Early October 2004

No.26

From the desk of Balthazar E. Ringpiece

Ah, Autumn and, as expected, our two mellow fruits are waxing misty. This week, after a trying month, the Gentlemen are back and in finest of form. Mr S, surrounded by the ghastly circus of the US Presidential geek tent, is understandably at his acerbic best while Mr T bartles on in a frankly unhinged way about the delights of various meats. I am, frankly, at a loss to understand either but, as usual, commend them to you and trust that you'll find their random peregrinations somehow amusing.

Balthazar E Ringpiece

P.S. As usual, should any of our members experience difficulty understanding the Chaps’ bon mots they are invited to peruse the Gentleman's English Dictionary and Usage. We hope you enjoy the Chaps' work and invite you to continue nominating new members.

London. October 4th

My Dear Friend,

Ugh. I say again Ugh. This country is all agog over a singularly domestic phenomenon and, as is so often the case, it falls to me to disabuse them of the dignity of this charade. They rave and they shout and they generally foam at the mouth, and all at the thought of the incumbent and un-elected Idiot-in-Chief and his worthy challenger standing some ten feet apart and both telling lies. The sort of lies that if a new boy backbencher had the temerity to whisper would see him jeered with cries of 'Shame' and 'Wanker', and ultimately have him black-balled and ejected from that noble house.

Over here no one is ever required to face genuine questions so the nearest they get to an actual debate is seeing the two corporate whores on stage together in a contest where you can do little more than compare their haircuts and heights, though even these are monkeyed about with as floors are raised to ensure equality. In theory questions are posed that both are supposed to answer (I know, ridiculous) and then each is given a chance to reply to the others' answer. Ha! And I say again Ha!

In fact the entire contest hinges on whether one of them can avoid tripping over his knuckles as they drag along the floor, and the other can restrict his 'sentences' to no more than four words with nothing duo-syllabic contained therein. Think of Tinky Winky and Po, then dumb it down.

It's all about managing expectations. Last time around it was deemed a resounding victory for the current Idiot simply because he responded to his own name and managed to stay up past his bedtime. We are told to expect little more this time.

Frankly you wouldn't trust either of them to run around the block, let alone run this banana republic, sorry country. Not, I hasten to add, that I am advocating anything less than a mass turn out on the side of the challenger. They have a term over here called a 'Yellow Dog Democrat' which signifies one who would sooner vote for a yellow dog than a Republican. Were I of the local persuasion (perish the thought) I might term myself a 'Bucket of Horse Dung Democrat'. After all, the challenger may lack personality, charisma and a decent haircut, but one thing he is not is a stark-raving-mad-bible-thumping-war-monger.

On a lighter note it was recently my great pleasure to attend the opening of a tailor's shop owned by a good friend of mine. I have no doubt you are familiar with his wares as he already has a shop on Savile Row. The New York arm of Spencer Hart is located in the Bergdorf Goodman department store (think of Grace Bros. for the colonies) and I have no doubt he will be an enormous success given the superiority of his wares and the appalling state of what's usually on offer over here.

With the weather changing one is naturally drawn to thoughts of flannel and tweed and to this end I have just had my plus fours adjusted to my newly race-engineered frame (see passim. A-Goy etc.). It's a jolly pleasant feeling to instruct one's tailor to take waistbands in, I can tell you.

My visit was also to linseed the willow for a new whistle. Ah yes, that joyous time in a chap's life when only the feel of something virgin against one's inner thigh will satisfy. That would be wool Old Chap, wool. Hmm. You may recall some while ago I began to ruminate at length on the bespoke suit; pitfalls and joys of. At the time I believe I covered 'Choosing One's Tailor.' Well if you'll allow me I shall now muse on 'The Style of One's Suit.'

Funnily enough, though nothing about a bespoke suit is amusing, it's remarkably easy to select the style of one's suit. Though there are differing opinions on every aspect of the style of a chap's suit frankly, and here I shall endeavour to be enormously frank, every single one of them bar one is wrong.

I am having a piece of charcoal grey flannel super 150's pure new wool made into a suit. Ergo it follows that the suit will be a slim-fit, single-breasted, twin-vented, scarlet lined, two-piece with a natural shoulder line, horizontal flapped pockets, an additional ticket pocket and no pleats on the trousers. Any talk of turn-ups, angled flaps, single vents and shoulder pads is the talk of fakirs and Republicans and is not to be tolerated. Could anything be simpler? All right, anything apart from the above-mentioned Tinky Winky debate. Precisely.

Another joy for Autumn is the changing of the leaves at one's country pile. However since having a country pile would necessitate living somewhere other than Manhattan this clearly isn't on and so the Memsahib and I like, at this time of year, to motor around the part of North America that they bewilderingly refer to as New England, and which I am told has nothing to do with the recent comment made by one of the jackals about Old Europe.

Anyroad one might perhaps imagine having the Men's two-seater spruced up and brought round. One might have the roof down and then shoot over the George Washington (who he?) Bridge and off into the countryside, there to enjoy animals grazing in their pastures, the spectrum of changing leaves, fragrant fields of cut grass and rolling verdant forests.

One might imagine that.

Not bloody likely. Who in his right mind would choose to inhale the effluent from CO2 belching power stations, genetically modified cyborg crops that're so chemically enhanced they could eat you rather than the reverse, and the whiff of cordite as Beau and Luke Duke use their newly legalised automatic assault weapons to shoot anything that 'ain't frum araound heeeere'. No thank you. Windows up in the Jag with Last Night of the Proms blaring and a Fortnum's hamper in case of emergency. Bugger the countryside.

There'll always be an England.

Yours, arrectis auribus,

S

London. October 6th

Dear Boy,

We’re beginning to sound like bitter old men. Let me take your mind away from the ghastliness that is the USA and concentrate for a moment on things that continue to delight us. Let us speak of meat.

Surely the world can’t be too bad a place when a chap can form the sentence ‘I’d had a little too much foie gras’ and last week I found myself in precisely that happy state. My landlord had left us a housewarming present of a bottle of champagne and a can of foie gras and over three nights we’d worked our way through most of it. On the fourth evening I found it in the refrigerator like a cholesterol hockey puck iced with a glistening crust of clarified butter. Silent, malevolent and faintly recriminatory.

I’d heard of a Manhattan restaurant that made hamburgers with a foie gras filling and felt that this would be the perfect way to use up the last of it. A resolutely proletarian punctuation to run of gourmandise. A google search on “foie gras burger manhattan” immediately returned the message…

“Did you mean Fine Grease Burger Manhattan"?

…(An amusing diversion and but a small irritation to a man who has long learned to ignore the advice of Messr’s Microsoft in matters of style, grammar and spelling) followed by a series of breathless reviews of DB Bistro Moderne. Chef Daniel Boulud, according to the reports, serves a burger comprising 10oz of ground sirloin wrapped around a core of braised short ribs, foie gras and black truffles. In a brioche bun with chips, this will set a chap back $59 or $99 if supersized with extra truffles.

To be absolutely correct, the reviews were not universally glowing. Most of the New York based publications seemed to find the idea of dead-eyed Wall Street succubi ploughing into these meat mountains somehow ironic and amusing. By the time the story had hit everyone else’s papers, however, it was being spun as another example of obscenely conspicuous American consumerism.

It seemed a shame really. Though I can’t imagine myself ever attending the DB nor ever making that kind of crass gesture in a menu decision, the idea of a burger flavoured with foie gras was still profoundly appealing.

Your last missive mentioned Tournedos Rossini which, combining foie gras, beef fillet and brioche, seemed to be a good place to start. I decided to hit the recipe books.

Here’s the recipe paraphrased from Larousse Gastronomique.

“Saute one slice of foie gras and two slices of truffle in butter. Fry a slice of brioche trimmed to the size of your fillet steak in the butter in which the foie gras was packed. Fry the filets mignons in butter and place each steak on a crouton. Arrange the foie gras and truffles on top. Deglaze the pan with Madeira and pour the sauce over the meat.”

A short pause, I think.

Aaaah.

Thank you.

That was enough of a classical reference to start on. The ingredients were definitely going to work. It was time to visit the butcher.

I’d love you to think I patronised a simple, rubicund local fellow who was able to meet all my carnal needs with a cheery wink and a rustic chuckle. Sadly this is London. Meat comes in Styrofoam and is entirely bloodless unless you know exactly where to go. My chap is located in your old manor, Marylebone High Street and, though he knows me by name, has rosy cheeks and a place in the country, he’s frankly as much of a yokel as George Soros. This man makes so much money as the only pusher of decent meat to the desperate addicts of the metropolis, that he’s waxed exceeding rich. There is, apparently, a slightly wealthier and more skilled meat cutter in Marylebone but he only does faces.

I felt this would be a test of our relationship so I straightened my spine, pushed open the door and strode manfully in. Oh yes, it took some steeling. Aren’t you afraid of your butcher? You should be. When he selects from his cold room he is deciding if you deserve a dinner party worthy of the Sun King or a pack of jackals. He can tell at a glance if your filet mignon is going to yield to the touch of the family silver or have to be chiselled out of your molars by a competent dental hygienist. Are your senses so attuned? Then fear him.

"How’s the Sirloin today"?

"I’ve got a nice piece out the back. Been hanging for thirty-two days".

"Can you do me a really lovely 1lb slice. And don’t bother trimming it".

He slapped the meat onto the block in a combination of highly trained butcherly competence and insolent challenge. If there was a better slice of cow than this anywhere in the civilised world, he’d fall on his filleting knife.

"Great. Can you put it through the mincer".

At first the look was one of utter incredulity. I felt like I’d asked him to feed his firstborn into the machine. Then his eyes softened to a twinkle…

"Ah. Tartare! You had me going there for a bit".

I would never advise any man to lie to his butcher. His accountant possibly, his wife definitely but his butcher – never. There’s too much at stake in the relationship. Your reputation as a cook, host and even, godammit, as a man. So you can imagine how compromised I felt as I mumbled …

"Yes. That’s right. Steak Tartare".

There ensued a tooth-itchingly embarrassing conversation in which he gave me his personal recipe in tremendous detail. I made diligent notes and, looking back at them now, I realise I should probably share them in a later missive. It looks that good. On this occasion, however, I took the parcel and fled.

Marylebone has also gained, since you left, one of the only two branches of Patisserie Paul outside of Paris so I headed straight there in search of brioche.

"Sorry", said the girl behind the counter, looking nothing of the sort. "We don’t stock brioche. There’s no call for it here".

I’m not sure if I hate the French more for inventing brioche but keeping it to themselves or the English for failing to aspire beyond ‘French Stick’ the ubiquitous faux-baguette beloved of the chattering classes but secretly a cock-shaped Wonderloaf.

It was time to clear the decks and set to work. The foie gras, which had languished in the fridge for a few days was perfectly chilled. As it had been canned there was a distinct layer of clarified butter on one side of the remaining slice that was simple to separate and put aside. The foie gras was cut into 3mm dice with a wet knife (actually, that’s not strictly true. The foie gras was cut into 3mm dice with the Japanese usuba I’ve had hand-forged and customised to fit my grip and chopping style – a chap needs the occasional luxury) and returned to the fridge.

I’d chosen to do 8 oz burgers so the ground sirloin was lightly seasoned weighed out and separated into two, four-ounce portions. The plan was for the burgers to cook on the outside, nicely browned and caramelised with full Maillard reaction but for the inside to remain medium rare with the foie gras slightly rendered. The sirloin was shaped into flat thin rounds, the foie gras dice strewn on the surface and another round placed on the top. The whole was squeezed sealed around the edge like an old fashioned pie then rolled between the hands to square the edges back into the traditional fat drum shape.

(I usually have beef dripping in the fridge. In fact, I’m a bit obsessive about fats. I have them filed alphabetically. Bacon, beef, chicken, duck, goose, pork etc. Yak is obviously tough to get in the UK but, in extremis the beef can be cut half with rancid butter and a reasonable facsimile can be achieved.) At any rate the scorch point of beef fat is high enough that the burgers can be neatly sealed with just the tiniest smear.

The original recipe for chateaubriand involves placing a tender piece of fillet between two cheaper but more flavoursome rump steaks. As the outer steaks sear, their juices are driven inwards to supercharge the fillet. I hoped that, as the outside of my burgers sealed they’d drive warm juices inwards to melt and blend with the foie gras. They did. I cooked the assembled burger exactly as I would a steak of the same thickness. In this case, on a very hot pan, two minutes on the first side then, after the flip, until ‘jewels’ of meat juice appearing on the upper crust. If you’ve judged your thickness correctly this portent should occur after precisely the same time on the second side.

The whole was put aside for the essential minute of silence which both out of work actors and lumps of grilled beef refer to as ‘resting’. If the pan temperature and cooking time are right the meat should lose no juice at all during the rest. In this case I must have got something right because the plate remained gratifyingly unensanguinated.

In the absence of brioche, I needed something special in the bread department. My local deli is Portuguese and, along with a selection of unpronounceable smoked meats they produce a leavened flat loaf with a high potato content. I’ve asked the name a dozen times but still have to point to it on the shelf. Suffice it to say, whatever it’s called, it is dense in texture and utterly lovely. I cut top and bottom crusts off leaving a large, inch thick slice out of which I punched two discs with my largest cookie cutter. These were fried on both sides in the reserved packing butter from the foie gras tin and immediately assembled around the rested burger.

I have a rule when trying a new recipe, that the first iteration should be as simple as possible. This was. Pure, best meat. Pepper and salt seasoning. Simple, unflavoured bread and foie gras carefully applied throughout.

I will be adding nothing in later attempts. No ironic sourdough versions of the bun, no special sauce with fresh horseradish grated into handmade aioli, no clever salad nor witty sun dried tomato relish. I’ll make it just as simple next time because I genuinely can’t think of a way to better it. In fact the only change I’m going to make is that next time my butcher asks me if I want my sirloin minced for a tartare I’ll reply in a loud, clear voice…

"No. It’s for a burger".

T.

'Web Sites' which amuse us.

Classic Cafes

It is rare that we find a site that entertains us more than our own, vain fools that we are, and even rarer to find one which reduces us alternately to tears of nostalgia and indignant rage.

Adrian Maddox has built this beautiful site as a clear labour of love. It is a paean to the passing of proper English Cafes in all their formica clad, steamed up, slop serving gorgeousness.

Illustrated with breathtaking black and white photographs and written with crisp wit and full rigour, we defy you not to spend an hour wandering around the site and the rest of your life seeking out the Cafes.

Adrian Maddox has created something of simple beauty and real social importance. If we could say that we'd die happy.

The Gentleman's Bathrooom Cabinet

A Chap's bathroom cabinet should obviously contain a real razor, a badger brush, solid shaving soap and a styptic pencil. There will, naturally, be a toothbrush, hairbrushes if necessary, clippers if not and a selection of personal medical requisites according to his frailties. The makings of a sound hangover cure and contraceptive apparatus complete the equipe. So far, so US GQ.

Any reader of gentleman's style press would perforce have accumulated the above but there are certain shibboleth items that mark the true chap. Each is traditional to the point of ludicrousness, in packaging unchanged since at least the thirties and, in most cases, manufactured from industrial by-products of Empire.

1. Wright's Coal Tar Soap. Smelling either institutional or like your Grandad, depending on your upbringing, Wright's Coal Tar Soap is the olfactory subtext of Victorian England. If cleanliness is next to Godliness, this is what God smells like. The carbolic odour lingers in a way that can only be appreciated by those who, either through extreme class or extreme poverty, consider anything more than a single communal bath per week to be hopelessly effete. In modern times, when we are told that soap has deleterious astringent effects on the skin of the face, few men have the stamina to handle this byproduct of coal gas manufacture. Over exuberant use in cleansing the anus can cause the sort of drying and cracking one usually sees in a poorly iced doughnut.

2. Euthymol Toothpaste. Until last year this product was sold with the deathless strapline "An Effective Dentifrice". It has the power to cut through fourteen layers of green mould and congealed madeira on the aristocratic tooth and leave the justly infamous British Upper Class dentition in a near respectable state. So painful on the gums that it actually wakes a chap up.

3. Original Listerine. Either the antiseptic phenol (another coal by-product) or the terrifying alcohol content (a little above overproof rum) make this the mouthwash of choice for the high functioning alcoholic. May be used to cauterise snakebites or, in extremis, make a passable Long Island Iced Tea. If splashed near the eyes, inform poison control clinic and purchase white stick.

4. TCP. Also containing chlorine and phenol, TCP has been around since before the First War and smells like it. It's a vile liquid antiseptic that not only cleases the wound but actually causes a painful burning sensation to surrounding sound skin. It smells like the trenches, Matron's office, the changing rooms after a particularly hard fought game of rugger and, divinely, of the back of the knee of Heptonstall Minor, the Ganymede of the Lower Fifth. It's bottled essence of Rupert Brook and clears up stubborn shaving rash overnight.

What do these things have in common? Firstly that no man will ever refer to them as 'Product'. Secondly that they carry generations of tradition in their simple packaging and finally that they hurt like hell. That's how you know they're doing you good

There Now! Having squandered a perfectly good ten minutes of your employer's time reading this you perhaps want to forward it to your chums. The Gentlemen heartily encourage this or, indeed, would be delighted to send the Gazette directly to these poor unfortunates should they so desire. A mere click here will take you to a screen where you can enter their email details to facilitate this happy event.

Pip pip

Messrs. T and S

Copyright Notice.

Two Chaps Talking, A Gentleman's English Dictionary and Usage and the Two Chaps Fortnightly Gazette are all protected under strict copyright. Anyone who helps themselves without asking can look forward to a visit from the Chaps' seconds. They would do well to familiarise themselves with the Code Duello.

Remember: Two to wipe. One to polish.