Tonight's
casserole is dedicated to a true LGBT Icon, Quentin Crisp. Find out
more about this brilliant wit in a short article after the recipe.
A comforting casserole of chicken, mushrooms and broccoli in a unique sauce. Great for the next “bring a dish” you are invited to!.
Ingredients
- ½ box pasta, I choose rotini for its spirals that hold the sauce.
- 2 C. broccoli florets thawed
- 2 T. butter
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ red onion chopped
- 3 T. flour
- 1 Cup. chicken broth
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 4 slices Gruyere cheese, chopped into tiny pieces.
- ½ C. Parmesan cheese, grated
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 3 boneless chicken thighs
Put pasta water on, when boiling add pasta, after it has boiled for 4 minutes, add the thawed broccoli and finish cooking together. Drain well.
Do your cutting: cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, sprinkle with salt & pepper and set aside.
Rinse the mushrooms and drain well, then quarter.
Chop the onion and garlic.
In a large saucepan, melt butter and sauté chicken for about 5 minutes, it will finish cooking in the casserole. Remove with a slotted spoon and place in casserole.
Add the onion & mushrooms to the pan. Fry, stirring for another 7 minutes or until onions are translucent and moisture has left the mushrooms.
Add garlic and cook for 1 minute, then whisk in flour, cook for about a minute while whisking, and then gradually add in chicken broth and soup; whisk until sauce is smooth. bring to a simmer, and stir in the cheese pieces and let them melt into the sauce.
In a greased baking dish, toss cooked pasta, broccoli, chicken, and sauce.
Bake for 20 minutes until bubbly.
What an interesting new taste for your table.
For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_IMFIOGCFc
So proud to be Master Indy's slave
socialslave
To
satisfy and restore.
To
nourish, support and maintain.
To
gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to
nurture, assist, and sustain
…..I
cook!
Please
buy slave's cookbook:
The
Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by
Quentin Crisp
It
is a difficult task to attempt even a short biography of the man born
as Denis Charles Pratt in south London on Christmas Day in 1908. A
man who defied social conventions with a brilliant mind and sharp
wit. While printing a list of his more famous comments would please
and humor, it would do little to inform about this icon.
Shortly
after WWI, he was wearing make-up and painting his nails in his
everyday life! He worked as a rent-boy in his teens. Then spent
thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art
colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted
increasing public curiosity and he was soon sought after for his
highly individual views on the cultivating of style. His one-man
stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America and he
also appeared in films and on TV.
Crisp
studied journalism at King's College London but failed to graduate in
1928. He began visiting the cafés of Soho – his favorite: The
Black Cat – meeting other young homosexual men and rent-boys,
and experimenting with make-up and women's clothes. Crisp said “For
six months I worked as a male sex worker, looking for love, but
finding only degradation.”
His
outlandish appearance brought admiration and curiosity from some
quarters, but generally attracted hostility and violence from
strangers passing him in the streets.
Crisp
attempted to join the British army at the outbreak of the Second
World War, but was rejected and declared exempt on the grounds he was
"suffering from sexual perversion". “I am a homosexual,”
Crisp said, “but I thought that fighting might be a nice change of
agony.”
He
remained in London during the 1941 Blitz, stocked up on cosmetics,
purchased five pounds of henna and paraded through the black-out
picking up G.I.s. In the intervening years he never attempted any
housework, "After the first four years the dust doesn't get any
worse."
Crisp
left his job as an engineer's tracer in 1942 to become a model in
life classes in London and the Home Counties. He continued posing for
artists for the next 30 years.
Crisp
had published three short books by the time he came to write The
Naked Civil Servant. The book was published in 1968 to
generally good reviews.
In
1975 the television version of The Naked Civil Servant was
broadcast on British and US television and made both actor John
Hurt and Crisp himself into stars. This success launched
Crisp in a new direction: that of performer and tutor. He devised a
one-man show and began touring the country with it.
When
his autobiography was reprinted in 1975, Gay News commented that the
book should have been published posthumously (Crisp commented that
this was their polite way of telling him to drop dead).
By
now Crisp was a theater-filling attraction. His one-man show sold out
the Duke of York's Theater in London in 1978. Crisp then took
the show to New York. In 1981, he arrived with few
possessions and found a small apartment on East 3rd Street in
Manhattan's East Village.
As
he had done in London, Crisp allowed his telephone number to be
listed in the telephone directory and saw it as his duty to converse
with anyone who called him. For the first twenty or so years of
owning his own telephone he habitually answered calls with the
phrase: "Yes, Lord?" ("Just in case," he once
said.)
His
openness to strangers extended to accepting dinner invitations from
almost anyone. Whilst he expected the host would pay for dinner,
Crisp did his best to "sing for his supper" by regaling his
host with wonderful stories and yarns much as he did in his
theatrical performances.
Dinner
with him was said to be one of the best shows in New York.
He
continued to perform his one-man show, published ground-breaking
books on the importance of contemporary manners, and supported
himself by accepting social invitations and writing movie reviews and
columns. He said that provided one could exist on peanuts and
champagne, one could quite easily live by going to every cocktail
party, premiere and first night to which one was invited.
He
made his debut as a film actor in the Royal College of Art's
low-budget production of Hamlet (1976). Crisp played Polonius
in the 65-minute adaptation of Shakespeare's play, supported by Helen
Mirren, who doubled as Ophelia and Gertrude. 1992 he was cast in a
lead role, and got top billing, in the low-budget independent film
Topsy and Bunker: The Cat Killers, playing the door-man of a
flea-bag hotel in a run-down neighborhood quite like the one he lived
in.
Also
in 1992 he was persuaded by Sally Potter to play Elizabeth I
in the film Orlando. Although he found the role taxing he won
acclaim for a dignified and touching performance. Crisp next had an
un-credited cameo in the 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia.
Crisp
remained fiercely independent and unpredictable into old age. He
caused controversy and confusion in the gay community by jokingly
calling AIDS "a fad". He was continually in demand
from journalists requiring a sound-bite and throughout the 1990s his
commentary was sought on any number of topics.
In
December 1998 he celebrated his ninetieth birthday performing the
opening night of his one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp,
at The Intar Theatre on Forty-Second Street in New York City. A
humorous pact he had once made with Penny Arcade to live to be
a century old, with a decade off for good behavior, proved prophetic.
Crisp
died of a heart attack in November 1999 nearly one month
before his 91st birthday in Manchester on the eve of a nationwide
revival of his one-man show.
Sting
dedicated his song "Englishman in New York" (1987)
to Crisp. He had remarked jokingly "that he looked forward to
receiving his naturalization papers so that he could commit a crime
and not be deported." In late 1986 Sting visited Crisp in his
apartment and was told over dinner – and the next three days –
what life had been like for a homosexual man in the largely
homophobic Great Britain of the 1920s to the 1960s. Sting was both
shocked and fascinated and decided to write the song. It includes the
lines:
It
takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile,
Be
yourself no matter what they say.
Sting
says, "Quentin is a hero of mine, someone I know very well. He
is gay and he was gay at a time in history when it was dangerous to
be so. He had people beating up on him on a daily basis, largely with
the consent of the public."
In
2009 a television sequel to The Naked Civil Servant was
broadcast. Entitled An Englishman in New York the production
documented Crisp's later years in Manhattan. Thirty-four years after
his first award-winning performance as Crisp John Hurt returned to
play him again.
==================
He
was practically asexual and never had a serious relationship in his
life. According to him, “Sex is the last refuge of the
miserable. It suffers from the same malaise as television: halfway
through what you assumed was a new episode, you realize it’s a
rerun. After that, it’s difficult to remain interested.” He was
only attracted to an image that by his definition could never be
attracted to him. He lived alone nearly all of his adult life.
Despite his many wise observations on relationships, he admitted,
“I’ve never been in love and clearly do not know what the
expression means.”
While
many consider Crisp a gay icon, he distanced himself from the gay
rights movement. “I don’t think anybody has any rights,” he
said and didn’t see the need for people to congregate, mobilize and
demand them. His reasoning was that, if you just are yourself
regardless, others will catch up.
He
refused to be pinned down or to become anyone’s poster child: “I
call no pigeon hole home”, he declared.
While
Crisp was a fantastic wit and could shoot out one liners on the spur
of the moment he was still a product of the pre-World War II era. His
perception of what a homosexual was and what he could expect was
based on the prevailing wisdom of that time and did not translate
well into the latter half of the century.In a way he was trapped in his own persona that he had developed.
He
was a Gay Icon that is perhaps better viewed as a modern Oscar Wilde
or even Dorthy Parker than as a role model. Still he was one of the
century's most uniquely identifiable character.
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