Silly menus and Family Bathrooms

Pan fried Pampered style.

Pan fried. 

Pan fried?  What else should I use apart from a pan?  I could try the kettle but it wouldn't go down well with my wife, would be my best guess.

Sloshing a pint or so of vegetable oil in there to heat up and fry a few nuggets wouldn't be a preferred plan.

I've been a little quiet on here of late - real life taking over for a while plus I've been away.  Catching up on various things, I've read numerous postings, emails etc.  I've been reading about overblown menu writing and the way it's all put down these days.  Once upon a time, not too long ago, it was all French if the restaurant thought it was important enough.  Few could understand a damned thing, but at least it sounded important. Even hairdressers my mum went to when I was a kid were 'Salon of Madame Jean' or something or other.

Frankly, it's not much better now, and it's in English of a sort.

There was ( I say was, it's no longer there) a restaurant not far from where I live that boasted: hand battered haddock, nestling on a bed of crushed peas served with hand cut chips. (Small mist of semi rage appearing).  That'll be fish, chips and mushy peas then? Crushed is OK, mushy is not.  It's just a word.  Why is one cool and the other chavvy?  And you just know all the half dozen same size chips will be stacked like a game of Jenga.  Not for me, thanks. I'll go to the chippy.  I get a free fork there too. And scraps.

Jus versus gravy

How did I manage to get through the early years of my life without a jus?  Half a teaspoon of brightly coloured cack in a cresent blur on my plate. No damned use at all.  Or a veloute, that's a good one.  I like gravy myself, but apparently I shouldn't say that out loud.  I was staying in a hotel in Wales last week and ate mind-boggling good lamb.  It arrived doing the backstroke in a meaty gravy to die for and came with an additional gravy boat. Yum.  If I had a straw I would have supped the lot. Here's a couple of real ones: 'gateau of grilled vegetables' and a 'bouillabaisse of sardines'.  Good grief. 'A carpaccio of courgette'.  I'm not making this stuff up.
I ordered one of these hand battered haddock malarkeys at a restaurant in Wales last week.  When it arrived, the waitress - as they do - asked if I needed anything else.  I asked for brown sauce.  I don't like ketchup, I like brown sauce.  She blanched.  The blood drained from her face. The request took time to process.

'Sorry, I got confused for a second....you said brown sauce?  With hand battered fish?  It's just that you've already got our homemade sauce of tartar as it is '

'Brown sauce would be great, yes please'

'Right...well. I'll just err...'  And off she went, clearly to tell the head chef to alert the authorities. I had little intention of using the hand-carved lemon wedge either.

Baked beans and brown sauce, please

To get back to our friend the veloute for a second, it's a long established sauce. Nothing new; it was one of the five "mother sauces" designated by Auguste Escoffier in the 19th century. It's just that for some reason we've picked up these words and trot them out to make a perfectly sensible dish sound flash. What on earth for? I'm getting grumpy now.

Pot au feu d'agneau aux pommes de terre et aux oignons I think you'll find is Lancashire hotpot. Boule aux épices et aux fruits secs would be Spotted Dick.  As I said, I've spent a while away in Wales  and I loved the fact that the shop and road signs made no sense whatsover.  Well, they would if I was Welsh. 

I'll have to take it that 'Mae hyn yn ffordd i ganol y dref' means 'This way to the town centre'.  It could say 'All your camels have warts'  I have no idea.  But like I say, it makes me happy that even in this small island in which I live we can celebrate our national heritage of words and language. That bit, I love, I'm just  not comfortable when we mess about with words for no real reason.


But it's not just foodies that revel in this tangle of consonants.  I quite like watching property programmes when I just want to relax. Phil and Kirsty and Jasmine with the A Place In The Relocation, Location, Home or Away or whatever it's called. But.

'And up the stairs you can see the Family Bathroom.'  A what? The Family Bathroom!  Is there another sort?

'Can I use your loo..?'

'No...please don't go in there, you are a friend, you must be upgraded to...The  Family Bathroom.  We only use this one for Non-EU Residents, total strangers or the dog if no-one else needs it'.

Yes, I know I'm getting sarky, but I mean, really...

A pack of Birds Eye Lamb Grills destined for a BBQ at our house years ago came with the instructions 'Do not grill.'  And again just last week while away, we walked past a childrens play area.  The sign was vast.

'Large childrens play area.  Families welcome'  Really..? Not just for orphans then?

Tonight I shall feast on a root vegetable confection of chopped beef encased in a hand rolled all-butter crimped shell served with a thickened tomato-infused bean broth and pomme puree and a molasses-based drizzle.

Or, pasty, baked beans and mash with, you guessed it,  brown sauce on the side. (Small burp.)

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Don't light the BBQ Ray, the washing's out!

Time to burn stuff in the garden aka get the barbecue going. Now, stop me if I'm wrong, but I think I heard  the majority of the nation's females groan, just ever so slightly.

It's one of the few things that truly excites the male of the species. As I kind of hinted in the last post, chopping stuff and setting fire to stuff is deeply appealing to the male.  I used to do it to old Airfix models of Sopwith Camels as a kid but now I've moved onto meaty bits. There's no point in me telling you that the speciality of the male BBQ house is a blackened yet still raw sausage.  We know that, been there.

I can't offer any sensible explanation, there is just something seriously appealing about lighting charcoal, watching the flames die down-ish, losing patience so therefore putting the meat on too early and generally doing a sort of OK job.  And we do know of course that the girls are pushed to one side.

Except that we chaps do occasionally want to tweak the boundaries and dump the briquettes in favour of twigs, and wood bits  so we can do the real outdoor thing.

This is the point were my wife shouts from the patio doors: "Oi! Ray Mears! Calm down, the washing's out and we could do with keeping the hedge for a bit longer yet!" This usually coincides with me glancing casually at the pint or so of unleaded that was decanted into a container, which is now by the bins, from the lawnmower at the end of last season.

"Don't even think about it..!"  Her capacity for mind reading is disturbing, wholly accurate and deeply frustrating. BBQ lighting brick things it is, then.

I am about to invest in some new heavy duty tools for the job.  Rather better than the lame fork thing I currently use which means I am far closer to the flame than sensible as the hairs of my arm sizzle in sympathy with the bits of burger now falling between the bars of the grill. I duck occcasionally as an overheated sausage explodes, turning itself inside out and, in sympathy with the burger, disappears between the bars, preferring the flames to me relentlessly prodding it.

Which is perhaps why the BBQ grill tray caused ripples of excitement at a men-only cooking show I did recently.  " My God! That's pure genius! " claimed one enraptured guest with one eye on sausage preservation and the trick of veggie cooking.

These are treats I will have to wait for.  Meanwhile now the rains have passed and the garden is walk on-able again, I'm out there, as flames engulf the bottom of the garden like a stunt from Die Hard 2 and bits of cremated burger drift gracefully to the almost dry white duvet cover  on the line. All that's missing is Bruce Willis in a vest, saving us all  from certain death. Speaking of which...

" You did get the washing in first, didn't you...didn't you?"

All this at the precise moment my wife, now through the doors with menace in her eyes, considers plunging my head into the still warm pasta salad bowl.

Don't worry, she's done it before. Honest.

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