tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47494104841546083692026-10-30T05:11:22.533-07:00Geoff Nicholson - PSYCHOGOURMET Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1072125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-15200043597886937622025-01-07T02:05:00.000-08:002025-01-08T11:32:51.745-08:00WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW .... Does the world need another book about the martini?No, probably not. But I do. Very much indeed. That’s how the Psychogourmet Martini Library thrives and grows and becomes more authoritative. And so we welcome Alice Lascelles’ Martini, subtitled “the ultimate guide to a cocktail icon,” though of course we all know there’s no ultimate in these Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-80011704193405347932025-01-02T10:53:00.000-08:002025-01-02T10:53:26.864-08:00GOTTA LOVE YOUR MOTHERI’ve been continuing to read and enjoy Fuchsia Dunlop’s Invitation to a Banquet (I admit that my fingers keep wanting to type Invitation to a Beheading). And I’ve been especially taken with something she describes called “Loving Mother’s Dish.”The story goes that there was once a woman whose son travelled to Beijing to sit the imperial civil service exams. While Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-7569704562426872322024-12-27T03:12:00.000-08:002024-12-27T03:13:33.874-08:00JINGLE SOME OF THE WAY I was once at a wedding where some unpleasantness broke out over the crumpets. The host presented guests with a platter of crumpets that had been pre-buttered and spread with jam. More than one wedding guest expressed the opinion that a crumpet was a savoury thing and that spreading it with anything sweet was an abomination. I tend to agree, though I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-83499758461615867092024-12-23T01:54:00.000-08:002024-12-23T07:58:06.117-08:00IT'S STARTING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE DESPERATION You know me, I love a martini and I’m not averse to a sprout, but do I want them in the same glass?Above is just one of the ‘Sproutini’ images doing the rounds in this yuletide season. Well, the media have to be filled with something. Also, Apricity, I’m no expert in these matters but I have an idea for how you could sell more alcohol. Maybe fill the glasses?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-32548643350437189832024-12-20T04:59:00.000-08:002024-12-20T04:59:47.940-08:00TARTARE FOR NOWYou know me, it doesn’t take much to get me salivating over venison, and there had been a loin of venison lurking in the freezer for a couple of weeks. This photo and the majority of the others by Caroline Gannon.And then when I was in London, back at the Coal Hole in the Strand, venison croquettes were on the menu, so how could I not order them.Actually they were described as Venison Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-25216636572024050062024-12-13T03:56:00.000-08:002024-12-20T05:11:51.507-08:00INVITATION TO THE EXOTICI can’t remember when I first heard of, and started reading, Fuchsia Dunlop, the great scholar, eater and creator of Chinese food. In some ways it seems like she’s always been there. Illustration by Anna HiggieBut I do know she was in the anthology The Wurst of Lucky Peach, a celebration of the sausage, in which she writes about opka hesip — Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-53148955527421760152024-12-11T00:16:00.000-08:002024-12-11T00:16:09.137-08:00THE REASON FOR THE SEASONINGPhoto: Caroline GannonI really love Christmas food, and every year I‘m, deeply moved by the thought of Mary and Joseph and the Three Wise Men sitting down to a plate of turkey with roasties and giblet gravy. The baby Jesus obviously had his own special arrangements.But you know, what I personally like best, rather than the big roast bird, are the extras and the afters, the stuffing, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-27728515212704313632024-12-03T07:22:00.000-08:002024-12-03T23:19:08.167-08:00BLOOD AND GUTS So the Guardian had its ‘Cocktail of the Week’ - Lyon’s martini x2, devised by Anthony Lyon of Lyon’s Seafood and Wine Bar, London N8, and described as ‘An almost savoury, nori-infused gin martini to enjoy as an aperitif, perhaps with an oyster or two on the side.’ ‘Almost savoury’ as in almost pregnant and almost dead? i.e. not savoury?&Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-80676011240293105212024-11-27T09:15:00.000-08:002024-11-27T09:24:11.552-08:00 REAL FAKE FOODAnd so to Japan House in Kensington to see ‘Looks Delicious’ an exhibition of replica food, the kind of thing you see in the windows of certain Japanese, and indeed Korean, restaurants, clueing you in about what the food you get inside is going to look like. The Japanese terms is shokuhin sanpuru, I understand.Of course these replicas don’t convey what it’s going to taste like but Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-39235748965196021472024-11-23T08:28:00.000-08:002024-11-23T08:38:59.457-08:00KING SOLOMON'S COCO POPS Like all sane people I try to avoid being in hospital, but you know, stuff happens. The secret of being in hospital, I’ve learned, is to have a good book with you. That’s likely to be your only source of comfort. The food certainly won’t be. I was eleven years old when I was first in hospital, with an exploded appendix, and although I have no memory of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-79808097366920767632024-11-06T10:17:00.000-08:002024-11-06T10:17:56.633-08:00LET'S ALL GO DOWN THE STRAND As I understand it, imperfectly no doubt, there’s only one real-world pub still in existence that appears in the works of PG Wodehouse, and that’s the Coal Hole, 91-92 the Strand, originally an extension of the Savoy Hotel though now it’s a Nicholson’s pub (no relation).The place is visited by Ukridge in the short story “The Debut of Battling Billson,” first published in 1923. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-51610803023625490722024-11-03T08:10:00.000-08:002024-11-03T08:10:38.336-08:00SETTLE DOWN DEER I was prepared to be a little disappointed by St John, Marylebone, not because I thought it would be bad but because the inamorata and I love the other two branches – Smithfield, and Bread and Wine - so much. This and the vast majority of the other pics by Caroline GannonAlso the menu didn’t include bone marrow, which is the single thing I like best about the other St Johns. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-59410191473467689792024-10-29T10:21:00.000-07:002024-10-29T10:21:49.627-07:00HANDS ACROSS THE SEAI can’t imagine that anybody will ever take a better photograph of a drink in front of an airplane window than this one by William Eggleston. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try. Here’s one I took a few years years ago on a plane to Tokyo. I mean it’s not terrible, though the absence of the hand and the ice and the clouds and the stirrer make it a bit nothing.And then a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-43958100600574552742024-10-23T03:56:00.000-07:002024-10-23T04:10:10.933-07:00MORAL PUB GRUB'Cheese is a mity elf,Digesting all things but itself.'Folk rhyme, apparently. I remember, when I started, or started trying, to read Joyce’s Ulysses, when I was about 16 years old. Much of it went over my head, as I suppose much of it still does, but I was all fired up by the scene in the ‘Lestrygonians’ chapter when Leopold Bloom goes to Davy Byrne’s (the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-28900409276105171802024-10-14T02:35:00.000-07:002024-10-14T06:46:35.731-07:00THE MOORE THE MERRIER As everybody knows, Thurston Moore (that’s him above on the left, standing next to some bloke from Sheffield) is a great guitarist and a wonderful human being, and as far as I know he has no connection whatsoever with Thurstons Fine Foods of Luton. Nevertheless when I was down at the local market, at the stall selling ‘food that’s probably fallen of the back of a lorry’ and I saw they Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-38066535210424583952024-10-10T02:04:00.000-07:002024-10-10T02:06:36.035-07:00GAME FOR MOST THINGS I asked the butcher in our local market if he had any rabbit for sale. I assumed he hadn’t because there wasn’t any on display but I thought I was worth asking. “No,” he said, “the lads are all out deerstalking.”I don’t believe I ever heard the word ‘deerstalking’ used in a sentence before, but at least this meant that the butcher had venison. So I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-2808908445710816662024-10-02T06:04:00.000-07:002024-10-02T06:04:55.774-07:00MR McLACHLAN - STILL RULESI hear that the great cartoonist and illustrator Ed McLachlan has died. This seems a terrible a shame, even if he was 84. His work has enlivened Private Eye and my imagination for many a long year. His work also appeared in all sorts of other places, including the Oldie, Spectator, even Punch – if you young folk remember Punch. Above and below areUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-54351187850769559772024-09-30T01:46:00.000-07:002024-09-30T06:53:43.791-07:00THE WILD HEDGEHOG (A RATHER FORCED ALLUSION TO IBSEN'S THE WILD DUCK - IBSEN WAS NORWEGIAN, RIGHT?) At Image from Norwegian Bakers website.Every Saturday at Manningtree market there’s a stall from the Norwegian Bakers, who in some sense hale from Wivenhoe, who sell enticing looking and fairly expensive bread and pastries. But you know, you’re only old once, so we bought a hedgehog loaf which looks like this: The outside is coated with olive oil and chunky grains of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-70505563085406663022024-09-24T09:08:00.000-07:002024-09-24T09:08:44.354-07:00THE CROQUETTE AND I Sometimes during school holidays when I was a lad growing up in Sheffield, my mum would take me out for lunch at the Sidewalk Café in Chapel Walk. I remember it being a nice enough place but photographs from its early days make it look way cooler and hipper than I could ever imagine, let alone remember. I remember two things about the food. One, that on the counter Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-21590106640452890402024-09-23T00:37:00.000-07:002024-09-23T00:37:19.467-07:00LOVELY LIFE, LOVELY GRUB I can’t absolutely swear to it, but I do believe I was once in the same room as April Ashley, one of the first Brits to undergo gender reassignment surgery, male to female. The room was the bar of the Chelsea Arts Club and somebody told me that the distinguished-looking woman across the way was Ms. Ashley. I had no reason not to believe. &Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-63969280849510716502024-09-18T08:49:00.000-07:002024-09-18T08:49:39.730-07:00SAUCE WITH EVERYTHING The whole point of reading the Daily Star Sunday, is that you get to see what some obviously quite smart journalists come up with when they channel their inner idiot.Last weekend there was the headline BROWN SAUCE SICKOS: BRITS SLAP HP ON ROAST. There in the fine print you’ll learn that one in ten of the 2000 people polled by the manufacturers of HP sauce said it was a ‘must’ on their Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-43701417212489445022024-09-16T04:30:00.000-07:002024-09-16T04:36:10.017-07:00LITTLE BIT OF COMFORT, VERY LITTLE JOY I’ve been thinking about comfort and I’ve been thinking about food. Whether this is the same as thinking about comfort food, I’m not sure. The simple, immediate cause of these thoughts was that I’ve been hit by a hideous dose of flu, like being run over by an Ocado truck, scarcely able to get out of bed. I was looking to find comfort anywhere I could, and food seemed a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-34375967189385511132024-09-13T01:09:00.000-07:002024-09-13T01:09:02.638-07:00PARTY TIME WITH JC Let’s have a belated celebration of John Cage’s birthday, September 5th, though frankly I’m prepared to celebrate him any day of the year. And I did see the above photograph on Gary Leonard’s Instagram feed, taken on September 5th 1987 at a party given for Cage at the Triforium in downtown Los Angeles. (He was born in 1912 – looking good, John). The Triforium is a piece of public Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-40078370933074026672024-08-30T09:54:00.000-07:002024-08-30T09:54:51.164-07:00ALL YOU CAN STOMACHYou’ve probably been hearing about this place Les Grands Buffets, an all-you- can-eat restaurant (though they don’t use that term) in the city of Narbonne, in France. It’s been mentioned in various places but an article by Lauren Collins in the New Yorker promises to be the defining word.They serve what they consider real French food, the price is fifty-two euros and ninety Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4749410484154608369.post-38503996379198834192024-08-27T02:34:00.000-07:002024-08-27T10:59:27.765-07:00WORLD EATSYou know, a lot of people say to me, “Old father, old artificer, is there one thing I should know as I travel around the world feeding my face?” And I say yes, it’s this, that when you arrive in a brand new place for the first time, the first meal you eat, whether good or bad, is always going to be the least representative. I’ll give you an example. When I went to Tokyo for Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0