Yours sartorially

I love cookbooks. I collect them, I read them like novels.

I can’t get enough of the recent phenomena of combining recipes with arty travel photos and stories that the chef has collected along the way. Recently, I picked up a huge coffee table book for a song at a book sale; “New Zealand, Food, Wine and Art”. It takes each region of the country and puts together a nice pastiche of the culinary and artistic flavours of the region, with a great recipe or two by the local notable restaurateurs.

A photo of one of the delicately assembled meat dishes suddenly had me in stitches laughing. For ages I have been trying to think what the little “final flourish” on top of the meat / vegetable / potato stack reminds me of. You know the thing I mean. It is usually tiny curly strips of cucumber or carrot or beetroot, and resembles a pile of wool all scrunched up.

Or, the Queen Mother’s hat.

That’s it. The green and delicate “joosh” toppings which balance precariously on those five star creations remind me of the outrageous hats the darling Queen Mum would wear to Ascot or her daughter’s garden party. There were ornamental cabbages, Waldorf salads, fruit compotes and spun sugar confections. All perched on 4’11” of majesty.

So that’s it, I’ve been eating the Queen Mother’s hat.