Imperative cooking: simply grilled lamb chops , .14 101 Lif.4.— I REMEMBER asking
my father once what a chap should order when invited to a restaurant he did not know or trust. The reply was instant, 'grilled lamb chops'. The thinking behind the reply was sensible. Grilled lamb chops are easy so it does not matter if the chef is incompetent. About the only way they can go wrong is if they are overcooked, and even that does not matter as much with grilled lamb as it does With, say, chicken or steak. And no one does anything to grilled lamb chops. There are no added hazards.
This was in the late Fifties. I'm not sure it's good advice now, because now one can't rely on anything being left alone. The other day I was taken to a London brasserie. The food was actually quite good — for a restaurant. My host ordered a fairly plain bass. It looked fine except it had a dry wiz- ened twig stuck in it, a branch of some sort with its base stuck into the fish and its own little branches drooping down from the stem. We both peered over it to see what this twig was, then immediately had to sit back. The waiter had returned, placed him- self side on to the table, reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a glittering object. In the same movement he extended his arm across the table in that confident way waiters have. Was it a corkscrew? The bottle was open. As we watched open- mouthed, he proceeded to set light to the twig with his cigarette lighter. Gradually, a stream of black smoke started to waft its way upwards. We peered forward again to get the smell. It was obviously sage or rose- mary but so withered and dry we had not seen which in our brief glimpse before its ignition. We were doomed not to smell either. For suddenly a draught made the black smoke take a sharp turn to the right. It set off down the restaurant to halt as a little cloud over two lunchers who, I am sure, were eating something that doesn't go with sage or rosemary. Not that bass needs them either.
Today, then, even the simplest dishes are unpredictable in restaurants and at home where people increasingly imitate restau- rants. I expect Saturday night dinner party hosts from Clapham to Hampstead are even now planning to stick dried twigs in their grilled lamb chops, practising pulling their lighters from their pockets with the right flourish and opening and shutting their doors and windows so the black cloud rests over the appropriate dish. And that won't be enough messing about to satisfy them. There will be a sauce or coulis, maybe two or three, of different colours, fruit fresh or dried, perhaps a glaze or two and a whole kaleidoscope of 'roast' vegetables.
Even so, the news that he was to be given grilled lamb chops would not terrify an Imperative Cook. To find the most terrify- ing dishes simply reverse the first two rules of Anderson senior. It should be something difficult to buy and cook where mistakes have disastrous consequences. Game in general and hare in particular are good and topical instances. And they are even more dangerous because you will be proudly told, `I got it especially for you. I know it's one of your favourites.' This means both that you will be expected to eat a lot of it and that the list of polite excuses for not doing so is very reduced. You can't say you don't like hare. They know you do.
The best thing is to come clean. 'Look, you may have got it and cooked it specially for me but you could not be bothered to shoot it yourself or buy it from someone who had. You bought it skinned and gutted and unhung. You did not add any fat pork. So it is dry as a desert. It sort of stuffs up the mouth like damp cardboard. And it's tough. Because you bought it as you did, you did not find out how old it was. I'd say three years. That needs six hours. And you were too mean to put a whole bottle of heavy red in with it. For goodness' sake. It weighs seven pounds. It needs a lot of good liquid. What we have here is water, water unflavoured by the hare because it has been cooked too little, water without the blood because your second-rate butcher had not kept it. Cardboard in light brown water.
Why don't you do something which taxes your limited knowledge and trivial commit- ment rather less? What about grilled lamb chops? There's this thing you can do with a twig of sage and a lighter. . . ' Don't worry, they won't take offence. They think you are joking.
Digby Anderson
Previous page
