In my (not so) humble opinion, I reckon that one can accurately measure the health of the economy by the number of waiter-sung “Happy Birthday” moments in a certain type of restaurant over the course of any one evening. This rule, let’s call it Zoë’s Index of Disposable Wealth Demonstration by Means of Public Humiliation, gives a rather accurate overview of how a town or city is wearing the current economic woes. The theory behind it goes that richer feeling families go out to eat more, are more likely to celebrate birthdays in public and in the kind of place where one receives a special song, and more likely to want to demonstrate their happiness too.
Obviously there are some complexities to be borne in mind here – day of the week, the menu and the dress code can all be indicators of how disposed the clientele or indeed the waiters are to sing in the first place. And I’m fairly sure that it only works on this side of the pond, a smack in the mouth being the proper English response to someone singing at you in public. But generally the index works quite reliably.
In the Bahamas, for instance, the waiters at our local steakhouse Seafire do a bang up job of singing really quite enthusiastically to the nearest gorging supersized family, with added stomping and menu thumping. I would expire on the spot in a small grey puff of pure embarrassment, but it seems to go down quite well with the majority of recipients. But on Saturday night there were zero birthday moments. None whatsover! It was really extraordinary – on an average Tuesday in off season you can normally expect at least four interruptions to your dinner. Couple this with the emptiness of the marina itself (just a few over-neoned charter yachts) and the lack of queue at Jonny Rockets (hot-dog emporium and staple diet for tourists on Paradise Island) and news of economic misery is all but ensured. But the emptiness of the restaurant did ensure an absolutely delicious steak, all black and blue and bloody, great mashed potatoes, very efficient service and a perfectly acceptable creme brulee. When times are tough it’s apparently time to eat steak.
I don’t really have an awful lot say about the food at Rosa Mexicano – it was alright, if you like that kind of thing. The guacamole arrived on a cart of its own, a sort of hostess trolley as envisioned by a caveman if he were to execute his design in fake logs. The avocados were pounded (right there and then! Gosh!) in a faux-rustic pestle and mortar and plonked on the table in a faux-rustic way. It ticked all the guacamole boxes. We chose grilled main courses, which came with various textures of pureed beans and were ok. The management completely failed to manage our expectations of the Pinguino dessert, billing it as a fancy chocolate cupcake filled with hazelnut mousse but actually presenting us with Dunkin Donuts leftovers. The icecream was nice. The service was pretty gay by which I mean that, as the only woman at the table with three reasonably presentable guys, the waiter forgot my order by the time he’d finished taking theirs. The big news, though, was that only one very half-hearted Birthday Moment happened for the entire meal. I’d be selling on the non-farm payrolls if I were you.
I’m not sure how many churches there are on New Providence, but I think in terms of sheer variety they surpass even the liquor stores, petrol stations and nail salons. In such a crowded marketplace, one genteel Bahamian lady of a certain age (all Sunday hats, proper pastel suits and sensible heels) has found a USP to attract her congregation…
Mr R&R would like it known upfront that he’s morally opposed to this post. It deeply offends his Italian sensibilities, history, culture, in fact everything that he stands for, and is an affront to the metric tonnes of ice-cream he’s consumed so far, and and insult to the hard-working families producing authentic gelati the length of the beautiful peninsula.
To be honest, he has a point – you’ll never find these flavours in a gelateria in Torino, but then again why should you? They have incredible hazelnuts, pistachios and chocolate to play with, whereas I in the Bahamas have beets coming out of my ears, kilos of sugar and homemade bread to perk up my ice-cream. Our mileage most certainly varies. Not that I’m miffed, I quite like the weird and wonderful if presented in a frozen creamy form, and I hope you do too. But I can’t be responsible for the results if you serve sesame, brown bread or beetroot ice-cream to a Torinese…
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I’ve always thought that brownies are a grown-up excuse to eat raw cake mixture – a cursory nod to the oven gives them baked-goods legitimacy, just as a whiff of the martini bottle is the grown-up excuse to down a large bucket of gin. This version with beetroot is, of course, just another such excuse – put a healthy ingredient in your cake mix, and gorge without guilt! I jumped on the River Cottage bandwagon last week, and made these chocolate brownies with grated beetroot and beetroot ice-cream. I can tell you that they’re delicious, as long as you like beetroot. There’s no getting away from the earthy taste even in the brownies, as it comes out in the slightly undercooked centre of the brownie pan. I really liked eating them together, the ice-cream with its extraordinary fuchsia colour contrasting with the savoury/sweet brownie. Next time I would puree the beetroot well for the brownies and for the ice-cream use slightly less of the root than stipulated in the recipe, possibly adding some chocolate chips to the just-churned mixture. Overall, a success, but not one to convince beetroot-avoiders. (Oh, by the way, if you’re a surreptitious snacker, these brownies will tinge your guilty fingers pink…)
I’d never heard of kasutera before reading this post from Teochew, but it is light as a feather (as it has no added fat other than eggs and milk) and well worth a bit of whisking in front of the hob – a good BBC Radio 4 podcast and an electric whisk are essential. Imagine a honey-flavoured zabaione batter, eggs whisked into voluminous lusciousness, thickened with a little flour, baked, glazed with more honey and then chilled overnight to become moist and even fluffier. Simple, absolutely delicious and well worth the bit of time involved.
Nigella’s Christmas Cookies are deceptively simple – just the usual suspects of butter, sugar, flour and cocoa modged together and splodged into little balls on a baking sheet. They come out of the oven crackled like the surface of an oil painting, and once glazed have the sheen of a just-varnished masterpiece. Sprinkles optional.
