Woo-hoo, my first post from foodie television.Viewers of 30 Rock will no doubt revel in the casting of Alec Baldwin as the head of Network Programming and Microwave Ovens at General Electric. He brings to the role a lip-smacking self-satisfaction tinged with just a bit of sleaze and bonhomie, and his corpulence is accentuated by his delicious description of the finest dessert in the world, which, according to him, is served right there in New York, in a restaurant called Plunder:

Jack: “All I want to do for Valentine’s Day is go to Plunder and eat the Lovers’ Delight.”

Liz: “That sounds filthy, Jack.”

Jack: “It is. Imagine a dessert for two, Tahitian vanilla-bean ice-cream in a pool of cognac, drizzled in the world’s most expensive chocolate, Amedei Boselliana, covered with shaved white, black and clear truffles, and topped with edible 25-carat gold leaf. Can you imagine anything better?”

Liz: “I don’t know… you ever put a doughnut in a microwave?”

In the late 1980s, Stephen Brook hung out in Budapest and noted that there was no other part of Eastern Europe where the food was as plentiful and of as good quality. In his excellent (simply excellent!) account of his time in three capitals along the Danube, The Double Eagle, he writes:

The shops are well-stocked, and good quality meat and fish are readily available. A visit to the huge covered market at Dimitrov tér is a revelation to those who assume that all Eastern Europe is a land of unmoving queues and perpetual shortages… The most attractive stalls were those selling peppers. Masses of cherry-red and yellow paprika pods, strung into wreaths and other elaborations, were hanging form the beams and walls framing the stalls, while on trays below were scattered hundreds of shiny pale green sweet peppers. Beans and nuts and herbs were abundantly available, and in a far corner of the market a few stalls specialized in whole goose livers. Not cheap, of course, at 900 forints, but probably a tenth of the price you would have to pay in a Périgord town square. The market is spacious enough to accommodate bakeries, clothes shops, sausage and lángos stands, peasants behind trestle tables selling locally produced honeys and jams and orchids boxed in transparent plastic. I bought some lángos, a lump of pale dough that is slung into hot fat, where it writhes until golden and dimpled; in the mouth it is soft, juicy and delicious, a kind of extrem doughnut that regrettably leaves a nasty oily taste in the mouth, no doubt an honest reflection of nasty oil in which it attained its succulence.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted something foody out of non-fiction. I was beginning to think that this blog was far too fictional. Now if only I can get something from a film or a TV programme, I’d be set.

In Tiziano Scarpa’s lovely little paean to Venice (Venice is a Fish), he makes the point that the true flavour of his city is not sweetness. To taste its full character, the visitor should repair herself to a bácaro, a kind of inn. There are fewer and fewer of these remaining these days, so go and grab and table while you can.

The windows of the bácari offer you halved boiled eggs, rolled anchovies, crabs’ claws, olives all’Ascolana, rice arancini, polpettini, stewed saltimbocca, nervetti (pork or beef tendon), fried sardines, masanete (small crabs), folpi (small octopus), creamed cod, onions, coppa di toro (bull salami), wild boar ham, squares of mortadella, cubes of dressed mozzarella, parallelepipeds of gorgonzola. These are all, of course, washed down with an ombra, a glass of wine that was once tapped straight from the barrel behind the bar.

It isn’t clear where the ‘technical term’ ombra (shadow) comes from: and that’s as it should be, even its etymology should remain in darkness. At the most banal level, ombra might designate the misty translucency of the wine. But it’s more likely that it refers to the open-air wine stalls in the summer, in the shade of the campanili, where people sheltered from the heat by drinking a glass of chilled wine. ‘Andiamo a prendere un’ombra – Let’s go and take the shade,’ was a kind of wink, implying: ‘Let’s go where the drinking’s done.’

In Matilde Asensi’s nonsensical novel (The Last Cato) of the search for the stolen remnants of the True Cross, the protagonists, a Swiss Guard, a Coptic archaeologist, and an uptight Sicilian nun stop for a bit of food en route to their latest test.

We were invited to a magnificent lunch in the hotel banquet room. I was like a kid when it came to the taramosalata and the mousaka, the souvlakia with tzatziki – small pieces of roasted pork seasoned with lemon, herbs, and olive oil, accompanied by the famous sauce made with yogurt, pepper, garlic, and mint – and the original kleftico. Especially delicious were the incomparable Greek breads made with raisins, spices, greens, olives, or cheeses. For dessert, a little freska frouta. Who could ask for anything more? Mediterranean cuisine is the best in the world. Farag proved that by eating enough for three or four people.

Alicia of the plump bottom and expectations of the high life likes to bring prospective suckers to her place, where her mum, Margarita, will concoct such a repast that the sucker will be well and truly, well, suckered. In Daniel Chavarría’s tale of Cuban amorality and yuppiedom-at-any-cost, Adios Muchachos, here is what Margarita has to offer:

For programmed occasions when the client wanted to show off his conquest and proposed having some associates over for dinner, culinary Margarita offered two cosmopolitan alternatives: a main entrée of fondue bourguignonne (with all the right silver and china), or chicken Maryland supreme.

Margarita’s specialty was, in fact, chicken. In forty minutes she could bone it, stuff it, and sew it up with bamboo needles. Another half an hour in the pressure cooker and it was done. But that was only for impromptu dinners. Sometimes, when a client had something good to say about traditional Cuban cuisine like they serve at the Bodeguita del Medio, Alicia’s mother would let out a soprano laugh. “Whatever are you talking about? Good food at the Bodeguita?”

By that time she would already have been treating him like an old friend, talking to him in the familiar tu, joking around, waving her restless hand in his face and inviting him to taste her own Cuban cuisine, which was much better, of course.

And in one manner of speaking, it was.

In matters of traditional Cuban cuisine, however, Margarita was a great fraud. If the guest was from Europe or from the southern cone of South America, for example, Margarita replaced the yuca con mojo with well-seasoned baked potatoes; the pork she prepared very lean and dry and just slightly pink in the center of the slices; the congri rice was never runny, and she seasoned it with a whole list of ingredients that congri was never meant to take. But she did produce a range of haut cuisine tastes, light with the slightest touch of bitter-sweet, which everyone praised.

She also did herself grand with Italian pasta: cannelloni, lasagna, fettuccini, ravioli, gnocchi; with sauces like il bolognesa, il pesto, le vongole, l’arrabbiata, la puttanesca. And when there were more than eight to dinner, there was the ever popular paella that never let her down.

I sincerely hope the author is being facetious here. Of course, it’s a Russian who is making the pasta, and we all know how that will turn out. Still, the narrator’s  mouth waters at the thought of Dmitri’s cooking. Take a look at this, from Camilla T. Crespi’s The Trouble With A Hot Summer:

“Dmitri! Are you cooking?” My legs swallowed the stairs two at a time.

My partner was standing in front of the microwave, a beatific glow on his face. The door was ajar. “Perfectissimo!”

I peered under his armpit. A plastic plate brimmed with cannelloni – six of them, covered in bubbling white sauce with a delicate marbling of tomato. One bare corner revealed paper-thin pasta. The smell told me lobster stuffing with a hint of tarragon.

…

[Dmitri] lifted the cannelloni out of the microwave as if they were his firstborn. “Microwave oven remind Russian woman of husband with vodka. Thirty seconds, he’s cooked.”

When people go into this sort of obsessive detail about what their characters ate – without actually describing the food itself – you can’t expect the book to be any good, can you? And so in S. Perone’s Murder Almighty we find a rather sad thriller about a fixed papal conclave and the following passage:

Dinner at the ancient La Canonica Trattoria – a stone’s throw from the residence of Cardinal Delarossa, Patriarch of Venice – had been candlelit and cozy. Because of the unusually warm October evening, Vella and Carolyn had been seated on the stone terrazza, at one of the corner wooden tables. The high-backed wooden chairs and white tablecloths provided a touch of elegance typical of Venetian outdoor dining.

Carolyn had ordered the Grigliata di pesce, featuring salmon grilled with lemon butter, while Vella had ordered the Cannelloni Canonica, witha creamy marinara sauce. They had decided together on a light dry white wine from eastern Tuscany, Bianco Vergine Valdichiana.

I mean, come on! How trite and leaden is this?

In case you ever wondered what delicacies would appeal to an enhanced human far into the future, wonder no more. In The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3, appears a story called Necroflux Day by John Meaney, in which a Bone Listener and his son have a meal in celebration of the boy’s birthday.

The food was good: komodo steak and buttery mashed tubers, then squealberry pie and ice cream, washed down with hot blue chocolate. But no waiters came out to sing Happy Birthday, and Carl and Dad were seated behind a heavy pillar, where entirely human diners could not see the hint of otherness in father and son as they ate.

Philippe Claudel has penned an absolute marvel of a novel in his Brodeck’s Report, from which I excerpt this bit:

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wanted a ‘collation’.”

“A ‘collation’? What’s that?”

“A light meal, he said.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What he’s asked me to do!”

Everyone was curious to see what a ‘collation’ looked like. Most of the crowd followed Schloss into his kitchen and watched as he prepared a large tray on which he put three thick slices of bacon, a sausage, some marinated gherkins, a bowl of cooked cream pudding, a loaf of brown bread, some sweet and sour cabbage and a large piece of goat’s cheese, together with a jug of wine and a mug of beer. As he passed through the crowd of his customers, he carried the tray reverently, and everyone made way for him in silence, as though for the passage of a holy relic.

In Andrea H. Japp’s medieval crime series starring the beautiful, wise but impoverished Agnès de Souarcy, meals are important, especially when the odd guest arrives. Here’s an excerpt from the first novel of the series, The Season of the Beast.

Mabile was not displeased with herself. Agnès de Souarcy had expressed her wish to thank the good chaplain and the servant had prepared a proper feast – a six-course meal, no less. Following an hors d’oeuvre of fresh fruit, whose acidity was supposed to act as an aid to digestion, there was a broth made of almond milk. For th third course the servant had plumped for roasted quail spiced with a black pepper sauce. That insufferable Agnès de Souarcy was such a sickler for table manners that the baby fowl should keep her busy for a while…

…She must hurry. The quail would not keep them busy forever. She should be back in the kitchen helping Adeline serve the desserts: a traditional goat’s milk blancmange followed by black nougat made from boiling honey and adding last year’s walnuts and spices. To round off the meal she had prepared some hippocras, a mixture of red and white wine sweetened with honey and spiced with cinnamon and ginger.