Bogof darling, Bogof...!

Bogof, Solzlhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. Bogof is clearly a name that belongs in the annals of great Russian writers, - except that you can't quite remember what he wrote or when he wrote it. Did he write that awful book about a paedophile? - no, that was Pasternak. Well, wasn't he that serious playwright whose scenes were endlessly depressing but awfully full of meaning? No, silly, that's Chekhov, or maybe Gorky... not Bogof.

The truth is that right now, in the 21st century, Bogof is extremely popular even though outsiders who unfamiliar with the genre, probably don't recognise the name.

Bogof's appeal is universal, which accounts for its widespread popularity. In fact you personally were almost certainly lured by Bogof within the past seven days. Bogof is everywhere, a well-proven asset in the arsenal - not of the writer or publisher, but of the marketeer.  Pile it high and sell it cheap...Buy One, Get One Free. B.O.G.O.F. It's another of those tedious management acronyms - the secret language of the commercial professionals. The rationale between Bogof is very logical: as long as I have stocks of brand Y on my shelves, I won't be tempted to buy brand X. In my classic GOM (grumpy old man) mode, I get angry with Bogofs, just as I get angry with 60% SALE discounts or just about any strategy behind selling kitchens and bathrooms. Does anybody pay the list price?

Ready-meals at TESCO                     [photo credit Route 79]

But what I dislike most about modern retailing - in supermarkets, in particular, - is not the pricing and promotion, but the way food is over-packaged into ready-meals and stacked on the shelves in plastic boxes. 
Yes, I know that's what the market demands, and I know that without the vast array of obscure products that sit on the shelf at Waitrose I would have to order my Ras-el-Hanout Moroccan spice on-line from Seasoned Pioneers, but I'm happy that I live in Lincoln, where street markets and farmers' markets and W.I. markets still thrive, and where real butchers cut, trim and tie meat to order.

Lincoln still boasts several traditional master butchers

Last weekend I went to my favourite butcher, down by the old covered Central Market, and was excited to see pheasants "in feather," hanging outside the shop. Unplucked pheasants give the buyer the opportunity to strengthen the gamey flavour by hanging them at home, and if I buy them unplucked, they are roughly half the price of when they are bought dressed and oven-ready.  When I had the restaurants  I learned the locals' trick of not bothering with the tedious business of plucking the birds; instead, you remove the whole skin and plumage in one easy movement, with none of the mess and palaver of struggling to pull out the feathers. 

I hesitated while I pondered whether to bard the birds with slices of bacon and roast them,  or joint them and simmer with  mushrooms and red wine in a casserole, or bone out all the meat (which would give me a carcase for the stock-pot,) then mix the pheasant-meat with pork and rabbit to make a richly-flavoured terrine of game. Not that I would let such mundane practicalities prevent me from postponing that decision and carrying a fine brace home on the bus, with the feathers protruding from the top of the carrier bag.

The view from my kitchen

But the reality is that there's just me, and so many of the dishes I used to love to prepare, demand at least a couple of other people at the table. I understand people with busy lives  who buy the ready-meals to dish up on a tray in front of the television. Many people see  food preparation as a chore, and not as relaxation and a creative outlet.

I have the luxury of a wonderful array of fresh produce in a county that supplies a high proportion of Britain's meat and vegetables. I also have the luxury of  time on my hands. What is less obvious is that my financial situation conveniently prevents me from eating out, buying  take-aways or living on convenience foods. It's a  happy twist of fortune, that economic necessity forces me to shop for raw ingredients  and then enjoy the creative opportunity of constantly experimenting with new recipes.

This afternoon I'll start work butchering and marinading the pheasants, in preparation for making a terrine of  game. It's a perfect dish for Christmas, when the family all get together.

Calm down dear...it's only a hurricane

Michael Winner is one of those people you love to hate. His restaurant reviews leave me thankful that he never (as far as I know) was a guest at one of my restaurants, but he has given us the "Calm down, it's only ..." catch-phrase that reached as far as parliament at Prime Minister's Question Time. It's very British to calm down demonstrate sang froid in the face of crisis, and when I was in Rhode Island last month on the day Hurricane Sandy arrived, my attitude was very much that people were over-reacting and the journalists were out trying to drum up a story.

New York: October 29th 2012

In Rhode Island, my son and I went out for a curry (how very British!) and ran between the showers. Less than a couple of hundred miles to the South in New York, it was a very different picture. The  hurricane took a formidable toll: 7.5 million people without power for several days, 16,000 flights cancelled, an economic cost of around $10/20 billion -and a death toll approaching 100. 
Wall Street was closed, the United Nations was closed and one of the world's great cities was forced to remember that it is also a coastal location.

Living through Hurricane Sandy, I now realise how easy it is to be totally isolated from what is going on around you and oblivious of the reality of human tragedy as it unfolds. Without television news and without all the infrastructure of modern communications,   people in Rhode Island or other neighbouring areas would have been totally oblivious to  the devastation faced around New York. Without "news" life just goes on.

It's no exaggeration to say that the constant flow of news and information changes the course of history. The other distraction in Fall in New England was the Presidential election. Behind the hype, hysteria and massive media spend there lay a fascinating statistic:

2012 Presidential election, distribution of votes by race and gender - source CNN

The people who tried to stop Obama returning to the White House were white men. Without the female, the Latino, the African/American and native American voters, America would be a virtual dictatorship.

Look at the map and the numbers. Just how does that make you feel...? 

Calm down, dear, it's only the most powerful nation on Earth.