A MENU IN OUR DREAMS

 

I have had requests to provide my ideal menu but I tread warily as food indulgence may not be in accordance with the “spirit of the age” at this difficult time. Maybe soon we can celebrate a sensible exit agreement with the EU and the end of the wretched Covid pandemic.

Anyhow, I will give you 2 menus – one I call the “hearty” menu (probably closest to my real desires) and the other is a “refined” menu for entertaining visiting friends of discriminating taste or elderly regal ladies from Windsor Castle!

Hearty Menu

1.       Cullen Skink

A delicious fish soup of smoked haddock, potatoes and onions. Our proud Scots reply to New England’s adequate Clam Chowder or the over-stocked French Bouillabaisse. My maternal grand-mother came from Cullen. This dish is served in select hotels and restaurants in the North East, and Baxter’s tinned version is toothsome.

 

                                Cullen Skink

 

 

                                                           2. Steak and Kidney Pie

I lie awake in bed trying to recapture the aroma of a freshly cooked steak and kidney pie. The purists will insist that the covering should actually be made of suet and be a pudding rather than a pie, but I adore a product made of short-crust pastry, brown and drenched in flavour by the diced meat. I insist on the kidneys, currently much avoided by the health conscious, but uniquely tasty. I would add boiled potatoes, decorated with parsley, and crisp, sweet Brussel sprouts and English mustard.

To drink heartily I suggest a fruity red to swig from the sun-kissed Rhone valley, probably a Chateau-Neuf du Pape, introduced to me in my student days in Paris in 1961, first sampled by me at La Mère Catherine, Place du Tertre in Montmartre.

As an alternative, knowing that lady cooks do not like handling offal, like kidneys, liver and sweetbreads, I propose 2(a) Braised Oxtail Bretonne, a very nourishing stew-like dish with exquisite little sweet forkfuls of meat nestling between the bones of the tail. It was one of my favourites in the 1960s at our Capitol Restaurant, Aberdeen, then under the management of talented caterer Bill Nixon.

3 Vacherin

As an indulgent dessert I propose Vacherin, a delicious confection of cows -milk, ice cream, chocolate sauce, and meringue.

Vacherin is on the menu of the mini-chain Le Relais de Venise, commonly called L’Entrecote, with outposts in London (off Marylebone High Street), Paris and New York, all with identical menus.

The Refined Menu

                Now for the real McCoy! A feast to remember!

1. I dozen native Whitstable Oysters, each

 

 

 Served raw with slices of squeezed lemon and a dash of Tabasco, from the ancient Roman oyster beds of my now-native Kent

2.       Poached whole Scottish Salmon

                                                             Poached whole Scottish Salmon

Lightly poached, melt-in-your mouth-salmon, easily sliced away from the bone, a dish for kings! With a Hollandaise sauce, to soften and enhance this delicious repast.

For the above 2 dishes I serve the bone-dry white Burgundy Montrachet.             

                                   3.Chinese Crispy Peking Duck Pancakes

A complete change, to bring savour to the mouth, and to wallow in the joys of the tastiest duck imaginable with piquant soy sauce.

We must change the wine to Pommard, a glorious red Burgundy, whose vineyard we visited in the early 1990s.

4, A Plate of Stilton and Brie Cheese

Two classic cheeses, one originally from Derbyshire the other from Normandy.

 

These cheeses will of course need some bread and I suggest delicious gluten-free sourdough.

5. Leonidas Belgian Chocolates

To finish off, a selection of Belgian chocolates, often businesses founded by Greek chocolatiers. Leonidas will sweeten up your sagging waist-line!

An accompanying glass of vintage Port will make a grand finale!

 

SMD

26.11.20  

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          

                                         CIVILISATION AND DESTRUCTION

Humanity is a complex phenomenon and throughout history opposing currents of thought have done battle - Order and Chaos, Stability and Reform, Status Quo and Movement, Subjection and Liberation. These currents pull us in contradictory ways and we embrace bits but not all of the grand claims made by politicians or religious leaders. He who embraces every jot and tittle of any programme is variously labelled a fanatic, a fool, or a visionary genius. I want particularly to concentrate in this piece about the age-old conflict between Beauty and Iconoclasm, about those who cherish depictions of noble, historic and divine images and the statue-topplers who object to them with grim determination, and the lessons we can learn

 Iconoclast at work, 9th Century Psalter   6th Century icon, St Catherine's Monastery

 

For centuries, the enemies of the Egyptian Pharaohs would deface their monuments (e.g. the Sphinx), the Mosaic laws forbad Jews from the worship of “graven images” and Jews and Christians promised to obey the 1st Commandment outlawing idolatry. The Muslims deprecated any depiction of the Prophet himself but tolerated their icon-loving Orthodox subjects. However, in time the example of the ever-stronger Muslims sowed doubts in the Orthodox and the Byzantine Empire was convulsed in the Iconoclastic Controversy of the 8^th and 9^th centuries AD, pitting the Eastern against the Western citizens, the Church against the Emperor. Eventually the iconodules prevailed, but the Byzantine Empire was weakened and the patriarch of Constantinople lost his status as equal to the Pope in Rome. In 1453 Constantinople itself fell to the Ottoman Turks, less tolerant than their predecessors, and the magnificent St Sophia had its icons desecrated, with many painted over, being replaced by Islamic calligraphy and banners in a display of triumphalism until 1919.

  

Moving on to the reformation in Europe, Luther was not an iconoclast and Henry VIII revered images. It was later, in the reign of Edward VI and then Elizabeth I, that all images associated with Catholics and, in particular, Mariolatry, became targets. Roving bands of Puritan iconoclasts smashed the statues of saints, stained glass or images of Mary – the desecration of the Decorated Gothic Lady Chapel in the 1540s at Ely Cathedral being just one example. In Europe the followers of Zwingli and Jean Calvin in Switzerland and of John Knox in Scotland insisted on the atmosphere of austerity so typical of radical Protestantism. While the old Church was corrupt, the Protestant Reformation destroyed much beauty which is still missed.

      A decapitated statue at Ely            The Lady Chapel, Ely Cathedral

Efforts to re-write history, very evident in the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, are still with us. In the American South, statues honouring Confederate generals are understandably resented by those whose ancestors suffered slavery. Similarly, in Bristol, once a centre of the slave trade, a statue to slaver Edward Colston was toppled and dumped in the harbour in 2020. In Afghanistan, the extremist Taliban gratuitously dynamited the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 in an act of ideological vandalism. After anti-clerical Kemal Ataturk decreed in 1934 that St Sophia should be a museum, Turkish dictator Erdogan decided in 2020 to re-instate Muslim worship there amid the protests of the Greek and Russian Orthodox.

                                                                                                                                                                                               The  Bamiyan Buddhas                         Colston's Statue dumped

There is much political theatre in these episodes but also strong emotions and – that dangerous expression, - “time -honoured”, beliefs on parade. We rely on tactful diplomacy and sweet reason to get over these difficulties, but very often agreement is not possible. ‘Twas ever thus!

 

SMD

17.11.20

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020

SOME CLOUDS DISPERSE

 

Well, “Sleepy” Joe Biden won, the unenergetic, slothful, but experienced machine-politician of no great distinction, overcame the hyperactive narcissist and screwball maverick Donald Trump who, true to form, is skulking in his tent crying “Foul!”. Biden’s victory was narrow in the key battleground States and Trump harvested about 71m American votes, so he represents a large constituency of citizens to some degree disaffected by Establishment policies and attitudes. His short Presidency has delivered a nasty shock to global assumptions about America and shown that some of her values to be, at best, skin-deep. Biden’s hopes of rebuilding and reconciling his nation will be a Herculean labour. 

                                                                        A Happy Biden

Trump at bay

As many others say, the US has not rejected Trump’s policies, it has rejected Trump the man. His boorishness, his inarticulate ramblings, his insults to friend and enemy, his monstrous ego, his contempt for the truth, have combined to embarrass the American electorate beyond toleration. He is quite simply unable to represent his country to others in an up-beat and civilised fashion. He will probably remain a force in US politics for some time but I cannot believe he will successfully run again for the Presidency. In short, Trump is permanently leaving the international stage. Hurrah!

There was more good news. The US pharma giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have announced preliminary results of their new vaccine to combat Covid-19 and it seems to be 90% effective. Much needs to be done before the vaccine is available to the public, but for the first time, there seems to be real hope that Covid can be suppressed, to global applause. The nightmare that 2020 has been, may evolve into the rare aberration we pray it to be. It seems that the technique Pfizer uses to zap the Covid bug is very similar to that being researched by AstraZeneca and Oxford University among others, so other effective vaccines may well emerge soon. What a relief all that will be!

                                                

Nasty Covid-19 viruses

Good news in the UK is harder to find. Our feeble government has been bounced into a second drastic lock-down by scientific advisers relying on dodgy data and tendentious mathematical projections. Maybe there is no better way but serious debate on the supporting evidence has not happened; I feel sorry for Boris as he read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford and can easily be bamboozled by epidemiologists – he would be much happier with Euripedes, as would we all! The lockdown in England is very damaging economically and seriously undermines public morale. A return to “normality” is devoutly to be wished.

We hope against hope that a trade agreement with the EU can be reached for the mutual benefit of both parties. But both the UK and EU are playing hard-ball and concessions by both sides are required, of which there is little sign. A hard Brexit looks much more likely. Common sense is notably absent, but we await some kind of breakthrough.

 Frost and Barnier still apart

Although the world is grasping at some rays of light, the gods can still be unpredictable. My lovely wife and I have spent most summers for the last 20 years in our house in bustling Karlovasi on the  Aegean island paradise of Samos. On 30 October, out of the blue, an earthquake struck, damaging many houses, including the large 19^th century Cathedral, maybe 100 yards from our front door. Our properties were unscathed but many were not so lucky and some 90 died in nearby Izmir in Turkey. We live in dangerous times.

The collapsed side and roof of the Cathedral at Samos

SMD     

10.11.20               

Text copyright © S M Donald 2020