Stuffed Monkey
from Jane Grigson’s English Food
It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort
that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink
waiting for them to subside.
It could be a bunch of keys, so many of them mysterious
from down the years, or clippings in a wallet, its leather
soft-shaped to a back pocket.
Or this cook book, English Food, sellotaped, cover missing,
pages stained, translucent with greasy butter prints,
the voice instructive, calm.
Tucked in, there’s a scrap scrawled with a list of ingredients
for just the filling of a classic lemon tart.
He didn’t need instructions
for its pâte sablé case, having mastered pastry: sweet crust,
short crust, rough puff, choux, all the many variations.
And here, Stuffed Monkey,
which no-one has ever had before – before he made it,
shiny with egg white glaze, round, heavy and dark
from brown sugar and cinnamon.
So plain to look at, so dense, delicious and unknown.
Now, I follow the steps, the book propped open,
method a bit vague. And I’m crying.
I could say widowhood, regret, could say it’s just a layer
of peel and ground almonds between two discs
of something like a pastry dough.
Jane says to make the dough ‘as if you are making pastry’.
I think she means rubbing in with fingertips, bringing together.
I could say ‘as if I’m suddenly so specifically lonely.’
Baked and cooled, the Stuffed Monkey sits in the shallow tin
which held our Christmas biscuits, stolid, a good traveller,
waiting to be taken somewhere. Sure of a welcome.
Kathy Pimlott has a collection, the small manoeuvres, (Verve Poetry Press, 2022) and two pamphlets Elastic Glue and Goose Fair Night (Emma Press). She lives in Covent Garden. www.kathypimlott.co.uk