Where’s the Jeopardy, Chef?

Pan de Muerto photo by Leslie Torres on Pexels.com

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From Cantaloupe Island to Pan de Muerto, by way of Pollo Adobado and a Manchego and Chipotle Sandwich

by Phil Hall

My brother Andy and I once made a pitch for a TV programme to some young Channel 4 producers. We arranged a meeting with them in a buzzing, fashionable pub. The producers were very busy and so we only had 30 minutes to pitch, but they were full of energy and focus and observant, and they were interested enough in our proposal to meet us and listen to what we had to say.

Yes, my idea was a little cruel. A member of our extended family on the Mexican side is not supposed to be a very good bullfighter; in fact, once he even failed to kill a bull—the worst sin a bullfighter can commit.

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The Channel 4 programme would have been called The Worst Bullfighter in Mexico. The bullfighter was getting on a little, and soft around the tummy. This would have given a mocking edge to the documentary. We would follow him around for his last season, watching to see if he could rescue a few shreds of dignity from a life of failure. We would question the idea of failure itself; apparently, the reluctant bullfighter had wanted to become an accountant, but his father was a taurino in love with tauromagia.

The producers weren’t convinced.

They looked at us and asked:
“Has he actually killed a bull?”
“Yes,” I said, “many.”
“Well then, where’s the jeopardy? Where’s the jeopardy?”

Evidently, this was their mantra, and if you click from programme to programme, you will see that this has been the mantra for documentaries and reality TV for at least three decades now. Life stories can only be told in cliffhangers.

Over the years the Jeopardy formula has become rather boring and that is because it always follows the same pattern. In Hollywood, the famous screenwriter, Syd Field, wrote a book on how to construct a plot: the plot must move from small disappointments and small climaxes to huge disappointments and huge climaxes. It is a rollercoaster recipe that must always thrill and grip. Where’s the jeopardy? Will the bullfighter kill his first bull?

Why, there’s the jeopardy, folks, right where you expected it to be. Every programme is an eight-pound funfair ride.

I used to read Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Dolittle books when I was a boy. Dr. Dolittle, was also a bullfighter. He conspires with the bull beforehand and arranges a spectacular bullfight which wows the audience in the arena.

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Dr. Dolittle had the best way to travel. Hugh Lofting describes the great man’s method here:

“Where shall we go?”
There were so many places that I wanted to go that I couldn’t make up my mind right away. And while I was still thinking, the Doctor sat up in his chair and said,
“I tell you what we’ll do, Stubbins: it’s a game I used to play when I was young—before Sarah came to live with me. I used to call it Blind Travel. Whenever I wanted to go on a voyage and couldn’t make up my mind where to go, I would take the atlas, open it with my eyes shut, wave a pencil (still without looking), and stick it down on whatever page had fallen open. Then I’d open my eyes and look. It’s a very exciting game, is Blind Travel, because you have to swear, before you begin, that you will go to the place the pencil touches, come what may. Shall we play it?”
“Oh, let’s!” I almost yelled. “How thrilling! I hope it’s China—or Borneo—or Baghdad.”
And in a moment, I had scrambled up the bookcase, dragged the big atlas from the top shelf, and laid it on the table before the Doctor (…).
“Well now, are we ready?”
“Good! Take the pencil and stand here close to the table. When the book falls open, wave the pencil round three times and jab it down. Ready?”
“All right. Shut your eyes.”
It was a tense and fearful moment—but very thrilling.
We both had our eyes shut tight. I heard the atlas fall open with a bang. I wondered what page it was: England or Asia. If it should be the map of Asia, so much would depend on where that pencil would land. I waved three times in a circle. I began to lower my hand. The pencil-point touched the page.
“All right,” I called out, “it’s done.”

Several times I have made decisions about where to go using the Doctor’s method of Blind Travel and have put my fate in mild jeopardy: a dark room, a pin, and a map. Twice I went to live in these places, but they were both a little disappointing. Once, the pin fell on a place called Cheam. So I went to live in Cheam, next to a large park—Nonsuch Park, where Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth I, had one of her palaces. There is no such palace any more. What is this if it isn’t nominative determinism at work?

On another occasion, the pin stuck into a place on the map called Pinhoe, near Exeter.
“Pin ho!“ indeed! Despite this sarcasm of fate, I went anyway – to live in Pinhoe. And it’s not even by the sea.

It’s 1984–85, and I decide to study Spanish in Mexico, not Spain. I want to feel the full power of magical displacement and put myself in a trance which lasts the whole journey, vowing to regain awareness again only when I am fully immersed in lo Mexicano. Doctor Doolittle’s Blind Travel method again!

I catch one flight to Mexico City, then another to Veracruz, then board a bus to Xalapa. I had a Walkman and, for the whole journey from Heathrow listen to a compilation jazz tape made by the New Musical Express mixed by the expert, Roy Carr. There are 16 songs that play over and over again including that hypnotically repetitive song Cantaloupe Island by Herbie Hancock, and Moanin‘ by Art Blakey. The songs end up controlling the way I move as I travel, walking down long airport corridors, jerking slightly at boarding gates, tapping my knees on planes.

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I arrive by taxi at my small hotel near the cathedral. Finally, I am in Mexico. It is as if I have jumped 30 metres into a deep cenote. Who knows what’s at the bottom and where I am going to land. I walk out into the plaza. I open my eyes.

The first thing to do is eat, so I buy Pollo Adobado. The chicken is smeared in red ochre paste which is so bitter to me that I cannot finish it.

Five years later, I am back in Mexico and have started dating a Mexican woman – a colleague. My friend swishes up in her green Renault 12 and hands me a sandwich. It’s a sandwich made from soft Manchego with chipotle chilies. I can’t believe how strong it tastes—how different, how astonishing. “They do go well together, don’t they“ she says “Manchego and chipotle,”.

That evening, after we’ve been out, we stop for Tacos al Pastor near Reforma—in Sullivan, I think. We watch them shave meat off a skewer; the redness of the meat is from achiote. We start with five little double tacos each on a plastic plate, topped with meat and pineapple. Add lime juice, chopped onions, coriander, and green or red chili sauce.

They are too delicious. Five each turn into ten, then fifteen. One Coke. Two Cokes. Mexicans drink more coke than the people of any other country in the world. Vicente Fox, before he became President of Mexico in 2000, was president of Coca Cola Mexico.

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Many years later, in a moment of idleness, I write a letter to the programme MasterChef, and the producer replies the next day. They’ve nearly whittled participants down to the final 20 but ask me to an interview.

I am busy and know I’ll be in South Africa visiting family during filming. Am I willing to sacrifice that holiday, I ask myself? Do I want fame and attention (assuming I get it)? No, I don’t! Will I make the time to cook properly? Possibly not. Should I go?

My wife tells me, “You won’t have to join the competition. It’ll just be for fun.”
I decide to go if I am invited. For the experience.

“Can you make bread?” asks the woman over the phone.
“Yes,” I say.
“Can you make Hollandaise?”
“I can make a good Béarnaise.”
“OK. We’ll see you Saturday. Bring two dishes.”

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I think: Which two dishes? I decide: Pan de Muerto and vanilla-flavoured Rompope.

If they want bread, I’ll give them twice-risen Pan de Muerto with anise, butter, and orange blossom water. If they want something to ease it down, I’ll offer a chilled Mexican-style eggnog—the kind sold at the roadside on the way to Toluca or Zamora, the kind of strong rompope with rum that housewives make. Not the commercial stuff.

I remember Pan de Muerto from Xalapa, when I studied at the University of Veracruz. A cold November morning in town. Xalapa overlooks two volcanoes: the Pico de Orizaba is a distant Kilimanjaro, and the Cofre de Perote is small, broken and close.

It’s the day before my birthday—the Day of the Dead. In the university cafeteria, they sell lumpy, sugar-sprinkled cake-buns and cups of hot chocolate or pineapple-vanilla atole from two slightly dented aluminium pots.

My classmates laugh. “This is Pan de Muerto,” they say, pointing out its corpse-like shapes on top of the round loaf.
“Is it?” I look. Damn! It tastes better than panettone: buttery, fragrant, yeasty. The gloopy atole warms me on the autumn morning.

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I make the Pan de Muerto carefully for MasterChef, letting it rise three times, not twice. Then I make the Rompope. Both taste as they should, and I’m sure it’s good because my Mexican family devours the batch. My wife tells her mother, “Yes, he really made Pan de Muerto, and it tasted just right.”

I make another batch, the crust darker this time to add flavour, ready for tomorrow.

They ask me to come at breakfast. I rationalise: Pan de Muerto and Rompope will do. They are something you can enjoy eating in the morning. London is deserted; it’s early. I arrive and am led into a room. A tall young woman with glasses films me, smiling. A more serious, slightly older woman interviews me.

She seems uninterested in the food, or its meaning. I pull out green rimmed tequila shot glasses, pour cold yellow Rompope into them, then place the Pan de Muerto on a beautifully decorated and glazed clay plate. They both try a piece of the Pan de Muerto and sip the drink. The interviewer says, “Hmm, cake. Nice,” but doesn’t take another bite.

She asks, “Why do you want to be on MasterChef?”
“It would be nice,” I say, smiling, relaxed—too relaxed.

I hear her silent thought: Where’s the jeopardy? I search my mind but find none.
“It would be lovely,” I say.
“And…?”
“Well, I’ve always loved Mexican food and want to start a restaurant.”
“I see. What would you do if you won?”
“I’d be pleased, and…”
“And…?”
“Perhaps open a restaurant.”
“You’d be the cook?”
“Not really. My wife would lead. I’d help.”
“Do you cook Sunday lunch?”
“I help my wife.”
“Why not ask her to join?”
I recall my partner’s comments. “No, she wouldn’t like that.”

They go outside and look at the recordings, then come back in.

“Well, thank you,” the interviewer says. “You reached the final elimination stage—very few do.”
I leave, stepping into a cold, bright, empty street. The shop shutters are just opening.

I walk into a smart Italian restaurant not far from the MasterChef studio and order Eggs Benedict to cheer myself up. They are excellent and the Hollandaise sauce is perfect. I tell the waiter the sad story of my visit to MasterChef.

Before I leave, the waiter asks, “Can I take take some to the cook.”

“Of course.”
As the waiter takes the Pan de Muerto away I call after him: “It’s like panettone, but with orange blossom water, more butter, and a little anise.”

The chef tries it. He likes it. The waiter smiles at me and says. “He wants the recipe.”
I jot it down, contented, then leave.

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