The Decadent Cookbook (22 page)

I took it into the kitchen and emptied it out into a dish. I peeled three cloves of garlic and crushed them. I grated some fresh black pepper and some Herbes de Provence, and mashed the meat with the extra ingredients. I squashed it all into a bowl, levelled it off with a fork, decorated it with three bay leaves, and poured melted butter over it so that it would look like the real thing when it came out of the fridge.

It was absolutely delicious spread over thin toasted slices of stale bread; it was positively a spiritual experience. It was the gastronomical equivalent of making love for the first time to someone that one has pursued for years.

I suffered the indignity of being visited by the same firm of bailiffs for which I used to work, but my old mates were kind to me and took only things that I did not need very much, such as the grandfather clock and my ex-wife’s Turkish carpet. They left me my fridge, my cooker, my collection of books on the manufacture of terrines and pâtés, my vast accumulation of garlic crushers, peppermills, herbs and French cast-iron cookware. I never could do things by halves, I always had to have complete collections.

I became extremely good at my new vocation. The more expensive catfoods made exquisite coarse pâtés and meat pies (my shortcrust pastry is quite excellent, and I never leave big gaps filled up with gelatine, like most pie-makers). The cheaper ones that have a lot of cereal generally do not taste very good unless they are considerably modified by the addition of, for example, diced mushroom and chicken livers fried in olive oil. Turkey livers are a little too strong and leave a slightly unpleasant aftertaste.

The fish-based catfoods are generally very hard to use. With the exception of the tuna and salmon, they always carry the unmistakable aroma of catfood, which is caused, I think, by the overuse of preservatives and flavour-enhancers. They are also conducive to lingering and intractable halitosis, as any owner of an affectionate cat will be able to confirm.

And so this is how catfood, which got me into so much trouble, also got me out of it. I began by supplying the local delicatessen, and was surprised to find that I was able to make over one hundred per cent profit. I redoubled my efforts, and learned to decorate my products with parsley and little slices of orange. I learned the discreet use of paprika, and even asafoetida. This spice smells of cat ordure, but is capable of replacing garlic in some recipes, and in that respect it is similar to Parmesan cheese, which, as everyone knows, smells of vomit but improves the taste of minced meat.

I also discovered that the addition of seven-star Greek brandy is an absolute winner, and this led me on to experiments with calvados, Irish whiskey, kirsch, armagnac, and all sorts of strange liquors from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.

But what really made the difference was printing the labels in French, which enabled me to begin to supply all the really expensive establishments in London:
Terrine de Lapin à l’ Ail
sounds far more sophisticated than ‘Rabbit with Garlic’, after all. I had some beautiful labels printed out, in black, with scrolly writing.

I have become very well-off, despite being a one-man operation working out of my own kitchen, and I am very contented. I have outlets in delicatessens and restaurants all over Britain, and one in Paris, and my products have even passed quality inspections by the Ministry of Agriculture and Foods. It might be of interest to people to know that my only complete failure was duck pâté that was not made of catfood at all.

I go out quite often on trips across Europe, looking for superior brands of catfood with nice labels, and my ex-wife often comes with me, having moved back in as soon as I became successful. She had become most skilful at soaking off labels, and is a deft hand with an
hachoir
. The liver with chives was entirely her own invention, and she grows most of our herbs herself.

I recently received two letters which greatly amused me. One was from a woman in Bath who told me that my terrines are ‘simply divine’ and that her blue-point Persian pussycat ‘absolutely adores them’ as well.

The other was from a man who said that he was beginning a collection of my ‘most aesthetically pleasing’ labels, and did I have any copies of past designs that I could send to him? I wrote back as follows:

Dear Sir,

Our manager thanks you for your letter and asks me to assure you that it is receiving his closest attention.

Naturally I never wrote back again, nor did I send him any labels. None the less I feel a little sorry for him, and anxious on his behalf; it’s easy enough to turn catfood into something nice, but what do you do with hundreds of jars of pâté? With him in mind, I had a whole new range of labels printed in fresh designs, with details of a competition on the reverse.

Labels
, Louis de Bernières.

Louis de Bernières is a novelist who lives in London. His works to date are
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
and
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
(all published by Minerva, London). The short story ‘Labels’ was published in the British Council anthology
New Writing 4
(Vintage, London, 1995).

Take pigs’ throats and cut out the fat, but keep the clean, smooth glands. Slice the loins finely; also the ears (well scoured), and the snouts; peel the tongues and wash them thoroughly in hot water; bone, scrub and singe the trotters; clean the testicles. Lay the ears, snouts and trotters on the bottom of a good clean pot and cover with coarse salt. On top put the tongues, then the throats, loins and testicles sprinkled with fine salt. Let the pot stand for three days then swill out with red wine. Soak the lot with red wine for another day. Drain, rinse several times to get rid of the salt, and dry with clean white cloths. Pack the ingredients tight into a sausage skin. Use at once or store.

This recipe comes from a cookbook by Christoforo di Messisbugo, chef to the Duke of Este in Parma in the 16th century. They don’t make sausages like that any more - in Parma or anywhere else. But if size is what you’re after you can still, in Italy, get a massive thing called a
bondola
. It’s a kind of
mortadella
- with the weight and dimensions of a 12-inch naval cannon - fatty, pink and rather slimy on the tongue. Sometimes it has emerald pistachios set into its spam-like bulk. It’s rough peasant fare, as the cliché goes, and you eat it (when you’re extremely hungry) sliced very thick on bread.

Elizabeth David said you could get good
mortadella
in Bologna. (A good one means pure pork, not ‘a mixture of pork, veal, tripe, pig’s head, donkey meat, potato or soya flour, and colouring essence’.) This was in 1954, but it’s probably still true. Italy, just as much as Germany, is good sausage country, and conservative in its cooking habits.

Lucania, in southern Italy, was the place for sausages in ancient times. Apicius, the Roman gastronome, says the ingredients were pork or beef, nuts, parsley, cumin, laurel berries and rue. They were cased in long narrow pieces of intestine and hung in the chimney to smoke.
Lucanicae
was the Latin name, which lives on in Italian
luganeghe
(still long and thin, but unsmoked now) and Greek
loukanika.

You can make sausages out of practically anything, which may be why there are six hundred different kinds listed in that great sausage-hunter’s bible - Antony and Araminta Hippisley Coxe’s
Book of Sausages.
The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is supposed to have invented the shrimp, crab, oyster, prawn and lobster sausage. Apicius gives a recipe that includes calf’s brains and almonds. Eskimos fill sausages with seals’ blood and offal. In Arles they use donkey or horse meat, in Madrid a mixture of veal and sardines, in Westphalia the brains of pigs. Traditional recipes boast delicacies such as black bear (Germany), porpoise (England), reindeer (Norway), rabbit (England again), and armadillo (Texas). Postmodernists may like to try another English recipe: Christmas pudding sausages, fried in egg and breadcrumbs and served with brandy butter.

Sausage names can be very poetic.
Larousse Gastronomique
mentions the
Gendarme
- ‘very dry and heavily smoked’ - which suggests a philosophical detective out of the 1940s. Then there’s the
Saucisson Princesse,
made of diced ox-tongue, the
Jagdwurst
(or hunter’s sausage), the
Punkersdorker,
‘a strong, juicy German salami’, the
Puddenskins,
the
Felino,
the
Black Hog’s Pudding,
the
Alpiniste…

Sausages are also medicinal, which is why great thinkers like Rabelais have always taken them seriously. They operate like wine, tobacco, jokes, sunshine, sex, anchovies, rock’n’roll, etc, according to their own arcane laws, which have nothing to do with the beliefs of men with stethoscopes and white coats. Someone who truly understood the healing power of sausages was that fabulous old queen Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. When she and
le roi soleil
were both very antiquated and sinking fast she recorded this touching little digestive swansong:

‘I seldom breakfast, and then only on bread and butter. I take neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, being unable to endure these foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits. I eat no soup but such as I can take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear broth - it makes me sick, and gives me the colic. When I take broth alone I vomit even to blood, and nothing can restore the tone of my stomach but ham and sausages.’

Decadents, like clapped-out French monarchs, are always on the look-out for elixirs to restore their rogered constitutions. They should never overlook the sausage. In the words of the writer Francis Amunatégui, founder of the A.A.A.A.A. (
Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Authentiques Andouillettes
), ‘The appearance of a hot sausage with its salad of potatoes in oil can leave nobody indifferent…. It is pure, it precludes all sentimentality, it is the Truth.’

This is a simple restorative sausage with mild aphrodisiac qualities.

10
LB
CHOPPED
PORK

1
LB
GRATED
CHEDDAR

1
OZ
EACH
OF
CINNAMON,
CLOVES,
GINGER,
NUTMEG

2
OZ
PEPPER

PINCH
OF
SAFFRON

SALT

1
GLASS
WHITE
WINE

Pound the ingredients in a mortar, then cook gently with the wine until the liquid is absorbed. Fill hog casings with the mixture and tie. Reheat in boiling water for 6 minutes before serving.