HAPPY AND POSITIVE!

All over the public school boy environment people with good diction and plummy accents are in despair that Gentlemen's Relish is no longer being made. And they are experimenting with concocting tasty replacements at home. Which, as you would expect, feature butter, tinned salty anchovies, plus pinches of mace, allspice, powdered ginger, cinnamon and maybe clove. Minute quantities of spices only, because they're British. And usually no garlic.
All gently cooked to darken a bit, then stuffed into ramekins and refigerated.

Perfect for smearing on toast at teatime.


What with being substantially Dutch, and despairing over American Anglo tastes, the concept somewhat excites me. Years ago at the computer company we would sometimes go out for a departmental lunch at restaurants like the Olive Garden, where the Anglo love for bland muck found a bountiful expression. Even "Italian food" got sucked into its orbit. Good lord, haven't you folks ever heard of flavour? Waiter, bring me some anchovies! And I hope you don't mind, but I brought some Jalapeños, I have a dozen in a bag in my coat pocket.

Or mirasol chilies. A friend grew them to survive the blandness out in the suburbs, surrounded by pale churchgoing people.

This grew eventually into a sambal for chain restaurant kibble.

Not quite "bush paste", which you take upriver in Borneo when visiting hill countr tribes who are far from spices, trade ports, variety, and cook freshly killed lizards with leaves into soup, serving it with broken rice and fermented what-the-living-blazes-is-that for flavour, or when you're going to England and know that you'll be so far from actual food that the appetite quails. But close.

[Bush paste: dried Habaneros or birdseye chilies ground to powder, mixed with equal volumes of salt, oil, and vinegar to an oily goo. Keeps for weeks unrefrigerated, and the British natives won't notice when you slip a little onto your plate.]

It's been years since I always had a bottle of a homemade hotsauce in my coat pocket when stuck in the suburbs. For one thing, I seldom eat with the white-bread-people nowadays. For another, both at work and at the places where I dine when off, there are bottles of Sriracha. One should probably not develop a taste for anything much hotter than that.
Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets are not common in the interior.



Currently smoking the pipe I had filled on Saturday with 4th. Gen. Black Dot.

Apartment mate has left for work. Sunlight streaming in.
Fresh cup of coffee on a stack of books nearby.
It is quiet in the building.
Peace.



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