What do you get for the woman who already has everything? I don't know where Prince Charles, Prince Phillip et al go to buy the Queen gifts on her birthday, but I'd imagine they're running rapidly out of ideas. Throughout her life on the British throne, making cordial public appearances and sipping one of her four alcoholic drinks a day, I'd imagine that Her Majesty doesn't really want for much anymore.
But with her eating habits now fine-tuned and fully realised, who knew that the secret to the Queen's heart was through her food? With garlic, pasta, potatoes and any other carbs off the Royal menu, the Queen sounds very hard to please in a culinary sense, but one very skilled chef might've just pulled it off.
For more on this, let's talk about Queen of the World, a new documentary from ITV (airing on HBO) presenting us with a new window into the life of the world's most famous monarch. Starting this week on Tuesday, we get to see the Queen in a way we've never really seen before, and as you might expect, that extends to the dinner table too.
Speaking in front of the camera, the Queen's personal chef Mark Flanagan says that although the Queen's happy overall with her food options (I'd imagine she has a lot), there's one thing that she'd like introduced to the dinner table a little more often. A group from the Caribbean spent some time cooking at the palace, and the Queen took a liking to one of those exotic dishes.
Jared Forbes, from the Bahamas, said the dish he was cooking to give "a little idea of what we eat at home", and the Queen likes what he eats very much, it turns out. Callaloo, a soup made with chilli peppers, was a surprise hit down at Buckingham Palace, and Flanagan says the Queen can't get enough of it.
“A number of the Caribbean dishes were particularly well received," Flanagan reveals. "The callaloo soup was an absolute sensation. I had email after email telling me that it must now feature more regularly," he goes onto say, while letting slip that the Queen uses e-mail. I don't know why, but I'd always assumed she'd be more of a WhatsApp girl...
When it comes to topping off a good callaloo soup with something sweet, former Royal chef Darren McGrady (and unofficial royal informant for Food Envy) says that there's only one thing that the Queen really loves. Chocolate biscuit cake is the one thing that amuses her every time, McGrady reveals.
"She'll take a small slice every day until eventually there is only one tiny piece, but you have to send that up, she wants to finish the whole of that cake. The chocolate biscuit cake is the only cake that goes back again and again and again."
Well, there you go folks. If you're looking to become best friends with the Queen (and I don't see why you wouldn't want to), then maybe the trick here is to make Caribbean soup, and chocolate biscuit cake. Not at the same time.
