Meades - The Plagiarist in the Kitchen

REFERRED TO

Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist, and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English , Peter Knows What Dick Likes , Pompey , The Fowler Family Business , Incest and Morris Dancing , Museum Without Walls , An Encyclopaedia of Myself . From 19862001 he wrote a weekly column approximately about restaurants in The Times .

He has written and performed in many television films, among them Jerry Building , Joe Building , Ben Building , Magnetic North , Off Kilter , The Joy of Essex , Father To The Man and Meades Eats , a three-part series about what the English really consume.

Unbound published Pidgin Snaps , a boxette of a hundred of his photos in postcard form. In the spring of 2016 his exhibition Ape Forgets Medication comprised thirty artknacks and treyfs. The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is the only cookbook he will ever write.

PRAISE FOR JONATHAN MEADES

Meades has been compared, favourably, to Rabelais and, flatteringly, to Swift. The truth is that he outstrips both in the gaudiness of his imagination Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement

Meades is a very great prose stylist, with a dandys delight in the sound and feel of words, and we are lucky to have him Ian Thomson, Spectator

Richly entertaining, invigorating and provoking; the fearless Meades is to non-fiction what Michel Houellebecq is to the good-taste mongers and mutual masturbators of the fiction scene Tim Richardson, Literary Review

A marriage of Borges, Betjeman and Bronowski Paul Lay, History Today

Lively, inventive and pugnacious... in an English literary tradition that, sweeping up Ian Nairn, John Betjeman and Charles Dickens along the way, takes us back to William Cobbetts Rural Rides Jonathan Glancey, Architectural Review

Meades is fast, splenetic and brilliant Andrew Billen, The Times

Provocative, opinionated, allusive, variously heretical and revisionist Martin Hoyle, Financial Times

Meades is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly Tim Teeman, The Times

As somebody said of Nietzsche (and I doubt if Meades would object to the grandiose comparison) the lack of system is a sign of generosity of mind Rowan Moore, Observer

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Filthy English

Peter Knows What Dick Likes

Pompey

Incest and Morris Dancing

The Fowler Family Business

Museum Without Walls

Pidgin Snaps

An Encyclopaedia of Myself

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ALL SNAPS IN THIS BOOK ARE BY THE AUTHOR

The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook, a recipe book that is also an explicit paean to the avoidance of culinary originality (should such a thing exist), to the daylight robbery of recipes, to hijacking techniques and methods, to the notion that in the kitchen there is nothing new and nor can there be anything new. Its all theft. Anyone who claims to have invented a dish is dishonest or delusional or foaming. The very title was lifted, without permission and with the gracelessness that infects Cooking World, from Julian Barnes The Pedant in the Kitchen (plenty more to rip off there). Informed of this larcenous books imminence Barnes prudently and no doubt correctly elected to consider it an act of homage.

Letting on where the title came from and fessing up to the books dogged thievery promotes a collision.

Were it a work of genuine plagiarism I would not have admitted it. Id have covered my tracks unlike the thief who returns to the scene of the crime. Id have called it something different and altered recipes, using, for instance, mackerel instead of crme anglaise and substituting glac fruits for sweetbreads.

Were it a work of genuine plagiarism I would, in an access of bovarysme, have convinced myself it was original. All thats original are my monochrome treyfs.

Apart from myself the most frequent victim of my light fingers is the greatest of all cooks, Anon.

A restaurant might have as many as 5 or 6 stocks on the go. Theres seldom the room, seldom the need in a domestic kitchen. One will suffice. Avoid stock cubes and supermarket stocks. I rarely include wine and dont use lamb or pork (the latters feet apart).

LEFTOVERS AND BONES AND CARCASSES OF

BEEF

VEAL

CHICKEN

DUCK

GUINEA FOWL

PHEASANT

PIGS TROTTER

CALFS FOOT

ONION

GARLIC

CARROT

CELERY

FENNEL

LEEKS

DRIED TOMATO

DRIED CEP

DRIED ORANGE PEEL

JUNIPER BERRIES

MUSTARD SEEDS

PEPPERCORNS

BAY LEAVES

WATER

(WINE, DRY, WHITE)

ROASTING JUICES IF YOURE STARTING WITH A LEFTOVER DUCK OR BEEF RIB. NEVER WASTE ANYTHING.

Bones, carcasses, feet and vegetables are best browned in a hot oven to enrich the ultimate flavour dont overdo it, dont let them catch. Deglaze their vessel with water. However, theres not much to be gained by browning scraps of already cooked meat. The greater the quantity of meat and bones, the more gelatinous, smoother and deeply flavoured the stock will be.

Use a large pan 10 litres or so. Cover the meat and veg and spices with cold water (and dry white wine). Bring to near a boil, but dont allow the stock to do anything other than just simmer. If it boils the ingredients will break down and itll get cloudy. Skim the top every now and then to rid it of the grey murk. Leave to cook for about eight hours.