Knackered Chef
Cooking is thirsty work and drink is a pretty damn good first cousin of food. And, given that it is now summer and deadlines are about to become a thing of next term, this week I would like to focus, in a blurry way, on booze. Now, as much as food, alcohol has become deeply ingrained in our culture, and daily routine. Living on the High Street, I have come to detest the kind of behaviour that leads to an irrational passion for kicking over bins and the bizarre compulsion of pissed students to compete with each other as to who is on most intimate terms with the man in the kebab van. It is my conclusion that these alcohol-users have been drinking either the wrong type of booze (which I accept is a highly controversial suggestion) or they have been drinking it in the wrong way. There is also the pissobolity that these people are simply arseholed arseholes but far be it from me to make such superior assumptions.
Now, going out and necking a load of filthy pints of lager or nauseous alcopops can be a laugh but booze can be used in much better ways. I recently discovered absinthe. Compelling. This heavenly green liquid offers novel and exciting sensations on both the taste buds and the brain. The ceremonial cooking up of sugar and mixing it into a glass of the emerald potion is a wonderful alchemical ritual that is reassuringly druggy. The passing round of an absinthe chalice is a stimulating communal activity that unfailingly transports the drinkers into a realm of comic absurdity. Conversation suffers the usual alcoholic impediment of being completely incoherent but is coupled with comedy vivacity and bubbliness. The wormwood, stuff in absinthe that makes you go loopy, also has a nice ability to distort light and helps you experience mild green hallucinations. I have also heard that absinthe mixed with champagne is an exquisite fizzy extravagance and it must certainly be a universal aim to try such an elixir.
However, for those not so inclined to spend their termly budget on one evening's debauch I have of late been bold enough to make a few voyages of discovery into cheaper varieties of booze. A Mancunian mate of mine introduced me the other week to a ridiculous beverage named Buckfast, an integral part of his scally culture. Buckfast is a tonic wine, which as the bottle is at pains to point out "does not imply health giving or medicinal properties". Too bloody right. This stuff is dynamite. It's 15% and tastes like a cross between Calpol and vodka-coffee. Brewed by Benedictine monks in Devon, Buckfast with its great spoonerism potential, is a testament to fact that even monasteries have a need for a sense of humour. The list of ingredients is also pretty comic. It contains quite a bit of caffeine and a few phosphates, notably Sodium Glycerophosphate BPC, which with so many syllables must be extremely potent. The effects of this wine, priced at a mere £6.49 per 75cl and available at that dodgy shop on the corner down the Cowley Road, are bizarre. It's a bit like drinking a load of vodka red bull and gives you the kind of absinthe recklessness that I can never really remember but am fairly sure exists. I recommend that if you are in Devon this summer then you should call into the abbey for a Buckfast breakfast.
Finally, I would like to end by reiterating the profound and wise words of Twelfth Night's Sir Toby Belch. Sir Andrew Aguecheek asks his mate Sir Toby, "Does not our life consist of the four elements?" to which the amiable bonviveur responds, "Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking". Thus I wish you all a fine Belchian summer!
8th Jun 2001