Town & Country Notebook
Quiz of the week
1) In which century was Charles Dickens born? 2) A clouded agaric is a form of what organism? 3) How many legs appear on the flag of the Isle of Man? 4) In music, what does the term Con sordino mean? 5) By what name is the lima bean more commonly known in the UK?
Riddle me this
I contain multiple diamonds, but have minimal worth. What am I?
100 years ago in April 12, 1924
IN the days before refrigeration, live fish were often transported in water barrels— thus the expression ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ for a sure thing. This antique, home-coopered, brass-banded creel with its handy cork stoppers is of Alpine origin and, although I have seen illustrations of smaller versions for live-gathering medicinal leeches, this one was designed specifically for wild trout, taken from streams for the preparation of that now rare dish truite au bleu (or Forelle blau).
Recipes are ancient and various. Most require a briny vegetable court-bouillon, often with shallots, herbs and wine vinegar; the last is crucial, because the trout’s mucilaginous skin reacts with the acid and turns a distinctive
blue. For this reason, the fish must be cooked uncleaned— traditionally, it was poached alive.
Papa Hemingway relished this delicacy in Chamby, Switzerland, in 1923: ‘You will hear a pop,’ he wrote, as the Sion wine was uncorked. In 1936, M. F. K. Fisher admired the dish, as did the swashbuckling journalist Negley Farson in the Haute-Savoie before the Second World War. It features as a motif in Bruce Chatwin’s outré novella Utz, wherein a Prague waiter at the restaurant Pstruh serves the trout exclusively to party apparatchiks. Pop! Follow David on Instagram @david_profumo
Time to buy
Edinburgh Yellow Waterproof Hooded Raincoat with Cape, £149, Joules (0333 777 4560; www.joules.com)
K ITTY PURR’, as my small son has named his cat, may be no Persian aristocrat, but he is remarkable in other ways. He was a small stray on the beach at Bournemouth, which followed a man into the sea. Apparently he made up his mind to be adopted by that man, although all he could see was a head b
