Les rosbifs : English Exotics

"When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food, It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood, Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the Roast Beef of old England and old English Roast Beef! "

"But since we have learnt from all-vapouring France to eat their ragouts as well as to dance,We're fed up with nothing but vain complaisance.  Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England, and old English Roast Beef!"

Springtime brings blossom and gambolling lambs. So what does one do? Eat the lambs. For anthropological research I ventured to a typical English Pub in the Oxfordshire countryside. Pretty garden, a horse tethered at the gate, two friendly black labradors at the back, who could smell the roast beef, lamb and chicken emanating from the kitchen.

The Unicorn is Victorian, a quarter mile from Anthony Worrall Thompson's Greyhound but the food is often just as good and the atmosphere more informal. So for the first time in decades, I ate an English Sunday Roast. It was infinitely better than the one in the photo, which was taken in 2005 elsewhere. The Unicorn's Yorkshire pudding almost covers the whole plate and is delicious - a meal in itself. I could get used to that. The Unicorn's vegetables are better too - fine beans, broccoli properly cooked al dente, not boiled to mush, and crisp, sweet carrots. My friend's dish was so good, he ate every atom. He's English, it's his native duty!

I haven't eaten English (or Welsh) lamb since around 1983 when I discovered, by sheer chance, the Walnut Tree in Abergavenny before it became a foodie magnet. Persian roasts, Lebanese dishes, kebabs, Mongol lamb stew but no Sunday Roast Lamb that I can remember. The Unicorn's special Sunday lunches are famous bercause they're so good and so generous. Home made mint sauce, too. But maybe English fare is too exotic for me. Still, the starter was excellent too - new asparagus from Worcester with ham hock, rocket and baby beans. And rosewater and raspberry cheesecake! Maybe I'm European at heart.

Tenerife Canary Islands Music Festival

Santa Cruz hosts Staatskapelle Dresden, the Goteburg Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic? Dudamel, Jurowski, Quasthoff, Mehta and the very hip Carolin Widmann? Not Santa Cruz in California but Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands in the wild Atlantic.

The Festival de Música de Canarias is now in its 26th year. While the rest of Europe struggles through winter, in the Canaries, the sunshine's glorious and you can possibly go to the beach before going to a concert. In past years, the Festival's attracted many huge names, like the Berliner Philharmoniker, Abbado, Barenboim, Haitink. The Festival was founded back in the 1980's to bring good music to the people of the islands, but naturally it has attracted tourists from elsewhere - a much better type of tourist than the ones who get so blind drunk they might as well have stayed at home. It's good for visiting musicians, because the atmosphere is relaxed and free, and it's good for local musicians too because they get to play and listen at a higher level than small town orchestras in most other places.

Intrepid Traveller De chez toi, fresh from his visit to Romania for the Enescu Festival, was in Tenerife these last few weeks. Read his reports HERE with photos. He's s an especially good observer, since he lives in Mauritius, where the scenery is even more verdant, and he understands the economic ramifications.

Ma négresse

A great Cajun classic by one of the great figures in Cajun music, Nathan Abshire (1913-1981). I had this LP long ago, when I haunted Arhoolie in Berkeley. Is it still there? Just seeing the cover brings happy memories. Cajun music runs in families - there were generations of Abshires, Fontenots, LeJeunes and probably still are today. It figures, this is homegrown music, not particularly commercial. Once I met an oil executive on business and would you believe, he was related and knew most of them well. Amazing karma, as this happened in a bar in a small town in Australia, thousands of miles from anywhere and we're talking things no one else knows. It was 30 years ago. Who was more shocked, him or me? Incidentally, country and western music is huge in Australia among Aboriginals in the interior.

An excellent blog I follow is about Mauritius (but also lots on music and Romania and the Bucharest Festival) a place after my heart where many cultures and genres mix.

Enescu - how the arts can save the economy

When times get tough most countries slash public spending, without realizing that spending generates income. So much respect is due for Romania, which is suffering economic meltdown like everyone else, but supporting an ambitious arts programme. Read about Festival Enescu in Romania in this article by Ivan Hewett HERE.

It's an extremely ambitious festival, bringing in many mega names like the Royal Concertgebouw and Lief Ove Andsnes. Certainly an international festival, not just local interest. It's a daring venture for a small country, but if it succeeds it could make Bucharest the Salzburg of the south east. As it's been running several years now it's good to see it getting the publicity it deserves.

From all accounts, Bucharest is a remarkable place, still relatively untouched by bland modernism. Apparently it's also cheaper than most European cities. Several of my friend are there at the moment, one of them a regular. The Romanians are wise - festivals like this bring valuable income, and the kind of tourists who come don't get drunk and mess up - in fact they come back for more, which further increases interest in Romania's cultural stock. Were other countries that imaginative.

But the big draw is George Enescu. The photo shows the Enescu Museum in downtown Bucharest, a magnificently ornamental building, which houses the Enescu archives, returned to Romania after the change in regime. Enescu's music forms the core of the Festival, especially his opera Oedipe. Read more about it HERE The writer, Evan Dickerson, is an Enescu specialist, who's writing a book on the composer and the opera. There's also an older book on Enescu by Noel Malcolm, see HERE. It's not very big so one day perhaps there'll be more. Enescu was an interesting man and his music is lovely too, and quite accessible. Please also see my other post about Enescu and Bucharest HERE, with good new links to blogs !

photo credit

Fabulous Ile de Maurice

Mauritius is my kind of place. Lots of plants and animals there which don't exist anywhere else in the world. Even better it's an island where people of many different backgrounds and cultures mix, Indians, Africans, Chinese, Malays, French and multiple hybrids. I could care less about the sterilized tourist Mauritius, where hotels cost more than the average wage of the workers. Instead, it's the image of hybrid profusion I love about the place, and the quirky ambience. The music is pretty wonderful, too, hybrid and vibrant. So I read a blog dedicated to the real charm of Mauritius as it is lived by the locals. Click on this link

Le Port-Port Louis de chez toi
"La capitale de Maurice grouille aux heures de bureau... puis se vide en un quart de tour, tel un coeur artificiel qu'on débranche. Théâtre frénétique des ambitions d'hier et d'aujourd'hui, joyeux bazar où s'affirme toute l'île, Port-Louis, au bout du jour, laisse entrevoir sa tristesse. Qui gagne le front de mer et les beaux restes de la ville d'antan. Mais son charme se perpétue dans le calme d'une cour intérieure et dans la mémoire de ses habitants."