The Blind Swine - an atypical north Yorkshire experience

Day 41 

General status update

Hair: Hair is a bit nervous in north Yorkshire, what with the extreme cold. It is anxious that it might be fixin’ to break off when frozen. 

Nausea demon: still away in Bilbao –  he's fixin' to come back on Tuesday, the Eve of FEC3.

Chemo Muse: she LOVES it here in north Yorkshire, since BigSisFo’s life is so much more interesting than mine, and is lobbying for an extended stay, which deep down she knows is impossible, as we have an appointment with Stan the Oncologist back in London tomorrow 

Chemo Brian: also totally enchanted by my sister’s house, where there are huge leather sofas for him to sprawl on, and roaring log fires on which he can toast marshmallows. It may be quite a job to persuade them both to get on the train back to London on Monday morning..

Fatigue/weakness: Even though I gave most of my cocktails last night to R, it is fair to say that the chemo cannot be held entirely to blame for a certain sense of fragility this morning. 

Sleep, lack of: now building up a sleep bank before the next dose of steroid mania on Wednesday. 

Anxiety level (1-10): We took Hank for a long walk in the snow around a frozen lake this afternoon, and the MC is cooking roast beef and Yorkshire puddings this evening. And, as I sit writing this, he has just brought me a glass of Manzanilla, with some olives and Jamon Iberico, in case I need a little something to keep me going until dinner-time. Life at BigSisFo's is the Antidote to Anxiety.

State of mind: Much improved. Have hardly given a thought to cancer or chemo for the last 24 hours; it’s so good to be out of London,and back in God's own county.

 

 

Previously on Chemo Nights: on Saturday evening disaster strikes as the MC, hanging his poor, beautiful, tragic dead pheasants (not that I’m biased in any way on this matter, obvs) in the wine-cellar, discovers that a frozen pipe has burst in the adjoining outbuilding, and that a fairly major flood is underway.

Now read on:

He comes into the kitchen and informs BigSisFo of this news, in the manner of one who expects her to do something about it, sharpish. BigSisFo, who has had it up to here with dealing with domestic crises recently

 – what with having had to cope single-handedly with the extended and very unpleasant north Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse  while the MC was away in London being corporate far, far away from the terrible, unforgettable smell of decomposing rat -

ignores this very strong hint: after a brief trip outside to inspect the catastrophe-in-progress, she returns and recommences pouring the champagne with which we are just beginning R’s and my early birthday celebrations, saying she will stay here and continue to look after her little sister, WHO HAS CANCER, while ‘you boys’ sort things out outside.

R goes pale, realising he is being called upon to metamorphose instantly from Professor of Bioethics into Man of Action with a sub-speciality in fixing outdoor plumbing emergencies in the dark and freezing cold; however, he rises to the occasion and announces ‘We just need to find the stopcock’, before striding outside into the dark and the snow with the MC and Hank, who is now barking furiously as he realises that something exciting is happening.

BigSisFo and I remain in the kitchen, nestling close to the warmth of the Aga; we drink our champagne and eat olives, meanwhile musing sadly on MamaFo’s long ago, purposeful suggestion that it would really be very helpful for everyone if one of her daughters could manage to marry a plumber.

Much to our surprise the stopcock is located, and the water turned off, within about 15 minutes, and the men stride back in exultant at this proof of their manly skills in aquatic crisis-handling; we are then able to resume the planned birthday festivities, the next stage of which is going out to dinner at a recently opened temple of molecular gastronomy in York, called ‘The Blind Swine’, a place now so popular that BigSisFo had to book 3 months ahead to get this table on a Saturday night.

How to describe this restaurant-slash-cocktail bar which combines the steaming frozen nitrogen flourishes of Heston Blumenthal with a screaming Heavy Metal soundtrack and a chef and brigade de cuisine with more tattoos between them than a convention of Hell’s Angels?

BigSisFo sits down, takes in the scene around her and pronounces: ‘Oh. My. God. It’s Hogwart’s meets Spinal Tap on ACID.’

We look at the drinks menu, which includes a short and learned dissertation on gin, and find cocktails that are named with lines from the book ‘American Psycho’ and have lists of ingredients that stretch credulity:

‘Brandy, hay syrup, port, quail’s egg’.

We decide against that one.

My sister goes for the ‘I like to dissect girls – did you know I’m utterly insane?’ cocktail, which consists of a relatively subdued combination of gin, cranberry, lime, Cointreau and orange bitters.

In a spirit of adventure I opt for the ‘Ziggy Sorreldust’: gin, sorrel juice, apple, lemon, Parma violets and protein lime. Somewhat to my surprise, this turns out to be one of the most divine things I have ever tasted.

I say so, foolishly.

BigSisFo immediately grabs and tastes my drink, whines because it is better than hers, and tries to steal it, whilst I calculate how many hundreds of times similar scenes have been played out during our decades of sisterly co-existence, sibling rivalry, and occasional all-out warfare. R, an only child, looks on, bemused.

The food, and its service, is surreal.

There is no choice about what to eat – the chef, who only cooks three nights a week, and then for a maximum of four tables and 20 people, offers a tasting menu of 8 courses, accompanied by cocktails devised to complement the exquisite morsels of food. You can order wine or beer as well if you wish, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to mess with the chef’s Grand Plan, particularly as whoever devises the cocktails is clearly some kind of crazed genius.

                               photo from the Blind Swine website

There was a time in my life when I regularly went to cutting-edge restaurants, but in those days they didn’t involve spectacular feats with clouds of steaming frozen nitrogen; this is cooking as performance art or religious ritual, each course cooked in full view of the diners and set ceremoniously before you by the rock’n’roll chef and his body art-adorned  acolytes.

The first plate put in front of us contains a thimbleful of carrot sorbet, surrounded by carrot crisps; over this is poured hot carrot soup from an alchemist’s glass flask, billowing clouds of steam.

It is all about the carrots, obvs.

It is essence of carrot, 3 different ways.

It is delicious.

The accompanying cocktail is some kind of mojito, with rum, elderflower syrup and frozen shredded cucumber, which tastes an awful lot better than it sounds.

BigSisFo gazes across the room at the tattooed, muscled arms of the chef and wonders aloud whether he works out.

  Photograph © Mark Ivkovic

‘I expect he does an awful lot of chopping’ I say.

My sister, who after champagne and a couple of industrial strength cocktails is approaching a state which might be described as fairly well-oiled (although nowhere yet near completely rat-arsed) observes that the chef, who sports a startlingly blonde 70s glam-rock hair style, looks like a tattooed all-in-wrestler in a woman’s wig.

Feeling that this is a trifle unkind I point out, truthfully, that he also has the face of a Botticelli angel.

R, our musical expert, argues that the chef looks more like the guitarist Mick Ronson, of David Bowie fame, than anything one might find in Renaissance art,

but adds that his closest doppelgänger has to be Dougal, of the Magic Roundabout.

 

The MC’s expression on hearing this exchange of views is pained beyond belief.

 ‘You do realise this guy used to cook at NOMA?’ he asks, with the sad but resigned air of a man fated to be surrounded by culinary imbeciles at moments of exquisite gastronomic intensity

 

 For those who do not follow such matters, NOMA is a now legendary Danish restaurant regarded as the second best restaurant in the world - after the late lamented El Bulli - by devotees of its intensely seasonal and often foraged food, where each plateful represents its own tiny ecosystem, and hay is often mentioned, although I’ve never been entirely clear in which precise context .

The rest of us, duly chastised,  shut up and apply ourselves with due reverence to the second course, which pays homage to the Spirit of Beetroot in the form of a playful melange of roast beetroot, beetroot puree, millet and pine nuts, decorated with a light dusting of vanilla snow.

It is at this moment that BigSisFo’s phone rings, and it becomes apparent that the as-yet-unidentified person on the other end of it is very upset indeed.

As we commence the third course - pea sorbet with a sliver of Iberico ham, aged for 15 years (the ham not the sorbet) with smoking hot pea and ham soup poured over the top, accompanied by Pain de Campagne with whipped black garlic butter – my sister says things like ‘He did WHAT?’ and ‘Oh my God, that is appalling behaviour’ and ‘I’d like to string that little bastard up by his BALLS’.

This conversation goes on for some time, and we are drinking our next cocktails – Sorrel Sours, AWESOME – and digging into veal sweetbreads with black garlic puree and what is possibly a poppadum made of dried white cabbage, by the time she finally rings off and explains to the rest of us what is amiss.

It transpires that a young female friend is undergoing an acute emotional crisis in  Texas, involving a travelling musician who has turned out to be a devil with the ladies as well as his bull fiddle. We all sit aghast as BigSisFo relates this tale of woe, and I reflect that it as well for the Good Ol’ Texas Boy in question that the Atlantic currently lies between him and my big sister.

Happily the next cocktail -  the ‘Chipotle Swinereiser’ a confection of rum, lemon, chipotle bitters, and blond beer with an orange twist  - arrives in the nick of time to take the edge off her ire, followed swiftly by more food: a king scallop atop a slice of boudin noir, resting on a tiny pillow of cauliflower puree and a slick of curry oil. The food has been getting better and better with every course, and this is just perfect.

It is perhaps unfortunate that the MC chooses this moment to observe that anyone who chooses to enter into a relationship with a young, good-looking male musician who spends most of his year on the road touring must surely be aware of the unlikelihood of such a union turning out to be of a monogamous and enduring nature.

BigSisFo turns on him, eyes flashing:

‘WHAT’ she hisses - she hisses magnificently, my sister, like a female cobra on steroids- ‘do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that this is in some way HER fault?’

I will draw a veil over the ensuing conversational carnage, and the response to my own suggestion that being done wrong by a bull fiddle player in Texas must surely count as a splendidly authentic blues experience, even if your name does happen to be Xanthe.

No, let us move swiftly on, as we do in the restaurant, to the next course: hanger steak topped with gremolata, accompanied by herbed gnocchi. My notes have become rather illegible and a little bit sticky by this point, but I think it may well have been accompanied by a cocktail, name unrecorded, composed of Chartreuse, Cointreau, gin and lemon juice.

Next, a playful take on egg on fried bread: a tiny piece of French toast, with a round white slice of Jerusalem artichoke topped with a little yellow dollop of lemon curd,  served with raspberry ketchup. This course is presented without cutlery, and we all end up licking raspberry ketchup off our fingers.

Just as I’m thinking that this was a delightful finale to the meal, the insanely delicious Beurre Noisette Ice Cream on a bed of yogurt cake scattered with shards of cinder toffee arrives, followed shortly afterwards by the final round of cocktails: espresso martinis made of God-knows-what, drunk with a straw poked through a hole in the layer of cling-film covering the glasses to trap in a layer of smoke.

I think.

One of the lesser-tattooed wait-persons has assured us, earlier in the evening, that the strength of the cocktails accompanying the meal is only half that of those on the bar menu; it is, nevertheless, a sign of the stamina of the Fo women and their consorts that as this extraordinary meal draws to a close we are all still sitting more or less upright in our seats and capable of conversation, of a sort.

It’s a very good thing that none of us is driving home, though.

The taxi takes us home safely though the snowy lanes of north Yorkshire, and Hank’s excited barking greets us as we slither and slide over the frozen snowy gravel towards the back door. On entering the kitchen we find Hank in his customary place on his special fake-fur blanket next to the Aga.

As I walk towards him Hank gets up, tail wagging, with some kind of large purple rag clenched between his huge, slavering jaws. 

Seconds later I recognise the shredded purple rag as what used to be my cardigan, left carelessly slung over one of the kitchen chairs when we went out earlier; as this realisation dawns I hear, as from a great distance,  the sound of my friend Danielle (aka @Pochyemu), whose American passport was eaten by my dog Freddie in Ayvalik three years ago, laughing and laughing and laughing…