How to clean a catafalque…

CHRIS BENNETT enjoys a memorable cataclysm.

I AM sitting a cat; to be more precise I am sitting a kitten. That is to say, friends have gone on holiday to the North Coast for a few days and have asked me to take over the life and times of one Millicent.

Now why anyone would want to go on holiday on the North Coast, leaving a lovely home on the South Coast, is quite beyond me.

Maybe it has something to do with the tempo of life. My friends have lately been the recipients of the slings and arrows (not to mention complaints) that accompany a major earthworks exercise. Which is enough to make anyone want a holiday. Anywhere.

But to return to the feline distraction.

Millicent is my name for the cat, although I was tempted by Magnificat and Oedipus; whether or not there is another name has not been discussed.

My cottage has been appraised, weighed in the balance, so to speak, and has been found wanting; but not too seriously.

Clearly there are not enough things to play with, but being of an inventive inclination, that has not stopped Millicent from assuming that everything, especially if it moves, is to be played with.

There are of course certain things that move because they are sentient beings; like me. My extremities (fingers and toes, in case you were wondering) are seriously inviting as claw and teeth sharpeners, but they don’t move enough.

As for the bee that had the misfortune to buzz through the sunshine of the French windows and investigate the reading room, little could have been so amazing a source of fascination.

I am not sure that Millicent had seen, or heard, a bee before, but on this occasion, morning one, the event was a revelation; a marvel to behold. Not only did this thing move and buzz – it flew in circles, arabesques and sweeping glissandos. Or maybe that should be glissandi.

It had to be caught. After a few minutes of dancing on hind legs, shadow boxing and flying in circles, arabesques and sweeping glissandos, Millicent fell off the settee. There was a moment of quiet nonchalance and a brief, rather self-conscious, cleaning of paws. This, obviously, is the feline equivalent of profound embarrassment.

The bee, clearly annoyed to a hereto unknown pitch of buzz, flew out the French windows.

Back on the settee, Millicent gazed out of the slightly open widow. One of the little wooden knobs on a string that operate the Venetian blinds shivered in the breeze. Millicent bristled. Clearly this was going to be even better than the bee.

A few perfunctory grabs, and misses, were performed; then Millicent, who has quite obviously been reading the papers, decided that what was needed here was an end game. I should add that it is also quite obvious that she is a dab paw at chess.

What followed happened rather too quickly for a detailed description, but after a quick shot at decision making the offensive was launched. Millicent leaped onto the Venetian blind; the Venetian blind, on the other hand, was quite prepared. It flipped; literally.

Millicent was floored: her strategy was manifestly even more flawed. She returned to the subject of clean paws as if she had never left off.

Millicent impinges on the tranquillity of my life, and I can’t help thinking that it is about time something did.

I have on occasion related a bon mot that I read long ago, “Dogs have owners; cats have staff”.

Well, I was looking for a job anyway.

CB

25/3/11

Say cheese…

CHRIS BENNETT has been thinking about the ultimate comfort food.

A SMILE is always in order when anyone says “Say cheese”. It was a photographer’s device, especially in the early days of the art when the subject had to be still for a few seconds, to evince a smile and relax those being photographed. Now that the awkwardness of posing for pics has gone out of fashion, thank heavens, we see more natural images.

I have always been very partial to cheese, as are most in my family. Its uses are endless, almost, and its variety is astonishing. We have a fine range of locally made cheeses here on the South Coast, most of which are widely available, although some supermarkets seem unaware of what we make. There is at least one that has a very limited selection of South African soft cheeses, but most are fairly good. Perhaps the most comprehensive selection, both imported and local, is to be found at the supermarket in the Hibiscus Centre.

Number one for me is a good cheddar, and number two a good camembert.

We make brilliant camembert in this country, in the Cape winelands; the best to my mind is the Simonsberg cheese with green peppercorns. It is not all that easy to find, but the major supermarkets sometimes have it. Like several of the canoe farms they have an attractive website which is worth a look. Google it.

I met with one argument that ran along these lines: soft cheeses, camembert and brie, have limited appeal here. I think that is nonsense. I might agree that they are an acquired taste, but it doesn’t take much acquiring.

Cheddar is not so easy to buy, not a good one anyway. Some makers freeze the cheese which tends to increase its crumbliness and make it difficult to grate. Most makes are adequate.

For my taste cheddar and parmesan make the most useful cooking cheeses. If you want to make cheese sauce, and I do quite often, then a local cheddar is perfect. Use butter to make the roux and add a teaspoon of English mustard to the finished sauce, stirring it thoroughly. A splash of bee does no harm either.

I buy parmesan in a lump and grate it myself. I find the ready grated stuff doesn’t keep. And let’s face it; if you can’t be bothered to grate a bit of cheese then you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.

Like so many foods, likes and dislikes abound when it comes to cheeses. I am not fond of the rubbery cheeses from Holland, but, when I can get it or afford it, I will use Emmenthal or Gruyère, both of which are Swiss. They have a rich, tangy flavour, and in winter make a beautiful fondue, for which a dry white Cape wine does very nicely.

Cheese has been around for a long time.

Because of a lack of evidence there is no agreement on when and where cheese first appeared. History tells us that it was already a well developed craft by the time the Roman Empire came into being some two thousand years ago.

Some boffins have out the emergence of cheese making as far back as 10 000 years ago (there is nothing quite like a well aged cheddar).

It is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.

But maybe that is a little more information than you really needed.

Research: Classic Cheese Cookery: Peter Graham; Penguin, London, 1995; Cheese Cooking and Entertaining: Jill Croxford; Pelham Books, London, 1975; Wikipedia.

CB

18/3/11

Food for words…

CHRIS BENNETT looks back on a couple of old books…

I HAVE a small collection of cookery books. It is housed in a purpose-built bookshelf on one side of my kitchen, far enough away from the hob and the kitchen sinks to be safe.

Cookery books have been a very important part of my life since early childhood, and they remain so to this day. I suppose it is just another aspect of my voracious appetite for reading, which is at least less fattening than a voracious appetite for food.

Last Friday, doing duty in the little library in my village I spent the two hours listening to the Mozart C Minor mass, a most glorious ensemble of notes and voices, and reading the obituaries in the Telegraph.

There is nothing odd in this; a tad unusual I will grant you, but not odd.

Obituaries are startlingly revealing when well written; needless to say, in the Telegraph they are very well written.

I reread, with huge pleasure, the obit of Keith Floyd, the English TV chef who died in 2009, a year with special association for me.

I also read the obit of Jay Landesman, a rather notorious American who longed for celebrity “but forgot to do much that merited lasting fame”.

When I got the part that described how, at 14 years old, he had had a nervous breakdown triggered by a plate of prunes, my heart was won.

Years later there was an occasion when he had waited long enough in a steakhouse for the waitress to bring his pudding.

When she eventually arrived Landesman said to the waitress, "Madame, do you realise your aggressive delay in bringing my Black Forest gateau has undone 32 years of psychoanalysis? If I relapse into a pre-oedipal stage, it will be your fault!"

There appears to be no record of the good woman’s reaction, but a nervous breakdown might have been in order.

Browsing the cookery bookshelf last week I came across a small volume that I had acquired at a Volks auction* years ago as part of a mixed lot. It was the Book of the Frying Pan by Phillip Harben, published in 1960 by The Bodley Head.

Mr Harben was the first TV cook of which I was aware; that would have been sometime around 1958. A few years later, as a newsreader and announcer with the BBC in London, I was to work with his daughter Pippa, a studio manager, a most exalted role in broadcasting.

The book is simply illustrated, quite practical and down to earth. I tried the soda bread recipe and found his timings a bit wide of the mark; otherwise the bread was OK.

Books about food have come a long way since 1950, when one of the most important of the 20^th century was published.

I say most important because the war had ended only four years earlier.

Moods in Britain were low and when a recently repatriated Mrs E. David released A Book of Mediterranean Food (John Lehman; 1950) it was well received. The book was an expression of her experiences with the food of the Mediterranean, where she spent the war years in Greece, Crete, Alexandria and Cairo. That highly respected Sunday paper The Observer said in its review, “Mrs David has assembled as potent a bundle of spells as ever made a culinary Witches’ Sabbath … (the book) deserves to become the familiar companion of all who seek uninhibited excitement in the kitchen.” And it did.

To her overwhelming delight Elizabeth David received a letter of glowing praise from one of the greatest of British novelists, Evelyn Waugh.

*The Pretoria auction house Volks conducted some magnificent book sales in the days when I was a bookseller; maybe they still do.

CB

11/3/11