h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is an act of compassion by Indian cooks created for sun-baked Englishmen who really missed a bowl of soup. No other soup can evoke the Raj with one sip and the Goons with the next.

- skin a chicken (a dead one), and remove most of the meat from the carcass.

- simmer the carcass in water with a few root veggies, a few cardamom pods, and a stick of... what's that stuff called?... cinnamon. Keep the heat low, and let stock form over several hours. Don't let it boil.

- read some Goonshow scripts.

- eventually, chop fine and saute some onions, garlic, ginger, and green chillies until the onions are tender and translucent... but not brown.

- add some whole coriander and cumin seed and some ground turmeric, and fry for a minute or two. Add a drop or two of water if things start to look dry.

- add the chicken, which you should have cut up long ago, but didn't because you were absorbed in the Goonshow scripts. Work quickly, but don't cut yourself. Fry (the chicken) for a minute, until it is slightly browned on all sides.

- add the stock, which someone may have thought to strain, but probably didn't. Better yet, add the other ingredients to the stock (which should probably have been strained). That way you can say in a high, weedy voice...

"It's fall-en in the wa-ter..." [refer to Goonshow script. Any of them.]

- Where were we? Oh, right...

- simmer gently for an hour or so, until the chicken is cooked.

- Serve hot in a big bowl between a pile of papadoms and a picture of Spike Milligan.

A swirl of thick coconut milk and/or a squeeze of fresh lime is an optional extra you might add directly to the serving bowls either artfully or absurdly to taste.

JTG

Sounds tasty... But what is a Goonshow script?

Surely you don't mean that you have only ever eaten mulligatawny soup without an accompaniment of Goon Show?

A Goon Show script is a printed record of the general course a Goon Show episode would take through a labyrinth of lunacy and jazz. Sadly, written language has generations of evolution to endure before it even comes close to being able to document the actual phenomenon. A script is like a pupa case on a milkweed plant, which does nothing to suggest the delight of a sunny sky full of butterflies... but it's better than nowt.

There is an excellent Entry about the Goon Show (A206399) which does a remarkably fine job of suggesting why mulligatawny without the Goons is like fish and chips without salt and vinegar, newspaper, and several pints of best bitter.

Admittedly, reading a script is a long way from actually listening to an episode. But I thought the risk of suggesting the latter to those who might not have access to a recording too cruel, rather like those exotic recipes that throw in a key ingredient that you have to be related to Indiana Jones to find.

Sorry. I just noticed that I listed it as 'Goonshow script', which is the brand name of the product our local grocer carries.

JTG

?!?!?!?

Slowly...

1 - Goon shows are some kind of radio show involving jazz and lunacy.
2 - The script for this show is what? Pupa milkweed?
3 - You can eat the script? They are sold in groceries?

?

?HELL?

And what is nowt?

Confused,

HELL

That's a lot of punctuation for three questions. Calm down and have some soup.

1. The Goon Show was a program on the wireless... which is like a radio show, only much better.

2. Milkweed are plants of the genus Asclepias. Monarch butterflies pupate on milkweed. Scripts are generally just words written on paper. Sometimes the words suggest images to people who can read.

3. You'd probably need to soak pieces of script for a long time in a very good soup to make eating one a nice experience; and even then, there are a lot of other things that are probably easier to come by and taste much better. Scripts aren't usually sold in groceries, no. That was a slight deviation from what is, strictly speaking, literally true for the sake of amusement.

Read the Entry.

JTG

Oops... missed a bit.

'nowt' is a way people used to say 'nothing', long ago in a time and place that I think fondly of when the topic of Goon Shows and mulligatawny soup arises. Sorry for the confusion.

JTG

Oh I read it... The Goon Show part was clear. It's just that sometimes I don't get metaphors or figurative things, and get confused. That's the kind of humour that only initiated people understand, y'know?

Thanks for the explanation JTG.

HELL

No problem. I suppose one of the many uncomfortable side-effects of getting old is that fewer and fewer people seem to get my jokes. Perhaps that's what senility is.

JTG