George M. Middius wrote:
said:
A tiny bit of grenadine syrup does not go amiss and adds a bit of
sharpness to overcome the sugar-sweetness of the wine
Are you insane? Seriously. Grenadine is 50% sugar.
We call him "Useless Wiecky". This is another example of why. Useless
is always speaking out of turn, trying to pretend he belongs. He's
clearly not a cook either. Sugared-up extract of pomegranate, ugh. Not
in my kitchen!
That's almost always the way the kitchen closet wannabes give
themselves away: they think it is smart to cook with something fancy.
Real cooks use everyday ingredients, but only the best and the
freshest.
When I was a student, before going out clubbing I'd put a dozen eggs
and a bottle of olive oil in a nautilus shell into the ten-gallon
parafin tin with the top cut off that rode permanently in the boot of
my car. In the dawn we'd sober up by diving for lobster off Cape
Agulhas, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans crash together. We'd fill
the tin with seawater and build a fire of driftwood under it. I'd whip
up the mayonnaise on the spot in the nautilus shell. You had to be
quick with those lobsters or you could be minus a finger. More than one
girl told me that she loved me not so much for my undoubted good looks
and extravagant charm but for this Darwinian demonstration of my
ability to provide a superb meal when all the shops and restaurants
were closed. Me Tarzan... Later I built a holiday house on the exact
spot I used to dive from even though I had an apartment overlooking the
city only half an hour away right next door to one of the great hotels
of the world -- in fact I had a side door knocked into their garden to
shorten excursions to their restaurant. Nostagia is a fine thing, of
course, but I'm only demonstrating that you don't need much to provide
an excellent meal, as long as everything is fresh and of the best
quality. (1)
Which doesn't include grenadine syrup!
Andre Jute
(1) Didn't we once have some poncey art-house film buffs on these
conferences? In all my life I've seen perhaps a single handful of
worthwhile films at film festivals, and of them one starred Robert
Redford (a really good film in which played a halfbreed -- uncommercial
because he is killed in the end) and one was a big-budget glossy French
movie, neither of which actually belonged in festivals among the cheap
dross. The French big-budget movie was uncommercial because all its
characters were unsympathetic and came to a bad end. It was called
Lacombe, Lucien. The most memorable scene was of the eponymous
protagonist chasing farmyard chickens until he caught one; he knocked
its head right off with the stick he carried. I interviewed the
director (whose name I don't remember), who told me the chicken episode
was "both social realism and political satire". I thought it was a
cookery class. Chicken doesn't get any fresher than that!