Small Fires burning in Marylebone, Pyrex pipes, celebrity chef spats and lemony pasta

Food and drink through the lens of culture and street life

Small Fires lit in Marylebone

Dodging train strikes, I travelled to a much-anticipated event hosted by London's Daunt Books in which two important contemporary voices and thinkers in food, cooking and culture. The topic was 'Small Fires', a newly published book by food writer, philosopher, and educator Rebecca May Johnson. The book is described by Nigella Lawson as 'an intense enquiry into the very nature of cooking’.

Rome-based food writer Rachel Roddy sat in front of an audience eager to hear her unravel the premise behind the hot new epic in the kitchen, Small Fires. The hour-long conversation ranged from Rebecca preparing Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce recipe hundreds of times, weaving sausages to poetry from Rilke and the abbs of a marble statue - The Archaic Torso of Apollo.

I am teaching a module on Contemporary Food Writing to a cohort of Masters students early next year. Small Fires will be a recommended text. And if you scroll through my Instagram, you'll find that I have cooked more Rachel Roddy recipes than any other writer!

Should you find yourself in London, set your compass to Marylebone and Daunt Books, an astutely stocked bookshop full of travel books, maps and writing. 

A page from Rebecca May Johnson’s ‘Small Fires’ book

Here is the Rilke poem mentioned, four verses that have taken millions of words written to understand and define any meaning. One review I read summed it up: He (Rilke) describes the dramatic power of the ancient statue's headless torso, even though it's only a fragment, and feels oddly as though the statue is the one looking at him. Deeply moved by this encounter with art, the speaker resolves to change his life.

Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 –1926)

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Celebrity chef spats in the heat of the kitchen

Who doesn't love a spat between celebrity chefs? There have been many in the past, such as the epic feud between Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay and that between Jacques Pepin and Ramsay. Jamie Oliver and Ramsay (there's a theme there … Martha Stewart and Goop's Gwyneth Paltrow, and guess what … Mario Batali (him of #MeToo infamy) and the perennial Brit yeller Gordon Ramsay have all gone into battle through the media.

Claws out in celebrity chef world. [Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash]

So, this week Delia Smith, a national treasure for millions of UK-based home cooks, took a potshot TV series Masterchef back in March for its overly complex dishes and almost professional levels of skills of its amateur contestants. She now has avant-garde chef Heston Blumenthal's in her sights, specifically the use of the 'boys' toy', a sous vide. Speaking to the brilliant wine magazine, 'Noble Rot' Delia says if served a sous vide dish at dinner with her husband, they have, "become expert at disposing of it. I get out a tissue, Michael goes "now", and it goes straight in the tissue then in the dustbin." Ouch!

She also scratched the old wound, saying that the hit BBC1 show Masterchef was 'theatre on a plate', adding: 'It says on the menu "with a sauce" and comes out with half a dozen Smarties-size dots of sauce. All my cookery shows were filmed in real-time, unlike now. My mission wasn't to be a great cook. I wanted others to know how to cook. That was my passion.'

But who doesn't love little blob's on a plate; a fish omelette, or a dish being described as, 'is it art or is it murder' – quotes from various TV cooking shows.

In other news, I've used Delia's recipe for Lemon Curd several times … try it here.

Pyrex dreams shattered in the kitchen and on the street

Pyrex is a tough glass used in science labs and for cooking … or at least it was! Most of us will have a Pyrex dish lurking in our kitchen cupboards. Myself, I have a measuring jug and a rectangular roaster.

This week my knowledge of Pyrex took an unexpected turn. I'd been watching a fascinating BBC documentary about Virgil Abloh, a Chicago-born designer. He died last year at just 41. Abloh was the first person of colour to lead a significant Italian design firm, Louis Vuitton. It was a position he'd earned through working with people and companies such as the increasingly controversial Kanye West, Nike and Ikea.

His first streetwear collection was based on buying up old Ralph Lauren stock and printing the words PYREX 23 on the back. The number refers to that of basketball superstar Michael Jordan of The Chicago Bulls, a boyhood hero of Abloh. This brand evolved into even more influential Off-White.

Meanwhile, back to Pyrex – interestingly, it's the preferred material, apparently, for glass pipes in crack-cooking vessels. That was until the original makers, Corning, sold the brand to a company that changed the formula. Crack cocaine is the highly addictive drug made by heating Pyrex became susceptible to thermal shock and so no good to crack addicts. Apparently, for I have no experience with this, cooking powder cocaine into hardened crack requires intense heating. It involves a container of water undergoing a rapid temperature change. The original could withstand the shock but not the new material.

(A quick note here, Abloh did not use crack cocaine).

Amazingly, US reports say that crack cocaine consumption in the US fell dramatically as. result of the weakened Pyrex glass. Don't try this at home, kids; it's a terrible, terrible addiction. Better to use your Pyrex to bake chocolate puddings or roast a chicken.

Click here for lemon recipes using Pyrex dishes.

https://pyrex.co.uk/blogs/recipes/lemon-lime-meringue-pie

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Lemon & Basil Pasta

This dish takes as long to make as it takes to boil the pasta. The lemon will make your taste buds pop with freshness and take you to Amalfi's fragrant citrus groves. It’s adapted from the thoughtful new book ‘The River Café Look Book’.

Serves 4
Prep time … as long as it takes your pasta to cook

300 gm spaghetti (or a design of your choice, eg penne, linguine)
3 – 4 lemons, juice of
150 gm extra virgin olive oil
150 gm Parmesan, freshly grated
Seasoning, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Basil, 2 handfuls and chopped
Lemon, zest of a lemon (optional topping)

• Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. The more water the better, as pasta likes to roll around in generously salted water.

• Cook the pasta according to the instructions still al dente – retains a light, but firm texture.

• Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice with the olive oil.

• Stir in the Parmesan, melting into a thick and creamy mixture.

• Season with salt and pepper.

• Drain the spaghetti and return to the pan.

• Add the sauce to the spaghetti, and shake the pan to coat the pasta.

• Stir in the chopped basil and lemon zest.

• Swirl onto your plate. Add a little extra lemon zest, parmesan if you fancy and maybe some extra.

This recipe is adapted from newly published ‘The River Café Look Book’ published by Phaidon Press. Buy the book here.

Thank you for reading The Lemon Grove. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Bruce McMichael
Writer, Podcaster, Educator
Website: www.thelemongrove.net
Twitter:  @lemonbites
Facebook:  @lemongrovesocial
Instagram:  @lemongrovepics

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org