Why not cook up a special IW dish?
THIS ISLAND LIFE
I WAS fascinated to see the chalkboard outside the Dairyman’s Daughter, at Arreton, last week advertising 'traditional IW chicken chasseur’.
Silly me. I’d always laboured under the illusion chicken chasseur was a dish which hailed from somewhere in France but I could, of course, be wrong.
Perhaps it was initially called a chicken-chaser and originated in Chale or Limerstone?
This exciting prospect also opens up the possibility of other previously unsuspected culinary delights which may have emanated from the Island.
'Traditional Wroxall bolognaise’ perhaps, or even 'traditional Gunville chow mein’?
It is a train of thought which had me heading up a particular siding. Why has a distinctive and wonderful place such as the IW not got a nationally known local dish?
Cornwall has its pasty, Cumber-land its sausage, Lancashire its hotpot, Melton Mowbray its pie and Yorkshire its pudding — but the closest we’ve got to a signature dish is a stick of Sandown rock.
This is a massive oversight and should be rectified at once. We are surrounded by the sea and there’s not much we don’t grow here, so it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of someone to come up with an original recipe.
It’s about time we produced a distinctive pie, cake, stew, soup or pudding with which the Island can be proudly identified. And I’m talking about proper grub here, not some poncey souffle consisting of crabs’ eyeballs and lemongrass.
After all, it’s not as if we haven’t got plenty of home-grown ingredients to choose from.
Local farms produce top-quality meat, fishermen turn up with fresh bounty every day, you can’t move for tomatoes in the Arreton Valley, the IW Cheese Company is scooping up prizes all over the place and the stink of garlic which drifts over Newchurch at certain times of the year is so overwhelming it would be healthier to stick your nose in a Frenchman’s armpit.
So the means are there — what we need now is the will.
The Island is blessed with some excellent cooks, so I’d like to challenge them to come up with an official IW dish.
It should even be possible to come up with an entirely original three-course meal.
If it’s judges you’re looking for, Malc Lawrence and I would be delighted to offer our services.
Nowhere touches the IW Hump
Cherry Rogers alert! Cherry Rogers alert! This little article is about cricket so look away now!
Dick Matthews (another old Sandonian) got in touch after my recent reference to the two Island lads — David Griffiths and Danny Briggs — who played for Hampshire this year.
He said the first (and for many years the only) Islander to represent the county was his uncle, William Ernest Newnham Scott, who was born in Binstead in 1903 and died in Newport in 1989.
Dick wrote: "I have the scorecard for his first match at Portsmouth. The ferry was full of supporters wanting to see 'their man’ play for the county."
Dick goes on to say he used to turn out for Ryde Casuals many years ago and played at Havenstreet’s old ground on more than one occasion.
He said: "Havenstreet was village cricket at its best; the walk to the church hall for tea, Granny Winter’s rock-cakes, the square-leg umpire’s eyes at the same level as the batsmen’s feet.
"I’ve played at some great places in Oxfordshire where I now live, including Blenheim Palace, but nowhere touches The Hump at Havenstreet!"
A man of rare discernment is our Dick.
How do you spell that? 133 different ways and counting
The problem with having a surname like mine is that it is frequently misspelled.
I’ve often considered having it changed by deed-poll to Newberry or Newbury, because everyone from the passport people to this newspaper continues to get it wrong and if you can’t beat them …
One woman at a call centre, to whom I had slowly spelled it out, actually asked: "Just one r? Are you sure?"
But my frustrations are as nothing compared to having a name like Mazillius and I was fascinated to be informed by Roger of that ilk that his father once appeared in the Guinness Book of Records because of it.
It happened in 1978, when his late father, Charles, contacted the McWhirters to find out if they had a category for the most misspelled surname.
"No," came the reply. "But anyway, how could you prove it?"
"No problem," replied Mr Mazillius sr, "because I happen to have 133 envelopes in my possession with the name spelled differently on each one."
Thus it was that in the Guinness book of that year (check if you don’t believe me) the name Mazillius was preserved for posterity.
But according to Roger, the record lasted only a year.
"Some Polish-American got in touch," he said, "and his name included so many zs, ms, ns, ys, vs and xs that it’s a wonder he knew how to spell it himself!"