Soundbites

[shewhomust]

Alex Kapranos, lead singer of Franz Ferdinand, writes a weekly food column for The Guardian. I understand that the band's not bad, but as a food writer he's terrific. Here he is, on a visit to his grandmother in South Shields:

Along with stottie cake, the soft open-textured bread which looks like a large muffin, pease pudding is one of the reasons I look forward to visiting the north-east. You can get it in cans elsewhere in the country, but it's grey and bland. The best pease pudding is made by filling a muslin bag with yellow split peas, then boiling them beside a leg of ham. As they swell, they are crushed against the bag's sides. The smooth, pureed texture is similar to hummus. As a kid, I used to visit my other grandmother in Greece. There wasn't much in common between the grannies' diets, but they both ate pease pudding. The Greek version, fava, is also a form of fast food, but in a different way. It is the staple of the week of fasting that precedes Christmas in the Orthodox Church. The only real difference is that my Geordie grandmother doesn't garnish her pease pudding with garlic and olive oil.

A week later, it's the game season:

The birds lie beautiful, iridescent against the folds of a polythene bin bag. They don't look peaceful. They look dead. They're a brace - a young couple. My mind races with macabre romanticism, imagining the dead lovers' characters.

He's a preening fop, proud and dandy. She's a Laura Ashley librarian; shy, but bright. Her sensitivity coupled with his sense of unbridled adventure gives them that impenetrable air of invincibility that is exuded by soul mates when confronted by the tedious insignificance of the rest of creation. I don't know whether I should cut their heads off first, or pull off their feathers.

The Guardian isn't obliging enough to provide an index; search the site for "Alex Kapranos", and look out for appearances on a Friday. Me, I'm waiting for the book - or better still, the diary!

Comments

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I have just cooked a pease pudding with a ham hock this very morning. Alas, I will probably be drummed out of the Soup Maker's Union for using frozen mushy peas.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I now have the image of you being drummed out of the Soupmakers' Union by white-hatted chefs banging on cauldrons with wooden spoons.

We could set up a dissident branch: I admit that split peas were the one pulse that refused to soften for me, boil them though I would...

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I think this is the image that shewhomust had in mind:

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Nice one! Though I think, if anything, I was thinking of the bakers from Sendak's In the Night Kitchen...