6 Degrees of Separation – Kitchen Confidential

Six Degrees of Separation is an excuse to peruse six favourite books linked to an initial offering by our host KateW and eventually link them back to the beginning. Kate W offers us big themes in her choices and since I have been participating, these have included – being adrift in TimeFriendshipMemory, and Romance. This month we have the autobiographical exposé of the world of chefs, restaurants and bad boys generally – Anthony Bourdin’s Kitchen Confidential…

Full disclosure – I once, briefly but gloriously, ran my own restaurant so this month’s 6 Degrees starter book was one I could really get my teeth into! (There will be lots of food metaphors!) Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” is a Chef’s story from a writer who self evidently writes, but counts himself first, foremost, and still practising – as a Chef. As he puts it – “If I need a favour at four o’clock in the morning, whether it’s a quick loan, a shoulder to cry on, a sleeping pill, bail money, or just someone to pick me up in a car in a bad neighbourhood in the driving rain, I’m definitely not calling up a fellow writer. I’m calling my sous-chef, or my saucier, someone I have worked with over the last twenty-plus years…” He writes about how a fairly obnoxious youth found his way into a profession where eccentricity, excess and general misdemeaning is mixed with skill, sweat and long hours in kitchens that come in many varieties, much like the seven circles of hell. He has a chapter in which he asks what possesses a man in mid-life to want to open a restaurant and whilst I was not quite as ignorant, inexperienced and deluded as the dentist Bourdin gives as an example, there were things I could identify with, although I enjoyed every minute of it and I now know, as Bourdin puts it “what it feels like to attain a childhood dream of running one’s own pirate crew…”. Anthony Bourdin writes clearly and entertainingly and for once I would agree with the blurb on the cover which states “More gripping than a Stephen King novel”

So in this month’s 6 Degrees, I am linking the books that made me a cook, a foodie and eventually, however briefly, a chef… When I left home to go to university, my parents bought me a Sabatier, high carbon-steel, flexible boning knife- something which Bourdin talks about in his chapter on essential equipment. They also bought me two paperback cookery books “The Pauper’s Cookbook” by Jocasta Innes, and “Cooking in a Bedsit” by the journalist Katherine Whitehorn.

Not one of my six but I had to sneak it in…

I should say, that heretofore, my mother had always refused to teach me to cook – unlike my sisters, who “would one day be married and therefore need to cook for their husbands” from which you may deduce that I grew up in the pre-liberation 1970’s – or at least Women’s Lib had not then reached our house! Not that I hadn’t kept my eyes and ears open and picked up some culinary skills just from watching my mother – and not just cooking meals, but bottling fruit, freezing vegetables and making jam. Nevertheless – the two books of recipes (or for any Americans – receipts) were intended to fill the gap in my education and fit the kind of cooking which my parents imagined would be the limit of what my student lifestyle would require. Incidentally, of myself and my two sisters, I was the only one who cooked professionally… What I chiefly remember about “Cooking in a Bedsit”, was not the recipes themselves which were sensible culinary cheats for the impecunious, but the structure of the book whose first section was entitled “Cooking on One Ring” followed by two rings and lastly, for those lucky enough to have access to one – cooking on a stove. There were also, entertainingly, short pieces on “For him Asking Her Round to Eat” and vice versa – the latter including the sage advice to make sure and remove all your drying knickers from the radiators before he gets there… This gave a hint as to the fact that food is not merely fuel, but a part of life and culture and this is also strongly themed in Kitchen Confidential. Jocasta Innes would return in a completely different field, later in my life, with her book Paint Magic which diverted me slightly from my career as a Signwriter to specialist paint finishes such as wood graining and marbling. And as for the Sabatier, well I have used it almost every day of my life since, including at least four food businesses and it has been worn down accordingly…

The thing is, I was slightly insulted by my parent’s offerings, implying that my culinary horizons would rise no higher than pauperdom and that once I had left bedsitter land, I would find a nice wife to do the cooking for me! So I set about building my now extensive collection of cookery and food books (three shelves in the bookcase now) by adding first Elizabeth David’s seminal “Mediterranean Food” closely followed by “The Joy of Chinese Cooking” by Doreen Yen Hung Feng and for international variety – the Penguin book of “Indian Cookery” by Dharamjit Singh. I did practise recipes from all these books, but I soon realised that on my cookery journey, reading recipe books and imbibing the essence of their method, ingredients and presentation, is more important than becoming an Indian, Chinese or Mediterranean cook per se – I was an early adopter of Fusion!

The beautiful Elizabeth David…

Elizabeth David was credited with revitalising British cuisine after the Second World War by both drawing attention to foreign food traditions but also, then researching and drawing out the best of British food traditions, subjects which had been, respectively, ignored and forgotten. She was also, a bit of a gal – as Wikipedia informs us “Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day. In the 1930s she studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Italy, where their boat was confiscated.” I can only urge you to delve into Elizabeth David, both her books and her life story. Below is an example of her recipe for Tapenade and you will see that this is grownup recipe writing – she gives quantities for the main ingredients – capers and anchovies, but there is no spoon-feeding by detailing everything precisely – if you are a cook, you will understand and use your judgement. Also on these pages, is the recipe for Skordaliá which has remained my go-to dish when catering for mixed vegetarian and carnivores where I want to demonstrate that vegetarian food is far tastier and more interesting than a piece of meat and two veg…

“The Joy of Chinese Cooking” taught me how to think about putting dishes together in a considered way – the uninitiated way many groups at a Chinese restaurant assemble their order by each picking a favourite dish, whilst familiar to Chinese chefs and waiters the world over, must nevertheless fill them with horror every time. A Chinese meal should contain some whole elements such as a fish perhaps, some chopped and stir-fried and some dishes which are “assembled” – meaning elements cooked by different methods and then brought together in one dish. There should be a balance in red and white meat, fish and vegetable dishes – the whole meal being a balanced and considered effort. This book, first published I think, in 1950 (I am writing away from home so I can’t check my copy) has taught many people to cook Chinese home-style food and whilst some might find the recipes a little heavy by today’s standards and health consciousness, that is perhaps the nature of home cooking everywhere… Below is an example of the cultural differences expounded in the book.

If Elizabeth David paints evocative word pictures of the dishes she encountered on her travels, Doreen Yen Hung Feng gives us a description of a whole food culture, sometimes anecdotally, as above, but also with some simple line drawings. Compared to today’s full-page colour photographs which present the recipes in impossible-to-equal perfection (no doubt with the aid of a food stylist and expert food photographer) Doreen’s illustrations are sparse, but her descriptions more than compensate and you will never be left feeling a failure when comparing your attempt with that in the photograph. The Penguin book of “Indian Cookery” is much the same – no pictures but a solid recipe book which has lasted through many editions as you would expect from Penguin the publisher

With “Indian Cookery” by Dharamjit Singh, I entered the pungent world of spices with their complex history and usage. Despite going to university in Birmingham (the city that gave us the diaspora invented Balti – a dish as unknown in India as Chop suey is unknown in China), I did not really go out for Indian meals until I lived in London, post-university and now I live and work in Bradford – Curry Capital of England! However, I did begin to dip my wooden spoon into yet another food culture and my ingredient shelf blossomed with yet more exotic substances. This is a source of friction between my partner and myself, as she is over-faced by the multiplicity of items she has no idea about in our kitchen and it is also a problem because unless you constantly use up your spices, they will stale.

My love affair with ingredients was developed by my next book choice – Tom Stobart’s “Herbs, Spices and Flavourings” which graced my bedside table for many years after university and many’s the time I read a few items of this splendid encyclopaedia of flavour before going to sleep. What I admired was that the author did not merely list the spices and herbs themselves, but delved into the nature of taste itself, the basic areas of taste detected by the tongue before the high notes which are detected in the nose (which is why food tastes of nothing much when our nose is blocked by a cold).

Tom Stobart also includes flavoursome items such as Marmite – that British food item which people famously “love or hate” – and in doing so, he legitimises the use of anything which has flavour for use as an ingredient which for a fusion foodie, encouraged cross-fertilisation of flavours from the different food cultures represented on my compendious ingredient shelf… In the extract above, you can see that below Marmite, Mastic the original chewing gum, is given its botanical name as well as the names by which it is known in various languages – what more could you ask for from an encyclopaedia?

I was torn about my final choice of book because one of the weightiest tomes on my culinary bookshelves is also an encyclopaedia of enormous import which my partner bought for me one Christmas “McGee on Food and Cooking”. It is the bible of the scientific approach to cookery and is credited with inspiring so-called “molecular” chefs such as Heston Blumenthal. For me though, it is simply the go-to book when you need to understand why something works the way it does in cooking, such as how “No Knead” bread works when everyone knows that kneading bread is what develops the gluten that traps bubbles of carbon dioxide (given off by the yeast) and causes bread to rise. Cookery may be an Art or as the Greeks would have it, a Craft but understanding the Science does not destroy the Art anymore than understanding the science of why a sunset is red should take away our appreciation of the beauty of a sunset – quite the opposite! However, if this has not counted as sneaking in a seventh book, I eventually chose Nigel Slater’s “Toast” as my sixth link since it better closes the circle back to “Kitchen Confidential”.

Nigel Slater recounts in a manner so entertaining that the book was dramatized for TV and the stage, how he became a chef – hence the link back to Anthony Bourdin. His mother was (now) famously, a terrible cook – so terrible that her long-suffering husband and only son, had, often, to ditch her burnt offerings in the bin and resort to the titular toast… After his mother died early, Nigel’s father remarried his cleaning lady, played, fruitily, in the TV drama by Helena Bonham-Carter who was at school in a class between my two sisters – how’s that for degrees of separation! The stepmother was a most excellent cook – in fact, that was part of the attraction for Nigel’s father and it meant that in Nigel’s perception, he found himself in a battle to win his father’s love and attention. The site of the battle was the kitchen as Nigel forced his way into domestic science (cookery) classes which in those days were usually reserved for girls and battle commenced – eventually equipping Nigel Slater to become not only a chef, but a celebrity chef, and like Anthony Bourdin, a chef who writes – both recipe books and his autobiography… So there you have my six (and a bit) choices all of which made me the reasonable cook/ sometime chef/ failed restauranteur I am today. My restaurant was not the first restaurant in which I cooked (I will not say Chef-ed) – that would be The Good Food Shop formerly of Lambs Conduit Street, London, where I blagged my way into cooking at weekends, became a manager/cook and learned a great deal about cooking, business and life – so I was not completely inexperienced when many years later, I opened my own restaurant “Frewin’s” (my middle name). Why did it fail? The obvious answer – not enough customers – was it the food, or the concept ( Café in the daytime, Bistro at night) – I like to think not. That summer it rained non-stop, so no walkers, no tourists and the people of the village went to the big newly revamped gastro pub (with café and massive umbrellas outside) and with copious car parking (of which I had none) and these things cannot always be seen in advance and so I lost my inheritance but as I said before, I enjoyed every moment of it. I hope you can also see why I enjoyed “Kitchen Confidential” so much…

A Cherita

A leaf

Engine of photosynthesis
that powers a tree

Turning red in Autumn
filled with anti-freeze
the tree sucks back before the leaf falls

Plucked before this happens
the tree would die
in Winter frost

That is the science
of Fall colour

But not the beauty…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft challenges us to Cherish the Cherita…

Give a Damn…

Give a thought to the dispossessed
better still give money

Give a charity a regular donation
then they can plan how to dispense salvation

A nation of the dispossessed
is claimed by others – it’s a given

I don’t give a damn about the animals
says one of the entitled supplanters

Call a man an animal or cockroach and
you can now give a call to the exterminator

Give heed to a cornered rat says Putin
it may just jump for your jugular in desperation

When dispossessing a nation – give a thought
to world opinion – goodwill is not inexhaustible…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

In response to “It’s a Given”posted by merrildsmith in PoeticsUncategorized  over at dVerse Poets Pub for Giving Tuesday

The Language of Knickers…

Having only been writing poetry regularly since May of this year, I was troubled by the usual doubts, was my free verse really just prose, or prose poetry – and it took a while to find and see poetry as a voice, and a language. So then I wondered if you could talk about literally, anything, in this voice and language. So this poem explores a frivolous subject with the voice of poesy…
I read it out on OLN Live and promised to post it for OLN over at dVerse Poets Pub hosted by Grace in OpenLinkNight

Is it beneath a poet to talk about knickers
the garments beneath – until they are not.

In the Nineteenth Century
obsessed with classification
they codified the Language of Fans
(the ones you fluttered and flirted with)
so that you might send the right signals
to your desired paramour
and not the wrong ones
to the rest of the world
the Language of Fans
the Language of Flowers
the Language of Colour
do knickers also speak
in a language of their own?

Undergarments, bloomers
pants, panties, scanties
skivvies, thongs, briefs or knickers.
I only know the words in
the English language
who knows what other words
are said or never said
in other languages
seen or never seen

Women may spend so long
choosing their outer clothes
do they give such thought
to what lies beneath
on the off-chance
that today might be the day…
and what woman’s mother
did not warn her
always to wear clean knickers
in case of being involved
in an accident
as if doctors and nurses
of the Emergency Room
have not got
more professional concerns
than the emergence of dirty knickers!

Are black knickers sexy
because of the maximal contrast
on a white woman
and do white-on-black
have the same connotation
do white knickers evoke
purity and innocence
for in some cultures
white is for death and the afterlife
but a shared view is that
white represents the divine and holy
in life and in death
can knickers ever represent the divine
or is it that which they enclose
that lovers dream of divinely

If black is sexy
ramp it up with laciness
for nothing says sexy
more than half revealing
that which is not supposed
to be seen – which can be said
for knickers themselves

Before the mini-skirt
made the possibility of
glimpsing knickers
unguarded (or intentionally)
Underwear was often
flesh-coloured or
pale peach -think
silky French knickers
loose and airy
and never seen
beneath the flappers
below-the-knee
fringed concoctions
the mini-skirt called for
briefer underwear and
ironically when so much
was being revealed
it was felt that pale peach
would not do
in case a flash was mistaken for flesh
and so bright colours
patterned prints
and even slogans
proliferated
– with slogans surely
the message outweighs
the medium

If knickers black on white
or white on black say
I am here – look at me
then what of red
small and satiny
ruched or ramped up
further with lacy transparency,
– what do red knickers
spell out – if there is indeed
a secret language of knickers
the colour of blood,
red is associated with
danger, sacrifice and bravery
so it is it a brave choice
to wear knickers of a colour
that also signals
heat, passion, sexuality
anger, love and joy?

A friend once told me
how a colleague
had eventually confessed
that intending to visit
her at her remote
cottage in the country
he was arrested by the vision
glimpsed through the
un-curtained window
of her lying across her lover’s lap
Victorian bloomers around her knees
receiving a fond chastisement
the colleague crept away
eventually
for is not the unwrapping
of the beautifully packaged
the erotic deliverance
of what is promised
in the language of knickers
some knickers anyway
something seemingly forgotten
by most makers of porn
with the slow reveal simply
being lost between cuts
a mistake the Burlesque stripper
would never make

And after white, black and red
what do other colours say
about the wearer
if they say anything at all
– purple, cerulean blue
emerald green
these are colours
at least in my experience
seldom seen
and what of the form
what does that say
if message it is even
intended to convey
and not a very private preference
quite without intent of sin
of what to wear
closest to the skin

In middle age
lascivious gives way to
comfort and by old age
it is big knickers all day long
unlike the thong
which covers the naughty bits
but bares the bum
and instead of flattening
the curves as other garments do
– leaves the tight skirt with no VPL
outward shape fit equally
close to underlying form

The freedom of French knickers
the high cut, the arbitrary
line of boy-shorts
what an education most boys
could confess too
who grew up with the
catalogue pages
lingerie it seemed
to the uninitiated
in every imaginable
form and colour from
black to white and red to blue
today’s young explorers
with unfettered access to the internet
might be forgiven for thinking
that more women than not
spend their lives going commando
and why is it called lingerie
who lingers over lingerie?

Make no mistake
knickers are the stuff of dreams
or more prosaically – fantasies
and even without a Victorian
guide to the messages
without teaching
perhaps even
instinctively
we mostly seem
to know the meaning of
the language of knickers…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Caught Off Guard

What are the outward signs
of a heart caught off guard
is it tear-ing up –
if not actually sobbing
– then eyes welling
voice constrained so hard
that it’s held to
a pained silence
whilst I try to
get hold of myself
hold back the tears
open the throat
carry on speaking

You expect to tear up
when delivering a eulogy
and I have written for
my father and mother
and latterly my sister
the last and most difficult
to deliver – the words
freshly written the day before
though sixty-two years
in the gestation
I wrote on a ferry
in the Irish Sea crossing to Dublin
and there were no tears
as I laid the words to rest
any more than when
I heap tragedy on my characters
in my “serious” novel
Thomas Hardy I will never
ever again speak ill of
your torturing Jude the Obscure…
– Ah! But read back the lines
to an audience and the emotions
etched into each page
pull a garotte from my heart
and tighten it around my throat
each word another knot in it…

There are happier moments
that catch my heart off guard
the golding of greens
as the light turns to sunset
the brightness of sunlit land
against the black of a storm-filled sky
the unguarded smile
of a mother for her baby
and the enfolded exclusivity of
teenagers who are unaware of
enacting an instinct that
really urges them to make babies. I look at my partner
lost to the present
more often than not
and a thousand memories
of happier times
holographically stored
explode in my brain
flood my heart
sometimes pulling out
that heartstring
and sometimes painting on
a philosophical, ruminant smile…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Evolution Found Poetry 8 – Chased…

Under the window spread a tree
great leaves, sweet white flowers
Magnolia I suppose
but Tom cared less
down the tree cat-like
across the garden lawn
over the iron railings
up the park toward the wood

The under gardener gave chase
– the dairymaid jumped up
gave chase to Tom
a groom cleaning Sir John’s hack
let him go, ran out and gave chase
Grimes upset the soot-sack
ran out and gave chase
the ploughman left his
horses at the headland
ran on, gave chase
the keeper taking a stoat out of
a trap caught his own finger
but jumped up and ran after Tom
Sir John looked out his window
a martin dropped mud in his eye
yet he ran out – gave chase to Tom

Never was there heard
at Hall Place
such a noise
row, hubbub
stramash, charivari
total contempt of dignity
repose and order
as that day
the very magpies and jays
followed Tom

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley. The title – Evolution, is because Kingsley was a naturalist around the exciting time when the work of Wallage and Darwin were revolutionising the worlds of science, geology and biology and there will be found poems that reference this aspect of the tale. But so far, the finding of poems has been more like the method for refining poems since Kingsley writes very lyrical passages anyway…
The image is derived in Midjourney.

This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems

Avocado – Don’t mind if I do…

Avocado green – redolent of
sickening seventies bathroom suites

But that green is only one variety
most avocados are black

Black and knobbly skins belie
smoothest of pale green flesh within

Smooth till smashed and served on toast
the latest trendy café go to – with marmite please

Go to Israel and elsewhere to see groves of
avocados greedily sucking the soil dry

Avocados ripen to the point of ripening
but left on the tree – ripen no more till picked

The ripeness of an avocado is inscrutable
hiding buttery softness or bruised decay – till cut open…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Tonight dVerse Poets Pub is hosted by Melissa Lemay in Uncategorizedhere

Evolution – Found Poetry 7

Angel and Ape

Under snow-white coverlet
the most beautiful little girl
Tom had ever seen – her cheeks
almost as white as the pillow
her hair like threads of gold
was she a real live person
or one of the wax dolls seen in shops
he saw her breath – she was alive
and as an angel out of heaven

Looking round saw standing close to him
a little ugly, black, ragged figure
bleared eyes, grinning white teeth
such a little black ape
in that sweet young lady’s room
it was himself
reflected in a great mirror

For the first time in his life
found out he was dirty
burst into tears
with shame and anger
turned to sneak up the chimney
and hide…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley. The title – Evolution, is because Kingsley was a naturalist around the exciting time when the work of Wallage and Darwin were revolutionising the worlds of science, geology and biology and there will be found poems that reference this aspect of the tale. But so far, the finding of poems has been more like the method for refining poems since Kingsley writes very lyrical passages anyway…
The image is derived in Midjourney.

This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems

Teacher

Heart a hater
trace heartache
hear react cheer
he her each
chart care there
art create teach…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

 Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at dVerse Poets Pub, invites us to write an Anagrammatic Poem,

  1. Select a title of one word containing not more than 3 vowels and 4 consonants.
  2. Try to find as many words that are using only the letter in the title
  3. Combine this into a poem of your own
  4. Do not use any punctuation in the poem

I picked the word Teacher – the artwork is created in Midjourney.

Evolution – Found Poetry 6

Is Heaven Like This?

Coming down the wrong chimney
found himself on the hearthrug
a room the like of which he
had never seen before
never seen the like

Rooms ready for the quality
to sit in – the sight very pretty
– room dressed all in white
white curtains
white furniture
white walls
a few lines of pink
carpet all over
gay little flowers

Pictures of ladies and gentlemen
pictures of horses and dogs
two pictures of
a man in long garments
little children and their
mothers round him
the other a man nailed to a cross
why should the lady have
such a sad picture…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley. The title – Evolution, is because Kingsley was a naturalist around the exciting time when the work of Wallage and Darwin were revolutionising the worlds of science, geology and biology and there will be found poems that reference this aspect of the tale. But so far, the finding of poems has been more like the method for refining poems since Kingsley writes very lyrical passages anyway…
The image is derived in Midjourney.

This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems