The War to End All Dinners

Upon the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, we might expect a commemorative dinner hosted by Heston Blumenthal. Let’s only hope then that he doesn’t insist on doing his own research for the theme, else his cooking staff are in trouble. Here he is conceptualising:

‘I’m going to do a cut of beef – beef culottes (we’ve all heard of skirt steak, but Heston would have found a rarer cut, not quite skirt but culottes, named after the 1980s-favoured flappy shorts that looked like a skirt (the only instance of optically deluding garment)). Now I want the perfect marination with the ultimate enhancer of beef – mustard. But how best to infuse the meat? Aha! Well, I have help on hand. Here’s a letter dispatched by a Private Tommy Farrell of the Royal Fusiliers from the Western Front. In it, it says:

“To my dearest Elspeth,

Well my darling, I hope this finds you in good health…”;

Blah, blah, blah, until we reach what for me is the most interesting passage:

“… the warning went up, masks on. Poor old Sergeant Fellows couldn’t get his apparatus on in time. Bought it I’m afraid. Mustard gas…”

Mustard gas! That’s it! I submerge my culottes in a trench – much like the New Zealand Maoris do with their hangis, burying the meat underground – and waft over the mustard gas. In its gaseous form that mustard is going to penetrate the beef to the max…’ (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

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Lawrence of Arabia will go down in history as the shortest, most succinct postal address.

Back in the early 20^th century, from Damascus to Medina, the conversation between workers in sorting offices across the Arabian peninsula went something like…

‘I hate this job – the Bedouin always moving around. Don’t they ever leave a forwarding address? There’s no tent number on this envelope mate.’

‘Stick it in that bag, Abdul.’

‘Which one?’

The one marked ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)