L is for Love
In all forms
At the risk of sounding like I’m taking myself a bit seriously, I’ve had a small influx of new subscribers over the past couple of weeks and therefore thought it apt to reintroduce myself and my Alphabet Soup project. I’m coming up to the three year anniversary of my newsletter and frankly, despite various ebbs and flows, I am proud that it is still going and that there are new people discovering this little outlet of mine.
Three years ago I was about to quit my 9-5 cushty job as an Editorial Assistant to go to culinary school and “retrain” at the green age of 24 to become a chef. Alphabet Soup was born out of my desire to hold onto a part of my editorial brain and combine my newfound culinary expertise with my love of writing to eventually (still working on it) become a food writer. Cut to Feb 2025, I am on the train on the way back to Paris from the French countryside where I am currently working in a small but mighty restaurant in the Perche, under the inspirational lead of Michelin starred chef Sven Chartier. My job as a chef, in the last few years, has introduced me to many of my now best friends, allowed me to travel and live in some mesmerising places, and develop a creativity and strength that I didn’t know I had in me.
The sun has been shining hard for the last few days and we had a magnificently busy weekend at work, the type of busy where a hectic choreography is required in the kitchen, an uncommunicated communication between the two and a half of us who make up the back of house. This type of work is so gratifying when it goes smoothly and no cock-ups are made and that might be part of the reason why I’m writing this cheesy letter - no Valentine this year but I fucking love my job so there’s that!
Anyway, I recently went back to the book that inspired the first year of Alphabet Soup, and that is An Alphabet for Gourmets by MFK Fisher. I often reach for this work when in need of motivation to write and with every re-read I find something novel and galvanising. A compilation of alphabetical essays full of shrewd observation regarding food, dining and everything that comes along with being a gourmet.
A few of my favourites:
S is for Sad
… and for the mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem about to break and our lives seem too bleakly empty. Like every other physical phenomenon, there is always a good reason for hunger if we are blunt enough to recognise it.
H is for Happy
When I was a child my Aunt Gwen (who was not an aunt at all but a large-boned and enormous-hearted woman who, thank God, lived next door to us) used to walk my little sister Anne and me up into the hills at sundown. She insisted on pockets. We had to have at least two apiece when we were with her. In one of them, on these twilight promenades, would be some cookies. In the other, oh, deep sensuous delight! would be a fried egg sandwich!
A recipe for Fried Egg Sandwiches follows including a list of spiritual ingredients made up of equal parts hunger and happiness
B is for Bachelors
Their approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of them under seventy-nine will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman. Few of them at any age will consciously ponder of the aphrodisiac qualities of the dishes they serve forth, but subconsciously they use what tricks they have to make their little banquets, whether intimate or merely convivial, lead as subtly as possible to the hoped-for bedding down.
W.H Auden stated ''I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose.'' Although I do not aspire to be the greatest writer in America (already geographically difficult), I aspire to continue to write with the hubris and greed of MFK Fisher as long as this newsletter shall continue.
Shopping list for you
Bawl your eyes out at Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Flowers for UK friends
Impatient waiting for the opening of Hattie’s caff
Happy Pear flu juice time again
Dolly making a great song even greater
T-chaz lip-syncing his way around the Dylan press tour
