Beer and Chips

I woke B up last night from laughing out too loud in my sleep. Apparently my slumbering brain had invented the most brilliant word ever. It was ingenious, and the more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed, which got transposed into a sound that jumped the gap between sleep and consciousness. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the word means, and the reason behind its being. Such is the tyranny of dreams. I do however recall being half asleep and very irritated that he didn’t think it was a very good word at all. Doesn’t it sound exactly like.. ?

We finally cracked open the Deus last night. Beautiful beer, with a nice fine fizz and honeyed tone, but probably not worth the asking price. Still, it’s all about experiencing new things, right?

Something else I experienced a good few weeks ago, inspired the above dessert : a dinner at Rockpool(fish) which was capped off by a refreshing, mildly bitter Trumer Pilsner granita with salty peanut ice-cream. The dish came with a few tuilles on the side; the whole effect of which reminded me of the experience of having a beer with salted peanuts and chips. Simple, yet clever enough to keep you interested with each bite.

My version involves a similar granita with vanilla ice-cream and salty peanut nougatine baked to look like potato crisps. While it was good, it could never replicate the feeling of delight I got from tasting the original.

As for that word? Yes B, it sounds like I took the word spleen and changed one letter, but unlike my dessert, spleem is a highly original word in my opinion – a definite improvement on it’s predecessor. A word with an infinity of uses. As in, that was a spleemingly good dessert.

The Dictionary people will be knocking at my door any day now.

6 Comments »

  1. Lorraine E said,

    May 14, 2008 @ 8:15 pm

    Wow, that ice cream looks great. How do you find photographing icecream? I have such difficulty doing it as it melts and I want it to either by shiny or frosty

  2. Y said,

    May 14, 2008 @ 9:00 pm

    Well I was lucky with this one, because it was sitting on a bed of cold granita, so it wasn’t about to go anywhere fast. I haven’t taken many pictures of ice-cream, so can’t say I’ve encountered any difficulties yet 🙂

  3. Aran said,

    May 15, 2008 @ 3:28 am

    Genius!!!

  4. Christie @ fig&cherry said,

    May 15, 2008 @ 4:17 pm

    Clever headline! And I love the salty peanut crisps – yum!

  5. Helen said,

    May 16, 2008 @ 10:06 pm

    Love the recipe and I really enjoy reading your posts too. I am a regular ‘sleep- laugher’ , it drives my partner crazy! (apparently, I don’t care, I’m asleep). I also often wake up with a word in my head which is quite spooky actually. Maybe this is a common problem?!

  6. Kristen said,

    June 29, 2008 @ 1:11 am

    This looks fantastic. I wake up screaming… I bet my husband would much prefer laughter!

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