Food & drink takeaways - 18 September
Breakfast with a difference from an Indian Masterchef, an English eccentric's love for creamy chicken and a famous literary figure’s downer on cucumbers.
Just some of the food and drink delights for which we can give thanks to 18 September.
Click on the links for extra helpings.
A curated taster menu of every day’s food & drink associations
Food birthdays
1974
English TV presenter, wine expert and newspaper columnist
1979
Indian chef and restaurateur known for hosting and judging
MasterChef India. Among his inventive recipes is a suggestion for a healthy breakfast with a difference –
Moong Dal Idli {header photo}, steamed lentil idli with tomato chutney.
Food quote
English writer and critic Samuel Johnson – one of the most famous literary figures of the 18th century – was born on this day in 1709. He made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. But he took a dim view of cucumbers.
Leftovers
It's also the birthday of English eccentric and 'sort of missionary of the arts', Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners.
"A composer whose works included several ballets as well as the music for the 1947 movie “Nicholas Nickleby”, this bald British bachelor (1883-1950) also painted more than 100 landscapes, wrote six novels, two memoirs, and was a leading light of Britain’s aesthetic world between the wars. . .
"When it came to food, however, Lord Berners was a masterful host, and his meals, whether at Faringdon or his London residence, were considered superb, even overwhelmingly luxurious. . . One of Lord Berners’ best known dishes, Roast Chicken in Cream, was reprinted in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (Harper & Bros, 1954), that immensely entertaining memoir cum recipe compilation."
Food art of the day
The Vegetable Garden by leading Dutch realist painter Anton Mauve, born on this day in 1838.
