Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment


The Bard sublime, old Bill Shakespeare starts his eighteenth sonnet with the famous question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

An unguarded casual remark by a female acquaintance got me thinking. What happens when we compare our loved ones, our friends or even our foes for that matter, to food? And think for a moment about our relationship with food. It’s a leap of faith to put something into our mouths. The way food looks; smells and tastes are all critical factors. It’s an act of intimacy and trust. We don’t just put anything into it unless you’re a pumped up participant in Fear Factor with a pneumatic chest and the brain of a goldfish.

In his discursive meditation on food, The Physiology of Taste, the eighteenth century French epicure and gastronome, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” He also said that “the discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.” In the age of aristocrats he had that precious commodity, all the time in the world to indulge in the confident and leisurely pursuit of educated pleasures.

Consider the damning and devastating indictment made by a rather attractive but somewhat aloof Pretoria wife that I know. She is not exactly a young slip of a girl although she occasionally dresses like one. Au contraire, she’s a ripe mother of two with a fine complexion, short dark hair, watery green eyes and excellent teeth. She owns a quaint little stationery shop, her pencils are always sharp and she drives a sensible Volvo station wagon. Alas she was unable to confer happiness and compare her husband to a new dish. No, she dispassionately compared her husband, a pleasant, mild-mannered man, to a loaf of plain brown bread. She uttered the alarming confession that in her orderly world, her hapless husband is in fact brown bread! Her practical side compels her to admit that every house needs brown bread and she happens to like having brown bread around. Every house however also needs bleach and toilet paper.

Which prompts me to turn to the Bard’s famous words for consolation and assistance and then ask the eternal question: “How shall I compare thee my love?” To bobotie? To a tuna sandwich? Hardly the stuff to stir our passions let alone titillate our taste-buds. You’d think she’d want to call him, her baguette, her croissant, her “pain au chocolat” or even better her chocolate éclair. I’d settle for the humble but effective cinnamon bun. Or you’d think she’d at least call him her cheese sandwich. I could live with that. Forget the cheese for a moment we’ll get back to it later. Forget such extravagance and wanton delights. Hot buttered brown bread would do. But no such luck for the hapless Walter or whatever his name is, cruelly condemned and forever demoted to government loaf status. She might as well have compared him to gruel or roughage. Is this how we are reduced in the eyes of our loved ones after years of the tender trap called marriage? Is this how romance is eroded by the daily attrition of domestic routine?

“Walter!" she cries desperately, "I missed you! I need you! My wonderful loaf of brown bread! And by the way, it’s Tuesday. Did you remember to take out the garbage and feed the dogs?”

Inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan and The Pirates of Penzance, I decide to lampoon our suburban heroine with a freely adapted little operetta that I’ve penned in her honour:

She is the very model of a modern house-wife,
With information on vegetables, shoes and the good life,
She knows the price of groceries and quotes the monthly sales,
She’s the envy of her peers, the other females.

Another woman I know, a determined blonde German Frau from Frankfurt, described her husband and her loveless marriage of convenience in the following terms. “Wiz Gunter, ze icing has been licked off ze cake! When he iss naked in front of me? It does nothing for me.” At least she had the grace to think of cake and not sauerkraut or borscht! And besides when you get older you get used to swallowing bitter pills, so dry sponge cake without icing sugar is not too bad and you may even get to like it! One has to be careful with cake however. It cost Marie Antoinette her head.

“How shall I compare thee?” To a bon fillet, fattened duck or a sardine perhaps? Am I an onion ring? Or stuffed cabbage dolmathes? Roasted marrow bones? To beans on toast or tossed salad? Please Lord; spare me the indignity of being chopped liver, Bovril or fish-paste. I hear the loud howls of protest from several quarters ringing in my ears. Yes, I agree, the occasional Marmite or fish-paste spread on hot buttered toast is a lovely nourishing mid-morning snack when we’re feeling peckish, indecisive or lazy. It is also the favourite of pensioners living in Uvongo and the Fish Hoek bowls club.

Think of someone you know and like and then compare them to your favourite dish or food. If you dislike them, think of the foods you avoid. For instance, who comes to mind when Texan bully beef, refried baked beans and boiled broccoli is on the menu? George Bush, perhaps? To Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin is indigestible meatloaf and to coin a phrase from Norman Mailer, “as common as gravy.” When I think fondly of Msholozi, our very own Comrade Jacob Zuma, I automatically think of “smiley,” which for the uninitiated is the township delicacy, braaied sheep head. Not exactly a dish on everyone’s shopping list or something I’d like to see on the menu of my local Spur. What comes to mind when you have to think about your mother-in-law? De-fanged Rattlesnake? Boiled salted chicken feet? Pickled tongue? Sour milk? Offal? Goat tripe? Gherkins? What about unripe green bananas? But then again, anything even cardboard and filleted deboned snake can be rendered palatable if you coat it liberally with flour and deep fry it in hot oil.

My first girlfriend was an English lass who loved clubbing and disco dancing. She made me think of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. She left me after I refused to give up my mother’s home cooking and legendary mille feuille for student digs and meat pies, which is just as well because she was a dish I was happy to consume only once in a while. Subsequent girlfriends were from the Pomona plots near Benoni and they made me think of milk shakes at the roadhouse and mince jaffles.

I detour for answers to the nation that gave us such delicacies like toad in the hole and spotted dick. I am reliably informed that a perennial favourite of the Royal Family is fish-fingers. This was the dish that was famously served at the wedding breakfast of the late Princess Diana. That tells you all you need to know about the mental age of the monarchy. Do they really enjoy eating fish-fingers? I know I once did. But I was four and a half at the time. Did some scheming palace courtier suggest this ubiquitous menu item as good PR to curry favour with the adoring masses clamouring outside the palace gates. Did it somehow convey some kind of identity, solidarity and goodwill with all the commoners in the realm? Did it send a message of support to the proletariat and the great unwashed? What message did it send about Britain’s place in the world? Did it unmistakenly proclaim: “Our Empire was once great. Fish made it so!” Now people all over the world, including me presently languishing in the storm battered Republic of Hout Bay, happily consume fish and chips doused with vinegar at least once a week. I buy my weekly ration of hake coated in a crisp golden batter from my mate Marco who is the proud proprietor of “Snoekies”, the world-famous fish emporium located in the picturesque harbour.

As a committed self-professed Republican I am happy to confess that I hold severely jaundiced anti-royalist views. To bolster my sentiments I read recently in the Sunday Times book section, that when the Queens younger sister, Princess Margaret married in 1960, 6d was deducted from the pay of every British national serviceman to pay for a small marble topped toilet. What a thoughtful and symbolic wedding gift. In no time her marriage to Lord Snowdown was flushed down the toilet and she holed up semi-permanently on the Caribbean island of Mustique where she slept her way through assorted pretty boys and the odd gardener.

Living in the twenty first century, on the southern tip of Africa in one of Her Majesty’s former colonies, I can afford the luxury of holding such extreme views without running the risk of being beheaded. The ungrateful Greeks got rid of their king in 1973 without unnecessary bloodshed. He now lives in comfortable exile in England where he attends weddings, baptisms and flower shows. He also hands out medals at sailing regattas. Constantine is related by blood or marriage to almost every European royal line including his second cousin Charlie, Prince of Wales. In the early 1970’s a group of mean-spirited Greek army colonels, otherwise known as the junta, all of them men of small stature sporting ridiculous Charlie Chaplin moustaches, convinced King Constantine II of the Hellenes of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, to leave Hellas post haste and leave behind his art and furniture. His predecessors included a Bavarian prince and his forefathers were imported Danish princes. The Danish gave us a king and we gave them feta cheese. They got the better end of the deal.

The Greek royal family was initially drawn from minor B-list European nobility who were looking for jobs and countries to adopt, so the Great Powers at the time with Great Britannia taking the lead happily obliged. They decided that the unruly Greeks need a king. So some enterprising civil servant in the Foreign Office was promptly despatched to find a map and he quickly located a sunny little Mediterranean country for them, recently liberated from the Ottoman Turks. The bewildered Greeks woke up one fine morning in 1832 and found this seventeen year old chap called Otto I of Bavaria from Salzburg and the House of Wittelsbach sitting on a throne. Problem was he couldn’t speak a word of Greek.

On the positive side, the Bavarian interlopers managed to teach the wine and ouzo swilling Greeks how to brew proper beer and the Greeks in turn taught them how to eat real food like tzatziki. History creates a legacy and plants the seeds for future problems. We’ve had wars caused by women, by religion, by madmen, by competing claims for herring, water, oil and land. Ever heard of a cheese war? We fast forward to the present day European Union where the feta wars rage. The description Danish feta is a disputed term and a source of constant irritation and conflict between these two minor cheese producing nations. A storm in a feta tub with the obstinate Greeks claiming exclusive naming rights to the word feta which means "slice" in Greek. Their logic is simple but flawed. If it's Danish it ain't feta. It is soft white cow's milk cheese from Copenhagen. Who cares what it's called, as long as it tastes good. Never mind, it gives the bureaucrats in Brussels something to do.

The great cheese powers merely observe the unfolding feud. The Italians drink Chianti and laugh, happy to adjust their crotches in public, pinch bottoms, munch provolone, parmiggiano and gorgonzola. While the French with an indifferent Gallic shrug; mutter under their breath, savour their Chablis, Brie and Camembert and smirk knowingly in a way that only the French can. Why this fuss about cheese? Because the pursuit of the perfect cheese to end a meal has civilised nations and many an important personage especially self-important politicians and businessmen have been called “the big cheese.” Because a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich (grilled cheese if you’re American) done properly is a fitting last meal on death row. Because our educated French gourmand, Brillat-Savarin was an avid cheese lover who believed that “a dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.”

When we think of food certain smells may also come to mind. There’s the popular poem by the Afrikaans poet DJ Opperman which goes something like this:
“My nooi is in n naartjie, my ouma in kaneel.
Daar’s iemand… iemand in anys.
Daar’s n vrou in elke geur.”

My girl is in a naartjie, my grandmother in cinnamon.
There’s someone, someone in aniseed.
There’s a woman in every flavour.

My grandmother, “yiayia”, was in melt in your mouth kourabiethes, crescent shaped short-bread cookies made with unsalted butter and dusted with icing sugar. She was in the smell of grilled lamb chops and oven roasted lemon herb potato wedges. She was in phyllo cheese pies and hot home-baked bread. She was in sweet Greek coffee cooled for me to taste on a saucer. And what is in my muse and in my wife and in every woman with kind eyes; but sugar and spice and all things nice.

It takes a genius like Richard Feynman, the American Nobel Prize winning physicist, to restore some much needed sanity to the debate. Feynman started his early life repairing radios and picking locks and although his incredible mind possessed an unquestionable capacity for love, emotion and the bongo drums, what he most relished was eating chocolate. He cleverly saw chocolate in everything in the universe. Even in unlikely places such as quantum mechanics and strip bars, which he frequented as his unofficial office, writing complicated formulas on paper napkins. His logic was irrefutable. Why take a chance? He always chose a chocolate dessert because he knew he’d never be disappointed. Why chocolate you may ask? Because it is soft in the mouth, sensuous and satisfying. Because it's good for you and it makes us happy. Because the best of it is truly sublime. Because to the Aztecs chocolate was the food of the gods. It was worth more than gold. This is what the famous poet James Wadworth (1768 – 1844) had to say about the joys of chocolate:

“Twill make old women young and fresh,
Create new motions of the flesh,
And cause them long for you know what,
If they but taste of chocolate.”

No discussion about food is complete without discussing the delectable Nigella Lawson. I happen to be one of several hundred million men on the planet who think that Nigella is molto simpatico and she too loves chocolate. Can we trust a woman who doesn’t like chocolate or anyone who doesn’t enjoy ice-cream? I've been on self-prescribed extended gelato therapia for several years to treat the occasional Sunday afternoon blues. OK, maybe some of us don’t have a sweet tooth. But then they better have some other reassuring addiction to something equally decadent like alcohol, sex or cigarettes.

Nigella is that uber-babe of the domestic kitchen, blessed with impeccable taste-buds and with what schoolboys nowadays call big “shiners”. While on the subject, I recently found out to my regret that “great tits” is the appropriate and correct terminology but only when we refer to certain birds in educated ornithological circles. They are none other than the fourteen centimetre feathered variety or species known as Parus major common throughout Europe and Asia. I’m not sure if they’re edible but anything coated with butter and slow roasted with garlic should be OK in my book.

Nigella is the cooking mans muse, inspiration and constant true companion in a way that Jamie Oliver could never be. When I gaze lovingly at the voluptuous Nigella and her promiscuous cooking, I think of a plump oven roasted chicken, which incidentally is also her favourite dish. Nigella tears a cooked chicken apart with her bare hands, eats unashamedly with gusto and then licks her fingers with gleeful abandon. At best Jamie makes me think of kale and rhubarb.

It’s mostly the unhealthy emaciated waifs with haunted sunken eyes, the Miss Twiggy’s, and the impossibly thin, single, female magazine editors from New York, with a fetish for shiny red handbags and Manolo Blahnik stilletto’s, that despise the Rubenesque Nigella. They remind me of celery and make me crave giant T-bone steaks and crème brulee for breakfast .But for those of us that hail from the Levant or shall we say with more tolerant African tastes; we don’t mind Nigella’s rather ample derriere. In any event if like many of us you live your life vicariously through intense episodic television experiences and this becomes your only source of entertainment or dose of daily reality, then the sensual Nigella only exists from the waist up. The camera never ventures south and when it does, it’s a forgiving blur. You may even refer to a woman with a fuller plus sized figure as your juicy goose. This does not immediately signify that you have cousins of Lebanese extraction living in Boksburg but it is a common and very complimentary term of endearment in the rural towns and villages of my place of birth, Egypt.

The many charms of this vixen of the screen had me so captivated that a few years ago I composed a limerick in her honour:

A buxom brunette called Nigella,
Had a wonderful way with paella.
She was pretty and talented and knew how to cook,
And she gave all the lads a come hither look.
In this way the gorgeous Nigella, seduced many a foolish fella.

George Bernard Shaw once said: “there is no love sincerer than the love of food.” I agree.

Oh to be thought of then in these terms:

You are my samoosa,
You’re my chilli-bite,
You’re my pretty baby,
My Turkish delight.

When I say buon giorno,
You’re my pasta al forno,
When I say bon jour,
You’re my plat du jour.

Bon appetit!

Costas Ayiotis
1 September 2008
Hout Bay