The sometimes rough and the always smooth
Social media and a recipe for chicken liver parfait.
There have been a lot of changes with how we use social media recently and imo with X or Twitter as literally everyone still calls it the changes have not been embraced with great joy.
It seems quite strange to me that less than 15 years ago a friend suggested I join an online chat portal whose emblem was a bird and where you could “meet up” with people and find friends. I can’t have been alone in stepping tentatively into this new world but soon I was as hooked as anyone else .
The joy of connecting with old friends, people you’d worked with, colleagues in an open, bright forum about as far away from Facebook as I could image, was epic.
I soon started each day chatting to my bubble, looking at my follower numbers searching for people who liked what I liked : food , wine, cocktails, literature , medicine, small p politics and people. I was enthralled by this new way of comunicating. There was something for everyone, sometimes “conversations” lasted all day.
If I was trying to avoid a deadline I would write a tweet saying that jelly in trifle was an abomination and should be banned. Then I’d sit back and watch the debate start, with friends and followers joining in as they woke around the world.
Dickens, Georgette Heyer two of my favourite authors would also start a lively debate from the lovers and the haters. But hate, in the way things went on to develop became as more extreme, language harsher, with more marginal opinions so less delicacy became the norm. Folk were bullied, many took offence, pile-ons occurred where friends and followers of the offendee vilified the often unwitting offender. It started to get a bit less Barbie and a bit more Oppenheimer.
I’ve my run-ins. Once, lacking basic good manners and tack I suggested a dish of food was, to me, abhorrent. The pile on was huge and I was called many different names. It passed and I learned an important lesson : one persons jelly fish is another’s Foie Gras, be respectful of different cultures. And yes I do know enough not to mention Foie Gras on Twitter.
The most easily wound up group on Twitter is the pro cycling lobby. They leap in at every opportunity with their green credentials fitting as snugly as their lycra shorts. When I dared to suggest that some of us need to use cars and the LTN’s might have a down side I was called many, many things, the nicest of which was “entitled bi**h”
When I mentioned that I had a broken back, that like me some people even if willing couldn’t cycle to the shops I was told more than once I’d not bothered to find the right bike. There is no arguing with zealots.
By then I’d found you could message your friends on Instagram. It started with me sharing someone’s post, with a friend, her replying and then us keeping up the conversation . A conversation that had nothing to do with my original message .
Instagram is a place both delightful and fraught. I love the idea of posting pictures of places and things I’ve seen and liked , meals I’ve eaten, places I’ve visited.
It can be a way to tell people about a small restaurant, that book shop you found and loved is just around this corner , or that you are finally wearing the most comfortable pair of shoes.
We can review a meal eaten with our dodgy, badly lit pics, giving a sometimes more honest appraisal than Tripadvisor.
I love to scroll through holiday photos, pictures of meals eaten, picnics in bucolic settings, sunsets, even brief cooking videos but if I’m honest I find Instagram the most challenging platform for, as a reader , it is sometimes hard to realise that pictures can be manipulated. That they are a moment in time . That the picture of perfect lunch, the perfect dress, the perfect boyfriend with you on the perfect holiday only tells what the poster wants you to see.
They can be a form of personal advertising. Often posted in enhanced colours, with gauzy filters
Even the very honest ones can be hard to look at. Seeing pictures of sun kissed swims when you’re faced with nothing but dull week’s work ahead, bills to pay and no prospect of a holiday can make the most mentally robust of us quite gloomy.
Pity the poor girls who look for unattainable levels of thinness, who yearn for lives that are portrayed in these pictures and do not see it is artificial
Oh and I did so prefer Insta when is was a photo and a comment, not a five page novelAdd in WhatsApp and Microsoft messenger and it’s not unusual to find me talking to the same person, at the same time, over more than one platform. I would send an article I was reading, a Matt cartoon on one platform, while fixing a lunch date with the same person somewhere else entirely. This as I’m sure you can imagine has often led to some confusion.
I then entered , later than many, into the delicious sustaining world of Whatsapp Groups. Oh the joy of a good Whatsapp group. Many people have several , there are even side groups of larger groups allowing you to “ chat within a chat”.
I have a foodie friend’s group, a nurses lunch group, we ran my mother’s care towards the end of her life with a family group, since disbanded through touch of understandable acrimony, a book group, a party planing group, a Christmas group, so many groups and each perfectly honed , fit for purpose. But danger lurks here too as you can quite easily mistake which group chat you are in especially if you are having several conversations at once!
Threads is the new kid on the block, stumbling along a little like a toddler finding its feet. It is, so far it’s a quieter place to sit but also it feels a little random and empty of the voices I like. Since X took away my converted tick, white on a blue background, I’ve been sulking. I loved that tick and that may account for my disenchantment but it seems to me that X has fundamentally changed, endlessly suggesting things to me in notifications, a previously dedicated space for messages.
So my experience with social media has been about 90% positive, my rules are not to engage with people who seem to have fixed view and who like to call out my failings. I believe biological sex is real and immutable , so avoid getting into heated discussions with those who take a more flexible view. I simple pass, resorting to blocking only when I can ignore them no longer. Though I always immediately block the strange US army captains that seem drawn to my profile and want to say “Hi” with strangely intimate pictures!
For me social media is a positive , allowing me to “say” happy birthday to a friend , wish her or him well privately, chat about the issues of the day publicly plus get views from outside my bubble and most importantly I stay connected.
As Bob Hoskins said “It’s good to talk”. Tell me how it is for you.
Chicken Liver Parfait
And now for the smooth, this parfait is a favourite with my family, it is lush and delicious , rich as Croesus and the perfect alternative to the aforementioned foie gras which is no longer an ethical option.
450gmchicken or duck livers, trimmed
8 egg yolks
1 tsp Maldon sea salt
2 tbsp port
2 tbsp brandy
300ml double cream
freshly ground black pepper
1 crushed garlic clove
1 tbsp chopped tarragon or chervil
400 gm melted butter
Put all of the ingredients, except the melted butter into the bowl of a food processor and process them together until smooth.
With the motor running slowly pour in the cooled, melted butter.
Now strain the mixture through a sieve . I do this into a large jug then divide the mixture between two medium or four smaller china dishes. For bigger occasions you can, of course, make one large parfait.
Put the dish or dishes into a baking tin, pour in 1” boiling water and place in a cool oven cooking at 150C/300F/gas 2 for about an hour (large), 35 mins (medium) 25 mins (small)
The parfait is ready when the middle is slightly firm but still pink and slightly pale brown.
Chill overnight then melt about another 150gm butter and pour over the surface of each dish, you can at this stage add a bay leaf for prettiness!
Have to say I’ve loved Twitter over the years - it’s introduced me to so many lovely people. And guilty as charged for messaging friends on several platforms simultaneously - no idea sometimes where I’ve had a particular conversation!
Those ex-military single fathers do put it about a bit on instagram, don't they?