One of life’s problems, it seems to me, is that the surface of things dulls with time. It’s hard to recover that sense of delight when something is first encountered, whether it’s a loaded potato or seeing a man step onto the moon.
Is there a way to recapture that “first time” enthusiasm? To channel our younger selves, and remember our giddy surprise?
Flamed at the table, I still remember my first Crepes Suzette.Credit: Marco Del Grande
Right now, I’m trying to summon up the memory of my first Tandoori chicken. Like Powell’s loaded potato, it was probably in the late 1980s. It was served with a type of bread, also cooked inside the clay oven. At the time I didn’t know what this bread was called. Curiously, this improved the taste. Now I order it, and eat it, with the same blase attitude with which I once consumed white toast.
Or there are Crepes Suzette, experienced for the first time flamed at the table. Oh, my God, the astonishment. The drama of the moment, followed by the taste of the soft crepes, the sweet Cointreau and the sharp orange.
I remember, too, the first time I saw a big musical, in a proper theatre. I was 19 and it was Annie. At some point the whole cast was on a mechanised travelator, moving from stage left to stage right without moving their bodies.
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What? How have they done that? It was by far the most amazing thing I’d ever seen – in a theatre or maybe anywhere.
Here’s my point: today’s humdrum was yesterday’s exciting. In terms of food, there’s nothing quite so dull as a Quiche Lorraine, a supermarket slice of which, eaten on the go, can pass for lunch.
Yet even Quiche Lorraine was, at one point, quite a thrilling innovation – at least for Australians. In the 1952 Sydney cookbook Oh, For a French Wife! the dish is considered sufficiently novel to be described from scratch: “This is really an open-faced tart.” It is recommended as a “masterpiece” that will provide the “climax” to any cocktail party.
Can we renew our gratitude for these things that have become dulled with use? Can we become excited over the existence of the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine or the loaded potato?
Maybe this is why people become aesthetes and retreat to caves in Italy or India. After five years of prayer or chanting they can come home, throw some clothes in a washing machine and experience anew the miracle of having them come out clean.
Personally, I don’t fancy five years in a cave. I hope for an easier way to burnish the humdrum and make it glow. How about we start with loaded potatoes for dinner? Oh, yum.
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