Monday, November 20, 2006

Skeets Gallagher's Souffle of Tomatoes


I am in strange black walled Blade Runneresque internet cafe in Auckland - the only non Chinese person here. All the salty snacks are Chinese, all the cold beverages ditto and even blog instructions are in Chinese so I have to use graphic memory to work out how to publish an entry. Surreal.

Am having a super time with all my NZ chums, have even managed to prepare two SSS dishes. The first, Charlie Ruggles' Tuna Special Salad - was prepared at our fabulous holiday home on Waiheke Island. This was a little appetizer before an evening of extremely heavy drinking and a birthday ceremony to mark my reaching the ripe old age of 40. This involved 5 of my lovely girlfriends perched on rocks in the dark like SIRENS swinging tea light lanterns to the sound of the Bee Gees singing "How Deep is Your Love". I was then handed a string (turned out to be dental floss) which I had to pull towards me thus propelling a "Huggies" baby wipe container across the swimming pool. The lid was open, another candle inside lighting the way on its journey to the poolside. Inside was a gift of a beautiful greenstone pendant. Only that bunch could have hatched such an elaborate plan. Insane and totally unforgettable. Those crazy kiwis.

The other Hollywood dish I prepared was Skeets Gallagher's Souffle of Tomatoes which I made for Merle and Rock - my lovely hosts in Glen Innes. It took me an age to prepare in an unfamiliar kitchen with a small pirate running around the place and preparations for a weekend away going on around me. Rock almost opened the oven to check on it but realised just in time that it was a SOUFFLE and we all know what happens to those if you are not careful. Upon completion I worried what it might taste like having never made a souffle in my life before but Merle announced with her usual style, "I'll chuck it down whatever it's like". It was actually rather nice in a sort of fluffy eggy sort of way.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm struggling to get up to speed with some of the lingo in here. Is
chawbacon as oer the dictionary definition - not very intelligent or interested in culture?

Lya de Putti said...

Hi there anonymous... wonder who you are?! You can give yourself a moniker if you click on "other" when you leave a comment then I'll guess who you might be...

The chaw-bacon nickname emerged for a Scottish gent I have been canoodling with during some blog correspondence with Edmund Gwen. I wasn't aware of the word's dictionary definition but EG sent a comment regarding an earlier entry about Constance Bennett (if you find entries relating to her Spanish Chicken you can follow the thread).

I guess at the point I received this I was feeling somewhat disgruntled with the Scot so picked up on the name from James Agate's excellent piece of writing - see below. The chaw-bacon IS intelligent and is sort of interested in culture but I still like the insult because he was MEAN to me so I can be MEAN to him! Ha ha!

Finding himself in 1931 on a motor-tour of Scotland, and passing through “the grimmest town I ever visited” where the air was leaden with the stench of the local linoleum factory, and the depression hung heavy in the streets, James Agate chanced to notice a poster for a Constance Bennett film:

"I passed through many such towns, possibly less repulsive in that they were odourless, and across the darkling sky of each Constance Bennett trailed her cometary glory... It was then that I realised the inestimable boon of the cinema for those willing to take advantage of it, and how wrong those high-brows are who bleat against the cinema because as an instrument of culture it might be better than it is. Quite seriously, I am prepared to defend the position that it is better that yokels and chaw-bacons in Scotland, England, or any other country should have a false notion of culture rather than none at all."

Anonymous said...

Sorry to be anon - it's the the Mole, the fleeting one from UKC, riding out into the West under a darkening sky, with a guitar strapped on my back.

Dog's howl....even tomcats get the blues. It's a long way...from me to you....(especially if you are still in New Zealand).