Life Less Literary

Recently, something strange has happened to me. I’ve started liking chocolate.

I’ve always liked chocolate - I mean, if you offer me some I’ll happily take it, and when I eat it I’m constantly surprised at how good it actually tastes. But recently it’s gone further than that. My chocolate-desire is at levels that I’d more normally associate with Gill. I’ve found myself lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, and suddenly realising that what I really need is chocolate. It’s even more compelling than Halva.

This all came to a head at the end of my trip to Amsterdam. There I was in the airport, with time to kill, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel the need to fill my house with more varieties of alcohol that I’ll probably never drink but definitely regret if I do. Instead, I bought three large bars of chocolate - some premium Lindt, milk chocolate with hazelnuts for me and Gill, white chocolate for the kids, and then another bar of cheaper but ever-so-slightly larger (all bars were around half a kilo) choc with hazelnuts for me to eat “on the journey”. And not only have I polished most of these off, I’ve even been eating the kids’ stuff.

This feels like an incipient addiction.

I bought one of those big round pumpkin-type winter squashes the other day. It’s proved very handy at lunch-times, provided I remember to stick a piece in the oven half-an-hour before I want to eat.

Here’s what I do: cut a segment from the squash, scoop out the seeds, scatter some stuff over it (I’ve been using a few olives, a bulb of garlic, some cubes of feta cheese, maybe a few nuts, I think I’m gonna try some chilli sauce) then stick it on a baking tray, drizzle some oil over and put it in the oven. Then 30 minutes later I take it out, put it on a plate, mash the topping into the squash (or should that be squash the topping into a mash?) and eat the lot of it (once it’s cooled a little). You can even eat the skin - although it’s a little tougher than the rest, it’s quite palatable after a while in the oven.

Not exactly haute cuisine, but it tastes bloody nice, feels like a proper meal, and is easier to cook than pretty much anything else I can imagine.

Oh my. Metafilter has a list of foodblogs. More than all I can eat, or shake a large wok at.

Mmmm… just polished off a kilo pot of Halva. OK, not all in one go, but close enough (when I was at university, and vegan, every lunchtime I would go to the Fry Haldane health food shop in the Student Union’s and buy a huge bag (about half a kilo) of bombay mix and a similarly huge lump (maybe 250g) of halva. That was my lunch (I’m sure I must’ve drunk a lot to wash it down as well - you’d have to, wouldn’t you?)

But the weekend’s Observer Food Monthly special on Nigel Slater’s autobiography got me thinking more closely about my relationship with Halva. It is one of the earliest foods I remember, and one of the greatest treats, although like many such early treats when I rediscovered it after many years away it didn’t seem quite so magical as before. Whenever I saw my grandma from my earliest memories or earlier she would bring me and my sister the same treats - crystallised rose and violet petals, pine nuts, and halva. Pine nuts were also, on rediscovery, quite lovely but rather cloying to eat more than four or five in one session. The crystallised flowers I haven’t yet re-discovered - probably be a disappointment when I do, but I’m very tempted to try tracking them down.

Cooked some food the other night - lovely millenium cookbook recipe for some kinda mexican bean casserole thingy sandwiched between corn pancakey layers and drizzled with sweet chilli sauce and coriander “cream”. Invented my own bizarre desert to follow - baked figs, topped and tailed with slices of lemon and with some bizarre kumquatty-type things the name of which escapes me speared through them, all dusted with a little brown sugar & lime zest and then floated in strawberry and plum sauce. Not bad.

Last Friday night was drinking night. Unusually, I didn’t need to dash and catch a train back to Sheffield - Gill had brought Rowan & Lola to London, and was coming to meet me later. We trickled out of the office towards the Cod, as is becoming habitual on a Friday night (and many other nights, come to that). As well as the usual suspects (mainly Mark, but various other hard reality degenerates) we had two guests: Arnon & Bjarni from Icelandic company innn.

I had drunk with Icelandics before. People from sub-arctic countries seem to have an incredible love of vodka, and in Iceland, which is about as sub-arctic as they come, this love is even more intense that the Finns, Poles or Russians (OK, maybe they draw with the Russians). Well, things started off fairly gently - the usual 3 or 4 bottles of champagne, all quite manageable. Then BJ’s friend, also from Iceland, turned up, and talk turned to another friend who downed 78 vodka shots in succession and not only survived but walked away from the scene. And for some reason (no doubt provoked by Mark) things started to turn silly.

The cause of this silliness was our introduction to Russian Cocaine. I haven’t managed to find a description of this cocktail anywhere else on the web (actually, cocktail is the wrong word, it’s more a drinking method) so I though I’d present it here, as a general disservice to the world.

The drink part is simple - pure vodka. I think we were drinking quadruple shots, although it may just have been doubles of the Cod’s exceedingly generous measures. In a shot glass. On its own. The interesting part, as with tequila, is in the external ingredients.

Take two slices of lemons (we made do with wedges, but apparently slices are de rigeur). On one of these slices, sprinkle ground coffee (as much as you can fit) and sugar. Sandwich the second slice on top - you now have a coffee-sugar sandwich in Lemon “bread”.

Munch on your lemon sandwich - take a good bite, devour all of the flesh (and dissolving coffee & sugar with it), swallow it and immediately chase it down with the vodka (in one go, of course). And enjoy.

The immediate feeling is one of instant awakeness, awareness, and hyperactivity. Followed some 15-20 minutes later by failure of the legs followed by inability to control the brain.

The reason for the ingredients is, apparently, as follows:

1. The lemon opens up whatever it is inside you that’s going to act as a receptor to this stuff
2. The coffee perks you up with an instant caffeine hit
3. The sugar gives you a burst of energy
4. The vodka… well, the vodka does the rest.

And that’s it. I can’t remember any more of the evening. Sure it was good though.