The Devil's Larder

49

‘THE FINEST FOOD, like the best of marriages, is bound to break the rules,’ according to Eugene Naval. ‘It seeks to reconcile opposing tastes and textures, sweet with sour, hot with cold, sharp with bland, the fluid and the firm, the solemn and the comic, and it depends as much on luck as diligence.’

So the tiny Syrian who, when we were kids, used to run the fried-food stall down by the harbour esplanade was working in the best traditions of his craft when — by way of cleaning up and as a joke aimed only at himself — he made a meal of his remaining scraps one afternoon, combining the last fish on his tray and a sorry piece of lamb’s liver with the one surviving wheel of pineapple. He frittered the lot in sesame oil, wrapped it in a leftover sour pancake, added a dash of unsold onion relish and a dramatic shake of Boulevard Cream Liqueur from his near-empty bottles, and garnished everything with hyssop leaves.

He would have tested it himself, then tossed it to the gulls, had not the seminary tutor come cycling by and, tempted by the new and usual smells, stopped off for an unscheduled snack.

‘I’m closing up. There’s nothing left,’ the Syrian explained, but the tutor could see for himself that this was not entirely true. He bought the pancake full of scraps — a melange which as yet had not been named — described its smell as ‘heavenly’, donated a copy of the most recent Seminarian, of which he was the proud editor, and rode off on his bike.

Depending on your viewpoint, the tutor tumbled off his bike that afternoon, fifty metres from the Syrian, either because the pioneering snack was so fabulously delicious, or because it was too shockingly extravagant for one who earned a living advocating moderation and austerity. It’s possible, of course, that he simply lost balance, fell and stunned himself. It couldn’t have been easy for a man of his age and weight, and with so many people strolling on the esplanade, to grip the handlebars and eat his pancake at the same time.

What is certain is that the Syrian, delighted at the impact he had made on someone of another faith and size, incorporated this new pancake meal of liver, fish and pineapple into his regular menu. The passengers from visiting liners took word of it back to their chefs at home, and it appeared in restaurants and cookery books from that time on.

So even though the Syrian never became rich or famous, he made a lasting contribution to international cuisine. But only he — and those of us out walking near the harbour on that afternoon in 1969 — can say with any certainty why this distinguished snack is known throughout the world as ‘tutor on two wheels’ and, incidentally, why the proud seminarian himself was from that day onwards feted as ‘the Pancake’.