LitRev 'Recipe'
 

Here's the latest challenge.

Who's going to be the next Spherian to win lots of dough?
It was no recipe for disaster last month - we were "cooking with gas", thanks to having Chris and Martin in the line-up. Good luck with mixing those ingredients and turning out a good poem.

Please write, in verse form, some sort of recipe. Poems should, as always, rhyme and scan, in twenty-four lines or fewer. Send them to reach these offices (by email if you must/live abroad) by 29 November.

(By post: The Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW
By email: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk)

Jayne, I doubt if this is the "good poem" for which you were hoping ! But it was great fun to write.

Discomfort Food

To a tin of baked beans add some chilli.
Do not stint; spoon it in willy-nilly
with, should you so please, cloves of garlic in threes
for gilding this culinary lily.

Use that fiercest of chillies, the Naga.
Let it simmer for hours on the Aga
till the reinforced steel of the pan starts to peel.
Then serve with a great deal of lager.

The effect on one’s gut is corrosive,
cathartic, intense and erosive.
It’s a dish to appeal to a masochist’s zeal
to blow himself up with explosive.

And great fun to read. Don't see why it shouldn't do well.

Bravo, Martin. Have you read the recipes in 'Inside Mr Enderby' by Anthony Burgess?

Martin,

I agree with Jerome.
I love it, and the very clever title. Naga chillies have a gorgeous 'smokey' flavour, which I adore. (I can eat hotter stuff than anyone I know; it's been put to the test many times. My husband reckons I just have no nervous system! :D)

Jayne, do I remember correctly that only subscribers are eligible to collect the big money prizes? I hope I'm wrong about that, although I seem to recall someone saying that at one point.

I have a poem that is around ten years old that I suppose would work for this contest, and I'm pretty sure it's never been published:


CATCH OF THE DAY

Making sure your knife is sharp
draw it up along the carp
so the scales come off the skin.
Use it then to slice the belly,
scoop out that disgusting jelly
known as fish-gut, then begin
lifting out the bones, filleting
almost like a child playing
on the ribs of some toy harp.

Heat some oil in a skillet,
add some pepper, freshly mill it,
toss in garlic, add the zest
of half a lemon to the sizzle,
then balsamic, just a drizzle
(do not skimp here, use the best).
Turn the heat up, add the fish.
Now warm up a serving dish.
If you have a wine glass, fill it.

Sadly, Bob, that is the case, I'm afraid. It's harsh, I know, that non-subscribers can win only a tenner. The way to look at it is to absolutely revel in the kudos if your name appears on that page!!! Believe me, that kudos really counts over here. Hope that makes you feel better :)

PS. You've got three 'some's in fairly quick succession there. Also, might I suggest a slight change to 'If you have a wine glass...' ? I'd assume they do have a wine glass, based on personal experience :rolleyes:, with something like Take your crystal wine glass. Fill it.

Thanks. I know I'll need to revise this. I was pretty new to metrical writing when I wrote it.

Bummer about the prize. I sure hope Chis was a subscriber. I'm not sure they'd be allowed to penalize non-subscribers like that in the US.

Turducken: or, Yorkshire Christmas Pudding Revived

Ask a turkey to swallow a pigeon
seasoned with spices and buckshot (a smidgeon).
Tell the turkey to swallow a pheasant
(talons removed, or it may get unpleasant).
The turkey then must gobble a chicken
(with beak and comb and tail-feathers sticking).
To swallow the chicken it downs a duck
(freed from the muck, but quite out of luck).
It swallows the duck to catch the chicken
to catch the pheasant to catch the pigeon,
seasoned with spices and buckshot (a smidgeon).
Soon the turkey resembles a sow. It dies—so, now:
encrust and bake it or spit- rotate it, hours long,
as did ancient cooks of the Yorkshire of yore,
when appetites, arms, and stomachs were strong.
Tip: when roasting nested birds, more is more.
So, stuff the whole turkey inside a bustard
and baste it with lager and Coleman’s mustard.
(and if you don’t have time to bake Cherpumple Pie,
roly-poly some jam and float it in custard).

("Turducken" is a contemporary term for a dish of nested roasting birds, with roots in the Classical world and in 18th c Yorkshire)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...as-dinner.html

http://theclearlydope.tumblr.com/pos...-water-board-a

You can get an online subscription more cheaply. I have one and it counts. £30 if I remember rightly, which is quite cheap for 12 issues. Don't worry, Chris is a subscriber. They check that.

John is right, I do have an online subscription. It costs a bit less than 30 quid per annum, so even one second-place win a year leaves you well in the black. And even if you just read it for the articles, like so many Playboy subscribers, you're bound to get your money's worth.

In British English, does "filleting" rhyme with "playing," or does it rhyme with "billeting"?

The latter, Chris. The only place that 'fillet' rhymes with Millais is at 'MuckDonald's', as in 'fillet o' fish'. It was never heard of in that context until the aforementioned 'restaurants' opened up here.

Otherwise, it's always pronounced 'fill-it-ing'.

I suppose a billet is a beellay when it's a love letter. I didn't know they said fillay in MacDonalds. Every day you learn something. And the guys round Saint Paul's certainly haven't bought their 122 tents at Millais. Don't the French have a painter called Millet?

Ignore me, Chris. Jayne is right.

Churchill, bless him, called Lyon Lions and Le Havre Haver.

Saint Lewis and New Orleens, isn't it?

Millet is strictly for the birds.

Thanks, Jayne and John. I asked in reference to the filleting/playing rhyme in Roger's "Catch of the Day." Yanks pronounce those words as rhymes, but I thought they might be a mismatched pair in the UK.

The city is usually called St. LOO is, but I'm pretty sure the patron saint and the cathedral there are pronounced LOO ee.

As for New Orleans -- locals call it, approximately, n' AW lins. The New Orleans accent (which I love, but many do not) is unlike any other Southern accent, and turns many French street names -- BOI buhn for Bourbon, EYE buh vil for Iberville, CHAW tuhs for Chartres -- into words no Parisian would recognize.

Oh well, my rhyme doesn't. But the poem would have lost in any event, and it was already written, so easy come easy go.

Roman Recipe

A pastry coffin, rich and round:
Flour, butter, water and
Powder prepared of bones fine ground,
The texture of sharp sand.

Now to the filling, take the bonce,
Having reserved the skull,
Mince cheeks lips, eyes and brains – the ponce
Shall be in death less null,

Shall be a fricasee of meat
Delicious to his mother,
A pasty that's a tasty treat.
Do likewise with his brother.

Two pies we have to cook, one hour
On high heat should suffice.
The sauce can be a sweet-and-sour,
And mustard would be nice.

Such fare should make you want to dance
As frenzied as Saint Vitus.
A Roman recipe. Perchance
You will approve it.

TITUS

Toast to Isabella

One-hundred-fifty years before the brood
Of modern Delias, Jamies and Nigellas,
One woman wrote the book on English food;
The first words in the void were Isabella’s.

Her Beeton’s Book of Household Management
Gave recipes for truffles with champagne
And other dishes much less opulent.
Although Toast Sandwiches sound rather plain,

They’ve been acknowledged by the RSC,
Who’ve challenged others to create a treat
As nice, for less than seven-one-half p.
The author taught a nation how to eat

And also manage house and life and health;
It’s poignant, then to realize her fate
Today would be to have a mogul’s wealth,
Not die while giving birth at twenty-eight.

So, brown a slice of white, and raise a toast
That’s wrapped in buttered bread, to Mrs. Beeton.
And savor. Though it’s not a marbled roast,
No better comfort food was ever eaten.

Frank

Frank,
May I suggest for S4L4 "not die while giving birth at twenty-eight"? I hear a beat too many in your line.

Susan

Enjoyed this, Frank. Love Mrs. Beeton. The toast sandwich is in the section on food for invalids. Funny, now it could be called "comfort food."