Not Fry's Turkish Delight
With Christmas looming, I have been exchanging mincemeat recipes with various girlie friends across the globe (New Mexico, New Caledonia, New Malden) in the course of which the S-word cropped up. SUET. Most recipes - including that Delia woman - insist that suet is a suitable ingredient to include in what is basically a spiced fruit filling. SUET. Animal fat. WTF? - as David Cameron would say.
A couple of years ago a heavy snowfall prevented me from getting out to the British shop which is out in the sticks and only accessible with a car, so I was forced to doe-het-zelf, as our Flemish friends would put it. I rummaged in the cupboard and threw together various types of dried fruit (currants, raisins, sultanas, figs, dates, prunes) and some candied peel, muscovado sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, soaked it in whatever booze Gorbals had not found in my secret hiding place*, covered it and left it in another secret hiding place. Come Christmas the raisins had swollen up, and the alcohol and the sugar had congealed into a dark, sticky, aromatic syrup. I used it in my mince pies and it was gorgeous. I had enough left over to fill a couple of big pickle jars, and shoved them in the back of the cupboard. Last Christmas I dug them out and found they were even better than the previous year. Proving that suet is quite unnecessary and probably just a leftover from the days when "mincemeat" actually contained meat.
The word "suet" acted like one of Proust's Madeleines, and took me rippling backwards in a sort of Dr Who dream sequence to 1983, when I visited North Africa. Not a lot of people know this, but when I was a dancer at the Folies Bergere in Paris, before I met Harold, one of my stage-door Johnnies was a Berber prince from the Atlas mountains. He was dashing, exotic and madly in love with me. He wanted to marry me and take me to live with him in the highlands of the Maghreb.
"But Hamidouche, my noble son of the desert," I protested, "What would my life be out there? I can't really do my speciality act in a Moslem country, now can I?"
"Daphne, my little rosewater loukoum," he smouldered, "You would live in the lap of luxury in my village, and all the people would come from miles around to look at you and touch your golden locks and marvel at your white skin." On seeing the stony expression on my marble-white face, he added "And you could do your speciality act just for me."
It sounded a bit like the Fry's Turkish Delight advert, to be honest, but I agreed to go and see for myself.
Well it was an adventure, I'll say that. After a stopover in Marbella to get my nails done, I took an Algerian tugboat across the Med to Oran, where Hamidouche was waiting impatiently with the Golf.
"Where is the white camel with gold trappings you promised me?" I cried indignantly.
"It's got a cold. Just get in, will you? It's an 8-hour drive."
This lad was but a baby at the time, but the Prince was from the same gene pool
We drove over the Atlas mountains, through melon fields and villages where the women were swathed in sheets. The heat was stifling, it must have been around 40 degrees C.
We eventually arrived at his village and pulled up at a modest little house.
"I thought you were a prince in your own country?" I exploded.
"Er, well, you know, we lost all our lands in the revolution," he mumbled. He pushed me through the archway into the courtyard of the tiny house, and sat me on a rickety bench. There didn't seem to be much room inside, as his father was asleep on a mattress in the courtyard.
"Afternoon nap," whispered Hamidouche. "Here's me mum."
A small, wizened woman approached, wearing a brightly patterned floral dress, a mismatched cardigan and an even more mismatched scarf around her hair. I clutched my Little White Handbag tightly and tried not to stare at the tattoos on her face.
"How do you do, Mrs ... er .. "
"Don't bother, she doesn't understand English. Or French." said my swain, in a matter of fact tone. "Or even Arabic. She only understands the local dialect."
"I thought you said she'd lived in Paris for 20 years?" I hissed.
"Yeah, she did." he replied, chewing on a date.
I felt slightly faint, and sat down on the bench. As I looked upwards, I saw a washing line over my head, on which was pegged what looked like a massive lump of fat.
"What's that?" I nearly shrieked.
"Suet," he replied. "They just killed the sheep, for the Eid. They cut out the fat and dry it on the line, then use it for cooking."
My head started to swim. I clutched my Little White Handbag even tighter and tried to stay upright. I was feeling more like Zaza in La Cage aux Folles 2 than the Fry's Turkish Delight girl. All that was going through my head was my mother's voice, sternly admonishing me. "Daphne Boadicea Harridan," (my maiden name) "You were born on Hyde Park Corner, in what is now the most expensive hotel in London. You were brought up in a nice middle class home in Surbiton, and you currently live in Paris. Right now, you are sitting in an Algerian hovel in 40 degrees of heat with a lump of sheep fat hanging over your head. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE ?????"
The next thing I knew, I was lying under a fig tree and Hamidouche's mum was muttering incantations and waving a smouldering branch back and forth under my nose. His dad was still asleep. Hamidouche was looking a bit, well, sheepish.
"Um. Shall I tell her we'll be staying at the hotel in town, then?" he ventured with a weak smile.
Needless to say, his backstage pass was cancelled as soon as we got back to Paris.
* If you're reading this, Gorbals, I have moved the secret hiding place.
