Return of the DJ (slight return)

FORMER DJ SPARRING PARTNER AND LATTER DAY WELL-SEASONED CHEF MARTIN SIMCOCK ON SCRIBEHOUND

I’m listening to a Louisiana Cajun album from the 1920’s, ‘Ma Cherie Tite Fille’ to be precise by Soileau & Robin, released in 1929. I guess you would call it a guilty pleasure, along with Madonna’s ‘Borderline’. From there it’s a short step to inspiration for this week’s menu, a Cajun classic Jambalaya. It’s an old surf and turf, one-pot dish from the Southern states of the good old USA, made with chicken, prawns, pork, sausage, peppers, whatever you have to hand really, bulked out with basmati rice and a really intense, home-made chicken stock.

I was a DJ once, in the mid-seventies. Twenty years old, studying textile design at Camberwell School of Art and living with nine other art students from Central, Chelsea and Goldsmiths in Limesford road, Nunhead, opposite the cemetery. I teamed up with Dave Henderson from Carlisle, we were both Northern Soul boys, driving up to Wigan Casino on the last Friday of the month for their legendary all-nighters. We loaded old Schweppes crates with 7”, obscure, imported, black, American B-sides and toured all the London art schools under the banner ‘Northern Soul on Southern Soil’. Catchy we thought.

Expressions of joy, almost like pain, the next record comes in. The first few piano bars strain from the speakers and the girl in the far corner recognises it, – Gerri Granger, ‘I Go to Pieces.’ She turns to the DJ with an expression of joy as feelings explode deep inside her. He has given her back a joy she thought she had lost, and it rushes into her as she turns to catch his eye and thank him. Then turns again and wraps her arms around her boyfriend, tears wetting his shoulder. The corner of the room erupts and the magic spills across the dancefloor. The crowd are deliriously drunk and happy. The DJ has done his job well.