PARIS

The city of luurrrrrrrrrve. And wine. And FOOD.

So James and myself took a trip across the channel to Paris for the weekend to experience how to correctly live life and eat food as frequently and as disgustingly as we physically could. And, as I will elaborate upon later, the physical breaking point was certainly discovered…

Anyway! The first night. After grinning inanely at the presence of FREE peanuts that came with our tiny beers, we ate dried saucisson sec, cornichons, goose rillettes, confit of duck and mystery salted meat steak with wine from the Cote de Beaune on red and white checked table top. So basically it was SICKENLY perfect, on a par to the scene from The Lady and the Tramp where the dogs kiss over a string of spaghetti. However, I doubt those Disney dogs were as sozzled as we definitely were.  

The next day, after walking semi unconsciously through Notre dam, we had lunch at Derriere. Derriere is a restaurant set up as a kitch apartment, where you can have dinner in a bedroom, play Ping-Pong in the living room between starter and main course or walk through a wardrobe into a secret smoking room. And the food was amazing- I has salmon tartar with horseradish cream followed by pork leg with mixed forest mushrooms and new potatoes. AND we had an ice-cold bottle of 1998 Sancerre to top it all off. HAHAHAHAH YES we were CERTAINLY beating Paris down into the ground.

But then, well, Derriere suddenly lived up to its name. The salmon tartar that was so glorious gave me the most savage food poisoning that wrote off the third and final day. There is something almost spiritual about revisiting ALL of the food you had eaten in the past two days, perhaps it is the ultimate in food criticism; you REALLY get to think about it again and again and again in a different light. I was crying out “Kill me”, I had visions of a baseball bat swimming through the air toward my temple, ending it all. But James was reluctant to kill me. And I guess that is the sign of a good relationship.

So, no galleries were visited or landmarks seen but I could describe to you in detail the turn of a typical Parisian toilet cistern. It was a purely gastronomic experience with an unfortunate end. But hey ho, Paris is only two hours away! However, it will be a lot longer until I can revisit any uncooked fish.

some words on cheeeeeeeeeese...

Right. If you don’t like cheese, I would stop reading now. About 70% of my waking life involves the handling, slicing, tasting, smelling, wrapping, displaying and selling of cheese. It’s not what I ever thought I would be doing but here we are. So if you don’t like cheese, it sort of undermines my existence in a round about way. And I can do without that kind of negativity. In addition, if you are allergic to cheese (and many people are, the world is a sick place) I wouldn’t bother either as it’ll probably just be boring.

SO cheese. I work in a deli in Broadway Market, Hackney. I am currently in the process of learning about 50+ different cheeses from around Europe. Now it may sound completely inane but I really underestimated cheese as a ‘thing’ before I started selling it. It is a defining factor in a certain way of life. Before I go off on one, I should state that I think cheese is really good and incredibly interesting and we should all eat lots of it. BUT what is even more interesting about working with cheese is ‘Cheese People’. These are the kind of people that come in on a Saturday morning and spend seventy pounds on cheese. SEVENTY pounds. It’s a lot. Buttttttt I suppose if you have the money and cheese means something to you, then that’s fine, its enjoyable, its been a long week, treat yourself! Who I am I to judge? But I do. I do judge.

When I work behind the market stall on a Saturday said ‘Cheese People’ come over and instantly think that I am one of them. I can give them a sample of any random cheese and they take it, looking directly into my eyes, boring into my retinas like in no other social situation. They smile and nod with an amused yet shocked expression: “Well THAT is just amazing, isn’t it?” Of course I agree. I have to. They are about to spend a lot of money and this in turn may reflect well on me. Many people know exactly what they are talking about. They have a modest body of knowledge that you cannot mess with. On the other hand, there are an equal number of people who are simply caught in the rush of market time and would react in the same way to a piece of proffered tarmac. I have the knife and therefore I have the power. Its probably too far to make some sort of cheese stall related world community analogy here, but you may if you wish.

So with cheese being treated like gold in the microcosm within which I spend a lot of my time, the realisation of just how ridiculous people can be comes at the end of the day when I am at home and cheese is a long way out of sight. As I think I have harped on about before, high end products such as cheese and wine generate the commonly termed ‘massive dickhead contingent’. They get off on knowing a little bit of specialised knowledge and practising their sex face whilst eating slithers of Brie. And I suppose people like me lull them into a false sense of security. I confirm the correctness of their facts or big up their musings on the certain taste of a cheese. I play along with the laughter, ooooooo that IS sharp, WOAH that really packs a punch. But the truth is, I AM LYING. I probably don’t know any more than they do about cheese, I am learning and interested but in reality the whole transaction is a farce. People trust the one behind the counter. I am essentially getting paid to pump up someone’s ego. And it comes in at seven pounds an hour.

What do you do when someone farts in wine class?

Well, nothing. I was deadpan. I think it is possibly the most compassionate moment of my life. Cathy, opposite me, was begging me to cave. She was internally DYING with laughter and saw right into me; she knew I was weak, that I would give in and together we would laugh “hahaha YOU FARTED?????? That is UNCOMMON IN PUBLIC@!” But I kept it together. And thank god, as karma is a bitch and I do not want to cross the fart gods in this uncertain time of professional development.

So this eve was Beaujolais; a wine I love but one that has recently dropped in sales and is now deemed ‘unfashionable’. I find this terribly hard to take. Beaujolais Villages, and particularly Georges Dubeauf, is a wine that reminds me of Sunday and my Dad and the first time I realized what wine was AND that I liked it. So there were many people at wine class giving it a hard time and I had to hold my tongue as ACTUALLY thousands of people drink Rose, a substance in my eyes that should be used as floor cleaner and yet here we are, slagging off an 18 pound bottle of hand harvested French wine, simply because the label is too colourful. BITCH PLEASE. And it got worse when we tried a Jacobs Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, nicknamed ‘the alcoholic Ribeena’. Now, I love a good wine and quality is both important and noticeable. But it is a luxury to be able to afford a bottle of wine above six pounds on a student budget. And I think Jacobs Creek do an excellent job of providing good wines that are drinkable with or without food. Perhaps my judgment is clouded somewhat by sentimental memories of buying three bottles of Jacobs Creek for ten pounds at the bottom of Jerningham road in New Cross to accompany a vat of bolognaise that fed the five thousand. (Or just me, Becca and Harriet…) Either way, its easy to judge when you are used to drinking expensive vintages or you naturally put price above substance. This is how the wine industry and wine enthusiasts are tarred with the ‘posh twat’ brush, a brush I am pretty familiar with. So, I am prepared to drink as many bottles of wine as I have to and shout incoherently at as many strangers as I can UNTIL people truly start to believe that the world of wine is changing hands. 

A note on wine...

So I have started a Sommelier course in London Bridge, it lasts roughly 12 weeks and at the end I will take an exam and hopefully have a certified Level Two Sommelier qualification. My first session last week proved to be a pretty eye opening experience. Not only was I completely incorrect in thinking I knew ANYTHING about wine, but I also learnt that men who like to drink wine and talk extensively about it are actually as ignorant as the rest of us, they’re just pissed and loud and have the utter arrogance to say anything enough times that you cave into their opinion. A case in point of this was the weird old wino at the back of classroom who shouted “I taste blueberries!!” at our tutor so many times that she had to pry the tasting glass from his dead lock clamp of a hand and inform him that “no, there are no blueberry traces AT ALL in this wine, perhaps you had a blueberry muffin before class?”. Honest to God, I am not making it up. Aside from that, it was actually really interesting. We tried six different wines, three white, two red and a desert wine, all varying in price and region. We then tasted them with salt, sugar, apple, cheese etc to check for balancing acidities and how to match wine to food. So top insiders tip for you; you can actually have any wine with any kind of food as long as you salt or put lemon juice on your meal. It is not wine that makes food better but actually food that brings out the varying qualities of wine. For instance, red wine is commonly paired with steak because of a presumed affinity in the richness of texture and flavor. However, it is actually the salt on top on your steak that deepens the umami aspect of the meat and that in turn brings out the ‘tannins’ (resonating flavors) of your glass of red wine! Also, Cote De Rhone can be drunk with any meal, its balances with salt, acidity and sweetness and is relatively inexpensive. I also learnt that women are normally better Sommeliers, or more selective tasters than men, as we have more complex taste buds. So LADIES, don’t buy into the masculine dominance surrounding the wine list at restaurants, you have more capacity to choose a nice wine than you know.

So to conclude, the nicest wine I tried at the session was a 2006 Pio Cesare Barolo from Italy, acclaimed to be one of the world’s greatest wines. So if you have £34.99 knocking about, go and pick up a bottle! If not, the Wine and Spirit Education Trust cellar is situated on Bermondsey Street, London Bridge.

Salad=Fluxus

Alison Knowles made the Fluxus statement ‘make a salad’ in 1962. In my opinion, the salad is exactly what the genre denotes: a happening!!!!

Friends will know my passion for salads. The Marks and Spencer Prawn Layer is a particular favorite of mine. In fact, the extent of my passion for the Prawn Layer is such that it could probably be classed as a personal character trait (if it is at all possible to make prawn mayonnaise and grated carrot a tangible extension of your SOUL) Yes, I think salads are important. And I know your first thought; is their appeal purely because of the health sticker attached to them. And in truth, that is part of it. Having a really varied, tasty salad that is filling and aesthetically vibrant makes me feel good about myself. However, it can also make others feel as equally bad. The words ‘I had a salad’ are incredibly loaded and can be akin to a live explosive. “Can I please have the Caeser salad with dressing on the…” BOOOOOOOOM and the sound of flapping pizza dough spinning through the air whilst you get pummeled by Pollo ad Astra and American Hot in Pizza Express. However, there is an alternative side to the salad that most people miss and if played out correctly can change the conception of ‘having a salad’ forever. Salads are made up by lots of individual leaves that create a multitude of tiny nooks and crannies to encase (and hide) loads of different bits of food that taste much better than the actual salad leaves. Try imagining your salad as a porous sponge or maybe one of those fossils with loads of long tubey holes running through it that you bought on school trips to the Butterfly Farm in year five. Basically, something with a multitude of holes into which you can put other things. Because lets be honest, everything tastes better stuffed. So instead of ‘tossing’ your salad, try ‘stuffing’ it! And I have just realized that the past two sentences are full of genuinely unintentional sexual innuendoes. So if you have sniggered even slightly then I think you should take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror.  

peaks and troughs...

Although I spend probably more money than I ought to on eating out, there is a way to try new foods for free and a particular skill of mine; ‘the free sample supermarket sweep’. I can sniff out a free sample within moments of crossing the supermarket threshold and as one’s experience develops, certain stores, times and aisles prove to have a higher success rate than others. Of course to gain access to such knowledge you have to spend a lot of time in supermarkets and that’s fine by me; if I have the money and the time, food shopping can be the highlight of my day. Now, this is the point in my writing where I suddenly realise just how mundane my day-to-day existence can be and seriously consider the pros and cons of exposing this to others. Because if this seemingly obsessive relationship with food costs me my social life, then it will really be my only friend and I’ll be that woman, that woman attached to the crane being pulled out of the front window of a living room, off her face on brie. And in a similar vein, sample sweeping also has its social pitfalls. Within the greatly student populated New Cross the local Sainsbury’s can be a high-risk area. It is quite probable that you bump into someone you used to fancy quite a lot whilst fondling a free miniature hotdog in one hand and a miniscule sample of summer fresh pea risotto in the other, whist trying to pick up a block of cheddar with the nook of your elbow.

In fact, eating in public (planned or not) comes with so many rules and regulations it’s a wonder we all do it so often. For instance, eating on dates. How to deal with this circumstance is entirely down to the individual and although I much bemoan it, the experience can be very different for girls than boys. On first dates many girls will want to give the impression of being a ‘lady’ (pronounced with the Little Britain accent) and as such will order something small and healthy or pick delicately at their meal, feigning fullness after half a salmon fillet whilst internally fighting the urge to grab their partners steak and ram it square in their own mouths. This, however stereotypical it may sound, I am sure will have been experienced by the majority of women. However it is a damn sight better than not eating at all on a date, drinking far too much to mask any sense of nervous awkwardness and thus showing the ‘fun’ side of yourself all too quickly. It is also possible to inadvertently not eat a lot on a date; perhaps the conversation is so involving and exciting that you lose interest in anything else than the other opposite you. Or it may be that you are pretending to be this engaged in your date but what is actually preoccupying all of your thought is the black matter that could potentially be stuck in your teeth. What should happen (and I am sure is the case with many) is that we order exactly what we fancy, eat as much of it as we like and enjoy ourselves. Because if your date cared at all about the level of your appetite or the speck of basil at the top of your front tooth, quite frankly, they don’t deserve to be having dinner with you anyway. They don’t understand you and they never will.

And at this point I realise that to many this could seem like a man bashing rant from a woman possessed and I should clarify that this is not the case, far from it. Men, and particularly young men, have stepped up to the plate (no pun intended) in terms of the culinary arts and from a recent graduate perspective, the sudden surge of interest in food from young male students has only been a great thing. Let the boys cook! As long as we get to eat it. And as long as the cocksure toss of whatever’s in the pan lives up to what they make it out to be.

for forks sake...

As much pleasure and happiness as it brings, food can be a fear and my own worst enemy. Because the desire for it all, like most things in life, is not without its consequences. Mine is in the form of an often sloppy side profile and traumatising shopping trips that can alter your outlook for the rest of the week, month even. However, isn’t it just so boring to talk about it? Again! Most women run a list in their heads of the food eaten in a day, the calories taken in, the days left until the surely life altering social event that we must look noticeably thinner for because this is all that matters. This list runs innumerably throughout the day and takes more mental agility than the average minimum wage job and can be even more depressing. So let’s just not. Pick up the fork, SPEAR LIFE!!!!

What I want to eat NOW/What I like to eat a lot.

-Fish pie- with massive prawns and white fish that melts in folds, with spinach and cream and shit loads of mustard. Accompanied with tender stem broccoli and baked beans.

-Bovril- one of life’s most underrated substances. Meaty, salty, shiny, the beef lover’s marmite taking your breakfast one step further to being a roast dinner if you just imagine hard enough.   

-Tomatoes- in my eyes, the greatest vegetable (yes, I know it’s really a fruit.) Tomatoes know the score and they know you know it too. They make everything better, raw or cooked, and their constant presence in my life is a greatly comforting factor.

-Salt beef bagel from Brick Lane with a slightly warm gherkin and mustard that whistles through your nose as the smooth, chewy bread sticks to the roof of your mouth.

-LOBSTER!- is it the taste that makes it so wonderful? Or is it the image, the pinky redness of a giant crustacean, the operation of its demise or that you are in charge with hammer and clamp? In fact all seafood is just great. Creatures. Eating weird creatures that look kind of like dinosaurs with mayo and chips.

-Roast chicken – it just happens doesn’t it? Inexplicably and all of a sudden you just know how to make a roast dinner. Again I put it down to the mothers and lazy Sundays of youth with nothing to do but pretend to read the Sunday papers and dance around your mum in the kitchen while she balances trays of hot oil and dices carrots and peels parsnips all at the same time.

-Mushrooms- up there with the tomato, just in front of red onion and level pecking with the glorious artichoke. Mushrooms are essentially the steak of the vegetable world and should be revered in the same way.

this evening's late august dinner

A proper start.

The basis of most beginnings is found in the motivation to attain that which is desired. Action is put in place to complete the deed, finish the job, gain the prize. And although these ramblings on the subject of food and wine have no definite finale (or, dare I say it, point,) they have begun from a place of desire, passion even. They are motivated by the highs and lows of a complicated but loving relationship. Because one thing is for definite, my desire is clear: I want it all. I want all the food.

My uncertain but sincere interest in food has accumulated over years of eating well at home and in restaurants, cafes, picnic blankets, service stations… There is nowhere you cannot eat and if there is an M and S within two meters of wherever you may be, I frankly consider it bad manners not to try some alternative alfresco dining. (Although not on the tube, I think this is where I draw the line. It’s a sort of weird unspoken rule isn’t it? Like taking your shoes off in the office or farting openly. In a library.) Yes, I have no shame in exalting Marks and Spencer, it is truly one of my favourite places in the world. I feel at home, I am happy and relaxed within its aisles, I have a system and it always works out pretty well. Worryingly, I think it has got to the point where I physically could not embark on a lengthy train journey without something from Marks, my body would just stop functioning and I would be empty handed and paralysed on the platform watching the doors shut and the train pull away.

I would consider myself a ‘foodie’ in my own terms; that I love eating and I love food.  I think I appreciate what is truly good food, am interested in how it is sourced and produced, and how it can be manipulated. And because of this curiosity I have tested my palate and tried some pretty weird things. This is not to say, however, that I am a food Nazi or indeed that I am an expert, far from it. Sliced goat’s heart is very interesting and exciting to eat but equally I am not going to turn down a slice of Tesco’s wafer thin ham. It’s all good.

I put much of my food enthusiasm down to the excellent knowledge and cookery skill of my mother. She has a natural talent for feeding and although the nearest Italian would probably punch me in the face for saying this; my mum can cook better than your mum. However, hers is not a skill acquired from the firm hand of her own mother like many good female cooks who learn their tricks by the side of a matriarch’s floury apron. Jamie Oliver has more to do with my mother’s excellent cooking than my grandma and therefore perhaps the statement ‘Jamie Oliver can cook better than your mum’ is more apt and, let’s be honest, a pretty safe bet.

The list of my favourite things to eat is endless and ever changing, the scope is vast and I can honestly say that there is nothing I will not eat. If it is meant to be eaten, I will try it. My quest for consumption could be misinterpreted as greed. And I am sure greed, the basic instinct, is a large part of it. But in my eyes eating is one of life’s reassurances, a dead cert; it is the gift of knowing what you want and having the ability to attain this through physical creation i.e. cooking. It is achievement. It is the achievement of dreams! Food and eating is a direct way of assessing ourselves, our inner feelings and what we want. Quite literally, going with your gut.

my first post.

Firstly, I should explain the reasons behind the blog title 'Deli Girl' and to do this I must expertly (after hours of trying to find out how to take a screen shot of it) COPY AND PASTE the email from my Dad that has motivated the whole thing:

From: marksfoster@live.co.uk
To: retro_penguins@hotmail.com
Subject: Your article
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:05:13 +0100

Hi Alannah

Ma read me your article which I thought was - well written, funny and personal. I really think you should start a blog - Deli Girl. You could even get advertising around it - starting with the deli.

Couple of minor observations (sorry for being a pedant) but tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable and mushrooms are a fungus.

I've just tidied up a bit of the spelling and grammar (you seem to have inherited your mother's misunderstanding of the apostrophe) but have left it alone otherwise.
 
One thing you didn't mention was your homing instinct for free samples at supermarkets.

Well done.
Papa
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