The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Kensington Gore

Here’s another post I wrote for The Dabbler. It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with food (unless of course, you happen to be a vampire) but I thought it might amuse you, especially as the American Pumpkin Festival’s just around the corner. We’ll be back to All Things Foodie next time. Promise.

 

Luke Honey takes us on a trip around some London landmarks captured on film and uncovers strange and groovy goings on down the Kings Road...

 

I first noticed him one Saturday morning; about a week or so after moving into my new house in Battersea: a man with a plastic Instamatic camera, lurking near the bay tree outside my glossy, bijou front door. A middle-aged man with a beard, sporting a rancid anorak. One twitch of my curtains, and he was gone.

Realising that something was up, I turned to that “simple sword of truth”, Google, and- O Fortuna!- discovered that I appeared to be living inside the Tardis: for my house had been used as a location for the 1981 Doctor Who series, Logopolis. The Doctor Who Locations Guide website gave precise directions on how to get to my street, several helpful “then and now” photographs of my house (how grim it looked back then!) and further directions to another Doctor Who location at a lay-by on the A413 near Watford.

The camera is kind to London, and it looks, perhaps, better on celluloid than it does in truth. Are not the pavements and parks haunted by the ghosts of films past? Who can forget dear old Genevieve and the tramlines of Westminster Bridge; or the real star of Blow-Up- Maryon Park near Greenwich: its grass painted verdant green by Michelangelo Antonioni; the dancing chimney sweeps of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins, the mean suburban avenues of SW11 in Up the Junction, foggy Berkley Square in Midnight Lace (actually, filmed entirely at the Universal lot, Los Angeles) or the charming late 70s street anachronisms of Shepherd’s Bush in Quadrophenia?

Still on the theme of London and film, I must raise my hand and admit to a guilty secret. I am a fan of Dracula AD 1972. Those of you who have yet to see this legendary oeuvre have a treat in store: Dracula (as played by Christopher Lee) arrives in Swinging London, and heads straight for the King’s Road to hang loose with a gang of groovy flower children, headed by a miscast Stephanie Beacham and a teen-like Michael Kitchen. The blurb on the DVD case reads: “The Count is Back with an eye for London’s Hot Pants and A Taste for Everything…”

All this, of course, is deeply amusing: it’s as if the producers at Hammer (undoubtedly pipe- smoking, Telegraph-reading squares) suddenly woke up to the idea that if the studio was going to survive, it had to get “With It”. Setting their picture in Swinging London was the answer; except of course, that by 1972, with the oil crisis just around the corner, the glory days of Terry and Julie were more than well over.

Christopher Neame (to go on to greater glory in Colditz and the excellent Secret Army) features as Johnny Alucard (those of a cryptic persuasion will have already worked out that this spells Dracula backwards), the suave Count’s manic vampire side-kick. Becoming an acolyte of the Devil has its financial rewards, and the producers gave Johnny a mustard coloured Triumph Stag and funky Notting Hill bachelor mews pad in which to seduce the obligatory dollybird and plot fresh evil.

Other highlights include a hilarious sequence in which the gang gatecrashes a dinner party in Paultons Square: a spectacular montage involving go-go dancers gyrating to the sound of the American band, Stoneground. Tut-tutting old biddies in dinner jackets and horn-rimmed glasses; and a Black Mass in which the tasty Caroline Munro writhes spreadeagled on a fibreglass altar splattered with Kensington Gore, as Christopher Neame bellows out one of the all-time immortal lines in British Z-Movie history: “Dig the music, Kids!”

Chelsea, alas, is now a shadow of its former past: the area around the former Duke of York barracks (wherein the glory days of Vivienne Westwood, punks and other low-life used to gather) now an immaculate shopping mall for banker’s wives along New England lines; Carlyle Square, where William Walton and the Sitwells first performed Charade to a salon of the avant-garde, now more likely to echo with the pneumatic drills of a plutocrat’s basement dig-out- the shrieks of the Bright Young Things a mere remembrance of things past; The Cavern, at World’s End, once the haunt of the chain-smoking kids from Dracula AD 1972, now a Yoga Health Studio; eccentric boutiques replaced by bland, international chains. Picasso’s Cafe, The Chelsea Kitchen, Pucci Pizza and the Chelsea Antiques Market (albeit in their original incarnations) all of them: no more. And so on, and so on. Chelsea, requiescat in pace.

But London, like English society, is fluid; continually evolving, and this is one of its many strengths. The Romans built their city on a mixture of shifting sand, clay and gravel, and what lies below is mirrored above. Perhaps “Chelsea” is more an attitude of mind, rather than an actual place; more likely these days to be found in Spitalfields, Shoreditch and other environs of the East End? In a century’s time, I have no doubt that “Chelsea” will still be with us. With any luck, it might even arrive back in SW3. Full Circle.

 

Gangster Chic & The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory

 

 

Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker (1967)

 

When was the first time you tasted the savoury delights of a pizza? If you’re under forty, this will probably seem like a strange question. It’s hard to get your head round now, but back in the 70s, pizza was an alien interloper in the land of Cap’n Birds Eye, frozen beef burgers, dehydrated Vesta Curry, Spangles, Angel Delight, soupy Brussels spouts and assassinated mutton.

I remember saving up to take a girlfriend to The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory. It must have been in 1981 or thereabouts, stylistically the fag end of the 70s. And like Joe Allen’s, I seem to remember that No. 17, Hanover Square, was hard to find: a hole situated in a dark corner the other side of Vogue House, iron steps leading down to a basement in the speakeasy manner, neon lights, soda-fountain graphics, exposed brickwork, a cocktail bar, brash American waitresses (the real thing, presumably imported en masse from a Chicago diner?), a television screen broadcasting recorded videos of American Football, background chatter courtesy of Chicago’s WFYR radio. And you could pay in dollars; at that time a genuine culture shock, especially when a waitress thrust a ghastly doggy bag in my hand and insisted that we took it away on pain of death.

The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory (“Purveyors of Chicago Pizza to London and the World...”) was the brainchild of Bob Payton, an Anglophile American entrepreneur who- in an inspired eureka moment- cooked up the concept of selling deep pan pizza to the impoverished Brits. The first pie factory was installed in Crown Passage, St James’s, a rancid Dickensian alleyway running between Christie’s and Pall Mall.

As you will remember, deep pan pizza is more like a pie or a quiche: the thick doughy crust is cooked in a special oiled pan, covered in grated mozzarella, filled with toppings such as pepperoni, mushrooms and onions, and then filled in with a thick blended tomato sauce. According to Wikipedia:

"it is often reported that Chicago-style deep-dish pizza was invented at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago, in 1943,by Uno’s founder Ike Sewell, a former University of Texas football star. However, a 1956 article from the Chicago Daily News asserts that Uno’s original pizza chef Rudy Malnati developed the recipe...”

 

A dream-like 1930’s Chicago as re-imagined in The Sting (1973): beautiful set design

 

The Sting again...(1973) 

 

With hindsight, the look of the pie factory was very much a product of the late 1970s: Gangster Chic. There’s a convincing theory that middle-aged marketing types become obsessed with the time as it existed just before they were born, which explains why the American Depression, Chicago Gangsters, Fedoras, Soda Fountains, Art Deco, Cloche Hats, Kipper Ties, Tiffany Lamps (and Chicago Deep Pan Pizza) spawned Ralph Lauren, Jack Clayton’s The Great Gatsby, Biba, The Sting (wonderfully evocative and elegant set design), Bonnie & Clyde, Strikes 1926, Soda Stream and Bugsy Malone; an appealing fashion that began in the 1960s and lasted until the late 70s, and, as with the last gasp of the wonder that was Disco, lingered on until the very early 1980s.

 

Stephanie Farrow, Mia’s little sister and the face of Biba

 

For my father’s 40th birthday party, my mother bought a vast purple feather boa from Biba in High Street, Kensington- like a 20s courtesan, although I doubt if she saw it quite like that. And then some genius had the bright idea to repackage Soda Stream with the hint of a 20s soda fountain: Coca-Cola influenced graphics and little glass bottles with impressed swirls, to which your kiddywinks could add brightly coloured cordials, which, ignoring the goody-goody instructions, you fizzed up by pressing a little button two hundred times, not unlike Gatsby’s butler and the machine that extracted the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.

 

Fat Sam’s Grand Slam: Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (1976) 

 

Alas, the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory is no more, and I can’t remember the last time I ordered a Chicago style deep pan pizza on these shores. 

 

Pinstripe suits and a Yellow Rolls Royce: Ralph Lauren’s take on The Great Gatsby (1974) 

 

 

Too Many Christmas Trees?

 

Steed contemplates the joy of a 1960’s Christmas, “Too Many Christmas Trees”, The Avengers, 1965

 

Fed up with Christmas?  Had enough?  Can’t wait to return to the Blacking Factory?  Does the Counting House call?  Funnily enough, I’m rather fond of this time of year, the ‘in-between’ bit, I mean. The raw, midwinter weather of Boxing Day, with its sporting traditions: hunting, shooting, betting, and the racing on Channel Four. And then the run-up to the New Year; when the Christmas tree’s still up (just!), social media shuts down and your email feed collapses into a meaningless trickle. And you’re left alone. With a fabulous wife and a shoe-munching whippet; a bottle of Veuve yellow label and an old black and white movie. 

London becomes a ghost town: London for Londoners; the deserted streets remind me of old black and white episodes from The Avengers. How I used to love that series!  My all-time favourite episode has to be Too Many Christmas Trees, in which Steed and Mrs Peel spend Christmas at the Gothick country house of a nutcase obsessed with Dickens and Mrs Peel dresses up as a cheeky Oliver Twist. 

Driven by the great god Mammon which everybody, these days, seems to worship without question, the modern focus is on the run-up to Christmas: decorations appear in the London shops while the leaves still cling to the branches of the great planes trees in Berkeley Square.

Historically, of course, the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas Day and ends on January 5th, the Epiphany (January 6th), or even quite possibly, on January 7th, which as the erudite readership of the Spoon knows, is the date of the Russian Orthodox Christmas. I’ve never worked out in my head which is the right day (I’m counting aloud on my fingers as I type) so please feel free to put me right, those of you prepared to confess to a pedantic streak.

Food at this time of year is also a good thing. After all that turkey, all that goose, the soggy Christmas pudding, the migraine-inducing mulled wine and the sulphurous brussel sprout, Something Light is the order of the day.

I’ve cooked my usual cider and honey glazed Christmas Ham (tweaking a recipe issued by the wonder that is Sarah Raven), and once I’ve finished this post, will start making a traditional Germanic Herring Salad. Mrs Aitch has also discovered Forman’s Smoked Salmon pate on the shelves of our local Waitrose in Nine Elms; outstandingly delicious. I cannot stress how addictive this stuff is. 

 

Tamasin Day-Lewis wrote a fascinating article in the Telegraph about H. Forman & Son, the only surviving East End smokery. The tradition of smoking salmon was brought to London by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Scottish smoked salmon only took off later, following developments in fish farming.

But, sorry Scotland, if you want the Real McCoy, Forman’s smokery is the place to go. Known for its “London Cure”, Forman’s uses dry salt rather than chemical brine and stretches the fish to improve the texture with a drip-dry effect.

And so to their Smoked Salmon Pate: it’s amazingly creamy in texture and has a lovely, savoury taste. I see that they make it with Mascarpone cheese, which, I think adds to the creamy taste. Their superior concoction also includes unsalted butter, natural yoghurt, dill and shallots.

Tamasin Day-Lewis gives a recipe to create something similar for yourself, but to be honest, I am such a fan of Forman’s smoked salmon pate, it might be a good plan to hurry along to your local supermarket (both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s stock it) and bag a tub or two for yourself. While stocks last.

 

 

Len Deighton: Making Food Sexy

 

Here’s a post I originally wrote for The Dabbler back in 2013, from a series of features on “Food in the Sixties”:

 

 

Colonel Ross: Champignons? You’re paying ten pence more for a fancy French label. If you want button mushrooms they’re better value on the next shelf.

Harry Palmer: It’s not just the label sir, these do have better flavour.

Colonel Ross (sarcastically): Of course, you’re quite the gourmet, aren’t you Palmer?

The Ipcress File (1965)

I want you to go back in time if you will, to the mid-1960s. To the years when olive oil, famously, could only be tracked down at the local chemist, and Crêpes Suzette was a dish of mystery, savoured only by the likes of the Fab Four and those lucky diners who could afford to splash out at the more desirable restaurants; where at your table, a fawning waiter in a maroon coloured monkey jacket would flambé a steak au poivre.

 

 

Into this culinary desert, strides an egg whisk bearing Harry Palmer, the working class protagonist in Len Deighton’s thriller, The Ipcress File, first published in 1962. Palmer is the perfect anti-hero: vice-versa, a flawed Mister Bond. While Bond holds Her Majesty’s commission in the Senior Service, Palmer scrapes the rank of Sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Bond wears a Walther PPK; Harry Palmer wears National Health Specs. And if fussy old Bond requires his housekeeper to boil the speckled brown egg of a Maran hen for three and a half minutes precisely, Harry Palmer slips Mozart’s Prague onto his trusty record player and whips up an Armagnac soufflé.

 

 

Len Deighton was- is- a man of many talents. He studied at Saint Martin’s before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Ou Est Le Garlic? (his first cookery book, based on his weekly cookery strip for The Observer) was published in 1965. His column appealed to the simplistic and mechanical brains of men: technical, cartoon-like DIY manuals on the fine arts of French and Italian Cuisine. Wannabe sophisticates learnt how to order from an A La Carte Menu (the correct pro-nunc-iation spelt out phonetically), how to stuff a Chou with Tomates, how to deglaze a copper pan, prepare Caneton à l’Orange, cut a cigar correctly (paper band on or off?) and ring up a fancy fishmonger to order smoked eel.

 

 

 

“You’re not the tearaway you think you are” purrs sexy Sue Lloyd during the kitchen scene in The Ipcress File, “You also like books…music…cooking.”

“I like birds best,” says Harry- an unsubtle reminder to a Sixties audience that although Sergeant Palmer appreciates the finer things in life, he reassuringly bats for the home side. At the time, Michael Caine’s character must have seemed remarkably novel, a prototypical yuppy before that depressing acronym had been invented, making it quite clear that it was okay for Real Men to cook, and quite possibly not just okay, but a desirable aid in persuading that voluptuous dollybird in the office (the one you’ve had your eye on for several weeks) to enjoy the delights of your home cooked Rôti de Porc aux Navets, and to climb in between your shiny black nylon sheets after the event.

International Men of Mystery, please take note: The Action Cook Book is still available to buy, albeit via the sinister Kindle. The art of seduction aside, it’s a brilliantly entertaining introduction to decent food, and in our Brave New World of Marks & Spencer microwaved mushroom risotto, this can be no bad thing. Even if Harry Palmer buys tinned Indian Prawn Curry from the supermarket.

 

 

 

 

Last Dinner on The Titanic

 

 

Like so many others with slightly macabre sensibilities, I have a near obsession with The Titanic. And I've had this for as long as I can remember, long before all the recent media hype and the James Cameron blockbuster of 1997.

I've got a very real problem with the latter: am I alone in thinking that this film is an example of the worst possible taste?  A very tragic real-life disaster, in which over a thousand people died, is reduced to a simplistic, anachronistic teen romance, fermented by a trite, retarded script; the Titanic's passenger list reduced to "them" and "us": "them" being the 'orrible upper classes- all cruel snobs with phoney Oxford accents and twirling waxed moustaches, and "us" being the brave, true, noble, kind, hard-working, down-trodden working class, on their way to create a Brave New America- except that they don't, 'cos they all drown at the expense of the cowardly toffs who dress up in drag to get to the life-boats before the women and children.

An interesting historical fact by the way- before we all get too revolutionary here- is that around double the amount of men in Third Class survived when compared to the poor old burghers in Second Class who suffered, I think, the worst survival rate of all, a terrifying 8.33 per cent.

And then there's all that bizarre cruciform spread-eagled arm waving stuff going on in the film, Leonardo and Kate at the bows of the great ship, offset by corny Irish folksy flutey music (why does modern day Hollywood have a thing about this? Although I'll grudgingly admit that the Titanic was made in Belfast) and the wailings- nay, shrieking- courtesy of the Franco-Canadian diva, Ms. Celine Dion.

 

 

A Night to Remember, 1958

No, I don't like "Titanic". Instead, have a look at William McQuitty's excellent A Night to Remember, directed by the late Roy Ward Baker and starring Kenneth More and a very young Honor Blackman (aka Mrs Gale). Yup, it's in black and white, yup, it was made in 1958. Yup, it requires a bit of effort to watch. Yup, it's got Kenneth More with a plummy accent, and it's all very Stiff Upper Lip. These are good things.

The Times today ran an article entitled "The other last supper". The byline said: "...inspired by the final Titanic meal, chefs around the world are serving variations of its first-class menu". Again, although fascinating, isn't this just a little dubious?  Not the Times article, which was interesting, but the idea that restaurants all around the world are staging "Last Dinner on The Titanic" banquets?

In the spirit of all this fun, one of my more recent second-hand buys has been, yes, you guessed it Last Dinner on The Titanic...Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner, by Rick Archbold and Diana McCauley, with a forward by Walter Lord. Walter Lord, by the way, wrote the book on the Titanic disaster, which I would recommend without hesitation.

 

So why not amuse and entertain your boss and his lady wife by inviting them to a Titanic dinner party?  If they're first class guests you could serve them eleven courses, consisting at a glance of: Oysters à la Russe, Poached Salmon with Mousseline sauce, Vegetable Marrow Farci, Chậteau potatoes, Asparagus Salad with Champagne-Saffron vinagrette (I like the sound of this one), and Waldorf pudding. If your guests warrant the second class menu, there's a choice of Baked Haddock with Sharp Sauce, Curried Chicken and Rice, Turnip Purée, Wine Jelly and American Ice Cream. Steerage gets, amongst other things, Roasted Pork with Sage, Vegetable Soup, Green Peas and Plum Pudding with Sweet Sauce.

Here's the recipe for the Asparagus Salad with Champagne-Saffron vinagrette (courtesy of "Last Dinner on The Titanic"):

Snap off the woody ends of the fresh asparagus stalks, and chuck them away. Plunge the asparagus into salted boiling water and cook them for 3 to 5 minutes until tender. Drain them under cold water- which will help to set the colour and will stop them cooking.

Meanwhile, soak some saffron strands in a few teaspoons of boiling water, and let it stand for a few minutes, until the saffron softens (you'll find that the water turns yellow). Stir in about a tablespoon or so of champagne vinegar, half a teaspoon of smooth Dijon mustard and a good pinch of white sugar. Whisk until smooth, and drizzle in three tablespoons of olive oil, until it forms an emulsion. Season with salt and white pepper. Toss with the asparagus and red and/or yellow peppers, finely diced. Arrange on a plate with a selection of designer lettuce leaves- those things in plastic bags you can buy from the supermarkets.

 

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Last Meal on Titanic

"A NIGHT TO REMEMBER" (1958) Review

Wassail

 

 

I've noticed that quite a few readers of The Greasy Spoon have been searching for wassail on the internet. As I'm feeling in a helpful mood, I'm revisiting a post that I wrote last year on the subject. I've also added a nice interactive link to a quirky short film I've found, explaining the wassail tradition in Herefordshire, England. Please take note of my own recipe for Mulled Cider. It's so utterly preferable to the ubiquitous Mulled Wine. I can't stress that enough. Here's the article:

Wassail is a traditional mulled punch, drunk at Christmas-time in the Northern and Germanic countries. Very Nordic. Wassailing can either mean the singing of carols (at Christmas, the serfs would wassail the Lord and Lady of the Manor), or, as in Gloucestershire, and other western counties, the wassailing of an apple tree- to ensure a good harvest, and drive away the evil spirits. This is done on Twelfth Night. I reckon that The Wicker Man was closer to the bone than many people realise. 

Anyway, although I realise that the chances of wassailing an apple tree in down town Vancouver are practically zero, I'm going to give you my recipe for my very own wassail, otherwise known as Mulled Cider. I prefer it to Mulled Wine, I really do. The problem with the wine version, is that many people get it wrong. Very wrong. They chuck in a bottle of plonk, boil it up, and then add all sorts of other dodgy ingredients, including vodka; and the result is an over-acidic, pungent brew which can leave you with a god-awful hangover. 

Mulled Cider is "different", smoother- and in my opinion delicious. There are no rules; but to get the best results, I suggest that you keep it simple. In a large pan, I pour in a decent dryish West Country or Norman organic cider. Try and avoid the cheaper, sweeter, fizzy stuff. Next, I cut an orange in half, and add that. Do the same with a lemon. Now it's time for the spices. A cinnamon stick, a few cloves, nutmeg, and a kernel of ginger would work well. Taste it! If it's too dry, add a bit of brown sugar. Start warming it up. You do not want to boil it. Keep it simmering at just below boiling point. If you boil it, all the alcohol will vapourise away- and you want your party to go with a swing, don't you? If you're going to serve it in glass mugs, make sure that you put a silver spoon in the mug first. This will prevent the glass from shattering. 

If you've got time, decorate the wassail with Lamb's Wool. This is just peeled apple simmered in cider until it goes woolly, and "explodes"; once that's done, you can float the pulp on top of the mulled cider.