Doing things by halves

1 May, 2011 – I have before me a plate of charcoal and chalk – sort of, for this chapter is out of sorts, a collection of posts that I will not write. In my imagination will remain the idea of putting down in detail the moment of deception and discovery when I happened across an amphetamine-based appetite suppressant, the agonist for our first full-throttle argument. I had stumbled over a realisation, the revelation that we were different, that we had differing views of food and different pharmaceutical tastes. I thought for the first time: you are not who you say you are, or indeed who you think you are. That post will go unwritten, at least in the sense that I shalln’t connive to russell it up into dish. Sometimes it is best to do things by halves.

It is time to skewer some ideas – pumped up, inflated yet leaden ideas. My idiosyncratic editorial method is to spike by noting but not truly writing and cooking them. I could brush away the ideas saying that they are half-baked, half-arsed. But they are not. They are some of the best and most thoroughly thought through. That is the point. They are thoughts that I have clung to, ruminated with, for many months. This spring cleaning is to halt further chewing over.

Nor then shall I write about good provenance, not for ingredients or relationships, though I am tempted to tease out a comparison. Many food writers become giddy about quality produce and I can buff lyrical and bluff poetic with the best of them when, for example, presented with an unwaxed, marvellously misshapen, organic Sicilian lemon. However, there are perils to being preoccupied with authenticity (sore, disproportionate disappointment when you can’t quite get the very best) and there is really very little to say about provenance. Best in class is best. More interesting are the exceptions, when authenticity can go whistle.

Exhibit A: Blue Moon. A comical name for the best evidence I have, but this is no rare vision. Once in a while I drink Blue Moon.

I loved Blue Moon from the first pint which I was bought. Its citrusy, light-wheaty freshness, served with a wedge of orange. Yet there is a little deception to Blue Moon. It is not what it feigns to be, it is not what it thinks it is. The best bluffers are those who have convinced themselves. There is no ‘behavioural leakage’, as psychologists say. And, masquerading as an artisan beer, hailing perhaps from a west coast micro-brewery, Blue Moon passes itself off very persuasively. Subsequently I learned that Blue Moon’s parentage could not be any more ignominious. It is manufactured and marketed by Miller. Did my heart sink? Did my enthusiasm wane? Not at all. This unmasking didn’t change a thing. It certainly does not diminish the enjoyment. Provenance, authenticity, being what you’re not; sometimes it really doesn’t matter. When it comes to Blue Moon, I am willing to be duped again and again.

Recently before drinking Blue Moon, I reached for my drug of choice. Occasionally I misuse the decongestant Sudafed, sinking its chemicals in the pursuit of enhanced gustatory pleasure. The promise of Sudafed is that it gives you a clear sniff at flavours (not that it says that on the box). More and more, however, I think of the equivalence between the casual consumption of phenylephrine hydrochloride and industrial-strength diet pills gulped down chasing a chimerical body image. A case of the “narcissism of minor differences”, as Freud wrote in a different context. One drug works so effectively on enlarged nasal blood vessels, the other for an imaginary, engorged belly (with my pill popping delivering the even more transitory kick). But I said I wouldn’t write about this, so all I will say – all I can say – is perhaps I was harsh or hypocritical or both. Sometimes we are not who we think we are, or indeed who we would like to be.

Exhibit B: Blue Moon, again. More Blue Moon. Whether it was the drugs working (and that is the real problem, you don’t know), the first pint was wonderful. What is more, I had less. Another Blue Moon, this time a half and so the happy discovery that it is best drunk in halves: a tiny difference, but with the same sized thickness of orange floating in it, a half is all the more fruitfull.

Finally, I am not going to write about how different we were. This is why I have a half of Ragstone goats’ cheese and Miller’s Damsel’s Wafers lined up. (Miller being a relatively small Derbyshire producer. I’ve checked the packet and it actually says that they are ‘artisan’ crackers. The feel is authentically handmade, anyway).

The final awkward half-idea, which I have been unable to either shake off or pin down, the notion that we were like chalk and cheese. Surely there is a post in there? But there isn’t; I give up. I’d latched stubbornly onto goats’ cheese as it is frequently said to be chalky. But that’s one and the same, not a contrast, never mind an irreconcilable difference. My mind meandered … (will the eccentric, ever-broadening course taken by my brain, expand, erode and carve away to the point that, one day, an oxbow lake of strange ideas is formed, cut off from reality? Certainly this writing lark seems to incite the tangential and the eccentric.) … to chalk and blackboards and wiping the slate clean. Which is why we have here Ragstone and charcoal crackers. The cheese ripe in all the right places. Melting ever-so gingerly towards the outside; firm through the middle. The Charcoal Wafers made from stone-ground wholemeal flour, unbleached. Breaking a hexagonal cracker in half I lay a slice of Ragstone between two grey pieces. The wafers are absolutely fresh: a clean break, a crunch that reverberates around in the mouth. The cheese heady, assertive, underlying sweetness. Sour crackers, pungent cheese. As they say, a perfect marriage. Of sorts.