nasty skank byotch

How many percent?

2009-05-15T18:11:00.002Z

Now that we know that we're not, in fact, all going to die from swine flu, we can turn our attention to what our favourite MPs have been spending our money on. Dewsbury MP, Shahid Malik, is the latest parliamentarian to be suspended, after reports that he claimed over £60k over three years on expenses for what may or may not have been his main home. Among the more dubious claims were a £730 massage chair and a £2100 TV, despite his repeated protestations that he'd behaved "one million percent by the book". Quite why anyone would expect someone so inept at math to make adequate expense claims, though, is beyond me.

Where has all the money gone?

2009-02-26T23:48:00.003Z

So let me ask you this. If, in this time of financial crisis, everyone has lost so much money, who's getting it all? I mean, these banks and financial institutions have lost trillions of dollars, judging by how much money we're pouring into them. Well where did it go? Someone must have it somewhere. How exactly do you lose a trillion dollars?

I'm sure it's mine. If you find it, please let me know. I want it back.

One use of strong violence

2009-02-02T14:46:00.004Z

I love the British Board of Film Classification. Nowadays, in the age of consumer choice, they don't just give you their opinion on which films are suitable for which age groups, they also provide you with helpful 'Consumer advice'. According to their website, consumer advice "enables the public to make informed choices. It covers in particular violence, sex, language, drugs and any other matters likely to be of concern to the public."

Below is a list of the type of consumer advice available for movies currently showing at my local cineplex. Bonus points if you can guess which movie corresponds to which piece of advice:

1. Contains very mild threat
2. Contains mild threat and scary moments
3. Contains mild language and sex references
4. Contains strong language and infrequent bloody war violence
5. Contains strong language
6. Contains infrequent strong language
7. Contains strong violence, sex references & one use of very strong language
8. Contains strong language and sex references
9. Contains strong gory violence, horror and sex
10. Contains moderate sex references and one use of strong language
11. Contains strong language
12. Contains strong language and crude sexual references
13. Contains emotionally intense scenes
14. Contains strong language and violence
15. Contains strong sex
16. Contains strong bloody wrestling violence, strong language, sex and drug use
17. Contains moderate fantasy violence and horror
18. Contains strong bloody violence
19. Contains moderate violence and one use of strong language
20. Contains one use of strong language and moderate sex references

The great thing about consumer advice is that it adds a whole new dimension to the cinematic experience. Suppose it's a Friday night, I'm bored, I feel like watching a movie, I check the local listings, but hey! I haven't heard of any of these movies. What to do? I could spend half an hour trying to find out about each of them on Rotten Tomatoes, but by the time I'm through, maybe I've missed all the showings. With consumer advice, I can just choose what I feel like watching. Say I feel like watching a violent film. My options are almost limitless! But if I know what kind of violence I'm into, then I can easily narrow my choices. I'm into bloody wrestling violence myself, so #16 would be the obvious choice (the smart ones among you will have guessed that #16 is The Wrestler). I can even choose what I want to go with my bloody wrestling violence. It's like a buffet, but better! Say I like strong language, drugs and sex. Why, #16 has it all! How could it not win an Oscar?!?

I still find some of the advice slightly confusing, though. Take "one use of strong language" as advertised for #19 and #20. What does that entail exactly? One instance of profanity? Or a single profanity repeated over and over? This would clearly influence my choice. It would be helpful if they could also clarify what kind of strong language, e.g. "one use of strong language beginning with "f", repeatedly" or something such like. My favourite description is "contains emotionally intense scenes". I've never wanted to see one of those.... and now, I never have to!

The correct answers, in numerical order: Beverly Hills Chihuahua; Bolt 3D; Bride Wars; Che: Part One; Frost/Nixon; Ghost Town; Jar City; Milk; My Bloody Valentine 3D; Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; Revolutionary Road; Role Models; Seven Pounds; Slumdog Millionaire; The Reader; The Wrestler; Twilight; Underworld: Rise of the Lycans; Valkyrie; Yes Man

The flesh-eating bug

2008-11-04T19:12:00.003Z

I was out for a walk the other day when I started thinking about all those phenomena that we used to hear about on an almost daily basis, but that have since been forgotten in the archives of history or been superceded by newer, trendier concepts. I think of acid rain, CFCs, lead poisoning, Michael Bolton. One rarely hears about these any more (in the latter case, that is undoubtedly a much welcome relief), although we now hear a lot more about climate change, melamine, mobile phone radiation and Ditta von Teese.

But what about the flesh-eating bug? There was a time when this was the scourge of hospitals, the flesh eating streptococcus causing that wonderfully exotically and scarily named condition, necrotizing fasciitis. It has, of course, more recently given way to equally nasty things, like MRSA and Clostridium difficile. But those of us who appreciate vintage do, on occasion, miss hearing about the flesh-eating bug, so it was with a certain amount of quiet glee that I glanced over at a fellow commuter this morning to peek casually at a headline from The Daily Mail (really, why.....?), which was all the more enjoyable for its quirky ambiguity:

"I Caught Flesh-Eating Bug Doing Gardening"

I rushed to the paper's website (this was a one-off, obviously, not something I do on a regular basis), although I was slightly disappointed to find that this was actually a story about an unfortunate gardener who brushed her hand across her eye and ended up on life support following a nasty eye infection. But even the staunchest of evolutionary biologists would have to admit that that would have been quite a sighting indeed.....

China China, where art thou , oh China?

2008-08-27T20:35:00.003Z

aka 烧肉贩

I was devastated to learn that China China, my vote for the best Chinese restaurant in London's Chinatown, closed down recently for reasons that will probably never be known. Situated in a prime location on the corner of Gerrard Place, roast duck, chicken and pork alluringly hanging on the restaurant front, China China served classic Cantonese food for years, and had the best crispy pork and rice in town. Gone are the days when I could pass by after work for a take out portion of crispy pork, or drop in for duck and preserved vegetables with crispy noodles, pi-pa tofu, or prawn dumplings.

I am now forced to undertake an exhaustive research of all the restaurants in Chinatown, to find a suitable replacement for my crispy pork cravings....... I will report back. In the meantime, I have no choice but to make my own...

Doing the J-walk again....

2008-08-07T15:33:00.003Z

Phew! Having spent a few days in Vienna, let me tell you that it's a real relief to be back in a country that allows jaywalking. I mean, I'm all for respecting local laws and customs and all, and I certainly don't want to be fined 50 Euros for failing to cross the road at the designated pedestrian crossings. Nor do I want to undermine the imperative to cross the road safely. I have to admit, however, that I don't think I can trust a country that penalizes pedestrians for jaywalking. Firstly, making jaywalking illegal is a recognition of the preferential treatment that motorized transport receives over pedestrians. The average intersection might allow cars in any one direction to pass through for one or two minutes at a time, while giving pedestrians only some 20 seconds to cross the road, despite the fact that cars generally travel at 10 times the speed of pedestrians. This, in addition to the extra distance that pedestrians must walk to get to a crossing, means that pedestrians spend proportionately more time crossing intersections than do motorized vehicles. Secondly, such preferential treatment of motorized transport perpetuates gross inequities in urban living. Although many pedestrians choose not to own a car, a great many don't own one because of financial rather than personal reasons. Car ownership is, however, rarely forced upon people (except perhaps in ridiculous cities that are built around the car). Urban public spaces are thus preferentially occupied by private, mobile spaces that pollute the air for everyone else at no additional penalty (exceptions being, perhaps, cities that have congestion charges). The very least cities could do to offset this imposition is to make jaywalking legal (under jaywalking, I exclude skimpily-clad, extremely drunk women who jump in front of a bus on a Friday night for no particularly good reason - that's just dumb).

Val de Loire

2008-07-19T11:16:00.005Z

How can you possibly not like the Loire Valley? A place that has more castles that have been written about in Disney stories, where a salad involves rillons (pork belly cooked in lard and browned with caramel), lardons and ham accompanied by a few lettuce leaves (but at least it comes with a decent dressing, which is more than can be said for most salads you get in London....), where anything that isn't a salad is served with frites, where trying to get an outdoor table for lunch invites dramatic remonstrations from a waitress complaining "Mais c'est impossible! Voyez! C'est complet!", where turning up for dinner at a restaurant without a reservation is met with looks of disapproval from a dour-faced waitress and replies of "Vous n'avez pas reservé? Je ne sais pas, hein?", where you can have dinner in a troglodyte cave, where a quick lunch ends up taking hours, where it takes at least three hours to have dinner in a half-empty restaurant that will serve no more than five tables on a Saturday night?

Château at Saumur, where a castle has existed since the 12th Century

The Special K Challenge

2008-07-10T20:45:00.003Z

It's been a while since I've had a good rant. I feel like one is coming on. I could bore you with a dissin' review of 'Wanted', which is a really dumb movie (a fraternity of weaving assassins who get their kill orders from a loom of fate?!? Gimme a break....... who thinks up this stuff?), but in this time of rising fuel prices and the escalating cost of grains, I feel like I should pick on Special K instead. Listen carefully now, here comes the science bit.... here is what Kellogg's thinks you should do for the summer:

First calculate your BMI (Body Mass Index) which is a calculation related to your height and weight. In order to take part in the challenge it should be 25 or over.
Eat up to a 45g serving of any Special K cereal with 125ml semi-skimmed milk for breakfast, have another for lunch OR dinner, with a third nutritionally-balanced meal for two weeks.
Snack on fruit, vegetables and Special K bars and Special K Mini Breaks.
Ensure a regular and adequate intake of alcohol free drinks.

So basically, you have to be classified as 'overweight' and eat 90g of Special K a day for two weeks, which clearly can't be that good for you, because if you look at what Kellogg's considers to be a 'nutritionally-balanced meal', roast beef should apparently be on your menu. I'm guessing that means there are a few things missing from your nutritionally dubious bowls of Special K. Not to mention that according to their nutritional information, Special K, Special K bars and Special K Mini Breaks are 17%, 35% and 27% sugar respectively. Three out of four people might be slimmer after two weeks, but they're probably well on their way to renal failure and diabetes......

Tortilla de patata

2008-03-13T21:12:00.004Z

Spanish omelette

You won't be surprised to hear that in Spain there's no such thing as a Spanish omelette (there is a French omelette, which is just a folded omelette). In Spain, a Spanish omelette is called tortilla de patata (potato omelette). The basic recipe just has eggs, potatoes and onion, but you can make it more interesting by adding chorizo, spinach or roasted peppers. Contrary to what you might see on TV, a tortilla should never be cooked under the grill like a frittata. A tortilla is always turned over, which is, after all, the fun bit. No cheating now!

Ingredients:

7 new potatoes, thinly sliced
6 eggs, well beaten in a large bowl
1 onion, halved and then sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

In a 20cm frying pan with a lid, fry the onion and garlic in olive oil until soft and translucent and set aside (about 10 mins.). Next, fry the potatoes until soft. This takes a while, so you could aid things by adding some water at regular intervals and covering to steam them. You could cheat and microwave or parboil the potatoes, but I always find it tastes better if they're fried. Don't skimp on the olive oil now! And make sure they're fully cooked before you take them off the heat, as they won't cook much more when you add the egg.

When the potatoes are done, mix with the onion and garlic and pour into the beaten eggs. Mix well and pour the mixture back into the frying pan. Cook over medium heat, using a spatula to slowly work around the circumference of the omelette. When the egg has more or less solidified around the edges, the omelette is ready to turn over. Cover the pan with a lid and flip it over, then slide the omelette carefully back into the pan. Cook for another couple of minutes checking with a fork that the egg is fully cooked.

Eat hot or cold with some good bread, or slice in half and put in a sandwich.

Mangoes and Curry Leaves

2008-03-13T20:56:00.006Z

Mangoes and Curry Leaves, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

If you ever wanted to make Indian food, but found it daunting, then this is the book for you. I got this as a Christmas gift from the G* and it's a fantastic book. It has recipes from all over the subcontinent, with anecdotes from the authors' travels, great pictures and some delicious, foolproof recipes.

A selection of tried and tested below:

Katchhi Village Potato Curry

Zinet's Chicken with Tomato and Greens
This recipe is fantastic. I wish I could tell you what it involves, but the G* made it, so I have no idea. I can only vouch for the fact that it tastes really good

Aromatic Slow-Cooked Chicken
On the face of it, this recipe looks pretty dubious. Anything that involves boiling chicken for half an hour makes me suspicious, but this is really tender and flavourful. The rice vinegar and fresh coriander make all the difference.

One million percent

2008-02-26T20:09:00.005Z

"X percent", where X > 100, is an expression that should be banished to the dustbin of English phraseology on the grounds that it's senseless and moronic. For a start, the phrase, in the context in which it is commonly used, is mathematically impossible. Expressions such as "I expect you to give 110%" or "When I go out there, I give 110%" are meant to get across the idea that you're expected to work very hard on a particular task, or that you're so devoted to a cause (say, trying to beat Roger Federer on the tennis court) that you will invest an extra-ordinary amount of effort to it. People who use this expression, however, are clearly not working very hard, for if they were, they would soon realize that you can only give a maximum of 100 parts out of 100, or 100 percent. I can imagine that the first time someone used the expression "I want you to give it 110%" it must have sounded quite eloquent and inspirational, but really, people should know better by now. Instead, they come up with even more absurd variations on this phrase: "I want you to give it 110%. No, 200%. No, 1000%!" Why not 10,000%, or 1 million percent? They're all equally impossible. Such people may think that they're expressing an increasing sense of fervour but, in fact, all they're doing is demonstrating a clear disdain for long division.

There are, of course, instances where "X percent", where X > 100, can be used validly, as in "The Zimbabwean economy has experienced rates of inflation of 1600%". But really, in that case, the problems lie elsewhere, because who can really operate in an economy in which the rate of inflation changes hourly? What you really want to know is the price of stuff on the black market.

So I'm inviting you to join my crusade to eradicate such stupid expressions from the English language. And no, I'm not gonna give this crusade 110%. I'm not even gonna give it 100%, because mathematics also dictates that if I did that, I wouldn't get anything else done. But maybe 0.005% would be an OK amount of effort to devote to this.

Naan pizza

2008-02-17T21:58:00.003Z

This was inspired by a recipe in Nigella Express. I say inspired, but in fact, I can take no credit for the inspiration, since G* made it all. It's super easy (especially when someone else does all the work), and works really well. Just get some naan bread, pour over some chopped tomatoes (or you can make yourself some passata (or have someone else make it for you), although that's not so express....), some cheese (buffalo mozzarella works well), and toppings of your choice (I recommend parma ham and rocket). Then warm in oven until suitably pizza-like.

Also works well as a substantial bruschetta with some farmhouse bread.

Recipe competition: Very crunchy granola

2008-02-17T21:23:00.002Z

This was one of G*'s entries for the competition. Being rather fond of Lizi's granola from The Good Carb Food Company, I was shocked when my local health food shop hiked the price up by 14p in a week, so I refused to buy it any more. I've now resolved to making my own. This recipe, I'm told, comes from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café: Breakfast Served All Day. So far, I've made it without the soy protein powder, since I only seem to be able to find the vanilla-flavoured stuff used by body builders. Apart from the oats and barley and oat bran (I haven't yet figured out what oat bran is, so I haven't used that yet), it has pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and almonds (although I've used ground cashews as I have a big bag of them in the cupboard). It's certainly very crunchy and even better than Lizi's. And you can try making it with different types of honey or maple syrup. Manuka honey seems to work quite well.

Serve with home-made yogurt for a perfect start to the day.

Tommy Lee Jones vs The World

2008-02-10T08:46:00.000Z

No Country For Old Men (2007), Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Carry McDonald, Joel and Ethan Coen (Dir.)
In The Valley Of Elah (2007), Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Paul Haggis (Dir.)

There are some things that are so far removed from our understanding of how the world should be that we don't know how we should react. Sometimes we try and find words to describe them, but often it seems that the words have all been used up describing less consequential things. Tommy Lee Jones has chosen to make movies instead. He seems to be leaving his weightier roles for the latter years of his career (he probably didn't think he had the wrinkles for it before), putting in two outstanding performances, as a retiring Texan sheriff in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men and an ex-military father trying to uncover the truth behind his son's disappearance in Paul Haggis' In The Valley Of Elah.

The most astonishing thing about these two films is how much they share in common, not just in terms of personnel (Josh Brolin also appears in both films, as do - according to The Guardian - two other actors, and the films also share the same cinematographer, Roger Deakins), but also in terms of sentiment. Both depict characters overtaken by world events, for whom their environment has become so unfamiliar as to be completely unfathomable.

In No Country, Tommy Lee Jones represents the old men of the title, a sheriff on the verge of retirement confronted by a series of grotesque killings resulting from a drug deal gone bad. When he finds out that a local welder (Josh Brolin) is on the run with $2m of drug money, he realizes he must find him before the killers contracted to recover the money do so. The sheriff is, however, resigned to his limitations, a man who observes with incredulity at how the world has changed around him, whose values could not possibly have prepared him to confront a man like Anton Chigurh, the mysterious killer who will stop at nothing to recover the $2m. In one of the more light-hearted yet telling of the many memorable scenes from the movie, sheriff Bell sits at a diner with his deputy, reading the paper:

"My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out
war. I don't know any other word for
it. Who are these folks? I don't know...

...Here last week they found this
couple out in California, they would
rent out rooms to old people and then
kill 'em and bury 'em in the yard and
cash their social security checks.
They'd torture them first, I don't
know why. Maybe their television
set was broke. And this went on until,
and here I quote...

...'Neighbors were alerted when a man
ran from the premises wearing only a
dog collar.'
You can't make up such a
thing as that. I dare you to even try.

...But that's what it took, you'll notice.
Get someone's attention. Diggin'
graves in the back yard didn't bring any."

It's these incomprehensible events that make this no country for old men and that put old men at a loss as to what to do about someone like Chigurh, a man who we're told has "Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that", and whose conviction is so strong that morality no longer becomes relevant. Chigurh is played with chilling effect by the excellent Javier Bardém. The dodgy haircut alone is enough to terrify you. No Country For Old Men is another great contribution to that film genre, the modern western (I think of Lone Star, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada...), that sets modern day events against the timeless, expansive , desolate backdrop of the south. The script is full of classic lines, sharp dialogue and cutting sarcasm and the film itself full of visual details that will keep Coen buffs talking for years.

In The Valley Of Elah takes its title from the biblical battlefield in which David fought Goliath. The title itself is laden with irony, as Paul Haggis' film is noticeably ambiguous about who is David and who is Goliath. Indeed, that's the point of the film, which is a critical inquiry into the fate of soldiers returning from Iraq. After being informed that his youngest son has absconded from his base following his return from duty in Iraq, Hank Deerfield sets out to find him, teaming up with a local police detective to try and uncover a military cover-up. Giving any more away would spoil the film, so that's all I'll say about the plot. The film works on many levels, as a father's personal journey to find his son, both literally and emotionally, as a social critique on military action, and as a study of the effects of war on individuals or inter-generational friendship. Theron gives a fine performance as the single mother detective ridiculed by her male colleagues, but Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding in his portrayal of a man whose entire life has been shaped by the military - to the extent that he still finds it inappropriate to present himself in front of a woman without a shirt - but whose circumstances lead him to question many of those values to which he himself has appeared. The film intercuts Deerfield's investigations with eerie video footage from Iraq recovered from his son's mobile phone that hints at the horrifying events that might have led to his disappearance.

The two films remind us of the non-Hollywood reality in which the good guys don't always win. Haggis' film is by far the bleaker of the two, however, for it tells us that, in sending troops to the grotesque theatre of Elah, we don't know whether we're sending them as Davids or Goliaths, for these events are so far removed from any comprehensible notion of morality that we have no framework by which to judge what's right and what's wrong. The film is, in the end, a cry for help, expressed with great poignancy in its final scene.

How to: Cook a goose

2008-01-30T19:37:00.000Z

Right. Now that we've all had time to recover from the excesses of Christmas, I feel I can sit back with a sense of clinical detachment and tell you about the goose. The goose has been gaining popularity as a Christmas meal among yuppiehood, no doubt due to the influence of celebrity chefhood, because people are getting bored of pasty white turkey, and because geese can't easily be bred intensively, which appeals to the judicious carnivore's conscience. All that aside, though, goose meat has a much more intense and satisfying flavour than turkey. The goose is also something like thirty percent fat by body weight (I exaggerate perhaps, but it's a ridiculous amount of fat), which makes it much less likely to turn out dry.

Sophie Grigson has a couple of good recipes for goose stuffing with cranberry and sage. Stuff the cavity with the stuffing and an onion. You might just want to put one stuffing inside and cook the other in balls outside, as it reduces the cooking time. Seal the cavity with string (or improvise with wooden skewers....). Cover in foil and cook in an oven pre-heated to 190 degrees Celsius. I suggest using a deep oven tray to collect all the fat at regular intervals, which you can use to baste the goose and roast vegetables, and store for future use. Reckon on about half an hour per kilo plus twenty, and remove the foil for the last half hour.

1. The beginning.....

2. Stuffing the goose

3. Sealing the cavity

4. Ready to cook

5. The end product, end section

6. The end product, side elevation

7. Goose fat

Recipe competition: Daube

2008-01-30T19:07:00.000Z

This one is from BJ. A French stew of beef, mushrooms and sundried tomatoes cooked in wine with an orange rind. I can think of no more deserving recipe to inaugurate my brand new 22cm cerise Le Creuset cocotte..... it's a really easy recipe, though it does take time to cook, so it's better suited for those slow, lazy winter Sundays (i.e. EVERY Sunday until June.......). It's a substantial, rich stew with earthy flavours and a twist of tangy citrus, and goes well with rice, pasta or potatoes. And having just had some leftovers, I can confirm that it doesn't suffer from being left in the fridge a couple of days. It does, however, help if your wine bottle doesn't have a powdery cork that decomposes upon opening and causes red wine to spray all over your face, white top and kitchen appliances........

Apple and cranberry steamed pudding with sticky toffee sauce

2008-01-17T21:42:00.000Z

For the filling:
4 eating apples, peeled, cored and cubed
25 grams unsalted butter
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
50 grams walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped

For the sauce:
175 grams light muscovado sugar
125 grams unsalted butter
200 grams crème fraîche

For the batter:
175 grams unsalted butter
130 grams golden caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
150 grams self-raising flour

Apples, cranberries in a pan
Cook with butter if you can.
Add the sugar when they’re brown,
Leave aside to cool them down.

Crème fraîche now with butter and sugar
Over low heat melt together,
Bring to boil and shortly simmer.
Toffee sauce, not for the slimmer.

Add chopped walnuts to the filling.
Caref’lly now and without spilling
Pour some of the toffee sauce;
When a third’s gone you can pause.

Grease a basin with some butter,
Quickly now, you must not stutter.
Cream the butter and the sugar,
Gently add the beaten eggs.
Fold the flour and then the salt,
Steady though, no room for fault.

O’er the filling next pour the batter,
Think not how you’ll end up fatter.
The whole thing you must now seal,
Listen up, ‘tis a big deal:

Take some parchment and some foil,
This part’s worth the ensuing toil.
For the pudding to expand
I must now make a demand,
That you take the double sheet
And in the centre make a pleat.

Tie this lid down with a string,
Now the cooking can begin.
Put some water in a pot
Just to halfway up the top
Of the basin, lid up-facing.
Cover well until we stop.

Ninety minutes it will need,
A long time steaming ‘tis indeed.
But your guests will want some coffee
While you warm the remaining toffee,
And with this pudding you’ll succeed
To disgust them with their greed.

Santoku

2008-01-17T21:29:00.000Z

On countless kitchen counters cutting
Plump tomatoes, new potatoes, slicing
Leeks and lettuce, beets and peppers,
Triads of scallion, garlic, ginger next,
There’s a dinner to be fixed.

Breasts of chicken now we mince,
Flesh gives way, but I don’t whince.
Giblets, joints and skin and bones,
Above his dulcet tenor tones
His artful skill my master hones.

Quickly now, the squash needs dicing,
The rest is there, ready for spicing.
Caref’lly next those herbs you’ll chop;
They’ll eas’ly bruise if my heel you drop.
My rhythm follow, never stop.

On you my virtues I bestow,
With time our mutual bond will grow.
And now we’ve done this one last task,
One final thing of you I ask:
A whetstone, please, my crimes to mask.

Ham in Coca-Cola

2007-12-24T15:23:00.000Z

This sounds totally gross, but don't knock it till you've tried it. And you really have to make it yourself to appreciate this recipe in all its glory. There are few things more fun to do than to pour a two-litre bottle of Coke on a 2-kilogram piece of ham (or gammon, rather). There's a good recipe for this in Nigella Lawson's Nigella Bites (amusingly, under the section headed Trashy). Basically, you get a mild-cured piece of gammon (you can soak it overnight to remove some of the salt), put it skin down in a large stockpot with one onion, pour two litres of Coke (the normal version, not Diet or Cherry or Orange or Zero or any of that), bring it to the boil and simmer it for two hours:

When it's done, let it cool slightly and take the skin off. Make a criss-cross pattern on the fat with a sharp knife and stick some cloves where the lines meet. Then spread a couple of tablespoons of dark treacle all over the fat, some demerara sugar and mustard powder, and cook for about 15 minutes at 180C.

Serve with vegetables of your choice

The ham has a deep, smoky, caramelized flavour. Be sure to keep the cooking stock, which you can use as a base for stews (in small doses, as it's very sweet!).

Recipe competition: wasabi seared tuna

2007-12-21T23:39:00.000Z

This is another one from SN. Must be from her fusion collection. Tuna steak marinated in wasabi and soy sauce, seared (it helps if you have one of those griddle pans, so you get the grill marks, like proper chefs do....), and served atop butternut squash mash. Great winter dish, and you don't have to worry too much about your heart giving out.

Season's apologies....

2007-12-21T23:20:00.000Z

Click on me to make me bigger...

Dear All,

I can only apologize for my lack of organization, and the fact that I nowadays spend more time in meetings than I care to think about, and hope that you'll forgive me for not getting around to sending you individual Christmas cards. In my defence, the goodwill was there, but time forsook me.

Grovelling aside, I wish you all a nice break from the shameless, mass consumerism (what's the point? The sales are just a few days away....), being trampled over by demented shoppers, run over by crazed mothers and their Bugaboos and general feeling of mania. I hope y'all managed to get that Nintendo Wii for your dearly beloved and that you'll have endless hours of fun playing Guitar Heroes. And finally, all the best for a happy and prosperous 2008.

In the meantime, here's the latest from my kitchen...... still waitin' on those recipes y'all....

Recipe competition - Black Midnight Cake

2007-12-19T20:56:00.000Z

This entry was submitted by SSR. It's a rich chocolate cake, kind of fiddle to make, as it requires two cake tins and some surgery if the two halves rise too much in the oven. The icing recipe supplied by SSR was also a bit dodgy and requires a rather lengthy period of stirring, for which I clearly didn't have enough patience. I have to thank G* for fixing it...

All that aside, the cake is fantastic and the unorthodox icing quickly improves on cooling. It tastes much better after a day in the fridge.

Stirrin' icin'

Black Midnight Cake

The Editors

2007-12-19T20:31:00.000Z

The Editors, live at the Brixton Academy, October 8, 2007

The Editors' second album, An End Has A Start, is the best CD I've bought this year (of course, you haven't seen what else I've bought....). A mix of The Smiths, Radiohead, Coldplay and U2, the Birmingham band nonetheless has its own distinct sound and style. There's not a bad song in the whole album, which gets better with every listen.

Their sold-out gig at the Brixton Academy was a manic, awesome affair, with Tom Smith climbing all over his piano and running around the stage like a crazed man until he eventually managed to rip out his leads and threw his guitar on the ground in contempt. But he has a compelling voice and delivers lyrics with a punch ("How can you know what things are worth if your hands won't move to do a day's work?"). The songs are full of fantastic guitar riffs and original drums sections. Escape The Nest is my personal favourite. We were deaf for about two hours afterwards, but it was well worth it!

I'm back!

2007-12-19T19:55:00.000Z

Wow, I can't believe it's been nearly three months since I posted something. It's been pretty hectic, so I can only apologize for my virtual absence. I better make a list of things I should have blogged about, in the hope that I'll gradually manage to catch up...

1. The Editors, live at the Brixton Academy - what a fantastic gig that was!
2. Josh Ritter, live at the Shepherd's Bush Empire - fun, folk and potatoes from the Idaho rockster
3. SSR's midnight chocolate cake
4. SN's seared wasabi tuna
5. The Sixteen x2 - A Ceremony of Carols and The Messiah
6. Ham in Coca Cola
7. G*'s cranberry and white chocolate cookies - yum!
8. The French Table - a great restaurant in leafy Surbiton
9. Jiu Zhai Gou and Huang Long - more travels around Sichuan
10. Celeriac!

Anything else I've left out?

中秋节 - Mid-Autumn Festival

2007-09-25T21:20:00.000Z

Since it's the mid-Autumn festival today, I thought I'd leave you with a traditional poem upon which to ponder.

静夜思

床前明月光，疑是地上霜

举头望明月，低头思故乡

- 李白

Thoughts on a tranquil night

The moon shines brightly before my bed,

I suspect frost covers the ground.

I watch the bright moon, as I crane my head.

Inclining, my thoughts turn homeward-bound.

- Li Bai

Macondo

2007-09-24T20:36:00.000Z

Macondo
8 & 9 Hoxton Square
London N1

Could Macondo be the best café in the whole of London? I think so. Exposed brick walls, cozy leather sofas, this is a great place to while away the Sunday morning hours. If you while away enough hours, you might as well stay for lunch. Despite my initial apprehensions, the place does actually serve authentic tortilla de patatas and paella, as well as a variety of other appealing foods, which yesterday included mushroom stroganoff, some aubergine bake-type thing, lasagna, and the infamous broccoli with cheese, which was a bit random. But forget all that, this place has the BEST cakes ever. They have REAL cheesecake. None of this Philadelphia fridge cake nonsense, I mean proper baked cheesecake made with fromage blanc, drizzled with honey and served with whipped cream. Their coffee's pretty darn good, too, and they serve an interesting array of drinks, including mint and lime iced tea (highly recommended).

Service can be a bit flaky, though. You have to order at the till and it's all slightly chaotic when it gets busy. I ordered and paid, and then they forgot our order, and then they forgot I'd paid. It seems a bit strange given that the food is actually on display in trays sitting atop shelves. I mean, you could just give me a spoon and I'd have no problem serving myself, since it all looks so yummy! But anyway, our server was having kind of a stressed out day.

Watching the Hoxton crowd is part of the experience. They can certainly be, well, let's say "expressive" in their fashion sense, and they range from continental chain smokers to doctorate students conducting interviews about cross-cultural ethnicity for their humanities dissertation.

And that Nutella cake.... it's just waiting to be tried...... maybe next time.......

Proper, baked cheesecake (bottom) and carrot and orange cake (affectionately described to us as "squidgy" cake (it's drenched in honey, so mind your kidneys.....)

The window-cleaning racket

2007-09-19T19:47:00.000Z

On the third week of every month, I get a note through my mailbox from my dutiful neighbour, telling me that the window cleaner is due on that Wednesday. In exchange for this note, I then put a fixed amount in an envelope (I won't disclose how much it costs to get one's windows cleaned) and put it through her mailbox, which she then pays to the window cleaner while I'm at work. I don't feel like I get a particularly good deal; because of the building's layout, the window cleaner can't actually clean the windows to my bedroom, and I don't get a discount for this. I'm also not convinced that my windows are any cleaner, so I'm trying to see whether I notice any difference, as I've actually forgotten to pass my money through my neighbour's mailbox these past two months. So far, I can't confirm that my windows are any dirtier than my neighbours'.

I've also noticed that every month, these notes are written on stationery swiped from a different hotel. This month it was quite a snazzy Swiss hotel. I'm beginning to suspect whether my window cleaning funds are being misappropriated for other purposes. Of course, my monthly contributions don't pay for a holiday in the Swiss Alps. But this is clearly not small-time embezzlement. I suspect a window cleaning racket. A national, underground network of "dutiful neighbours" who collect our window cleaning money and pool it so that each month, one of them can spend a week in a snazzy hotel and swipe some more stationery. I'm considering a major undercover investigation...

Becoming Madame Mao

2007-09-16T20:53:00.000Z

Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min

"Well, I won't surrender. When I was a child my mother used to tell me that I should think of myself as grass - born to be stepped on. But I think of myself as a peacock among hens. I am not being judged fairly. Side by side Mao Tse-Tung and I stood, yet he is considered a god while I am a demon. Mao Tse-Tung and I were married for thirty-eight years. The number is thirty-eight."

Anchee Min's follow up to the popular Empress Orchid is a fictional account of the life of Jiang Ching, wife of Chairman Mao and leader of the infamous Gang of Four. Although a work of fiction, the novel is based around historical events, and Anchee Min displays great imagination and empathy in portraying a little-known but highly influential historical figure. She presents a character whose constant defiance of Chinese society's oppression of women results in a resentful, angry and proud character who, even unto Mao's death, struggled for recognition and what was invariably unrequited attention. Although not as colourful as Empress Orchid, Min's writing style in this second novel is much bolder. Quick, short sentences reflect the protagonist's temperament, and she continuously shifts the narrative perspective between the first and third person, often contrasting Jiang Ching's own perspective on events with historical fact. The second half of the book is not as effective as the first, partly because the narrative style is difficult to maintain, and because the earlier years are arguably more interesting, despite the fact that the historical repercussions of the later years are far more significant. Nevertheless, this is a highly accomplished and original work.

Recipe competition: Chocolate pud

2007-09-16T20:36:00.000Z

For those of you sending recipes for my recipe competition, you can follow progress here. I'll be reproducing all the recipes and posting them so you can see the final product. I should stress that what I write on here is not an indication of the recipe's chances of winning, since the final judgment will be made by an independent panel of jurors. Also, I'm not posting the actual recipes here, since I'll be compiling these in a recipe book for y'all.

So, let's begin! To start things off, here's a recipe from SN. A yummy chocolate pudding that takes minutes to make. Crisp on the outside, deliciously gooey on the inside, but not excessively heavy. A great ending to any dinner party. With thanks to GK for help with the faithful reproduction of the original recipe.

funkynewwords

2007-09-15T08:18:00.000Z

So I was described by AR yesterday as a "superachievingnerdybutloveablemonkey". I don't have an official definition for this new term, but it's sort of self-explanatory. I like this great potential to develop new words by stringing lots of adjectives together. It's almost germanic. AR also coined this new term: "ninjafoodtennismusicetc". I can give you an official definition for this: "A class of recreational activity that comprises watching a movie followed by a meal of a complementary cuisine. Tennis and/or music, with particular reference to 20th Century Soviet composers, may be directly or indirectly involved. The term is particularly associated with Japanese films and cuisine."

Quote of the Day, Sept 13, 2007

2007-09-13T21:45:00.000Z

"I like my boots, and that's something that capitalism gave me."

- Naomi Klein, speaking at the Queen Elizabeth Hall about her new book, "The Shock Doctrine", comments on positive aspects of capitalism

忍者办事 - Death by Ninja

2007-09-12T22:00:00.000Z

Peter, 这个加拿大商人，不了解在中国做商业应该怎么办。他被一些黑社会的忍者教训了！有没有人会复仇他啊？

Canadian businessman Peter doesn't understand how business is conducted in China. He's gonna be taught a lesson by ninjas of the criminal underworld. Will there be anyone to avenge him?

Things I learnt in Rotterdam

2007-09-05T20:26:00.000Z

1. Dutch people don't jaywalk because they don't have to. Cars actually stop for them. You're more likely to be run down by a reckless cyclist than a bus.
2. Dutch adults drink milk in public.
3. Dutch people smoke a lot! This was rather unexpected, given #1 and #2. I suppose cycling/pedestrianism, milk drinking and smoking aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, and there's nothing to say that those who do #1 and #2 are the same people as those who do #3, but still.
4. There are worse places than Holland to get a craving for Japanese food. That said, the 'best' (reputedly, from my extensive internet search) Japanese restaurant in Rotterdam, Sakura, is actually run by Chinese people. I'm not sure if this has been made clear to the local populace, although they must know that you're highly unlikely to get steak served with egg fried rice and stir-fried vegetables in a Japanese restaurant (but man, the steak was good!). Also, their wakame salad 'with special sauce' is, in fact, just a salad with thousand island dressing and some wakame strips on top.
5. There's good food to be had in Rotterdam, although not particularly cheap. Loos, despite the somewhat unappealing name, is a great, casual, if rather smoky, bar/café/restaurant. They serve a simpler menu in the bar section, which I would have tried had I been in the mood for smoked food. The raised restaurant bit at the back has a pricier, but excellent a la carte selection. I had the set menu, which came with a foamy, light mussel soup, leg of lamb with spinach and mustard sauce on mashed potato, and a coconut sponge cake with poached pear for 29 Euros.
6. I didn't get a chance to try any lattes, but their espressos aren't bad at all!

My first latte

2007-09-01T19:53:00.000Z

I don't think I ever published my first latte, so here it is, oh great pride of my espresso machine...

Back from my oh-so-brief sojourn in the French Alps. The weather was too good for me to be bothered to blog about it, so you'll have to be patient while I gather my willpower to post you more pictures of alpine culinaria. And nastyskankbyotch is off to a conference in Rotterdam tomorrow. I wonder if they have nice lattes in Rotterdam. Watch this space.....

Chamonix 2007: Day 2

2007-08-25T16:02:00.000Z

1. Went up the Aiguille du Midi for some views of Mont Blanc:

2. Stopped for lunch:

3. Solved the Euclidian extension of Pythagoras' Theorem for three dimensions:4. Hiked to Mer de Glace:

5. Had a tartiflette:

Chamonix 2007: Day 1

2007-08-25T07:45:00.000Z

Oui, cette saison est encore arrivée. Fun, food and frolicking in the mountains.... actually, that sounds rather Rogers and Hammerstein-like. What I'm talking about is a gruelling, five-day marathon of hiking and stuffing oneself with fine French food.

En résumé, le premier jour:

1. Hiked up to Lac Vert:

2. Had a picnic:

3. Enjoyed the mountain view:

真是十分漂亮！

4. Had dinner at La Calèche, a museum of the rustic macabre, with a busy decor of copper pans, animal heads, musical instruments and, as the name implies, a big horse-drawn carriage, along with other random paraphernalia:

Tarte au reblochon

Potée savoyarde

Cappuccino de framboises, glace pistache

Petit café

被外星人绑架 - Abducted by Aliens

2007-08-20T21:07:00.000Z

这个星期的ChinesePod高中级课非常有趣。一个人跟我们告诉他至今憋在心里的秘密：他被外星人绑架了！要是你想知道外星人相貌怎么样，飞碟是不是你想象中的那么样，或者你有一个外星人绑架的经历，让你访客www.chinesepod.com的网站看一看：

Learn Chinesepod on Your Terms at ChinesePod.com

Summer movies (part 3)

2007-08-19T09:25:00.000Z

The Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass (Dir.), Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney

Who is Jason Bourne? Find out in this latest installment of the Robert Ludlum adaptations. I must admit to not remembering much about the first two, other than the fact that I didn't like them. That's probably largely to do with my having a considerable distaste for Matt Damon, as well as having watched them on a 4 inch-square screen on an economy class flight to somewhere. However, this third chapter is quite compelling, even if it doesn't particularly stretch Matt Damon's acting abilities. Having had his memory, identity and girlfriend taken away from him, Bourne returns to get to the source, a top-secret CIA operation known as Blackbriar. His investigation takes him to Paris, London, Madrid, Tangiers and New York, and reunites him with CIA agent Nicky Parsons, played by Julia Stiles. There's non-stop, engaging, implausible action all the way through. The film is like a feature-length hybrid of Alias and 24, and suffers from much the same downsides of those two shows, namely a rather one-dimensional portrayal of US response to paranoid national security issues, an equally one-dimensional obsession with violence and revenge, and the ridiculous attempt to portray computer geeks and surveillance technology as ultra-cool. Interestingly, the CIA and NSA always tend to come off badly as portrayed in Hollywood movies, in general contrast to the US military and the FBI. There's a thesis to be written somewhere in there. All that aside, it's all mindless entertainment, particularly if you like the increasing trend for rooftop chases (To Catch A Thief is still the original and the best, closely followed by The Untouchables).

Compelling offers

2007-08-19T09:02:00.000Z

This week, Peter Fahy, a chief constable from Cheshire, called for the legal drinking age to be raised to 21. This is presumably following all the great evidence from the US of how effective this policy is, and ignoring the fact that no other country in the EU has a limit set at 21 years. On the issue of measures designed to make parents take greater responsibility for their children's actions, he has this to say, which is commendable for using equal measures of the type of paternalistic and fascist language that is so prevalent in political life these days:

"There are schemes whereby youth workers and other people offer support to parents who may have a problem with a youngster who's drinking. But we find a lot of parents will not take up that offer... If people are not willing to take up that offer, then there is some form of sanction which actually makes them come and take up that offer."

Presumably, what he means is that when parents are "offered" support, it's up to them to decide that they want it. Of course, not all parents may actually want it, in which case they should be "encouraged" to want it by means of "sanctions". These must be compelling offers indeed. Or perhaps it's just indicative of the fact that we're now far better at devising imaginative language than imaginative policy.

Summer movies (part 2)

2007-08-12T06:20:00.000Z

Die Hard 4.0, Len Wiseman (Dir.), Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, Maggie Q

I know what you're thinking. "Die Hard 4.0?!? You must really be scraping the bottom of the summer movie barrel......". Well, not quite. There's still Evan Almighty, Bratz and Surf's Up somewhere further down, but trust me, I ain't going there..... In fact, Die Hard 4.0 is the best of the Die Hard series. You may not think that counts for much, but the difference is that the fourth installment was directed by Len Wiseman, he of the cult, future vampire noir Underworld series (you know, the one with Kate Beckinsale? OK, never mind.....), which means that it has a certain edge go it. This time, John McClane (who, incidentally, looks more like he should be in a movie about a washed up boxer) responds to what appears to be a routine call to pick up a suspected hacker, but becomes entangled in a plot to unleash a "fire sale", a four-step cyberhack designed to bring the country to its knees by disabling transportation and utilities, spreading fear through the media and stealing lots of money. Justin Long is entertaining as the paranoid hacker who becomes McClane's sidekick; Olyphant (whose name sounds like it should appear in the dictionary as an antonym to sycophant) and Q play the rather clichéd bad guys. It's mindless action all the way through, all very implausible, and there are lots of guns and explosions and stuff. Oh, and the guy from District 13 (Banlieu 13) is in it (you know, the French one with all the parkour runners in it....).

Fauré vs Mozart

2007-08-07T18:07:00.000Z

Fauré Requiem - Harry Christophers (conductor), Elin Manahan Thomas (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), The Sixteen, The Academy of St Martin in the Fields, live at the Barbican, Aug 2, 2007

Mozart Requiem - Harry Christophers (conductor), Lucy Crowe (soprano), Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Robert Murray (tenor), Matthew Rose (bass), The Sixteen, The Symphony of Harmony and Invention, Aug 4, 2007

At least Fauré and Mozart were never anywhere near enough to each other to have a spat, being separated by some 51 years. They did both know how to write a piece to commemorate death, and The Sixteen performed both of these settings of the Requiem last week at the Barbican. The Sixteen is without doubt one of the best and most adaptable chamber choirs around, with a repertoire that spans five centuries. Their annual Messiah performance at the Barbican is always sold out, and their concert schedule includes an annual pilgrimage of English cathedrals. All this aside, they sound amazing. I know what you're thinking. There must be sixteen of them. But, in fact, there are twenty-something on them, depending on the performance, including an excellent section of male altos, and listening to them is like being hit by a wave of sound that swells and sways at their conductor's subtlest command. Christophers, incidentally, is a genius, seemingly creating magic out of the air.

Yes, anyway, enough gushing. The choir have just recorded a new album with Welsh soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, although she was a bit disappointing in the first concert, with minor intonation issues throughout, and a thin voice that didn't particularly appeal. The Pie Jesu was particularly unappealing. Roderick Williams, on the other hand, has a rich, full voice, and was a popular soloist. On Saturday, the choir started with Vivaldi's Gloria. They were slightly under par by their standards, probably saving their voices for the Mozart Requiem in the second half. But all that was forgotten by the time the Laudamus te arrived, and the rest of the concert was almost literally worth dying for. Wyn-Rogers was the most consistent of the four soloists, but Lucy Crowe, despite being less technically accomplished and repeatedly shading the top of her register, provided silky and colourful singing throughout.

But really, it's all about The Sixteen. I'm afraid I'm a Sixteen groupie... more on them in December, when they'll be performing A Ceremony of Carols and The Messiah at the South Bank and the Barbican respectively.

Alonso vs Hamilton

2007-08-07T17:38:00.000Z

There was an amusing story on BBC online about the current polemic within the McLaren Formula One team. For those of you who haven't been following this, their two drivers and current championship leaders - a cool rookie Brit and a hot-headed double world champion Spaniard (the descriptions are somewhat embellished, but you get the picture) - aren't the best of buddies at the moment. It all came to a head this weekend in Hungary, when Alonso was judged to have intentionally blocked his team-mate during qualifying to prevent Hamilton from completing his final qualifying lap, for which he was demoted four places on the starting grid.

Andrew Benson believes that this is the unfortunate result of McLaren's noble policy of letting their drivers actually race, rather than favouring one over the other (you'd think that Formula One racing is all about drivers competing against each other, but you'd be surprised to know that very little about Formula One racing actually involves 'racing' in any commonly understood sense of the word). He says:

"Like male lions competing for control of a pride, no F1 team is big enough to comfortably contain two sporting alpha males of this stature.

Top racing drivers are intensely driven and complex individuals, and competition from within their own camp is not appreciated."

He then goes on to insightfully disentangle the racing driver's "complex" psyche:

"Their psyche is based on the belief that they are the best - so any challenge to that belief, or the ability to demonstrate it, provokes extreme responses."

which pretty much makes racing drivers sound like baboons. If that's the essence of a complex psyche, I wonder what defines a "simple" person.....

He does, however, point out the great irony that this season is widely considered to be the most compelling in recent years, for reasons that have little to do with racing, and more to do with allegations of spying between teams and childish spats between supposedly grown men. It's not quite reality TV....... but it's close!

Summer movies (Part 1)

2007-07-30T22:11:00.001Z

So it seems that 2007 is packed full of medium to low-brow entertainment, perfect for whiling away the hours between those flood warnings. Here's the pick of the ones I've managed to catch so far:

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Tim Story (Dir.), Jessica Alba and, well, who cares.....
AKA "Who cares? Jessica Alba's in it....", the sequel to Fantastic Four, incidentally still the best comic book-adapted animated TV series ever, introduces the Silver Surfer, who is, you won't be surprised to hear, a silvery being from outer space who flies around on a surfboard and does some pretty nasty things in preparation for the arrival of his master, Galactus, an even meaner-ass outer-space being who's coming to suck the life out of Earth. The Silver Surfer is kind of like a John the Baptist of the galactic anti-Christ. Thankfully, Dr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Rock and The Human Torch are here to save the day. There's the usual globe-trotting that seems to be the norm in these movies these days, with action sequences at the London Eye on London's South Bank, Shanghai, New York... and enough gags, CGI and schmaltz to keep teenage boys happy. The acting is... well, who cares? Did I mention Jessica Alba's in it?

Ocean's Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh (Dir.), George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and the rest of the crew....
Steve, dude, like stop playing with my head already. This is by far the most convoluted of the Ocean's remakes. I mean, we know the plot already: there's a casino, there's lots of money in it (yes, even more than in the Bellagio), they're gonna steal it. The fun is in figuring out how they're gonna steal it. But what's the point if the plot is so complicated that you end up getting a headache and none of the enjoyment? JMG fell asleep, and both George Clooney AND Brad Pitt are in this movie, so that's saying something. Essentially, this is just an excuse for grown men to wear disguises and walk around looking hip in Vegas. Don't think about it, just soak it all in....

Hairspray, Adam Shankman (Dir.), Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Amanda Bynes, Queen Latifah
OK, so despite having been reluctantly dragged to see this by JMG, Hairspray really didn't suck anywhere nearly as much as I thought it would. In fact, I'd even say it was quite fun. And, in retrospect, who wouldn't wanna go see John Travolta in drag? The story follows sickeningly good-natured Tracy Turnblad, as she fights to fulfill her aspirations of becoming a dancer on TV and be recognized as a dignified individual. Oh, and she more or less brings about racial integration in the process, which is no mean feat, for a schoolkid from Baltimore. Christopher Walken is quite endearing as her simple-minded, but honourable father, but John Travolta's naive and over-protective mother becomes a little tiresome after a while. There are plenty of cheesy songs for those of you who like that sort of thing, although most of them are actually bearable, even for those of us who find musical theatre deeply offensive. What makes Hairspray enjoyable is the quirky, at times pretty dark humour that pokes fun at the musical genre. There's a slightly uncomfortable undertone throughout the whole movie that makes you feel that this is the kind of movie Hollywood makes in order for Americans to feel OK about their rather tragic recent past. But if you're not that cynical, then this is entertaining enough. Amanda Bynes is the best thing in the movie, playing Tracy Turnblad's quirky, slightly ditzy sidekick.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, David Yates (Dir.), Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson
I'm all for dark Harry Potter films, but I wasn't overly impressed by Order of the Phoenix. I fear the whole enterprise might be starting to get a little tiresome, which would be rather sad. The wizard world is in denial about rumours of the return of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and it's up to Harry Potter to train an 'army' of his school peers to prepare for battle against the ultimate evil. This film focuses much more on Potter and his inner struggle against his mysterious connection with Voldemort. Sadly, the film suffers considerably for it, for Radcliffe is getting rather old and he was never that engaging anyway (it'll be interesting to see how he survives another two Potter movies). The older Potter lacks the cuteness factor of his younger self and appears to have gained an annoying sense of self-importance. As a film, Order of the Phoenix doesn't have anything novel to offer over the previous instalments and it feels rather choppy at times (e.g. the fate of Sirius Black). As usual, Hermione is grossly underused, which is a shame, given that Emma Watson is a much better actor than either Radcliffe or Grint. And Nicholas Hooper's score isn't particularly memorable. Having said that, it saves me from reading the books, and I get to learn some wicked spells to defend myself against the dark arts, so it's all good.

Transformers, Michael Bay (Dir.), Shia LaBoeuf, Megan Fox, John Voigt, John Turturro
They're robots in disguise. Really. What more do you need to know? Although here's what I wanna know. How come the good robots (the autobots) choose such crappy disguises? I mean, c'mon, a banged-up Camaro, the cab of an articulated truck... when the bad robots (the decepticons) dress up as F22s, armoured vehicles and tanks and stuff. Anyway, Shia LaBoeuf plays the geeky schoolnerd unwittingly harbouring the key to an advanced, alien, robotic civilization. His first car (the aforementioned banged-up Camaro) also happens to transform into a kick-ass robot, perfect for a kid with no friends. When it becomes apparent that evil robots are taking over the US's defence system, autobots, led by Optimus Prime (guess those robots weren't very good at Latin) start landing on Earth to try and find and destroy the Allspark that is the key to their civilization (hey, I didn't make this sh*t up!) before the decepticons get their hands on it and bring destruction to the human race. Along the way, you find out that robots can be cheesy and patronizing in equal measure, and they break a lot of stuff. Megan Fox effectively provides the feisty female interest who makes an unlikely friendship with the class geek. The visual effects are stunning and are accompanied by Steve Jablonsky's score, which is at times reminiscent of Batman Begins, but cleverly references Terminator 2 at key moments in the battle between autobots and decepticons. John Voight is by far the worst thing in the movie, ridiculously miscast as Defense Secretary John Keller.

Miso Soup

2007-07-26T19:29:00.000Z

Miso Soup, Live at the Purcell Room, 17 July 2007

OK, how could I resist going to see a band called Miso Soup? This London-based Japanese quartet of guitar, bass, synths/trumpet/percussion/whatever and drums played in the South Bank's World London series. Words rather fail to describe this crazy avant-garde, improv, fusion, funk, jazz, drum 'n bass, rock get-up. But damn, they're pretty cool.... check 'em out on MySpace.

Thai fragrant rice, ginger and garlic chicken pot

2007-07-24T18:26:00.000Z

1 chicken leg, thigh and drumstick separated
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cm stem ginger, finely chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 cup Thai fragrant rice
1 and 3/4 cups chicken stock
4 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked and sliced
1 spring onion, sliced

Wash rice and place in heavy-bottomed, non-stick pot. Add all the other ingredients, reserving the green part of the spring onion, and place the chicken pieces on top. Add pepper to taste. Cover and bring stock to boil, simmering over medium heat until rice and chicken are cooked (20-25 mins). Sprinkle the remaining spring onion on top and serve.

Quote of the day, 24 July 2007

2007-07-24T18:13:00.000Z

The first two quotes of the day weren't ones I could publish on this blog, but this one comes a close third....

So it seems that a blood test on Alexander Vinokourov has revealed that his sample contained red blood cells from two different people, suggesting that he'd received a blood transfusion before his victory on Saturday's Tour de France time trial. Apparently, this is what his Astana team had to say:

"...the organisers of the Tour de France invited the team to withdraw, which was immediately accepted."

which can't even be said to be a euphemism..... I'm sure they're feeling nothing but pride at being invited to withdraw from the Tour....

I'm not a plastic blog (part 2)

2007-07-19T19:54:00.000Z

I've been following the Anya Hindmarch I'm not a plastic bag bag saga with interest. In the latest developments, it seems that a number of women were crushed as Hong Kong fashionistas fought it out for one of only 1600 of the prized cotton bags available on the island. As a result, the sale of original I'm not a plastic bag bags has been banned in mainland China, which is rather ironic, given that the bags are actually made there. Not to be denied, however, the up-and-coming fashion-conscious Beijingers are already making orders for genuine 'A grade', fake I'm not a plastic bag bags, which are reportedly identical to the originals. In a further insult, the demand for I'm not a plastic bag bags is so high that the fakes are actually more expensive, expecting to fetch about 9GBP compared with the 5GBP original.

Home-ripening

2007-07-19T19:46:00.000Z

I love it when you go into a supermarket and they sell fruit "for home ripening", as if it's gonna make you feel good about yourself that you buy an overpriced punnet of unripe nectarines, and have to wait at least a week before you can eat any of them.

C#

2007-07-19T19:30:00.000Z

Apparently, the White Stripes ended their Canada tour on George Street in St John's by playing a concert consisting of just one note, after which they claimed to have officially played in every province and territory in Canada. The note in question was "reportedly a C-sharp". Which begs the question: if you were only gonna play a single note, why would you choose a C-sharp? Why not play a D-flat? Of course, it could be that the person who reported hearing them play a C-sharp couldn't tell the difference between a C-sharp and a D-flat (which is understandable......).

See, 'cos if were only gonna play one note, I'd play a G double-flat.

Quote of the day.....

2007-07-19T19:25:00.000Z

"No one will miss targets when they're gone"

Pete Riddell, in The Times, on the cut in the number of public spending targets from the Treasury.

퐁양 / 深圳 - Pyongyang / Shenzhen

2007-07-16T17:26:00.001Z

Pyongyang: A Journey in North , by Guy Delisle
Shenzhen：A Travelogue from China, by Guy Delisle

It seems that not even cartoon animation has survived outsourcing. The fact that capitalist economies should outsource to North Korea and China is, however, not without a considerable degree of irony. Pyongyang and Shenzhen are Guy Delisle's animated accounts of his visits to these two countries while working for a French TV channel. The books are full of wry humour, often resulting from the animator's keen eye for detail. Despite being primarily a fun read, Delisle nonetheless deals with a wide range of issues, ranging from the outward idolization of Kim Jong-Il, the restriction on individual freedoms and freedom of expression, the communist perception of Western capitalist culture, the disparity between the treatment of Westerners and natives, the homogeneity of Asian hotel rooms, food, the boredom of months living in a hotel etc. There are moments of extreme hilarity, such as his efforts to demonstrate to Chinese animators how it is physically impossible for a cartoon character to get up from a chair without leaning forward first, or his lending a copy of George Orwell's 1984 to his Korean interpreter when he asks for an English book to read. There are also very touching moments, such as the effort that one of his Chinese co-workers makes to help him celebrate Christmas, despite them not being able to communicate, and the fact that he only begins to get to know his Chinese interpreter in their last half hour, despite having spent some two months together. Pyongyang and Shenzhen are insightful and entertaining accounts of a Westerner's clash with oriental culture and communism.

Carry on regardfully

2007-07-14T08:06:00.000Z

OK, I've tried to avoid doing this for as long as possible, but I can no longer refrain. I suspect this will be the first of many entries documenting blatant abuses of the English language in the mainstream media. So let me start here....

First of all, irregardless is not a word. The term is a literal absurdity. It's illogical. Note that illogical is the antonym of logical (the antonym of antonym is synonym). Irregardless, in its common, erroneous usage, is taken to mean the same as regardless, making it a) a redundant term, and b) doubly ridiculous, since irregardless should mean the opposite of regardless. The opposite of regardless is regardful. If you're really set on using an ir- word, you can use irrespective, which is a synonym for regardless.

Hair Affair....

2007-07-09T07:49:00.000Z

Have you ever cheated on your hair stylist? Perhaps you can help me resolve this problem after reading the exchange below with etowngirl:

"Oh, so let me ask you this. If you went to a hairdresser's and had one stylist do your hair a few times, and then switched to a different stylist in the same place, do you think that would be seen as a sleight by the other one?

I was never really bothered by who did my hair, so when I started going to this Korean salon this Korean girl did my hair a few times, but then the next couple of times I kept going on days when she wasn't in, so someone else did my hair. And now she [the new one] always does my hair, so I'm wondering if the other one's [upset] with me now. I don't really know about hair stylist politics. I'm sure someone's written an insightful novel about this called "Secret diaries of a hair stylist" or something.

But I wouldn't want to upset a Korean woman with scissors...... I've seen "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" - it wasn't pretty!"

"I think you are guilty of being a stylist slut...

Seriously, I am not joking when I say that I have heard from many a reliable source (ie. my own hairdresser) that switching stylists without having a long discussion with your old one first, or just going from one stylist to another is not good etiquette. I think it's even worse if they work in the same salon.

Watch out for the Korean woman with sharp, pointy scissors..."

"I feared as much. It's bad enough that I switched stylists in the same salon, but my new one is Japanese...... doesn't bode well, does it....?

So do you think there's a way to resolve this that won't lead to a scene out of a Park Chan-Wook vengeance movie? Those scissors are really sharp. They're made with Japanese steel, you know... It's not like I meant to sleight her - she just was never there when I went to get my haircut. So it's really her fault for not working on convenient days! Although she was there the other day, and I even had my tips coloured. Is that, like, really rubbing it in? "Hey, look, someone else is putting red low-lites in my hair!"

I thought that maybe next time I could have her cut my hair, so she doesn't think that I think she's a sucky stylist. But then I'd probably have to go on a day that my Japanese stylist isn't working. Would that be like two-timing my stylist....?

Dude, how stressful is getting one's hair done?"

"Okay, not ONLY did you get your hair cut by a different stylist, but you also highlighted your hair with her?! You have committed a double sin, and I think the only solution, in order to avoid the Japanese steel scissors, is to change salons. If you go back to the first stylist you cheated on just for a cut, she's going to think she's the runner-up and that you only think she's good enough for a cut but not a highlight. And that would be tantamount to saying, "You're my back-up date." No girl likes being the back-up date.

Before you cheat on yet another stylist, just abandon ship and find another salon. Preferably one that's far away from the first..."

So, what do you think? Should I:

a) Do nothing. Pretend this never happened. Keep going to stylist B.
b) Abandon ship and find another salon, preferably as far away as possible from the current one
c) Attempt to reconcile with stylist A (Korean woman with sharp scissors) by arranging my next cut with her on a day when stylist B (Japanese woman with sharp scissors) isn't working
d) Ditch both stylist A and stylist B (Korean and Japanese women with sharp scissors respectively) and go for a male stylist next time
e) Other, please specify

Wimbledon, Day 4 (aka TOW Tim Henman lost. Again)

2007-06-30T12:30:00.000Z

Heard in and around Court 2:

"Tim's gonna lose, isn't he?" (Tim Henman is two sets and a break down in the third)
"Yeah, a large part of Canada's electricity comes from hydroelectric power."
"Was he asleep the first two sets, or what?" (Some girl to her mother on Tim Henman, who's just fought back from two sets down to level the match)
"Yeah, these look like kids. I think that 'dj' guy is serving. They're just nameless faces." (Some annoying guy, speaking about 4th seed and current world number 5, Novak Djokovic. The Serb defeated American world number 67, Amer Delic)
"Bloody Henman, that's it, he's not gonna win, is he?" (Tim Henman has been broken twice and is 1-5 down in the fifth)
"Yeah, those are the VIPs, the suits and ties. We're the masses. I way prefer to be the masses." (Same annoying guy, expounding his blue-collar pride)
Silence. (Tim Henman has just lost to Feliciano López 6-1 in the fifth)

Meanwhile, elsewhere around Wimbledon....

Serb superstar, Ana Ivanovic, beat American Meilen Tu 6-4 6-3, Svetlana Kuznetsova beat extravagantly-dressed American Bethanie Mattek 7-6 6-4, Slovak 10th seed, Daniela Hantuchova, defeated Russian Elena Likhovtseva, and Chinese Taipei's third seeds Chan and Chuang beat Ivanovic and Hantuchova 7-6 6-4 in the ladies doubles late in the day.

Amuse Queues

2007-06-30T11:52:00.000Z

Those of you who are not yet convinced that the English have made a sport out of queuing should try lining up for the Wimbledon tennis championships. Forgetting about those individuals who camp overnight, who clearly need to have their head examined, people get there at 5am to score Centre Court tickets, waiting for some five hours for the gates to open. The queues at Wimbledon have a degree of organization unseen in any other facet of English life. You get a queue card with a number, so you can leave the line and go to the numerous portaloos or patronize one of many refreshment stands. Newspaper vendors walk up and down the line offering you your paper of choice. You get a free fan/hat/raincoat (as climatically appropriate) with your copy of the Daily Telegraph. You get enthusiastic offers of free Rachel's Organic yoghurt and Tropicana Original samples. There are even people collecting donations for various charities. By 8am, stewards walk down the line offering colour-coded wristbands to Centre, Number 1 and Number 2 courts for those insane enough to make it sufficiently close to the front of the line (being the lightweight that I am, I only got there at 6.30am, so only managed tickets to Court 2). Despite the fact that people queue there for as long as it takes to fly to Turkey, the wait itself is surprisingly bearable (provided, of course, that it's not pouring). For one, stewards go around waking up all the overnight campers and asking them to pack their tents so that, despite the fact that it takes some four hours to progress the 800 metres from the car park at Gate 10 of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club to the turnstiles at Gate 3, you do find yourself advancing slowly to take up the space occupied by campers' sleeping bags. A good, long, playlist on your iPod obviously helps, and I survived thanks to the prologue and first two chapters of Anchee Min's excellent Becoming Madame Mao.

You would think that queuing for five hours would be enough to satisfy even the most ardent queuer, but once inside the grounds, there's all manner of queuing to be had. You can queue for seats on courts 3, 13 and 18, the larger of the outside courts, queue for a 2GBP bowl of strawberries and cream, or a 4GBP crayfish and rocket sandwich, or a jug of Pimm's, you can queue for the restroom, and you can queue at the ticket re-sale booth to try and get returns for Centre Court. And once you've had a satisfying day's queuing, you can queue at the gates to leave the grounds, queue for a cab or a bus of your choice, or form one long queue all the way down Church Road, until you get the Southfields tube station, where you can queue for a tube ticket, queue to get through the turnstiles, and join another queue at the platform to get onto your train. Queuing truly is an endurance sport. I hear it will become an Olympic event in 2012, for which team Britain might actually have a chance of winning a gold medal.

From the favelas to the future (via Hackney...)

2007-06-30T10:09:00.000Z

Favela Rising, Jeff Zimbalist (Dir.)
From the Favelas to Hackney
This is the Future, Paul Kelly (Dir.), Saint Etienne

Following brutal police massacres in Rio de Janeiro's Vigário Geral slum in the 1990s, the AfroReggae movement was born with the aim of offering a positive alternative to the drug-fuelled violence of the favelas. Jeff Zimbalist's documentary, Favela Rising, follows the movement's founder, Anderson Sá, a former drug trafficker turned musician, social activist and community leader. The film describes the structure of life in the favela, the dominant role of its drug gangs and the resultant social exclusion of its residents. Through the AfroReggae movement, Anderson Sá provides young kids with an opportunity to channel their energies more creatively by teaching them percussion and dance and holding mass social awareness parties. He makes insightful observations about the destructiveness of false hope. For many in the favelas, becoming a drug soldier provides one of very few ways of earning good money, but a drug soldier can rarely expect to live beyond 25 years. Poignantly, as AfroReggae's founder comments on the paralysis that violence imposes on the favelas, he himself is faced with his own paralysis when he fractures his fourth vertebra in a surfing accident. As AfroReggae's members consider whether to end the movement, Anderson Sá makes an unlikely recovery, walking unaided within four days of his surgery. Zimbalist's documentary is a rare film, about the power of social organization against negative influence and the role of culture in bringing hope.

In 2005, AfroReggae were invited to spend one week at Hackney Free and Parochial School to bring their experiences to inner city schoolchildren 6000 miles away and help them prepare for a performance at Amnesty International. From the Favelas to Hackney demonstrates the transforming influence of the experience, providing often challenging students with an outlet through performance, and an opportunity to focus on positive activities and enabling them to work together. The school is taking this experience forward, with performances at the Barbican planned for next year.

Completed in 1951, the newly renovated Royal Festival Hall is a historical landmark on London's South Bank. Built as the capital's showcase for the Festival of Britain, the building's post-war modernist design was a symbol of hope and a vision of the future. Following last year's hugely successful Hymns To London Revisited, Saint Etienne were invited as the RFH's resident artists. During the following 12 months, together with director Paul Kelly, the band made a film about the restoration of the hall. Much in the style of Revisited, the film is accompanied by a live soundtrack from the band, this time with a 60-piece orchestra and youth choir, and details the historic importance of the South Bank and the hall's careful refit, from the new acoustic ceiling membranes, to the hand restoration of the original Race seats and 4000 square metres of hand-woven carpet. As usual, Saint Etienne demonstrate a great sensitivity to the spirit of the city, producing a film that is both educational and compelling, and a vision of the future today.

Saturday cooking

2007-06-23T20:35:00.000Z

Butter bean, chorizo and wild Alaskan salmon soup-type thing

1/2 tin butter beans
1/4 cup brown rice
2cm piece spicy cooking chorizo, diced
1 handful curly leaf kale
1 large mushroom, diced
1/4 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
1 small fillet wild Alaskan salmon, cubed
750ml fish stock
A bunch of coriander, roughly chopped

Heat some olive oil in a heavy-based pot and gently fry the garlic, onion, chorizo and mushroom. When the onion is soft, add the kale with a couple of tablespoons of water, two capfuls of Shaoxing rice wine and cover for a few minutes until the kale has wilted. Add the beans and rice and mix well. Add the stock, cover and simmer until the rice is cooked. Stir in the cubed salmon until cooked (just a couple of minutes will do). Season to taste, throw in the coriander and serve.

The War on Democracy

2007-06-23T19:49:00.000Z

John Pilger, Matthew Young (Dir.)
Barbican Screentalk, June 21, 2007

John Pilger's new film is his first (of about 50) documentaries to be made specifically for cinema release. Thursday's screening at the Barbican was followed by a Q&A from the journalist/film-maker. The War on Democracy is an unapologetic attack on US policy in Latin America. The film is widely regarded as a highly important work for being one of the very few documentaries that takes a panoramic view of US intervention in its own "backyard" and tries to draw some general conclusions from these observations. It deals primarily with repeated (and usually successful) US efforts to undermine and replace progressive, often democratically elected, governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala. Pilger tracks down and interviews the main actors: presidents, scholars, businessmen, former CIA officers. Most importantly, however, he follows the lives of those most affected by the course of history - former abductees in Chile, victims of violence in El Salvador, residents of the barrios in Venezuela - and tries to understand how the imposition of power affects the poor and powerless. Despite this, Pilger insists that the message of the film is intended to be positive, highlighting the recent trend for social reform and local empowerment. Venezuela in particular is highlighted as an example. The first part of the film is dedicated to explaining the popularity of Hugo Chávez, recounting the events of the dramatic 2002 coup. Much of this uses footage from the excellent documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and highlights the power of the private media and the gross inequality common in Latin American societies.

Despite the positive intention of the film, The War on Democracy is ultimately somewhat disappointing. Although at times both moving and enraging, some snappy editing and a lack of factual information leaves the viewer wondering about the integrity of the material presented, even if it's clear that The War on Democracy is a thoroughly researched piece of work. Former CIA officers and the wealthy, portrayed as being directly, indirectly or, at best, passively complicit in the plight of Latin America's poor, come off worst, although given what they have to say, one isn't compelled to feel sorry for them. There is, for example, the Chilean woman who denies that torture could have occurred during Pinochet's time because "why would you torture someone when you can shoot them?" By contrast, Hugo Chávez comes across as a guy you wouldn't mind having round for a Sunday barbecue. Pilger's interview with the Venezuelan president is interspersed throughout the film, and Chávez expounds his ideals for a new kind of democracy and the redistribution of power, recounts his experiences during the 2002 coup, and tells anecdotes about his first English lesson.

To his credit, Pilger has produced a highly informative, thought-provoking work, while at the same time managing to make it entertaining and emotive. I found his narration rather awkward and he comes across as being a little facetious during some of his interviews. I suspect that those with the same disposition as some of his interviewees will not be stirred by this film, which is probably more an exercise in preaching to the converted. As a documentary against the United States' foreign ventures, I don't rate it as highly as, say, Oliver Stone's Comandante or Jehane Nujaim's astounding Control Room.

Wild Alaskan salmon wrapped in pancetta with fennel and mushroom risotto

2007-06-13T20:34:00.001Z

1 cup risotto rice
1 fennel bulb
2-3 slices pancetta/streaky bacon
1 large mushroom
1 wild Alaskan salmon fillet
750 ml stock

Trim the stalk off the fennel bulb, keeping the trimmed bits. Cut into halves lengthwise and cut leaves into medium-sized square pieces. Spread over a lightly-oiled baking tray and roast at 180 Celsius for about 20 minutes. Leave to cool slightly and cut into thin slices.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-based pan. Add a small piece of butter. When the pan is hot, add the fennel and thinly sliced mushroom and stir-fry until the mushroom is soft. Stir in the rice and add one ladle-full of stock at a time, stirring constantly until rice is cooked.

For the salmon, remove skin from fillet and wrap the fish in the pancetta. Arrange fennel trimmings in the centre of a baking tray and place fish on top. Cook for 15-20 minutes at 180 Celsius. You might wanna put it on grill for the last couple of minutes to crisp the pancetta.

The Gotan Project Live at the Barbican, London

2007-06-03T09:48:00.000Z

On the tail-end of their Lunático tour, The Gotan Project performed at the Barbican a day after winning at the Radio 3 World Music Awards in the Club Global category, which sounds more like something you might want your airline to upgrade you to. The set was a slightly toned down version of their Paris gig and suffered from being in a seating venue and an audience that had probably never heard the band live before. Row K was particularly boring. Despite this, the performance was a typically cool Gotan Project affair, with the white suits and silk gowns, slightly bizarre visuals and irrepressible mix of crazy DJing, virtuosic playing and tango.

The band finished with an encore of Libertango played over the backtrack of Diferente, which was, well, different. The extended Lunático album with three bonus tracks and two videos is now available. Everyone go out and grab a copy!

Yui: Can't Buy My Love

2007-06-03T08:42:00.000Z

Let me confess now that I'm new to the whole J-Pop phenomenon, but I picked up this CD in Hong Kong and I'm hooked. Yoshioka Yui is a 20 year-old singer-songwriter from Fukuoka. Her second album, Can't Buy My Love, made it to the number 1 spot on the Japanese Oricon charts back in April and has so far sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Yui is like Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson and No Doubt mashed together and sung in Japanese (and let me apologize now for mashing No Doubt and the other two together). I know this doesn't sound particularly appealing, but the album is great, full of catchy riffs, catchy lyrics (I imagine, if you speak Japanese), hummable tunes and songs that could win the Eurovision song contest. Rolling Star, It's Alright, CHE.R.RY, and Winding Road are my favourite songs (why are the titles in English, you ask? I dunno.....). You can catch I Remember You and Goodbye Days on YouTube.

My first espresso....

2007-05-30T22:36:00.002Z

OK, so I've finally given in and bought an espresso machine. Years of plunging that French press and using that stovetop clearly haven't satisfied the irrepressible allure of the home-made espresso.

I got a Francis! Francis! Trio X3 machine, which is a less boisterous version of its X1 cousin. It lacks all the retro dials and all, but for those of us with spatially-challenged kitchens it's a great compromise, combining sleek looks with slim practicality. I was also much swayed by CoffeeGeek, who gave it an extensive test and a good write-up.

The thing looks like something out of the Titanic and, once out of the box, it's a breeze to set up. Sadly, it doesn't come with a holder for ground coffee (at least mine didn't), so if you want to use your own grounds, you'll have to get it separately. The pod grouphead is pretty easy to use, though, and it comes with 18 servings of Illy pods so you can at least get your fix while you get that other grouphead.

I wasn't brave enough to try the milk frother yet, being a novice barista, but here's my first espresso, which even on a new machine, was reasonably OK. No doubt they'll get better as the thing wears in. I'll let you know when I manage my first cappuccino......

Mudéjar

2007-05-30T22:20:00.000Z

Or, what happened when I tried something out of Claudia Roden's book, Arabesque. I got this as a Christmas present (thanks, Gungush!), and certain people had been bugging me about making something from it. Sadly, I didn't have much of an opportunity to do anything more elaborate than humous, babaganoush and try her method for fool-proof couscous (which involves first soaking it and then sticking it in the oven - it works!). The rest was me dressing up a chicken and making some gazpacho, hence "mudéjar". Anyway, you can see the results below. Oh, the cake was from Sam and Sam Clarke's book, Moro.

Minutes to Midnight

2007-05-26T19:23:00.000Z

Minutes to Midnight is Linkin Park's third studio album and seemingly the most coolly received. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm bothering to review it, since this is just going to seem like a rehash of what everyone else has said already. However, being a proud owner of all their previous albums, I feel compelled to put in my two cents.

The album is certainly different from their previous efforts. For a start, it's the first to come with a parental advisory (I'm excluding the Reanimation remixes and the Jay-Z Collision Course collaborations). Secondly, fans of the band's distinctive, epic, wall-of-sound sound will be disappointed. The band have stripped down the sound on Minutes to Midnight, giving more prominence to vocals and content. Most notably, Mike Shinoda sings, probably more than he raps, on this album, and shares the vocals somewhat more equitably with Chester Bennington than in previous albums. Their biting, acerbic lyrics still feature heavily, but are more focused than previously (All you've ever wanted was someone to truly look up to you / And six feet underwater I do). In Hands Held High, the best track in the album for me, Mike Shinoda professes anti-Bush sentiments over a military beat and choruses of "Amen", quickly followed by more of the same from Chester Bennington in No More Sorrow. The album is also more introspective, particularly in Leave Out All The Rest, Valentine's Day and the somewhat pointless In Between. Despite their attempt to experiment with new sounds, there's nothing here that's particularly novel, and the band at times sounds like a bad imitation of U2, especially in Shadow of the Day. Fans of the band's distinctive sound on previous albums won't take too kindly to Minutes to Midnight and NME clearly hates it. But I think it grows on you, even if it'll never be as satisfying as Meteora.

Where's the dog? And Yellow Dust....

2007-05-26T17:16:00.000Z

I was gonna title this The Heart of Seoul, but that would have been far too cheesy.

So anyway, it turns out that despite my best efforts, I was unable to master Korean in two weeks in anticipation of my recent trip to Seoul. Despite this, I did manage to grasp enough of the alphabet to have a fair go at reading Korean, which did come in handy, if only to be able to order 비빔밮 (bibimbap), 불고기 (bulgogi) and 두부스테이크 (tofu satay, I think...) off the menu. I suspect the proprietors must all have thought I was weird, as having ordered one of the above, they'd ask me something else and I'd have absolutely no idea what the heck they were talking about. Of course, having mastered the alphabet, I realized that much of Korean was actually English, as in 휱넸크래브 (fitness club) and 고러프타운(golf town). OK, I kinda made those up, but it's something along those lines, anyway. So, in fact, a little Korean goes a long way.

I must say that I hadn't heard very encouraging things about Seoul before I went. Outwardly, it does appear to live up to its reputation of massive concrete, industrialized, commercialized, Americanized urbanicity, and the fact that there was a huge six-storey Tesco Home Plus store right opposite my hotel didn't bode well. Seriously, I've never seen anything like it. But in the little time I had to look around, I did find some redeeming qualities to the city. Changdeokgung Palace (창덕궁), the city's second Joseon dynasty palace, was built in 1405 and served as the king's residence following the destruction of neighbouring Gyeongbokgung by the Japanese. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the palace has been restored, as have the city's other five Joseon dynasty palaces.

The area between the two palaces is a great place for a stroll, particularly around the Bukchon Joseon dynasty village, and there's a quaint network of streets full of small stores, restaurants and cafés. Further south is Insadong, a traditional street that's now home to a number of art galleries, tea and calligraphy shops and souvenir stores. Koreans certainly appear to have an interesting concept of space, and seem to pour all their individualism into whatever square foot of space they have available in their premises, making for some fascinating architectural features.

Seoul is apparently also renowned for yellow dust, which travels in sandstorms down from the Gobi desert via North Korea, collecting all manner of sulphurous and metallic particles on its way through China and leaving behind a thick layer of yellow nastiness that is related to all manner of health problems. I'm informed that it's particularly bad in April, although I did manage to witness speckles of the stuff as they landed on my mobile phone screen.

But what about the dog, I hear you ask? Well, I asked myself the same thing. My Japanese hairdresser had informed me all about how there are only some seven dog dishes in South Korea, in comparison to North Korea, with its considerably more extensive canine cuisine. Despite my piqued interest, I didn't consciously come across any dog cuisine and nobody took me anywhere that served dog. I did feel a rush of excitement while having lunch at a restaurant in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong the following week, when I spotted 'dog' on the menu board. But on closer inspection, I realized that it read 热狗 ('hot' dog.......). So I'm none the wiser.

OK, I'm not really serious - I don't have particularly have any interest in sampling dog cuisine........

Five things to do in Hong Kong when you're bored....

2007-05-26T11:34:00.000Z

1. Try to fit in - get on a noisy, crowded tram to Central and shout into your mobile phone as loudly as you can. It helps if you can say "It's very noisy here! I can't hear what you're saying!" in Cantonese ("hou chou ah! Ngo m-tehng dou nei gohng mut-yeh ah!")

2. Go for rib-eye buffet lunch at the Salisbury, a bargain at HKD108. The Salisbury Dining Room, YMCA Salisbury Hotel, 41 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.

3. Cross over the road to the Hong Kong Museum of Art to see the Lin Feng Mian exhibition. Lin Feng Mian was one of the most important Chinese painters of the 20th Century, combining Chinese and Japanese styles with French impressionist and cubist influences. The exhibition presents his work arranged by subject, including female portraits, landscapes, birds, flowers and more abstract work with Chinese opera being a major theme. The Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Until June 3rd, free admission on Wednesdays.

4. Go up the spiral at the Langham Place Mall and check out the latest J-pop releases at CD Warehouse. CD Warehouse, Langham Place Mall, next to the Langham Place Hotel, 555 Shanghai Street, Mongkok, Kowloon.

5. Skip dinner. Have dessert buffet at the Grand Hyatt instead. The Tiffin Lounge, Grand Hyatt, 1 Harbour Road, Wanchai. 8-11.30pm nightly, HKD150

6. OK, I'll give you an extra one for free. Perhaps you haven't had enough dessert. There's no shortage of dessert houses in Hong Kong, but for something more traditional and low key, try a bowl of ginger milk (geung nai) at Kau Kee Sweet Shop, 53 Parkes St, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon.

Prawn, bulgur wheat and coriander salad

2007-04-29T13:36:00.000Z

Having not updated my blog in a while, it now appears that I'm over-compensating by fitting in as many entries as I can in one weekend. I think it's about time I added some more food pictures, so here's yesterday's dinner:

Bring 600ml of boiling water to the boil and add 125g of bulgur wheat. Cover and leave for about 30 minutes until the water has been absorbed. Drain well.

Combine 150g of cooked prawns, half a chopped onion, a bunch of coriander, one crushed garlic clove and 8-10 quartered cherry tomatoes (spring onion and flat leaf parsley would probably work better than onion and coriander, but I didn't have any). Add as much bulgur wheat as you feel like eating. Dress with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, the juice of half a lemon, and pepper.

One big, happy Tescopoly

2007-04-28T19:04:00.000Z

Tescopoly by Andrew Simms, Constable 2007

Andrew Simms, from economic think-tank nef, certainly appears to have it in for Tesco. It seems it wasn't enough to write a book about evil multinationals, or the desecration caused by supermarkets. No, Tesco is so offensive that he felt obliged to dedicate a whole book to telling us all about it, and he makes no apology for singling out this particular multinational which, according common lore, has nearly 40% of the UK groceries market share and takes one in every eight pounds that Britons spend on shopping of any kind. The book takes its name from www.tescopoly.com, an alliance concerned with countering the negative impact of supermarkets.

From the outset, Simms' tone makes it clear that he's not interested in objectivity. Even the cover, with the first 'o' in 'Tescopoly' cheekily adorned with the Devil's horns and the 'y' sprouting a pointed tail, is a parody of Tesco's logo and its white, blue and red colour scheme. In fact, this is the sort of book that might make the average corporate executive think the author is a hippy, free-loving allotment owner. But Tescopoly isn't just a rant about why supermarkets are bad for you; it's primarily a book about all the ways in which supermarkets are not good for you. Simms dispels common myths about the supposed benefits of supermarkets, particularly in terms of the creation of local jobs and the boosting of local economies. In a particularly revealing chapter, he compares the relative benefits of London's Queens Market to those of the typical supermarket. Queens Market generates an estimated £11m directly to the local economy, excluding indirect benefits from visitors spending money in the area. Per square metre, the market provides more jobs than a typical supermarket, and a typical basket of goods is about half the price of a comparable shop at a supermarket. By contrast, every pound spent at a supermarket is money that leaks out of the local economy and makes its way towards the big Tescopoly in the sky. For, even though supermarkets provide local jobs, those employees will also shop at Tesco, and other local branches of multinationals, etc., etc.

Simms also details how supermarkets, often argued to provide better value through competition, in fact do the exact opposite. Large, out-of-town, rival supermarkets are rarely in direct competition with each other, because they will not build a new branch near a competitor. Moreover, once you walk through those sliding doors, any chance of competition is gone. At a local market, the economic principle of 'the market' still operates, because you can easily compare produce and prices between competing stalls and decide where to buy from, which generally involves some kind of trade-off between quality and value. Supermarkets, however, by virtue of their product diversity, are not sensitive to such market forces, because they rely on the fact that customers are unlikely to drive between competing branches of Tesco and Sainsbury's to see which sells a kilo of peaches for the lowest price. Product diversity also means that supermarkets can keep the price of certain products artificially low to draw customers, but still make money by grossly overcharging for others. This principle can, of course, be repeated over all sorts of scales. Prices of certain goods can be kept low in certain areas of the country in which local market share is low, but be hiked up in places where a particular chain commands a 50% share of the market. Prices of certain produce can be kept artificially low in one country by importing it from another, financially incentivised to dedicate land to the growth of exotic food for exports rather than staples for the local market. And so it goes on.

An even more astounding, though I guess unsurprising, fact is the manner in which supermarkets are able to post record profits. Because of the volume of their orders, supermarket chains are able to negotiate ('negotiate' in this context often means 'dictate') terms such that they do not pay upon purchase, essentially buying goods from producers and suppliers on credit. Supermarkets, however, instantly turn goods into cash, such that they can make record huge profits out of what are, in fact, interest-free loans that, in the case of Tesco, can run into more than £2 billion in any one year.

So there you go. Supermarkets suck. Here are 7400 places to spend your money other than Tesco.

Feist

2007-04-28T18:41:00.000Z

Feist, Shepherds Bush Empire, London, 17 February 2007

First of all, a piece of advice. If you're collecting money for charity at the line for a Feist concert and you hear someone speaking in a vaguely North American accent, chances are they're Canadian. Just as a general matter of course, it's not good to start conversation by asking: "So, which part of the US are you from, then?" There's a good chance abuse will be hurled at you and your name will be cursed forever.

There was an opening act to this. I vaguely remember it. It was a one-man band. Some guy called Dr. something. It must have offended something, for my mind seems to have blocked the details from memory.

Feist played material from her new album, The Reminder. I'd say Feist is the right side of quirky. I liked all the rhythm lines and riffs, but I kinda got the feeling that, despite her instantly recognizable voice, she doesn't really have a distinctive style of her own, so I kept being reminded of bits of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the White Stripes, the Zutons, Alison Goldfrapp and Eva Cassidy, among others. Her mellow stuff is better than her more upbeat, rocky songs. And, of course, we always welcome a new rendition of Mushaboom to end the evening.

Coriolanus

2007-04-28T14:12:00.000Z

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, The Ninagawa Theatre Company, Japan
Barbican Theatre, London, 26 April 2007

OK, so it's a three-hour play about revenge. In Japanese. And if you sit near the front you have to crane your neck left or right to catch the surtitles as they flash by, while trying to keep an eye on what's happening on stage.

Also, it's a play about revenge. Everyone's very angry. They speak very fast. In Japanese. There's lots of yelling and arguing. And fighting. And crying.

But it's impressive. The set is sloped, thanks to a set of faux-stone steps leading up to backdrops that slide away to take you between scenes outside Rome's Capitol and Corioli. The whole thing is like something out of a Kurosawa movie, with elaborate costumes, choreographed swordfights, an epic score, and even some climactic blood-spurting that Tarantino would be proud of. Coriolanus, despite speaking very fast, puts in an excellent performance, as does his mother, a guilt-tripping, manipulative wench that is nevertheless the heroine of the story. It's an exhaustive evening, but well worth the effort.

Murray Perahia

2007-04-28T13:52:00.000Z

Murray Perahia in recital, Barbican Hall, London, 23 April 2007

Right, so need I say that Murray Perahia is awesome..... Monday saw his return to the Barbican, following last year's cancelled recital due to recurrent problems with a hand injury. An inflammation in the hand during the 1990s forced him away from the piano for a number of years, during which he supposedly drew great inspiration from listening to Bach. True or not, he has subsequently given us some of the most sublime recordings of Bach's keyboard works.

It was thus unsurprising that he should choose to start the evening with Bach's C minor Partita which, although marred by a few mistakes, was remarkable for its clarity. Watching someone play Bach is always nerve-racking, because it requires mathematical precision and there's simply no room for error. Under Perahia's hands, you can hear every single note of every single voice, no matter what finger, what tempo or what dynamic.

He was nevertheless far more comfortable with Beethoven's Pastoral Sonata, his best piece of the evening. This was followed by Schumann's Fantasiestück, a piece I'm not so keen on. But Chopin's Ballade No. 2 was amazing, and followed by a breathtaking Chopin as an encore.

On a completely random note (no pun intended), Murray Perahia kinda reminds me of Jacques Pepin. I can imagine he might make a good chef, although he seems a bit too mild-mannered. I wonder how Jacques Pepin would do at the piano......

I'm not a plastic blog...

2007-04-28T13:38:00.000Z

I'm 100% organic, fairtrade, carbon-neutral, sustainable, recycled fluff.

If you want the rip-off, made-in-China-and-shipped-20,000-miles-to-the-UK, queue-outside-Sainsbury's-from-midnight-to-get-one-and-sold-in-a-plastic-carrier, Anya Hindmarch cotton bag, then you'll wanna go here.

Of course, you won't find one, unless you shell out 250GBP on eBay for it.

Asadal and Jump

2007-03-24T10:19:00.000Z

Asadal, 227 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7DA

Sometimes, all you want is a baby chicken stuffed with sticky rice, garlic and dates, slow cooked in a stone pot and served with broth. No? Well, you will after you go to Asadal. This basement Korean restaurant right next to Holborn tube station is quite a find. It has sleek, modern but simple decor and the food is great. Definitely try the whatever baby-chicken-stuffed-with-sticky-rice-garlic-and-dates-slow-cooked-in-broth thing is called. I have to warn you that this isn't the easiest thing to eat, particularly with thin, metal Korean chopsticks, but man it's worth the effort. The tofu jeon is also good - light, deep fried tofu with peppers.

And what better way to round off a delicious Korean meal than with the high-octane, martial arts extravaganza that is Jump, down the road at the Peacock Theatre? Performed by the Ye Gam Inc. theatre company, this is like a cross between The Itchy and Scratchy Show, The Matrix, a Bruce Lee spoof and a bad 80s pop video. On amphetamines. The 'story' basically involves a martial arts-obsessed family that indulges in fights involving crazy stunts, slow-mo action replays, fast forward, rewind, tae kwondo dance routines and all manner of bizarre and highly entertaining action.

The Golden Pig

2007-03-10T10:17:00.000Z

I'm told the Year of the Golden Pig only comes around once every 600 years, and that children born during such years are endowed with great fortune, so many congratulations to all of you expecting golden piglets this year. Of course, I've also heard that the whole thing is a complete rip-off to boost business, and that the next Golden Pig year isn't actually due until 2031, but hey....

Anyway, the 15th day of the year is meant to be an auspicious date, and not being one to take any chances, I thought we'd choose this day to appease the kitchen gods. Or whatever, it's an excuse for a seven-course meal....

Mochi balls courtesy of Hopster. Hey, guys, you didn't take any pictures of the dumplings?

Now, let me share my tips on smoking duck breasts. I find that oolong tea works well. Marinate the duck breasts overnight in some soy sauce, shaoxing rice wine, and crushed Sichuan peppercorns. Line a wok with aluminium foil. Put half a cup each of rice and tea at the bottom, and some crushed star anise. Heat at a moderate temperature until the tea begins to smoulder. Place the duck breasts on a raised tray (or a pair of chopsticks) in the centre of the wok. Cover the wok with aluminium foil, leaving a couple of inches of space between the duck and the foil, and smoke for about 10 minutes. If you want that extra smoky flavour, then put on high heat and set your tea towel on fire. I found this works very well, but have a fire extinguisher ready... Slice the duck breast and stir-fry with mangetout or sugarsnap peas or whatever you feel like.

Since when were we at war with the fish?

2007-03-02T09:12:00.000Z

Steven Poole's Unspeak is an insightful critique of the abuse of the English language for political use. Drawing on Orwell's concept of Newspeak, through which the State restricts individuals' boundaries of thought through the destruction of words, Poole's Unspeak presents a more subtle concept: the practice of influencing people's attitudes towards a policy or political objective by creating terms that attempt to hide often unspoken, but highly value-laden ideas.

Many such terms are, of course, well known, as in euphemisms designed to gloss over unspeakable acts of violence, such as 'ethnic cleansing' (as opposed to 'mass murder', or even 'genocide'), 'collateral damage' (which sounds more like someone keyed both doors of your car) and 'surgical strikes' (which rather ironically combines the tools of mass murder with the precision of the 'operating theatre', incidentally, a term also used in military circles to refer to an area in which, presumably, 'surgical strikes' are carried out to minimize 'collateral damage'). In Poole's view, the success of Unspeak relies on silencing any opposing view from the outset by re-framing the way in which a particular issue is discussed. Thus, we have terms such as 'tax relief', which implies that you should be grateful for your taxes to be lowered and that what the opposition is proposing constitutes a 'tax burden', or terms such as 'pro-choice', which re-frames the negativity of 'abortion' into the positivity of 'choice', while at the same time implying that if you are not 'pro-choice' then you must be 'anti-choice'. This, of course, is matched by the equally astute 'pro-life'. A common mechanism for Unspeak is to create such artificially extreme dichotomies that only one view can possibly be considered reasonable, much in the spirit of "If you're not with us, you're against us" and "The coalition of the willing", by which any opponents must by implication be unwilling and complicit in terrorism.

Much of the book focuses on propagandist terms that have become widespread in the 'War on Terror', but Poole also analyzes some surprisingly far more subtle (at least to me) terms. In particular, the apparently innocuous term 'community' turns out to be highly charged in political speak. 'Community' harks back to the days when we lived harmoniously in quaint little villages with a common set of moral values. You can thus "Go to any community", in which you'll encounter a sense of 'community spirit', and you can speak of "The biggest threat to our community". 'Community' in the sense implied, however, is rarely applicable these days, so while reminiscing about forms of life that no longer exist, we nevertheless use 'community' to label others whom we deem to be different from ourselves, as in 'the Muslim community', or 'the Chinese community' or 'the gay community'. The Unspeak quality here is that there exist such 'communities' that are, in some tangible way, different from our own, that are internally homogeneous, and whose defining characteristic is that of belonging to a different religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. In this way, we cleverly place abstract boundaries between us and them, while congratulating ourselves on our sense of tolerance, as in "There is a large Chinese community in London" (but note that they're not quite part of our community). Our sense of tolerance does have its limits, however, for while we accept such communities, there are certain people we are certainly not prepared to accept, such as 'bogus asylum seekers' and 'illegal refugees', neither kind of which can actually be legally said to exist, since anyone is entitled to seek refuge and asylum without prejudice. The descriptions of 'bogus' and 'illegal' thus preclude the assumption of legitimacy that constitutes due process and an individual's right. And so it is with 'terrorist suspects' and so on. In fact, the desire of stripping individuals' legitimacy can be so extreme that, in order to remove any association between suicide and martyrdom, people have even attempted to use such blatantly absurd terms as 'homicide bombers'.

Poole's writing style can seem rather self-righteous and his sarcastic quips are at times an annoying distraction from what is, for the most part, an insightful and often unexpected critique of the language of spin. He cleverly links the different sections of the book from one Unspeak term to another, providing a number of interesting historical and journalistic details along the way. But the book is to be admired not simply because of its recording of linguistic abuses, but more importantly for its conviction that the responsibility to resist them rests with us - that to use terms such as 'ethnic cleansing' is to be complicit in acts of mass murder by legitimizing a term historically linked to the treatment of human beings as mere contaminants and a failure to recognize genocide.

So what about the fish? My favourite part of the book comes in the epilogue, in which Poole quotes from a speech during the 2000 election campaign, in which George W Bush rationalized his unwillingness to demolish hydroelectric dams in order to protect endangered fish thus: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully", to which Poole responds: "Since when were we at war with the fish?"

Eva Yerbabuena

2007-02-26T21:07:00.000Z

Eva Yerbabuena and her Ballet Flamenco company opened the London Flamenco Festival at Sadler's Wells with three performances of her latest production, El Huso de la Memoria (The Spindle of Memory). A native of Granada, despite having been born in Frankfurt, La Yerbabuena is one of the leading flamenco dancers of her generation. Her new production blends traditional flamenco with modern dance styles to create a rather abstract, but captivating performance. It consists of a number of precisely choreographed numbers with different combinations of male and female dancers, with a focus on time, symmetry and rhythmic repetition subtly inspired by West Side Story. These numbers are interspersed with more free-flowing interludes from dancer Aida Badía, performing to saetas, unaccompanied prayers originating in the Easter processions. Eva Yerbabuena dances four numbers, the third of which is by far the highlight of the show, and danced to a soleá (an improvised combination of three- or four-verse stanzas over a 12-beat metre). The musical accompaniment is provided by four male singers, two guitars, flute/soprano saxophone, and percussion.

This type of more artsy, large-production performance will probably not appeal so much to those preferring the more intimate, low-key setting of traditional flamenco haunts, but it's a fair compromise to see the more established dancers who have graduated from the tablao. Of course, I wanted to see Isabel Bayón on Wednesday, but it's sold out already. The clip below is from one of Yerbabuena's performances at the 2006 Bienal de Flamenco in Seville, with singer Miguel Poveda, courtesy of traza

Smash don't mash...

2007-02-21T20:03:00.000Z

Steamed haddock with ginger, garlic and spring onion, and smashed potatoes with Boursin

So I have to thank indiagirl for this one, since it was she who suggested the whole Boursin thing, which on the face of it doesn't seem that appealing. But trust me, this is a great way of making something from bland boiled potatoes.

Marinate the haddock with some light soy sauce, oil, balsamic vinegar, Shaoxing rice wine (or dry sherry), garlic, pepper and finely chopped ginger for at least 20 minutes. Sprinkle some chopped spring onion and steam in a bamboo steamer or other method of your choice for about 5 minutes. For the potatoes, boil them in salted water until soft (I'm told I should use red-skinned potatoes for best effect, but I don't think I offended anyone by using white-skinned ones...). Drain and smash (not, I hasten to add, mash - indiagirl didn't specify how one should smash potatoes, so I just squashed them with the back of a wooden spatula, but there are probably more fun techniques, like pelting them against the wall or something). Add a generous helping of garlic and herb Boursin and mix into the smashed potatoes.

Hot Fuzz Scandal

2007-02-21T19:25:00.000Z

Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright (Dir.), Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

Notes on a Scandal
Richard Eyre (Dir.), Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett

From the makers of Shaun of the Dead comes Hot Fuzz, which is by far the funniest movie I've seen in a long time, actually not much of a surprise, given that comedies don't tend to appeal to me much. But what sets Hot Fuzz apart is some great writing, which innocently introduces random bits of character observation that later serve to set up gag after gag. The story involves PC Nicholas Angel, whose exemplary record as a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Force leads his superiors to assign him to a remote village in the middle of Gloucestershire so as to prevent the rest of the force looking bad. Angel soon finds out that policing in rural Gloucestershire is rather different from the adrenaline-charged crime-fighting of London and soon becomes the butt of jokes from the local police force for his paranoid intent on investigating a spate of seemingly accidental deaths. The rest I can't describe, because it's just too insane and it would give too much away, so you'll just have to watch it yourselves. The cast includes a whole bunch of cameos from the likes of Timothy Dalton (as manager of local Somerfield, Sissy Skinner...), Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Edward Woodward and Bill Nighy.

Bill Nighy provides the link to Notes on a Scandal, playing the loyal, older husband to Cate Blanchett's bourgeois art teacher. Based on a novel by Zoe Heller, the story follows a young art teacher, whose ineptness at instilling discipline in her students facilitates her friendship with Judi Dench's old-school history teacher. From Dench's narratives of her diary entries, we learn that her interest in the young art teacher is not without an ulterior motive, but is instead an obsessive and manipulative ploy. When she discovers that Blanchett is having an affair with one of her students, she believes she has what she needs to split up the young teacher's marriage and make her the lasting companion she has been looking for to relieve her loneliness. Despite a superficially mundane plot, the movie is made compelling by outstanding performances from Dench and Blanchett, who convincingly portray their characters' obsessions, driven respectively by fear of boredom and fear of loneliness. Dench's portrayal is particularly unsettling, and you'll leave the film thinking twice about striking up a conversation with that nice elderly lady in Hampstead Heath.

Snowflecked brownies

2007-02-10T21:00:00.000Z

The recent snow has inspired to do some baking, partly because I've been spending days cooped up in a not-so-warm apartment, working from home and staying away from the chaos outside. This recipe is from Nigella, one of those that you only do once a year (usually before Christmas, though!) for fear that doing it any more frequently amounts to making a choice between diabetes or a heart attack. Since the snow's gone, I didn't actually bother with the snowflecks, but here's the recipe anyway:

375g dark chocolate
375g unsalted butter
225g plain flour
350g sugar
6 eggs
250g white chocolate buttons
1tbsp vanilla extract
1tsp salt

375g of dark chocolate is really a ridiculous amount to request in a recipe, because good quality chocolate almost invariably comes in 100g bars. So once you've chopped up 375g, you have 25g left over, and let's be realistic, you're just gonna end up eating it anyway, so you might as well just use up the whole 400g. That's what I do, and the brownies taste all the better for it.... Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan over low heat until smooth, and leave to cool slightly. Meanwhile, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Fold into the chocolate mixture and mix thoroughly. Add the flour and fold until all the flour is absorbed. Finally, fold in the white chocolate buttons. Using a spatula, pour onto a deep baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and spread evenly.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 25 minutes. The top should be crisp and speckled, but the centre should be goo-ey. Leave on a rack to cool. Cut up into squares. Serve with some icing sugar, vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint. Or just eat straight out of the oven... incidentally, brownies make good smoothies. This might sound rather disgusting and, in fact, if you give some thought to what you're actually putting into your smoothie, I agree it sounds less than appealing, but seriously, it's chocolate and fat - how could it not taste good? Just add a little milk, ice cream, maybe even some peanut butter while you're at it, blitz to your desired consistency, and drink. You'll feel your blood turning to cement instantly.......

1. Mix melted butter and chocolate with eggs and sugar

2. Fold in flour

3. Bake at 180C, 25 mins

4. Drool.....

Roast chicken

2007-02-04T19:15:00.000Z

Having just fed four people, I thought I'd share my thoughts on roast chicken. No doubt everyone has their own way of roasting chicken, so here's mine. The worst thing about a roast chicken is dry, bland breast meat (although I don't usually eat chicken breast anyway), so you have to stuff the thing with something to prevent it from drying. Get your preferred choice of chicken (free-range, corn-fed, or whatever works for you). Wash and pat dry. Stuff with: wedges of lemon, small onion, crushed garlic cloves, your choice of herb (mint or thyme work well), butter. Rub olive oil and salt all over skin.

I served roast potatoes with the chicken. Wash and peel the potatoes, and cut into bite-size chunks. Parboil for 5 minutes, drain and shake in the pan to fluff them up. Spread over the bottom of a deep roasting tin lined with aluminium foil. Halve two small onions, and cut each half into quarters. Crush some garlic cloves. Spread evenly among the potato chunks. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and cumin seeds. Place the rack on the roasting tin and set the chicken on top, breast side up. Cook in a pre-heated at 190C (about 75 mins. for a medium-sized chicken). You shouldn't need to baste it, and the fat and juices will be soaked up by the potatoes, giving them extra flavour.

Et voilà:

Praise for....

2007-02-03T09:38:00.000Z

This is something that has bemused me for some time. Who writes those testimonials that appear on billboards for third-rate Hollywood movies and on the inside pages of fiction best-sellers? You can tell much about the likely quality of a movie from these helpful one-liners. For example, "Rocky Balboa is the best Rocky movie yet!", is hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? The word "yet" also warns you that it's not outside the realm of possibility that Sylvester Stallone might appear in one further installment, in which it doesn't matter if the guy is blind and in a zimmer frame, he'll still knock the crap out of an opponent 60 years younger after 12 rounds in the ring. Or what does it say about Final Destination 15 that the best the distributors could do was an endorsement of "Thrilling!" from the News of the World, as if, somehow, a thriller shouldn't be expected to be "thrilling".

Books don't escape this sort of disingenuous advertising either. Take Jacques Pépin's autobiography, The Apprentice, which I'm currently reading. It's a great book describing his early years as a trainee chef, going on to cook for Charles de Gaulle, emigrating to New York, almost becoming JFK's personal chef and eventually becoming a TV personality. Yet, the Washington Post seemingly has nothing more helpful to say than "Fascinating", Entertainment Weekly chips in with "Colourful memories", or how about this from the Chicago Tribune: "Well told", as if somehow they're commending this charming Frenchman on his competent command of English grammar. Some others have clearly read the book more carefully and offer far more useful commentary. Anthony Bourdain, ever-enthusiastic, has this to say: "I've been waiting for this book my whole life!... A well-written, funny, sad, informative, and always enchanting account of an incredible career.... An instant classic." And this brings me to Bourdain's own hefty tome, Les Halles Cookbook, which I recently purchased. This, by the way, is an excellent book, replete with classic French recipes accompanied by Bourdain's odd-ball commentary: "So, let's make fries. But do it right. There's no half-ass way to make French fries." You can almost feel him watching over your shoulder. "No, you f*cking idiot! You're supposed to blanche them first!" That's the kind of thing he might say if you didn't give due respect to your fries. The introduction alone is worth the 9.99GBP (reduced...) I paid for it. Yet the front carries this dubious endorsement from Gordon Ramsay: "A workable, usable book with attitude", which in my impression of Gordon Ramsay, translates as: "Yeah, this book is f*cking sh*t! Usable! I use it as a f*cking doorstop! And I don't care what people say about his attitude, I still think he's a f*cking a***hole!" Of course, that might just be me being unkind....

Here's another book I'm reading: The Tapestries, by Kien Nguyen, a novel set in early 20th Century Vietnam. Now, some people are just full of themselves. What the heck is this?

"The Tapestries stirs and bleeds and blushes, fully fleshed. Its every leaf glimmers with sunlit rain, its every anguish burns the eyes. It breathes... No detail escapes Nguyen's watchful eye, no shape or surface slumps into soft focus... The pictures, thousands of them and almost every one jewel-bright, tell the story... Under the swoosh of the story itself lie the backdrops crafted so exquisitely that their silver blades and lanterns gleam long after the drama fades from view."

I get the feeling that whoever it was at the San Francisco Chronicle who wrote this was suffering from a severe case of post-colonial romaticism. Firstly, the place was run by French people; there were probably bakeries selling baguettes to rich white people all over the place. Secondly, the poor guy was sold into slavery to the household of the magistrate who murdered his father. Thirdly, there were probably rats everywhere, and cockroaches, and malaria. And it was hot, and sweaty, and humid.

Dreamt that....

2007-02-03T08:55:00.000Z

I've been having some very weird, random dreams recently. It started the other day, when I dreamt that I poured soured milk on my coffee. For some reason, this was very distressing. I then dreamt that I had to clean up a vatful of coffee ground sludge off my sink, which I presume was the leftovers from the coffee I poured down the sink the previous night. Anyone an expert on coffee dreams?

Yesterday, though, following dinner with SM at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Hampstead, I dreamt that we were having dinner at some other generic establishment, let's call it Franchise X, wherein the following conversation ensued at the end of the meal:

Me: "Excuse me, could we have a glass of tap water, please?"

Waiter: "I'm sorry, sir, we can't serve you tap water."

Me: "What do you mean, you can't serve us tap water?"

Waiter: "I can't just serve you tap water, you have to be eating something."

Me: "But we've just had a whole meal! You want us to have another one so we can get a glass of water?!?"

Waiter: "I'm sorry, sir, but that's our policy."

Me: "Well, how much do you want people to spend in order to get a glass of tap water?? Could I speak to your manager, please?"

Wait 15 minutes...... some guy in pyjamas and a toothbrush comes out of the kitchen and walks towards our table.

Toothbrush guy: "Excuse me, sir, you had a query about something?"

Me: "Are you the manager?"

Toothbrush guy: "We don't actually have managers, it goes against company policy. But I have the requisite skills and qualities for somebody in a managerial position."

A guy in pyjamas and a toothbrush? What the heck is that about? No doubt there are signs of a deep-seated anguish at the state of the service industry in this country. I have, on occasion, been charged 1p for tap water at restaurants, which is, frankly, just insulting. Oh, we know it's a legal requirement, but we're still gonna charge you for the effort of turning on the tap.... But, dude, what do they put in those burgers at GBK??

Babel Babble....

2007-01-29T18:20:00.000Z

Alejandro González Iñárritu (Dir), Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, Koji Yakusho

I put it to you that this is one of the most overrated movies of the year. Far from being the towering achievement that its title implies, this kinda crumbled to pieces like the proverbial tower. I regard Iñárritu as the natural heir to Krzysztof Kieslowski in his ability to weave together divergent stories across space and time into a coherent whole, as in his excellent Amores Perros. I've found his last two attempts, however, to be rather disappointing. 21 Grams had nothing very interesting to say and was kinda pretentious, while Babel, despite seemingly bearing an important message about cultural miscommunication, is far from an entertaining movie. I can't say that I found anything in it that was appealing - the characters aren't compelling, the story isn't that interesting, the acting is average, and the conclusion is highly unsatisfying. Why is it, for example, that the white American couple end up OK (Cate Blanchett doesn't even need an amputation), but everyone else gets screwed over? Is this a comment on the way of the world? In fact, I spent much of the movie trying to decide whether there was any point to any of it. The three settings (Morocco, California/Mexico, Japan) don't fit that well together, and the Japanese section is particularly tenuous, if not wholly bizarre. Not even Iñárritu's usually excellent cinematography makes the trip worthwhile. Perhaps the one redeeming quality is Gustavo Santaolalla's score.

I sense there was a reason why men were sent to the corners of the earth speaking in different tongues, but I suspect it wasn't so they could make a movie about it.....

Catchin' up...

2007-01-27T19:10:00.000Z

OK, I don't really have time for this bloggin' sh*t these days... so here's a quick one to catch up on stuff I've been meaning to write about, but won't ever get the chance to. Ever.

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) - Guillermo del Toro's latest fantasy film set during the Spanish Civil War, in which a young girl forced to live in the household of her tyrannical Nationalist General stepfather [wow, it's really hard to concentrate while watching The Magnificent Seven, and that great score by Elmer Bernstein blaring out of the TV...] becomes absorbed in her own fantasy world of fawns and fairies. You might think this sounds like a delightful children's story, but this is at times a seriously gross and violent movie. If you can bear the gore, it's a wonderfully inventive and imaginative film with some great acting. Despite this, del Toro's earlier film, El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone), also set during the Civil War, is a superior film.

Déjà Vu - I'm guessing this one will only appeal to fans of Star Trek and Denzel Washington (I happen to be both....). That said, this isn't much of a stretch for Denzel, who's probably played this character at least five times before. As an ATFB (that's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau) agent, he's called out to investigate an explosion on a ferry in New Orleans carrying soldiers returning from war (someone in the cabinet must have come up with that story line...). A new technology that enables a secretive new agency to construct a wormhole through spacetime to view events that happened exactly four days ago provides the novelty value. Then it all gets a bit silly as Denzel is sent back in time to try and stop the terrorists from blowing up the ferry. Lo and behold, he begins to realize that whatever he does, he can't really change the course of history. Unfortunately, Hollywood thinks differently and so in the end he gets his way. But dammit, why can't people die at the end of Hollywood movies? Anyway, it's entertaining enough, but I suspect Stephen Hawking didn't advise on the plot.

The Last King of Scotland - everyone go see this one. Forest Whitaker is great. Hurrah! Oscar please....

Apocalypto - jury's out on this one... this movie's weird. Some great cinematography and entertaining action. I'm told there's a lot of historical detail that's factually correct, as long as you don't care when stuff happened (the Maya Kingdom, for example, no longer existed by the time the Conquistadores arrived in Mexico, but hey...). The film's gotten a lot of criticism for being racist and portraying the Maya people as ruthless barbarians. Mind you, that's how Americans are portrayed in most films, and nobody seems to care much. So my question is, how much responsibility does a film maker have in accurately portraying a particular ethnic group/nationality? Discuss.....

Matsuri St James's, 15 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AL - great Japanese restaurant with teppan-yaki tables. Fireball ice cream is quite an experience. Expensive, but chilled out.

OK, enough for now.

都江堰 - Du Jiang Yan Irrigation Project

2007-01-08T19:34:00.000Z

The Du Jian Yan Irrigation Project is situated 56km northwest of Chengdu, a 50-minute bus ride from Cha Dian Zi bus station in western Chengdu (茶店子西门公共汽车站) (on a direct, "deluxe" bus, for 15RMB a go). The project was constructed by the Shu Governor, Li Bing, in the 3rd century B.C. It is the world's largest example of a damless irrigation system and classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The irrigation system serves to control and divert the flow of water for irrigation of the Chengdu Plain and consists of three components: the Fish Mouth dike (鱼嘴), the Flying Sand Spillway (飞沙堰) and the Bottleneck (宝瓶口).

Pay attention now, here comes the science bit: if I've understood the principle correctly (which, not being an eco-engineer, is far from likely), the Fish Mouth divides the Minjiang river into an outer and inner canal. The outer canal follows the course of the river and is shallower than the riverbed, while the deeper inner canal diverts faster flowing water along the face of the surrounding mountain. The inner canal serves to remove silt; the outer canal acts as an overflow when water levels are high so as to prevent flooding. The long, deep Bottleneck guides water from the inner canal into the irrigated area and was carved out of the face of the mountain, even before explosives were in common use, by repeatedly heating and cooling the rock, causing it to crack. Barriers made from bamboo and rocks, held together by rope, were used to protect the river banks.

Several temples and ancillary features were subsequently built on the site, and the walk back up the mountainside through the Songmao Road (松茂故道) is well worth it, giving some great views of the river and Du Jiang village (and the city, although that's not so nice......).

满城尽带黄金甲 - The Curse of the Golden Flower

2007-01-07T13:16:00.000Z

Zhang Yimou (Dir), Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou

The Curse of the Golden Flower is set to be Zhang Yimou's latest bid for Best Foreign Film at this year's Oscars. A typically stylish, visually sumptuous period drama based telling the story of a Tang dynasty Emperor whose thirst for power results in the death of his three sons, Golden Flower has attracted a great deal of attention, much of it for its unusually revealing costumes (Critics Rip into Golden Flower's Bodices, Guardian Dec 20, 2006). Based on a play by Yu Cao, the film has all the ingredients that make imperial dramas so cinematically appealing: elaborate sets, visually stunning set pieces, beautiful costumes, internecine power struggles, decadence, love, incest, patricide, filicide, martial arts... But Golden Flower is more than just another period martial arts drama. In fact, unlike Zhang's previous films, House of Flying Daggers and Hero, there is much less focus on elaborately choreographed swordfights, in favour of emphasizing the ritual of imperial life, in a manner reminiscent of Raise the Red Lantern. As with many of Zhang's films, plot is far from everything and the plot is, at times, rather obtuse. The story focuses on Gong Li's empress, the emperor's second wife and mother of his two younger sons, who, upon realizing that she is slowly being poisoned at the behest of her husband, hatches a plot to kill the emperor on the night of the Chrysanthemum festival, pleading with her eldest son (played by Taiwanese actor/singer Jay Chou) to lead the assault and take over the reign.

The main characters are sadly not very fully developed; Chow Yun Fat's emperor is disappointingly two-dimensional, while his first son, subject of the illicit and unrequited affections of the empress, is more like a straight line, not helped by some pretty poor acting by Qin Junjie. But the film is all about Gong Li. After some pretty average Hollywood distractions in Memoirs of a Geisha and the absurd Miami Vice, she's back on form in a captivating performance that holds the film together. Empress Phoenix is a perfect blend of seductiveness, imperiousness, deceit and despair, all of which which Gong Li excels at. If you only need one reason to watch this movie, let it be Gong Li........

Giant pandas

2007-01-07T11:55:00.000Z

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base (成都大熊猫繁育研究基地) is located in the northeast part of the city, a short cab ride away from the city centre. The base holds the largest population of captively-bred giant pandas in the world (as well as some red pandas) and, as the name suggests, conducts research into panda breeding, including genetic typing to match potential mates. The site provides a simulated natural environment for artificially-bred pandas, with separate enclosures for cubs, and sub-adult and adult bears. Newborns are kept in a nursery (in cots - very cute.....).

The best time to visit is between 8.30am and 10am, when the animals feed. Being the outwardly lazy animals that they are, pandas seemingly do little other than eat and lounge around (secretly my ambition in life), so if you don't catch them while they're munching, you're unlikely to see them move. As the book implies, the giant panda eats shoots and leaves. Although there are some 90 different types of bamboo, the panda appears to be quite discerning, favouring only about 20 of these. Bizarrely, pandas appear to be rather stubborn eaters, eschewing an active, hunter-gatherer carnivorous lifestyle in favour of chowing down and munching on 15 to 20 kilos of bamboo a day instead, despite the fact that they lack enzymes to digest grasses efficiently. They're also fastidious breeders; females ovulate once a year, between March and May, leaving a period of only two or three days when fertilization can occur. Mothers give birth to twins, but usually abandon one of the babies, who dies after a few days. Giant pandas are indigenous to southwest China, namely the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, and Tibet, with an estimated 1600 specimens left in the wild.

The general appeal of pandas appears to be partly due to certain similarities with humans, both in their facial expression and anatomic function; unlike other bears, pandas possess a "pseudo-thumb", which I'm told involves a sesamoid bone. This thumb enables pandas to grasp objects much like humans, and they use this ability to grab bamboo shoots, using their mouths to strip off the leaves (see pictures below). It's really rather mesmerizing. They also appear to be designed to sit on their ass for extended periods of time, which humans are also known to do. All of this makes me think that humans must, at least in sentiment, be the direct descendants of pandoid ancestors.

The Chengdu Breeding Centre recently released Xiang Xiang, a tagged four-year old male, into the wild, at the nearby Wolong Reserve. Sadly, he doesn't seem to have fared very well, and it's reported that he's been bullied by wild males. Spare a thought for the poor guy....

A cautionary note: although getting to the Research Base by taxi is fairly straightforward (taxis in Chengdu are metered), getting a taxi back into the city doesn't seem to be. The drivers loitering around there seem to make a business out of conning tourists by not using their meters. Private drivers might give you a better deal. A ride into the city centre should cost your around 30RMB (15RMB=1GBP).

Chengdu: A city of never-say goodbye

2006-12-30T12:49:00.000Z

成都：一个一来了也就不要离开的地方

So goes the official slogan for the capital of Sichuan, soon to be replaced by "Chengdu: City of Pandas" or "Chengdu: Eden of the East" or some such other nonsensical slogan, if the market research survey questionnaire I was asked to fill in is anything to go by. Allegedly, the province of Sichuan has more visitors each year than the entire United States. Most of these are from Asia, making Sichuan relatively unknown to Western travellers. This, sadly, hasn't prevented a proliferation of Starbucks and Pizza Hut (which, bizarrely, was listed under "Exotic cuisine" in my hotel's Chengdu restaurant guide).

There are a few things you should know about Chengdu. It's big. Very big. It's the fifth most populous city in China, with some 11 million inhabitants. It's polluted. Very polluted. You can get up in the morning and pretend that it's winter fog, but it isn't. It's full of Chinese people (11 million of them, as I mentioned above). They spit. Everywhere. They talk really loudly. It's full of cars, mopeds and bikes (I'm guessing, about 11 million of them in all...). The taxi drivers are insane (incidentally, there are no seatbelts in taxis. In fact, they seem to make a point of taking them out, as if somehow, putting on a seatbelt detracts from the experience. They also like putting steel cages between the passengers' and driver's seats, so that, should the taxi brake suddenly, you'll invariably smash your head against a bunch of steel bars. This, of course, is nothing to worry about, as taxi drivers rarely use the brake pedal anyway, preferring to avoid obstacles by using a combination of evasive manouvering, swerving, cutting people up and stepping on the gas. Often, however, this is also unnecessary, as taxi drivers seldom feel the need to avoid oncoming traffic or pedestrians, having, as they seemingly appear to do, the unerring conviction that others will move out of the way first). You might think, then, that risking your life in a taxi is not really worth the adrenaline rush, but let me assure you that you're much better off inside a taxi than outside it...... another note for the pedestrian - do not be fooled by the green man, who merely indicates that you may attempt to cross the road with a probability of less than 1 that you'll be run over. Beyond that, your life is in your hands.

Indeed, Chengdu is not the easiest place to get around for the nouveau arrivé and, although a metro system is due to be completed in 2008, taxi is still the transport of choice for the non-electric moped-riding out-of-towner. It's also not a pretty city. It's noisy, polluted, haphazardly planned, non-pedestrian friendly, the centre's overrun by Western überbrands and it sprawls for miles. In fact, it's a typical Chinese city, with worse transport infrastructure. But, as with other Chinese cities, Chengdu possesses little spots of hidden beauty - small, preserved oases of calming order amidst the surrounding urban chaos. These include a number of temples, the thatched cottage of the poet Du Fu (which I sadly didn't get time to see), and the famed Panda research base (which is well worth a visit). Further afield are a number of must-see places (these require time and planning, so inevitably you won't get to see them all on the same trip), including the giant buddha at Leshan, carved on the face of the mountain, the Du Jiang Yan irrigation project, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Jiu Zhai Gou, said to be one of the most beautiful scenic places in China. The Wolong panda sanctuary is a protected site and home to the majority of the world's remaining wild panda population, although given that there are only about 1600 of them left, I'm guessing your chances of actually seeing one in the wild are pretty slim.

Of course, another reason to visit is for the famed Sichuan cuisine, which is famed for its complex flavours, combining sweetness, saltiness, sourness and spiciness all in the same mouthful, examples of which include Kungpo chicken, twice-boiled pork and Ma Po tofu.

More on the above to come, including all my culinary experiences. Chengdu: A city of never-say goodbye. Well, we did say goodbye, but will no doubt return to see all the things we missed out on this time. So perhaps the city's slogan does need changing. I would suggest "Chengdu: The city of say hello again" or, in the local lingo 成都：一个一离开也就一定要再来的地方.

Pre-Christmas

2006-12-05T21:48:00.000Z

Since nasty skank byotch will be away for three weeks, I've had to forego all pre-Christmas celebrations. In fact, I'm quite thankful for this, because I have no idea where time goes these days and, frankly, I don't have time. I couldn't, however, get away without hosting one dinner, vicarious, graphic details of which below:

1. Spiced butternut squash soup
2. Russian salad with prawns
3. Sherry roast pork with crackling, roasted pumpkin and sautéed leeks
4. Half New York Cheesecake
5. Mince pies (courtesy of H) and cappuccino biscotti

Merry Christmas!

Things to do with: a pumpkin (part 1)

2006-11-26T11:08:00.000Z

Hallowe'en's gone, all the pumpkins are on sale, and you just can't resist buying one, even though you have no idea what you'll do with it once you've bought it. Herewith, I provide part one of a pumpkin experimentation series, courtesy of india girl. Hopefully, I'll find more pumpkins at the supermarket to continue the series, otherwise you'll have to wait a year!

Stir-fried beef with string beans and roasted pumpkin:

Pumpkin preparation technique is important: should you skin first, then cube? Or cube first and then skin? Or perhaps cut into wedges, cook and then skin? After much discussion, I opted for the first option. Cut off the top and bottom of the pumpkin to give yourself a flat surface, cut vertically in half, then skin. Spoon out the seeds and spread out on a baking tray with some oil. Cube pumpkin and place over the seeds, drizzle with some oil. Add sea salt, pepper, ground cumin, chilli and whole, crushed garlic cloves. Cook for 15-20 in oven, pre-heated to 200C.

Serve with stir-fried beef and string beans, yoghurt, and plain rice.

Casino Royale

2006-11-18T19:39:00.000Z

Martin Campbell (Dir), Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Eva Green (2006)

Thursday was the Barbican's members' screening of Casino Royale, complete with martinis (shaken, not stirred, but no olive. Not that I give a damn...). Of course, I can think of no better way to precede such an event than a decent steak frites at Smiths of Smithfield just down the road. Incidentally, the "lucky squid" is an excellent starter - smoky, grilled squid with Chinese broccoli, chilli, garlic and ginger. Desserts appear to have changed a little since last time. There I was looking forward to their trifle, only to discover that it's been replaced by a banoffee fool for the winter season (although it's not at all a bad alternative).

Anyway, enough of food. After all the hype about Daniel Craig and the lack of gadgetry in the new Bond film, I was curious to see how Casino Royale would compare to its predecessors. I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of Bond movies. I watch them because it's become more or less a civil duty, but I have no particular passion for them. In fact, other than Pierce Brosnan, I haven't particularly liked previous Bonds, and the last few have had rubbish storylines. I must also admit that I haven't seen the original Casino Royale, and have no idea what it's about. With this in mind, I was pleasantly surprised by this new outing - here's a Bond movie I actually really enjoyed watching (admittedly, this might have been residual endorphin effects from the steak at Smiths, but still...). Daniel Craig makes an unlikely Bond; he lacks that certain charm and charisma. He is, however, a much better actor than most previous ones, and he's a lot meaner. The tongue-in-cheek humour and gadgets are replaced with a much grittier, and more violent, style. It's to Daniel Craig's credit that, thinking back, I have no idea what the plot was about, but I don't really care. The film itself is so engaging, particularly the Montenegro sequence, that you more or less lose sight of the bigger picture (you'll realize that this is quite ironic once you've seen the film...). Eva Green is stunning as Vesper Lynd, and Judi Dench is bitchier than ever as "M". There were other people in the film, but who cares about them? Most of them die, anyway. There are some great one-liners, though, but I can't say them here, so I don't give them away. As for the title song, Chris Cornell's You Know My Name.... the jury's still out on that one. Not sure I'm that keen. Although David Arnold does a reasonable job of weaving it into the score.

All in all, the best Bond movie I've seen, I would say.

Now then, what the heck is this Baz Luhrmann-directed Chanel no. 5 comercial with Nicole Kidman? Anyone else get this before the main feature? It's ridiculous! The thing is unbearably cheesy and it goes on for ages. The credits alone (yes, credits for a freakin' commercial!) are longer than the bloody film! Seriously, yes Chanel no. 5, close-up of Nicole Kidman looking pretty, and then move on already. What else do you need to say? It's a perfume. At least half the audience has no interest in it, and I'm sure the other half will have lost all interest after being made to sit through a commercial reminding them that they look nothing like Nicole Kidman...

Flamenco v The World

2006-11-17T19:02:00.000Z

Tomatito and Michel Camilo, live at the Barbican, Nov 15th

This was one of the most anticipated concerts at this year's London Jazz Festival. Discovered by Paco de Lucía, Tomatito hails from Almería, in the east of Andalucía, and at 48, is one of the leading flamenco guitarists of his generation. Michel Camilo, a native of the Dominican Republic, is regarded as the pre-eminent Latin American jazz pianist. Putting the two together is seemingly a recipe for a sublime evening of highly controlled chaos. Both are strongly influenced by the music of Astor Piazzolla, and started their set with Libertango. The programme combined another two Piazzolla compositions, an amazing performance of Fuga y Misterio and Adiós Nonino, with compositions by both artists from their second collaborative album, Spain Again (the first one, if you're wondering, was called Spain). Both players traverse the various realms of Latin American, Spanish and jazz music with ease, but their playing is always strongly rooted in their respective Spanish and Caribbean roots, which makes for a fascinating contrast of playing styles and rhythms. Tomatito's guitar playing speaks for itself, but Camilo's piano playing at times leaves you completely speechless, switching effortlessly from tango, to rumba, to salsa, to blues, and sometimes even playing more than one of these at a time. You feel you could ask him to play The Sound of Music over a bossa nova beat and he'd probably throw in some bluegrass for good measure.

Definitely worth the three standing ovations.

Shut Up And Save The Planet

2006-11-06T22:44:00.000Z

I've been half-spectating the run-up to the US mid-terms with what I can only describe as equal measures of bemusement and bewilderment. Apparently, the elections are expected to cost some $2.6 billion (according to the Center for Responsive Politics, although I don't quite know what they mean by 'responsive' politics. Maybe they mean 'responsible'), which is about 45 times more than the last general election in the UK. Much of this, of course, has gone into financing those imaginative TV ads that have been flying around, those rather Orwellian ones that place Bob Casey alongside pictures of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or ones in which a Senator's opposition to a Bill scrapping federal grants for sexual studies somehow get morphed into: "Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men." And there was the whole Harold Ford Jr at a Playboy party thing, among other, less colourful accusations of graft.

Other than making dubious allegations about the opposition, the rest of the time has been largely spent on damage limitation from various gaffes by their own party members. Last week, there was Dick Cheney's comment that, as far as he was concerned, waterboarding was a "no-brainer" - it must be some other kind of torture that the US government does not support - and, of course, the latest comment, courtesy of John Kerry, that those not taking their education seriously would "get stuck in Iraq". George W Bush apparently found this comment "insulting and shameful", saying that "The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology." Interestingly, John Kerry didn't seem to have said anything about the military's smarts or bravery, so it's unclear what Bush found so insulting. Education, after all, has little to do with smarts - he of all people should know that, having once admitted that even a grade C student can make it to the presidency.

Regardless, one feels that the surest way for the Democrats to take back Congress is to say nothing. As the Democrat House Leader said: "We are thankful for where we are today, to be poised for success. But we have two Mount Everests we have to climb - they are called Monday and Tuesday." Hopefully, someone will inform her that the air up there is pretty thin, so it's a good idea not to say too much on your way up. And this brings me to my public policy intervention of the day. With all this talk of global warming and budget flights and carbon credits, has anyone actually tried to estimate how much carbon dioxide we'd save if we stopped talking nonsense? I suspect that if we encouraged people to think before they speak and open their mouths responsibly, we could collectively save the planet. This way, many people could go for days without saying a thing, and the world would be so much the better for it. So this is the new campaign: "Shut Up And Save The Planet!" (Yes, if you're wondering, I did try to come up with a tacky anagram that read "S.H.U.S.H" or something such like, but I gave up....)

So there, next time you're about to say something, stop and think: "Are my grandchildren's lives worth what I'm about to say?" If the answer is "No", then just keep it to yourself. You'll be doing us all a great favour.

See also:

Remember, remember the 5th of November...

2006-11-05T14:46:00.000Z

...The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

I hope you'll all be watching V for Vendetta...

Fado, Sufi, Flamenco....

2006-11-03T20:32:00.000Z

Qawwali Flamenco, live at the Barbican, Oct 25
Madredeus, live at the Barbican, Nov 2

Last night's Madredeus set at the Barbican was definitely the mellowest concert I've been too all year. It was the Portuguese band's first Barbican appearance for six years, at which they performed songs from their latest two albums, Um amor infinito and Faluas do Tejo, the latter being a homesick dedication to the band's native city, full of the sights, sounds and smells of Lisbon and images of faluas crossing the Tejo. The concert was full of sublimely lyrical songs, often combining the nostalgic melodies of fado with rhythms ranging from blues, flamenco and traditional Andean music. Sadly, Teresa Salgueido, although an expressive singer, does not sing well live, and was off-key for much of the concert. Her emotive singing nevertheless made it a worthwhile experience, although the audience apparently didn't care. Half of Lisbon must have been in the Barbican Hall; you'd have thought that Portugal had won the World Cup. Regardless, I feel I have 20 years of Madredeus to catch up on, so I'll be buying their Anthology album.

By contrast, Qawwali Flamenco must be the whackiest concert I've been to this year. A collaboration set up by a Spanish musicologist, Qawwali Flamenco pits the sufi sounds of Faiz Ali Faiz against the canto jondo of Duquende. The result is an absolutely mesmerizing mix of Punjabi chanting, complete with tabla, harmoniums and lots of clapping, and gut-wrenching flamenco song, accompanied by guitar and cajón. Faiz Ali Faiz's band had been held up in Islamabad for two days due to cancelled flights, and only arrived at Heathrow airport an hour and a half before the concert, but that didn't seem to prevent them from stirring themselves and everyone else up into a frenzy of rapturous singing, often carrying on for 20 minutes at a time, harmoniums chasing Ali Faez as he improvised or led the singers into chorus. The DVD is out - I'll be adding it to my collection......

See also:

Blackberry

2006-11-02T22:59:00.000Z

It's always interesting to learn about the toilet culture when you first start in a new working environment, so here's an edited excerpt of my e-mail to india girl earlier today:

"ok, so I'm just writing this quickly as I need a distraction between checking proofs of a manuscript and preparing myself psychologically for another session of looking at endless tables of Stata output. But I was just in the third floor restroom and I swear the person in the cubicle next door was tapping away at his Blackberry. All I could hear was this "click, click, click" noise of the keys, and I'm pretty sure it was a Blackberry, 'cos they have a very distinctive key-click sound. But damn was he a slow typist. It was actually really annoying me, not just that he was typing, on his Blackberry, in a toilet cubicle, but that he was doing it so slowly. I bet he was writing a paper for the New England Journal of Medicine or something. Public health's finest, written in a toilet cubicle.......

I wonder if JK Rowling writes on the toilet."

Yasmin Levy

2006-10-21T09:40:00.000Z

at Union Chapel Islington, 18 Oct 2006

"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with your tickets", said the usher woman as she ripped my credit card receipt by mistake. One gets the feeling that the event organizers at Union Chapel aren't very organized, judging by the shambolic queues outside that left people waiting 40 minutes to collect pre-booked tickets. Having said that, it's a great venue for an intimate concert - an octagonal church with a high, vaulted, wood-panelled ceiling, with great natural acoustics. Although I don't know about people having kebabs and diet Coke in a church, and I'd suggest you bring yourself a cushion.

The supporting act was a half-hour set by Roxy Rawson, a singer-songwriter-violinist playing an interesting mix of folk-rock-blues. It's all a little hippie for my liking and, although she has a nice voice (I think we decided on a cross between Eva Cassidy, Alanis Morissette, Björk and someone else I can't remember), I couldn't understand a word she was saying and she looked kind of awkward on stage, more like a 12-year old at a school concert. But I'm being unkind - check out Roxy Rawson's MySpace page. Perhaps you can get it to stop playing Philanthropy.

Yasmin Levy is an Israeli Ladino singer, interpreter of Sephardi songs. Her father, Itzhak Levy, collected and transcribed thousands of songs from Sephardi families, passed down from 15th Century Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula. The songs are mainly in Ladino, old Spanish subsequently mixed with Turkish and Hungarian. Befitting the mixed origins of the music, Levy's band comprises a Chilean cajón player, an Israeli guitar player and percussionist, an Egyptian violinist and an Armenian duduk player. The result is a unique blend of middle eastern and flamenco rhythms, and old and modern Sephardi and Spanish song, perhaps not so popular with the purists, but a totally absorbing experience. Levy not only has a great voice, but is also a charming story-teller, taking you back to her childhood learning songs from her mother drumming rhythms on a cooking pot (which she re-enacted with a traditional prayer on stage), describing the Ladino lyrics or re-telling experiences that inspired her own songwriting. The Sephardi songs in particular are tinged with dark irony, with harshly vicious lyrics often sung over beautiful melodies - Mi suegra la negra (my mother-in-law the wench) and Adio Kerida
("Goodbye, goodbye, my darling, I don't want this life, you've made it miserable for me") are great examples. Levy also has more mainstream, light flamenco crowd-pleasers, such her cover of Mayte Martin's Inténtalo encontrar and the gypsy Nací en Alamo. Her surprise of the evening was a duet with Navroz, a Kurdish singer who can do amazing things with his voice. But the evening ended with Ora y media al balkon, a roaring, riotous song that takes you on a trip to medieval Turkey, drunken old men with cigars drumming on table tops and glasses and singing of duelling over their bewitching beloved up on the balcony, watched over by her snake of a sister.

Check out Yasmin Levy's website.

See also:

Random acts of ranting

2006-10-14T17:45:00.001Z

This is a set of random act about random things.

First of all, how hard is it to get a decent cappuccino in this city? Do we get up at 6am, leave the house caffeine-free, rush to Waterloo station to check in for a Eurostar train to Paris, only to get a 1.95GBP cup of water soaked in burnt beans? Do we rush out of the house to catch a late-running, over-crowded train, only to stop at the café on the way to the station and be made to wait 10 minutes for a nasty, frothed up cup of ashtray residue? Seriously, if you're gonna serve crap coffee, then don't serve it. It's so uncivilized. Stressed out commuters take the time out of their hectic journeys to patronize your establishment and they don't ask for much - the least you could do is give them a decent cappuccino. Really, it doesn't take much, and it certainly doesn't take 10 friggin' minutes. And wash out the spout between cups, or at least change the grounds so it doesn't taste like you've passed garden compost through your espresso machine.

Speaking of Waterloo station, there was a guy outside there the other day dressed as a gorilla, collecting funds for Childline. Now, I'm all for giving money for charity and all that, but what's with the gorilla suit? What is it that would make us give more money for a children's charity to a guy dressed as a gorilla than a guy, say, not dressed as a gorilla? Do we somehow think that a
man who decides to hide inside a gorilla suit is more trustworthy? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... in fact, I think the whole sociology of donation would make an interesting thesis for some poor PhD student - see how much money you can wrangle out of people without dressing up as a mammal.

My last rant is about stupid people. I happened to be (yet again - there's a rant in there somewhere) queueing up to pay for a halogen bulb in the lighting department at John Lewis. My main objection to being made to queue is that you're invariably forced to hear the conversations of your fellow shoppers, some of whom simply shouldn't be allowed to consume our oxygen and pollute our atmosphere with the carbon by-products of their pointless respiration. For near the cashier was a stand with 'Blinky Lights'. Blinky Lights, it seems, are pointless, tacky, plastic, battery-operated cubes with flashing LEDs inside, which you can put inside a vase or some other container to impress your guests with your utter cheapness and complete disregard for the environment. It would take a person completely without taste to stop and admire Blinky Lights for more than two seconds. But would you believe it, there are such middle-aged women in the world, who would not only admire said tack, but would even contemplate buying them so she could serve them in a glass with a gin and tonic as a means of impressing some unfortunate acquaintance. Fortunately for her, there was another man in the queue with better temperament than myself, who politely pointed out that, actually, that might not be such a great idea, as gin and tonic probably doesn't go so well served with a Nickel Cadmium battery. "Oh yes, that's true!", she says, "I might give them lead poisoning!" (errm.... yes, if you served it with, say, filings from your Victorian water pipes!) "It takes a man to think of these things, doesn't it?" Well, no, actually, it takes a complete moron to have such a friggin' stupid idea in the first place.......

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The Departed

2006-10-14T17:45:00.000Z

Martin Scorsese, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg

It is rather apt that the title for Scorsese's latest movie also appears to be an anagram for The Predated and almost for The Repeated, for it is a competent remake of Lau Keung Wai's Hong Kong cop and gangster classic, Infernal Affairs. To his credit, Scorsese doesn't try to out-do Infernal Affairs; the plot never strays far from the original and the departed even depart in the same way. There are, in fact, rather a lot of departeds in this movie, but for all the body count, the film has neither the style nor the tension of the original. Scorsese is compelled to give away too much early on, spoonfeeding viewers information that they would have much more fun trying to figure out for themselves as the plot unravels. The result is a much slower and far less engaging movie than the original. The film gains little from being transplanted from the bright lights and triad turf of Hong Kong to the ganglands of the US, other than some dodgy Bostonian accents, some even more questionable hairdos (really, who's idea was it to give Mark Wahlberg THAT?!?), and a lot of cursing.

The performances are competent, although one gets tired of Matt Damon after about 10 minutes, with DiCaprio being by far the better of the two protagonists. It's always fun to watch Nicholson act like a complete whackjob, although some of it is unnecessarily indulgent. Mark Wahlberg's added character, however, seems completely pointless other than to add more deadweight (although he doesn't actually die...) and a few moments of humour. Being re-made for a Western audience, the ending invariably had to be changed, which is a huge disappointment. Although at least we can be certain that Scorsese won't attempt the next two installments in the Infernal Affairs trilogy.

My advice, go rent the original on DVD.

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Films

The Gotan Project Live at L'Olympia Hall, Paris

2006-10-10T19:55:00.000Z

The Gotan Project is playing again at the Brixton Academy on November 3rd. Get tickets now. If there aren't any left, find someone with tickets and bribe, steal, blackmail. Whatever it takes.

Their gig at L'Olympia in Paris last Thursday was preceded by a set from Martinique singer-songwriter David Walters, an impressive one-man band fusing French song with Afro-Caribbean rhythms, using a mix of guitar, drums and synths. Walters was followed by a set of five jazzed up tangos on piano.

After a 20-minute set change, The Gotan Project came on, dressed all in white suits and red ties. The line-up included MCs Philippe Cohen Solal and Christoph H. Müller, bandoneón player Nini Flores, guitarist Eduardo Makaroff, pianist Gustavo Beytelmann, and vocalist Cristina Vilallonga, backed by a string quartet. The group's renowned visuals threatened to cause some embarrassment at the opening of Diferente; nobody wants to start a concert with a giant screen behind them saying "No signal"! But eventually the techie gods got it straight, and the projection for the Diferente video came on (it's cool, by the way, you can check it out on their website). The latest album, Lunático, is named after Carlos Gardel's racehorse, and the title track was appropriately accompanied by a black and white projection of a race track. The gig included tracks from their new album, with excellent smokey vocals from Vilallonga, and tracks from La Revancha del Tango. Particular highlights were a medley of El Capitalismo Foráneo and Vuelvo al Sur played over each other, and a cool extended version of Tríptico. Mí confesión was definitely the most original number, featuring Argentine rap artists Apolo Novax and Chili Parker projected onto see-through screens above the band.

All in all, an excellent evening. Can't wait for my copy of Lunático!

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