A Very Merry Medieval Christmas

This was just going to be a post wishing you all a very merry yuletide, and so on and so forth, possibly with a slight Dickensian riff. However, as I was waiting to log in, I remembered there was something literary that had caught my fluttering attention. (Bear with me here.)

I was walking to work the other day, and happened to hear Simon Armitage on Radio 4 talking about his new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For those of you not familiar with this medieval epic, it's a cracking northern tale of feasting and knights and decapitation and fair maids and all that sort of thing, with a slightly disturbing undercurrent of homosexual 'purity' rippling along beneath all the jollity. I had to memorise large chunks of my 'own' translation for my degree, but, nearly three years on, I feel I'm finally ready to return to the hall and sit myself down with a trencher of bread and await

Dayntes dryuen … of ful dere metes
Foysoun of the fresche, and on so fele disches
That pine to fynde the place the peple biforne
For to sette the syluren that sere sewes halden on clothe

or ‘rare dishes of the richest foods, fresh meat in plenty, and on so many plates that it was difficult to find room before the diners to set upon the cloth the silverware which held the various stews.’

Not the most poetic translation, I admit, but then it’s certainly not mine (thanks Dr R.L. Barron), so I’m really looking forward to reading the new one, which, like the original, employs an awful lot of alliteration (which was a Big Deal in early verse). There’s a piece on it here, if anyone else is interested.

Oh, and merrie Chrystmasse from all at ye Penne Pushere!

A Seasonal Lecture

It’s that irritating time of year again, which isn’t quite Christmas (well, for us pedants anyway; strictly speaking it’s Advent, which isn’t a time for jollity and feasting and eggnog at all), but when one’s thoughts must inevitably turn to celebrating the upcoming festival with one’s loved ones by buying them all big presents. Yes, I know it is more worthy to purchase a job lot of cattle for a man in Sudan on behalf of your nearest and dearest, but in my experience, that kind of gesture tends to piss people off. If they want to give to charity, they reason, they’ll do so on their own terms. Thus I tend to reserve that sort of present for children small enough not to care whether you buy them a set of model cows for their farmyard, or just the single one that comes with the ‘good gift’ as a symbol of your largesse (and because human nature demands something to show for altruism – look at charity stickers and Aids ribbons and all that jazz).

Anyway, I digress. What this post is actually about is a fantastic present I’ve found for the gourmet (greedy person) in your life. Forget ‘the new Jamie’, which is over-hyped, over-designed, and a bit dull (if you want a cookery instructional manual, you should buy the Leiths Cookery Bible instead), or anything by anyone else who has ever appeared on Saturday Kitchen, save for Keith Floyd, who I love with all my heart. Plats du Jour, by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd, was first published in 1957, when ‘proper’ meals still demanded a meat and two veg approach, plus some sort of brown Windsor soup to start, and tinned peaches and condensed milk to round the whole thing off. Rather daringly, the authors turned this laboured parade of tired ingredients on its head, advocating ‘a system of cooking by which a variety of dishes was replacd by a single plat du jour accompanied, as a rule, by a green salad, a respectable cheese, and fruit in season, and, wherever possible, by a bottle of wine’. It’s difficult, in an age of one-pot, ‘rustic’ cookery, when goulash, and even biriyani are old hat, to imagine the tumult this book must have caused in respectable homes. It was a wild success, even outselling Elizabeth David, who is now often cited in isolation as the saviour of the British palate.

Along with recipes for – now – old favourites such as cassoulet and paella, there are more obscure dishes such as leberklösse für suppen (a Czech meat dumpling to be enjoyed with a beef broth or vegetable soup), plus a wealth of instructional and contextual information about different sorts of pasta, cooking methods, and cheeses, which, while interesting from a historical point of view, is still relevant today, and makes it a great read for those idle moments between dinner and supper. In fact, if you often find you can’t think of a single simple thing to make that isn’t a bacon sandwich, or often resort to the dreaded spaghetti Bolognese for dinner parties, then you should think of investing in this charming book yourself.

Best of all for lazy gift-hunters, there’s no need to go ferreting about in church booksales and on abe.com for this unsung gem (although you’re more than welcome if you have the time, I’m all for recycling), because it’s now been republished in a handsome new edition by the wonderful Persephone, complete with the delicious original illustrations by David Gentleman. I could go on forever, because it really is a delight to cook from, or just to flick through, but I suppose I’ll let you decide for yourself whether this really is the perfect present for you and everyone else in the world (even Keith)*: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/books/plats_du_jour.htm

*clue: it is