Romance. I suppose there isn't an easy way to rail against romance without sounding curmudgeonly. But really, howhave we got to the point in our existence when we feel the need to give over a special day of the year to romance?
Surely romance should be an everyday activity (or in my case a never-day activity). Isn't St Valentine's day just another example of commercialism exploiting our emotions and pressurising us into adhering to a concept we might not agree with? Not tha
t as a single, unattached and romantically unloved man I am the least bit bitter.No.
Mystery ride on the edge your seatI've never been completely comfortable in black cabs. The high cost of this mode of transport is exacerbated by the visual representation of the price as the meter displays the ever increasing journey cost. Even when someone else is paying for the cab, I still feel this sense of apprehension, this sense of pregnant nervousness. Unlike a minicab man, who will, at the journey's outset, tell you how much the journey will cost, a black cab ride is a magical mystery tour when it comes to cost. There is a sort of alchemy when trying to judge the point at which the meter will come to rest. I write this from the back of a black cab. I am two miles from home. The meter is just eighty pence short of 20 quid. Where will it stop? I have no idea. And I am nervous.
Something is in the air following my gastric gambleI have adopted a new salad starter. A hale and hearty dish that will ward off the cold and offer comfort from the storms. It is a puy lentil, goat's cheese and roast Jerusalem artichoke salad. This triumvirate is embellished with preserved lemons and fresh parsley. I have to confess that it works; it's truly delicious. The inspiration came from elsewhere; I can take no credit. Had I devised this salad myself, I would perhaps have turned my attentions to the digestive reality of a Jerusalem artichoke. Delicious though they are, they are prone to offer constant and sonorous reminders of having been consumed.
The knobbly vegetable is notorious for leaving the eater with a ghastly gastric gamble, a form of fulsome flatulence that makes a bath full of baked beans seem like a walk in the park. (A big, well-ventilated park with plenty of fresh air.) There's no easy way of saying this: artichokes make you break wind, in quite a spectacular fashion, like Johnny Fartpants from the Viz comic. I am no stranger to backdrafts; I regale in the theatre of cheese-squeezing. I am one of three sons; for us it was sport. But there is no preparation for the acrid, air-altering aroma of artichoke aftermath. That is bad enough. The fact that my dinner guests had to sit through two further course while their colons filled with gas was another discomfort altogether.
Caught red-handed in the kitchen with blood-stained fingersI have been working or cooking in kitchens since I was 16 years old. Waiting tables to get myself through university followed by managing the odd (and sometimes very odd) Glasgow West End eaterie taught me life skills and helped nurture my deep love of food, a love that keeps me smiling through the most trying of times.
And in that almost two-and-a-half decades in kitchens, I have had only two serious accidents. The first was a moment of humongous hubris. As a cocky 18-year-old working at the then legendary Gulistan in Bishopbriggs, I decided to beat the record for the number of plates carried to the kitchen from a table in a single visit. I splayed, creatively, 28 pieces of various crockery across my left hand and arm.
This installation of dirty plates was so vast it managed to obscure my view. Had my view not been so obscured, I would definitely have seen the comedically large pot that the new and stupid chef had placed in the middle of the kitchen. I did see the pot, eventually, as I fell floorward Manuel-like into a cacophony of cracked porcelain. My left hand soon became acquainted intimately with shards of white plate. I counted 13 or 14 entries into my skin, my hand resembling a living Jackson Pollock (but without the financial value). I was unbelievably lucky that my wrist remained intact and free of curry-soaked cracked
crockery.
I then waited some 23 years until I managed to visit serious injury upon myself, in a burny-hand incident in Edinburgh last summer. (It's generally a good idea to remember that when a pan has been in a searingly hot oven for three-quarters of an hour that it's not particularly wise to grasp, bare-handed, the metal handle.) Having
recovered composure and credibility, I had resolved to take a great deal more care in the kitchen thereafter. My hands are my living, one way or the other, and should be protected from extreme experiences like burning, gouging, etc. And I had been doing very well at taking care of myself until last weekend.
I was blithely chiffonading cabbage (there was no need to chiffonade when chopping would have sufficed). And I insisted upon urbane chat while I chopped. Not only did I chat, I decided to do a silly, comedy dance to impress my visitors. It was a fatal mistake, since my lack of focus led to me slicing through the nail and subcutaneous skin on my left-hand index finger. It really hurt. And it wouldn't stop bleeding. And I hadn't actually finished cooking. I had eight hungry diners and blood on the dance floor, so to speak. I was forced to soldier on, knowing I would be left with a visual and sensory reminder of my folly. I cleaned the cabbage, swallowed hard and resolved never to dance and/or chat when chopping again. My primary concern was to ensure that there was no blood in the food: there were vegetarians in my midst.
