Hymn to the mac ‘n cheese of an unknown shopper
In a time of mayhem, murder and Trump I bring you a celebration of the ordinary, my Hymn to the Unknown Shopper.
Bugger Jamie Oliver may not be a standard start to a hymn but it would put more bums on pews than All Things Bright and Beautiful. So, bugger Jamie Oliver and bugger coy Nigella and bugger all the writhing preening personalities known as celebrity chefs. They are just cooks.
Cooking is an honourable trade and it’s as old as prostitution, but like prostitution it requires only half a dozen basic skills that anyone can master. So just as we don’t have celebrity prostitutes we shouldn’t have celebrity chefs or indeed celebrity anythings including Trumps. (Though no, you may not steal the idea of celebrity prostitutes, because the moment this piece is finished I’m off to the nearest intelligenceinsulting cable TV channel (anyone for pleonasm?) to sell the idea for billions and then withdraw to a hilltop fort from which to snarl at the world until I peg out.)
Now that I don’t smoke I’ve grown fat, though not so fat as the fatso behind the Trump-pumping Fox News cable television channel. To judge from the photographs he’s a sphere on pins. Yet he’s just been forced to resign because some of his female propaganda-readers, all of whom he requires to dress like dolls and grin like gibbons, have accused him of trying to get them into bed. Is there no limit to the gall of rich fat old men? Well, since I can now identify with three quarters of the rich fat old man formula I hope to find out soon and shall report.
After work yesterday I took the dog for a waddle and then to the local supermarket for dinner ingredients. But my head was as barren of meal ideas as Trump’s is of sequential thought. I went to meat. Meals start with meat. Many a time I’ve stood before that chiller and the culinary muse has whispered. But yesterday nothing: to my left not a word from the beef or the poultry. To my right no pork talk. And in front of me only the silence of the lamb.
‘‘You look as if you’re just standing there making bad jokes,’’ said an unknown shopper.
‘‘Inspiration has abandoned me,’’ I said. ‘‘I need an idea. What are you having for dinner?’’
‘‘Me?’’ said she. ‘‘Macaroni cheese.’’
My heart slumped like a CEO’s belly. Macaroni cheese. The food of desolation, of nursery despair, of inspiration’s absence.
I think she sensed my slumpage. ‘‘You start with garlic,’’ she said. ‘‘Abundant garlic.’’
I perked like a deer’s ear. All garlic’s good by me.
‘‘Crush garlic into melting butter and sweat it till the fragrance fills the house. Then whisk in flour and make a sauce with milk and cream,’’ she said. ‘‘Abundant cream.’’
By now people in tinned goods had overheard the unknown shopper’s sermon and were coming round the end-of-aisle specials to listen.
‘‘You need a herb,’’ she said. ‘‘Thyme’s good.’’
‘‘Thyme it is,’ I said, and the growing crowd nodded.
Any cheese would serve, she said. But she liked salty gruyere for the sauce and even saltier parmesan to sprinkle on the top alongside streaky bacon grilled to crispness and a crust of Japanese panko breadcrumbs. ‘‘Bake it till you can bear to bake no longer,’’ she proclaimed. ‘‘Then serve it with a salad of red capsicum for the crunch and colour and a fist of simple leaves in sharp balsamic vinaigrette to bite through all that cream.’’
The crowd stood silent, wideeyed and adrool.
‘‘Be off with you,’’ she said and clapped her hands to break the trance. ‘‘Go forth and cook.’’ And, turning, she strode out of my life.
The murmuring crowd dispersed. And if like me they cooked last night a macaroni cheese such as they’d never cooked before then they knew the joy of the voluptuary, a joy that lets you laugh at fat old lechers and at insecure tycoons. And as the fat dog cleaned my plate I raised a glass of rich shiraz to the unknown shopper and intoned the first verse of a ritual incantation. ‘‘Bugger all celebrity,’’ it went, ‘‘along with rich fat powerful randy selfdeluding men, and, while we’re at it, (anyone for tautology?) Trump.’’