From Cheese Soufflé to Tewahdiddle
Via Elizabeth David, Pizza, Spectacular Joy in Eating, Clever Gretel, Sing a Song of Sixpence & Barley Water
Dearest Gentle Reader,
I hope all is well as can be with you and those you love. This letter is slightly more full of food thoughts, with slightly less seasonal folklore although I have an interesting little nugget later in honour of National Pie Week which I’m hoping you will enjoy. There will also be a story, a vintage remedy, and more from the interesting Dr William Kitchiner.
I wrote in my last letter about my lack of motivation and creativity in the kitchen. I’m pleased to say that I think I may have made a small breakthrough with some mini muffin pizzas and an increasing desire to make a wonderful French feast possibly involving soufflés and pommes dauphinoise. This may or may not have been influenced by a recent reading of Elizabeth David’s An Omelette and a Glass of Wine where I wanted to climb into the book to share her meals.
On Friday night though, I did not decide to whip up a soufflé even though I had the time, I did what many people do and used a random voucher and ordered a pizza. It was very good, when is crispy bread and hot cheese not delicious? It was sadly not from our local independent pizza place because it has closed down. The mirror piece covered pizza oven is no longer producing fantastic pizza made from dough prepared that morning. It was timing really, they opened in January 2020 and even though their pizza was fabulous, they hadn’t built up enough of a customer base to weather that storm followed by the steadily increasing food and fuels costs combined with the shrinking budgets of their customers.
I am mentioning it here because my sadness for the loss of their dreams and worry over the livelihood of the lovely proprietors when I saw it closed, with the interior fittings draped in cloths and dust, added a bitter note to one of my joyful food experiences during 2020 which involved their pizza.
During the first lockdown we were not eating takeaways because we were over-cautious as we were shielding and, strange as it seems now, we still weren’t confident of how Covid was spread so were wiping down all food deliveries etc. However by July we had become much more certain that it was mostly safe to eat food made by others so I got to eat my first full meal that hadn’t been prepared by me in several months. I didn’t even have to put it on a plate. It was a Neapolitan: a tomato and mozzarella base with onions, anchovies, capers, olives and oregano with an add-on of friarelli stems, very hot in its plain brown box.
It was heaven in that moment, a feeling of absolute joy in the act of eating. I can remember every salty bite, the creamy mozzarella and sweet tomato contrasting against the slight bitterness of the friarelli, the fantastic range of textures, the crust & almost burnt hot spots you only get from properly made dough cooked in a ridiculously hot pizza oven. The final moments of finishing that pizza were as heartbreaking as when you reach the end of an amazing book that you want to last forever.
As we are on this topic I must share that I love reading whilst eating, don’t give me that nonsense of not registering what you’re eating. If you think that, it is quite possible that you have never had the right reading snacks. I don’t think I can even begin to explain how garlic, cheese and spinach stuffed mushrooms can totally enhance your reading experience but believe me when I say that both the unputdownable book and the incredibly moreish mushrooms benefit from the juxtaposition. Double if not triple the joy if you will.
“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. …… they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.” - E. Nesbit, The Magic World
When did you last allow yourself a moment of pure joy when eating? Allowing none of the nonsense that we hear about food every day inside your head, and just experiencing the true sensual moment of those exploding tastes and textures in your mouth. Or maybe its the purity of enjoying one single item of food that you truly appreciate. I once spent a year without eating dairy products and my memory of the first bite of perfectly ripe brie that I took, should probably remain private between me and my favourite cheese knife. It doesn’t need scarcity though to bring about that moment of wonder, throughout asparagus season, I eat so much that it gets a little silly but I till get that burst of joy in the first buttery bite of every bunch of stalks.
Hot and cold food together is another sensation that provokes spectacular joy for me: ice cream and hot, rich chocolate sauce, hot rhubarb crumble and cold vanilla custard, hot & spicy lamb pilaff with big dollops of ice-cold greek yoghurt on top. Sometimes it can be the place that allows you the space to find the pleasure in your food, that’s why chips taste better by the sea, slightly burning your mouth, directly out of the bag, with the sun in your eyes and the wind stinging your cheeks, than they ever will in your house on a plate no matter how nice your china.
I also think that it is no coincidence that one of the few designers known for actually appreciating the female form and designing clothes to flatter it, Elsa Schiaparelli, actually enjoyed food. She was quoted as saying: “Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.”
As the woman who invented the wrap round dress and hidden bras in swimming costumes I was always prepared to forgive her a lot, but knowing that she valued the importance of the pleasure to be found in food gives her hero status.
I’d love to hear your food moments of joy, if only to get away from the deluge of negativity about and around food we face every day. As Ruth Reichl says: “Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” They don’t all have to be joyous for angelic reasons either. There’s no shame in taking the last biscuit or the best chocolate in the box and enjoying them partly for their flavour and partly because they have the added frisson of you being the person that gets to enjoy them!
Our story and our protagonist certainly aren’t on the side of the angels but unusually for a Grimm retelling of a story, they have allowed a less than perfect woman to actually enjoy her life. I bring you Clever Gretel who not only enjoys eating & drinking with gusto but also has daring taste in shoes. I hope you appreciate her as much as I do:
There was a cook whose name was Gretel. She wore shoes with red heels, and whenever she went out wearing them she would turn this way and that way, and she was very cheerful, thinking, "You are a beautiful girl!"
Then after returning home, because she was so happy, she would drink a swallow of wine, and the wine would give her an appetite, so she would taste the best of what she had cooked, until she was quite full, and then she would say, "The cook has to know how the food tastes."
One day her master said to her, "Gretel, this evening a guest is coming. Prepare two chickens for me, the best way that you can."
"Yes indeed, sir," answered Gretel. She killed the chickens, scalded them, plucked them, stuck them on the spit, and then, as evening approached, put them over the fire to roast. The chickens began to brown, and were nearly done, but the guest had not yet arrived.
Gretel called to her master, "If the guest doesn't come, I'll have to take the chickens from the fire. And it will be a crying shame if they're not eaten soon, because they're at their juicy best right now."
The master answered, "You're right. I'll run and fetch the guest myself."
As soon as the master had turned his back, Gretel set the spit and the chickens aside and thought, "Standing here by the fire has made me sweaty and thirsty. Who knows when they will be back? Meanwhile I'll just run down into the cellar and take a swallow."
So she ran down, lifted a jug to her lips, saying, "God bless it for you, Gretel!" and took a healthy drink. "Wine belongs together," she said further. "It's not good to keep it apart," and took another healthy drink.
Then she went and placed the chickens over the fire again, basted them with butter, and cheerfully turned the spit. Because the roasting chickens smelled so good, she thought, "They could be lacking something. I'd better taste them!" She tested them with her fingers, and said, "My, these chickens are good! It's a sin and a shame that they won't be eaten at once!"
She ran to the window to see if her master and his guest were arriving, but she saw no one. Returning to the chickens, she said, "That one wing is burning. I'd better just eat it." So she cut it off and ate it, and it tasted very good. When she had finished it, she thought, "I'd better eat the other one too, or the master will see that something is missing."
When both wings had been eaten, she once again looked for her master, but could not see him. Then it occurred to her, "Who knows? Perhaps they've gone somewhere else to eat and aren't coming here at all." Then she said, "Well, Gretel, be of good cheer! The one has already been cut into. Have another drink and eat the rest of it. When it's gone, you can relax. Why should this good gift of God go to waste?"
So she ran to the cellar once again, downed a noble drink, and cheerfully finished off the first chicken. When the one chicken was gone, and her master still had not yet returned, she looked at the other chicken and said, "Where the one is, the other should follow. The two belong together. What is right for the one, can't be wrong for the other. I believe that if I have another drink, it will do me no harm." So she took another hearty drink, and sent the second chicken running after the first one.
Just as she was making the most of it, her master returned, calling out, "Gretel, hurry up, the guest is right behind me."
"Yes, sir, I'm getting it ready," answered Gretel.
Meanwhile the master saw that the table was set, and he picked up the large knife that he wanted to carve the chickens with, and stood in the hallway sharpening it.
The guest arrived and knocked politely on the door. Gretel ran to see who it was, and when she saw that it was the guest, she held a finger before her mouth, and said, "Be quiet! Be quiet! Hurry and get away from here. If my master catches you, you'll be sorry. Yes, he invited you for an evening meal, but all he really wants is to cut off both of your ears. Listen, he's sharpening his knife for it right now."
The guest heard the whetting and ran back down the steps as fast as he could.
Then Gretel, who was not a bit lazy, ran to her master, crying, "Just what kind of a guest did you invite?"
"Why, Gretel? What do you mean by that?"
"Well," she said, "he took both of the chickens off the platter, just as I was about to carry them out, and then ran away with them."
"Now that's a fine tune!" said the master, feeling sorry about the loss of the good chickens. "At the least, he could have left one of them, so I would have something to eat."
He called out to him to stop, but the guest pretended not to hear. Then he ran after him, the knife still in his hand, shouting, "Just one! Just one!" But the guest could only think that he wanted him to give up one of his ears, so he ran as though there were a fire burning beneath him, in order to get home with both ears.
With that the tale is told.
Amongst all the blacksmiths and metal workers, I have a cook in my ancestry on my Grandad’s side who I hope had just a little of Greta’s spirit, if not her ethics.
Don’t worry I haven’t forgotten the pie folklore whilst I was distracted by Gretel’s red shoes, appetite & trickery. It comes from a nursery rhyme that you probably know:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
counting out his money.
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird,
And pecked off her nose.
This one has many alternative solutions. It is possible that the origins of the story go back as far as 1454. A feast in was held in Lille by Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good to gain support for a crusade, and one of the entertainments was a giant pie containing a group of musicians who ‘sang’ when the pie was opened. Another alternative, the rhyme may be about the day – 24 birds representing the hours, the opening of the pie and the singing of the birds referring to the dawn. Some suggest it is about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and that Anne made the pie to entrance Henry. There are actual various contemporary instructions for making pies where livestock jumped out upon opening which were very popular in the Middle Ages. The least likely suggestion is that it is a coded message for the recruiting of pirates by the famous Blackbeard, as some urban myths contest.
As this is one of my longer letters we may as well go the whole hog and really enjoy a little bit of extra vintage food from last weeks star: Dr William Kitchiner. I mentioned his Cabinet of Taste, in which he stored all of his prepared condiments, sauces, and flavouring essences and I thought you’d like see what he thought was essential in terms of ingredients and tools.
He is also the provider of our remedy and recipe, also from the Cook’s Oracle. They are unusually both in drink form.
You would be forgiven for considering barley water as an ingredient in Robinson’s squash rather than a remedy in its own right. However, in the days when you couldn’t just take two paracetamol for a fever, it was used as a remedy to control temperature in a feverish patient. To our modern eye it also has the advantage of containing boiled water thus reducing the risk of drinking contaminated water when already ill. It’s also frankly a relief not to add a disclaimer to a remedy for a change. I think I’d try paracetamol following the instructions on the box first, mind.
I’m not entirely sure I would enjoy this drink but I absolutely love the name, so here we are. I even bought some Old Tom Ale to try it out but decided I didn’t want risk wasting it. If I ever do decide to try it, I’ll keep you updated.
So with that, Gentle Reader, I must bring this letter to a close. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch via the comments or via any of my social media profiles/my website . If you have enjoyed this and would like to read further such nonsense and have not yet subscribed, please don’t hesitate to subscribe for free at the button below. You’d be very welcome and it would be a joy to write to you.