The Birthday Cake: Make a wish and blow.

I am entering into high birthday season. Not only my own, but about half of the people I know. We’re Summer babies– the product of cold-weather snuggling and perhaps a little too much Holiday Cheer. I suspect that my own conception had something to do with Nixon’s 1968 presidential victory. I shudder, yet I am grateful. And, as I type this, I realize that today is the 100th anniversary of my paternal grandmother’s birth (the smiling profile at the lower right of the photo, eleven months before I was born). Of course, she hasn’t been celebrating it herself for some years, which isn’t surprising– she’s dead.

When I hit the one-year mark, my mother (Mia Farrow-circa-Rosemary’s Baby haircut, second left) thought it would be a fun idea to have a joint birthday party for myself and my grandmother, since our birthdays were so close together. The birthday cake read “Happy birthday Mom and Michael!” I’m sure I was delighted with the cake, as I am sure there are photos of me with icing smeared all over my face and body. My grandmother, however, was not. “Don’t ever do that again” was all she said. She didn’t enjoy having her special day shared, nor did she like the fact that her birthday wishes would be diluted by those of a small, frog-like newcomer who frequently soiled his onesies.

And I don’t blame her one bit. On average (unless you happen to be someone who enjoys multiple birthday parties), you get one shot a year at your own cake and birthday wish. That thought makes me weep for all the twins and triplets in the world.

So where and when did this dessert become imbued with the power to single out one’s specialness, grant wishes, and divide families?

What an excellent question.

The Birth of the Birthday Cake

Both the Greeks and the Germans lay claim to inventing the birthday cake. Of course, the Greeks claim to have invented everything, so I’m not surprised.

In Ancient Greece, flat, round cakes of honey and nut meats called plakous were given in offering to the moon goddess Artemis on her special day of celebration– the world’s first Moon Pie, if you will.

The Romans, as was their habit, adopted this Greek custom, but latinized the cake’s name to placenta and expanded upon the idea of annual celebrations. Whereas the Greeks had limited their cake offerings to the gods, the Romans took a shining to the idea of the birthday, celebrating those belonging to their Emperor-du-jour and his family, to important military heroes, even to one’s own city. One’s 50th year is said to have been celebrated with a cake make of flour, cheese, honey, and olive oil. Placenta, delicious placenta.

Of course, neither the Greeks nor the Romans bothered to come up with a new word for cake, since little distinction was made between these cakes and bread.

No, it is rumored that our word for cake is derived from a 13th Century Norse word: kaka. Cake, it would seem, was in need of a greater marketing strategy.

It was the Germans who really put the concept of the modern birthday cake on the map. In the Middle Ages, sweetened bread dough was made into the shape of the Baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and eaten cannibalistically on that biggest of all birthdays, Christmas. I am reminded of the story a friend once told me of how his family celebrates that holiday every year. His mother walks into the dining room carrying a peppermint-frosted birthday cake (because Jesus loves both you and peppermint) and everyone bursts into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday”. Not, I hope, “Happy Birthday, Jesus”.

Mercifully, the idea of a bready Christ-child lost some of its appeal, but the tie-in of child + birthday = celebration survived in the form of the Kinderfest– a child’s birthday party. In centuries past, it was usually the custom to regard children as either mini-grown-ups, free sources of labour, or simply not at all, since it was most likely that he or she would not survive into adulthood. It was the Germans, with their proto-modern Geburtstagtorten, who helped to pioneer the warm and fuzzy regard with which we now treat the young. At least our own. And the birthday cake.

Candle Power

It’s impossible to talk about birthday cakes without regarding their source of power– the birthday candle.

Fire is, of course, a source of both light and heat. It is therefore symbolic of the sun’s power and, as such, the use of it in religious rights is not at all surprising. The smoke from these fires — from candles or burnt sacrifices– would rise, curling its way up to Heaven, to whichever god one was worshipping at the time. The Greeks sometimes placed candles upon their cakes, as they did with Artemis, and lit them as they prayed. With the round cakes glowing like the moon, they sent their prayers skyward with the smoke. It is essentially that tradition we still follow, though we no longer call them prayers, but wishes, which sounds less religious, yet more unreasonably hopeful, and we light up German Chocolate or Wacky Cakes instead of Moon Pies, because that somehow seems more comfortable to us.

We place the same number of candles on our cakes as the number of years we have lived but, no matter how many candles there might be, we get just one wish. The more candles on the cake, the more difficult it is to blow them out in a single breath, as is the wish-making custom. If anything, this symbolizes not only the complexities of aging, but the growing unlikelihood of our ever getting what we wish for. For the young, the act of blowing out candles is one of hope. For the elderly, it can be an exercise in frustration and futility, which might explain why my family stops counting candles for someone when their age exceeds the number of candles in a standard box– 24.

Whatever you might read into the tone of this post, I am not completely cynical about the birthday cake, its traditions, and its powers. I don’t believe so much in the making of wishes by blowing out candles, though I enjoy the symbolism behind the act. The real power of the birthday cake comes from the fact that, if it is made from scratch, it tells the recipient that he or she has been thought of in advance, is loved.

And, of course, I love the fact that I, as the birthday boy, am essentially coating the entire surface of the cake with a fine mist of my own spittle, sharing a little bit of myself with all my co-celebrants. It’s better to give than to receive, you know. That’s why this year, I shall joyfully close my eyes, put my lips together, and blow.

Arizmendi: there is fancy bread.

The voice of Gene Wilder has been inhabiting my head for the past several days. There is no good reason behind it, really. Just an endless, mildly obsessive audio loop, but it got me thinking…

Yes, where exactly is fancy bread? In the heart or in the head? After much thought on the subject, I have decided that, if one manages to find it, purchase it, and ingest it, fancy bread will wind up in both places upon digestion. Problem solved.

One of my favorite places for fancy bread is Arizmendi Bakery on 9th Avenue. Born in the Autumn of 2000, Arizmendi is natural-born offspring of the Cheeseboard Collective of Berkeley. Like The Cheeseboard, Arizmendi is a worker-owned-and-operated collective, a fact which gives me hope that the idealism of 1960’s San Francisco is not totally extinct, even if it had to be imported from the East Bay.

I had not been there for years, but the desire to exorcise the Wilder-demon combined with the fact that I’ve been missing their Corn-Cherry scones (one of which I am eating as I type) caused me to take the hour’s round trip out to the Avenues and pay them another visit.

I’m very happy I did.

The place was filled with the local hungry at the noon hour, all waiting, it seemed, for the fresh, unique-to-the-day pizze that make their way out of Arizmendi’s ovens some time after 11:30. There were so many people packed into the small public area, both in line and at the tiny tables, that I wondered what would happen if there was some call for mass-panic. It was difficult to move, but that, I suppose, is the price one must pay for getting one’s hands on some fantastic baked goods.

If you live in the neighborhood, then you’re already familiar with their award-winning breads, scones, muffins, brioches, pizze. etc. But if you live elsewhere, I recommend you expand your horizons and your comfortable eating radius, like I need to remind myself to do from time to time, and pay them a visit.

And try the scones. Just save one or two for me.

Arizmendi Bakery:

1331 9th Avenue

Between Irving and Judah

415) 566-3117

www.arizmendibakery.org

Hours:

Tuesday: Friday: 7 am – 7 pm

Saturday: 8 am – 7 pm

Sunday: 8 am – 4 pm

Monday: Closed

Sayonara, Mr. Aoki.

Forget for a moment that the late Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki was a heavy-drinking playboy who once boasted of impregnating three different women at the same time. Forget that his Benihana empire turned his family into some Japanese-American version of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran. And try, too, to forget that trademark jheri-curled head of his.

Rocky Aoki helped change the way America looked at Asian food and, in his own special way, how Americans dined.

The cultural confusion displayed in this commercial shows us just how far we, for the most part, have come in our acceptance of “Oriental” Cuisine– a term which now seems quaint, even racist. Before Mr. Aoki opened the first Benihana Restaurant in New York City in 1964, “Oriental” food meant, to most Americans, chop suey and fortune cookies– both, incidentally, American inventions

Despite its Japanese trappings, Benihana is a distinctly American restaurant. Named for Mr. Aoki’s parents’ coffee shop, which was itself named after a little red flower discovered surviving the fire-bombing of their Tokyo neighborhood, the concept behind the new, Japanese-style dining-experience was brilliant.

Take American ingredients like steak, shrimp, and chicken, cook them up in a setting heavy with paper screens and lacquer work, pipe in some hypnotic shamisen music, and have it all served up by, not waiters, but cleaver-juggling chefs.

It didn’t seem to matter that the food wasn’t exactly Japanese. Mr. Aoki’s success lay in the fact that he persuaded American to think it was.

And his idea could not have come at a better time. Benihana was born just months before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was passed, reversing decades of exclusionary policies against immigrants from Asia, as well as other non-Western nations.

Though Aoki’s concept of a Japanese Steakhouse was, at the time, anything but authentic Japanese food, by getting Americans used to the idea of Asian cuisine through the dressing of up essentially non-threatening foodstuffs in vaguely exotic-yet-accessible dishes, the road ahead was made clear for the advent of later Asian food crazes, like sushi in the 1970’s, Thai in the 80’s, and Vietnamese in the 90’s.

Benihana , too, was instrumental in moving the theatrics of dining away from the waiter, with his twin, dying arts of Caesar salad-tossing and Crêpes Suzette-flaming, and over to cooks with samurai-like knife skills and their lightening-fast slicing of animal flesh. There was (and hopefully still is) always an element of danger and surprise when dining teppan-side, as though one might wind up finding a finger, curled and sizzling, among the scampi.

Mr. Aoki died last week of undisclosed causes, plagued by hepatitis C, diabetes, and cirrhosis of a liver once sliced in two. He lived the American dream of fame and fortune, and died amid the nightmare of litigious children and bitter ex-wives. He lived fast and died quietly. He was a source of both outrage and outrageousness. And he was as American as apple pie or, more accurately, a Japanese Steakhouse.

Sayonara, Mr. Aoki.

The Pretzel– Tying knots.

Pretzels are a snack food to which I have never given much thought. They’re crunchy and salty, or soft and chewy. Great with beer, great with mustard. Plain, dipped in chocolate or yogurt, they satisfy the basic urge to nosh mindlessly. They work well with myriad accompanying flavors, except possibly huckleberry, which I tried last night. Those, according to the waiter with whom they were shared, smelled like urinal cakes. Pretzels are at home in bars, ball parks, and low-budget parties. They are anything but high falutin.

When a friend mentioned I might talk about pretzels, I thought, “Why not?” Of course, if he asked me to walk into the middle of a Hell’s Angels picnic singing show tunes, I’d probably do that, too. I am currently that open to suggestion. Pretzel-making, however, seems a much safer venture, so I did a little reading…

Legend has it that the pretzel was invented by a monk experimenting with leftover bread dough in or around the year 610 C.E.. He twisted the dough into the shape of a child’s arms folded across his (the child’s, not the monk’s) chest in prayer, a position not unlike the one made when jumping off a very tall cliff into the sea. I think that both the willingness to believe this tale and the act of cliff-jumping are alike in their need for a certain amount of blind faith in order to be successful. The priest gave these bready pretiolae or “little prayers” as rewards to children who managed to learn their prayers well. These treats became rather popular, spreading throughout Europe over the centuries, most notably in the German-speaking countries, where they became known as pretzels.

What is certain is that medieval monks used the inter-connected loops of the pretzel to help children grasp the concept of the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all rolled up into one chewy treat. According to a number of sources, they became “an important symbol of Church life.”

Above, Pieter Breugel’s “The Fight between Carnival and Lent”, 1559. Pretzels were also known as “Lenten Bread”. Today, of course, the are synonymous with carnivals.

Pretzels soon came to symbolize good fortune, bringing prosperity and spiritual wholeness with every bite. Wedding couples fell into the practice of breaking a pretzel, much like one might break a wishbone on Thanksgiving– the person with the larger piece was assured domestic happiness. What the loser was left with, besides a smaller bit of pretzel, is unknown. The pretzel, over time, came to symbolize the tying of the marriage knot.

Most importantly, the pretzel seems to have been directly responsible for the invention of the croissant (at least, according to folklore). During either the Siege of Vienna in 1529 or the Battle of Vienna in 1683 (you can read an interesting commentary on this at JoePastry.com), legend has it that pretzel bakers, working in the pre-dawn hours in their cellar workshops near the city’s walls, heard the clang of the Ottoman invaders’ digging tools, warned the Austrian army of the enemy’s tunneling efforts, thus saving the city. In commemoration, the bakers of the city created the kipfel, a crescent-shaped pastry mimicking the crescent moons of the Turkish banners. It wasn’t until France’s favorite Austrian, Marie Antoinette, moved to Versailles with her pastry chefs that the kipfel became more commonly known as the croissant.

You can take all that, more or less, with a grain of kosher salt.

Chewy Pretzels

I received a cookbook (on loan) entitled Breads, Soups, & Salads! by Sharon Baizer Winstein from the person who, in his way, has tied me up in my own, special kind of knot. He met the author years ago in Spokane when she was on her national book-promoting/ visiting-the-grandkids tour. How could I not want to try a recipe from a woman who combines business and pleasure so efficiently?

The recipe is stated to be “fun for kids to do with an adult helper.” Well, it is easy. I have a feeling that the level of fun depends upon the attitude of the adult and the age of the children.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups minus 2 tablespoons very warm water

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 package active dry yeast

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

3 ½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

¼ cup toasted wheat germ

¾ teaspoon salt

oil or non-stick spray

kosher salt, for topping

1 egg white, for glaze

Procedure:

Pre-heat oven to 425 ° F. Place oven rack on top shelf.

1. Warm a large (4-quart) mixing bowl with hot tap water. If you have a stand , mixer, your pretzel-making life is going to be much, much easier. Empty and immediately add the warm, measured water and sugar into bowl. Stir to dissolve sugar. Sprinkle yeast over the surface of the water and add vinegar. Let rest (of course, the yeast is really being hyperactive at this point, so I suppose I should just say “let it do its thing”) for 10 minutes. The mixture will foam slightly.

2. Put 3 ¼ cups of the flour, ¼ cup toasted wheat germ, and ¾ teaspoon salt in another bowl. Mix well.

3. Measure out 2 ¼ cups of the flour mixture; stir into the yeasted water. Knead with the dough hook attachment in your stand mixer, or with a lot of stamina without, until the dough is nice and stretchy. Scrape down side of bowl from time to time. Add the remaining flour mixture in small amounts.

4. With flour on your hands (or the hands of a small child, if you like, it doesn’t matter. Make them do the dirty work, they might thank you for it later), work the dough until it becomes soft and tacky, but manageable.

5. Turn dough out onto work surface. Knead dough by hand for a few minutes, until it is “pleasant but slightly tacky” (which seems very much in accordance with my personal world-view). If the dough is unmanageably sticky, work in a little more flour.

6. Put dough on a flour-free surface and squeeze, pull, and roll dough into a 12-inch log of even thickness. Measure the log; cut in half with a knife or dough scraper. With wide-spread fingers, firmly roll each piece into 12-inch logs with ends as thick as the middle. Cut each log into 8 pieces.

7. Line two baking pans with aluminium foil and coat with oil or non-stick spray, or one pan, if you don’t have two. Set near your place of dough-rolling operation.

8. Work with one piece of dough at a time. Place one piece of dough on your work surface. With your palms and wide-spread fingers, roll each piece into an even 18-inch strand. Cross ends, twist once, and bring twisted ends up to rest on the top of the pretzel. Repeat with the rest.

9. Use a soft brush to generously coat pretzels with beaten egg white. Pretzels will be shiny only where the egg white is applied. Sprinkle as much kosher salt over the pretzels as your blood pressure will allow. Place on the top rack of your oven, shut the damned door and bake for 16 minutes, or until golden. Serve while still warm with mustard or what-have-you.

Makes 16 soft, chewy pretzels.

Yelp: (No) thanks for sharing.

In celebration of our most patriotic holiday, I am declaring my own independence from what I consider one of the most irritating sites on the internet– Yelp.com. Even the name causes me to chafe.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “yelp” means:

1. Noun: a sharp shrill bark or cry (as of a tog or turkey); (see) also squeal.

2. Intransitive verb: To utter a sharp quick shrill cry.

At least. they’ve given themselves an accurate name.

Perhaps it is my own, personal distaste for democracy, especially in terms of voting for, say, restaurants (think Zagat), pop singers (think American Idol), or even presidents (think about whomever you wish) that makes me dislike sites such as Yelp. Before your underwear gets anymore bunched in places, I am hardly un-American. I am a firm believer in our particular form of government, which happens to be republican, rather than democratic. And before your y-fronts become irretrievably lodged, I am referring to systems of government, not political parties. For the sake of argument today, I shall limit my discussion to restaurant commentary.

It seems that anyone with access to a computer today can write a restaurant review, myself included. But is everyone’s opinion worth reading, let alone writing? That is certainly debatable. I for one, don’t think so.

Call me a snob. Call me an elitist pig. I’ve been called much worse.

Of course, I believe that everyone is certainly entitled to his or her opinion, but many opinions expressed on sites like Yelp are neither well-informed nor, as is more often the case, well-written.

For example, I’ve chosen three reviews of Brenda’s French Soul Food on Polk Street, which has, as of this posting, 338 Yelp reviews. This is from a four yelp star rated piece:

I enjoyed this place a lot . We found parking right on Vaness. Our wait was about 20 minutes. We arrived at 11am I think. It will seat about 20 people-30people. I did not see Brenda though.

My first time eating beignets – I did not know it came in threes, I should of ordered one of each. We got three apple ones. It was gooood and fattening.

I ordered the bowl of gumbo (dark gumbo). I am use to the tomatoey colored gumbo but it was pretty good.

Also got an entree of the Harrytown special which includes oysters, grits and biscuits.

I loved the biscuits.

Cute little place to revisit or bring out of towners.

Harrytown Special? I can only assume she meant Hangtown Fry. With testimonials like this, it’s not surprising the restaurant sustains such long lines out the door. Are reviews such as these typed on a texting keypad, rather than at a keyboard? That would be a charitable explanation of such short sentences. It’s like some unevocative, bastard form of haiku. It horrifies, but that’s just fine, since I tend to savor crappiness. The only point it serves, in my book, is as the object of mockery.

Now here is an excerpt from a not-so-good (two yelp star) review:

Just before we passed out from hunger, they brought over our beignet flight which was good, our favorite beignet was the crawfish. The only other compliment I have is for the coffee. The breakfast plates were mediocre. My friend, who was starving, took 5 bites of her omelette and left the rest.

She certainly has a flair for the dramatic. If one decides to set out and review a restaurant, whether one has enjoyed the experience or not, one should, to the best of one’s ability, explain why. What made these crawfish beignets good? What could possibly compel a starving woman to take only five bites of an omelette? These are things I want answered. If a reviewer cannot accurately describe her experience– the food she ate, the service she received, or her surroundings– she has no business wasting anyone’s time with her fourth-grade writing skills. Make that third grade– I know a couple of nine year-olds who write much more vividly.

And, finally, here’s a rather terrible (one yelp star) piece:

I am as honest as a heartbeat, so believe me when I say that this spot is highly overrated. I just have no desire to come again- wait or no wait.

I had a bit of all four of our plates and the sampler benettes, so here goes my opinion…

My dish- The Shrimp and Goat Cheese Omelet Grits and Cream Biscuit- The shrimp was not devianed and thus flavorless. I opted not to have the bacon relish on top so I will be fair and refrain from further commenting about it. I like my gritts creamier than it was but it was tastey and the buiscutt was pretty good.

Watermelon Sweet Tea- Free refills, but they don’t really tell you that. liked it because it was not sweet, and I like water. It was also luke-warm.

The Chalkboard Special, Shrimp Pot Pie- The shrimp was overcooked and rubbery, and the veggies were overcooked and mushy. Boo Hoo!

Honest as a heartbeat. Perhaps she should have her cardiologist examine her for arrythmia. I don’t trust anyone starts off by telling me how honest she is. It was a bad review on a number of levels, star ratings aside. I do, however, admire her creative spelling, the fact that she feels shrimp proto-intestines are where all the flavor is, and that she can’t tell the difference between a mirror and a chalkboard. I read the bit about why she likes the Watermelon Sweet Tea about ten times.

If you’re interested in reading about her bikini waxing at the Pink Cheeks Skin Salon in Sherman Oaks, I will happily email you her yelp profile.

I had hoped the members of Yelp Elite might be a little more helpful or, at least, better writers, since the elite page states:

…Yelp members who get in are known for having reviews that are insightful, irreverent and personal (aka useful, funny and cool!).

Of course, it also requests that Elite members have:

Personal pizazz! Even after all this, we look for a certain je ne sais quoi—we call it Yelpitude. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice James Stewart when defining pornography in a case about obscenity, “Yelp Elite is hard to define, but we ‘know it when we see it.‘”

Perhaps I should have sensed trouble when I realized the Yelp Elite squad (or, at least, the person responsible for writing the copy) had mistaken a much-beloved Campbell’s Soup-hawking actor for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

The first elite reviewer I read was a young lady named Beverly. She went on and on about her experience with a DAT date to Frisée Restaurant in the Castro. I hopethat by DAT she meant “Dine About Town”. Please read:

Sidenote: It was cramped as s**t. We sat upstairs and the ceiling was like 6 feet high and we sat at a tiny itty bitty table next to a tiny itty bitty walk way. Oh and the service. SLOW AS S**T. I want to minus stars for the service but the food was so good I just can’t bring myself to do it.

What is it about her personal writing style that led her to become part of the Yelp Elite? Was it her penchant for using fecal terms when describing her experience? Perhaps it was her photos (which are required of all Elite members). Maybe her two lip rings at the right-hand corner of her mouth catch enough food so that she might savor it more thoughtfully upon her return home from dining, quill pen in hand and that deep-in-thought dreamy look that only fake, blue-tinted contact lenses can properly convey. Does she have “that certain je ne sais quoi“? I’m thinking it’s more like elle ne sait rien.

Well, I’ve had my fun at Yelp’s expense today, but to be fair(ish), I must say that, in browsing the site for several hours this week, I have come across some people who do offer thoughtful– and fairly well-written– reviews. Case in point: Kerry “Tempura Assassin” K in describing her experience at Burritoville in San Anselmo:

[My husband] was a little more offended at the sight of iceberg lettuce on his carne asada taco ($2.95) than I was. Granted, yes, iceberg lettuce in a Mexican restaurant is an insult to my intelligence, I was able to forgive. This was largely due to the chips, which were thick, crisp, and toasty as well as a lovely salsa bar, friendly and welcoming service, a clean environment, and a buy 9 get 1 free taco card.

Caveat lector: on the back of the frequent buyer card, it spells out the number of tacos in spanish, “uno, dos, etc.” After the 9th one it says “bingo gringo”. Gringo eh? That must mean that either Latinos and Chicanos don’t eat here or the food isn’t real Mexican. So perhaps my taste can’t be trusted with this review. If you keep reading, read on with that in mind.

Finally, someone who notices and describes those little details that make a review worth reading. That, and the fact that she used the term caveat lector correctly (or at all). A bright, shining tablet of antacid to save me from so much Yelping bile. I’d really like to hug her. If elite membership could be limited to the likes of Kerry, I think I might have a little more faith in the website. Otherwise, what is the point of creating an elite class, if it is open to, well, everyone?

If you accused me of elitism, you’d be absolutely correct in doing so. Why should I waste my time reading the average person’s average review? I don’t want an average guy running my country, building my home, or giving me a colonoscopy. I want experts. I want smart people. Same goes for my restaurant reviewers. If all you can give me in describing a gumbo is “OMGITSAWESUM!!!”, perhaps you should just keep it to yourself. The world beyond your Myspace friends list is not ready for you.

Posh Nosh Revisited

Cooking shows have sprung up like so much unpleasant fungus in the past decade. Thank you, Food Network. Some are truly instructive, even mildly entertaining, but few are actually really interesting. A recipe here, a perky, annoying host there. Thirty minutes and several jarring jump cuts later, you’ve got two to three dishes presented that you’re, more likely than not, never going to make yourself.

Oh, how I miss Julia Child.

Where is the drama? Well, there’s The Next Food Network Star, Top Chef, or Iron Chef, but I regard them as mere stress-related entertainments. I want real conflict. I want character-driven tension. With the exception of perhaps watching Jacques and Claudine Pépin, I find the cooking world an emotional wasteland. At least with them, I get to witness some fascinating inter-family dynamics. Claudine can never quite live up to her father’s expectations, and it shows. One gets the feeling he has never let her win at anything, but I still keep rooting for her just the same. It makes me cringe, but I keep watching because, one day, I hope she’ll have a breakdown on camera and finally tell him what he can do with his aubergine farci.

So where do I turn for food-related drama?

Posh Nosh.

Posh Nosh is difficult to describe without giving too much away, so I will just have to let you judge for yourselves.

It’s good, I swear. Do watch. And when you’re done with this one, watch some more. It’s not as though you’re actually getting any work done.