Hints and tips:
...Flaming brandy and aspic as social capital. The backlash against Cradock’s blatant social ambition was expressed by the impeccably patrician Elizabeth David....
...We’re offered brandies but it feels like a stretch. As we begin to wrap up, Smith says, “We’re going to make a deal . . ....
...From the outset, Woodhams was determined to avoid comparisons with 1970s gambling cliches and their clubs complete with gaudy chandeliers, oak panelling and florid-faced chaps in black tie nursing giant brandy...
...In my experience, most human need for comfort, joy and conviviality can be met by port, potatoes, brandy butter, Brussels sprouts and gravy. Call me old-fashioned but I still like Christmas pudding....
...Elizabeth David, when asked to pass judgment on the idea, is said to have responded waspishly that it depended whether you were intending to eat the bowl or the salad....
...She mixed the flesh of 10 pineapples with whipped cream and brandy and spooned it back into the shells and put the palmy lids back on....
...The first time it is used the dramatic shock is akin to turning the page in Little Women to read of a brandy-fuelled skinny dip....
...Many recipes in the book also demand heart-stopping quantities of brandy, butter, cream and wine, and Carrier’s gastronomic world is intensely Eurocentric....
...At weekends he would add a shot of brandy or rum. The latter came in handy at Christmas. He was wedded to tradition but disliked its flavour....
...It was a favourite tipple of Queen Elizabeth I, who had casks of it delivered to her court in the 16th century. Dr Samuel Johnson was also a fan of its “pleasant and mild flavour”....
...Elizabeth Taylor and audiences across the world begged to differ: “He’s bloody beautiful – and sexy,” she insisted....
...Accompanied by the fiddler who appears on the record, Tania Elizabeth, Gauthier played the album in its entirety....
...Gauthier’s cooking is bold and vigorous: Norway lobster comes with vanilla and galangal, Licques pigeon with crisp asparagus, a whole baby squid with fig purée and chives....
...A face that knows it will never see loneliness, or a bed-sitting room, or the melancholy finishing of a brandy and soda in some mouldy Pall Mall club....
...I made shortcrust pastry as usual, and the mincemeat by mixing dried fruits, brandy and jam....
...; Qi for an exotic tea-based brandy that tastes like an English country weekend, only without the mud, and Cordarounds....
...We talk about how Jackie Kennedy was criticised for not weeping at her husband’s funeral and about the film The Queen, in which Helen Mirren (another old friend) plays Queen Elizabeth as she comes under...
...Once the pudding – consumed with roughly equal quantities of brandy butter – was dispensed with, dessert proper could start....
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