Epicurean

One of the most frustrating things about Ireland’s schizophrenic weather is the inability to plan a good barbecue. There are few things better than meat cooked on open coals, accompanied by a cold drink enjoyed outdoors in the sunshine. Unfortunately with our climates proclivity to rain planning such an event can be as rewarding as picking the long shot in the Grand National. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Quality steaks are the first key ingredient. These should be picked up at a butcher, not prepacked from a supermarket. I recently bought some fine cuts of sirloin from a butcher off Aungier St. He was able to recommend and advise on which type of meat suited my needs, how long the meat had been hung, which farm it came from and the cow’s star sign. Maybe not that one.

Prepped with a rub of olive oil, salt and pepper, it should be cooked on the rare side of medium rare. When cutting into it the meat, you should be greeted with a beautiful pink color. My dad always wants his steak cooked well done. I try to tell him he is missing out.

When the meat is cooked it should be allowed to sit for a bit to let the flavours settle. It should then be enjoyed with a side salad, cold beer or a nice glass of red wine. 60’s and 70’s soul music (Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Motown) should be playing in the background to give it the perfect summer feel.

Does that make you feel hungry? Do want to run out the back and spark up the steel drum full of charcoal? Are you lusting for food? If the answer to these questions is yes, well then I’m afraid you may be among the thousands of those afflicted with a food porn addiction.

Food porn is a relatively new phenomena but it has spread quicker than facebook and is more addictive than crack. Around the world people cannot get enough of watching celebrity and amateur chefs as they slice, dice, chop and prepare food on TV. Programmes like Masterchef, Come Dine With Me and Hell’s Kitchen regularly have millions of viewers.

They don’t get any actual fulfilment from these programmes. They see beautiful dishes thrown together and are made to feel that they could have it if they wanted. Exotic food, bringing pleasure to people on the screen and making the viewer salivate and desire. It also gives people unrealistic expectations of what food really is.

Most of the time it’s not real. Just like the threesome with top heavy Swedish supermodels from that link you clicked by ‘accident’ is not real. Nobody actually cooks red mullet soup with toasted almonds and basil, or pheasant leg with rabbit saddle and mustard sauce. It’s usually pork chops and chips or a Goodfellas pizza.

The very concept of a chef as a sex symbol or celebrity is something which, ironically, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Anybody who can think that a foul mouthed arrogant egomaniac such as Gordon Ramsey is attractive clearly needs their head examined and probably has serious daddy issues. They can argue that he is a powerful man in control of a huge empire but he’s still obnoxious.

Anyone who is any doubt that cookery programmes are borderline pornography need look no further than Nigella Lawson. Everything is laced with innuendo and is teased out so seductively that it’s easy to forget she is talking about sticky toffee pudding. Although nothing I can write about Nigella can match this clip.

Dublin played host to the Taste festival this weekend. A gathering of chefs and foodies in the Iveagh Gardens, where people were encouraged to wear their food porn addiction with pride. One of my friends who went said she really wanted to see Gino D’acampo live. He’s a chef. Not a musician or comedian. He’s not even a ventriloquist. You don’t go to see chefs ‘live’ because they cook food they don’t play Smoke on the Water.

The whole event strikes me as being left over from a time when Irish people thought they had money and would happily plonk 90 euro on the table for fancy chips and burgers on a Tuesday night in some restaurant because a spiky haired TV chef stirred a pot of bouillabaisse there once.

Maybe that’s why these programmes are so popular. People can’t afford to dine out so often so there is an increase in dinner parties where the hosts get to pretend they are Jamie Oliver or Hugh Fernley Whittingstall. It’s a cool thing to have your friends over and impress them with your culinary technique.

But you can keep your flash fried goose, sautéed in a unicorns tear (to paraphrase Dylan Moran.) I remember the first time a friend cooked for me. We were both students and the menu was very simple. It was bean and sausage surprise. A bowl of baked beans with two supermarket brand pork sausages sticking out like birthday candles.

The surprise? Hidden in the beans was another sausage.

Sandwich

One of my favourite things to eat these days is a sandwich. Some nice bread…walnut maybe or if not just some fresh thick cut brown bread. Slightly toasted. I then add a generous helping of Pesto. I tend to use Jamie Oliver’s but any will do. Then two big chunks of Black Pudding (obviously some brands are better than others), straight from the pan. Hot and still sizzling. I then flake some parmesan cheese over it and watch as it melts from the heat of the pudding. Delicious.

To some people that actually sounds disgusting. I can understand that. For while its delightful treat to me these days, I wouldn’t have always thought so. When I was younger, I never really liked black pudding. There was something about it. It looked rubbery and it smelt funny.

Back then I probably didn’t know what pesto was and I certainly wasn’t going to be eating anything green and runny. The Cheese? No way. Too strong tasting for my likes. Besides cheese in Crumlin means Easy Singles. Anything else is for snobs.

And I always preferred white pudding to black. Some people might not know black pudding. Its usually called blood sausage in other parts of the world. I don’t know what white pudding is called.

I should explain. Being a young man in Crumlin, life was very simple. Jumpers for goalpost, Home when the streetlights came on and all food was boiled or deep fried. We didn’t bother with things like seasoning…or heaven forbid flavour. Things were cooked until they started to fall apart and eaten with brown sauce or ketchup between two slices of Brennan’s slice white pan.

Now that I’m 33, a man of the world with an mature and educated pallet? I really cannot get enough of those ingredients combined to make the worlds tastiest and handiest snack. And you can eat it at any time of the day. Breakfast, lunch, late night snack. Just amazing. An explosion of various flavours which pretty much make my day whenever I indulge.

It does make me realise how my tastes have change. When I was younger there was so much that I just didn’t like the taste of. Strong cheese, Red wine, Olives, Coffee. All these things that the twenty year old me would have rejected like Duncan Bannatyne turns down a shoddy business proposal. Now they are the first on my shopping list.

Its not just my opinions on sophisticated dinner party snacks of suburbia. I don’t have the same outlook when it comes to things like movies, music and people even.

One of my best friends in the world these days used to annoy the life out of me. But now I won’t hear a bad word said about her and all her really annoying habits. Singing and dancing in the car. Watching hours on end of Living TV. Her borderline alcoholism, I don’t care. I still love the bones of her. She knows who she is.

I used to think the two best bands in the world were Ocean Colour Scene and Oasis. In that order.

One of my favourite TV programmes was This Life (no, not the consumer affairs programme with Esther Rantzen). The 1996 BBC drama centred around 5 twenty something’s just graduated from college, finding their way in the world now that they had to face up with responsibilities like work. I loved it. They drank. They swore. They had sex. They had problems not exactly like the ones I had…but ones that I’d like to have. The programme just appealed to me. It was raw and gritty. It was real.

One drunken night 12 years later I decided I wanted to see how Miles and Egg and Millie and Anna were. I even wanted to check in on Ferdie. So I went on to amazon.co.uk and bought series 1 and 2 of This Life DVD box set (I should have never been given a credit card and the internet). I was very excited when it arrived. I watched three episodes in row as soon as I could. Something didn’t seem right. They were awful. There wasn’t a single character who didn’t need a good slap.

And it wasn’t that it had dated as such. These were the people who spoke to me so vociferously a decade earlier. But everything they had to say was just so awful. They complained and moaned. They cheated on their partners. They had a hard time in work so they took Class A narcotics. Life was hard for them. So!!! Life is hard for everyone. Being a sorry self centred middle class British twit won‘t change it.

It wasn’t them. It was me. My taste had changed. I was being overly nostalgic about some cult TV programme from when I was 20. In the bigger picture how I felt about these characters was unimportant. It did get me thinking though. How do we know if something is good or just cool

This Life was zeitgeist. At the time people thought it was groundbreaking TV. Oasis where at one stage one of the biggest cultural (I use the word loosely) phenomena on the planet. Green Day used to be edgy punks.

When I was twenty I may at one stage or another denounced the following. The Beatles, Goodfellas and the work of Martin Scorcesse in general, Woody Allen , Frank Sinatra, Jazz music and any kind of cinema which involved any of the 3 subs (subtext, subtitles or submarines….still not crazy on submarine movies).Over the years I have avoided things like the Sopranos, Amelie and Bob Dylan because they didn’t seem like my cup of tea.

Without wanting to sound blatantly obvious, like JD at the end of every episode of Scrubs, I guess what I’m trying to say is try everything. And if its not great at first. Try it again. Give it a chance. One thing that drives me batty are people who won’t try something because it sounds weird. Live Life you blinkered buffoon. Its people like you who give the Irish a bad reputation as little islanders with bad skin and poor love making ability.

Woo. Sorry about that. Rant over.

So my taste has changed. Thankfully. But does that make me any better as a person? Probably to be honest.

I know, of course, that no one should be judged on their taste . I mean just because someone likes the latest Muse album does that really make them a bad person. No it doesn’t. It just means they have terrible taste in music. Or maybe they are 12.

There is a part in High Fidelity were John Cusack says that its more important what somebody likes than what they are like. Of course as he ’grows’ he realises this isn’t necessarily true. But maybe he has a point. Could you spend the rest of your life with someone who thought 2 pints of lager and a Packet of Crisps was cutting edge comedy.

And lets be honest, who hasn’t judged me based on my pesto and pudding sandwich?