The worst curry ever

Posted in Old blogger by Twenty Major on January 29th, 2007

Stinking Pete has gone vegetarian. He says he can no longer cope with the senseless slaughter of animals for our consumption. I say I can no longer cope with him being a complete and utter cunt but he doesn’t seem to be giving that up.

Anyway, he invited me, Jimmy the Bollix and Dirty Dave over for dinner on Saturday night. Normally I can think of an excuse to get out of going to his house to eat but this time I was caught on the hop and ended up with no choice but to go. The upside was the only way to cope with going to his house is to get really, really drunk. It’s not that his house is dirty. Despite his own questionable hygiene and personal odour, his house is well kept.

It’s just a really depressing place. It looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since the early 70s which is quite a coincidence because it hasn’t actually been redecorated since the early 70s. Terrible wallpaper, curtains that look like the stage curtains at a village concert hall, threadbare patterned carpet in what was once brown and beige but now looks like the colour of old mud and the furniture would have some kitsch value if it wasn’t falling apart.

He refuses to change anything since he inherited the house from his parents after they died. It’s a bit macabre, I suppose, but the sudden and frankly disgusting way his parents died had a big impact on his life. I’ll tell you that story another day.

Anyway, after spending some months in Goa a long time ago Stinking Pete reckons he’s the best Indian cook in Dublin. It’s quite patently not true. You can go into the worst Indian takeaway in Dublin and look into what passes for a kitchen and witness whatever sad wretch reheats the food in there and he/she/it is probably a better cook than Pete but to be fair to him he can knock together a decent chicken curry.

So it was no surprise when that’s exactly what he served on Saturday.

“How are you liking the chicken curry, lads?”, he asked.

“Grand, Pete”, I said. “Hey Jimmy, pour me another pint of Jim Beam. Cheers.”

“Good, good. I’m glad you’re enjoying the …chicken…curry.”

“Yeah, it’s good”, said Jimmy the Bollix. “Give us one of those naan breads, Dirty Dave.”

“Splendid. Everyone is appreciating the taste of my …*cough*…CHICKEN….*cough cough*…curry.”

I put down my knife and fork.

“Something you need to tell us, Pete?”

“Oh, no. What gave you that idea?”

“Stinking Pete. Don’t have me thrash you to within an inch of your life. What’s going on?”

“Well…hehehe…you think you’re eating chicken but, in fact, it’s not chicken at all.”

“Turkey?”, asked Dirty Dave.

“No, Dave. Not turkey. It’s no fowl whatsoever. It is Quorn.”

A dealthy silence fell about the table.

“Quorn?”, I said.

“Yes, Quorn”, he replied.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Stinking Pete! Are you trying to fucking kill me? Do you know what that shit is made from?”

“I know that it’s made from some kind of fungus and no innocent creature has to die to fill your belly.”

“Firstly, you cunt, how dare you impose your values on me in your own home. Secondly, ‘a kind of fungus’ is what they want you to think, you dopey bastard. Look at the name. Quorn. Can’t you see it? What is fed on corn? Chickens. And what part of a chicken begins with Qu? The quim, of course. Quorn is actually chicken minge and you sit there as smug as you like after feeding us, your friends, with the processed vulva, labia and clitorii of farmyard birds. Fucking hell.”

“My God, I never knew. I’m sorry, Twenty, Jimmy, Dave….”

“There’s no time for that. Lads, do what you have to do.”

In unison the three of us put our fingers down our throats and sprayed vomit all over the table until there was no more puke to be puked.

“Oh, fucking hell”, he said as he looked at his bile covered kitchen. “You could at least have gone out in the back garden”.

“No we could not”, said Jimmy. “Trying to make us eat Quorn and trying to pass it off as some kind of healthy alternative is just despicable. I’ve done some bad things in my time. Like that time I stole the collection money for that orphanage in Nairobi. Or the time I could have saved that woman from drowning but I decided it was too much trouble. Or like that time I was face to face with Osama Bin Laden and he told me he was going to launch a terrorist offensive on the world which would bring us to the point of nuclear war and I figured he was just another Johnny Big Bollocks giving it the big I am so I let him go without killing him. Or that time when when a man asked me for one euro to make a phone call to tell his pregnant and hysterical wife he was on his way home and not having an affair with his secretary and I told him to fuck off and get his own euro and he told me he’d just been mugged and they’d taken all his money and all he had was this watch which his father had given him on his death bed and he offered me the watch which had such sentimental value if I’d only give him a euro and I took the watch then kicked him in the side of the head and walked off and his wife killed herself by stabbing herself in the stomach over and over with a kitchen knife and then he ended up committing suicide by throwing himself under a bus which caused the bus driver to suffer post traumatic stress disorder which made him sexually abuse his children who grew up to be rapists and serial killlers. But I’ve never done anything like give somebody Quorn. NEVER.”

Pete just stood them looking down at his shoes.

“Look, Stinking Pete”, I said, “if you want to be a fanny-arsed vegetarian then that’s fine. You know it makes a big poof, we know it makes you a big poof and we will rip the piss out of you for it, but if you’re going to be a vegetarian just eat vegetables. Don’t be one of those cunts who’s a vegetarian but eats fish and chicken as if they’re not real animals. And for Christ’s sake don’t get suckered in to eating shite like Quorn. Quorn is made by cunts from cunts for cunts.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Sorry again lads.”

“Now, do you want a hand cleaning up this vomit?”

“Yeah. That’d be great.”

“It would be great but we’re not gonna. We’re off to the chipper to get some decent food.”

“Mines a Quornter-pounder with cheese!”, said Jimmy.

“Oh, Jimmy, you are a one”, I said.