Literary Eats #2: Gone with the Wind

Scarlett's refusal to be a lady at all times means she gets to eat all kinds of yummy things while her peers go hungry.

There’s an awful lot of talk about food in Gone with the Wind. The food in the novel is resolutely Southern – ham, biscuits and gravy, barbecue – a part of the characters’ cultural identity. Slaves, of course, have different food from white people, eating their chitterlings and yams. Men drink bourbon, and holding one’s liquor is a mark of a Southern gent, but alcohol is completely off-limits to women (except for Aunt Pitty’s ‘swoon bottle’ of brandy, from which she takes nips whenever she feels faint – I have one of them myself, of course. Funny how often I feel faint on a Friday night.) Constant references to food also contrast the land of plenty that these (white, well-off) people lived in and their near-starvation during and after the war: food is in abundance everywhere at the beginning of the book, more than anyone could possibly want or eat. Yams are ‘dripping with butter’. During the war, Yankee soldiers, who have passed through Tara and taken all the food and everything of value, do not know what yams are and leave them in the ground, so the family do not starve: a case of Southern culinary know-how stealing a march on the dirty Yankees.

The heroine, Scarlett, who is gutsy and ambitious and has a healthy appetite, is constantly swinging in the novel between her desire to be a lady, what she has been brought up to be, and her desires to eat and be able to feed her family; to express her opinions; to work; and to make her own decisions. Ladies aren’t supposed to eat. Scarlett O’Hara, as a young girl, is stuffed with a tray of food before going out to a party so she can ‘eat like a bird’ in order to catch a husband; ladies, in this Southern culture, are not supposed to eat, drink, be able to cope with coarse language, or pretty much anything else.

            The point of being a lady seems to be surrounded by every single thing one could possibly want, all the time, and to reject it (an interesting parallel with today’s morality of appetite, where the people we are supposed to look up to are extremely thin despite living in a society where food is cheap and readily available; the thin take the moral high ground while the fat are considered lacking in moral fibre). Given that there are no actual hardships for the rich women of the antebellum South, since slaves pander to their every whim and they have to do absolutely nothing for themselves, women in the society of the novel invent their own privations by forcing themselves to become even weaker and more cossetted than they are already. Older characters occasionally point out the differences between the overly refined women of today and the gutsier, more active women of their own generation. Later on, of course, the war means that ladies can’t eat anyway, even if they wanted to: there’s not enough food. So this way of asserting their moral superiority is taken away from them, though as they become physically frail through hunger rather than choice, they begin to show their real strength through genuinely moral choices.

What the characters eat and do not eat sends strong messages about who they are and how they define themselves. The fabulously selfish and outspoken Scarlett, of course, loves to eat, especially once she has experienced hunger. She fails to conform to the polite fiction about females in which the whole society is colluding: that they have no appetites. In her decadent years of running with Carpetbaggers and scoundrels, when old Southern society gives her up as not being a lady, she publicly eats oysters, rich gumbos, pastries stuffed with meringue – as a real lady never would.

Man v. Food, Eighteenth-Century Style

This James Gillray print is of greedy Germans. But really, they could be from anywhere.

I’m reading Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s absolute classic, The Physiology of Taste (1825), about the new science of gastronomy. It’s a hoot – full of brilliant apothegms, from the old chestnut ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are’ to the lesser-known, but to my mind still just as true, ‘the most indispensable quality of a good cook is promptness.’ Ha! Anyway, while reading old J.A.’s fact-packed fun-ride through the science and culture of good eating at the turn of the nineteenth century, I came across this anecdote of a late-eighteenth-century Man v. Food-style feat. We love to think that eating competitions and challenges are a modern phenomenon indicative of the downfall of society, consumer culture, overly cheap food et cetera, but it turns out men have been proving their manhood through competitive overeating for centuries.

‘This anecdote recalls to me my townsman, General P. Sibuet, long the chief aide of Napoleon, and who was killed in 1813 at the passage of the Bober.

He was eighteen years old, and had at that time the appetite by which nature announces that its possessor is a perfect man, and went one night into the kitchen of Genin, an innkeeper of Belley, where the old men of the town used to meet to eat chestnuts and drink the new white wine called in the country vin bourru.

The old men were not hungry and paid no attention to him. His digestive powers were not shaken though, and he said ‘I have just left the table, but I will bet that I eat a whole turkey.’

‘If you eat it I will pay for it,’ said Bouvier du Bouchet, a rich farmer who was present, ‘and if you do not I will eat what is left and you shall pay for it.’

They set to work at once, and the young athlete at once cut off a wing, ate it at two mouthfuls and cleaned his teeth by gnawing the bone and drank a glass of wine as an interlude.

He then went into the thigh which he ate and drank another glass of wine to prepare a passage for the rest. The second went the same way, and he had come to the last limb when the unfortunate farmer said, ‘Alas! I see it is all over, but Mr Sibouet as I have to pay, let me eat a bit.’

Prosper was as good a fellow as he was a soldier, and consented. The farmer had the carcass at spolia opima, and paid for the fowl with a good grace.

General Sibuet used always to love to tell of this feat of his youth. He said that his admitting the farmer to eat was a pure courtesy, and that he could easily have won the bet. His appetite at forty permitted none to doubt the assertion.’

Whisky: The Perfect Lady-Drink

Whisky at the tasting room, Bowmore distillery, Islay, Scotland. Note the shape of the little glass, designed to give the drinker the best possible flavour experience. The sea air and view didn't hurt either!

Contrary to popular belief, we don’t all suffer from being addicted to sugary food on the one hand, and obsessed with calorie-counting on the other. Many women – myself included – don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and at a bar might wonder what they can order that isn’t over-sugared, pink or creamy.

            The answer is whisky. Once considered the province of old codgers, Scotch whisky is becoming more and more popular around the world, and a new breed of drinkers – Japanese, Chinese, Scandinavians – are increasing demand. Drinks giant Diageo recently announced that they were going to invest £5bn in Scotch whisky production, including a new distillery, to keep up with demand. But sadly few of these new drinkers are women. (I wrote an angry feminist article – complete with penis jokes – about why I think this is recently for The Vagenda magazine.) Yet good whisky is a wonderful drink. It’s a perfect digestif after a sophisticated dinner and rounds off a meal much better than an oversweet cheesecake or chocolate pudding. And you won’t find it decorated with an umbrella.

How to drink it

Ask for a single-malt Scotch. This means that the whisky is made at a single distillery rather than being blended from the produce of several. Blends can be very nice, but a single malt will give you more of a sense of the individual distillery and its location, which affects the flavour, just as it does for wine. Blends can be a bit samey.

If you’re a whisky novice, ask for something not too heavily peated. Talisker, Jura and Glenfiddich are all fairly light – as whisky goes, that is. If you enjoy the peaty, iodine flavours, try some of the Islay whiskies. Laphroaig is the peatiest one you are likely to come across in the average bar or restaurant, and tastes like smoky seaweed. Talisker is sweeter and more fruity. Highland Park is a good all-rounder that's not overly peaty.

If you can, get it in a tulip-shaped glass, not a straight-sided one. You want to be able to smell it, like wine. The tulip shape traps the aromas and funnels them up towards your nose, which improves the flavour as well as the smell. You don't need very much, either. Good whisky is best drunk in small sips – gulping will be too overpowering.

Don’t ever order it ‘on the rocks’. It’s a myth that this is how you’re supposed to drink it. Ice kills the flavour of the whisky. It also means that you have to drink it too quickly so as to finish it before the whole drink’s diluted and slushy. But then, maybe that’s the point of all those on-the-rocks orders in Hollywood movies; in film noir they’re not drinking fine single malts but cheap bourbon. Ask for it straight instead, with a little jug of water on the side.

Swirl it around the glass and sniff it. Now take your first small sip. Hold it at the roof of your mouth and breathe through your nose, taking in the scents. You will probably taste the smokier, peatier flavours first. Before the second sip, add a drop or two of water from your jug. This will ‘open up’ the flavours and make them rise up through your nose. The whisky might now taste more floral to you, or more like honey. Add more water if you like, a few drops at a time.

Femineater: Great British Menu

So recently I've been watching Great British Menu - in which chefs from every region of the country come together to compete for the chance to cater an 'Olympic banquet'. Since the Olympics haven't started yet, and since the final episode was aired on 8 June, it's fair to say that the relationship between the show and the actual Olympics is not as tight as they like to imply it is, despite various no-doubt contractually obliged witterings by the contestants and judges about what an honour it is to cook for Olympic contestants (who surely are putting in last-minute training, not eating four-course banquets and getting sloshed). Anyway, a minor point. The idea of the series is to find the best, most ground-breaking chefs in Britain and then put on a jolly good show for Johnny Foreigner to display how great we are at food now and how other countries are not allowed to make mean jokes about our cooking any more (not that that will stop them).

We all know, of course, that cheffing is a very male-dominated profession. I do not pretend to be saying something groundbreaking when I make this assertion. But this show does not help. It does not help at all. One of the judges is a woman, yes - the fab Prue Leith - but only one contestant is, out of 24 in total. (SPOILER! She doesn't win.) The show is a total sausage-fest, which is ironic, because no-one cooks sausages.

I cannot, of course, just blame the show. The fact that women chefs either do not want to, are not invited to or are not good enough to compete on this show is a symptom of a wider malaise - the dichotomy between the (usually woman) cook, and the (almost always male) chef.

It's struck me recently that running a kitchen is one of the few jobs that's still basically feudal. Much like working in the workshop of a medieval craftsman, the underling-chefs are expected to follow orders and replicate exactly the head chef's work rather than going by their own inspiration and creativity, so as to produce the same plate of food for every customer that orders it. In Olden Tymes, the workers at an artist's workshop would do the boring bits - sky, grass, people's bodies - of paintings or sculpture and the artist would do the exciting bits like faces. Nowadays sous chefs pretty much do the same thing, doing the prep and using their skills to perfectly craft dishes to the head chef's instrutions; the top chef, an artistic genius, provides the inspiration and does the fancy bits.

I'm not saying that this feudal system is a bad way to run a restaurant or to learn a skill. But I do think that this might have something to do with why more women aren't top chefs. The very concept of the artistic genius is a traditionally male one, of course – try to name five female geniuses. Geniuses are solo figures, iconoclasts, sometimes social outcasts. Historically only men could be geniuses in fields where one needs to be independent (financially, freedom of movement, of education and so on) in order to excel, essentially by having the freedom to be left alone and do whatever wacky thing you want to do - a room of one's own. Though women finally have gained the freedom to work and to own property (hooray!) we still come up against this concept of the independent genius, with its associations of maleness. Many of us were brought up in cultures which praised women's tact, diplomacy and ability to make conversation and work well with others, and men's competitiveness and ambition, despite the fact that many women and men were evidently handed the wrong-gendered skills at birth (a bit like getting the wrong Happy Meal in McDonald's). A recent sociological study by Deborah Harris and Patti Giuffre of food writing in America found that men chefs were more likely to be praised for technical skill, and women for working hard (especially 'in a man's world'); that successful male chefs were lauded when they were iconoclastic and groundbreaking, and women when they achieved excellent traditional cooking; that men's ambition to build an empire of branded goods, TV shows, media exposure and so on was praised, and women chefs' ultimate motivation was more often described as the love of feeding and nurturing people. Whether or not it is true that these are the specific motivations and qualities of women chefs (and I am very sceptical), and that there is a difference between mens' and womens' excellence in the field, it definitely seems the case that at the moment it's the 'manly', sciency stuff - the technical wizardry - that's somehow supposed to be better. In what is supposedly the cutting edge of the modern chef-world, this means things cooked sous-vide, foams (if you're SO three years ago), spherification (e.g. making things that aren't normally the shape of peas into pea-shapes for no reason), cutting potatoes into spaghetti, and turning various unlikely things into gels. Maybe that's why there aren't more top women chefs on Great British Menu. They think it's stupid.

Literary Eats #1: The Great Gatsby

Quaffing in the 1974 film.

For people who drink so much, the characters of The Great Gatsby seem to do very little eating. Food is on display, of course, at Gatsby’s parties – ‘on buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold’ – but this is really just a spectacle, another example of the conspicuous consumption of the Gatsby set, like Gatsby’s ‘gorgeous pink rag of a suit’. The ‘gold’ and patterns of the food let us know that they’re primarily a visual spectacle, an expression of luxury and of riches, much like Gatsby’s parties themselves, and his supposed friendships; this contrasts with the time when the young Jimmy first mets his crooked associate Meyer Wolfsheim, when ‘he ate more than four dollars’ worth of food in half an hour’, a genuine hunger reflecting both his humble origins (he hasn’t eaten in days) and his appetite to better himself. Gatsby has gone down a path of corruption and decadence since those hungry days. Various humble meals are alluded to in the book that contrast with the empty consumption of Gatsby’s set ­­­­– lonely, cheap, filling meals in restaurants eaten by workers; ‘little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee’. Carraway also eats with the Buchanans and Gatsby, but the food isn’t fuel. What matters is the social ritual, not the content of the meal.

               It’s drink, really, that Gatsby is all about – champagne, mint juleps, claret, gin rickeys. Not Martinis, though, although these are firmly fixed in the mind as the drink of the Jazz Age. The characters drink many, many ‘cocktails’, which would probably have been the traditional kind – specifically a spirit mixed with sugar, bitters and water. The word only later came to mean any mixed alcoholic drink.

               Of course, drink is a corrupting influence in the book, what with Gatsby’s shady past as a bootlegger, and the fact that Daisy has been drinking when she has the car accident. Gatsby doesn’t drink at his own party – out of a desire to keep himself pure, like his love for Daisy? – but it doesn’t matter. He can’t escape the things that he has done – or who he has been.

The classic drink of Gatsby, to my mind, is the gin rickey ‘that clicked full of ice’ which the characters memorably imbibe on the ‘broiling hot’ day of the car accident. This is a class of drink oddly out of fashion, given that it’s first cousin to the Mojito, and – even better – traditionally free of sugar. To make one, measure 60 ml of gin into a highball glass. Squeeze a lime into the glass, rub it around the edge, and throw it in. Add ice. Then top up with soda water. Delicious.

The Elder Scrolls

Apparently the first day of the British summer is that on which the elder first blooms! So it’s official – this is the summer. Ha. Anyway, I started to make elderflower champagne a couple of weeks ago and am pleased with the results – frothy, floral and lemony, with an unexpected creaminess. Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though I’m going to fulfil my fantasy of drinking it out in the garden on a hot summer’s evening. Maybe in front of the radiator. Yes, our heating is on. In June.

Yes, I took this picture at 8.45 in the morning. It's the first sun I've seen all week. Also, it's so frothy and delicious! And you can't possibly put it back in the bottle after pouring it out, can you?

Strictly speaking, of course, elderflower ‘champagne’ is not champagne at all – various books are rather bossy about this misnomer, as though anyone might actually be deceived into drinking it under false pretences. But who cares. Snotty books are not the boss of me.

Elderflower champagne

2 unwaxed lemons, sliced fairly thinly

6 heads of elderflower, if possible picked early in the morning on a hot day

4 litres water

700 g sugar

30 ml vinegar (cider or white wine)

Take a lidded bucket and put the lemons, water and elderflower heads in it. Cover with the lid and leave for 36 hours.

I love my new steeping bucket. Yes, I bought it specially for making booze. No one is ever allowed to throw up in it or use it to wash paintbrushes in.

            Now uncover and strain through muslin or a sieve (if you don’t mind the odd bug or petal) into a large bowl. Add the sugar and vinegar, and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. At this stage the liquid is very sweet but floral and lemony – the sweetness will diminish as the sugar is turned into alcohol by the wild yeasts that live on the flowers. Now decant it into two two-litre plastic fizzy drinks bottles that have been sterilized. Don’t screw the lids on too tightly at this stage. 

I'm not too bothered about the weird lumps of yeastiness that have formed. I think they mean it's working.

            Leave for around a week. After a day or two you’ll see small bubbles forming; this is a good sign, it means that the yeasts are doing their job. After a week tighten the lids up fully and leave for another few days to a week for the drink to become fizzy. You’ll be able to tell when it’s fizzy enough because the plastic bottles will swell up when the gas build-up is too high. If you use glass bottles you have no such clues, and you may find that the bottles explode or that you lose your precious champagne when you open them. In plastic bottles you can let the gas out when the bottle's about to fall over and keep letting it out at intervals (I had to do it around every 4 hours, guess my wild yeasts were pretty powerful) until you're ready to drink it, at which point you should leave the bottle tightly screwed up for a few hours first to make the champagne super fizzy. The fermentation will slow down if you put the bottle in the fridge, so take this into account if you're trying to fizz it up and get it cold at the same time.

The elder tree has other uses besides culinary ones: Dr Johnson in his Dictionary (1775) mentioned that ‘dwarf elder is near London propagated for medicinal use’; he isn’t any more specific about what it was used for, but elderflower or elderberry tea was a traditional folk remedy for coughs and colds, and when the plant is made into a poultice it was used to ease grazes and skin problems such as eczema. The smell of its leaves is said to repel flies and wasps, so it was traditionally planted near larder windows, or next to privies. The modern gardener may find that pigeons and other birds will go for elderberries rather than their carefully tended fruit and veg – there’s a chubby woodpigeon that doesn’t stir from the elder tree in my garden from June to September – so it might be worth planting one near the veg patch. In British folklore it’s believed to repel witches if you plant it near the house or carry its twigs or leaves in your pocket, although it’s not all good: although you can be confident that it is immune to being struck by lightning, you should never burn it in the fireplace, as this is taken to be an invitation to Death, or to the Devil himself.

Witches, demons and critters aside, the elder’s flowers can flavour jam and cordials or be made into fritters, and its berries can be made into wine or added to fruit pies. Elderflower is a popular flavouring in Scandinavian countries as well as the UK and US. Don’t eat the branches or bark, though; they can cause stomach upsets.

‘Sambocade’ (from the tree’s Latin name, Sambucus nigra) from The Forme of Cury, a fourteenth-century cookbook written for the chefs of Richard II, is a sort of medieval elderflower cheesecake: a pastry case filled with sweetened curd cheese, mixed with egg white and fresh elderflowers, and then baked. Yum! Here is a modern version that you don’t have to bake (or pick soggy brown elderflowers out of):

Elderflower cheesecake

10 digestive biscuits

75 g melted butter

1 tbsp golden syrup

700g mascarpone (or Philadelphia if you want something a bit tangier)

1 unwaxed lemon

6 tbsp elderflower cordial, either your own or shop-bought

175 g icing sugar

Put the biscuits in a plastic sandwich bag, seal it and smash them with a rolling pin (this is the fun part). Mix in the butter and syrup and squish into a 20-cm tin.

            Zest and juice the lemon. Put the zest in a separate bowl with 2 tbsp of the elderflower cordial. Beat the cheese together with the sugar, lemon juice and elderflower cordial. Smooth it on top of the base and leave in the fridge for at least 12 hours. Before serving, decorate with strips of the soaked lemon zest.