Archive for July, 2006

Generally, I’ve been pretty lucky with my health. I’ve never had a headache. Or suffered a nosebleed. Or broken a bone. And until quite recently, I’d never experienced a hangover, despite spending most of my twenties and much of my thirties determined to advance the onset of chronic liver damage.

Within the last few years, however, things have changed. For a start, I drink a lot less, but even when I do I still don’t suffer as most seem to – no pounding skull, no nausea, no sensitivity to loud noise – but the night before definitely makes its presence felt on the day that follows. I suffer from a kind of mental lethargy, staring at my computer screen for considerable amounts of time, before realizing with a start that I haven’t actually done anything for ten minutes. And then there’s the digestion issue. Without being too graphic, visits to the toilet become more frequent, more urgent, more painful and, to be frank, more… liquid. It’s not pretty.

So the search for a hangover cure has become paramount. I need something to ease my mind back into the day, something to tighten up the valves downstairs, and several years of intensive trial and error have led me in the direction of two remedies.

Stage one is ice cream, which I believe works for me for two reasons. Firstly, the coolness of product helps to counteract the inevitable post-alcohol sweat. Secondly, both dairy products and eggs are a valuable source of Vitamin B₁₂, a deficiency of which is normal in hangovers – my body is telling me it needs more, and ice-cream delivers.

Stage two is the imbibing of Pepto-Bismol, that remarkable, vibrantly pink remedy for bowel anguish. This stuff is weird, but it does the trick. Years ago, when I worked for outlandishly hirsute rockers The Cure, the band wouldn’t tour without stocking up first. I’d be at my desk, and the call would come in. “Fraser? We’re in Rio, and we’ve run out of Pepto. Can you Fedex us a crate?” And so I would.

Ice cream. Pepto-bismol. Pepto-bismol. Ice cream. After a while, it became obvious. I should combine the two. So I wrote to Proctor & Gamble, manufacturers of the liquid, and asked their opinion:

I am a long-time user of Pepto-Bismol. I like the fact that it is extremely pink, and find it very useful for coping with alcohol-induced bouts of digestive trauma.

But can you cook with Pepto-Bismol? I am thinking of making some Pepto-Bismol ice-cream, and want to know if there are any dangers involved.

Thanks in advance,

Fraser

With the kind of wild efficiency you’d expect from such a vast organisation, a response swiftly arrived.

Hello and thanks for your e mail.

Pepto-Bismol is a strictly controlled medicine and should only used as a remedy to relieve the symptoms of an upset stomach.

Kind regards,

Christine

Consumer Relations

Well, I’m none the wiser. No information. I guess there’s nothing to do but experiment; this is, after all, how advances in medical science are made. And so I gather together the ingredients.

Eggs (6 yolks). Vanilla pods (2). Milk (250ml). Pepto-Bismol (1 bottle). Cream (250ml). Sugar (50g). Simple. We start by splitting the vanilla pods and scraping out the tiny seeds.

The seeds get added to the cream, sugar and eggs as I rustle up a classic crème anglaise, the foundation of all good ice creams. This custard is taken off the heat as soon as it’s close to boiling (the point at which the liquid can curdle), and rapidly cooled over a bowl of iced water. Eagle-eyed readers will notice the tiny specs of vanilla in the picture below.

Gingerly – I’m not sure why, perhaps I expect some kind of unholy fusion – I pour in the medicine. Nothing happens. No chemical reaction. No-one dies.

Stirring the ingredients together, however, does reveal a serious problem. The passionate Pepto pink has diminished somewhat, leaving behind a more anaemic imitation.

Thankfully, help is at hand. In the far reaches of the blogjam pantry I’m able to score an ancient bottle of scarlet food dye, and add a capful to the brew.

Finally, I pour the compound into my trusty Panasonic Ice Cream Maker, light the blue touch paper, and retire.

While I’m waiting for the mixture to freeze, I revisit the Pepto-Bismol website, where a glance at the FAQ section reveals a previously unheralded paragraph:

Some people feel refrigerating makes the dose more pleasing to take, and that’s OK. However, you shouldn’t freeze the product.

Whoa! Waddya mean no freezing? I’ve just made ice-cream! I need to clarify the situation immediately, and write back to Proctor & Gamble.

I’ve just noticed that the FAQ on the Pepto-Bismol website says that while refrigerating the product is OK, one shouldn’t freeze it. Can you shed any light on why this might be?

This time, Penny responds.

We do not have any information about freezing Pepto-Bismol….we can only stress that as a controlled medicine it should only be used as directed on the bottle.

Kind regards,

Penny

Consumer Relations

What a quandary! Obviously the girls can’t endorse my ice-cream adventure, but they won’t give me any clues as to why it’s a bad idea either. Penny doesn’t have this information to hand, but P&G must have tested the theory, otherwise the warning on the website wouldn’t be there. What to do?

Eat it, of course! In my book, food without danger is like sex with a condom: it goes in the same entrance, but the experience is altogether less thrilling, less memorable, indeed less satisfying. I fetch the ice cream from the freezer, scoop out a chunk, and admire its pinky goodness.

The taste? Actually, it’s quite nice. The vanilla and sugar temper the metallic bitterness of the medicine, giving the end result a flavour not too dissimilar to black cherry. And as a hangover cure? Initial studies are encouraging, with no negative side-effects experienced as yet. A mild mid-week drinking session provided the first test, and while my cross-breed concoction certainly didn’t eliminate the suffering altogether, the benefits did not go unnoticed.

Obviously, if I’m to suggest to P&G that they approach Ben & Jerry’s to produce a commercial version, there will have to be proper clinical trials, with control groups and placebos and suchlike, but I’m hopeful. It’ll sit nicely on the shelves next to my paracetamol bacon roll.

Small-print: As as a controlled medicine, Pepto-Bismol should only be used as directed on the bottle. If in doubt, consult your pharmacist.

I have a theory about cookbooks, that publishers deliberately insert mistakes into the copy in order to give themselves ammunition in the battle against counterfeiters. Sir! I accuse you of ripping off my recipe for apple strudel! Only an imbecile would have followed my directions and used gravel in place of lemon zest! Your honour, I rest my case! And so on.

A perfect example is the case of Antony Bourdain’s recipe for clafoutis, in which temperature and oven-time directions are suggested that would make a pyromaniac blanch. More evidence for this theory can be found on page 455 of Hugh Fearnley’s Mammoth Meat Manual, in which our hippy-headed hero claims that 250 grams of minced pork is sufficient when constructing a sweetbread terrine. 250g? Not in my loaf tin, that’s for certain.

Anyway, let’s go back to the beginning. What is a sweetbread? Although it sounds like a delicious treat for children, some kind of wondrous, sugary bun, in reality it’s entirely made of meat, the kind of meat you get on the inside of animals. There are two kinds of sweetbreads, the thymus gland – whose primary function is the production of cells used by the immune system to battle infection – and the pancreas, which secretes the various enzymes that allow the body to break down digestible foods. The precise location of the pancreas is demonstrated by our model below.

The pancreas I managed to procure came not from a female human, sadly, but from a Dutch calf, courtesy once again of the artisan butchers at Kent & Sons, St John’s Wood. Fully aware that these kinds of innards are of a highly perishable nature, I rushed home to examine my freshly-slaughtered bounty. As you can see from the picture below, it’s not nearly as yellow as suggested by the diagram above.

First up, the pancreas is soaked overnight. This removes any traces of blood from the tissue, leaving our mucilaginous friend all pristine and ready for action.

Next, we simmer the pancreas in boiling water for five minutes, which tightens up the flesh and makes the next part of the procedure easier: once the meat has cooled, any cartilage, connective tubes and tougher pieces of membrane are carefully picked off, leaving behind only the finest, most delectable tissue.

And this is where I think Hugh gets it wrong. Lining my rather lovely Le Creuset Silicone Cook ‘n Bake 24cm Rectangular Loaf Mould (bought for me last Christmas by Blogjam reader Alex in America – and don’t forget, kids, I do have a Wishlist) – with slices of streaky bacon and a layer of pork spiced with sage, thyme, salt, pepper and port, I carefully lay the first sweetbread layer down.

If I had taken Hugh’s recommendation to use 250g of minced pork seriously, I’d be struggling right now. In fact, I’d have virtually none of this so-called “forcemeat” left to complete the next layer. Thankfully, however, I’d decided in advance that such a paltry amount wouldn’t be sufficient, and prepared 750g of the stuff. And guess what? It turned out to be precisely the right amount. I swear, someone should give me a cottage and some cows.

After ninety minutes in the oven and a night in the fridge (carefully weighed down by a house brick wrapped in silver foil), my terrine is ready to be turned out. Here’s an aerial photograph:

I cut a slice and serve it up with a spoonful of Mrs Bridges spicy apple chutney. Hugh recommends his broad bean puree but, to be honest, I fear it’s a little bland. Stick to the meat recipes, HFW, that’s what I reckon.

And the taste? Well, it was exquisite; a saliva-inducing symphony of succulence, a tapestry of taste, as it were. And so I took it to work, to share amongst my friends and colleagues.

But virtually no-one wanted any.