Does disappointment trump joy?
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
"I see no point in putting pen to paper to preserve anything negative, sad or painful." Nigel Slater
Well so says Nigel. To be fair he did go on to say that there was more than enough misery around, and probably in his life too. I doubt there is anyone happy all the time. He was simply saying he did not want to write about the bad things. The things that go wrong.
However, I want to consider this in writing after my Sunday birthday party which was overall a joyous experience, but there was some disappointment on my part about the food, and, of course, this being family, a couple of tetchy moments. What I want to ponder on and ramble around is whether the disappointment overwhelmed the joy or not.
It certainly shouldn't have done, because the disappointment was probably only felt by me, and anyway it didn't matter, and, like all food disappointments was a learning experience.
The disappointment, was Nigel's Pork, leek and green peppercorn stew. Of course I forgot to take a photograph, and there is neither an online picture, nor one in his book. This is the nearest I could find to the finished result. Mine did not look quite as good - and this is not amazing either - beige I guess. MIne was runnier and yes he did talk of the joy of soaking up the juices with bread, but there were too many juices for that even. It was approaching soup not stew, and my family are not really into stew anyway I think.
My mistake was two-fold. First I think I cooked it too long and cut the pork too small - although he did say cubes. Secondly I was making double the amount, and he said casserole, so I put it in a large, deep pot, rather than a wider sauté pan, which I think would have meant that the liquid would have boiled off more. I added the amount of stock that he specified, so the fact that there was too much liquid was not my fault. And at the end I did try to boil some of it away and I did, but not enough. Besides the pork was disintegrating a bit. I also stuffed up on the cream. At the end you add the cream, the parsley and the peppercorns, but I forgot to take the cream with me, and so had to substitute sour cream - which may actually have been a better choice. Still I was cross with myself for forgetting. I had even written a list of everything I needed to take!
I suppose my main disappointment was that it was somewhat bland. Of course it was eatable. Even quite nice in a bland sort of way. But I had hoped for more - particularly from the green peppercorns which you could barely taste at all. They certainly did not 'balance the richness' of the pork and leeks because there was no richness. And all that liquid! I think it would have been better, either as a braised dish with much less liquid, more peppercorns and fewer mushrooms, or with the pork cooked as a whole piece long and slow in the oven - perhaps covered for half the time and uncovered for the rest.
So certainly a large part of the blame goes to Nigel, but also I take on part of the blame by (a) choosing the wrong dish to make, (b) it somehow not turning out how I suspect it was supposed to and (c) disappointing my family. Not disliked, but not an immense pleasure.
I was also a tiny bit disappointed by my puff pastry twists. This is the 'official' Guardian photograph, and truth to tell mine did look a bit like this. But they weren't crispy and these look crispy. Maybe I should just have cooked them a little longer. However, these were very popular - rightly so because they did taste good. I also had a huge moment of joy when I found that my teenage grandchildren had thought to serve them on a platter beside a pool of chilli sauce. I should have thought of doing that. They know more about cooking and serving than I give them credit for. Witness the fact that my second granddaughter also made a wonderful Basque cheesecake to boost my dessert. Perhaps I should cease work on my grandkids cookbook.
The vegetarian dish was a success although not without trauma. I was a little late of course, and so at David's behest I cut short the cooking of the rice somewhat. There was also a minor meltdown about the heat of the various pans in the car - eventually sorted, but nevertheless upsetting for a few minutes. And I did finally forget to put the coriander on top - even though I remembered to take it with me. This might have been a good thing because some family members hate coriander so much that he whole dish would have been ignored if the coriander had been there. And I forgot to add a little bit of butter to the crunchy topping. None of those mistakes mattered in the end however. The rice was cooked enough and the overall taste was delicious. The charring of the beans and the cherry tomatoes, certainly made it a more interesting dish to look at but whether it added to the taste or not I don't know. We have enough leftovers - having distributed some to my older son and to my vegetarian granddaughter, for tomorrow's dinner.
Joy there was a-plently just in being in the company of my wonderful family and yet, those foodie disappointments caused me a day of depression the following day. So stupid. They were small disappointments after all, so to be so upset about not evincing oohs and aahs is just silly.
There was heaps more joy than disappointment and yet it was the disappointment in not achieving almost perfection - an impossible task after all - that lingered and charged the whole of the next day. And here I am writing about it against Nigel's advice. Does it achieve anything? Is he right not to write about disappointment and worse. Surely psychotherapy involves at least talking through the bad, and sometimes writing it down. Great art can be made from misery. Not that I am in any way suggesting that a foodie blog is great art. Whether it helps me or not is perhaps another question. Will it change me? I suspect not.
It's the news cycle in miniature in a way. Bad news trumps good news every single day. Indeed it is generally extremely difficult to hear any good news at all. We focus on the bad. We love - well some of us do - to watch gloomy, violent, grim or just plains sad TV shows or films. Even comedies these days tend to be about bad things and frequently not really in a funny way.
There were oohs and aahs over the chocolate tart however even though, the pieces of toffee stuck together and therefore the appearance was not quite as classy. And I couldn't extract it from its tin. But so very, very delicious - especially if you like chocolate. So Coles easily trumped Nigel on this occasion.
Perhaps it's reassuring to find that your heroes are not superheroes. That sometimes their recipes are not as good as those from the local supermarket or even from oneself. And yes Ottolenghi has failed me occasionally too. Delia as well although I think Robert Carrier and Beverley Sutherland Smith never have. Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson mostly up but sometimes down.
The family served the cake with cookies and cream ice-cream. I had mine with double cream. You certainly needed something to cut through the richness here. You didn't need much of it.
Maybe chocolate is joy after all. As long as you only have it every now and then.
YEARS GONE BY
March 24
2024 - Noodle bars
2023 - Breaking my own rules
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2018 - Lucky dip - Meissen china
Too hard on yourself Rosemary. It all sounds delicious.