Episode 5: Nigella Lawson and Aminatta Forna
Our guests for this food-related episode are the author and chef Nigella Lawson, whose most recent book is Cook, Eat, Repeat and the award-winning novelist Aminatta Forna, author of Happiness and, most recently, a collection of essays called Window Seat.
If you would like the read the extracts discussed in this episode go to linebyline.substack.com.
Comments and feedback to @tds153 on Twitter. Line by Line is produced by Ben Tulloh with readings by Deli Segal. Music by Dee Yan-Key.
Extract One
The first thing to do was to lock the door. Now nobody could come at him. He deployed an old Herald and smoothed it out on the table. The rather handsome face of McCabe the assassin stared up at him. Then he lit the gas-ring and unhooked the square flat toaster, asbestos grill, from its nail and set it precisely on the flame. He found he had to lower the flame. Toast must not on any account be done too rapidly. For bread to be toasted as it ought, through and through, it must be done on a mild steady flame. Otherwise you only charred the outsides and left the pith as sodden as before. If there was one thing he abominated more than another it was to feel his teeth meet in a bathos of pith and dough. And it was so easy to do the thing properly. So, he thought, having regulated the flow and adjusted the grill, by the time I have the bread cut that will be just right. Now the long barrel-loaf came out of its biscuit-tin and had its end evened off on the face of McCabe. Two inexorable drives with the bread saw and a pair of neat rounds of raw bread, the main elements of his meal, lay before him, awaiting his pleasure. The stump of the loaf went back into prison, the crumbs, as though there were no such thing as a sparrow in the wide world, were swept in a fever away, and the slices snatched up and carried to the grill. All these preliminaries were very hasty and impersonal.
It was now that real skill began to be required, it was at this point that the average person began to make a hash of the entire proceedings. He laid his cheek against the soft of the bread, it was spongy and warm, alive. But he would very soon take that plush feel off it, by God but he would very quickly take that fat white look off its face. He lowered the gas a suspicion and plaqued one flabby slab plump down on the glowing fabric, but very pat and precise, so that the whole resembled the Japanese flag. Then on top, there not being room for the two to do evenly side by side, and if you did not do them evenly you might just as well save yourself the trouble of doing them at all, the other round was set to warm. When the first candidate was done, which was only when it was black through and through, it changed places with its comrade, so that now it in its turn lay on top, done to a dead end, black and smoking, waiting till as much could be said of the other.
Extract Two
At this moment, the old waiter comes back, bringing with him my bottle. I can remember it now. It’s an ’88 Salimaé, from a famous vineyard that will soon be on our side of the border. He serves it to me like that means nothing to him—and I get the sense that he is bent on showing the great strength of character it takes for him to serve me this wine like it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to him whether or not the owner of the vineyard is bayoneting his son in the airplane factory right now. He peels the foil off the top of the bottle, and then he uncorks the wine in front of me. He flips my glass and pours me a little, and he blinks at me while I taste it. Then he pours me the whole glass and leaves the bottle on the table. He disappears for a moment, and then he comes back, wheeling in front of him a cart that's covered in big lettuce leaves and bunches of grapes, slices of lemon, all of which are crowded around a centerpiece of fish. The fish are clear-eyed and firm, but they look like something out of a circus.
The waiter says to me: “Well, sir. Tonight we have the sole, the eel, the cuttlefish, and the John Dory. May I recommend the John Dory? It was freshly caught this morning.” There are not very many of them, not very many fish— perhaps five or six, but they are neatly arranged, with the two eels curled around the edges of the display. The John Dory is lying on its side like a spiked flat of paper, the spot on its tail staring up like an eye. Of all the fish on the cart, it is the only one that actually looks like a fish, and also the only one not giving off a vaguely dead smell. Now, I love John Dory, but tonight I find myself wanting lobster, and I ask about it, about the lobster. The old waiter bows to me, and apologizes, says that they have just run out.
I tell him I will need a moment to think, and he leaves me with the menu and disappears. 1 am pretty disappointed about that lobster, I can tell you, as I sit there looking at the dishes they have to go with the fish. They have, of course, what you would expect: they have potatoes several ways, salad with garlic, four or five different sauces to go with the fish, but all the time I am thinking about the lobster, about how they have just run out. And then I think: my God, it would be awful if this man, this gloating man who is here reading a book, has just had the last lobster, the lobster that should have come to me when I am not here to gloat.
Extract Three
I wake, early as ever, but at my lowest ebb. The long summer days have been a torture to me, the fetid summer haze. The ugly light. The vicious colours. The fermenting air. I long for crisp autumn and winter dawns, the air once again pure and icy, the light clean and Nordic.
Once out of bed, my mood changes. There are yet more signs of a shift in the season, a hint that autumn is well and truly here. The chestnut trees in the lane outside are changing to a mottled gold, the dahlias are out and the greengrocer has plums, baskets of Victorias and a wicker box of greengages.
Yes, there are more interesting plums than the Victoria, sweeter, thinner skinned and more Sauternes-like. But Vics are good all-rounders, providing rivers of sweet juice. They make a serviceable jam. There are few finer ways to start a winter’s day than with frost, and sourdough toast with plum jam. And anyway, if you let a Victoria soften to the point of translucence, it will have something of a honeyed sweetness and is good enough to eat as a dessert fruit.
Today is a summer’s day lived whilst thinking of a winter night, a day for making good things for later in the year. Jam of course, jolly pots of jewel-hued fig and plum, but this year something different too. I have always loved the Chinese plum sauce that comes with crisp-skinned duck and soft warm pancakes. It has something of the night about it. Mysterious, dark, intriguing. You imagine the recipe to be secret, written in Chinese characters on browning parchment, the result of centuries of kitchen alchemy.