Here at Lush Places, the bunting has come down. Actually, it never went up. But I did make a quiche to celebrate the coronation. That is also a lie. I made a quiche because we, unlike the odious British Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg, like a quiche. He said: “I don’t like quiche, it’s disgusting, I wouldn’t dream of having it.” This seemed to be a good enough reason to indulge in a quiche.
The coronation of King Charlie was quite the spectacle. Watching it was very strange, a time warp, akin to being transported back in time 700 years. But it will mostly be remembered as the dividing of a kingdom over a quiche. Only the English could get their Marks and Sparks knickers in such a twist over a bit of pastry.
No surprises there. It is a country in which people come close to blows down the local, or at least on Twitter, over whether you put jam or cream first on a scone.
The quiche in question was the coronation quiche. “Sacré bleu!” said the French. The coronation quiche was not even a quiche, sneered Évelyne Muller-Dervaux, who is the grand master of some mad thing called the Brotherhood of the Quiche Lorraine. The coronation “quiche” was a tart.
Only a quiche Lorraine is a quiche. Only the French would have a grand master of the quiche Lorraine. The coronation quiche is an abomination, an insult to quiche Lorraines, and hence to French folk, everywhere. It includes broad beans and spinach. I like broad beans and spinach. But non. Not in my quiche, merci. I’m with the brotherhood.
“How did the coronation quiche go so wrong?” This most serious of questions was posed by Britain’s Telegraph. It is “borderline unpatriotic”, thundered the paper, which is widely known as the Torygraph.
The Torygraph stopped short of saying that whoever came up with the idea of broad beans in a quiche should be taken to the Tower of London and thereafter beheaded.
A minor problem with this plan is that the beheaded ones would be the new King and Queen, who created this whole quiche quarrel. They allegedly came up with this unholy concoction.
You’d think they might have been a bit busy, trying on crowns and swearing about Harry and embroidering Camilla’s two rescue Jack Russell pooches on the hem of her coronation gown, and various other important tasks. Perhaps the couple had been on the gin on the eve of the coronation. Camilla looked, on the big day, as though she could have done with a very stiff gin.
The coronation quiche has been nicknamed “Quiche le Reign”. The quiche I made was a quiche Lorraine. There is no other kind worth eating.
A quiche requires eggs. Eggs require chickens. A small town in the region of Limburg, Belgium, has come up with a social experiment that involves giving, at a hefty discount, three chickens to any citizen crazy enough to think they want to keep the birds.
hey have to promise to take care of the feathered fiends and that they will not eat them for two years.
A local body councillor said: “So far, we haven’t had any bad experiences, but of course, we can’t be sure that people aren’t just throwing them into the oven.” There ought to be an investigation.
Where is Agatha Christie’s famous and famously insufferable Belgian detective Hercule Poirot when you need him? He’d have been able to sniff out a roast chicken.
The experiment’s idea is that the feathered fiends will eat up household waste, thus reducing it. This is a worthy idea. Except for the fact that chickens are evil. You do not keep chickens, they keep you. They would also eat you, given the opportunity.
A tip to any Belgian contemplating taking up the chicken offer: keep your doors firmly secured at night. A chicken will eat anything. Even, quite possibly, a coronation quiche.
