It was on a cold and dreary night in November 1892 that I was first introduced to yet another of the singular talents of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, talents with which he was wont to so often surprise those that thought they knew him well.

The fire was blazing in our chambers at 221b Baker Street and I was seated comfortably in an armchair, browsing through the privately published memoirs of a Ruhr industrialist visiting Siam in incognito. Meanwhile Sherlock Holmes sat listlessly at his desk with his commonplace book open before him but ignored. Once again it was clear to see he was in the grip of one of his queer humours.

Looking across, I recognised of old that glint in his eye that signaled a brooding determination to break loose of his lethargy. I feared his gaze would soon turn to the drawer that held his vials of five percent cocaine solution, or worse still, to his violin case.

Suddenly Holmes leapt to his feet and began to pace about the room. “I feel like something spicy and gamey,” he ejaculated.

“Why my dear Holmes, whatever could you mean?” I murmured, rising to feet and closing a chapter on a stimulating account of nubile hermaphrodites in Indochine.

“The Devil’s Kidneys, Watson! That’s what I mean,” he curtly exclaimed.

“Good heavens! You’ve finally found the solution to the Case of the Missing Claret? I’ve always thought it was connected with the evening the Diogenes Club came back here after that show of photographic slides about fertility rites in West Africa-“

“No Watson,” Holmes vigorously interrupted, “I meant I could do with a spot of devilled kidneys right now.”

“A capital idea,” I remarked, for I too was feeling the pangs of night hunger, and I immediately rang the bell for Mrs Hudson. After waiting a minute I rang again as she had not appeared with her customary alacrity.

I looked at Holmes with a quizzical expression and said “Perhaps Mrs. Hudson is entertaining?”
“I’ve never found her so,” he replied with some asperity.*

At that moment, the door to our room was flung open and there stood Mrs. Hudson on the vestibule, clad in a blue and somewhat distressed flannel nightgown with her hair all awry and apparently in the grip of some strong emotion.

“It’s four thirty in the f_____g morning! What the f__k do you mad b_____ds want now?” Mrs. Hudson cried.

Holmes regarded this apparition with some amusement and then blandly remarked “Why Mrs. Hudson, I would venture a guess that you have recently risen abruptly from a deep sleep while reclining mainly -”

“Too f_____g right I was !” she replied with some passion.

“Please calm yourself my good woman,” Holmes crisply replied. “As you can see, Dr Watson and myself are perfectly safe and sound. Although perhaps not in such animal spirits as we would prefer. Could you pray prepare some of your delicious devilled kidneys and we shall feel whole again in a trice.”

“Oh f__k a fishwife with a Tilbury bunt! I’ve put up with a lot from you two I have. I never complained about the b____y bullet holes over the mantelpiece, I never said a word about Mr Holmes’s used vials littering the landing and I always turned a blind eye while cleaning to the Doctor’s folios of “artistic studies” left all over the b____y place. I’ve opened the front door to those f_____g Irregulars of yours at all hours more times that I care to remember and thrown some of them out again when you was passed out from that coco juice s__t, I can tell you. The things they get up to with your makeup case! And why only the other night I had to let the both of you in at three in the f_____g morning, reeking of cheap gin and even cheaper cologne – all dressed up as b____y Haymarket trollops.”

“Ah yes, the affair of the Dollymops and the Duchess of D________” Holmes languidly interrupted. “Thank you for the loan of your undergarments Mrs. Hudson as their appearance of verisimilitude proved invaluable at a certain crucial point in our investigations.”

“Loan my a__e! You pinched them from the b____y washing line! Now you want me to cook at this f_____g hour! Well, you can shove that right up your Khyber!”

With these parting words, Mrs. Hudson slammed the door shut with a resounding crash and left down the stairs with further and thankfully now inaudible imprecations.

Holmes turned to me and dryly remarked “I fear the absence of conjugal companionship these past fifty years since Sergeant Hudson failed to return from Afghanistan is finally taking its toll on his other half. ** Never mind Watson, we can fend for ourselves this just this one. It should be no hardship to an old rough campaigner like yourself.” ***

“What in the devil’s name do you mean Holmes,” I replied.

“I mean devilled kidneys and that is what I mean to have right now. Unwrap that parcel of eight lambs’ kidneys reposing on my desk that I bought to further my research for my monograph on penknife wounds inflicted in second-class carriages leaving from the Metropolitan Underground Railway station at Aldgate during Bank Holidays. **** Now hasten to the bath room and under running water, peel the filmy skin from these kidneys, remove anything else that is white in colour or gristly in texture and then cut each kidney into no less than three pieces but of no more that this length. As you do so, I shall assemble the other ingredients.”

When I returned from the bath room with the kidneys prepared as Holmes instructed, he briefly sniffed the organs before returning to the absorbing task of weighing various items on his scales.

“Look what I have here Watson,” he said with some pride. “I have accurately exacted the following measures. They are: three tablespoons of worstershire sauce; one heaping tablespoon of Coleman’s English mustard powder; one tablespoon of freshly squeezed juice of a lemon; half a table glass of water; one two-ounce canister of Fullers Earth, one substantial tablespoon of cayenne pepper; a heaping pinch of ground black pepper; and four drops of Tabasco sauce.”

While Holmes was distracted by the task of lighting up the Bunsen burner, I deftly removed the canister of Fullers Earth from his desk as I knew full well from the affair of the Radium Éclairs that my friend was often perhaps too dazzled by reports of the immediate effects of new but not sufficiently tested scientific compounds and elements.

“Now Watson!” Holmes urgently blurted, “The game is afoot. As I briskly blend the materials I have just assembled in a china bowl, you must place a saucepan on the stand just above the Bunsen burner and dissolve into that pan two ounces of fresh and unsalted butter. You will find adequate quantities stored in the toe of my Persian slipper*****. When the butter reaches liquefaction then cast in the pieces of kidney and stir until their colour turns from deep red to umber.”

I did as Holmes dictated and soon a powerful odor filled our chambers, followed shortly by the thumping of a broomstick on the ceiling below our floor, accompanied by muffled cries of protest. The scent emanating form our efforts carried some faint but perceptibly unwelcome reminders of the all too earthly functions of the originating organs.

I mentioned this observation to Holmes who replied with some spirit.

“Why this is why I am mixing together these compounds. They will completely hide your disapproval of the smell and yet subtly and indeed paradoxically play off against what olfactory and other traces linger. Now let me decant what I have stirred together over the kidneys that I assume are now the colour of your oxblood brogues. Yes they are and away we go. Whee-hee! Observe as I stir briskly using the wooden handle of that lethal edged souvenir of yours from Khandahar. Now I strongly urge you to place some slices of bread on the toasting fork and retire to brown them by the fire. When they are done, butter them well. If my calculations are correct, only five minutes should have elapsed since the kidneys have simmered, while being occasionally stirred, at half-full heat in the sauce I have prepared. Now if you please Watson, the hot buttered toast on the plate. I place the kidneys, with a generous dribble of Holmes’ Personal Effusion of Borneo Lavage, like so atop the toast. Et voila! Now perhaps you could remove the cork from the bottle of the Cockburn’s 1880 that I see there weighing down your medical bag and we shall feast. If it will taste as I suspect, I must send a telegram to Mycroft insisting that this be on the menu for the next supper meeting of the Diogenes Club.” ******

I did as Holmes instructed and then we ate with great good appetite and before long we were feeling quite sated. I rang for Mrs. Hudson to remove and wash the dirty dishes and cutlery.

“A marvelous dish to welcome the start of a new day, “ I observed to Holmes as rosy fingered dawn stole through the windows. ******* “However, it is curious is it not that a dish based on the mammalian glands of purification and extraction should prove so delicious?”

Holmes looked up keenly from the divan on which he was now reclining as he filled his pipe with shag tobacco and added a few grains of some opium-based tincture.

“Why my dear Watson. We have just consumed the concentrated essence of the organs that process food and drink. Sweetbreads, offal, call it what you wish. I have always found the consumption of such dainties when well prepared to be both a savoury experience and a very sensual summation of how all life is basically meat. Why, allow me to predict that within several decades, the manager of an establishment in Zurich that projects onto a screen moving photograms will attempt to artistically render in print the emotions and speculations that we have just enjoyed by consuming the parts of animals necessary to the passage of food throughout themselves.” ********

“Astounding Holmes! How do you do it?”

“Alimentary, my dear Watson,” Holmes replied and reached for his f_____g fiddle.

* A great one-liner from “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.” 1970. Feature film. Colour and sound, Co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, natch!

** Sergeant Hudson died fighting at Piper’s Fort, Afghanistan in 1842 – according to the first volume of the Flashman Papers.

*** Doctor John H. Watson was a military veteran of the second Anglo-Afghanistan war where the Afghans again handed the Brits their arse on plate. If you think of Watson as an affable late twenties Vietnam vet sharing digs with a brilliant high bohemian post grad student of similar age that’s also a well connected covert Empire fixer, then the whole Baker Street ménage and general mise en scène starts to come into focus a bit more, n’est-ce pas?

**** The Bank Holidays Act of 1871 specified in law the days when both metropolitan and country wage earners could take time off at the same time to attend major matches between regional cricket teams.

***** Holmes was documented as using his footwear as a storage medium for valuable and/or perishable commodities. See “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual”, 1893. The Strand Magazine. B&W.

****** Mycroft was Sherlock Holmes’ older brother – sometimes perceived as perhaps too smart and well fed for the Empire’s long term good. His possible involvement in instigating the latest ill-fated Mesopotamian excursion by HMG remains unproven.

******* I spent some serious time working how to integrate that classic piece of Victorian innuendo naturally into this text. In the end, as you can see, I just gave up and blodged it in where I could.

******** James Joyce – regrettably Irish – who discussed at length the pleasures of eating kidneys and other sweetbreads and organs in the opening chapter of “Ulysses”. 1922. Book. Colour, sound, smell and taste.

And a tip of the bowler to Sidney Paget for the original Strand Magazine illustrations with which I fear I have taken some liberties.

Recently returned to a single state, I have resolved that I simply have to devote as much attention to cooking nice things for myself as I do when cooking for other people, or I will become lardy and unhealthy. As we know, being lardy and unhealthy is inimical to dating but, more importantly, leads to permanent ill-health and it’s hard enough to meet a bloke in Katoomba without confining yourself to the hospital grounds.

But enough about non-dating in the Blue Mountains. This post is about how virtuous I am for cooking even though I didn’t really feel like it, how I managed to work dukkah into the meal without overdosing on the stuff, and how it’s important to just get going and do stuff for yourself, because the results are really special. And it doesn’t take much effort, or cost much.

This week, I made a VERY yummy celeriac and parsnip soup, which was dead easy. You just take a celeriac – a funny lumpy vegetable that manages to be like celery, potato, cauliflower and ginseng all at once – and chop the tops and bottoms off it. Then you quarter it, eight it, peel off the skin and chuck it in the pot with two quartered onions, two or three cloves of garlic, some water, some dry white wine, two peeled parsnips, a bay leaf and some thyme. Cook it until the veges are soft (about 20 minutes) and then blend it to bejeesus, add some soy milk or stock to get it to the consistency you want and warm it through with some salt, pepper and a vege stock cube if it’s not savoury enough. Serve it with some crumbly parmesan on the top and drink the rest of the wine while you eat.

But the nicest dinner of the week incorporated green veges AND enabled me to eat dukkah. I just love simple pasta dishes like grated zucchini or pumpkin tossed through spaghetti. Tonight, I fried an onion with some small pieces of sweet potato, garlic and a finely sliced piece of preserved lemon (my most specialist secret ingredient). When that was rocking I shredded a small bunch of silverbeet into the frypan, tossing until the colour brightened. I mixed it up with some fetta, a bit of butter, a smidge of cream and a small handful of coriander leaves. Then I mixed it into hot, fairly wet pasta (so the pasta water made a kind of sauce) and sprinkled dukkah over the top.

It came out lemony, with plenty of bite in the silver beet and the salt of the feta and nuttiness of the dukkah hanging perfectly off the sweet potato. I even had enough left overs to ensure that I don’t have to buy lunch tomorrow, which is good in these global financial crisis-ridden times.

I am really interested to hear about other people’s eating vices so invite PDP readers and writers to share their sins against fine dining. However, to ensure we honour the goals of this blog, perhaps it’s best to temper stories of vice with tales of how we have managed to redeem ourselves by cooking clever and artful food, even when we is by ourselves. So, c’mon contributors and commenters, share.

A very seasonable recipe based on litres of tradition and extensive hands on research. Works fine with all hats.

First catch your flu.

Blend half a bottle of fine coloured spirits – preferably brandy, whiskey/hy or rum, with a couple of glasses of fishpiss (water) in a saucepan and bring to fingerhurting but not boiling heat.

Then flake in a cinnamon stick the size of Donald Trump’s real dick, half a dozen cocktail-sized lemon slices, a pinch of hammered cloves and some grated nutmeg if the mood takes you..

Now add a big swingeing tablespoon of unsalted butter from happy cows, another equally butch dollop of honey from busy bees and simmer, stir occasionally and sneeze for the length of four good 60s pop songs.

Decant contents of saucepan into thermos flask. Recline on bed or sofa with flask and glass to hand. Place hat on foot and starting imbibing your hot toddy.

When you can’t focus on the hat anymore, that’s when the hat flu cure is kicking in.

The first instalment of the tale of Pamela’s journey is here.

Day 1: Canberra to Mildura (700 and something kms)

This morning the Parents sent me off into the world with a stomach full of poached eggs and bacon and in a ute packed with donated blankets and clothes (thank you Wamboin craft group, and Trish and Glen). I only got as far as Yass before I stopped for a coffee (it was a slow start). It was the beginning of what turned into a disastrous day’s eating.

Handy Hint #1: If you are ever in the position of having to buy a tall flat white at McDonald’s McCafe, make sure you ask for a double shot.

The coffee was in fact so bad that I couldn’t drink it. But against all logic, I actually chose to stop at the next McDonalds (Gundagai) to buy another one. But this time, a long black. I figure there’s not too many people in this world who can ruin a long black.

Turning off the Hume Hwy, I made north for Wagga Wagga and then west through a landscape that produces so much of our food, gourmet or otherwise: the endless, empty wheat fields of the Hay Plain; the orchards and irrigation flats of the Murray-Darling basin rivers of the Murrumbidgee; the acres of land cleared for grazing around Balranald. I was playing tag with a truck carrying 600 sheep for live export to Saudi Arabia, the driver of whom stopped to check on his flock almost as regularly as I was stopping to pee.
 

 

We were motoring along with not a care in the world, until suddenly just outside Narrandera I was confronted by a barrage of fruit flies of gigantic proportions.
 

I had completely forgotten about the “no fruit” rule in orchard country. The resulting loss was profound. Into the bin goes the kilo of NZ apricots brought at Woolies Dickson (no great loss, weren’t that nice anyway); a Tupperware container harvest of my own cherry tomatoes (these, on the other hand, were very yum); the one capsicum I had managed to grow this summer (just the one, lovingly tended for months!); and the last of the yellow plums off my tree in Kaleen. All this beautiful food now sits in the bottom of a bin somewhere on the Sturt Hwy. How depressing.

I was so upset I resolved not to buy any other food for the rest of the day. So I nibbled my way to Mildura on boiled eggs, carrots and a slice of tasty cheese. All washed down with sips of a long black that was getting on for six hours old. Finally pulled in to Mildura around 8pm, paid ten bucks for a tent site at a caravan park on the banks of the Murray River, rolled out my swag beside the car (who needs tents?!?) and popped on the billy to make myself a cup of instant miso soup. While waiting for the water to boil, I headed to the amenities. The Ladies featured a striking fake-plant-fairy-light-sculpture that I loved so much I considered stealing it.
 

Handy Hint #2: When instructed to mix instant miso soup with a small cup of boiling water, make sure the cup is VERY small. Or add a double shot.

Day Two: Mildura to Adelaide (a leisurely five hour drive)

Handy Hint #3: Check the weather report to make sure it’s not going to rain in the middle of the night when you decide to forgo the shelter of a tent and sleep out under the stars…

Today was Gourmet all the way. It started at Mildura’s most famous café, Stefanos, with a truly gourmet hot cross bun (generously sized with big, juicy raisins, perfectly spiced, glazed with marmalade and still warm – I would drive hundreds of kilometres just to get my hands on one of these) and a coffee. Perfect for a drizzly autumn morning. I don’t usually have a great deal of time for men who like to put their faces on bottles of sauce, but it has to be said that the presence of celebrity cook Stefano in the neighbourhood has given the local foodies something worth cooing about. And what a perfect place for Gourmet to be, with the best of fresh fruit, veges, meat, olive oil and wine all locally available. His cafe stocks it all, from blood-orange marmalade to squid-ink pasta. I couldn’t go past the “Murray River gourmet salt”, soft flakes of perfect pale pink harvested from local lakes. Delicious. My sagely frugal (and gorgeous) sister-in-law will be horrified to learn that I paid $8 for a bag of the stuff, but I figure I was merely spending a little of what I saved by sleeping on the ground in the rain last night.
 

I was in no hurry to get to Adelaide, so I pottered along the highway, stopping at wineries, fruit stalls and coffee shops along the way whenever the whim took me. I had a particularly tasty spinach pastie from the bakery at Waikerie (home of Nippys – the makers of the best commercial ice-coffee ever). The filling was a bit too salty but I was totally sold by the caraway seeds on top. Nice.

There is something particularly indulgent about tasting ten different wines at ten thirty in the morning, particularly if (like me) you have no idea about wine. I found a couple of organic bottles near Renmark, and a rather yummy 2005 cab sav as I came through the Barossa. Think I’ll save that one for next time I fall in love.

In my (reasonably broad) experience of men, each likes to have their Signature Dish, a culinary piece that they’ve stumbled upon or invented (or mother used to make) and have tweaked to make it utterly Theirs. It is carried with them through the years, brought out to impress the chicks, and then served to the family proudly over the years and passed down from father to son etc etc… ok, maybe that last bit’s an exaggeration, but most of it rings true, no?

Best Beloved is a enthusiastic but slightly nervous cook. He travels widely in the foodie universe, but never without a guidebook. This following dish is one of the very few things he will cook without a recipe; it is a family favourite, and went nameless until I decided to blog it, upon which Bumblebee decided that it should be called Mount Yum. Before this, it was always know as ‘your/my chicken/nut dish’.

To celebrate the fact that it is made without a recipe on the bench, I will not be providing ingredient quantities. You need to think about how much each person can eat and provide enough of everything to divide between the number of people eating. There’s no right or wrong; substitutions are not only welcome, but encouraged. There are endless possibilities. Best Beloved rarely strays from his favourite combination, but the other day we had no pine nuts and I persuaded him to use slivered almonds rather than popping down to the shop. Lo! It worked! (Sigh.)

Please excuse the crockery, we’re waiting for it all to break. If BB had known I was doing this before he started, he would have brought out his collection of 60s Poole pottery!

Ingredients

• Breast of chicken, cut into chunks. You could also substitute firm tofu for the chicken.
• Rice (Jasmine is juicier, Basmati works well, brown would be nice)
• A green vegetable able to be wilted (we use baby spinach)
• Avocado
• Pine nuts (or a kind of nut)
• Yogurt, plain
• Lemon juice (or lime)
• Garlic, crushed
• Fresh coriander (or basil)

Method

Marinate the chicken chunks in the juice of the lemon/lime along with a handful of shredded coriander and a crushed clove or two of garlic. Leave for at least one hour, all day is good if you think of it in time.

Cook your rice whichever way you do. We use a very cheap but effective rice cooker. Do everything else while the rice is cooking, which is about 15 minutes?

Mash the avocado, get out the greens, chop a heap of coriander and set aside.

Stir fry the chicken in batches, marinade and all, until brown and juicy. Set aside and keep warm. Have a small pot of water heating to boil while you do this.

After you’ve taken the chicken out, add the nuts to the wok/frypan and roast them slightly in the pan juices/leavings. Set aside.

Wilt the green veg in the boiling water: doesn’t take long, just use tongs and dip the leaves in and out. Set aside in a warm bowl.

By now your rice should be cooked. This is when you build the mountain…

Each plate gets:

• a bed of rice (size of bed can vary between stomach capacities)
• a blanket of greens
• a splodge of mashed avocado

• a serve of chicken pieces/tofu chunks (Best Beloved likes his meat, so there’s probably more than necessary shown here)

• a scattering of nuts
• a thick topping of plain thick yoghurt

And:

Mount Yum!

Enjoy demolishing it.

Ah Spaghetti Bolognaise! The bachelor’s friend, muse and destroyer of waistlines. Here I offer a hot new take on an old favourite. All measures are calculated for two people of firm appetite with enough left over to fill a few jaffles on a hungover late winter morning.

This one’s a bit tricky though as it involves not one (1) but two (2) hotplates. You’ll need all your project management skills here.

Ingredients

• First catch, kill and grind up your cow. If this proves problematic, simply purchase 500 grams or so of lean beef mince from your local boucherie or supermarché (You can tell I’ve been watching ‘Hot Fuzz’ again.)
• One bottle of robust and reasonably priced red wine, preferably a burgundy. OK, Shiraz if you must, you metrosexual you.
• One muxtape of good narcocorrido interspiced with lashings of Nina Rota and Enio Morricone. And a cheap greenish cheroot.
• Enough olive oil to grease your arm up so it can slide through the bars to reach the keys of the guard slumbering under his sombrero. Virgin, extra virgin, cold pressed, whatever, they all look the same to me over a jaffle and hot buttered rum and coffee the next day.
• A tablespoon of salt.
• Two bloody big white onions. T. Rex eyeball size at least. Chop, chop.
• A couple of cloves of garlic (for the purists). I find a level tablespoon of pre-pulverised garlic from a jar quite adequate.
• 500 grams of straightforward no frills spaghetti.
• One 500 gram bottle of not trying to be too clever pasta sauce.
• One of those cute little tubs of Leggos tomato paste.
• Enough honey to fill an eggcup. Or a baby T.Rex eyesocket.
• Two majorly brimming tablespoons of quality medium-hot chilli paste (definitely not chilli powder) up to 200,000 Scoville Units max. Unless of course you’re one of those really macho bachelors who enjoys singing along to Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” the next day in a v. small room with excellent acoustics. In which case you should be aware that the Scoville scale goes up to 18,000,000 units. For those that wish to be pre-cremated.
• 300 grams of canned and drained red kidney beans. The starch cuts the chilli heat.
• Some black pepper, oregano and other herbs if the fancy takes you.

Preparation

• Click muxtape on and light cheroot.
• Boil at least two litres of water (with the salt) in a saucepan that now should have been scrubbed clean of that mashed potatoes disaster.
• Check wine to make sure it isn’t corked. Are you sure? Check again. Better safe than sorry. Cheers.
• Dollop the olive oil in a frying pan on full heat, chuck in the crunched up onion and garlic and sweat the buggers for about five minutes, stirring now and then. You wanna see some browning here but not too much. About three days into your holiday suntan should do it.
• The water’s boiling? Good. Add the spaghetti and poke it into submission below the waterline.
• Add the mince to the frying pan and smodge it around until the pink turns to a brownish-grey. Then turn down the heat to around half what it was before, do a kidney beans air strike and keep stirring from time to time.
• Quick, check if the spag has reached al dente status. It has? Good! Turn the heat down to the barest whisper of a hint of a suggestion of a smidgeon of a soupcon of calorific energy. A handy tip here. Remove cheroot from mouth before leaning over the steaming saucepan. The gasper gets soggy and the ash discolours the water.
• Double-check that the wine hasn’t suddenly become corked.
• Empty the bottle of pasta sauce into the frying pan and encourage it to blend with the brooding mince, kidney beans, onions and garlic.
• Into the empty pasta sauce jar, insert the tomato paste, honey, chilli paste, various herbs as you see fit and a good glass of the wine. Add a dash of hot water, put the lid back on, shake into a foaming frenzy and pour the resultant concoction into the frying pan.
• If all goes well, you should now be eyeballing a steaming bubbling aromatic red swamp. Turn the heat down to the barest simmer to cook the water out. What you’re aiming for here is the river Phlegethon as limned in Dante’s seventh circle of hell.
• Once it gets nice and gluggy, kill the heat and frantically bustle around for a colander to drain the spag. However do not attempt a la Jack Lemmon in “The Apartment” to use a tennis racket for this purpose – as I once did to impress a date. She was impressed. Not so much the Elwood Tennis Club a few days later when I ventured onto the court with a Dunlop Power Plus now strung to a soggy 20 pounds and smelling strongly of garlic.
• Anyway, now have some more wine to wash away that memory and celebrate the fact we should be about done now.

Serving

Find two reasonably unchipped plates and insert spag underneath sauce, leaving behind enough for next day brunch jaffles.

Perhaps a sprinkle of Parmesan and a sprig of greenery perched on top if you’re into that whole presentation thang.

A nice salad, some garlic bread, another bottle of red and a Billy Wilder DVD makes a nice accompaniment. Chased down by a joint, a couple of cognacs and a substantial slab of gourmet chocolate.

Warning

Make sure that within 6-12 hours your water closet is stocked with an easy to hand aerosol air freshener.

How do you do. Allow me to introduce myself, I am the Devil Drink. Pull up a chair, make yourself comfortable, and help yourself to a glass of whatever you’d like.

You see, with her child-chewed Penguin paperback edition of the Delomelanicon, a bit of incantation and a burned sacrifice or two on the suburban gas-burning altar-stove, I have been summoned here by Zoe to provide my services. I must say I find myself unusually at home at this progressive’s dinner party, I’m quite familiar with your best of intentions. My driveway is paved with them—but let’s not get started on discussing real estate just yet.

It’s the usual deal, as I’ve explained thoroughly to others; temporal benefit for payment delayed, a deal unique in bargain-basement value. No job is too small, naturally, and I’m offering here all my efforts in agony auntery, booze pointers and advice on grogiquette. In short, let me answer your curiosity about anything drink-related.

Readers, let your idle hands make the Devil’s work. I am entirely at your service. Questions in comments below or if you’d prefer to remain anonymous, to thedevildrink@yahoo.com.au. My answers will be published in one week.

I have had the good fortune to meet Nabakov on a couple of occasions, and can confirm that he is able to drink me under the table (a rare talent when I’m in form) and wear a white trouser like few men can. His love of the good things in life extends to food and drink, and I’m very pleased to announce he’ll be educating us all about how a stylish man about town keeps himself fed and impresses the ladies. His first post, Sexy Pink Mashed Potatoes, follows. Unless you’re reading in a feedreader, in which case you’ve probably just finished reading it.