Paul J Penton – Songwriter

French fry – daily writing March 25

They used to pre-cook them in the shop I grew up in, so it was quicker to serve them. They sat in a lardy pile on a silvered sandwhich of steel, waiting for the scoops that would scrape dull along the bottom edge, then the chips were plunged to their death in boiling oil, the air would crackle with a thousand kisses as the super heated oil did its job. Wriggling squirming chips, bobbing about in the bubbling ferment, like swimmers across the English Channel until they were sufficiently browned. The air getting thick with the smell of burning oil if the fan wasn’t left on, sometimes it would catch on the back of your throat as if you’d accidentally swallowed a fly.

I had everything with chips, bacon egg and chips , beans and chips, fish and chips – I didn’t even know what a fry was then – and maybe it’s only those shoelace thin strings they serve at a famous establishment. But these ones occasionally would meet my high standards – crispy brown on the outside and fluffy clouds of taste on the inside, steaming like steam rising from a pond on a chilled winter morning when the sun hits the water. Soggy ones are a complete turn off, it’s like trying to write on wet paper eating a soggy chip, or ones that have been in the bag too long, they’re like withered flowers you forgot to send to your girlfriend that you feel guilty about. Yes the best chip in the world at the moment comes from Nandos – Portuguese chicken specialists- I don’t know how they do it but the crispness has a unique consistency across the stores and the special ’salt’ they use keeps me returning like a dog to a bone….I am considering an application to be their chief store tester- where I would randomly go and assess the quality of their fries… and feed back to HQ which stores need to lift their- game- but why I wonder after all those years of…..