ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Appalled to see that a salmonella outbreak in the UK was traced to Cadbury’s chocolate bars! But relieved to see that the source was not the chocolate but the crumb base. So purists can rest easy and carry on with that therapeutic intake.

Yesterday I found the perfect activity for the first gentle day of our heat wave: a visit to Merridale Cidery. We did the self-guided tour to see where and how the cider was made, admired the acres of apple trees and then enjoyed a small tasting of half a dozen of their products. Apple juice was thoughtfully provided for our under-age companion, who was at an age to enjoy the faerie fixtures that were strategically placed to help her endure the tour.

Scrumpy and Traditional Cider were my favourites. In West Country dialect, “scrump” meant to steal apples, and so Scrumpy was the name for pilfered apple cider. At 11% alcohol it was described as a “sit down” cider, and mercifully Merridale has departed from the traditional recipe which calls for raw pork as one of the ingredients.

Merridale puts on a mean spread in La Pommeraie Bistro, where we sat outside on the covered veranda and admired the orchard. I had some very nice pulled pork and apple crepes and the soup of the day, a cold honeydew-raspberry concoction which the waitress accurately described as “a smoothie without all the sugar”. It was garnished with chopped mint and gently flavoured with dill and was just the thing for a warm summer day.

The perfect surprise for this melting heat we’re facing was the arrival of my copy of Loutro Poems, an anthology of poetry by writers who attended World Spirit poetry courses 200-2005, lavishly illustrated with colour photos. As if I could forget…

A little awkward to post while being harassed by my desk ornament (yes, folks, Boris is back… he had the sneezes and needed another round of antibiotics so, well, umm…)

Been reading a new Billy Collins (The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, Picador 2006) and liked this bit, from Monday:

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

And a little more from Ted Hughes:

Much has been said about the therapeutic value of uninhibited writing, and though no doubt that can go to the point where mere confusion enters, it is one way of talking about the pleasures and the healing effects of reading and writing poetry.

All imaginative writing is to some extent the voice of what is neglected or forbidden, hence its connection with the past in a nostalgic vein and the future in a revolutionary vein.

I had a revolutionary experience with a roast chicken on the weekend. Following the guidance of Lynne Rossetto Kasper, I rubbed a whole chicken with olive oil and then slathered on a paste of 1 tbsp minced rosemary, 1 large minced garlic and 1/4 tsp salt, stuffed a couple of sprigs of whole rosemary in the cavity, covered it in plastic and refrigerated it for 24 hours, and then roasted it at 350f at 20-25 mins/pound, the first half on its breast and the second half breast side up, basting it with cooking juices at intervals until the thickest part of the thigh read 170f on the thermometer. It was gorgeous. The finish was to drizzle it with a 3-4 tbsp artisan balsamic vinegar (or slice it first and and drizzle with balsamic). It was beautifully moist and well flavoured.

While I told Jennifer about this triumph, she reminded me that only a few weeks ago I had been reading to her about the use of salt on meats. A magazine I’m extremely fond of is Cooks Illustrated, which is a food nerd’s dream, featuring experiments from America’s Test Kitchen (something I’d never heard of before I started reading the magazine). In the August issue they were performing merciless experiments on barbecued chicken and explained (with diagrams) the effects of salting chicken for 3 or 6 hours. At 3 hours the flesh does not absorb the salt and you end up with dry chicken (which is why popular wisdom says not to salt roasting meats). But after 6 hours, the salt is drawn into the flesh and you end up with flavour from the salt and from any other water-soluble flavouring agents (e.g. herbs and spices but not oil-solubles like capsaicin, the hot element of chili peppers). They prefer salting to brining if you are dealing with chicken because they found brining made the skin soggy, and salting leaves it crispier.

A book that has, I’m told, not received the best of reviews lies open by my chair these days, and I’m enjoying it so far. The Ode Less Travelled is Stephen Fry’s guide to Unlocking the Poet Within. It’s a manual of metre, rhyme and form by someone who writes privately himself:

“I do not write poetry for publication, I write it for the same reason that, according to Wilde, one should write a diary, to have something sensational to read on the train.”

(If only we Canadians had trains to read on we might be better poets and diarists…?) He quotes Auden on the difficulties of writing free verse:

“The poet who writes ‘free’ verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor – dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.”

Lynne Rossetto Kasper has certainly produced something original and impressive in The Splendid Table, her 1992 guide to the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food. Interesting and unusual recipes, including this pasta sauce (which I have only slightly tweaked) which she says comes from the cooks of Modena’s and Ferrara’s Jewish communities. It features a substance unfairly despised and misunderstood in North America: the amazing anchovy. Be not afraid, and you will be fed.

Lemon Anchovy Sauce (Bagnabrusca):
2 2-oz cans anchovy filets
1 cup cold water
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup water
2 large fresh tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped
6 tbsp minced flat-leaf parsley
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground black pepper to taste.

• Rinse the anchovies and soak them in the cup of cold water for 10 minutes. Drain and coarsely chop.
• In a 12-inch heavy skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until faintly golden but not brown.
• Add the parsley and anchovies and heat briefly, 30 seconds or so. Immediately stir in the 1/2 cup water and cook over low heat about 2 minutes, until the anchovies melt (isn’t that the coolest thing??).
• Blend in the tomatoes and lemon juice, raise the heat to medium, and cook 1 minute.
• Generously season with black pepper and scrape the pan over hot drained pasta – tagliarini is recommended. Toss to coat. Sprinkle with a further tablespoon of chopped parsley and serve (without parmesan or other cheese).

Any of you out there seething with feelings of helplessness and impotent rage against competition judging… here’s your chance to set the world to rights. ChapterOnePromotions has an open poetry competition that you the voting public can judge. Just click on the ‘Open Poetry Competition’ link on the home page and make someone’s day, in the best possible way. Deadline for votes is July 15.

A little more on the festival weekend. Every Saturday morning there is an excellent Farmers’ Market in Courtenay/Comox, conveniently placed right next door to the festival. So the minute we’d staked our tarp we marched ourselves over there to see what was on offer. There was a looong line snaking towards one of the several bakery stalls and I later heard it was all about the cinnamon buns. But I went elsewhere, and bought some incredibly good cheese bread, a fantastic pumpkin muffin and some durable vegetables for snacking on, including peas in the shell and cauliflower florets. This morning I came upon a clipping that’s been floating around my office for a while that says certain vegetables, particularly broccoli and cauliflower, are naturally abundant in the compound sulforaphane (SFN) which is believed to reduce the risk of developing hereditary cancers.

Back at the site, I was greatly amused by Todd Butler who hosted a Sunday morning workshop. Acknowledging they were up against the gospel hour on the big stage he said, thank God for atheists or we’d have no audience… Paul Reddick’s concert was well attended by a well baked Sunday afternoon crowd. One of them in a mellow stupour in front of me piped up at the end of Villanelle. Hey, he said, did you write that one? Yes I did, said Paul. Man, that was beautiful, said the listener… Sunday afternoon in the barn was hot in oh so many ways when the giant talents of the Campbell Brothers shook the pigeons loose from the rafters. As this musical mayhem was immediately followed by epic and ecstatic helpings of Los Rastrillos, the birds didn’t get much rest till much later… Crankiest moment of the festival came courtesy Jamaica-based Anglo-German punker Ari Up who dropped out of her scheduled workshop to feature herself in another and then tried to run overtime, and when that didn’t work she — um… the polite word is remonstrated I think, although her arguments appeared to have far fewer syllables than that — with the beleaguered organizers. I suspect she’s not getting a repeat invitation. Even if her mom did marry Johnny Rotten. (Well ya didn’t see Peter Yarrow‘s daughter or Joe Fafard‘s son behave that way. )

Charlotte and I slipped away midday to cheer with the Italians and weep with the French in the air conditioned comfort of the bar at the local golf club. It was harder than it should have been to find ourselves a World Cup venue (shockingly, we were two of only six footie supporters in the pub) and near impossible to find an authoritative start time for the match: there was not a newspaper in sight and I must have asked at least a dozen people at the festival (including the Information booth, the First Aid booth and a pair of homesick Ozzies working the Mediterranean BBQ kiosk) before a man at the Security booth said he’d heard from a dedicated soccer fan that the start time was 11:00 (PST). Cut no ice with the bartender who had looked it up and decided it started at noon, so we missed the first 21 minutes before he got around to switching it on. And of course with two goals in the first 19 minutes, that was tragically poor timing. Since it all ended I’m tapering off by checking at intervals for breaking news of What Materazzi Said To Zidane To Make Him Do It.