Sophistication. But today a waiter appeared with a saucer, and placed it in front of me and said: "For you, signorina, a Special Treat: it is New. The olive oil, balsamico, and black pepper." I shook my head and rattled my ears. We were in a Time Warp. There were melon and parma ham. Someone had stuffed a mushroom.

Whilst I was chewing mutely on a bread stick out of a packet (last seen in 1974), one of my companions - who is too amusing to try and Explain - got in to a conversation with the table next to us. They were going to a Show (The Sound of Music - "I mean she did terrifically well, the girl on the telly, and then we're going to the South Bank for a drink"), and were Excited about being in That London, eating Genuine Italian Food. We had a long conversation with them and thought they were from Derby, or possibly Nottingham. I could feel myself sneering slightly. One of the men was wearing a leather jacket.

But they were happy. We were in a Themed Restaurant, and it was 1983, with pictures of Anita Dobson, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Brian May with the proprietor on the wall (but not at the same time) and stuffed mushrooms on our plates. And yet still I sneered, because I reckon myself to be a bit Sophisticated. And that, I now see, is a terrible waste of time.

I want to be the sort of person who is excited about going to a show in London, eating the 'House Special', and being a bit pissed on Friday afternoon. Instead, I appear to be the sort of person who would rather eat their own head than go to a 'show', has eaten pretentiously in Italy and Knows It, and knows that actually TASTING wine is a waste of time, because if it's corked, you can smell it a mile off without swilling the glass around and slooshing the wine through your teeth.

I shall spend the rest of the weekend sneering at myself for wasting time being An Awful Snob. It is the most horrific waste of time, and cuts off all kinds of Opportunities to Have Fun. But hold up: I think I have an invitation to see The Sound Of Music next Wednesday. I shall go, and Enjoy It. I will, I tell you. I will. And then I will go in search of Chianti bound in raffia, set fire to the paper around my macaroon, and watch it float lazily up into a ceiling painted like the Sistine Chapel.

Day 120: I Am Seasonally Affected

We are all aware that Christmas now starts in mid-August. It is already impossible to penetrate Woolworths without breaking your ankle on a 12 ton tin of Quality Street. Every advertisement on the Television on Saturday morning is for terrifying slack-mouthed weeing dolls called Baby Born, voiced by a 12 year old animatronic child from Lithuania, and unless I am very much mistaken, I saw some mince pies in Waitrose in October. What would the Baby Jesus have to say about it all? We shall never know, for he would have been a baby, and therefore unable to talk. (Which reminds me: there's a BOGOF on myrrh in Tesco this week.)

However, even I am at a loss to understand what this man (who I followed for some five miles, but not in That Way), was doing wearing a Father Christmas hat in his car on this bright November day. More to the point, why is he fondling it? It is Not Right, and I do not fancy a go on his pom-pom.

Splendid Monkey Gallery: Picture 9

Regular readers will be aware that I once had a job. In it were People who I Liked Immensely. Today, out of the blue, I was sent this Particularly Splendid Monkey by Suzi, who once sat behind me (and me behind her).

When we were not accidentally running over each other in our wheely chairs and I wasn't being jealous of her Immensely Large Personal Workspace (for those are the things I used to fret about), we spent our days hanging tiny monkeys from a rubber plant and reading newspapers.























He is drawn with her own hands; he is black and white; he looks a little sad. He is Immediately In. Suzi does not think she can draw. Suzi is Wrong. So very Wrong.

It gives me really quite extraordinary pleasure to say:

Congratulations, Suzi!

Day 120: I Buy A Cup Of Coffee

Someone accused my comments box in the post before last of being like a branch of Starbucks. Needless to say I was horrified; I replied that I like to think of my comments box(es) as a sort of virtual eighteenth century salon, in which my witty and erudite readers bow slightly to each other, stroke their powdered wigs, exchange bons mots and pretend to be Alain de Botton, not a slackly-decorated repository for Imaginary Writers drinking coffee-flavoured hot milkshake. (They're still at it, as far as I can see, except they are not talking about the Death of Philosophy, but who they would rather shag - Feltz or Prince Edward. Feltz is in the lead.)

Anyway, it set me to thinking and caused me to scoot to a sudden stop outside Caffè Nero in Waterloo this morning and purchase the cup of coffee you see above (customised by my own monkey hands).  As I was sucking it up with my monkey lips, I thought some more about coffee. In fact I started thinking about it last night and haven't stopped. That is the horrible truth.



I would like a cup of coffee

1. I would not like "a coffee" or "a tea".
2. Neither would I like "a hot drink".

Starbucks coffee is not coffee

Someone in Starbucks ("Er ... I'll have a cappuccino please. With two extra shots." "TWO? You SURE?" "Yes, I would like it to taste of coffee". "You want syrup wid tat?" "Do I look like a cretin?"), gets a pint of milk, then Lucifer passes by and squirts in it.

What he squirts is up to you to decide, but suffice to say it ain't pretty, and in normal circumstances would require a double dose of Arret and some rehydration salts.

I have yet to meet a French person who can make nice coffee in their houses

You may well sit through sixteen courses of the finest food in Christendom, hand-reared and cooked by the Laydee of the House. But when it comes to "un petit café?", shout "NON!" and run for the hills.

English people are more obsessed with coffee than any other nation on Earth

You might think it's the Italians, but that is part of them and they are very fucking good at it, so nothing to see there; move along now. You may think it's the Americanos, but I do not see that drinking 12 pints of skinny latte with coffee syrup light on the coffee is really drinking coffee. The French don't care what anyone thinks of them anyway (if they're being annoying, just shout "SHAKESPEARE! HE'S BETTER THAN ALL OF YOURS!" at them - it usually works.)

But you see we are in trouble over here. Fed up with everyone saying British food is rubbish, we have become obsessed by proving everyone wrong. Regardless of the fact that most people live off ready meals bought from Tesco (despite owning 12 cookbooks by Jamie Oliver, five by Nigel Slater and twenty-nine by the Spawn of Satan, Delia Smith), the middle classes will confidently blether on about farmers' markets, read Heston Blumenthal in The Guardian (and buy a meat thermometer they will never use), talk about the number of Michelin-starred restaurants we have and roll their eyes at children who eat chips for lunch. Therefore, making a decent cup of coffee is important, and by your coffee shall ye know them: Instant is Bad; a Cafetière is Cheating; anything in a sachet is Probably Rat Poison.

How to make coffee at home

Like this:

Please note: the coffee maker must say "Bialetti" on the side of it and feature a man with a hat and a large nose and moustache, making a hand signal you only usually see on cricket pitches. Only this one will do. There are Many Imitators but considering the 6-cup costs about £25 and will last 100 years, it is well worth the Investment.

Tips on what to do when you get one (learnt at the knee of Monkeymother):

1. Put one drop of washing up liquid in with the water and run it through once.
2. Make about 3 batches of coffee, and discard them.
3. Thereafter, NEVER use washing up liquid on it.
4. Always store the 3 bits separately, otherwise you get Weird Mould.

Also:

1. The minute it starts bubbling, TAKE IT OFF THE HEAT. Otherwise it will be burnt and disgusting. You may also burn your rubber ring (yes yes, ho ho). If you do ...
2. ... you can get replacements at John Lewis or Peter Jones (same difference, except the latter contains more people with Hermès scarves than the former, which contains mainly people on a day trip to That London and me, sobbing quietly in Haberdashery.)

If I want a cup of coffee in a cardboard cup, I go to ....

1.Caffè Nero
2. AMT Espresso
3. Costa Coffee

Prêt à Manger is also OK if you ask for a strong one.

People who bang on pompously about coffee are knobbers

Mea culpa, yah? Great! Love my own work! Super to see you dahling - let's do lunch.

Right, I'm bored of coffee now, and will move briefly to tea.

How to make tea

Boil the water, then put it IMMEDIATELY on to the tea bag or tea leaves.  I am not that interested in warming teapots, milk in first or last, lemon or milk and the like. If people could just get the water hot, they would realise how really very nice tea can be. It also has the added benefit of not making you mad in the head after 2 cups, unlike coffee.

Hot drink, anyone?