Nothing personal

Dear Faithful Blog Reader,

I would like to inform you of my recent change of address. I shall no longer use this Blogger site, and have chosen to, as the youth of today might say, “go back to my rootz”.

The reason behind the aforementioned change is simply one of personal preference.

I do hope that no bad feelings shall be caused by this move, and I would be awfully glad if you would do me the honour of visiting my new (but actually old) site. I duly enclose the address below:

http://buttermelts.wordpress.com/

Nothing save the address shall change – the Eyebrow, The Boy and I are all continuing as before. We do very much hope to see you soon.

With much buttery love,

Schpoon.

Ants in your pants or smoke in your eye.

Which one would you prefer?

No, not the latest method of playground guerrilla warfare. But simply a question: a picnic or a BBQ, which one would you prefer?

I’m going to hazard a guess that, for the male readers out there, the answer has been quick and easy: a BBQ.

For the females out there, I can’t say. If they’re anything like me, they will umm and aaahhh, and ponder and wonder, and probably end up writing a blog about it in order to understand their feelings on the matter. Such is the heavy burden carried by the cogitative sex.

The Boy, being a boy, without any hesitation or deviation, but with ardent repetition, maintains that nothing beats a BBQ. The taste of blackened, charcoal-licked flesh, crispy and tender, juices flowing into the soft, billowing dough around it, or onto the zesty, crunchy salad beneath, is enough to send him into a euphoric trance, and one from which I can only rouse with the offer of more meat from the BBQ dear?

When asked what exactly it was about BBQs that gave him such pleasure, considering that the same blackened taste can be achieved in the home, or that such meat can be prepared in advance and taken on a picnic, he didn’t know.

I think I do. (Surprise, surprise). I think it’s the fire aspect of a BBQ. Men stand in front of a fire pit, flames licking sturdy iron bars, hot coals glowing menacingly but lovingly, sizzling and crackling joints of meat, popping and hissing. All very hunter-gatherer. Not that women can’t, don’t or don’t want to BBQ. Just that, more so than slicing and dicing and sautéing and simmering in the kitchen, a BBQ taps into some primordial urge within men.

I’m not going to try and stop that urge. Just last night whilst He feasted on sausages, I feasted on smoky, fat fingers of aubergine and charcoaled portabello mushrooms. Ka. Ching.

As for picnics, The Boy claims he wouldn’t know where to begin. It would all be bought from a supermarket, eaten on scratchy grass, with plastic cutlery that snaps simply trying to pierce an olive, and warm fluids drunk from paper cups that quickly disintegrate and leak their insides out.

Put like that, I too would ask for a BBQ over a picnic every time.

But, oh what innocent delights and enjoyment can be gleaned from the punctilious preparation and ebullient eating of a proper picnic. Crafty schemes to ‘carry’ or encase food using another foodstuff, ingenious ways to transport a salad and dressing without mixing them until required, creatively combined toothpicks of amuse bouche, all eaten on a soft rug, off vibrantly coloured melamine plates, sipping chilled liquids from glass or plastic vessels, the bottles carefully stowed away from the sun’s heat in a cool box.

A loaf of bread turned into a portable panzanella salad: its insides removed, cubed and toasted, then mixed with tomatoes, cucumber, perhaps olives, maybe capers or anchovies, but definitely with grassy, fruity olive oil.

All manner of ‘wraps’, but, the real question is wrapped in what? Lettuce leaves, chapatis, pittas, slices of courgette, spring roll wrappers. Let your imagination run wild.

Jam jars turned into individual layered salads, the dressing poured in first so as not to render the ingredients flabby and limp, ready to be shaken and eaten, no stirring required.

Salads in general present a myriad of possibilities, and get me flapping my arms just thinking about what can be done with a salad. Broad bean, mint and ricotta salata. Courgette carpaccio with lemon, pecorino and parsley. Butternut squash, chilli and rocket. Cumin and coriander roasted cauliflower and chickpeas. Watercress, grapefruit and cucumber. Apple, hazelnut, sorrel and blue or goats’ cheese. Oh lord I could go on.

But wait. Did somebody say cocktail sticks?!!?

Fig, basil and prosciutto. Manchego, grape and cucumber. Smoked duck, cherry and cornichon. Smoked salmon, caper-berry and celery. All woven and threaded onto short wooden picks, no cutlery or napkin required. Down in one.

Focaccia – the ultimate plate for juicy olives, soft and glistening onions, or to ‘dress’ with cured meats or shaved cheeses, or, even for plunging into dips.

Dips, ah dips. Another passion of mine. Soft-boiled eggs, mash with olive oil, parmesan and herbs. Smoky aubergine dip, perhaps fortified with white bean purée, perhaps not. Homemade mackerel paté, enlivened with horseradish and lemon – outrageously much better than shop-bought.

And dippers for said pots of pleasure? The stalwart favourites of grissini, celery, cucumber, peppers and carrot for sure, but forget not the lurid pink radishes (also delicious dipped in butter and celery salt), raw asparagus (trust me on this one, when eaten raw, the taste is so very much more intense. Best with the thinner, younger stems), and little gem lettuce leaves.

And for the nibbles on the side, nuts, olives, cherry tomatoes, grapes, summer fruits, melon, apple, pear, fresh bread, crackers – anything goes. But whatever has gone must have a decent blanket underneath it all. And a decent set of plates and cutlery. Paper cups are forbidden. Plastic is fine (the brighter the better).

Just as the fire aspect of a BBQ taps into something within men (according to my opinion that is), so too the craft, invention and creation behind a picnic’s preparation taps into me. It is like a logical problem to solve – how best to put this in that, and get that to there without that being flabby.  A culinary sudoko.

What both of them share is the al fresco eating, something we sorely lack the opportunity for living in the gloriously grey UK. However these past few weeks, and hopefully one or two more to come, have blessed us all with such opportunities. Whether it’s fiery meat and punchy Pimms, or a repast eaten on some green; be it one or two sausages, or a few boxes of shop-bought salad; BBQs and picnics are something to be enjoyed. A few adventurous ants and whips of smoke are a small price to pay for such abundant delight.

Kou gan is King

It’s like someone took a probe, ventured into the chaos within my cranium, and transmogrified it into succinct and meaningful prose.

Oh for such a talent.

I can now confidently identify myself as a rheophile and The Boy as a neophobe. I have already sampled the delights of natto and sea cucumber, and also calves’ brain, aged 8, at a wedding in Belgium. Apparently I asked my mother what it was, to which she replied “yes dear”. Bemused but unbothered I continued to eat. Not much has changed since – my mother still makes as little sense, and I still adopt the attitude that, as long as it doesn’t make me retch, spontaneously combust or fall over, I’ll continue eating.

Feijoada in Rio de Janeiro presented me with a whole plate full of UFOs – unidentifiable floating objects. Pigs’ feet, tongue, and even an ear complete with hairs were amongst the delights I could identify, the rest I can’t say. What I can say is that it was a serious food moment, hairs aside. Completely delicious.

Regarding the items mentioned in the article that I have yet to encounter, my Japanese boss has shown me a photo of a plate of ducks’ tongues. She went home last year and this was one of the ‘show-stoppers’ at their big family meal. I have yet to be presented with such a show-stopping plate, and I’m not entirely sure that I’d hasten the process, but I would be mighty interested to see if they taste like what they look like – sprawling, pointy, hard, rubbery, mutant squid. After all, I like a good chew off.

I wonder what the Chinese think of our food…mashed potato with (sloppy) veg, gravy and slow cooked roasts…(soggy) pastry enclosed around more slow cooked meat or veg. Steamed puddings, custards and cakes. Soft, beige and unchallenging. The closest we get to a crunch is a crumble, or a biscuit, but even then we insist on dunking it in tea and rendering it wholly pappy and wet.

*sigh*

Not that I’m about to start eating goose intestines on toast or deep fried duck feet with mayonnaise. I don’t think The Boy would appreciate that much. Being the neo- and rheophobe that he is, it’s still touch and go with things like tofu (“oooh. Um. It wobbles”) and bread crusts (“but it hurts my teeth to chew). But it’s why food is constantly in my head – there are the recipes, production methods and ethics to consider, as well as what it says about cultures, history and individual characters.

The Boy – Will instinctively pick the easily understandable. Alone, will not think outside of what he has experienced before. Prefers the known to the unknown, the latter resulting in clammy hands. Muted, soft and creamy (occasionally insensate).

Me – Will instinctively pick that which is not understood, regardless of the potential side-effects. Thinks so constantly about what has been and what could be experienced, results in headaches. Prefers the unknown to the known, the latter resulting in a nihilistic “my life is slipping away from me” mentality. Tart, crunchy and kaleidoscopic (occasionally rampageous).

Sounds about right.

Sweet like chocolate..?

Marinade:

4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon mirin

½ tablespoon fish sauce

½ tablespoon soy sauce

2 small dried chillies

Pinch soft brown sugar

Vegetables for marinade, left overnight:

½ cucumber, seeds removed, diced

Handful of radishes, sliced

1 Asian pear, peeled and piced

To serve:

Watercress

That was my dinner last night. And no, it wasn’t an attempt to pickle my insides. I just love a good tang.

Whilst enjoying said tang, toes fully curled, eyes resting on nothing in particular except the distance, crunching and munching in peaceful harmony, my mind rested upon something (yes, it does happen every so often).

What is it, or why do women, by and large, go nutty for sweet things more than men do? Please note the “by and large”. There are exceptions to every rule, case or scenario. I am one of them. But, the majority of females I know get positively fizzy (oo eer missus) about the idea of some melting moment death by whatever temptation sensation chocolate bomb explosion. And if it’s not chocolate it will be a ludicrous, sorry, ‘cute’ cupcake (excuse me whilst gouge my own eye out with a hot schpoon. An act more enjoyable than a cupcake) piled high with tooth-decayingly offensive buttercream.

Is it the language or imagery used to market and describe these items? Think of Magnum, the ice-creams – sultry colours, the impression of silk or velvet fabric as the background for each advert, lips, swirls, indulgence – it’s all there. 

And then there’s chocolate “melting moments” sold in most supermarkets and on most “gastro” pub menus. I need no genius to identify what moment makes a woman ‘melt’. And one would hope she is not so starved that it comes only in the form of said dessert.

As for our nefarious little cakes, raunchy may not be at the fore, but an overt femininity pervades every crumb. They are ‘cute’ and ‘fun’ and ‘pretty’ and, perhaps most importantly, ‘indulgent’. I have had the misfortune to be trapped on a bus listening to two females extoling the virtues of cupcakes, finishing with the fact that “it is literally like having one whole cake all to yourself, but, like, so much less guilt!” To which the other replied, “Oh my god, how. Fun.” Only in the realms of Blumenthal and Adrià can I imagine food to be “fun”. Otherwise it is enjoyable, delicious, tasty and all the rest of it. But “fun” the food is not. And if it is, the food itself, you need to reassess your interpretation of “fun”.

I have yet to see a man, (without a woman at his side having bought it for him), gleefully tuck into a cupcake as he walks down the street. Krispy Kreme far more likely. But why? They too come in feminine forms – pink glazes, chocolate, sprinkles and flakes. Whilst women most certainly do get fizzy about Krispy Kremes, there is a robustness about just what an assault they are on the palate that make men more amenable the idea. Even the word “doughnut”. You can really cough it out. “Cupcake” on the other hand. It’s infinitely more delicate. Or, tongue in cheek, it sounds like the greeting you’d get from the local grocer as you walked past in the morning.

The other notion is that women spend more time agonising over food and the effects food has on their figures.

A man is hungry. He goes to a shop. He sees a chocolate bar. He buys it. He eats it. He continues with his day.

 A woman is or is not hungry. She craves chocolate. She tries to ignore the craving. She reminds herself of that dress or that party or the bikini. She craves chocolate. She tries to ignore the craving by buying a new piece of clothing online. She craves chocolate. She reminds herself that chocolate is b-a-d. She craves chocolate. She relents and proceeds to eat two chocolate bars. She spends the rest of the day, if not week, regretting having eaten the chocolate.

For the same sort of reasons, women often only eat desserts when eating out, or on a ‘special occasion’. And the same Bacchic frenzy can overtake them at the point of sinking their schpoon into the luscious and impenetrable molten lava glistening before their eyes. There is a sense of having allowed themselves to indulge.

I get that. Everybody ‘indulges’ in something that we know is not wise or healthy to eat every day. Mine would be bread dipped in amazing, virulently green olive oil, Italian cheeses or gelato. But what I don’t get is why this sense of “no, I mustn’t” and then “yes I can indulge” appears to beset women more than men. Is it really all social conditioning to make women care about their figures more than men?

I find that a difficult pill to swallow.

I go mad for fruit, which is sweet, and sorbets or Italian ice-cream (English is too creamy. Bleh), which are also sweet, but that is where it stops. The occasional meringue if it’s still chewy on the inside, maybe one macaron if it is from Mr Incredible Hermes. But otherwise my palate revels in sour, bitter, tangy and sharp. I find chocolate, cream and butter weighty and visually uninteresting. I cannot explain why, and I do not believe myself to be superior because of it. But seeing my fellow females flip a screw over the dessert menu, whilst the males in the group idly glance over it, perhaps pick something, perhaps don’t, and find myself scouring the coffee making apparatus, cheese on offer, or digestifs, well, it doesn’t make sense to believe there is nothing behind it.

Is there something in a woman’s sensory receptors that is more responsive to desserts and sweet tastes? You don’t hear many men ordering an Archers and lemonade at the bar…

Or is it the internal dialogue that besets even the most relaxed and confident women, gently reminding them of the potential negative effects of having that dessert?

Or, is it the marketing used for these products? Are women more susceptible to the hidden messages? In daily life we are most certainly more sensitive to nuances than men. And most definitely more thinking than men (no, not a feminist rant. Just that on the whole [again, exceptions to every rule] women think about ‘things’ more than men. Men tend to accept what is there in front of them, end of).

As I ate, occasionally screwing my nose up slightly in delight at the sharp, salty, tangy KAPOW my dinner was enrobing my palate in, I resolved that I had no idea. Probably a mix of it all. And if the genetic or mental wiring element holds true, I definitely don’t have it.

And with that I reached for my dessert. The jar of pickled onions, and my schpoon.