The Domestic Goddess

After a solid month of poetry and politics, my overheated mind needed some light relief. This creaky old vessel was floundering in rough seas and desperately in need of replenishment, a refit and a change of tack and direction.

Here I was a sheltered son of the suburbs, with a modest little villa on the hill, two cars in the garage and a chicken in the pot. But the comfort and relative safety of this harbour was not enough to stimulate some creative thinking. Comfort and security are good but often lead to complacency and apathy.
Not good motivators. This is especially prevalent in Cape Town where the majestic surrounds of the place lull many people into a self-serving, self-congratulatory circle-jerk. People pat themselves on the back for living in a beautiful place as if that in itself is enough and this beauty in itself is enough. Well it is my contention that it isn’t. Life here is pleasant enough but is it productive or meaningful? Does it stand for anything beyond itself?

I sat staring glumly at the flickering images and talking heads on my television set thinking that maybe relief would come from this unlikely quarter. I should have known better. Someone said that at best television is a medium, and good television is rare and seldom well-done. It’s like peanuts for the eyes said some other wise-guy. And after a few hours of mindless watching, I felt the heaviness would not go away just as sure as if I had consumed a large bag of salted peanuts.

“Medium, rare, well-done.” Forthcoming events casting their shadow before the time. Vital early clues in the search for my next topic, but still inspiration evaded me as I sat in despair searching in vain for my elusive muse. I offered a silent prayer to Apollo, the god of light, intelligence, of healing and the arts. A small detour here to tell you more about the interesting life of Apollo since he plays such an important role in my life as a humble scribe.

He was a comely, youthful god usually quite successful with women. A randy bachelor he seduced and ravished many a sprightly nymph. The gods were a versatile lot and did not restrict themselves to the opposite sex. Think about the obvious advantages: you go to a celestial party with an open mind and an open robe and you double your chances of going home with someone. The easy-going attitude at the time could be best summed up as follows: if a chick won’t do, to a dick we’ll be true! And after sex no awkward silences. You can have a nice discussion about wrestling, javelin throwing, arrow pulling technique and so on.

Apollo one day fell in love with a handsome boy, called appropriately enough Hyacinthus. Zephyrus, the West Wind, also fell in love with the boy and became very jealous of Apollo. One day as Apollo was instructing the boy in discus-throwing, Zephyrus seized the missile in mid-air and hurled it against the head of the hapless Hyacinthus. The boy was killed, but where his blood fell there sprang up the hyacinth flower bearing the boy’s initials.

Apollo was especially vain about his musical prowess and kept the Nine Muses as part of his retinue. The Nine Muses were the daughters of Mnemosyne, or memory. I turned to each of these goddesses of inspiration to jolt my memory: Clio of history, Melpomene of tragedy, Urania of astronomy, Thalia of comedy, Terpsichore of dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love verse, Euterpe of lyric poems and Polyhymnia of sacred songs. Still my head was filled only with candyfloss. Light, fluffy and airy. Not good ingredients for someone in search of a meaty recipe for a hearty writers stew.

I was about to do the unthinkable: exit the room and hand control of the remote over to Christine. To men of my generation this is a greater dishonour than unconditional surrender to a Japanese train groper. Most men would rather stick hot needles in their eyes than hand over the remote to their wives.

And then there she stood in all her glory, in front of me, so close and yet so far, on the screen of all places: a new muse to add to my small retinue and to the nine already claimed by Apollo. None other than the tantalising Nigella Lawson. Despite her somewhat unappealing name, I immediately appointed her as my very own domestic goddess and goddess of food and sex appeal. The crisis was over. I could now go back to basics and write about two of my favourite topics: food and sex.

Her gorgeous presence, alluring sex appeal and formidable bosom filled the screen. She has been called “the cooking man’s crumpet” and the sexiest cook on television. The press have described her as “the thinking man’ fantasy woman and the thinking woman’s nightmare!” The woman every man wants to be married to. Forty-two years old, just the right age for someone with mature tastes, but not quite ready to join the grab-a-granny club! And not some twenty something bimbette with nothing to say for herself. A working mother of two, a housewife, recently widowed and a writer who also did current affairs programmes on television before trying the new spectator sport: food shows.

My kind of gal. She has all the qualities and physical attributes I so admire in a woman: a big brain, big time sense of humour and big tits. What else could a man want? A thick slab of fillet maybe, grilled to rare perfection. I sat watching her transfixed as she sliced, chomped, licked, beated and whisked her way into my heart. At last relief; no more of the cheesy, cor blimey! mateyness of Jamie Oliver in the kitchen.

Nigella it is clear to see has a deep sensuous relationship with food. At last someone who understands and has not lost the primal earthy need to feed people. She eats whatever she likes and says you can see it on her ample chest and well-rounded bottom. She says: “People who put on weight are like me – people with a genius for eating when they’re not hungry!”
Nothing wrong with that. Beats anorexia any time. And the one good thing about television is that it does tend to magnify certain things, especially her bosom! She cooks in a figure-hugging denim jacket and a white T-shirt! Oh sweet talking mama!

What is it about Nigella that I find so enticing? So many little things that I could mention. The simple honest way she browns sausages in a pot. The way she strokes them lovingly before she gently lays them down, fat, juicy and snug on hot steel. With this comely wench, the sizzle definitely comes before the sausage. She has even sampled our own local variety, which she calls “delicious boreworst.” Naughty girl! Now here she needs a firm slap on her well-fed bottom to set her right. There is nothing boring about boerewors. After sampling many of the world’s finest sausages; Polish kielbasa, German bratwurst, bockwurst, blutwurst, Portuguese chourico, sweet Italian, French saussicon and bangers to name but a few, there is in my estimation nothing to beat the King of all sausages, our very own boerewors.

Unable to go without them for too long, when I lived in New York, armed with the meat boards winning recipe and an industrial sausage casing feeder, I started my own production line, with a few other devotees in a New York basement.

Back to Nigella. Why is she the serious uber-babe of the kitchen? It must be the way she pronounces “couscous”. I never thought of couscous as an erotic food. Bananas maybe, grapes, strawberries and cream possibly, chocolate and oysters definitely. But not couscous. Little yellow balls that stick to the top of your mouth, which need the addition of a good stock, bacon , olives and mushrooms to transform their inherently bland taste. The way Nigella pronounces couscous, it comes out like a softly whispered “kiss kiss.” Imagine those full luscious lips hissing that into your ear. Whew! She even made the humble pea sound erotic! Her pouting lips purred with perfection as the words “petit pois” rolled off them.

Then it’s the dark Levantine looks and long eyelashes. It’s the way she licks a spoon with such wild abandon and then tosses back her head and gives me and only me such a deep meaningful all-knowing look and a sly suggestive smile. I could swear that we have established some kind of unspoken contact or rapport. That we have somehow penetrated through the scrambled scrim of electro-magnetic waves crashing about the atmosphere to become kindred spirits.

Christine naturally thinks I’m losing my mind. She’s absolutely right of course. But then who wants to maintain balance and equilibrium in a situation like this. I would rather go crazy because of my vices than on account of my virtues. My ancient Greek forefathers did not write obituaries. They asked one simple question: Did a man live his life with passion? Wine, women, food and song are my passions. They make me and many other men happy and that’s all that matters, not so?

Then it was the way she handled an inch thick slab of prime rump. With due deference and respect she caressed the meat and trimmed it of all excess fat, brushed it with some olive oil and seared it on a hot skillet, two minutes on each side. She cut it into diagonal slices and then unable to wait and using her fingers she immediately popped a piece of the succulent pink flesh into her delectable mouth, the juices visibly dribbling down her chiselled chin. She certainly knows her way around meat, this girl. Another promising sign. After watching her I was finally convinced that God is a meat lover.

This woman uses her hands for everything. She lets egg whites slide through her fingers and uses her hands to tear a roasted chicken apart into rough chunks. This merely served to reinforce and confirm what my father once told me: that when it comes to chicken, fish and women, you’ve got to use your hands! Taking all these factors into account I realised I was irretrievably smitten.

In her choice of words and adjectives, I also detected a love for poetry lurking somewhere beneath that heavy bosom. She had passed with flying colours the two critical tests that I pose for any woman that grabs my attention: she has to love poetry and she must be a meat eater. The old open you car door from the inside test is now considered passe’. I have met so many bloody-minded and aggressive female vegetarians in my life that they have left me permanently scarred. There’s got to be something sinister about the lack of animal protein in ones diet. Remember Hitler was a teetotaller and a vegetarian and look how much trouble he caused for himself and the world.

Onto sweet temptations. Her affection for Greek yoghurt, which an octogenarian couple reliably tell me, has secret aphrodisiac properties. Her quick effortless way with desserts and her love for ice-cream were other positive signs. She soaks raisins in a jar of rum in her larder and then mixes them into vanilla ice-cream for an instant easy and very satisfying dessert. She mixes four egg whites to bake a meringue that is moist and chewy on the inside. Her secret ingredient is a teaspoon of wine-vinegar. She then tops it with crème fraiche and passion fruit to create a wonderful Pavlova. The aromatic sourness of the passion fruit being so much better to counteract the sugary sweetness of the meringue. Another one of her favourites is to poach pears in some hot water, sugar and vanilla to create a syrup. Then to pour them onto vanilla ice-cream topped with hot sauce of melted dark chocolate and sprinkled with either almond flakes or chopped up pistachios. Nigella is an unashamed chocolate addict. Absolute heaven! Even the greedy gods would be fighting for more over this one.

She is one of the few women I know that looks phenomenal in yellow. Not even the sight of her in elbow high yellow rubber kitchen gloves could diminish my ardour for her. The sight of her performing a simple routine task like de-rubbering, was nothing short of intoxicating. I imagined her in my kitchen, wearing only her apron and a smile, bending over a steaming pot of Coq-au-vin, misting up my glasses, as she feeds me great big spoonfuls of the drunken bird. I was reduced to a quivering wreck. And then to further impale my heart, her entire home, even her dining room is lined with volumes of books. I understand that in a future show, Nigella even pays tribute to the King. She recreates Elvis Presley’s famous fried peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwiches. Health food? At least the sandwiches have fruit in them, she adds knowingly. For this woman I would eat brussel sprouts.

Finally compelled to do what all silly poets do and write a poem about the forbidden woman of their dreams, I trawled my fevered brain for an appropriate ode to dedicate to this voluptuous vixen of the kitchen. I found to my dismay that the two muses I needed the most at this critical juncture: Erato of love verse and Calliope, the muse of epic poems, had both deserted me, angry because in Nigella I had added a tenth muse and goddess to their divine firmament. Therefore as punishment they made sure that all I could muster by way of expressing my undying devotion and admiration for the domestic goddess had to come by way of a humble limerick:

There was a buxom brunette called Nigela,
Who had a wonderful way with paella.
She was pretty and talented and knew how to cook,
And she gave the lads a come hither look.
And so the gorgeous Nigella, seduced many a foolish fella.

After my armchair exertions as an eager love-struck spectator, after the visual opulence of it all, for as any good chef will tell you, we must first feast with the eyes, I went off to continue my never ending quest for the perfect coffee lounge. I found some of it at Seattle, in Constantia. That irresistible combination of leather, books, well-groomed freshly Botoxed housewives with roving eyes and perfectly brewed coffee. As I eased myself into a plush leather armchair, I let my thoughts wander back to Nigella. All that was missing at my side and in my free hand to assist my musings about the joys of mixing gastronomy with beauty, was a tumbler of single malt whisky and a fine Monte Cristo cigar.


That night I retreated to the cosy comfort of the lounge at the Chapman’s Peak hotel, where the attentive barman always brings me a glass of his finest Shiraz without me asking. The Shiraz glowed like a brilliant ruby in the soft candlelight. The log fire blazed away. Frank Sinatra was crooning in the background as I finally lit a Cuban and reflected on the words of Lawrence Durrell in Prospero’s Cell: “In Lakones on Santorini, when you ask for red wine, they bring you a glass of volcano’s blood!”


Costas Ayiotis
Hout Bay