The first two courses went off without a hitch, until the main course was served; a juicy, perfectly cooked lambchop with miniature spring vegetables. I am so relieved that the chef, my bud, and old boss, has decided not to serve lamb with any trace of mint.
Mint sauce, in short, represents everything that is wrong with Britain. It is pine-puke green, gelatinous, and kept at the back of everyone's fridges until, lo and behold! Someone makes lamb. Mint sauce doesn't complement lamb, it treats lamb like a piece of toast.
Get your stinkin' marmalade away from my meat.
The catering staff are cleaning up when we see the Lord [---]* walk in. No, not jesus, a lord. Of England. As in, 'Lords-a-leaping,' and The House Of. On a side note, he's gorgeous, but on his third wife. Oops.
"Very sorry to bother, but do we have any mint sauce?" he blusters.
All, in unison: "Sorry, what's that?"
"Mint. Sauce. For the lamb."
"Mint. Sauce?" (I can feel my inner Basil Fawlty rising)
[he starts rummaging in the back of the fridge] "Surely we must have some mint sauce somewhere…"
(I feel a vein pop out in my forehead)
We eventually convince him to stop looking, that it's useless, and he will have to damn well live without mint sauce. But THIS, my friends, is why Britain lost it's empire. A little known fact: if mint sauce hadn't been rationed during World War II, England would have lost.
And to think, this self-repression is coming from the top-down. End the self-fulfilling prophecy of bad food, Britain! Fight Mint Sauce on the beaches! And in the streets! In the hills! Britain should never surrender…
*For various reasons, I'm not using his last name, but you'll just have to take my word for it
1 comment:
You are so delightfully odd.
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