Why do people photograph food?

 Why do people photograph food?  For any number of reasons.

Mainly because it’s free.  Before digital photography you had to first pay for film and then pay again to get it processed, so people took a lot less photographs.  It was not unusual to see for the first and last photographs on the same roll of 24 exposures to be of Christmas – and not the of same Christmas (although chances are that ‘The Sound of Music’ would be visible on telly in the background in both shots.  ‘The Sound of Music’ at Christmas, ‘The Great Escape’ at Easter, those are the correct films for the major Christian festivals in the calendar).

In addition to cost, getting your film developed meant others saw your photographs (before the invention of digital photography the only way a 17 year old would see a picture of your drunk girlfriend naked was if he worked in Boots), and nobody wanted to be known as the Guy Who Takes Pictures of Chips.

With the advent of digital photography, we are free to take pictures of food, then e mail them to our friends to torture them by pointing out that they are not about to tuck into a huge portion of egg and chips.  Yum!  Or the weapons-grade variation, taking a picture of a mid-morning pint when on holiday and e mailing or texting it to a friend at around the time when you know they are at their most frazzled.

To a certain extent, the growing trend of photographing food has been driven by the illustrations in the growing pile of celebrity chef cookery books that continually clutter our kitchens.  Food porn is not, as you might rationally suspect, something to do with cucumbers or a bloke holding up a melon without using his hands, but a term used to describe luscious pictures of food intended to make the food look delicious, like the photographs in fast food joints convincing you that what’s in the cardboard container you have just been handed is luscious and plump and full of flavour, rather than simultaneously limp yet full of flavourings.

There’s something of an OCD aspect to all this too.  I can quite understand the pleasure one can take in, for instance, taking a picture of the occasional tasty looking dish or, even better, a surprising looking offering on a plate or, jackpot! a rudely shaped scoop of mash, and then e mailing it to your mate to compound the monotony of their day, but I can also imagine that there are people that delight in documenting everything that goes in their mouth. 

Knowing something of human nature from the internet, I strongly suspect that there are probably people who equally delight in documenting the other end of the process.  The next time you get all self conscious when you hear the distinctive click of a camera shutter in the next stall over in a public lavvie, just remember it may not be you who has just become an addition to some pervert’s album.  But it probably is.  In either case, screaming is perfectly acceptable.

The next step is blogging about your food and while there are probably a gazillion blogs where foodies exalt excellent cooking while pretending to be restaurant critics in the same way that kids wrap their sheds in tin foil and pretend to be astronauts, the most entertaining ones focus on the rougher end of the culinary experience, such as the ‘traction man’ blog that highlighted the problems with hospital food (starting with it being the last thing anyone feeling under the weather would want to be confronted with) or the excellent ‘no second helpings’.  Both blogs took pot shots at the establishment and attracted the attention of the national press in the way that some twat who wrings 1,000 words out of couscous never will.  I hope.

Food is life and people are recording more of their lives than ever, even the intimate – eating is putting something in your mouth – experiences.  On balance then, I’d rather see a recording of a pie than a sex tape, especially if it’s made by the sort of people who like pies.

Pop up fun

There are, I have read (in the trendier left leaning newspapers and magazines that I do not of course buy, but find in the better class of train carriage or clap clinic waiting room), about pop up restaurants.

Pop up restaurants are not, it would appear, giant three dimensional cookbooks with seating for thirty and a turbulent chef hidden in the index, but rather restaurants in unusual places. Disappointingly, what is considered ‘unusual’ in these circumstances is anywhere well ventilated, spacious and in a trendy postcode.

When I hear ‘pop up restaurant’, I have certain expectations. I want to open doors to the most unusual places, I want to open the door to trap three of a public lavvie and find a candlelit table, two chairs and a hot plate there, or be climbing a tree, mountain or loft ladder and find a place at the top renowned for doing interesting things with ducks.

Of course, for those of us in the real world, we have known about pop up restaurants for years. They are layby cafes and they serve up the very best in greasy baps and tea.

Why though, draw the line at pop up restaurants? I rather like the idea of pop up libraries, swimming pools (okay, ambitious that one), cinemas (already being done through mobile cinemas), film studios (the next logical step) and, already here, pop up theatre in the form of site-specific theatre…but site specific theatre that you’d actually want to see – for instance you slip into your chair at your check-out for a nine hour shift and next to you is played out not some bloody monologue about feminist bar codes, but rather a feel-good musical rom-com! With lasers. And sequins.

Currywurst

Like many Premiership footballers, I enjoy taking pictures of my sausage with my 'phone.

Ever since I saw a ‘close up’ feature about currywurst on the BBC’s news web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8408716.stm), I’ve been excited to a degree best described as ‘juvenile’ about the prospect of trying this exotic new dish.

Apparently the Germans have the same enthusiasm for curried sausage as they do for lederhosen, beer and war. The origin of the dish is that a German Housefrau in 1940s allied occupied Berlin obtained some curry powder from British troops and created the curried sausage and the lucrative sex-for-food trade at the same time

Currywurst is available in London at Kurz & Lang, 1 St. John Street, Smithfield, London (www.kurzandlang.com). They are, apparently, a German sausage importer and the shop has a small café attached. And by café, I mean griddle in a room.

The café itself is a monument to white tiling, like a better class of public convenience. There is a shelf running along the front windows and at this you can sit up on stools, watching the world go by while passers-by look in end envy you your hot sausage and cold beer. Those having their wurst inside get it on a china plate, those who wish to sit outside at the small tables on the pavement and fag up get paper plates.

Inside it’s a cosy and warm place to be on a winter’s evening. The hiss and sizzle of sausages cooking on the griddle complete with the banging tunes coming out of the radio, more commercial rock than oompah. It wasn’t in the least crowded but there was an atmosphere, which by my reckoning was never less than about 70 per cent pork fat and occasionally took on an almost solid appearance not unlike one of my more enthusiastic weekend fry-ups.

There are a variety of sausages on offer, all cooked by an authentic German chap sporting a rather unfortunate beard. I went for the posh end of the wurst experience; currywurst, sauerkraut, fried potato and a roll. In truth all you need is sausage and sauce and roll.

The currywurst is a sausage, smothered in a spicy brown sauce and then sprinkled with curry powder. Seeing curry powder shaken over sausage and sauce was truly a cultural shock and something of a taste sensation. Curry powder in British cuisine has the reputation of being used timorously by housewives in the late 1970s to bring a touch of the exotic to the dinner table. But not too exotic - lest one inflame passions that, in an era heavy on man-made fibres and material, might lead to chaffing, or tremendous static discharge. No, you used just enough to have you reaching for your glass of blue nun.

It was quite a surprise to see that it’s curry powder that gives the currywurst its kick, not so much a curry sauce, Curry sauce is, of course, a staple of after hours cuisine in the Midlands where, smothering chips, it is often the last, desperate throw of the dice to try and head off a hangover. It’s probably possible to work out where you are in Britain by what people put on chips, curry sauce means Midlands, chips and gravy means t’north and chips and cheese is, of course combined with a glass of white wine to constitute the ‘ladies special’ at the Café Piccante in Edinburgh. (www.cafepiccante.com). God knows what they serve further north than that; maybe the national dish of the Shetlands is chips and sheep dip.

To drink? An excellent lager – pauliner in this case, but there was quite a selection. It was such a shock not to be grossly overcharged for decent German beer that I quite forgot to steal the glass as a souvenir.

Also on sale was Jagermeister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4germeister). This was sold in a bottle (from which you pour a shot), a little bottle (from which you pour a shot), and in a test tube (and if you’re drinking from that, it’s time to go home). I’m wary of drinking anything from a test tube as a search of literature shows this inevitably leads to transformation into Mr Hyde. Unleashing an inner beast without conscience usually happens when I drink stella anyway.

In addition I’m made aware that there’s a practice called Jagerbombing, surely the preserve of somebody hell bent on self-destruction, you drop a shot of Jagermeister into a glass of red bull and end up hammered but unable to sleep it off. It’s exactly this sort of behaviour that makes you hellish grumpy and sets a nation down the road of fascism.

Fast food, convivial atmosphere, with booze! Surely this is the way forward.

Kraft Korner

Kraft, the 'food giant', has bought Cadbury, the chocolate company. Any quaint notions you may have of a Willy Wonkaesque set up to make chocolate...is probably not that far off the mark. The Bourneville estate in Birmingham was built by Cadbury in Victorian times so that the workers would have somewhere decent to live. The visionaries at Cadbury realised that rickets-wracked workers consumptively coughing their teeth into the fruit and nut mix was probably A Bad Thing and so built a charming housing estate for them.

I don't know much about Kraft except that they make processed cheese. Processed cheese is one of those stealth phrases that only seems odd when you stop to think about it. What the hell is there to process about cheese? Cheese is, essentially, milk plus time.

OK it's apparent that there's a little more to it than that, and I suppose the magic of processed cheese is getting it to look the same after you peel the cellophane from the slice as it did when it was still in the packaging. Cheese slices (that is, pre-sliced cheese (presumably for people too stupid to be trusted with a knife), individually packaged (presumably for people who are on a mission to convert landfill pits into mountain ranges)) are designed for one purpose only, to go onto the top of a beef patty and make a cheeseburger.

After Kraft bought Cadbury and essentially either sacked all the Umpa Lumpas or sold them into slavery, I won't be buying Cadbury again. Which is a shame, because at Easter, you have your Cadbury cream eggs. At Christmas, you have your Cadbury selection box, with a game on the back and about 7 billion calories in the box itself, best consumed immediately on Christmas morning, giving you the energy to rip off all the wrapping from the presents. And at all times you have a bar of Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut in the glove box of the car. On the M-Way feeling drowsy? One bar later and you are hard on the bumper of the Porche in front, whooping and honking for him to move over!

So Kraft are, essentially, all about the calories – presumably that’s why they are a ‘food giant’, or at least a food-lard arse. Cadbury are all about love.

Because Cadbury chocolate is love. It's what love tastes like, smooth, creamy and delicious and, just like love, it can lead to funny sensations in the pit of the stomach and induce nausea if abused.

Europeans mock our chocolate. Made with vegetable oil instead of the coca powder it means that Cadbury chocolate is a melt-in-the-mouth luxury sensation, rather than the grudging, bitter excuse for a snack available on the Continent. British chocolate is chocolate for lovers. Foreign chocolate is chocolate for masochists. Aztecs used to use lots of coca in their rituals. A bad bunch who made a habit of gruesome ritual sacrifice, some of this has to be down to eating all that bitter chocolate. If they had access to Dairy Milk they would probably have been a bit more placid. With a diet containing bitter chocolate and coffee, no wonder they were always so bloody bad tempered.

Postcard from Norfolk – Fine dining

After many years of driving past the doors of Morston Hall, hotel and restaurant, we finally got round to eating there. I knew the time was right to do so when the phrase ‘we really must eat there one day’ moved from an internal thought, through mumbling, past suggestion and finally to a chant voiced with almost Gregorian-monk like discipline by all in the car. Not to have booked at this point would have resulted in the next trip past the gates of the hotel being heralded with the same chant, but in that slightly mocking and accusing tone by the rest of my family, while I simmer internally and wonder if I am the only one able to pick up the telephone or what?

The booking was made and the night arrived. It was, I have to admit, a pleasure to dress for dinner in a suit thinking ‘I am going to look good’ rather than dress for dinner thinking ‘if I spill grease on this shirt, it won’t be a disaster’.

Not that we don’t get out much, but we were the fist non-residents to pitch up for dinner. This was in part to get maximum enjoyment from the evening and also a cunning ploy to enable the consumption of two gin and tonics before having to go through to eat. On arrival we were greeted by a ridiculously young and infectiously enthusiastic young man who was less matre de and more master of ceremonies.

Our first visit? How lovely, and were we celebrating any special occasion? Yes, we were celebrating my Mother’s birthday, one week ago today. Without a pause the young man stepped forward and gave my Mother an affectionate hug, wishing her happy birthday.

Frankly, it could have gone either way. My mother is a rather prim and mannered Scottish lady and, to be honest, demonstrative affection is not something that my family are into (at least not until recent years, when the younger members have married into families and made the discovery that hugging is something you can do without alerting the council authorities). Luckily the young man was genuine, and very good looking, and probably a bit surprised at my mother hugging back. I know I was. It’s not often you see your mother surprised and melting and back to normal inside of a space of a skipped heartbeat. Granite, see, the Scots.

I looked at the waitress, twenty, gorgeous, and wondered whether I’d get away with saying it was my birthday today. Sensing this my wife steered me safely to a chair and the welcome embrace of a G&T.

Frankly, the food had a tough act to follow. The service was divine, but the food was sublime. The stand out dish though, the one I keep thinking about, was the parsnip soup. Now, I make a good parsnip soup, taking parsnips that are shaped like the ‘after’ pictures of an STD lecture and some curry paste, I can make a soup that will be hot and fiery enough to restore vigour on the coldest winter day, and that’s just with external application to the chest and pulse points, if you actually eat the stuff you feel great right up until your next bowel movement. But this soup…

They must have harvested the parsnips with a silver sickle when the moon was waxing gibbous. Such flavour, such subtlety. Then at the bottom of the bowl there was apple puree! Christ alive, it’s bonus food!

Frankly, anything after that was going to be an anti climax, yet it was obvious that the chef, if not his crepe pan, was on fire that evening. He was young and hence had something to prove and energy to spend proving it. Then, after dinner had finished, he pulled it out of the bag.

After he had done the rounds, a shy guy propelled out of the kitchen by his staff eager to see him complimented (as he deserved), we sat down to coffee. I idly reached for a chocolate and popped in my mouth and, oh; my. Chocolate and chilli! You can stick crack up your arse (and maybe you do).