The Delicious Miss Dahl on Escapism

It'd be rude not to review this episode of the Delicious Miss Dahl. Initial, one week, scepticism on the series was promptly washed away by episode two. Now we're over half way so may as well see it to the end. This week's escapism theme may seem a little bit ironic as it coincides so neatly with the abrupt standstill of all airline traffic. But what I find so many of the Delicious Miss Dahl episodes about are dreamscapes and ignoring real life for thirty minutes. The food this week is pushing me to the brink of having to buy the book. I can see myself having far too many cookery books which I mainly look at the pictures in so hopefully I will be fairly rational as to whether or not it would be a good buy.

Sophie Dahl is good egg. I think the food comes from good meaning and she can't help having travelled the world. Probably a few times over. Fortunate enough to be able to try and fail/quit/nonchalantly-move-on from many a glamorous endeavour like acting, modelling, writing etc. I've said it before, and probably will say it again, I like the kitchen of the delicious miss Dahl. It's kitchen aid and le creuset, sure, gastro porn enough, but it's also trinckets and treasures like retro floral stove-top espresso makers and tin bowls. Ebay here I come.

Yes, I realise it's probably a studio or not really hers, but like I say little details and reality don't fathom much with the delicious miss Dahl.
The music in the Delicious Miss Dahl on Escapism was true to form. Very apt. This week took on something of an ethereal theme in keeping with escapism, and mainly featured airy female singer-songwriter. I think this week wasn't as good as the past, and she missed a trick a bit but I still enjoyed it.

My favourite choice was Far Away by Ingrid Michaelson, perfectly summarising East Coast america as I'd imagine it. Yes a little bit Dawson's Creek, but guilty pleasures are surely what escapism is for. Escapism for me is as much the dreaming as the actual doing.

"I will live my life as a lobsterman's wife on an island in the blue bay.
He will take care of me, he will smell like the sea,
And close to my heart he'll always stay.
Far away far away, I want to go far away.
To a new life on a new shore line.
Where the water is blue and the people are new.
To another island, in another life."

Sophie Dahl talked about Martha's Vineyard, quite probably the most bizarre place-name, but somehow it's a part of the world I'd like to go to along with Cape Cod, ever since my Grandma went and brought back pictures of auburn topped trees and rows upon rows of pumpkins.

Sophie cooked up some awesome looking New England-style clam chowder with crunchy thyme breadcrumbs.

Other music featured included Goldfrapp's Little Bird and Aimee Mann's Great Beyond:

"Go, honey go -
Into the ocean
Go, honey go -
Into the great beyond
Til you're good and gone
And you can hide away for
When everything goes wrong
Honey - go"

Aimee Mann, Great Beyond.

Obviously the featured poem excerpt could not be without a mention, Leisure by William Henry Davies. It's a beautiful poem which just takes you away for few blissful moments.

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."

Leisure, William Henry Davies

Accompanying this audio indulgence is a sensory assault. The Mexican breakfast is fairly safe but looks great. I in fact am going to buy some tortillas right after this. I'm not sure what the mexican's would make of putting Tofu in your quesadillas. Not a lot I should think.

With black beans, an arsenal of spices and roasted pepper alongside a good smultz of guacamole it's pretty damned hot. She also made a veritable panacea for cold drizzly day with spiced hot chocolate and extolled the virtues of chocolate not difficult but also the Mexican's unabashed use of chocolate in savoury meals in a dark and mysterious manner. 

I'll skip over the Greek calamari and Chicory Salad to the Indian Supper of Dahl's Dhal. She was obviously born to make this. Or so named. Anyhoo, the rice was the star attraction for me, delicately fragranced with star anise, cinnamon, saffron and cardamom and cooked together with a good knob of butter. Butter and rice is actually a great thing as a Slovakian flat mate once taught me. I don't agree that rice should not be gloopy, sticky or lumpy. That is just how I like it.  How Sophie Dahl cooks the lentils quite as eloquently as she does is beyond me, mine always look like congealed brown goo akin to Dickensian slops but maybe the recipe will hold the key. And you literally cannot go wrong with sweet potato charred wedges. Distraction enough for any congealed goo.

Ahhh, 'til next time.

The Delicious Miss Dahl on Melancholy

Yesterday was a really rather nostalgic day. I realised that only when I watched Sophie Dahl describe it on the Delicious Miss Dahl on nostalgia and nostalgic food. 'A longing...You don't need to be 1000 miles away from home to be nostalgic'. What she maybe forgot is that it doesn't have to be home you miss, just a state of mind. Sadly, that's where my affinity for the episode ended. I for one, am not a fan of 80's pop-music, so it didn't really appeal to me. I did enjoy a relistening of Golden Brown by the Stranglers. Who doesn't? It was a good chance for Sophie Dahl to embrace all things british such as, 'hurrah', on making a victoria sponge cake for a homecoming, 'what more to remind them of home and england'.

Episode 4 of the Delicious Miss Dahl was on Melancholy. Something I think Sophie Dahl was born to make. Not in a bad way. It was wonderfully over-indulgent and captured the  self-deprecating and lackadaisical nature we find ourselves in at times of all-consuming melancholy. Dahl describes it as 'Somewhere between the cross-roads of sadness and suffering. ..But also a slightly ridiculous, old-fashioned affliction.' She knows it. That's for sure. There's no pull-youself-togetherness.

What I liked about the Nostalgia episode was that as well as some good music I can pretentiously do a slow nod of my head to in a well-done-you-know-good-music to, I also heard some new music I liked. I really liked Melody Gardot's Who Will Comfort Me which has a parisienne lilt to it, surely the city of wallowing and self-pitying indulgence. I have heard of Melody Gardot before and her story, she had a near-fatal car accident at 19, using music as her therapy she was reborn and produced some insightful music. But it's nice to hear it in an apt setting, i.e. the delicious miss dahl on melancholy, to appreciate it. Old school favorites included Jose Gonzalez's Heartbeats I will never tire of this track, KT Tunstall Under The Weather, Adele's Right as Rain.

Maybe new to you was the Go! Team's Feel Good By Numbers. If you're melancholic and ready not to be, The Go! Team are so uplifting and woo-hoo. I so strongly recommend their first album. Listen at volume. With a smile on your face and dance in your step. The Delicious Miss Dahl also played I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl, by Bessie Smith I think, here played by Nina Simone. And woah. What a cool version. Inform me of the artist in the show if you know. I'd like to know.

"I want a little sugar in my bowl
I want a little sweetness down in my soul"

There was a lovely lovely excerpt from English Writer Sydney Smith to Lady Morpeth. Nearly 200 years old it may be but sadly it is still relevent to today as melancholy lives in. Maybe not 'sadly' actually, as I think many of us actually quite enjoy a bit of melancholy from time to time.

"Dear Georgiana,
Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I haveso I feel for you. Here are my prescriptions.
1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana."

How truly yummy. Mantra for the days. Absolutely.

As Dahl said though, it's missing food. Damn straight. As she said, 'It's difficult for the smell of hot red wine and onions not to cheer you up'. Her recipe for Bubble and squeak cakes with a fried egg and red onion gravy. Yes. Please.Including a 'blue egg for a blue day'. That made me smile.

And anything with orange chocolate in it shows she has deep understanding of sadness and wrap-me-in-tenderness food. I think she had it right in the set to from open fires to her comforting baggy shirt. She sums it up with 'In a state of melancholy all you notice is the sludge in the river, children falling over in the snow, the unfairness of it all'. She also managed to hail star anise, my new favorite spice too, compared mushrooms to little old men in berets, think that prawns could be like roughians in cashmere cardies and decidedly cheery and muse about calling up Eeyore and inviting him for tea.

Sophie Dahl you washed away my last cloud of melancholy. Ahhh, foodie crush heaven.
I leave you with this quote from Dorothy Parker, american writer and poet,

“Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live."