Mmmmmmm. Feast your eyes upon it, my friends. I can almost hear your salivary glands palpating from here – almost feel your anticipatory juices welling up from the depths of my keyboard. Such is the majesty of this simple creation.
Just sit back, for a moment, and detach yourself from the mediocre reverie of everyday life to lose yourself in this culinary kaleidoscope. Dive into those deep yet vibrant ochres. Be dazzled by the golden flesh of the vegetable, draped over the fresh, life-enhancing pulp like a gilded negligee over the thigh of Joan Collins in her prime.
See how the blood of the bean shines against the skin? Like the Atlantic Ocean on a stone worn smooth by the tides of millennia. Like the last remnant of the radiant mother on the flawless cheek of a newborn. To break such a delectable membrane feels almost criminal, and yet that is the only method of obtaining ingress to the taste bud utopia that lies beyond.
To then feel such white fluffiness melting on your tongue is akin to being transported – body and soul – to the snow-dappled lanes of Dickensian London, where the joyful songs of bewhiskered carollers caress your ringing ears even as the gaslight through the mullioned windows of an ancient toy shop dances on your retinas, teasing your imagination with toy soldier adventures and wild rocking horse dreams. Catch the nutty aftertaste like a snatch of roast chestnuts from the urchin’s brazier and wait for the warming sensation within, like a twelve year old malt by a roaring fire after a steely winter’s day wrestling a treacherous sea.
This God-gifted egg of pleasure is as far removed from the ‘rock hard baked potato’ reported in this week’s Telegraph as it is possible to be, so much so that I can only assume that their witness is deranged. What else would explain her claim that this auriferous angel of the spheres cost ‘a fortune’, when in truth it cost £1.05.
£1.05? For this teardrop of tuberous nirvana?
Now that is madness.