Fondues

[g.johnson]

There's a smug scientific bastard who did. Pay attention.

[Steve Plotnicki]

What's the difference between 'naff' and 'daft'?

Word.

[Hopleaf]

Is naff used as an adjective? and how about daft? I'm just wondering about the range of uses these words might offer. How do they compare to F*ck, which is probably one of the most versatile words ever created?

[Simon Majumdar]

USAGE

Andy Lynes' jacket is naff

G Johnson's smugness is daft

Back on thread

Fondues are naff and anyone who doesn't think so is daft

S

[Wilfrid]

Simon is a man of great erudition. I say that only because I typed a reply to this thread which referred to 'Abgail's Party' and then somehow failed to post it. He's bang on. There are many melted cheese dishes which will be with us always, and quite rightly, but the fondue served from the fondue set remains naff. If I told my friends I was having them round to dinner for a fondue, they would think I was joking. If I went ahead with the project, they would assume I was being ironic.

This, of course, is the solution for Charlene. By all means go ahead with the fondue, but make it a knowing, ironic post-modern sort of evening. Play Demis Roussos CDs.

(Why certain high altitude diners repeatedly order fondue at Artisanal remains a mystery )

[Basildog]

it would just be some poor birds luck to go to a Wife Swapping party looking for some hot action and to find she is hooked up with me, keys to my Austin Princess in one hand and a threatening slice of Jarlsberg in the other.

S

Simon, if your comfortable discussing it, you owned a Princess

edit spelling

[Priscilla]

Fondue, like all other dishes on God's green earth, can be bad, or can be good, depending on the usual factors, among them ingredients and preparation and care.

To eschew it due to its intrinsic cultural meanings not being compatible with one's self-image is another matter.

It is analogous to, say, an eater not partaking of foie gras because of so-called animal welfare concerns. "I am not the type of person who eats force-fattened goose liver."

Whether the foie or the fondue is good or bad becomes irrelevant.

To Simon's admirable yet nascent and wobbly anti-melting argument I submit: Butter, in certain applications, is certainly welcome melted. (Blini, e.g.--plus, doesn't lovely historic buckwheat have less carb content than demon wheat?)

[Wilfrid]

To be rigorously clear about all this, I think the question of whether fondue is a good dish is different from the question of whether it is a naff dish. I quite like a prawn cocktail with a well made sauce, but it's a naff dish.

[g.johnson]

There’s definite snobbery about this, isn’t there? Prawn cocktail and fondue are naff because they’re the lower class’s idea of a ‘sophisticated’ dish. Abigail’s Party again. (Am I the only one that finds early Mike Leigh overly cruel?)

[StephenT]

My wife loves chocolate. So when she says that we need dessert, it's easy to melt some chocolate in a fondue pot and dip things (chopped fruit, marshmallows, cake, amaretti, etc) into it.

[Vanessa]

I guess that there are two kinds of naffness: terminal and cyclical. Some here would argue that fondue is terminally naff, others that it is coming round to no longer being naff. But so what? Go for it Charlene, or re-name it a 'Mongolian Hot Pot' or 'Shabu-shabu' or whatever they call in Japan. That sounds pretty cool.

I think prawn cocktail is the cyclical type as well.

v

[Jaymes]

Two of the most sophisticated and worldy people I know are a Czech couple - he a mechanical engineer, she an electrical engineer. They were actually minor celebs in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, frequently interviewed by the media for their expert opinions on this and that. They escaped (a story in itself) a couple years before the wall fell, and went to Switzerland, where they lived for seven years, then France for a year or so.

Then, they took well-paid positions in China, where they lived for three years, and then Thailand, for another year, before finally receiving permission for permanent residence in the U.S.

The wife (the electrical engineer who once held a very high position working on sound, in a Czech film studio) is one of the best cooks it has ever been my great honor to know.

In each of the countries where this distinguished couple has lived (Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, France, China and Thailand) she has taken extensive cooking classes, including le Cordon Bleu during her time in Paris. She grows a Keiffer Lime tree, just so she can have the leaves for her Thai cooking. She is nobody's culinary rube.

They invite me for dinner all the time, and I start salivating as soon as the invitation arrives.

This couple invited me 'round for a classic Swiss cheese fondue (as they had enjoyed it in Switzerland). And, unlike Wilfrid's hypothetical guests that he mentioned earlier in the thread, I never once thought she was joking. I thought she was taking the time and trouble to prepare yet another sublime treat just in order to please me. And I was right.

I should add that it was the appetizer for an equally sublime and memorable meal.

Again, as I and others have said, one can prepare and present anything well, or badly. It's up to the host.

And, of course, to the guests who should, rather than prejudge, attend an event to which they have been invited with open minds, generous spirits, and a grand appreciation for the fact that they were invited at all.

[Priscilla]

Also naff can be used as per "Naff off!" can't it?

Poor fondue. It's not a Michelob commercial, or, a Turning Leaf commercial, or some kind of post-ironic retro party in a magazine.

It's just fondue, a venerable dish that deserves to be treated with respect.

Added: Yes to Jaymes.

[Wilfrid]

(Am I the only one that finds early Mike Leigh overly cruel?)

No, I think that's entirely fair - but the accuracy of the observation is astonishing. I think he developed some real heart for his characters in 'High Hopes' and 'Truth and Lies'. Sorry, carry on...

[Priscilla]

I have not seen this Mike Leigh "Abigail's Party" that you all reference. A fondue touchstone?

[ChocoKitty]

If I told my friends I was having them round to dinner for a fondue, they would think I was joking.  If I went ahead with the project, they would assume I was being ironic.

You have some, um, interesting friends.

If I told my friends I was having fondue, they'd think, "Cool, we don't have to cook!"

If I had a "friend" who felt compelled to judge me on whether I was serving the "right" food at a dinner party, I'd find a new friend. Life's too short to try entertaining people who can't be entertained.

But then, I'm just a Midwestern oaf.

Jaymes: ditto!

[Wilfrid]

If I told my friends I was having them round to dinner for a fondue, they would think I was joking.  If I went ahead with the project, they would assume I was being ironic.

You have some, um, interesting friends.

If I told my friends I was having fondue, they'd think, "Cool, we don't have to cook!"

If I had a "friend" who felt compelled to judge me on whether I was serving the "right" food at a dinner party, I'd find a new friend. Life's too short to try entertaining people who can't be entertained.

But then, I'm just a Midwestern oaf.

Jaymes: ditto!

I think you missed my point, Chocokitty. I was trying to indicate that such a reaction to fondue would be common among British people, certainly under the age of, oh, say fifty. It is a byword for naffness. Significant that Simon and I both thought of 'Abigail's Party' - a fondue-free play (Priscilla) but a touchstone for 1970s cring-making awful naffness.

In other words, my friends' reaction would be fairly representative. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

[ChocoKitty]

Wilfrid -- thanks for clarifying.

[Jaymes]

....awful naffness.

RE - "naff"

Might one combine it with a bit of valley-girl speak?

Like, might one say something is "way naff" as one might say something is "way cool"?

[Wilfrid]

Prompts me to think about the derivation. I recall hearing that it's a contraction of "NAAFI" (pronounced "naffee"), an acronym which stood for "Navy Army and Air Force..." what? Institute? Anyway, the NAAFI was the notoriously ghastly canteen and bar used by non-officers in the British armed forces for refreshment purposes.

Anyone confirm that?

[Jaymes]

Prompts me to think about the derivation.  I recall hearing that it's a contraction of "NAAFI" (pronounced "naffee"), an acronym which stood for "Navy Army and Air Force..." what?  Institute?  Anyway, the NAAFI was the notoriously ghastly canteen and bar used by non-officers in the British armed forces for refreshment purposes.

Anyone confirm that?

Eeeeeewwww THAT sounds way naff.

[g.johnson]

Prompts me to think about the derivation.

Just waiting for you to ask. OED:

Origin unknown: apparently not related to preceding

Cf. north. dial. naffhead, naffin, naffy ‘a simpleton; a blockhead; an idiot’ (Eng. Dial. Dict.); niffy-naffy adj. ‘inconsequential, stupid’ (Gloss. Whitby 1876); Sc. nyaff ‘a term of contempt for any unpleasant or objectional person’ (Scot. Nat. Dict.).

Preceding is naff, v:

Of uncertain origin: Partridge links the word tentatively with old backslang naf = fan (the female genitals: see FANNY4 2). Cf. EFF v. (perh. with metanalysis).

A euphemistic substitution for FUCK v. Freq. used imp. with off: ‘go away’.

Why they don’t conclude it’s derived from ‘naffy’, is anyone’s guess.

[Blondie]

(Am I the only one that finds early Mike Leigh overly cruel?)

No, I think that's entirely fair - but the accuracy of the observation is astonishing. I think he developed some real heart for his characters in 'High Hopes' and 'Truth and Lies'. Sorry, carry on...

I think Mike Leigh is brilliant. The way he works (actors develop their characters through months of rehearsal and virtually nothing is scripted) is highly unusual and the resulting films are among my favorites because they are so challenging.

Obligatory food reference: Leigh's film "Life is Sweet" is worth renting for the scenes where Aubrey (played by the wonderful Timothy Spall) opens his dream resaturant with disastrous consequences. The misguided menu includes such delicacies as Chilled Brain Mousse, King Prawn in Jam Sauce, and Pork Cyst.

[Priscilla]

A euphemistic substitution for FUCK v. Freq. used imp. with off: ‘go away’.

Yes. I edited out a mention of naff off, just sent it over the eGullet psychic transom instead. Now I'm sending something about piss off, and how does the word piss have so many differing applications.

[Wilfrid]

Oh the web of language. I am naffing off down the pub now, pausing only to mention that I forgot 'Life is Sweet' - another one of Leigh's films with a heart, until he went back to being pretty savage again with 'Naked'.