Random reminder

Press, 17 March 1982, Page 37

Random reminder

TRUE TO LADLE

Every nation in the world has made a national virtue out of its citizens' laziness. The British pride themselves on "muddling through," the colonial will wrap a couple of turns of fence wire round anything mechanical rather than fix it properly, the French invented the term “laissez-faire." the following references to other nationalities will not appear by order of the Race Relations Board, and even the Japanese — imagined by the rest of the world to be tireless automatons spending seven day’s a week on the factory floor — even the Japanese spend their spare time snoozing under cherry trees and call it "Zen contemplation of the Universe.” Two specific examples of “She’ll-be-rightness" occur in interior decoration, where it is called “chocolate brown” and is the colour you get when you mix up all the left-over residuals of paint and hope that there will be enough to finish the hallway, and in catering, where an exactly analogous process produces something called "Brown Windsor Soup."

In one Christchurch tourist hotel, soup is not always served in summer. But on this occasion it was. We cannot even blame the Australians, by whom 19 out of 20 New Zealand hote’ls are staffed, because by chance this was No. 20. The menu was to have included fish on a base of spinach, and, later, roast hogget. The way that hotels serve roast hogget is chilled (so it slices thinly) on hot plates and covered with boiling gravy. Over all, it arrives warm. Nobody complains. Assistant chef A, travelling south-east, backwards, met Assistant Chef B, travelling north-west, backwards. The impact sent too much gravy into the puree of spinach to allow it to support the fish, and too much greenery into the gravy to allow it to be fed even to tourists. The menu was finalised with a stroke of- the pen. Fish, on rice. Roast hogget as before (with fresh gravy, which comes in packets, need you ask). And, proudly leading all, "Green Windsor Soup.” Nobody complained.