Word from the land of always something

 

Word came to Americans some time in

the evening of the 18th that a hold-

out against replacement on the high

court had passed from the scene, al-

lowing speculation of whether, how,

when, by whom something definitive

would be done about this. This was

not the first intrusion on a wedding

anniversary of mine, when a highly

presentable plate of rognons de veau

was first served to me on the night

of my farewell to the East Coast. I

found myself back here eventually,

unmarried, and although cured of com-

memorating occasions with food, still

easily consoled by a determined defer-

ence to offal.

This latest bulletin in the struggle

for power in the United States found

me just as glad to be able to rely on

my friends already to be in earnest,

plotting various interventions. No 

one had telephoned me, anguished to

be reminded, how to breathe, and I

found myself managing equally well,

once I'd recalled the virtues of 

fresh coffee. Not for this house-

hold, then, will hands be wrung in

wonder of what will become of life

for another 40 terms of this court;

no swooning on the indignity of the

present power structure's swan song

of bottomless villainy. Possibly,

some frantic defections from that

cabal can be negotiated; possibly

a bolt of gastronomic clarity will

descend upon the illumination of

well-grazed kidneys, but in any

case, calving season will return, 

in all its telling raucousness.

For more than 50 years, a tenuous

claim to a position in the general

population and an ill-bred fixation

on the mythology of judicial review

have left me with the conviction 

set out above, that one's time can

much more securely be invested in

a study of the classics in cuisine

than in the tergiversations of a

casuist tradition under demagog-

ic appointment. Enough, please, 

of heroes of magical powers. Win

games, breed good beasts, honor

reality. 

Now. That's revenge.

A box of captain's biscuits, nearly full

"Rat," he moaned, "how about your supper, you poor, cold, hungry, weary animal? I've nothing to give you - nothing - not a crumb!"

"What a fellow you are for giving in!" said the Rat reproachfully. "Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kitchen dresser, quite distinctly; and everybody knows that means there are sardines about somewhere in the neighbourhood. Rouse yourself! Pull yourself together, and come with me and forage."

They went and foraged accordingly, hunting through every cupboard and turning out every drawer. The result was not so very depressing after all, though of course it might have been better; a tin of sardines - a box of captain's biscuits, nearly full - and a German sausage encased in silver paper.

"There's a banquet for you!" observed the rat, as he arranged the table. "I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting down to supper with us tonight!"                             

  Look, what thy memory cannot contain

  Commit to these waste blanks, and

    thou shalt find

  Those children nursed, deliver'd

    from thy brain,

  To take a new acquaintance

    of thy mind.

  

John Julius Norwich

An English Christmas

  Kenneth Grahame

  The Wind in the Willows

  1908

John Murray, 2017©

Christmas Crackers

  Commonplace Selections

    William Shakespeare

    Sonnet 77

    1609

Allen Lane/Penguin, 1980©

Sunday nibbled sleeve x: What's become of the bacon?

We, too, are acquainted with students

of metallurgy who feel the art reached

its apogee in relevance, by isolating

the culinary properties of cast iron,

copper, aluminum, and the molecular an-

omaly, steel, stainless and not. Lit-

erature in their distinctions has been

molded heatedly in the dies of each

of these elements, with a tendentious-

ness which, in calmer times, would em-

barrass any reader. Today, such texts

seem no more than drawn from familiar

kilns of irreconcilable conceit, jaded

by forgetfulness of the subject itself.

Why've they lost the bacon, we ask ap-

ologetically, not to suggest ingestion.

          In a large cast-iron cocotte, render the fat from

          the bacon over medium-low heat until the edges of

          the bacon are crispy. Remove the bacon to a large

          bowl, leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Increase

          the heat to medium high. Add the beef to the fat in

          the pan and brown it on all sides. Remove the beef

          from the pan to the bowl with the bacon. [Now, pay

          close attention for a lapse in content]. Add the on-

          ion, carrots, celery, and mushrooms to the pan. Re-

          duce the heat to medium and cook for 5 to 7 minutes,

          until softened. Add the garlic and cook for another

          30 seconds, or until aromatic. Remove vegetables

          from the pan to the bowl with the beef.

In the past week, we were treated to

four broadcast hours of discussion os-

tensibly of the ends of political ves-

sels, with only the most fleeting nod

to their content. We were treated, in-

stead, just to the fond appreciation

of their properties, as if a boeuf

bourguignon were proprietarily an ex-

pression of their own anatomy. And yet,

what did they do with the bacon in the

shell game we were witnessing, and who

will ever get their answer? Once, there

was a bowl with the beef and the bacon.

Then there was not. Accidental lapse, 

or just more self-absorbed legerdemain?

Now the putative winners are reinforced

in their incompatibilities, and the in-

contestable losers are doubling down in

self-exculpations. Who can be gratified,

when no one is performing as proclaimed,

and all are distanced from compatibility?

Amanda Frederickson

  Editor

The Staub Cookbook

  Modern Recipes for

  Classic Cast Iron

Zwilling J.A. Henckels, LLC

2018©

What do the Drones say?

   Shoots Brazil nuts, does he?
   You stir me strangely.

Of all the moral disappointments,

possibly as many as three at last

count, which one must lay at the

door of the previous Presidency,

the blithe debasement he brought

upon the Drones by casual resort

to their employment in one char-

after of offense or another, will

surely be remembered as unworthy

of the well-read head of State.

In the hands of his successor,

so ostentatiously immune from

that characterization as to ap-

pease the idlest trifler in mor-

als, a temptation to over-exert

Drones may be accorded, rather,

to statistical accident of his

knowing about them at all. Yet

as we see, still the offense re-

mains, pleading for depiction,

hostile as it is, to etiquette.

Is it the drone's deprivation

of the human element, or its re-

lief of human culpability, which

more affronts the scruples of an

inhabitant of life? Half the fun

of being a Drone is to triumph

under risk, not over it; and the

other half is like unto it, a

serene nap in revealed triumph,

not compromised by deniability.

No sportsman can would content

himself with a secret bulls-eye. 

Probably, therefore, it is the

suspense of the target which ap-

peals to our present President,

having much acquaintance with a

fly's protectiveness of its wings

under his omniscient espionage.

Regard the trembling infant, now

borrowed from a mother's arms

at that ballot-rich border of in-

terest; consider the bankrupting

farmer, deprived of markets by 

his tariffs; the Masters Champion,

tarnished by the embrace of his

commercialization of the Medal of

Freedom. Who might not be next -

the unsuspecting balloteer in the

subverted sanctity of the polls?

It wasn't ever thus, of course,

when Lord Ickenham came to lunch

with his nephew Pongo Twistleton

at the Drones, and retired to the

Smoking Room for digestive coffee

amidst the merry trajectories of

cubes of sugar, hurled only occas-

ionally to effect, and never with

the sordidness of malice. A pity

our President cannot recall the

impetuous Earl, reveling in the

sport of his childhood, catapult-

ing a Brazil nut at the top hat

of a snobbish barrister in the

street below. With his genius for

losing legal representation, the

President might take heart from

a tidier style of their disposal.

But for the Drones, what relief?

What study of their humanity can

salvage it from the debasement of

ignorance, that wellspring of des-

peration so apotheosized in our

President's style of play? To've

heard of the Drones is one thing.

Not to know them in their world,

is to lack humane habitation,

and to careen into satiric range.

   It was apparent to the Egg 

   that the old gentleman had

   missed the gist.

   He shoots with Brazil nuts.

Iasonas Lalos

Tom Hiddleston

P.G. Wodehouse

Cocktail Time

Simon & Schuster

1958

Origins of Wednesday xcii: Asylum can wait

How movingly the New American Gov-

ernment has claimed the soul of its

tidier successor to Jeff Sessions,

whose testimony to the Senate Judici-

ary Committee, in protecting his nom-

nation, bore all the stalwart recti-

dude of the failed rapist, Justice

Kavanaugh. This sleeper collaborator 

has just promulgated his revival of

our Fugitive Slave laws, with the 

odd view, that aliens asserting the

legal right to claim asylum in this

nation must be jailed now, without

bail, indefinitely. Who could con-

ceive of sounder advice, as we claim

our own asylum from awareness of the

New American Government, in a bowl of

berries which are not yet in season?

  

Decay by cynicism: Marseille on plastic

A vulgarian hospital bloc, in-

dispensable dispensary of medic-

ations of impeccable hazard, is

now a bland sea of taupes and

extruded plastic reading chairs,

under the dour Intercontinental

logotype. Streets are being cel-

brated for lack of texture and

bracing aromatics, unaccountably

dismissed as "grit." The soul of

the bouillabaisse, itself, is re-

duced to a "milk shake," sparing

cast iron its raison d'être, and

les fruits de mer their fame, for

drawing thrill-seekers with cred-

it cards. The integuments of the

place and its purpose are no long-

er fluently flexed; even Le Corbu-

sire's wonderfully incongruous

Cité Radieuse is impressed into

service to taxable tourism. And

yet still he saw us coming. An

architecture, a city, a culture

defying mockery, met its muleta.

Eduard Galia

untitled

undated

Le Corbusier

Taureau

lithograph

1949

Origins of Wednesday lxxxvii: Close calls we have known

    One can just hear the guffaws

    of the actuarily deprived, at

    the sight of this antiquarian

    call box, stuffed full with a

    single listener, not a speak-

    er button to be found. On the

    other hand the luxuriant sup-

    ply of cord permits a grovel-

    ling on the paving for spills

    of coins and pencils and oth-

    er accessories of documenting

    a purchased conversation. The

    closest call of this type I'm

    aware of, this week, was that

    escape from lunch at the Ex-

    active Mansion to work a deal

    to bail its tenant out. Wrong

    way to exit that predicament;

    on the other hand, nice save.

A singspiel for our times

Now that our fabulist President

has dispatched his Secretary of

State to concoct a libretto for

an abduction from an Ottoman ser-

aglio gone awry, all confidently

anticipate an enormous enhance-

ment of his original premise, a

band of rogue murderers infil-

trating one autocrat's embassy

in another's secured city, only

to chop the captive for lunch.

Much prettier music, much mer-

rier ribaldry; with a score al-

ready in the public domain, by

no less than Mozart. Ah, so much

to dazzle: who could rue the in-

cidental disappearance of the

corpus delicti? Take that, O.J.