Category: Food & Drink

Written in the Stars

The frosty flurry in old London Town soon turned to sloppy slurry. Sunday was our day of rest away from commitments. We decided to do what we rarely do these days – a West End jolly, just the two of us. It was a strangely alien experience. The Sunday evening stalwart – Jivin’ Julie’s karaoke night for the hairy marys down the Kings Arms (or Kings Arse, as it’s affectionately known) was a shadow of its former self. The fat crowd has thinned to just a few old fairy faithfuls. We ventured to Comptons, the pivot around which gay Soho revolves, to find it bereft of punters except for a few lonely tourists, northern fag hags in mountainous heels and Russell Grant. Sadly, cuddly Russ hasn’t managed to keep the weight off following his stint as housewive’s choice on Strictly Come Dancing. I bet he didn’t see that coming in the stars.

All the bars told a similar sad and sorry tale. Was it the long recession or the wind chill that kept the boys under the duvet? Perhaps it was neither. Restaurants were buzzing away to the sound of glasses clinking and tills cher-chinking. Perhaps the crowd has moved on to pastures new. Perhaps the pubs should lower their beer prices. We joined the throng at an eaterie and supped Rioja into the small hours.

The Big Chill

Our trip to Blighty was blighted by the big chill. Before our exodus, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’d experienced snow in London with its urban microclimate. In fact, three of our four last winter tours have been a white out. Perhaps global warming really is pushing the Gulf Stream out of kilter. What next, winter fairs on a frozen Thames? Shocking. Fortunately, we landed at Heathrow just before the weather closed in. Two years ago, we were diverted to Cardiff by a light dusting at Gatwick.

Once on land, we trundled off through town to celebrate the half century of an old friend and watched the arctic flurry from the comfort of an Islington restaurant. As the winter wonderland of bobble hats and woolly scarfs scurried past the window, a wonderful warmth enveloped us like the Ready Brek halo. Glory be to the god of central heating.

Black Gold

Our precious olive crop is bursting to be harvested. A huge, ancient double-trunked tree is the central exhibit in our shared garden and is dripping with heavy fruit like black baubles on a Christmas Fir. Olives have been dropping haphazardly for weeks, exploding over the patio and staining the paths. Our neighbours, Beril and Vadim have been collecting the debris, presumably for preparation and processing. I looked up the method online. It seems like a right faff to me. Our olives come in handy little jars from the supermarket. I intend to keep it that way.

A second olive tree from a neighbouring house overhangs our single storey kitchen. We were rudely awoken this morning by a heavy, thick-set covered lady in clashing florals and crocheted twinset (no pearls) who had climbed on top of the kitchen roof to beat the bounty out of the heavily laden tree. Olives rained down and danced around the tiles for a couple of hours. She went at it with great gusto, grunting like an East German shot putter until the entire crop had surrendered to her considerable force. I won’t be messing with her.

Greats of Great Britain

Old pal Philip and his partner David are cheesemongers in St Margarets, Southwest London, just across Old Father Thames from Richmond. Their pongy shop is called Yellowwedge Cheese and it’s weathering the recessionary storm remarkably well considering. If you’re in the area pop in and sample their smelly wares. Philip also writes an excellent food blog called What’s for Tea Tonight, Dear?

Yellowwedge was voted best new retailer at the British Cheese Awards 2008, named in The Times Top 10 cheese shops in Britain for 2010 and 2011, and listed in the top 5 cheese shops in Britain in 2011 by lovefood.com. Gongs are good. It’s a great way to raise the profile and earn a wedge. Now they’ve entered their cheese emporium into the Great Exhibition Awards with Greats of Great Britain. They need all the votes they can get so why not do them a small favour?

Need persuasion? Maybe this will convince you:

Ringing the Belles

New Year’s Eve brought a couple of tremors and torrential rain to Bodrum. We refused to let Mother Nature throw us off kilter or dampen our spirits as we joined the Bodrum Belles to drink in the New Year. The place of our undoing was Musto’s Restaurant, our haunt of choice. The source of our undoing was a bottle of Jaegermeister doing the rounds courtesy of a particularly boozy Belle (you know who you are). Think 100% proof cough mixture. At the stroke of midnight, Liam and I kissed in front of a passing copper, put out some windows with a salvo of party poppers the size of bazookas, watched the creditable firework display and shuffled from side to side to classic, cheesy, gay dance tracks of yesteryear. I wonder who chose the music?

It doesn’t get much cheesier than this.

Have you checked out the book yet?

Fancy Another?

Jilly Likes a Drink

Wine tasting (ok, wine guzzling) is an essential element of our hedonista lifestyle. Together, we survive on in a month what I alone used to earn in a week so we’re rather preoccupied with the cost;  prices have been rising due to increased taxation on alcohol. We don’t have a car so we can’t take advantage of the bulk bargains to be had at Metro, the local cash and carry warehouse. Instead we have to make do with what’s on offer in local supermarkets.

We care about the quality (though less so after the second bottle) and quality isn’t necessarily linked to cost. As Brits, we’ve been rather spoilt for choice. Setting aside the small amount of vino produced by English vineyards, all wine in Blighty is shipped in from the four corners of the globe. Generally, this means the quality is reasonable, even at the plonk end of the market. Liam likes a full bodied red. I prefer a crisp white. We’ve found a couple of labels that tickle our taste buds: Sava from Carrefour (the French multi-national) and Beyzade, occasionally from Tansaş. Both sell at around 7 lira (about £2.40 or $1.80) and are very good value. We’re not experts. We don’t do the Jilly Goolden roll, smell and spit routine. We just sup. A lot. I’ll drink to that.

Check out my new book:

Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam move to Turkey

High Five Cs

While Nurse Liam is in Londra doing his Florence Nightingale gig, he frets that I’m wasting away on a liquid diet. There’s a lot to waste away these days. I could do with dropping a few pounds around the midriff. Nevertheless, he has a point. My culinary talents would never get me on Masterchef. When I was a young gay boy about town I considered my function in life to be purely decorative. That worked extremely well until I reached about thirty when the looks began to fade. After that I had to learn some proper life skills that would keep, and not just attract, a partner. These days, I’m quite handy about the house. I can scrub better than the best char in town. Sadly, the kitchen has remained a bridge too far. This may explain my life mantra – the 5Cs. This isn’t an indication of bog-standard IQ, but the formula I’ve applied to assess relationship potential. What are the 5Cs? I thought you’d never ask.

Cook – I know good food when I eat it.

Conversation – A brain and an opinion worth hearing.

Car (or the ability to drive) – Another skill I’ve never mastered.

Cuddles – I’m a romantic old sod.

And the last C? Well, I’ll leave that to your filthy imagination.

What’s your formula?

Check out my new book:

Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam move to Turkey

Penny for the Guy

After an excessive Guy Fawkes Night with a wheelbarrow bonfire, fireworks to blow your hands off and the drunken Gümbet Gals Chorus (ladies, you know who you are), I’m suffering from mental paralysis. I have neither the inclination nor the energy to write anything remotely interesting, amusing or informative. It’s just as well that it’s Kurban Bayram across the entire Moslem world, a time where men are men and sheep are nervous. To celebrate the occasion, I am releasing a tiny snippet from Perking the Pansies the Book which tells of our first bloody encounter with the Feast of Sacrifice.

Liam answered a knock at the door. It was Tariq’s daughter. Selma was a pretty little thing, a fourteen year old girl with fathomless dark eyes and long brown hair, perfectly parted at the middle. Our contact had been minimal but we had exchanged half smiles and several hundred empty wine bottles: she occasionally helped Tariq with the rubbish disposal.  Selma handed Liam a bag of bloodied bones.

‘For you,’ she said. ‘Iyi bayramlar.’

‘Why… thank you. Teşekkürler.’

Selma smiled nervously and wandered off into the night. Sheep’s blood dripped through the bag and splashed onto Liam’s feet.

‘What the fuck?’

‘Who was at the door?’

‘Selma and a bag of blood.’

‘Fantastic. Anyone for spare ribs?’

‘You’re excited by a bag of bones?’

It was Kurban Bayram, The Feast of Sacrifice commemorating an Old Testament myth. God rather unreasonably commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. Thankfully, Abraham proved his devotion and God provided a sacrificial ram instead. I had never read the book but had seen the Hollywood movie several times.

Liam was unmoved. ‘So hapless sheep across the entire Moslem World are being butchered as we speak? Revolting.’

‘And the flesh is distributed among family, friends and the deserving poor.’

‘So we only get the bones. What does that make us?’

‘Accepted.’

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Birthday Beaus

It’s been a double celebration of our birthdays. We were feted in style by a succession of festivities sponsored by a select sample of the Bodrum Belles and Gumbet Gals, and topped off by a birthday bombshell. Blighty-life friend and part-time thesp, Clive, flew in for the occasion on a surprise visit. Liam was suitably startled and unusually speechless. Our days were awash with lavish fizz and food, calorific cakes with candles, and generous bountiful gifts.

Dear Clive is a flimsy sleeper and needs total sensory deprivation. He couldn’t quite fit the isolation tank into his hand luggage so had to make do with a Virgin Atlantic mask and earplugs the size of suppositories. Thankfully, Clive managed to get his beauty sleep (despite the dogs, traffic, call to prayer and a plague of flies) and awoke each day rested and raring to go. Liam and I drank the house dry while a sober Clive looked on with amiable amusement. When the white was spent, I resorted to sucking out brandy from the fruit cake Clive had lovingly baked and slipped into his luggage.

After a solid week of liquor decadence and wringing our livers out in the sink, the show is now over. These two ageing queens are resting their drunken bones. Until next year.

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The Faithful Retainer

We enjoyed mezes and drinks in Sofiye’s lush garden and we were in joyful, mellow mood. Towards the end of the evening Sofiye’s maid emerged from the kitchen having washed up and wiped down. She joined us at the table to eat a modest meal of pasta and salad. She asked Sofiye about Liam and me and Safiye asked us how she should reply. ‘Honestly,’ we said. We studied the maid’s mystified expression as she grappled for several minutes to make sense of the information. We thought it cruel to persevere so we settled on cousins, and she seemed calmed by the clarification since village people like to keep it in the family.

The teetotal maid became quite intoxicated by the laid back charm of the evening and, with reckless abandon and without warning, whipped off her head scarf to reveal dark, silky hair fashioned into a single squaw-like platted ponytail which she draped across her left shoulder. Excited but anxious, she looked to the assembly for approval. We gave her an ovation. Sadly, it was but a brief moment of sovereignty. She replaced the head scarf as we left to totter home down the lane.