Salmon-ella Feasts-How to Entertain

It was a plate of something.

It challenged all my powers of identification because it was not clear what it was.

Something on a plate is, to my perception, usually a foodstuff but the object had no clear origin.

Any physical characteristics to place it in its correct category of animal, vegetable or mineral were blurred by what resembled a fluffy white cloud but was obviously a large, fine tendrilled and organically active mass of mould. Smaller fruiting bodies had attached themselves in roundels of dark bluey green but shortly to launch themselves off in a billion spores into the atmosphere.

The soft, fluffy texture was interrupted by a shiny metallic protrusion which was not, at first glance, instantly recognisable as the handle of a fork but evidently was . The pronged end could be traced under and through the fine misty body forming an ingrowing element to whatever was lurking under the fungal growth.

The whole thing was out of context as although in a kitchen, the rest of the room was spotlessly clean showing that the occupiers, students, had been brought up proper.

I poked the object with the end of my ball point pen, at the same time making a mental note to avoid sucking the same in one of those thoughtful but at the same time absent minded moments later on in the day.

The fringes of the object were light brown in colour, possibly crispy at one time but now soggy and fetid. The underside of the mass, where sticking out over the rim of the plate was darker and with a pearlescent quality and made up of tiny slivers of material, a bit like bitumen felt shingles on the side of a garden shed.

Through the silvery texture was a discernible yellow strand, deep set as though engrained as a genetic identification of a species, human, animal or other.

The flowing lines of the amorphous shape were broken up by long rectangular shapes, pale and off white and with a different composition, dense and starchy.

So far my investigation of what it was on the plate had been visual and textural but I was no nearer identifying the object. It was necessary to crouch down and sniff. Quite unpleasant but essential for analysis. The overriding odour was that found in the darkest deepest recesses of a mountain cave, damp, fusty, primordial soup-ish or commonly found in a wardrobe onto an outside wall of an old house. It was tinged with a fresher bacterial cocktail which starter to irritate the finer receptors at the back of my throat and the sensory parts of my nasal passage. My own experience caused me to at least identify an acidic taint.

I was now in a position to give a name to the object. Piecing together all the evidence I had come across a six week old plated up portion of cod and chips liberally doused in vinegar, abandoned to the elements of natural decay, disgusting to see but nevertheless an interesting talking point to grace any modern kitchen.