Finger Food
When I was a teenager, like a lot of girls, I was fascinated by women’s magazines. Particularly in the rural backwater I grew up in, they seemed to me to harbour a template of sophisticated womanhood departed from the dross of daily life, which, at that time, consisted mainly of variations of potato supper, tepid tea, and a endless yap of turgid TV used to promote Alan Titchmarsh.
Oh, and being fingered on the bus by acne-riddled teenage boys all called ‘Rhys’. This was about as sensual an enterprise as rolling around in a mound of mouldy jay cloths, but was, all the same, a necessary early feature of the ‘erotic odyssey’. I bossed up when I got to 18 and spent the night with an older man who had a silver sports car, a four poster bed, a set of coloured oils and brushes, and what he said was expensive champagne, but may have just been Lambrini pursed through a soda stream (and cigarettes of course).+
Speaking of sensuality, the editorial++ that sustains most in the memory, among all the advice columns on how to get and keep a man+++ was centred around incorporating the lustiness of eating into the bedchamber. It was most likely in Cosmopolitan, my favoured of the genre. It stays staked into the mind, because among the list of sexy foodstuffs (strawberries, melted chocolate, oysters etc) it recommended the humble ham sandwich. As I was largely attending to the magazines because I was trying to escape the tedium of teenage life, this was disappointing. It shunted me out of the landscape of magical thinking that the glossy pages were meant to transport me towards (hot summers spent in a Harlequin Romance) with an almost Brechtian brutalism. I think the logic had something to do with the neatness of the packaging, although from that angle, a mini smoked salmon bagel would have been more elegant and considerably less flaccid.
It came to mind recently after I was thumbing through a cookery book containing a recipe for a tarted up Ploughman’s, which was to serve as my second lunch of the day. Apropos of nothing, I should also say, that eating is an ill-advised activity as a replacement for masturbation, or vice versa, as bingeing is always a product of unnecessary repression. It is considerably more healthy and balanced to engage in both activities in conjunction. And to that end, it all got me to thinking about a food menu that, no offence to ham sandwich lovers everywhere, I would find considerably more libidinous….
Primi, Whore’s Spaghetti: The Puttanesca
On Italian dinner menus, it is classic to separate your carb from your protein, in the form of a primi and secondi, and so I’ll follow in that tradition. And what better way to do that than with this etymologically controversial supper, the pasta dish that inspires cheeky winks from TV chefs the world over. In the Latin languages ‘Puttan’, and linguistic variations, is a naughty word, that can double both for whore and, roughly speaking, for shit (brass cheek). It’s this doubling that leads to the confusion; is the puttanesca a dish thrown together by a whore in a rush, or a pile of random shit thrown together by more or less anyone in a rush? Specifically, historically… was the dish made by the courtesans of Italian bordellos who did not frequent the daily market, and so kept to a kind of store cupboard cookery, or a working class housewife’s way of making food on a slender dime?
The debate reminds of the similar uncertainty circling the history of the dance, the tango. It most definetly developed in 19th century Argentina, but whether it was specifically a form of erotic display for the brothels of Buenos Aires or more generally a pop culture developed in cosmopolitan working class districts, is uncertain.
I’m going to be boring here and guess in both cases, it’s more likely the latter. But I see nothing against adding the not uncommon embellishment of the brothel, to add a certain frisson to folk history.
There is also something kind of sexy about the dish itself; it’s, in short, the salty unctuousness++++ of it. Spaghetti, of course, and a tomato base to the sauce, which is laced with good anchovies, black olives, capers, chilli pepper and I think perhaps garlic and parsley. It is a recipe for all good love affairs; they ought be both fruity, briny and spicy, whilst ultimately comforting, filling+++++ and served with an ill-advised amount of chilled white wine.
Secondi, The Body and Blood of Christ: Rare Sirloin and Burgundy
I will eat almost any slab of meat that comes to me well-aged and freshly trimmed, but my favourite is a fatty sirloin. I know, not as refined and easy on the waste-line as a slim fillet, but, as ever, it’s the fat that gives most meat its flavour. Added, I do prefer my steak cooked medium, or perhaps medium rare if it’s a very good cut, but something about rare, pink steak just seems simply more lascivious. I suppose we are always and ever, part animal, part angel, and eroticism is more at home with the former facet of ourselves. As is a yearning for just-seared flesh, oozing with some cardinal maroon, perfect even for our sanded canines.
If my steak is pre-coital I’d prefer to have it with a light side, we are more in the insalata department than potato, but either way, it must be served with a robust red. A burgundy would work, but really, truly, give me anything as long as it isn’t Beaujolais. Or Jacob’s Creek.
Steak, wine and sex is absolutely, manna from heaven. Indeed, I think the Catholics would up attendance no end if they stopped pretending that mass is not a repetition of some historic ritualised pagan orgy, dripping down the centuries, getting drier and more wafer-like with each passing bit of social regulation and new layer of anxious, suburban pretence. In fact, I am convinced that Jesus was some respectable but marginal public official by day (like a Liberal Democrat) and a secret satanic sadomasochist by night, who rounded up some meat, wine, whores and a swarm of goths hiding their tumescence under thick, black linen…and the authorities, finding his dead body after it all ‘got out of hand’, just had to start a big cover-up. Christianity was born. And when the church starts being honest about this history, and serving better, sexier dinners, I’ll dust off my Sunday best.
Dolce, The Spunky Martini: Gin, Berries and Vanilla Ice-Cream
I like things that are at once, sweet and alcoholic++++++; they are the two great gastronomical engines of the sex drive. I discovered this particular concept whilst at University, and myself and a group of friends had planned a sort of Come Dine With Me competition amongst ourselves. I was the first contender+++++++. I forget the starter now, but the main was a rabbit stew. That fact is hard to forget, as I had a real ‘to do’ trying to remove the hearts from the two carcasses I’d purchased from the local butcher. I tried to delegate this task to a friend, but he took one look inside the ribcage and returned his face to me, anguished and ashen, his masculinity lost among the gore. I did it. I ripped their pretty red hearts out. And never watched Watership Down again.
But I have happier memories of the dessert. I don’t know where I obtained the recipe (or more likely just the general idea) but I was a real bastard for the gin craze, and have very fond memories of a small, but arch, cocktail bar in my University city, that served a very decadent martini with some kind of blood orange and Benedictine mix. This drink induced a fantastic degree of inebriation that led me down alleyways I had simply no business going down.
That night was more restrained. I chilled cocktail glasses and added a whipped up mixture of good vanilla ice-cream and gin, which back then, meant the modish Tanqueray Ten. I then cooked down a compote of more gin, dark berries and sugar, and when cooled, drizzled it on top. Unlike the murder scene that was my stew, this dessert went down a treat among my guests. It may have instigated some erotic charge, but they all favoured their lovemaking in the Greek style, so I went to bed alone, with a glass of gin, a Marlborough light and some private initiative. Bliss.
KISSES, CORA LEIGH
UK INDEPENDENT ESCORT, DOMINATRIX & COMPANION
+I was supposed to have been painted, but, I can’t remember if that happened or not. And I know it sounds like a cliche straight out of a crass memoir about my ‘gap year in France in the 70s’, but it really happened, I was there and I was never the same again. I learnt that, in the world of men, there are spotty fingerers on buses who might give you a swig of their shandy (but don’t get too comfortable) and there are professionals with a penchant for silk linen, and you have to try the former to appreciate the latter, and that is just the system. I don’t make the rules.
++I appreciate that calling the articles in 2000’s women’s mags editorials is living generously.
+++Slather yourself in lads mags to siren him in, then spend 9 days religiously sucking his scrotum. When he inevitably wipes out from carnal exhaustion, chain him to the bed and bolt the doors. Spend the next 20 years telling his Mother he is doing the grouting in the shower cubicle and can’t get to the phone.
++++I starred long and hard at the clause ‘salty unctuousness’, my toes curled in horny embarrassment. But I’m sticking with it.
+++++I am sorry, I have come over a little Julian Clary. Boom.
++++++Like Grace Kelly.
+++++++And only. My fellow contestants were all blokes and after my dinner they never came through with their own. I’d like to the think it was because my meal was so fabulous they simply couldn’t marshal the confidence to continue, but in reality, it more than likely has something to do with the patriarchy.
