November

Appears in

Published 2018

About

The lyf so shorte,

The craft so long to lerne

– Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parlement of Foules

Reading through these essays and looking for a theme or title for the book, I came across the phrase ‘a long and messy business’. It actually referred not to cooking but to eating. Talking about green curried lobster, I wrote ‘Eating them was a long, protracted and messy business. Just the ticket really.’

A friend of mine goes to a street café and orders black pepper crab whenever he visits Singapore. Fiercely piquant and incredibly messy, the big chunks of crab, shell and all, are bathed in a fiery, sloppy sauce. He then goes to his hotel and has a shower. In the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York, they give you a naff bib to wear while you eat their lobster.