Can A Menu Be Racist?

A canteen chef in America has found herself at the centre of a race row after serving up a soul food menu in celebration of Black History Month.

Leslie Calhoun’s specialties for staff at the NBC studios included fried chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas.

The menu was spotted by musician Questlove, who posted a picture to his 1.2 million followers on Twitter, with the words "Hmm, HR?" It went shooting round the Twittersphere, and quickly sparked a food fight between people with clearly far too much time on their hands.

The issue – which seemed to be centered on whether it was racial stereotyping, and therefore racist, to suggest black people eat fried chicken all the time – was greeted with an equal measure of incredulity and consternation.

In one corner, there were the boggle-eyed, foaming-at-the mouth types, jabbing their fingers at how it was all political correctness gone mad. They questioned whether it would be equally racist to put potatoes on the menu for Paddy’s Day, or pizza and lasagne for an Italian night.

One comment began: “I went to Nam to defend this country and look at what has happened. Obama, Tiger Woods, and (Al) Sharpton should all send that chef a personal letter of apology.”

In the other corner, were equally outraged folk, slamming culinary racial stereotyping, especially in such a predominantly white canteen. Seeing middle class media types tucking into their finger-licking chicken and cornbread was tantamount to “blacking up”, one person argued.

Comedian Wanda Sykes entered the fray on the Jay Leno Show, saying, "Hey big chin, what is happening at NBC? Is the whole damn network on medical marijuana?”

Questlove clearly regretted the row he’d started. An hour after he circulated the menu, he tweeted: "i think i need a twitter break. i done started something. and now i must put out fire."

But despite his way with words, the row continued and the sign was taken down, and the only thing people could really agree on was how it would have been much worse if the chef had been white.

NBC’s black chef then defended herself to the New York Post, saying she couldn’t understand why people might find her menu racist, and it was only food “that I eat myself".

She added: "Questlove, who I serve every day and who enjoys my food, requested the neck bone [cooked in] the black-eyed peas and fried chicken, then got off the line, saying, 'This is racist.'

"The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn't."

It might all seem a bit trivial compared to the problems, of say Haiti. But it’s strange how emotive food is to national identity and culture – we are what we eat. And how often it is used in race-based slurs. Sausage-eaters, les rosbifs, limeys, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, spaghetti slurpers etc.

I got a glimpse of it once, when I was staying with friends in California. I was introduced to a German at a dinner party, who joked about how “everything in Britain is boiled”.

“Boiled!” I cried, recoiling in pain, the word much louder than planned.

I don’t why. I’m not particularly nationalistic or proud, but anger rose up inside me from somewhere, and I let rip about how British cooking had undergone a complete transformation in recent years, and there were some brilliant restaurants in Blightie, and besides all they ate in Germany was sausages and potato salad, and why anyone would consider the elegantly-named schweinshaxe a delicacy was beyond me.

Equally, and perhaps understandably, incensed by my disproportionate dissing of the legendary German cuisine, he put his hands to his ears and made a strange bellowing noise, and said all our cows were mad. I was about to turn to the thorny issue of Nazi Europe, when the other dinner guests jumped in.

And it was all over a fairly innocuous comment about the British preference for stews. The German had even winked as he said it. But somehow it had seemed racist, or at least intended to offend, and at the very least irritating.

Dinner Party Rule Number 8: Never discuss politics, religion, or food.

A disappointed Ms Calhoun told how she’d been begging NBC bosses for years to let her make special dishes to celebrate Black History Month, and only got her wish last year. The plan was to have one special meal every Thursday during February.

Apparently, next week, she’s got poodle hot pot for Korean night.

Spam, Spam, Chips And Spam

They say an Army marches on its stomach, so spare a thought for Corporal Liam Francis in Afghanistan.

The Army chef was forced to feed comrades on Spam-based recipes for six weeks when a helicopter bringing their food supplies was shot down by the Taliban.

Racking his brain for recipe ideas, and with no more fresh food able to get through to Forward Operating Bases, in Sangin District, the 26-year-old cook was only able to offer a menu that looked like it had come straight out of a Monty Python sketch.

The Royal Logistics Corp chef said: "We were on compo (compound rations) for six weeks and we only had one menu – Spam.

“I was surprised what we could do: sweet and sour Spam, Spam fritters, Spam carbonara, Spam stroganoff, Spam stir fry..."

A month-and-a-half later, with mutiny no doubt afoot and even the merest mention of the infamous budget tinned pork punishable by death, fresh supplies finally started to get through. And the troops’ celebratory meal? More pork, of course.

"The first day off Spam, I prepared battered sausages, chips and curry sauce,” he said. “The Sergeant Major said it was the best meal he had ever had – he'd never seen morale so high."

Cpl Francis is now back in Camp Bastion, the UK's main base in Helmand province, where Army and civilian chefs currently get through 7,500 burgers a week, 10 tonnes of chicken breast a month, 20,000 baguettes a week, and absolutely no Spam.

PS. Here’s a recipe for spam carbonara if you’re interested.

Ingredients:

Half a normal-sized pack of spaghetti
2 eggs, beaten
Tin of Spam, cut into cubes
Grated parmesan cheese
One onion, finely chopped
2 tbsps olive oil
Ground pepper

Cook the spaghetti and then drain. While it is cooking, fry the Spam and onion in the olive oil until lightly browned. Add the spaghetti, eggs and cheese and toss well. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and then throw in the bin because it’s absolutely disgusting.

Can Celebrity Chefs Learn From El Bulli?

Interesting news that El Bulli is to shut for two years so that Ferran Adria (pictured right) can dream up some fresh recipes and trail-blazing ideas.

He said he has got as far as he can with the “current format” – after all if you’re consistently voted the best restaurant in the world, the only way is down – and wants to get some creative juice back. "It's like telling John Galliano to go work in a factory," a tired-looking Adria said of the last few years.

When you’ve got food writers hanging round you like groupies, it’s easy to sit back on your laurels and stay with a tried-and-tested formula, and train up protégés to do the hard work for you while you swan around stuffing your face with Jaffa Cakes, and I think many chefs would applaud the 47-year-old for not taking the easy option.

In fact, many would applaud him for escaping the hellish prison of running a three-star Michelin restaurant and the whirlwind stress of constantly having to do better to satisfy clients.

I think celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal, owner of the second best restaurant in the world, could take a (no doubt edible, exploding, nitro-green) leaf out of his recipe book – well another one at least anyway.

When I worked at the Fat Duck nearly four years ago, some of the chefs felt they were on a treadmill just banging out the same immaculate but identical dishes year after year – a common complaint in Michelin-starred eateries. There was little creative buzz or inspiration, just long hours standing on your feet in a cramped furnace.

They longed for a la carte orders, but most customers stuck to the famous tasting menu (only a pompous fool with the ‘gentlemen’s disease’ calls it a degustation menu) and they longed for a revamp of that.

The Fat Duck is sometimes described as being a restaurant you dine at once in your life – mainly because of the expense and tick-it-off mentality of trainspotting gourmets rather than the quality of the cooking – so it doesn’t really matter if the menu remains the same for decades. But isn’t it good to take a chance and bring in fresh ideas – especially from the brigade doing the cooking for you?

Although I never managed to get in there, I have it on good authority that Blumenthal has a laboratory above the prep room run by elves who experiment with wondrous dishes such as poached cockatrice eggs that allow you to fly round the garden, and dormouse wine gums that send diners back to early Roman Britain. But it seems to be more of a prop for his TV shows.

I dug out an old tasting menu in the 'stagier handbook' they gave me during my stage at the Fat Duck. Comparing it to the present degustation menu (oh, the gentlemen’s disease!) it seems very little has changed in those years.

The nitro-green tea and lime mousse, pommery grain mustard and gazpacho, and snail porridge dishes were still there. As was the egg and bacon ice cream.

And there were small tweaks to some of the other dishes. The quail jelly was now served with crayfish cream rather than langoustine cream. The salmon poached with liquorice was served with golden trout roe (there was no mention of the dreaded grapefruit – had they finally taken pity on those poor, deformed stagiers locked away in the dungeon?) The poached breast of Anjou pigeon pancetta was now a 300-year-old dish called powdered Anjou pigeon. And the parsnip cereal was still there.

The new additions were roast foie gras, mock turtle soup (a sort of crazy, deranged tribute to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party), something called taffety tart (circa 1660), and whisky wine gums. In fact, not much had changed but the price – a 50% increase in just less than four years.

Explaining his reasons for throwing in the apron, Adria said he was finding the gruelling, 15-hour days at El Bulli “difficult” and it was impossible coming up with new stuff while spending your whole life toiling over hot ovens. And I think Blumenthal should follow his example. Give up working noon and night, and reward himself with a well-deserved break to recharge his batteries. Those TV programmes can be hard work.