Not all black and white; Crazy good

12 July, 2012, Alsace – The grandmother watches. Stands as she has for most of the morning, with hands firmly on hips, and watches as I dig.

Notebooks and fish guts

Alsace 9 July, 2012 – They missed the blood and guts. Not that they would have wanted the entrails. They are here for the sheen and the shimmer.

Labelled trouble; with friends like these

Alsace, 7 July 2012 – “Why?” said the two winemakers in plaintive unison, switching to English as they did so.

Laying down a cellar

Alsace, 5 July 2012 – I’ve arrived in paradise, it just isn’t finished yet. There’s a raspberry clafoutis on the table and the clanging of scaffolding being disassembled. From the chimney stack a pair of storks look on; a mechanical crane stands idle in the garden. At the end of the day, on a patio amidst the rubble, we sip flinty Riesling made from the vines that surround us.

Pret

1 July, 2012, Gatwick – Ready. Bleary-tongued with that pit in the stomach which is carved out by missing a proper breakfast. Ready with hair cut especially, albeit quickly, cheaply, shoddily. Looking like Tufty an alpine donkey, I will fit in.

THE PRONOUNCEABLE TRUTH

Like parsley, like dill

27th June, 2012, Wigan – It was the one time that I have ever, even faintly, felt that I understood motorsport. It was also the only time that I have been cast in the most likely of roles, that of translator. Naturally, food was responsible.

The kippers they went in two by two. Hurrah

1 June, 2012 – Roasting garlic a tad too long, a little too liberal with grated ginger, zealous with the anchovies; of the many enthusiastic mistakes that I make habitually in the kitchen, the happiest error, I think, is one which I fell for again today.

On the each of the last three times that I have been in the fishmongers, I have fluffed my lines. Each time ordering whatsoever it is I’m after then, while waiting for the fish to be scaled, I start multiplying. Might as well pick up some smoked trout while I’m here, and they’ve got samphire, and, because I know that I’m always most famished at breakfast time the morning after a feast, Oh yes, “a pair of kippers too please”.

“Pair”, no sooner has the ambiguous plosive left my lips and I realise that I’ve done it again. The fishmonger gathers up two plump Manx kippers. I only meant to ask for one, I swear. I should have learned by now that I should perhaps spell out that all I want is a “single pair”.  Does the fishmonger willfully misunderstand, is it a sales trick to interpret “pair” as two, contravening the linguistic traditions of butterflied fish? Still I might have learned that I’ll get twice as much as my rational brain orders, but no less than my appetitive soul demands. And now the double pair have been rustled up in paper and I can’t possibly say, “No. Actually. I only wanted…”. Rather I resign myself to an unhurried breakfast of curled, glistening amber kipper, smoky and rich  with scrambled egg and wholemeal, well-buttered toast, not just tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow too. To err, it seems, is to have the same splendid breakfast two days running.

Double-glazing, to speak candidly

10 February, 2012 – Changing trains on my way to Borough Market, there was, on the underground platform, a man about my height. Tucked under one arm he carried the latest edition of the London Review of Books as he flicked through Skye Gynnell’s A Year In My Kitchen. Doubly nourished, clearly, and heading to my destination. In my bag I kept my copy of each, and boarded a different carriage.

A snaffler-up of unconsidered trifles

3 December, 2011 – Pick your verbal weapon of choice, your metaphor or simile. Choose from the colander, chinois or sieve, for there are memories that gurgle away, while others snare and are enmeshed.

Failing the marshmallow test

November 19, 2011 – “Come here. Let me show you.” Chided at the cheese counter. Today, my last day working on the market.

Sweet things

London, 29 September, 2011 – I have all my teeth. I have no fillings. Never having been weaned on fizzy drinks and sweets, mine is an anchovy tooth, all savoury and salty. Yet I am staring at preening ciabatta – stale until a few minutes ago, now puffed up having absorbed whipping cream and egg yolks and a lot of sugar. One side glows, already a healthy dark brown. The underside froths in butter, turning caramel too.

The lost hurrah

Nîmes, 10.23pm, 7 September, 2011 – On family holidays, on all holidays, the final meal has always been freighted with some special significance. Arriving in Nîmes I resolved, for the second time today, to happen upon a local bistro, to maybe order some frites…

A triple positive

Avignon, 3.44pm, 7 September, 2011 – I arrived in Avignon thinking that I would take in the sights of the city and enjoy what could only, surely, be a magnificent, consoling lunch. There were no floods of tears leaving the farm, not this time, but it was a wrench. A departure with the same sad sense that I remember from twenty years ago: the magic over, the usual end-of-holiday glumness magnified by knowing that – unlike any other holiday – the fairytale could come real, the wish that the holiday would last forever could be made reality. All I’d do is up sticks.

Intermission

2 February, 2011 – [A quandary, something to ponder during the break.

I started the unpalatable truth to see if I could cook and write myself out of a rut, to see if writing, thinking, tasting could effect a change. I now have a problem: it is working.

Chocolate is Dark

18 January, 2011 – This site is not search optimised, not linked to, commented on nor ‘liked’. To be an internet sensation I’d have to take another route, and I thought I had hit upon it when I was assaulted peddling up Streatham Hill. This is how I was not happy slapped but very happily slaked.

Wine is Red

14 December, 2010 – My mum taught the cat to like Marmite. It’s not true that you either love it or hate it. Dabbing it on his paws he soon came to love it, pester for it. A ginger tom quite oblivious to umami can acquire a taste for a salty beer by-product. All sorts of taste transformations are possible.

Mimicry & Nigella Neurons

28 November, 2010 – Why does every post set out with a question? I’ve done it again.

What love told me; or the Senora and the little dog

12 November, 2010 – We would joke that I liked the loud bits, joshing about my simplistic tastes, about my rough and ready appreciation of music. The joke started after a riotous Mahler symphony, which we both enjoyed but in markedly different ways.

A snout that tastes like a good snout should – or a masked trout replica?

30 October, 2010 – I decided to smoke. It’s said to be sensual pleasure, surely within the realm of taste. Chefs smoke. It’s bad for their palate, they know, yet they’re romantic professionals making a living from their keen taste buds.

When I first had the idea for The Unpalatable Truth I did a cursory internet search for “improve my palate”. From the results I learnt little, except that I would not be taking an algorithmically-friendly route. I’d be wayward, off the beaten path, exploring under my own steam, unaided by an engine of search optimization.