A Little Dinner Before The Play

I recently came across Agnes Jekyll's "A little Dinner Before the Play" a collection of her "Kitchen Essays"that was published in The Times in the 1920's  put together by Penguin earlier this year.

It is, in a few short words, delightful. I think particularly for me because of their historical information about food. Being interested in food, I am interested in people (not necessarily those that are still living, mind, who can be somewhat annoying!) But those that have gone before exist at a safe distance and in that way I find are a great deal more endearing to me.

For instance, I know that Lady Jekyll and myself would have been very good friends, both taking an interest in food and both acknowledging that one is not at one's best first thing in the morning - though she published these thoughts in The Times almost 90 years ago and for those of you who have never met me, for the first time, now on this blog.  But I do feel so strongly on the idea that getting up before the sun rising is wrong, that I'll be surprised that I haven't written it somewhere else. All the more reason form the cheerful breakfast tray which she prescribes!

But I digress: this is not about me, but about Lady Jekyll.  Agnes, from her writing seems like a perfectly no nonsense kind of woman who found that all things being equal, and even if they weren't, that they were to be rectified immediately by putting effort into how and what you provided your guests with, but moreover, by putting careful thought into what guests ate.

Here is one such example. She says:

God made the first Christmas and man has ever-since been busy spoiling it. Year by year, the propaganda of the shops grows increasingly active (what would she have said today?) ; and their suggestion for the keeping of that high feast, including such secular items as dozens of brandy, whisky, and champagne, appear annually more elaborate and incongruous than never before.

So she doesn't hide her indignation at the fact that then friends will come from the countryside to Town in order to procure said brandy and champagne. But does she hold it against them? Of course not! Being delighted that she should see her friends, she suggests that the gracious Town hostess would make for them such delights for tea (read here an almost three course lunch to allow them relief from the effort of being on their feet and flitting from one shop to the next) as they would not be able to make in their country abode due to their being unable to procure the ingredients: A dear friend indeed!

The effort (or her cook's effort - since she was lucky enough to oversee one - though I have no doubt that if she saw her cook doing something incorrectly that she would take over and instruct with the good intention of bettering her cook's skills) that she went to in proving them with such fare leaves us in no doubt as to her being much treasured as such.

Some of her recipes do seem a little on the difficult side, but she seems not to have been one to spare the horses on account of her guests' happiness!

She would insist that guests enjoy themselves and in doing so, benevolently allow others to do so - another point with which I sit in solidarity with her on.

She was after all, a famed philanthropist, which starts in the kitchen.

I'm so delighted to have met her through her writings!

The Art of the Sandwich

Cooking is full of waxing lyrical about tastes, pontification on what and what shouldn't be done and snobbery as foreign (French and Italian) words are bandied about: Uttered  through the nose or with excessive gesturing. But food, as so many other things in life (and don't we so often forget it) does not have to be exotic or complicated to be enjoyed.

And what can be more simple than the humble sandwich? I have something of a love affair with sandwiches: their morish tastiness never fails to satisfy and astonish me with the enjoyment I take in having a good one with a cup of tea.

It started at school. Like so many South African school children, a sandwich was my lunch-time staple and  I had my fair share of end-of the week, peanut butter on dry-ish brown bread. This never bothered me that much at the time ( though now I might pull up my nose at one) because at school I always had an appetite to rival any of the boys' and so slightly dry or not, my lunch was generally finished before the bell had even begun to ring for break time, when I would oggle the contents of my friends' lunchboxes. But in all fairness, coming from a family that has always valued tasty food, my sandwiches were, more often than not, tasty and since I was so quick to gobble them up, the tomato never even had a chance to soak into the bread!

Fast-forward to life after the playground and my time has been dedicated to that well made sandwich. The idea that the Earl of Sandwich popped his delicate between two pieces of bread so that he could carry on eating without sullying his cards, sounds like the most sensible thing in the world to me, and I probably would have done exactly the same if only to be able to enjoy a tasty morsel while living through the characters of my favourite novels. Talk of warm bread and cheese in Lord of the Rings probably imparted more of the community and personality of the hobbits than all of Tolkien's description and the fact that they took time out of their epic journey to always sit down and eat the aforementioned bread and cheese (what better than a cheese sandwich?) impressed on my mind that these must, indeed be wonderful little creatures with an assured innate goodness.

Eating is more than essential, it is an art, even if it is just taking a moment to construct and enjoy the simple things. Taking a few moments to compose a delicious sandwich, in my opinion, is exactly a manifestation of that art. When, in the fifth book, Mostly Harmless, of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent eventually becomes the official sandwich maker of the small planet that his spacecraft has crashed into, I felt such a resonance that there can indeed be no better calling that Douglas Adams had indeed seen deep into my heart and published that short part of the story just for me. But then I think that, like so many other readers, Arthur Dent, for all his irritability, must be tolerated because he is in constant search for a good sandwich and cup of tea. That search and his unfulfilled desire for a lovely sandwich and cup of tea is, I would argue, the engine that propels the story! (It certainly drives my day. Who said that fantasy fiction is far removed from our world clearly knows nothing of the matter!

Well, having cleared up the importance of the sandwich in history, literature, morality (what else is Tolkien's epic about but the problems that the rustic English person faces?) so indeed, daily life!- you can see that it really is an art form.

I promised that I wouldn't be dogmatic about sandwich making, and indeed I recommend experimenting with all kinds of fillings. I even put a sprinkling of flax and sesame seeds onto mine (I'm nuts about these seeds at the moment). Only, keep these three rules in mind: Use a good bread that is still relatively fresh; If you use tomato on the sandwich make sure that the tomato is at room temperature( all the better if it has been ripening in the sun) and crack your fresh salt and pepper directly onto the tomato slices which should not to be too thin or too thick, but can be as many as you like. And lastly, since a sandwich is an entire meal in itself, balance the filling so that each bite gives you the best combination of the ingredients you have used to fill your sandwich.

Remeber every day is an opportunity to have a sandwich and cup of tea- As I have been writing this blog I realise that waiting for lunch time to aproach has created a longing almost as strong as Athur Dent's throughout his travels through the universe!

Bon Apetite!