Via Books, Inq, I read a story in The Telegraph 'Row over shepherd's pie ends in court':
"A row over the correct way to make shepherd’s pie ended up in court after a disagreement between two brothers turned violent. After a day spent drinking, Michael Garvin cooked his brother John the traditional English dish for dinner, expecting a grateful response. John, however, voiced his disquiet that the pie was not topped with a layer of sliced tomatoes. His brother, a chef, claimed a layer of tomatoes was not the appropriate way to finish off a shepherd’s pie, and responded by hitting him over the head with a shovel."
There is quite a back-story to how the two brothers ended up in the dock, described in the article: kind of hard to countenance all the fuss. Thankfully, we have an in-touch and intelligent judiciary in this country, capable of making a ruling in the form of a code (Da Vinci plagiarism case), and not a collection of people who can't follow the plot of a Harry Potter novel. "District Judge Peter Ward told the defendant that, in his view, there was no need for a layer of tomatoes on a shepherd’s pie". Maybe the judges should follow the Lords' excellent example and start their own blog.
[Even if the shepherd's pie story hadn't been so funny, I would have had to write about it so I could give the post this title.]
"A row over the correct way to make shepherd’s pie ended up in court after a disagreement between two brothers turned violent. After a day spent drinking, Michael Garvin cooked his brother John the traditional English dish for dinner, expecting a grateful response. John, however, voiced his disquiet that the pie was not topped with a layer of sliced tomatoes. His brother, a chef, claimed a layer of tomatoes was not the appropriate way to finish off a shepherd’s pie, and responded by hitting him over the head with a shovel."
There is quite a back-story to how the two brothers ended up in the dock, described in the article: kind of hard to countenance all the fuss. Thankfully, we have an in-touch and intelligent judiciary in this country, capable of making a ruling in the form of a code (Da Vinci plagiarism case), and not a collection of people who can't follow the plot of a Harry Potter novel. "District Judge Peter Ward told the defendant that, in his view, there was no need for a layer of tomatoes on a shepherd’s pie". Maybe the judges should follow the Lords' excellent example and start their own blog.
[Even if the shepherd's pie story hadn't been so funny, I would have had to write about it so I could give the post this title.]
According to the EU Shepherd's Pie Directive of 1998, a Shepherd's Pie can only be named as such if it contains at least 51% Shepherds (by weight). Tomatoes don't come into it.
Posted by: Henry Gee | 22 April 2008 at 21:59