for
Adrian & Rosanna, Pete & Avril – who will enjoy this
And why do we act? this voice said
why, nothing strange, not once you know
but mainly fear, desire & custom
a lot of it vain attempts at establishing
some mark
that may last longer than us or, too
just establishing companionships in our
common voyages
often, say, by taking food together
so
I offer you this recipe you may well have
eaten
with a taste for any luscious feast:
food, like flesh, variously coloured &
delightful
This is what you’ll need
to get the applause & interest of your
guests:
200 g high quality plain chocolate (c 70%)
175 g butter
175 g caster sugar
6 large eggs
– of which you’ll need to
collect the yolk & white separately
true magic is to separate then mix
1 tablespoon well-flavoured instant coffee powder
2 tablespoons rum (maybe left from Christmas)
225 ml double cream
60 ml sour cream
Take a deep pudding basin (2 l or 3 or 4
pints)
& wipe inside with a little almond oil
where it shall wish to be hot & strange
then start like this
(not like some hillbilly king):
break up your chocolate into pieces
& pop into a small bowl
sit it on a steamer
in a little cup
dissolve your coffee powder in 2 tbsps v hot
water
& pour (here photos can be difficult) into
the chocolate
let it all very quietly melt above the steam
get that going gently
(like a wave towards the pebbled shore)
As this happens beat the butter into a pale
cream
(spreading out as the prima primula)
beat in the sugar (with hands that are light)
until fluffy
O alchemy, your serious but unstable play
comes in here!
beat again each egg yolk in
– how it shall gild itself
Raise up your little bowl of chocolate, show
it to all the rest
mix & fold it then most carefully into
the golden mixture
making one dark luscious mess
(like this one that’s all about us)
the maiden lights her fire and hastens away
– just to set a large pot of water on the
heat
with a trivet waiting to support your basin
like the branches of the pedunculate oak a
nest
In another bowl whisk (with your hands)
the egg whites until stiff, then fold (w/ yr
hands)
carefully into that dark mixture so they
will not withdraw
quickly fill
the prepared bowl (carefully as
a bloody crown upon thy gilded head)
happen just to smooth it down, then cover
with greased & unbroken cooking foil
pleated like a shirt or the sonnets of
Petrarch
tie it & trim, let it rest as it should
in the boiling water
half-drown’d & gently simmering
– you may need to keep up the boiling water
cover with a lid & keep the sleeves
clear!
Three quarters of an hour it’ll take to truly
transform
take it out & put carefully aside
let it cool – it is awfully clean now
and cool, let us say, as mushrooms
To serve, to truly serve
hopeful, dirty, noisy & shaken as we are
uncover the pudding & loosen its side
gently with a palette knife or such
carefully invert onto a shallow dish or
trencher
whip the cream – it will
lighten a little but still should pour
covering this pudding but not completely
– the moist dark flesh peeping disordered
(we project) through the white & lacy
coverlet
then eat, peaceably & agreeably as children
do in fun
something simply good & tasty together
[I got his recipe from a cheap 80s recipe
book for fine dining (Philippa Davenport[1], 100 Great Dishes Made Easy, Regent Books, 1985). She gave a toned down
version of Robert Carrier’s “Negresse en Chemise”, a legendary dish. This was
based loosely on continental models (French “Negresse en chemise”, Viennese “Mohr
im Hemd”[2]), which tend though to
be more cakelike, with typically flour, breadcrumbs, nuts, often ring-shaped
rather than breastlike. Carrier’s name for this soufflé, introducing it to
Britain, is a problem – the dish undoubtedly is dark, beautiful & fleshy, a
mound of delight. A flirtatious sexuality unavoidably attends our eating,
indeed, should do so. Questions of power and origin attend all our actions –
often unavoidably. Negresse is rejected. But I can’t unname it or her.
One would be a cretin to reject the pudding because of its original name.
Names, words, can never be innocent – but what can? But puddings at least are never
guilty[3].]
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