Discourse
No theme this week, O my droogs, unless I think of one halfway through writing this. Themes are naff anyway, though not as naff as cappuccinos or the word 'naff'. Which makes me think - does anyone remember NafNaf? The OshKosh for teenagers? That dates me, I suppose (not to mention having no place in a food column), but maybe there ought to be a naff backlash, like the appearance of Motörhead T-shirts in Top Shop, a double negative of naffness if ever there was one.....and so maybe I ought to spearhead the return of naff foods. Because food has fashions, my dear little brothers in Christ, as much as anything else, and it's beginning to get on my nerves. White vine tomatoes are the new sundried. Butter beans are the new polenta. Flat-leaf parsley has had its day, coriander is on the up, cappuccinos (okay, they're still naff) give you a fetching moustache and have doubtless been the subject of hilarious gags in endless unforgettable American sitcoms. Ho hum.
But seriously, folks. Somebody gave me Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef spin-off cookery book for my birthday, and it brought home to me with a horrible jolt just how easy it is to be sucked into the fatuous Sunday-supplement food-chic continuum: it's an absolutely fantastic book. It makes my mouth water just looking at it from the other side of the room. I'm never going to use it, because I can't bear to take it off the coffee table, and you're joking if you think I'm getting the inevitable food-splashes all over the nubile Jamie (more pictures of him than food in there, O my droogs), but it's a fantastic book because every single bloody ingredient in there stands for something else. Whilst tucking into your pappardelle or your tray-baked salmon, you can rest assured that Jamie does it in a baseball cap, that London loves Jamie, and that with every mouthful you swallow you're plugging into the now, the indefinable where it's at, that somehow, sometime, you, Jamie and a fleet of young media professionals will be sipping drinks in the same ergonomically-designed heaven. And in twenty years' time it'll be as dated as me and NafNaf.
But what is my point? And, more to the point, where are the recipes? Stop spouting and get down to business, stop pretending you don't buy into food fashions, cut the bullshit, own up, and get on with it, you cry. The chickpeas are soaking downstairs, aren't they? Okay, okay. They are. I freely admit to having no soul. But all of you out there, my onetime droogs, heed this cry from one already damned. Don't forget about naff foods. So, this week, I say to you: don't cook. I mean in the Jamie Oliver sense of 'cook'. Buy British. Eat Cup-a-Soup, eat pork chops, eat Dolmio, baked beans and boiled potatoes, go off salads and get scurvy. Buy Um Bongo, revel in the 'bab vans, take vitamin supplements if you must, but strike a blow for good old-fashioned British economy stodge while you still can. You never know, you might even start a fashion.
4th May 2000