Table Talk

By alice | May 11, 2008

This was Jackie’s idea, and a very good one too- so good, I’m actually going to tag people for the first time ever! Read on:

What’s your favourite table?

My own. Although I haven’t actually had a proper dinner party for about a decade, which is terrible. In those days, the raggedy bunch of oddballs who called themselves my friends and I would gather in my Camberwell flat for steak with wine and cream sauce and potato gratin with more cream and cheese, followed by banoffee pie with extra cream. Between courses, we smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank extra wine, and at the end there were tarot card readings and singing sessions from the English Hymnal (for fun, not religious purposes). If musicians were present, in 4 part harmony (which in my view is the most fun you can have as a musician).

It all seemed more normal at the time.

What would you have for your last supper?

If I knew it was my last supper, there is no way I could eat. Although I might be tempted to down a few margaritas.

What’s your poison?

Margaritas. My favourite ones are from Guero’s. Normally just two. Three (don’t recall ever having had more) and I wake up in the middle of the night wanting to scale sheer rock faces.

Name your three desert island ingredients.

Onions, olive oil and garlic. Nice and healthy, goes with everything.

What would you put in Room 101?

Quite a lot of things, I’m afraid. Certain foods smell very intensely unpleasant to me, and the idea of tasting them is even worse: cooked eggs, most cooked green vegetables, institutional meat dishes (invariably cheap ones, so maybe it’s the chemicals), and sauces with indistinguishable flavourings which seem to confuse my nose (?).

Which book gets you cooking?

In total agreement with Jackie on this one- Nigel and Nigella. That’s the first time I noticed the coincidence about their names. Although sometimes Nigella does go overboard on the prosaic voluptuousness, I think.

What’s your dream dinner party line-up?

Pedro Almodóvar, Alan Cummings, Derek Jarman, Eugene Hutz, Colin Greenwood and Jackie Danicki. Most of them because their art makes me happy, except Colin because I could return a book borrowed from him at college which I still feel embarrassed about (although his music is admittedly extremely good too), and Jackie because it’s ridiculous we haven’t met already.

What was your childhood teatime treat?

Toast, made from everlasting sliced white bread out of a plastic packet, with the butter melted. You can’t beat toast, really.

What was your most memorable meal?

When I was a student, I went to a dessert thrown by two of the dons. Dessert consisted of bowls of fruit accompanied by three sorts of wine that you passed around the table. Everyone had three glasses, and either the port or something else red went anticlockwise. After mixing a few of these the maths became quite impossible, and getting out of the room even more impossible, because all the doors were panelled to look like walls, and it was dark from heavily stained glass windows, with only candles on the tables. I was sitting next to Dr Adamson and some men I did not know at all, and left during the Genesis (band not book) conversation. It was a long walk back to my room.

What was your biggest food disaster?

Trying to grate the zest of 30 lemons for a dessert for my wedding party in my mother’s kitchen with her 50-year old totally blunt cheese grater. Should have expected it in advance.

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?

Those processed pork pretend ribs covered in barbecue sauce they gave us at boarding school in the 80’s. Anyone around my age will probably remember them though. You burp them up for hours afterwards. Everyone loved them at the time, but we were pretty desperate.

Who’s your food hero/food villain?

My food hero was definitely Gordom Ramsay for saving all those restaurants in his show, until he went completely bonkers last week. Still in shock about that, to be honest. Don’t have a food villain.

Nigella or Delia?

Obviously Nigella. Also, Delia is another one who has gone nuts lately, with her new show about cooking out of tins etc.

Vegetarians: genius or madness?

I really do not care.

Fast food or fresh food?

I hate this dichotomy. What’s wrong with great bread, cheese, cold meat/ fish, fruit, salad etc if you don’t want to cook??

Who would you most like to cook for?

My husband. And tomorrow, I probably will! Lucky me.

What would you cook to impress a date?

Ah, you have to be careful on a date not to leave your victim groaning with cholesterol, unable to snog. Maybe a steak salad and three kinds of sorbet that don’t upstage your outfit.

Make a wish.

Whole Foods starts selling Bendicks Bittermints.

tagged: Shefaly, Sean, Greg and Beth.

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5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Table Talk”

Jackie Danicki Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 1:25 am

It was such a treat to read your answers! And I am totally overwhelmed to be invited to any table with you. We will make it happen this year, some place or another, I suspect.

Meme: Table Talk « La Vie Quotidienne Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 4:43 am

[...] Shefaly @ 9:43 am Tags: food, meme Alice, over at The Mad Housewife, has tagged me to continue a meme that Jackie Danicki started with inspiration from the [...]

Shefaly Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 4:57 am

What a fascinating meme! Jackie had a great idea and I think Guardian will do well to pick these responses and publish them, as she suggests.

I have done my bit. Thanks for tagging me.

gcotharn Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Whew, I used up too much time on this, mainly b/c I started skimming around Shafaly’s blogs, which I enjoyed very much! Thanks Alice for the tag. Like you, I love Margaritas, and I love these ingredients: onions, olive oil, and garlic. And, maybe similar to something you wrote: there’s a packaged snack food in the Southern U.S.: pork rinds, which I find horrifying to taste, and also horrifying when considering the poisonousness of ingesting it. http://theendzone.blogspot.com/2008/05/cookingfood-meme.html

Meme: Table Talk Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 1:36 am

[...] over at The Mad Housewife, has tagged me to continue a meme that Jackie Danicki started with inspiration from the [...]