Subscribe They missed out panicking bitching bickering and making fun of fortune-cookie philosophising
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They missed out panicking, bitching, bickering and making fun of fortune-cookie philosophising, all of which we also managed to fit in. A sensational bottle of Au Bon Climat from the thoughtful and adventurous wine list also helped to get our chi flowing nicely.The variable quality of the starters continued into the main courses. I was fairly happy with my chicken yakitori, which was actually more like a Middle Eastern chicken kebab, featuring seared hunks of skewered meat, peppers, and what I took to be a mushroom, only to discover too late that it was a chicken liver. Sharon's Thai-style chicken came in an enormous portion, four joints in a sludgy sauce which nodded towards a green curry, but whose blandness betrayed none of the expected zing of lemongrass or sweet basil.Helen tried to stay positive about her salmon teriyaki, but it was a challenge - it was over-fishy and unpleasantly dense in texture. "If I invited people round for dinner, and tried to do the kind of food they serve in trendy restaurants, this is what it would be like," she concluded.
Side dishes of jasmine rice, garlicky bok choi and mashed potato ranged from competent to disappointing.Still, mychi isn't really a place for people who are passionate about food. It's lifestyle-led, for diners who want to co-ordinate their eating experience with their designer outfits, and to enjoy themselves in a stylish, unintimidating atmosphere. As such, it works very well, and at around pounds 25 a head, there should still be a bit left to contribute towards that next trip to New Yorkmychi restaurant, myhotel, 11-13 Bayley Street, Bedford Square, London WC1 (0171-667 6000) Daily lunch and dinner All cards accepted Disabled access No smoking.. I look at aubergines - or eggplants, which is a name I actually prefer - every single day of my life at home. So, to illustrate this week's outing, I demanded of Leica Lowe that he take a few snapshots of my inedible collection (I asked him very nicely, in fact, and he was thrilled to participate). His fastidious montage represents only about one third of my entire collection (many of them refused to be photographed), which normally resides on some shelving in a corner of my sitting room. I jocularly refer to those who see it for the first time as "eggplant enclave" or "aubergine alcove", to which the reaction is usually a light titter - and hardly surprising, I suppose.
But they are a constant joy to me, my deeply tactile black, purple and lilac objects. Well, it's better than bottlin' it up! Initially, many find the eggplant a difficult vegetable to become fond of Some even fear it. I seem to remember some cookery verbiage along the lines of " .. big, black and loathsome .. " but I don't recall who Surely a misunderstanding - clearly no cook. What is marginally true about that ignorant observation, is that the bigger and blacker the eggplant in the greengrocer today (certainly the only one available to the supermarket shopper), the less interesting it will be to eat. These perfect specimens will generally have been grown in a Dutch hot-house, and we know just how unexciting and measured have been the lives of these little chaps. I'm not sure which is worse: the battery egg, or the battery eggplant. Whether or not the original eggplant to be grown was egg-shaped and white, it is quite clear that this particular variety (now rarely seen on these shores) was aptly named because of its resemblance to the egg.
I have recently noticed that the powers that be - ie supermarkets - have deemed that we should now refer to our blameless cos lettuce, as "romaine". This is the French appellation and also one long adopted by Americans. In their country, and also in Australia however, aubergine is called eggplant. I wonder why, and when, we suddenly decided to drop the perfectly apt English moniker? Maybe it was some continental Soho grocer of the early Sixties - le plus chic epicerie de cette temps, bien sur - who felt a change of name might increase sales of this rare vegetable? Because, as I most definitely recall as a nipper, mum most definitely pronounced "eggplant" the first time that she plonked one on to the kitchen table (she was about to make her first moussaka). If trendy supermarket nomenclature now insists on having romaine on their shelves, perhaps it is high time for them to give us back our eggplant?Perhaps the most delicious of all eggplant cookery I have sampled - and there has been much sampling in my life, I can tell you - has been in Sicily. And, not surprisingly, it was also on that island that I saw the most beautiful of all eggplants for sale. They were displayed in all their glory, one early sunny morning in the market of the seaside town of Marsala, where the drink is made (I only mention this because I didn't know that until I first went there).
But they were unlike any eggplants you'd chuck in your wire basket at the local Tesco.Il melenzane di Sicilia - the Sicilian eggplant, as I have called it ever since, is a vegetable of astonishing beauty Oh pish, I hear some of you say. How can some old eggplant be "astonishingly beautiful"? Get thee to Pseud's Corner with all haste. I may be biased, but this great, fat, white-, lilac- and purple-streaked miracle, simply brings out the very gush of me. I promptly purchased a couple of dozen and checked them in as hand baggage for the journey home.