Foie Gras in The Death Throws

The Glenwood Restaurant has cooked many vegetables. It has sincerely and determinedly doffed its cap to the champions of animal rights – and to the animals themselves. It is not entirely a restaurant built on the torture of animals for the pleasure of people. Nevertheless, we find ourselves, two weeks from the end, serving foie gras. Doing so is becoming to Death and Dying. Like the cypress, we take it to be a symbol of death. Of finality. We shall serve foie gras for as long as it lasts in our pantry, starting tomorrow. How long it lasts will depend on how many self-serving hedonists we feed, how soon.

An authentic French woman has flown back with it from France and delivered it to our doorstep. She had to be lured with all sorts of treats and promises, of course. We receive the parcel tonight, under the cover of darkness, in a small pizza venue – address will remain undisclosed.

Foie gras, the French claim, is part of their protected cultural heritage. If a duck or goose is fattened somewhere else, say in Turkey, the product of that fattening is the intellectual property of France. So, the liver itself might be Turkish, but the fact that it has been fattened, in a way that is good for eating, belongs to the French. You, dear Patron, can work this out for yourself.

The aforementioned intellectual property oddity is not dissimilar to how the French think of a chateau, or chateaux (plural). A chateau can only exist in France. By this they mean that the same house, brick for brick, if on other soil, cannot be called a chateau. Chateaux, by definition, are buildings which stand on French soil. So, it is not a word which is up for translation, like mansion or villa or castle. It designates a building of a specific type which resides in France. Foie gras, whether on French soil or not, belongs to the French.

Fortunately, we at The Glenwood Restaurant are not intimated in the least by this guileful nationalism. We cook it with gay abandon and fearlessly – these are not the same thing. One can display gay abandon and mean it, whilst being riddled with fear. We are neither. We are about to leave this mortal coil, we have nothing to lose. 

Important notices: Adam and Carin Robinson would like to thank the staff of The Glenwood Restaurant for their impeccable work and commitment to the restaurant. You will make us cry still. We think Durban owes you a round of applause. We love you all. Thank you.

The photograph is of Bernadette on her last trip to France, just after having harvested some goose livers herself. Notice the gay abandon. You too could look like that.

Bernadette, the Kremlin and the mining of her data

Bernadette had been dressed from the heart of the Kremlin since the day she opened her eyes. And to decide what her clothes would be, her keepers would watch her eyes every minute of the day. If her eyes lingered on the night sky, dark velvets with embroidered silver points would be her next gown. If she waved her little fists excitedly at the sound of rustling leaves her next little cape would be the finest, starched cotton chintz. Her debutante ball gown was the result of observing her adolescent joy at the finest spiders’ webs. (Needless to say, this dress was banned by her mother and replaced with a dress inspired, instead, by Bernadette’s secret fascination with monasticism.) The point is that it was Bernadette’s data, the information about her behaviour provided by none other than herself, which was closely watched and cleverly employed by the Kremlin. This, of course, secured her commitments to, originally, Russia and, later on, the Russian Federation. She was a national treasure.

When Bernadette came of age she was told a heart breaking story. Her mother, prodigious scholar and inimitable sage, having long resented the social frippery and popularity of Bernadette’s father, was determined to turn their daughter against him. So, when Bernadette discovered one day, to her horror, that everything she thought was private about herself, had in fact been used like a commodity, her mother seized the moment. Bernadette falling at her mother’s knee, her body wracked by tears, wailing loudly that she hated the Kremlin and the Kremlin’s enemies alike, was then told the following tale.  

Facebook was a wonderful story book, written by its own readers about themselves, started her mother. One day there was upset about the readers’ stories in Facebook being used to further the political aims of The Great Tzar. But, as Bernadette’s mother reminded her, all the readers knew already that Facebook mined their stories to make a great big, Uber story told to all the other readers. So, it should not have been surprising that The Great Tzar might get hold of it to use for his own ends. It is, after all, useful to know what one’s subjects think, is it not? It is useful to know what another’s subjects think. Are they plotting revolution? And it is particularly useful to be able to influence all of them.

Her mother suggested that Bernadette’s horror at the Tzar’s mining of her story as opposed to Facebook’s mining of it is, of course, because of the human intent behind the Tzar’s mining and the ends for which it was used. It is one thing when an inanimate thing like a story book uses its own stories to suggest beautiful fabrics, pretty chandeliers and new friends to its readers and writers. It is quite another when an outsider’s mind, free and with its own motives and will, uses these stories to win political favour. Bernadette’s mother cautioned that, like her father, her fickle and social ways, her desire to have many friends, would always lead to compromise. Her story will always simply be fodder for another’s aims.

Do only Tzars from the Kremlin do such evil things, asked Bernadette, drying her tear stained face on her Vyatka lace cuffs. Her mother, a committed nationalist, patriot and, eventually, comrade, caressing Bernadette’s dark hair, assured her this was not the case. Their Tzar is certainly not the only one doing this. Nor is he the only one fabricating reasons for warring in other people’s countries. Nor is he the only one getting in, and staying in power, on the whiff of the strange new fangled idea of democratic election. Nor is his inconvenient election by his people the first to be called corrupted by the West. No, says the scholar and sage, the Russian Tzar has given the Russian people a name again. And this name is a strong and uncompromising Russian one, not an adoptive Western one. It is one which falls easily off the Russian tongue. The moral of the tale was not meant for the Tzar, it was meant for Bernadette, warns her mother. Do not bare your soul and then be surprised when it is scrutinised. Zazdarovje!

Important notice: The Glenwood Restaurant will be cooking, on the odd occasion, at The Glenwood Bakery from after the restaurant’s closing date on the 19^th of May 2018. If you are keen to be kept in the loop about such events, by email as opposed to by Facebook, please send your email address to carin.b.robinson@gmail.com

Cooking for France

Mr Robinson, chef and proprietor of The Glenwood Restaurant, has been invited by the French Embassy (SA) to participate in a week celebrating French cuisine. This week is an international event, organised by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.

The French, as we have all realised by now, are unapologetic champions of their culture and central to their culture is food. Now, it is tempting, as I have just done, to use ‘French cuisine’ in a nearly generic sense. But this is very far from accurate. There is the north of France and the south of France. There is haute cuisine and classical cuisine. There is what the French eat at home and what they eat in restaurants. But what holds true through all these distinctions is that the French took their primacy in European cuisine to be absolute for at least 150 years until, relatively recently, people started noting Italian and then Spanish cuisine, and so on. And even in parts of the world which are not Europe it has been expected, for some bizarre reason, that the French would be the judges of how others fair with their own conceptualisation and execution – we have had Michelin judgements since 1926.

Robinson, as we know, is a stickler for making food he likes to eat. His leanings are also towards that part of France, Provence, which belonged to Italy till as recent as 1486. Provence is that incredible place so lauded and loved by Elizabeth David and her hero, Marcel Boulestin. It is home to where France meets Italy. Provencal food is rooted in the terrain of the produce, and these are used according to classical rules. The French love rules; they have rules for everything. This type of food is fresh, accessible and simple, but by no means easy to produce. There is no chance of subterfuge – of hiding behind mousses and jellies, or under blobs and swirls. There is no chance of baffling with things very esoteric. There is no smoke, nor are there mirrors here.

This is the food you eat at The Glenwood Restaurant and is what has won Robinson the invitation to participate. Over this week we shall also have French wines available, as is required of participants.

Here is something about the cultural week. And then to follow is the menu (R290 per head) we are serving over this week (21 to 25 March, for us). You are welcome to book by the usual means.

GOÛT DE FRANCE (a symbol of good France)

“Cuisine - French cuisine - represents joie de vivre, lightness, optimism and pleasure, ideas which are central to the image of Destination France”. Alain Ducasse, event creator alongside the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs  The spirit of Goût de France / Good France follows this founding idea with the aim of including all categories of restaurant throughout the world. This international event, which was first held in 2015, follows UNESCO’s decision to put “gastronomic meal of the French” on the intangible cultural heritage list. Thus on 21 March every year, participating restaurants offer guests the experience of French art de vivre and pay tribute to its capacity for innovation and the values that it represents: sharing, pleasure, and respect for good food, good company and the planet.   In 2017, over 2,100 participating restaurants in 150 countries, 250,000 meals and 8,000 guests in 156 embassies. Vitality, modernity, responsibility: gastronomy will be used to showcase France's positive values, with the warmth associated with the pleasures of good food.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On arrival:

Olives and Bakery bread with anchovy butter

(Et du pain de la maison avec di beurre d’anchovois)

------------------

Starters:

Deep fried courgette flowers stuffed with house made ricotta

(Fleur de courgette farci au fromage)

Or

Steamed oysters with tomato and tarragon butter

(Huitres au vapeur, beurre de tomate et l’estragon)

-----------------

Mains:

Impala stew braised in red wine with mash

(Civet de chevreuil “Grandmere”)

Or

Open ravioli with ratatouille and basil butter

(Pate fraîche a la ratatouille et du beurre de basalic)

-------------------

Cheeses:

Local farmhouse cheeses with Bakery walnut and raisin sourdough bread

(Plateau de fromage fermiers servi avec notre pain de noyer et raisin)

-------------------

Puddings:

Choux pastry fritters with ginger ice cream and hot chocolate sauce

(Biegnets soufflés de chocolat chaud et dela crème glacée de gingembre)

Or

Plum and almond tart with vanilla ice cream

(Tarte aux bruneaux et amandes avec glace a la vanille)

----------------------

Café et petits fours

Bernadette becomes a vegetarian

Even though Bernadette’s parents were not animal rights activists, nor kind people, they did love horses and dogs. Also whales and dolphins. And lastly, lions and elephants. They were, naturally, vociferously posed against hunting for sport and also against eating dogs and horses. On the other hand, they always maintained, while presenting some rather startling lines of reasoning, that one could eat cows and sheep and could hunt salmon and tuna. 

 

Now, despite Bernadette’s meticulous schooling by a posse of classically trained monks, on her mother’s appointment, she found it difficult to live with her parents’ incoherent beliefs about animals. Despite the fact that she had been taught to argue deities into existence, her will out of existence and to make injustices just, she simply could not make head or tail out of how her parents thought about other sentient beings. The inductive leaps, the contradictions, the strange favouritism and, generally, just the tension between their hedonism and their compassion left her awe struck.

Bernadette, when she was awe struck, preferred it to be due to dresses, food or wine. She was her father’s child in this regard.

It was, therefore, with some trepidation that Bernadette decided to try her hand at vegetarianism. A sort of designer type, which permits the consumption of anchovy. One of her tutors, a breatharian (who, naturally, has recently shuffled off this mortal coil), had instructed her as to how one makes a transition from one set of values to another. Given that there are many, many sets of values, none of which have any firmer factual foundation than the next, he always became very flustered when Bernadette asked him what was right and what was wrong. What was good and what was bad? His eyes would widen and he would breathlessly reply: ‘It is impossible to tell, Bernadette, with any certainty. So, it is best to be flexible about good and bad. As long as your beliefs all fit together nicely.’

So, Bernadette did not become a vegetarian because she thought it was morally better. She became one because she believed her parents were paragons of unreason, and she could not abide it. Like not abiding people who wear stretched purple velvet and many bracelets, Bernadette could not abide the sentimental underpinnings of her parents’ world view about animals. Neither of her parents would ever wear such things, of course! They had better sense than that. Her father, as we know, was a style icon, clad only in shades of black all made of either of the finest Egyptian cotton or Chinese silk. Her mother, eminent scholar and formidable intellect, wore mostly hooded capes of roughly hewn cloth, in dark brown. Her only luxury being the satin slip between that and her brown skin.

No, Bernadette’s vegetarianism would be analogous to crisp white shirts with starched collars. It would the bedfellow of finely crafted wine and slow fermented sourdough. It would be the favourite peer and confidante of a perfectly roasted little quail. Metaphorically speaking.

On that day, the 16^th day of December, Bernadette became a vegetarian. One who eats anchovies; thus rendering her vegetarianism like a Persian carpet.*

*The real reason is that she simply could not forego Caesar salads nor spaghetti puttanesca.

Important notices: The bakery will be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and on New Year’s Day. The restaurant will be open as per usual over this time (i.e. closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and open for the rest). But the restaurant will close for two weeks from the 15^th of January, and open again on the 31^st of January.  

Letters from friends

From Jo Corrigan to Adam Robinson

To follow is a beautiful letter sent to Mr Robinson by his friend, Jo Corrigan. Ms Corrigan cooked with Robinson in London, during the 90s. Her current occupation is working with her partner to forage for wild things for the kitchens of knowing chefs.

 Shared here, with her permission.

" I'm sitting on a beach on Phu Quoc Isle, Vietnam, having had ten splendid days here with Matt. The flowers and the fruit are on steroids. The sea is bath warm and roars on happily outside our villa. It's monsoon and, whilst our fellow travellers struggle, their humour noisily suspended by the constant downpour of inches and inches of tropical rain and the absence of hot water due to solar interruption we are both just- well - very content. 

We are cocooned in the heat and the sheer luxury of swapping our Macedon Ranges home, which currently battles snow and ice, for this life of freedom in the shape of an old motorbike, beautiful people, night fish market feasts of razor clams, grilled squid and pho, plates of sautéed morning glory, whole days motionless... reading and reading... and sleep- the kind of sleep it's hard to really have unless you momentarily hang your life on a high shelf. 

Life at home has finally settled into a beautiful yearly rhythm where we do exactly what we planned we always would - pretty much the length of the year. 

From February onward we go into mushroom season. Matt and the team start in the Blue Mountains in some of the most beautiful old forests I've ever seen. Towering, they are miles from civilisation. We see few folk through there, the odd cattle farmer who shares the boundary with the forestry commission. These forests are rich in all wild mushrooms, blackberries, river mint... Their slopes are high. They test the spirit and the legs. 

I travel between there and Melbourne with early loads then I catch further tonnes off overnight freight in one of the vans and deliver to the wholesale market and the restaurants. It's a great sustainable business. It can be demanding, however. The light at the end of the tunnel is this period in July, August/September when we can ramble happily and live without a plan. 

We are often joined on our mission by travellers eager for an experience of food in the wild. The last lot boasted a very good fisherman. This made for some pretty memorable suppers. 

We finish in NSW when the local season starts on Mount Macedon around April/May. 

We spend a couple of weeks changing spots into south Australia where we have a cabin for 3 months a year, a beautiful spot with koalas, a lemon tree, a pub and about 20 huge forests that offer kilos and kilos of mushrooms at a time of year that others find it difficult to source them. Sometimes we head into Adelaide, catching a game of our beloved Collingwood and driving happily through the Adelaide Hills and a favourite spot, Basket Range, where wild watercress is delicious right from the stream. We found lovely Porcini here one year... under a set of swings in a park! 

Spring. September offers us morels. We head to the snow country after the thaw. We're still yet to crack the tonnes that we experience with the other varieties but we get a little better every year. Matt is such a happy camper if we can come home with 40 kg. They don't taste as strong as European morel but they're thrilling to sleuth out and always sell well. 

Cooking is still my first love. However, I do not miss the shape of it in terms of restaurant life. Where did honest food go? I know it's on our table at home. It is in the homes of our friends. That's where we eat more and more.  I don't miss owning a restaurant. I don’t miss fielding a young chef’s desire to create something 'new' when all we really need is to combine a menu that reflects a good combination historically. A menu that will take into account the skill on board and the ingredients available locally. Then back all that up with good, honest warmth and hospitality. We supply many, many kitchens that champion these values, certainly values that The Brackenbury instilled in me. Since joining Matt in his quest to put hard to get gear onto the chopping boards of like-minded chefs I have so enjoyed walking into those businesses and seeing faces instantly light up as they chat excitedly about what they will cook with whatever we have brought them.

In previous summers we have lent our time to part time gigs, event catering and so on. Instead, this year, we are going to finally complete our dream of growing 12 different heirloom tomatoes on a large scale. We did a test amount last year in our back garden and produced a good 70 kilos which went to favoured chefs. Wonderful! I wrote a form letter last month and, being in winery rich/organic country I popped it through twenty or so letterboxes. I wasn't prepared for the response. 10 properties offered spare land, a tractor and bore water and so the project took joyous flight. We chose three of the local wineries and we start ploughing and preparing next week. They will receive vegetables for the house on return. One fellow, giving us the biggest area, has requested 6% of our total crop earn. A good deal in the end. 

To aid the size of all of this we finally purchased a beautiful big green house. We have this delivered the day after we get back and our seedlings will go in. Joy.

Hoping my yearly yarn finds you both well and enjoying both your businesses. I do check them out from time to time and do dream of visiting. I do know I'll find honest cooking there and it's not too far to go to find it."  

Bernadette fits a dress

When Bernadette turned 48 years old, she knew that she would not be able to go on as she had before. She knew then that all attempts at subterfuge and sophistry would come to naught. She knew that her web of beliefs had been exposed for the falseness and treachery that they were. She had been exposed. She had finally come loose from the firmament of middle class morality. Bernadette was undone.

Up until then it was of not much significance that the cost of a dress could be the same as another person’s monthly wage. It was of no real consequence that the cost of an airplane ticket might solve another family’s financial crisis. It mattered only briefly that to attend Shakespeare’s Globe comes at the same price as another’s heating bill. Naturally, Bernadette, did think about these things. Her mother, eminent scholar and formidable ethicist, had tortured the young Bernadette with confounding questions about morals since she could speak her first words. But, in the past, the denouement of such musings would, minimally, be a sort of vague uneasiness, a confusion about what is right. At best it would result in finding another charity or visiting her dying, senile aunt. Sometimes just watching Sir David Attenborough expound the nature of Nature would bring relief. Learning a new language, particularly of those least favoured by the world economic system, would positively induce feelings of moral superiority in Bernadette. The point is, a sense of well-being and moral ease, could be achieved with relatively little effort.

Bernadette, looking into the mirror, waiting for the French lotions to take action that morning, knew evil had set in. It had set in with the knowledge thereof. And the romantic poets knew this would happen long before Bernadette was a twinkle in her father’s beautiful and wandering eye. In the past, in Bernadette’s youth, when her body was nubile and milky white, and when her mind was like a sapling, yielding and filled with hope, she could find ways to approve of herself. But when she became 48, and the world presented as brittle stories with definite edges, a just world was not credible anymore. And her moral goodness was not credible either. For the likes of Bernadette, her evil nature reared its monstrous head; it rose like the truest scion of this defunct world in which everyone fights for a bit of light. A world where the light is just a chipped, plastic sequin dangling over a dirty dance floor. Nothing more than that.

If all this seems a tad dramatic, a little too dark, Bernadette suggests that you, you esteemed reader, look to Al Jazeera. Look to The Guardian. Look to The Beijing Review. Look to the International Socialist Review. Look to the Great World Wide Web. Look and tell the scribe how brilliantly astute Bernadette is. I shall convey your compliments to her. Presently, she is fitting a dress and eating mozzarella boconcini.  

Elizabeth David again; this time on presentation

I turn again to the inimitable Elizabeth David for inspiration. Here she has written about ‘buffet’ tables. She seems to have quite a lot to say about what such a spread should look like. Buffets are, of course, reminiscent of the ‘harvest table’ that is now on offer for lunch at the restaurant, during the week. The wonderful thing about David is that, while everyone else was decorating platters in the most unfortunate and embarrassing ways, or trying to get everything onto, or into, silver and glass, she knew better. Her culinary and visual taste transcended her time. She should be forever deemed an Ultimate Judge; a final arbiter of good taste. Hume was wrong about only this one thing; what is aesthetically correct is not subjective. Elizabeth David’s advice on the vessels for salads and stews and soups rises above the fashions of the 50s, 60s and 70s in England; the decades over which she produced her incredible books.

Here she is in ‘South Wind Through The Kitchen’ in a chapter called, ‘Buffet food’. She speaks about catering for a party; and what is the harvest table at The Glenwood Restaurant if not a party? I have edited her words slightly, to fit our physical page.

“The presentation of party dishes, and of course of all food, is an important point. Cold food should certainly have a lavish and colourful appearance, but to varnish it with gelatine or to smother it with whirls of mayonnaise seems to me a misconception of what makes for an appetizing appearance. The effect needed is not of food tormented into irrelevant shapes but of fresh ingredients freshly cooked and not overhandled. The most elementary hors-d’œuver such as a plate of radishes with a few of their green leaves, a dish of green and black olives and another of halved hard-boiled eggs (not overcooked) with butter and bread on the table, is ten times more tempting than the same ingredients got up in a pattern all in one dish and garnished with strips of this and dabs of that. You are, after all, preparing a meal, not decorating the village hall.

As for hot food, if it has not acquired an appetizing look during the cooking, a few blobs of cream or a border of mashed potatoes will do little to improve matters. There are, of course, way of making good food look especially beautiful. The colour, size and shape of the serving dish is obviously important; food should never be crammed into too small a dish; serve rice and pilaffs on large shallow platters, not pressed into deep glass casseroles; for the serving of fish and of grilled chicken, which could be spread out rather than piled up, a long narrow dish is best.

Paesant and country stews of beans or lentils, deep brown daubes of meat or game, onion and oil-flavoured ragoûts of pimentos or purple-skinned aubergines lose some of their particular charm (and also get cold) when transferred from earthen pots to a smart silver entrée dish, and all the delicious brown bits on the bottom and sides of the dish are lost. Dark glowing blue china, the dark brown glaze of slip ware pottery and plain white always make good backgrounds for food.”

The Glenwood Restaurant, like the Glenwood Bakery, is now open seven days a week, in one way or 

Massimo at Osteria Francescana, Modena

The Robinsons watched Netflix’s ‘Chef’s Table’ few days ago. It was very interesting in parts. Very. What was particularly interesting was watching the episode on Massimo Bottura, an Italian born chef, working in Modena. There he is head chef for his restaurant called Osteria Francescana.

This restaurant was, during the early stages of its existence, so quiet that it sometimes fed no one. It now has three Michelin stars and is, as expected, fully booked for months. This is despite its home being a small and extremely traditional Italian village. Now, most will assume that it being in a small and traditional village is a challenge to its success because it is out of the way and populated with the non-cognoscenti one expects to find in rural areas. But, in fact, the reason why it is a wonder that it exists despite its surroundings is because the people of Modena, for a very long time after the opening of it, judged its extravagant and lawless reproduction of traditional Italian cuisine as unacceptable. What were those splotches, broken pastries and strange compositions which only remotely represented what they were used to eating? From where the audacity to mess with what has been firmly established and is, evidently, the food people have grown up on?

Of course, the Netflix ‘Chef’s Table’ sings the praises of Massimo’s self-belief, determination and his commitment to his vision; one which flies in the face of tradition. The Glenwood Restaurant too sings his praises for his self-belief, determination and his commitment to his vision. But we do not share his actual vision. We found ourselves strangely siding with tradition – with the people of Modena and not with the bedazzled Milanese making their way to Osteria Francescana to eat deconstructed tortellini en brodo. We found ourselves very sympathetic to the fact that there should be ten tortellini for every mouthful and not six marching on a piece of slate towards something which merely represents the brodo. Call us old fashioned, but we think the people of Modena have been robbed.

There are indeed many, many traditions which must go. Such as expensive wedding dresses and American movies with a Christmas theme. But do not mess with tortellini en brodo. Nor with lemon tart. So, if The Glenwood Restaurant ever closes its doors due to a lack of comprehension it will be because the supposed cognoscenti are looking for pieces of slate carrying food that looks like Jackson Pollock paintings (note, we are fans of Pollock paintings when done in oils on canvas). Such food, for good reason, will never, ever be found across our threshold.

Nevertheless, we genuinely love Massimo for his commitment to, and revelry in, cooking. Also for his evident skill. But we looked in wonderment, with much real entertainment and with not just a little horror at what emerges from his kitchen. Viva la cuisine!

How to make risotto nero. Or, once more, unto the breach.

How does one make risotto nero? It depends on where it is being made. Cooking risotto nero can either be done in an hour holding a glass of wine, or it can take many days, as part of a violent battle. Cooking it in a restaurant makes it akin to waging war.

We know very little about each other’s professions. And why should we know more? We are, naturally, more interested in ourselves than in others. Some of us, however, have created a little soapbox to speak from. Here is that soapbox, and this is that speech. It is the speech that answers what it takes to make very simple, good food for restaurant patrons. It takes much, much more than what most people think. Any person who actually cooks, and by this we mean a person who takes in hand stuff that grows, walks, swims and flies, knows that to produce a plate of food which is good, even if it has seemingly only one thing on it, often requires many steps. Sometimes, but not always, it also requires a lot of time. But to make good food in a restaurant is never a case of combining pre-existing ready-made components in novel, or not novel, ways. Good food does not manifest from dabs of this, slices of those or splashes of that unless the dabs, slices and splashes were first made under a very watchful eye.

These steps include finding the raw ingredients. Thus, much time is spent holding a phone with a chin speaking to the butcher, the baker, farmers and grocers whilst bringing to the boil two or three stocks. Lists, which have been written at the end of the previous night’s service, over a glass of wine while high on adrenaline, are now studied and soberly executed. These lists are based on what has been used up and needs to be replaced – and this depends also on what will change on the menu that day and what remains the same. So the list is not simply a ‘stock’ take, it involves menu planning at the same time.

Any restaurant which actually engages real cooking, and The Glenwood Restaurant is sadly one of only a few in Durban, will have such lists. At The Glenwood Restaurant this includes instructions to make certain types of pasta doughs – things like herb tagliatelle, linguini, mezzaluna – butter, ricotta, tart pastries, butchering, poaching and reducing. Whilst three people attend to these lists as from 8 am, the head chef, if he is also the owner, will meet with managers, work out the cost of goods, determine the margins, look for better suppliers of better ingredients and fire bad ones. In the afternoons, wines must be tasted, wine lists updated to remain in keeping with the menu and the general ethos of the particular restaurant. This includes the decisions which have been made around the pricing of items on the menu. In short, a day running and cooking for even a small restaurant, which offers a certain type of menu, is a fourteen hour non-stop affair, if one is lucky.

This is certainly not a complaint. This type of work is self-inflicted, of course. And it is chosen as an occupation by people of a certain type. Given the chances of receiving criticism on a daily basis, because food and eating is a very emotional thing for most of us, often whilst under pressure and barking orders at others, makes for a nerve wracking work day. Like actors, cooks, have tomatoes thrown at them. As they should have. No, kitchens are not pretty. They are stages, bared to scrutiny. One either becomes an actor, soldier or a cook. Turning on the first flames and sharpening your knives when the sun has just risen, so as to feed people when the sun sets, is a case of ‘unto the breach, once more’. And the battle is won in systematic layers; each, time consuming and, all, indispensable. That is how one makes risotto nero with squid tentacles and mussels. It has very little to do with the tentacles and mussels, except that someone must be certain that they are very, very fresh. But it really starts early in the morning with a good stock and ends, before plating, with copious amounts of hand-made butter.

Important notices:

The Glenwood Restaurant now serves lunch all week, from 12 am to 3 pm, in the form of a harvest table. We are making beautiful salads, tarts and warm dishes. You may help yourself to what you want. Take-aways are possible. Weekend lunches, and all dinners (Wednesday to Saturday) remain menu based, as they always have been.

The Glenwood Bakery now serves breakfast all day.  

I love you, Thomas Mann.

I have recently discovered Thomas Mann. I am not sure how I would have turned out had I discovered Mann in my youth. But there is no doubt that my character would have been significantly, and permanently, altered on reading his work. Even after just two novels.

I first read The confessions of Felix Krull, confidence man. And then I read The Holy Sinner. Presently, for me, if a novel cannot make me laugh out loud – preferably bitterly – it is doomed at the outset. Profundity, as a rule, is ruled out. If, however, profundity, is an absolute must for the author, it should present itself properly armed with satire, or it should invoke personal embarrassment in the reader, or it should make you want to meet the author and spend a whole night holding them very tightly. When it does all three, whilst firmly prohibiting any saccharin and exalted delusions of wisdom in the reader, it is safe to call the author a genius. Thomas Mann is such a genius.

He manages to consistently make me feel as if he has seen humanity naked, finds it often wanting and just as often beautiful, but never commits himself to an opinion. But this lack of commitment does not take the same form as J. M. Coetzee’s refusal to offer a moral exemplar. It is not nearly as self-consciously detached and objective (please note, I am a fan of Coetzee’s too). Unlike Coetzee, Mann often comments through his narrators. He judges, he approves, he fears for them, he puts his reader at ease about them. But his narrators (at least, in these two novels) are themselves characters like confidence men or Catholic monks. Objectivity is thus instantly thwarted. What I have loved about them both, the confidence man narrating himself into existence and the monk narrating a very holy man, is that through their respective biases there is a sort of fictionally tempered objectivity. I suspect Mann’s reasonableness, his clarity about people, is simply a feature beyond his control. He cannot help but see things like they are. His humour is surely an extension of this reason.

But, granted, love is blind. And I am in love with Thomas Mann. How is one when one is in love with Thomas Mann? You first tread carefully to see if it is appropriate to express this love. One does not simply fall at his feet. That would be madness. A path to self-ruin. If one wants the love to be reciprocated (figuratively, of course), one investigates, plans and then approaches head on. To love Thomas Mann is to approach confidently, but be ready to retreat should his gaze begin to, as they say, ‘go right through’. That would make one invisible – the death knell to a hopeful lover. Unless one’s flaws are interesting, sophisticated and even glamorous – in the broadest sense of the word – one should rather simply be Mann-perfect. Either way, it is very evident to me that what he wants from his lover is a person who is able to temporarily bend the path of his gaze. I’ll probably never be ready, but I will declare it in this very, very private place: I love you, Thomas Mann. Also for your politics. 

The meaning of a white table cloth

What does the object, a white table cloth, mean? What does it symbolise, conjure up or denote? In terms of denotation, of course, a white table cloth is a white table cloth. Since there are no words involved here, the thing denotes itself. But what it conjures up and symbolises is as varied as the cultural milieus in which this item might be put to use. It is as complex as the societies which eat from its pressed linen surfaces. There are those who flagrantly spill wine on it, those who revere it, those who regard it as an indication of their excellent choice in eating place or those who regard it as an artefact, minimally, required for civilised eating. Does the reader find this hard to believe; the claim that white table cloths mean different things to different people? Can anything be a more unassuming object than a plain of white cloth? Bear with me.

Whilst making my case about white table cloths I would like the reader to extrapolate the moral expounded here to other physical features of eating places; such as tables (with or without white table cloths) set up with wine glasses and cutlery, the absence of brightly coloured menus with seasonal, uplifting messages on them, waiters in black and white, cut flowers, cloth napkins and many more. All these features, these moments of creating an identity for an eating place, have the potential for meaning different things to different people. Sometimes, they evidently mean different things to the Patrons and the owners.

In France something called a bistro or even a café can have starched white table cloths and waiters dressed in black and white. And that is not because a café in France is like a posh restaurant in South Africa. Cafés in France are what they say they are; places where people drink coffee during the day and have light meals, and perhaps a glass of wine. To eat in a café in France is to not plan one’s outfit, gather a group of friends and secure a booking. It is a place where one arrives, perhaps, in the middle of a working day, asks for a sandwich, pastry or bowl of soup and have that, perhaps, alone over a white table cloth served by a waiter dressed in black and white. One might do so in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Why is this? Why are the French not intimidated by the same things that we see as formal and demanding? I am not sure. Perhaps it was their revolution that changed things. This is not the seminal question though. The point is simply to show that white table cloths and other artefacts, mean different things in different contexts.

To others a white table cloth, or tables set with wine glasses, or cloth napkins means a show.  A show of pomp and ceremony; of finery and formality. But my suggestion is that to think of a white table cloth – and any of the other artefacts mentioned – as necessarily signifying formality is either a sad petit bourgeois hangover or it is an unresolved childhood fear of bed linen and going to sleep at night. White table cloths, wine glasses, rows of cutlery, cut flowers are beautiful, and beauty is supposed to bring succour to the artistic soul, the unconstrained soul, in pursuit of finer things. This is surely the only way to think of such things. Beyond social demarcations and etiquette – into a meritocratic world. A world where a beautifully arranged space can simply be there to form a backdrop to a quick bowl of soup and a glass of wine.  

Dreams of farming, part 2

And so the successes lead to greater ambitions, greater disasters and greater successes.  Our neighbouring farmers’ patience was tried by escaping goats, pigs and cows.  At least I got to meet my neighbours, even though in their justifiably, irate state relations weren’t improved. 

Being the completely naïve and ignorant country person that I was, however much reading I did and however many short courses I went on, I only saw the problems after they had happened.  The need to administer worming medicine to the goats, the challenge of castration, the importance of fencing, housing and corals, the struggle to brand (and yes I did once wrestle a calf to the ground), the difficulty of getting a pig to the slaughter house (those intelligent and affectionate animals will not follow you on slaughter day) etc. etc. 

The only farming that I did start sensibly was bee-keeping.  I helped out a fellow bee-keeper for a month or two before getting my first hive.  And then started with only two hives.  Even so, when I felt that I was half competent, the swarming I engendered and attacks that I suffered were quite something.  It didn’t help that the local bees were Apis mellifera scutellata or African Killer Bees as the Americans, in their histrionic way, know of them.

 

Nevertheless by the time I left our lovely farm, I had 35 cattle, 40 goats, 40 bee hives, serial pigs, serial broiler chickens, the odd couple of sheep (too thick for my taste), 6 old and not so old layers and a vegetable garden that could meet about 75% of our vegetable needs.  What I did learn, and quickly, was, that if Armageddon comes while I am still alive, and I have to rely on my skills to feed myself and my family, we would all starve and pretty quickly.

Asparagus with beurre fondue

It took a while for our asparagus patch to take off, but when it did………..

There is no such thing as a glut of asparagus, there is only a feast of asparagus. My favourite way of eating those delicious stalks is probably the simplest way.

Pick and cook them as if it was one operation.  You cut the stalks with a small serrated knife on or just below the ground.  If you have cut them young enough there shouldn’t be too much of a woody base. Bring them into the kitchen and snap off what woody base there is, if any. Throw your grass into a capacious pan of boiling, salted water.

While they are boiling, take a tablespoon of their water and put it into a small pan.  Whisk cold, unsalted butter into the water piece by piece.  This is an emulsified sauce, not the classical English greasy condiment of unseasoned drawn butter.

As one piece of the butter is whisked into the water add another.  Then season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Pour over the cooked, drained asparagus. You can tell when asparagus is cooked by pressing at the base of the stalk.  If it is easily squashable, it is done.  No al dente, half cooked asparagus please.

At least 12 good spears per portion and 50 gms of butter

Tagliatelle with saffron milk caps, parsley and garlic

Like a many farms in our area, there were a number of pines trees planted about the place, some as decorative and some as a plantation.  I don’t know when they were planted or when the rootstock came out, but, with the rootstock came out spores of European wild mushrooms. We had boletus, both birch and slippery jacks, though unfortunately, I never found ceps. We also had a very productive patch of saffron milk caps.  A most delicious mushroom as its taxonomic name would indicate – lactarius deliciosus.  Like many mushrooms, great with all eggy things.

For three

To make the pasta, mix 300 gms strong (or bread) flour with 3 large eggs and a teaspoonful of salt.  Mix until you have a stiff dough; if necessary add another egg yolk or entire egg, but you don’t want a wet dough that will be hard to roll out.

Wrap the dough and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or so (or a day).   Assuming you have a pasta machine, roll out the dough to the penultimate setting (this does depend on what machine you have, but too fine a pasta sheet might well make soggy eating).  Hang it on a drying rack or leave lying on a floured surface until dry enough to cut. 

Wipe your mushrooms – about 400gms – and slice thickly.  Sautee the mushrooms in butter quite gently as they are not usually very watery. Season with salt and pepper and, when cooked, remove from heat and throw in a generous amount of coarsely chopped parsley and finely chopped garlic, about 2 tablespoonfuls.  Then add another tablespoon of butter

Cut into tagliatelle strips and blanch briefly in plenty of boiling salted water. Drain, but not too well. A certain amount of the cooking liquid helps lubricate and enrich your sauce.  Mix the pasta with the mushrooms and serve.  Add grated parmesan to each plate and pout ore parmesan on the table (with a grater of course).

Parsley.  Generally, you either have curly (English) or flat (continental).  It has been recherché amongst some to praise the virtues of the old fashioned English variety.  The chauvinist in me wants to agree, but unfortunately the flat variety is not only much tastier but also a million times easier to grow.

Dreams of Farming.

Like all foodie urban dwellers, I had fantasized for many years of living the life of a self-sufficient peasant.  Of course, thinking about the possibilities soberly, I knew that I didn’t want to be imprisoned by poverty, that I didn’t want the monotony of life that true peasant toil brings and, mostly, I didn’t want my existence to be threatened by the failure of one crop or another. So no true, and hence unromantic, peasant living for me.  But what about a smallholder with a private income?  Now that’s an attractive proposition. 

In my early 40’s after the adventure of the restaurants in London, we emigrated to rural South Africa and bought a smallholding.  Well it was more a tract of virgin, indigenous forest with a smallholding attached.  Our kids were 6 and 11 and emigration was quite a change from urbane West London.

We had a large established garden with plenty of fruit trees and the bones of an erstwhile vegie patch.  There was grazing aplenty and space, space, space.  I had dreams of self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens.  Well they all came true plus a herd of about forty beautiful local cows – the Nguni breed.  But it came about by lurching from accident to mistake to disaster and back.  The neighbouring farmers could have been less helpful, but that would have difficult.  So for advice I turned to the local, non-landowning folk, some of whose practices, I found somewhat eccentric.  Apart from the obvious fact that we couldn’t understand each other, even if we had spoken the same language.

I started trying to plant onions by putting seeds in an unprepared bed and assuming the sporadic rainfall would do the rest.  Needless to say nothing happened.  But I got some gentle and not so gentle coaching from a Zulu gardener, John Seymour’s books (the granddaddy of the UK self-sufficiency movement) and a retired environmentalist neighbour.  In the modern city, one calls in skills – at least I did.  Be it a plumber, roofer etc.  To have to discover these things oneself is either a source of serious frustration or great pleasure, or, more likely, both.

So the first thing I learnt is that nothing happens without a compost heap – and not just a heap but a creation of an environment where rotting can be controlled and accelerated.  Next came serious watering and some laid down irrigation.  Then some collecting of some cast off planks and terracing in our sloping vegetable garden.  I had never even hung a shelf in my life and here I was with chainsaw, nails and stakes.  I even learnt the difference between a spade and a shovel.  And found that the difference is as marked as that between a fillet sole and a paring knife.  It was going well.  Of course, I started with the quick and easy stuff – lettuces, spinach and herbs.  Then came the root vegetables.  Always a bit anxious making as you can’t see what’s going on under the ground. Often half the crop would be wasted by my preliminary investigations. Mary, Mary you should have seen how my garden grew.  Asparagus, artichokes galore, soft fruit, stone fruit, potatoes for months (not quite 12, but hey). So what next? Eggs.

Let’s get some layers.  The local farm and pet shop, staffed by the caste of Deliverance, sold all sorts of useful animals – not just those of the stroking variety.  Off we went and got four Rhode Island reds (big red egg laying chickens to you and me).  ‘Give them six weeks and they’ll start laying one a day’. Sounds easy.

Two and a half months later, two chickens and an egg a week - sometimes.  Back to the shop.  ‘What are you feeding them?’ ‘What sort of housing do you have for them?’  Food, housing?  Don’t they just peck and forage around the place and sort themselves out at night?  What, gymnogenes, civets, servals, adders?  What nature of unspeakable, wild and crepuscular creatures are these?  Just part of the hugely rich and interesting place in which we had chosen to live.  So a small hen house was built and I discovered the feed shop where I could buy some boffins’ mix that enabled our thoroughbreds to lay an egg a day each.  I still wonder what exactly goes into those feeds.

Good eggs and happy chickens. Your first herb omelette with baby potatoes and salad from your garden is a moment of joy.  Of course it’s also a moment of deep self-deception as the butter, the wheat for the bread, the oil, the salt and the bottle of wine are from elsewhere.  Nevertheless, we all live for those very moments and there are times when the cynic should be left in his cellar.

Good eggs and happy hens.  But these were chickens bred for laying and after two or three years of laying, even I knew that they weren’t going to make the Sunday roast.  So let’s get some meat chickens.  These are a completely different breed, stupid and dull beyond belief and ready after only seven weeks.  So off I went to get twenty day old chicks.  Pretty little yellow things.  They had a cozy, straw covered secure (I thought) dedicated hut.  I was a proud farmer in my gun boots, muddy jeans and pitchfork.  They next day I rose to inspect the overnight growth of these wonders.  Well I should say ten had died of cold and another eight of being smothered.  At night, they climb on top of each other to keep warm and smother their fellows with complete compunction.  Of course, incubator lights.  So now I was running electrical cords through the garden, installing incubator lights, gathering more straw.  Another twenty to add to the hardy two and…………

Yes, the next day there were still twenty-two. I was yet to deal with the determination of jackals and the athleticism of the caracal.  Nevertheless, we raised brood after brood of these animals and got to fifty chicks a time and losing only about five.  Of course, it took much longer than seven weeks to raise them as I wanted them larger and to grow slower.  I was raising them for taste, not profit.  Slaughtering them (which we did ourselves) was never much fun but one can become inured quite rapidly. It helped that I never developed the affection for them as I did for our layers.

To be continued.