Don't bust my crust, baby

Since I’ve got Keith Richards floating around here, I’ll turn a few thoughts to Life, his memoir, which I read a while ago.

Yes, it was written “with” a journalist (James Fox), so I don’t know how much of it is Richards and how much Fox. However, it was much more engaging than other celeb books, with less ego than Lisa Robinson’s name-dropping and product placement-fest (There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll), and none of the whining of Morrissey’s drama queendom (self-consciously titled just Autobiography). Richards certainly dishes dirt—but consider that in more than 50 years with The Rolling Stones how many hectares of the stuff he’s accumulated.

And—the guy does know how to tell a story.

Richards has very strong opinions on food, and advocates only eating when you feel an appetite, not at set times. It was a habit that drove his band mates a little cuckoo.

He also has useful thoughts on his comfort food, starting with the ever popular Bangers and Mash. (Which I have to say are utterly delish, in a good pub, with friends and a pint of bitter.)

“I’ve been cooking bangers all my life and I only just found out from this lady on TV that you have to put bangers in a cold pan. No preheating. Preheating agitates them, that’s why they’re called bangers. Very slowly, start them off cold. And then just be prepared to have a drink and wait. And it works. It doesn’t shrivel them up; they’re plump. It’s just a matter of patience. Cooking is a matter of patience. When I was cooking Goats Head Soup, I did it very slowly.”

And he gives us the recipe.

“My Recipe for Bangers and Mash

“First off, find a butcher who makes his sausages fresh.

“Fry up a mixture of onions and bacon and seasoning.

“Get the spuds on the boil with a dash of vinegar, some chopped onions and salt (seasoning to taste). Chuck in some peas with the spuds. (Throw in some chopped carrots too, if you like.) Now we’re talking.

“Now, you have a choice of grilling or broiling your bangers or frying. Throw them on low heat with the simmering bacon and onions (or in the cold pan, as the TV lady said, and add the onions and bacon in a bit) and let the fuckers rock gently, turning every few minutes.

“Mash yer spuds and whatever.

“Bangers are now fat free (as possible!).

“Gravy if desired.

“HP sauce, every man to his own.”

Another culinary gem is his recommendation for shepherd’s pie: just before you top the meat-and-veg mixture with the mashed potatoes, add a layer of chopped (raw) onions. This tip came from Big Joe Seabrook, one of Richards’s “minders”, “and he was damn right—it just gives you that extra je ne sais quoi.”

I’ve tried it and Seabrook and Richards are indeed damn right.

Richards is religious about his shepherd’s pie—one gets delivered before every performance, even though he doesn’t eat before a show. But no one—no one—is permitted to cut into the pie. “Nobody touches the shepherd’s pie until I’ve been in there. Don’t bust my crust, baby. It’s written into the contract. If you come into Keith Richards’s room and he’s got a shepherd’s pie on the warmer, bubbling away, if it’s still pristine, the only one that can bust the crust is me. Greedy motherfuckers, they’ll come in and just scoop up anything.”

This is a book that should have come with a CD, DVD or link to online playlist. I had to haul out some of my own and queue them up. Like this one:

But as for his Life, I really wonder how Richards remembered enough of it to produce more than 500 pages about it.