"After" photo to the "before" of the home page. Breakfast with friends at home, the debris of the table when they leave, signs of happiness. 
"Only connect." E. F. Forster Howard's  End.

What do these activities have in common? 

• ​Watertight bulkhead technology of Chinese junks.
• Napolese pizza
• Kmer shadow theatre of Cambodia
• ​The French meal
• The whistle language of Turkey
• Korean Wrestling
  

They are all on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage. There’s hours of fun trawling through this website. (UNESCO lists)
Every year the cultural organization of the United Nations gathers to consider additions to their list of Intangible Cultural Practices. In 2010, France’s multi-course gastronomic meal, with its rites and its presentation, fulfilled the conditions for featuring on the list. They wrote...
 
“The gastronomic meal of the French is a customary social practice for celebrating important moments in the lives of individuals and groups, such as births, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, achievements and reunions. It is a festive meal bringing people together to enjoy the art of good eating and drinking. The gastronomic meal emphasises togetherness, the pleasure of taste, and the balance between human beings and the products of nature.

Importance is given to the purchase of good, preferably local products whose flavours go well together; the pairing of food with wine; the setting of a beautiful table; and specific actions during consumption, such as smelling and tasting items at the table.

The gastronomic meal should respect a fixed structure, commencing with an apéritif (drinks before the meal) and ending with liqueurs, containing in between at least four successive courses, namely a starter, fish and/or meat with vegetables, cheese and dessert. Individuals, called gastronomes, who possess deep knowledge of the tradition and preserve its memory, watch over the living practice of the rites, thus contributing to their oral and/or written transmission, in particular to younger generations.

The gastronomic meal draws circles of family and friends closer together and, more generally, strengthens social ties.”   (Gastronomic meal of the French)
 
In 2016, the national dish of Tajikstan, (Oshi Palava) was added to the list. This communal dish of rice, vegetables and usually meat was hailed for bringing families together, securing friendships and solving arguments, it may even have helped end civil war! 
 
So what are you waiting for?  Get out that diary, email, text or (old school) use the telephone and invite someone over.

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Beautiful tomato, heavy, plump and red, soft to the touch, slightly blemished due to a spate of rainy days. The season so far has been sparse, despite the  borrowed bees in their Hilton-like structure in the garden. From this large healthy plant, we'll probably only get five tomatoes.  Whatever, sliced, a touch of salt, covered in olive oil and ripped basil, this tomato makes a delicate entrée for two.
Would we be prepared to pay for good tomatoes, soft-skinned, picked from the vine only when ripe?  
​It's become a cliché to complain about the modern tomato.  Is it our fault?
​
I've looked into this.  Vine-ripened tomatoes are NOT ripened on the vine. Sorry to crush your delusions. They should more rightly be called "cluster tomatoes" because they are a variety that grows that way. And don't they look lovely in the greengrocer's with their little green stems? You pay more, harvesting is trickier but there is no improvement in flavour.  Furthermore, all bought tomatoes are bred for  tough skins , which makes them easier to transport. (See doctoring tomatoes in post 28/12/2017.)
How much more would we be prepared to pay?

I have been playing with eggplant (aubergines), a vegetable with which I have a strained relationship.  I love every dish I'm offered but rarely cook it myself, so here goes.
I’ve now done a Japanese-style eggplant in miso, a Madhur Jaffrey recipe with eggplant, apple and chilli, the Turkish eggplant dish that made the Imam faint it was so delicious, melanzane parmigiana and this good-looking moussaka.
The moussaka needed the minced lamb to be cooked with tomato, onion and cinnamon, the eggplant to be salted, drained and fried in olive oil, the béchamel to be prepared with milk and eggs, the cheese to be grated – all simple enough steps. Nonetheless I found I needed to spread the preparation of all the “bits” over a couple of days.  The outcome was worth it but I was reminded of an observation made by  friend, fellow chef and  observer of gastronomy.

“Traditional cooking assumes there is someone who will spend all day making something. This is not as dire as it sounds because the ‘men folk’ know that it takes all day, they taste the nutmeg, they know they can only have zucchini flowers in certain seasons and they know that maybe that day the sheets have not been taken to the river to be washed. Only if you have an appreciative audience will traditional cooking survive."  Rosa Matto

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​We receive an invitation to morning tea in the new year, ostensibly to help clear some left-overs, in particular the Christmas cake.  Seven of us sit around a table set with Shelley teacups, plates and a glass of domestic bubbles. Bliss.
Laura has been making this recipe for years. It was possibly the best I’ve ever had – texture, colour, flavour. Following modern trends, it was not covered in marzipan or snow-like icing, which I miss.

As Rick Stein helps a Sicilian nonna to “peel” artichokes (Mediterranean Adventures) he alerts us to a passage from Kingsley Amis’ 1969 novel The Green Man (a sardonic and witty writer with a nasty streak, writing about a rather nasty man running a small hotel).  One critic called it “Fawlty Towers with sex and ghosts". Here, landlord Maurice sits down to lunch with his wife Joyce and friends. 
 
“Joyce had put up a cold collation: artichoke with a vinaigrette, a ham, a tongue the chef had pressed himself, a game pie from the same hand, salads and a cheese board with radishes and spring onions. I missed out the artichoke, a dish I have always tended to despise on biological grounds. I used to say that a man with a weight problem should eat nothing else, since after each meal he would be left with fewer calories in him than he had burnt up in the toil of disentangling from the bloody things what shreds of nourishment they contained. I would speculate that a really small man, one compelled by his size to eat with a frequency distantly comparable to that of the shrew or the mole, would soon die of starvation and/ or exhaustion if locked up in a warehouse full of artichokes, and sooner still if compelled besides to go through the rigmarole of dunking each leaf in vinaigrette. But I did not go into any of this now, partly because Joyce, who liked every edible thing and artichokes particularly, always came back with the accusation that I hated food.”

(Incidentally he does hate food as he hates life, everything and everyone he comes across.  Joyce, his wife gets her own back, leaves him and runs off with his mistress.)

How are you going with your artichokes?  Comment below.

I celebrate the 25 December as the beginning of the final days of the year - something I'm quite sentimental about. I don't mock the idea of New Year's resolutions. It's a time to give it a go, to be warm with each other, to forgive one's foolishness, to plan and to make an effort.  For the first time ever, we celebrated à deux.  Modern life sends friends and relatives both across the globe and across the continent.  We must accept it.  And it was very, very simple, special and quite lovely.  

We set the table for two with a tablecloth embroidered by my mother.  It's what French girls did in Algeria waiting for fiancés to claim them after the war.
We had a modest petit-bourgeois sauternes, in possibly the world's most beautiful glass. (Joseph Hoffman, late 19th C., still available at Lobmeyr in Vienna.)
Adam Wynn, retired winemaker and Honorary Japanese Consul relates that Philippe de Rothschild liked his sauternes so chilled that splinters of ice would tinkle against the glass. I've stuck to this although I think Phillipe might have drunk Chateau d'Yquem.
This accompanied our mousseline de canard with sour-dough toast and pickled cherries ( from January this year).

We moved to Champagne, Pol Roger 2008, a birthday present from October this year to RTV from his friend and "medical adviser" Dick W.  Bliss to allow oneself to drink Champagne with a meal, not just before.  Note to self -  do this more often.  (And drink less but better.) I love drinking in these possibly "incorrect" glasses, (bought in Hobart).  It's festive to have the bubbles tickle your face.  In keeping with the simplicity theme, we had garlic prawns (very 1970s but quick to prepare) with a  little basmati and a tiny salad of our baby cos.

To finish, a classic plum pudding, hot, with chilled custard. I'm not ashamed to say this was a pudding from Aldi and you couldn't have wished for better. I flamed it with over-proof dark  rum. As you can see, I pour the custard around but RTV, the rugged individualist, pours his over, obliterating the pudding.  He knows I dislike this but it's "party time" and to mimic Alan Bennett, "I didn't say anything".
But at this stage of the evening, things deteriorate a little and the laptop appears on the table.  We reminisce, we draw out old dance numbers on Youtube, we rewatch some favourite comedy stand-ups.  We drink water.  Ah, well...
​(Cutlery - Portugal - Cutipol-Goa - approx. 2008) 
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