Life, as someone almost remarked, is too short to make ravioli.
It is invariably disappointing and the contents, whatever they purport to be, taste of nothing. I have glanced at recipe books and considered making ravioli and then dismissed it as being far too fiddly for far too little taste. Doctor Johnson’s sentiments about cucumber (with which I do not agree) could rightly be applied to the doughy disaster that ravioli so often becomes.
Having chosen the fresh pasta starter in my menu Del dia it was therefore with something approaching dismay that I saw the large crinkled envelopes languishing in some sort of orange sauce. They were filled with what I took to be my parents’ purgatory.
It was spinach.
It is invariably disappointing and the contents, whatever they purport to be, taste of nothing. I have glanced at recipe books and considered making ravioli and then dismissed it as being far too fiddly for far too little taste. Doctor Johnson’s sentiments about cucumber (with which I do not agree) could rightly be applied to the doughy disaster that ravioli so often becomes.
Having chosen the fresh pasta starter in my menu Del dia it was therefore with something approaching dismay that I saw the large crinkled envelopes languishing in some sort of orange sauce. They were filled with what I took to be my parents’ purgatory.
It was spinach.
As a child I eschewed all cooked leafy greens with the exception of the one leafy green neither of my parents could abide: spinach. They could have eaten this pasta with relish as it had no taste whatsoever of the fondly remembered vegetable.
I do not want you to get the idea that I was a picky child. All peas and beans (garden, processed, marrow, broad, runner and baked) were eaten by me with gusto. Indeed, those of you familiar with my enthusiastic attempts at culinary inventiveness will realise that this infantile approbation still beats on in the pulses that I will add in an instant to any concoction lacking what I consider a certain je ne sait quoi.
Luckily the addition of parmesan created a more than acceptable sauce when added to the savoury flavoured liquid surrounding the serrated squares so I was able to eat them with something approaching relish. Also they were served with the flair of Tachism as some unidentified form of oleaginous sauce had been artistically thrown on part of the rim of the dish giving the thing the look of a production from an avant garde potter chef from the 1950s.
And if any of you are still with me at this point I will stop writing like that. You see what happens when I read through a single almost perfect story by E F Benson! His style (or a pastiche of it) is very catching!
I do not want you to get the idea that I was a picky child. All peas and beans (garden, processed, marrow, broad, runner and baked) were eaten by me with gusto. Indeed, those of you familiar with my enthusiastic attempts at culinary inventiveness will realise that this infantile approbation still beats on in the pulses that I will add in an instant to any concoction lacking what I consider a certain je ne sait quoi.
Luckily the addition of parmesan created a more than acceptable sauce when added to the savoury flavoured liquid surrounding the serrated squares so I was able to eat them with something approaching relish. Also they were served with the flair of Tachism as some unidentified form of oleaginous sauce had been artistically thrown on part of the rim of the dish giving the thing the look of a production from an avant garde potter chef from the 1950s.
And if any of you are still with me at this point I will stop writing like that. You see what happens when I read through a single almost perfect story by E F Benson! His style (or a pastiche of it) is very catching!
I am reading a collection of his short stores called, ‘The Countess of Lowndes Square’ and Benson has thoughtfully divided up his stories into categories so that his readers will be spared “a skipping hunt through pages in which they feel no personal interest.” The categories are Blackmailing Stories, General Stories, Spook Stories, Cat Stories and Crank Stories: an interesting exemplification of who Benson thinks his readers might be!
‘The Oriolists’ (one of his General Stories) concerns a group of people who invent a character to frustrate the vulgar ambitions of a society hostess. The concept is simple but the execution through Benson’s wicked prose is a delight, it catches the tone of social nicety that informs so many of Benson’s books. Social striving which oversteps the mark is his constant target but a target for which he shows far too much understanding of nuance to be an objective observer!
The finest expression of this ambiguity is seen in his Mapp and Lucia stories and if you haven’t read them then I urge you to do so. The unbelievable television series (which I still, having seen it, find faintly incredible) with the extraordinary combined acting talents of Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie Pillson; Prunella Scales as Miss Mapp and Geraldine McEwan as Lucia is a triumph of something that ought to be unfilmable.
It is, or at least it should be still, available on video or DVD. Watch it. But the books are so much more even that a superlative television adaptation. Enjoy!And the sun is shining!
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