Consuming Interest
Share My Dressing
By LESLIE ADRIAN PERHAPS the English, with their deserved re- putation for indiscrimin- ate eating, don't really like the taste of salad vegetables. This is the time of year when the bottles of salad cream are brought out of winter quarters wherever two or three products of the market garden are gath- ered together, and the llegary emulsion is slopped generously about. 1rhe fact that most of the salad cream used in ;..uts country comes out of bottles with wen- nWn labels is partly the fault of the cookery- pu()(31t writers who, for generations, from :cetcin and Eliza Acton onwards, have made b'aYonnaise-making into a mystique. Raw egg riks were thought dangerous once, and oil was r foreigners or the medicine cupboard. Later, ere was much off-putting talk of skill and Pa.tience. The modern writers, scientifically in- clined, prefer to terrify the simple reader with details about kitchen temperatures, the need to !°01 the equipment or stand it all on a block of Ince, and how to chill the oil and unchill the eggs.
author-cook even warns us not to use eggs lee than a day old—so easy a requirement in tile age of the Little Lion. With so much moni- :r51 advice, it is hardly surprising that most t cginners are scared of attempting the simple ask of emulsifying olive oil and egg yolks. „..this is not the place to instruct the would-be 'Xilionnaise-maker in method, except to say that f I he needs is a bowl and a spoon, a small jug the'r the oil, and about ten minutes. However 4,e,re is a splendid little French gadget called the fvuesse, jar with an egg whisk and a drip- :Led, arrangement built into the screw cap) with senieh mayonnaise-making time can be cut to :en minutes. And perhaps even more im- Ztant, this machine makes it possible for the is an of the family to do the mixing (or rather " 'takes it impossible for him to refuse on the grounds of ineptitude) while his overworked mate gets on with the more complex domestic tasks.
I set out to buy this gadget for a friend last week—at the height of the salad and mayonnaise season. After trying three of London's 'best' de- partment stores and two kitchen-equipment shops, I finally ran it to ground where I knew it would be, if anywhere in Britain, Madame Cadec's shop in Greek Street. Price: 21s. (Set- fridge's have a plastic one at 12s. 6d. which seems to me inferior both because it is hard to get mayonnaise off without subjecting the plastic to an unsuitably high temperature, and because the holder would not take enough oil even for one egg yolk's capacity.) Fresh mayonnaise can go off fairly soon, also it is liable to separate if it is kept in the refrigera- tor (unless you can squeeze it into the semi- insulated butter compartment). This is less likely to happen if two tablespoonfuls of boiling water are stirred into the mixture, but if it does, work the separated emulsion into a fresh yolk. Inci- dentally, the Vitesse jar can be used for storing the dressidg as it can be made airtight with an ordinary Kilner top. Similarly, the whisk part can be screwed on to a Kilner jar if the original one gets broken, if only to accommodate visiting children or whip up a sauce more or less tartare to go with fish and chips. • There may be times when even the most exacting epicure has to compromise and reach for the ready-made mayonnaise, and 1 have found that reasonable substitutes can be bought in bottles and tubes—with less well-known I would give top marks to the tubes from the Continent (light is excluded, for one thing, so they keep better than the jars), and I particularly like Kron-Majonnas from Sweden. It is dear at 2s. 6d. for 3-1 oz. but tastes so much more like the real thing than our more familiar brands, with their one-dimensional flavour, either too sharp or too flat.
Other brands with subtler flavours than the average, allowing the ingredients of the salad or meat to have a taste of their own, are Satarad lemon mayonnaise (8 oz. for 2s. 8d.) in date- stamped jars, Rayner's (10 oz. for 4s., a good storage jar when empty) which I found at Jack- son's of Piccadilly, and two American makes, Whiterose and Bennetts, 'both the same price as Salarad.
And for those who live within shopping dis- tance of Soho, Randall and Aubin of Brewer Street make real mayonnaise freshly every day at 4 oz. for Is. 9d. So do Joe Lyons.
You don't have to be a journalist to know the feeling of despair that grips you when your typewriter gives a croupy whirring noise and ceases to move along with each letter, or simply fails to feed tile ribbon to the keys; but the consequences are certainly worse if you need a machine for work and move around a lot into the bargain. My typewriter is a Royal, and the Royal people were happy to lend me another while they mended it—but not a portable. The one I have is old; possibly its days are (or should be) numbered; with this aspect of the matter in mind I have been checking on which brand would do me best if I decided to buy a new one. Olivetti scores best: they will lend either standard or portable models from their showrooms in Kings- way. Underwood and Adler, like Royal. will all lend typewriters, but not portables, as will Low's repair services. Imperial will lend them if they are available, Olympia will not. For anyone in my predicament it seems the best plan is to take the machine to Al City and Suburban, who from their office in Queen Victoria Street, will lend either a standard or a portable, and are not com- mitted to any one make.
Hooray for limes—or rather for Schweppes. Inspired, believe it or not, by this column, Schw.eppes have decided to try importing fresh limes into this country and have promised to let me know when and where they are to be had. Watch this space for the information.
An idea has come in from a publicity handout which seems such a good one that I am eager to pass it on. The suggestion is that old and crurnby suitcases can be re-covered with Fablon, the self- adhesive plastic that costs 3s. 9d. a yard and will stick to any clean surface. I have had large slabs Of the stuff around the bathroom for more that a year without its peeling too .badly; and though I imagine a renovated suitcase might need re- doing every season it would make a cheerful change and, as the people point out, you could certainly pick it out in a crowd. The trouble would probably come at the edges; suitcases with definite bindings might be the best candidates for this sort of face-lift. It would certainly be a nice change to say 'Mine's the yellow check one' instead of 'That rather battered one over there.' I remember a doctor friend of mine used to lacquer suitcases, and attaché cases, and even the toes of his boots; it always cracked almost at once. Obviously this was what he was waitinglor.
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