NOURRITURE - Partie Une

Food... It makes your mouth water... It's excellent. I could live on it... Unfortunately though, it's the main way we are regularly duped and ripped off in this country. Food trends come and go and the one's that 'go' are the one's where the public have decided that they no longer enjoy the warmth of piss on their backs. Remember cheesy potato skins? What a bastard rip off...The part of the potato that was usually peeled off and discarded or fed to pigs, offered up as a dish for £3.95. The open sandwich... Half a sandwich for more money than a regular sandwich. Cajun Potato wedges... Two small potatoes cut by a potato surgeon, 'dusted' with orange dust-like dust. Yours for £4.95. As they say in this locale, 'Get tae fock!'

Words are used in front of food to cynically add 'value' to it, or infer a costly esoteric process - the cost of which has to be passed on to the customer. A portion of fried mushrooms for example are a third of the price of sauteéd wild woodland mushrooms. No one would buy Onion soup unless it is marketed as French Onion soup, even if it is made in Wales by a Scouser with poly tunnel onions from just outside Shitterton.



Names are misleading yet reassuring aren't they? We get used to them despite them being outright lies. I mean who would eat something called Chicken Keighley or Penistone Cheese? Maybe we like being let down a bit too... Jamaican Ginger Cake, Mars Bars, Spanish Omelette, Greek Yoghurt, Chicken Kiev and Lobster Thermidor...I mean, give us a break... where the fuck is Thermidor?  

The word Organic seems to be a good way to lever a few extra pounds from those wanting to feel wholesome... Next time you are eating Organic Carrots, give yourself a good pat on the back content in the knowledge that you are helping employ several thousand Albanians and Bulgarians who stoically stand all day in warehouses rubbing mud onto Tesco's Selected Carrots to give them that 'just hand pulled' look. Many of these guys may be 'just hand pulled' too.

 Another word added to food which increases it's cost threefold is the word Waitrose. Waitrose specialise in providing food for the hard of thinking and people who cannot be arsed with menial peasant tasks such as mashing potatoes or grating cheese. They also provide essential Ready Meals for the inbred, like Hummingbird Egg Omelette with Shrew's Noses and Stickleback Roe. Waitrose are also poised to introduce the world's first Poach In The Bag Platypus Egg with Beaver Cream. You read it here first...



Even the application of heat - cooking - has a variable pricetag... Pan fried, griddled, stone baked, poached, seared, sauteéd, roasted, flame grilled, slow roasted, reduced, steamed etc...  

Some of these pretentious terms are an insult to the intelligence: Slow Roasted and Pan Fried for example. So you're going to fry my rod caught Atlantic Sea Bass in a real pan? And there's me thinking you'd do it in a fucking banjo...

Anyway, I think it's time for Porc reformé en croûte avec sauce brun... from Chez Màttésôns.

Bon appetit!

All artwork images Copyright Rob Kirbyson.