RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34031, 20 December 1975, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

SPECIALTY OF THE HOUSE

The better cookery books, and some of the culinary experts who perform on television, insist that the proper serving of food is needed to embellish the most exotic dish. A certain sense of ceremony is required. Two young friends of ours know all about that. They are 19, they share a flat, and one of them has an interest in cooking. Recently they had some guests for dinner, and the chef decided upon crepe suzette for dessert. This romantic dish, very familiar to readers of the lesser lady novelists of some years ago. was prepared with meticulous care. And the serving of it was thoroughly organised too. The cook brought to the dining-room the butter, the brandy, the oranges, and the frying pan. His friend, having nothing better to do than concentrate on making feeble jests, brought in

the fire extinguisher, put it on the table, and retired to the kitchen to perform some menial task. This left the chef ample room for the requisite flourishes. The brandy was applied, and a match set to it, with spectacular results: but it was this piece of legerdemain which knocked the extinguisher off the table. It was highly unfortunate that the extinguisher landed on its nozzle, for before one could say either crepe or suzette, a billowing cloud of fine dry powder began to fill the room. The crepe suzette disappeared beneath it — the brandy giving tin a wholly unequal struggle with but a tiny whisper—and so, soon, did the guests. A desperate effort was made to remove the monster. It was tackled and seized and borne away, to be disposed off out of doors. It was again a most unhappy chance which

insisted that a chair, unobserved in the snowstorm, should be directly in the path of the ball carrier; but the subsequent confusion of feet, floor and fire extinguisher did provide more than sufficient time for the dreadful stuff to spread through two open doors into the bedrooms. It was quite the most spectacular piece of Christmas decorating of recent times: the whole flat became like a frosted caramel, and not an inch of it escaped the attention of this diabolical equipment. It put a bit of a dampener on the dinner. And it caused the hosts such mental and physical discomfort that neither, next day, could bring himself to go to work. They employed their time, listlessly, in reparation. And they needed the full day. Why can’t Des Britten tum 'on something like this?