A small selection of the many things that have happened to Dan Sumption, his family, friends and colleagues
It had got dirtier since our last visit.
But we had a room on the top floor. On the corner.
There is more to tell.
With lots of pictures.
Read it now. Especially the “alt” tags. If you know what “alt” tags are. I’m not sure that I do.
Something about screaming “look at this” louder than anyone else, and giant fingernails strafing the bedspread, and all that blood reabsorbed, sucked back in month-by-month piling up the pressure, and getting halfway there but still no closer, and this is my story but where’s the story. And suddenly, the wind dropped and everyone returned to their business. And the next day, it meant nuffink to no-one.
Beautiful memories!
I just had the most gorgeous moment. I’m listening properly for the first time to all three volumes of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. And then I heard it. That haunting too-high voice wailing “No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir…”. It’s a track called “The Spanish Merchant’s Daughter” by The Stoneman Family. And I’ve never heard it in full before, but I heard the chorus many a time on the gloriously surreal thewoodcutter.com, probably my all-time favourite ever website and now, like the company that made it, Bullseye Art, sadly deceased and replaced with “Raw Power”, a very much more commercial and less obscene version of Bullseye. There was one point in the beyond-surreal adventure-game-like trip around the island that was The Woodcutter, where the Woodcutter himself ascended into the sky and became part of a kind of religious scene, with this chorus playing over it. So now, even though I may never see The Woodcutter again <sniff> at least I can listen to his inspiring music.
…I now have a large vat of very tasty smelling duck stock. Lots of soups in the days to come… anyone got any suggestions? For lunch today I think I’ll have a Swiss (Schwyz)-style rice and chestnut soup (OK, it’s supposed to be beef stock, but waddya think I am, a fucking masochist?)
Speaking of beef, I tried a bit of steak last week. It was actually OK, nothing like the beef, though still not great as meat goes, a bit stringy. At the same meal, I had black pudding and apples - not a spot on the ones Mark had at South, and not a spot on the ones I’m gonna cook as soon as I get hold of some black pudding - and I had duck with winter vegetables: the duck was a bit tough, again not a spot on the one I cooked, but the veggies must have been ultra-fresh because I have never tasted such flavoursome and perfectly-steamed broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, turnip and brussels-sprout. The carrot had a flavour of brazil nut, gorgeous.
Ha! That got your attention, didn’t it. Well, I guess it’s not 100% true yet, but I am become increasingly keen on it. Meat that’s properly cooked, that is (it’s not hard to get right, but on the other hand it’s very easy to get wrong).
Yesterday I cooked my first ever bit of meaty meat - some lamb’s liver. I fried it in butter for a couple of minutes either side, which I reckon would have been perfect (I was guessing completely), but I was a little worried that it might still be raw in the middle, so I chucked it in the pan for a little longer. I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t too bad, still had a tinge of pink to the centre, but I reckon if I’d taken it out when my intuition told me to then I’d have been pretty much spot on. Deglazed the pan with a swirl of red wine and used that for the sauce. Ate it pretty much on its own, just a little salad in a side-bowl. I haven’t eaten liver since I was five or six - I remember it being my favourite meat, even though everyone else I know seemed to hate it. One bite and that old familiar musty blood/iron taste came back to me. A bit overpowering at first, but after a night of ruminating on it I started to love it again, in my mind at least. Gill won’t touch the stuff though.
Today I roasted a duck. A whole gressingham duck. First bird I have ever cooked in my life. I was very nervous, as I hadn’t a clue where to start, but I delved into a couple of recipe books, delved about online, and pieced together what seemed to be the best duck-cooking tips I could find. Chief among these was Nigella’s, to boil the duck first. So this morning I stuck the duck in our biggest Le Creuset casserole dish along with a load of boiling salted water. simmered it, covered, for half-an-hour. Then I lifted it out carefully (with a cradle of wooden spoons), wrapped it in a tea-towel to dry it off, and cooled it for the rest of the day (rather than stick it in the rather full fridge, I just carried it upstairs where, due to the ongoing building work, the heating’s been off for yonks and it’s barely above zero. I also put it near the de-humidifier, in the hope that it would suck out a little more moisture, something which I gather helps make the skin come out crispy.
I then started on the sauce - Delia Smith’s Confit of Cranberries. A gorgeous cranberry/orange smell permeated the house for the rest of the day.
This evening, I whacked the fan oven on at 220°C, gave it a chance to get fully up to heat, and put the dried duck (sprinkled with Maldon salt) in on a big tray, and started parboiling some potatoes. After 10 minutes I stuck them in with the duck. Another 40 minutes and the lot was done. I know I should have rested the duck for 20 minutes or so after taking it out of the oven, but I couldn’t be arsed. I started carving bits off it (something I cannot do to save my life) and tucked in. It was awesome, perfect - if I do say so myself (actually, Gill said it before me). The only time I’ve eaten better duck was when Guy had some Chinese crispy duck at Zen . The flesh was tender, not in the least dry (though a hint more pink would have been nice), and the skin was as crispy as anything that comes out of a Golden Wonder packet. Ate it with the potatoes and confit, plus some steamed brocolli and cabbage and a glass of red organic Rioja. And now, a couple of hours later, I’ve got that lovely warm ducky taste in my mouth that tells me that was a really good meal.
OK, so that Atkins malarkey lasted even shorter than I’d expected. I mainly bowed to social pressure - phoned Mark up and he said he refused to talk to me if I came to London and wouldn’t eat potatoes dauphinoise. Fair ’nuff. Also, I was feeling shit, carbohyrate-shortage headache was coming on, and I was too weak to push Lola up the hill in her pushchair. OK, next stop paleolithic diet. Another one that makes kinda sense.
This isn’t going to work. I can’t stand meat.
OK, let me clarify. I quite like thin pig-like meat - I’ve had bacon, prosciuttio-like wild boar, and salami, and I find all of those quite palatable. Pork chops, on the other hand, just make me think of pig fat. Anything made of cow tastes absolutely disgusting. The Venison I had at Juniper was good, but those sausages left my mouth cloyed with grease all night and I couldn’t contemplate anything similar again. The thought of chicken makes me retch, partly because of the tray-load of chickens that Greta burnt in our house earlier this year, the smell of burnt chicken fat is almost as strong in my mind as the piggy version, partly because chicken seems less meat and more mass-produced factory product. Other poultry I could probably handle quite well - the pheasants we had last Christmas weren’t bad, and I’m quite tempted to try goose and quail. Lamb I imagine is quite nice, but again a bit too meaty (=brown) for me and reminds me of picking strands of mutton from between my teeth when I was about three years old.
I think I’m gonna have tofu stir-fry for dinner. Breakfast was a big salad with feta cheese and soft-boiled egg. Think I need to get some salami and some nice ham.
Some cool daily tips on advent etiquette from Meg and Anna at meish.org.
Woy! I want a digital sundial!
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