Another extract from The Compleat Imbiber. This time an essay by Hugh Johnson called Confessions of a Merman

Sometimes I think I must be a merman, and a half-cannibal one at that, to enjoy browsing on the sea bed as much as I do. I remember a particular plat de fruits de mer at Hornfleur which was quite simply that: a bare-handed predators’s banquet on all stony, scaly or limpid beasts that lie, crawl, or proceed in illogical little flicks among the wrack and the wrecks,  stirring up sand or disguised as pebbles.

There were shrimps and oysters, whelks and mussels, winkles and cockles and clams. The napkins were sea-green with crustaceous designs. The plate was virtually a bivale in pottery. The wine, palest from a dark green bottle, was as cold and as tangy, almost, as the sea itself.

The toss of a lobster pot from the harbour wall, where pyramids of tarry rigging were black against the moon, the cafe-restaurant Aux Deax Ponts was like an extension of the sea bed, with the only difference that the water boiled. I returned there with unabated appetite for grilled sole, steamed turbot, moules marinieres night after night.

This evening we ate out in New Brighton. We walked down from Vale Park along the Prom looking out with Liverpool at our back and forward to the Irish Sea. There were ships coming in and it felt good to watch them as the light shifted over the water. The ships and the great warehouses and buildings that run along the Liverpool shore line all seemed dwarfed by the river and the pull along of the tide.

Now making fish cakes for the family’s supper tomorrow and looking forward to seeing Dexys in The Duke of York’s Theatre all by myself!

One of the reasons for the trip to Cow & Co on Friday was to pick up a copy of a new food magazine called The Gourmand. Part of the reason for wanting a copy of The Gourmand was that it had in an article about a series of book/anthologies called The Compleat Imbiber. I had picked up a copy second hand a few years ago for £2.00 and was intrigued to learn more. In all there were 16 volumes published intermittently between 1956 and 1992. They were all  edited by Cyril Ray. I have volume 11 published in 1970. Its original home was in Walton Library and amongst other things it contains articles on the longest wine list in the world, the best restaurant, food in Marcel Proust and this poem by Adrian Mitchell. I am not sure that the poem lives up to the title.

GASTRONOMIC PORNOGRAPHY

Anchovies in aspic                                                                                                             With marinated aubergines                                                                                          Beetroot bellies in brandy                                                                                                  With a bucket of Heinz Baked Beans.                                                                         Alligator puree and I don’t care                                                                                               If you stuff it with reindeer rind,                                                                                             But gastronomic pornography                                                                                                Is booting me out of my mind.

Cavair and cakemix                                                                                                         Makes coriander chocolate cheese.                                                                               Chutneyed carrots and coffee-                                                                                        Won’t you slice me a doorstep please.                                                                               Pass me down a mousse with its antlers on                                                                         You can cook it in fairy snow,                                                                                                  For gastronomic pornography                                                                                                       Is dragging me down so low.

Gammon stuffed with garlic,                                                                                         Geraniums and gooseberry fool.                                                                                         Grouse, gazpacho and ginger,                                                                                               Burn your kitchen and leave to cool.                                                                                                I want Mrs Beeton to be my man                                                                                                 And Elizabeth David too,                                                                                                             For gastronomic pornography                                                                                              Makes my stomach feel like a zoo.

The Gourmand also has an article on Mark Hix’s library. One of the books featured is called Rude Food and is a series of glossy photos of half naked woman with items of food artfully draped around them. Mum and Dad used to have a copy. Do they still have it somewhere?

Saturday afternoon was spent shifting the grenhouse. The wind on Wednesday night had managed to move one side of it eight or so inches across the patio stones it sits on. Fortunately all the glass had stayed in although a couple of panes had buckled loose. On my knees trying to manoeuvre it back into position I was conscious of one of the loose panes of glass above me and had a brief vision of it slipping loose and taking my head off. It stayed in place and my head and neck remained intact. I then planted out some salad seedlings and spent the best part of an hour scrubbing out ground elder from all corners of the garden. It is almost time for me to dig out the recipe to turn it into soup.

In the evening we ate deep fried soft shell crabs with garlic, pepper and coriander followed by a seafood stew made with prawns and scallops.

The base of the stew was an intense tomato sauce made with fried garlic, white wine, stock, lemon peel and oregano. This all cooked down until it was thick and pungent. I then strirred in the raw prawns and scallops to cook through together with half a block of feta cheese.

It reminded me of a lunch I had one Sunday in Barcelona almost fifteen years ago. It was in a fish restaurant down by the harbour. When we got there at 2.00 the place was empty but over the next hour or so it filled up with families all gorging themselves with fish. I had monkfish in a tomato sauce that had some sort of creamy cheese stirred in.

A large part of the morning was spent shaking off the blurred edges from the Salopian Oracle drunk last night in Gallagher’s Pub whilst listening to all the excellent swearing on John Grant’s Pale Green Ghosts. We all need some more swearing in our lives.

Over lunch I was reminded of my English grandmother as I went into Waterstones to leaf through some cookbooks to find something to make for my supper.

I went straight to Claudia Roden’s book on Spanish cooking and reminded myself of her recipe for a lamb stew with the honey. That would do and I made a mental note of what I would need to buy on the way home. I kicked myself for not having stopped off at Edge’s on the way into work to buy some lamb rather than having to rely on the best that Sainsbury was going to have available.

After that I went into Probe and resisted the temptation to buy some more music. It is record shop day tomorrow and I will have to go back and join the queue.

But the highlight of lunch was walking into a new shop down past Liverpool 1, Cow & Co, and being asked if I was ‘the writer’ on the back of a tweet and an article about mackerel in Fire & Knives. There seemed to be some symmetry in me having written about the things that I think about over a lunch spent walking round Liverpool and there being a shop in Liverpool come across over lunch selling a magazine with the same article in it.

The lamb stew is cooking now and we are listening to King Creosote and looking out for bats as the sun goes down.

I wrote some months ago about defenestration. I started the process on my book about mackerel and then put it to one side. Well I have opened the window again.

The expression comes from a book about Katherine Hepburn. Some years ago we spent New Year’s Even in Kent. There was a lot of driving both to get down there and then on trips out to Whitstable, Romney Marsh, Dungeness and thereabouts. As we drove we listened to an audio book about her. A lot of it was was descriptions of long conversations that the writer had with Katherine Hepburn about life and her life. At one point the writer talked about a book he was writing a problems he was having trying to conclude it. ‘Defenestrate,’ she said. Open a window and throw it all out then start all over again.

I am not throwing it all out of the window but I am taking apart the pages and putting them back together again in a different order with bits of odd conversation with the man with a black beard thrown in for good measure.

I am quite enjoying it so far but let’s see if that lasts when I sit down to reread it and remind myself of the rewriting that needs to be done.