Priceless Paintings from W7

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a happy and healthy new year!

Here’s how we enjoy the day (click for a larger image).

See you in the new year.

Food and Drink Christmas, food

All that is left is get on with paid work for a couple of hours, prepare some food for tonight’s party, wrap the remaining presents, and relax. As we don’t have a Christmas tree, we don’t have to get into an argument as to where to trim it, how and when (but we’ll put some extra lights up for that extra Christmas Cheer).

So, take it easy, and hope you haven’t forgotten anything essential with your shopping. I didn’t get my supplies through online order and direct delivery from the supermarket this year, but instead made all shopping in small batches on foot, scheduled according to requirements and shelf-life. I managed to get the rest yesterday, but the situation at the supermarket even at 10.30am on Wednesday December 23rd was such that I do not plan to return before it is all over.

The fridge and the larder are full anyway. There’s neither need nor space for more.

Thoughts Christmas

This week, I’ve been mostly eating more Christmas menu try-outs. The goal is to produce a new menu with a new twist here and here, while still honouring the tradition of Brussels Sprouts and Christmas Pudding. You’ll see it online this Friday.

For those who can’t wait, here’s how I plan to smuggle Brussels Sprouts into the 2009 Christmas menu:

Christmas Fettuccini Carbonara with smoked salmon and Brussels Sprouts.

This is fit for all year round, and absolutely delicious, so bear with me…

Per person, get five Brussels sprouts and two rashers of good bacon. Cut the bacon into fine strips, and flake the sprouts into individual leaves. Set aside.

Replace the Brussel sprouts with fine strips of Cavolo Nero if you don’t like the former and can source the latter. In the UK, try Waitrose, the only regular supplier for Cavolo Nero known to me. Now…

Per person, take one fresh egg yolk, one tablespoon of sour cream, a teaspoon of mustard, a good pinch of hot mustard powder, a pinch of black pepper and a good pinch of freshly grated nutmeg. Add one more yolk for the entire party. (Normally, you’d use cream or even double cream. I find soured cream is a better choice; it produces the same creamy result without that Oh-it’s-a-little-too-rich feeling that you get from double cream.)
Whisk it all up and set aside.

Take a good portion of smoked salmon and cut into thin stripes. For this meal, I prefer very strongly flavoured peat-smoked salmon.

Get some good quality egg fettuccini and cook them al dente.

Meanwhile, cut three or four cherry tomatoes per person into halves.

Fry the bacon sharp, using a knob of butter and an equal amount of olive oil until golden. (The olive oil raises the melting point of the butter, allowing to work longer and hotter without browning too much. You could also clarify the butter, of course, but for the quick day-in-day-out cooking, adding olive oil works well enough.)

The fettuccini should be done by now. Drain, and put into a bowl.

Add the Brussels sprout leaves to the bacon, crank up the heat and stir frequently in order to fry the sprouts quickly over 3 minutes or so.

Pour the egg-cream mix over the pasta. Mix in the salmon and the tomatoes. (Remember: the key to Carbonara is not to confuse it with scrambled eggs. Do not let the eggs into the pan or pot; just mix them in the bowl with the still hot pasta.)

Serve the pasta on a plate, surrounded by sprouts and bacon. Add some slivers of parmesan, and grate some nutmeg over the whole thing (the final nutmeg is important, don’t forget it! I forgot it with my second helping, and it makes heck of a difference).

Sprouts like you never had them before.
Carbonara like you never ate it before.

Food and Drink Christmas, cooking, food, recipe

We have great sympathy for the Questors Theatre, a very large amateur theatre near by, that often provides acting and staging to very high standards. We’ve been members for over a decade (active at times), and always been actively promoting the theatre.

How embarrassing, however, to take a friend to this years’ Christmas production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

A traditional staging without any attempt to re-tell the tale in a way fit for children of the 21st century. We should have been warned by the poster, but even within the confines of the traditional interpretation, Questor’s A Christmas Carol failed to impress:

The tragedy begins with Ebenezer Scrooge, who is a far cry from being a bitter, angry, grumpy old man. He was in fact outright friendly and smiling from the beginning, and the occasional Bah, Humbug! didn’t change that.

The ghosts were laughably unimaginative, appearing in white (but ghostly illuminated) bed sheets, as Santa Claus, and all covered in black veil with the occasional ghostly waves of arms. I didn’t take the time to match their appearance with the book, and they might well match Dickens’ description, but I am sure one could have done a better job staging them, ghostly dress-code aside.

Rare exceptions aside, acting was below the usual standards, and only a few actors stood out with clear enunciation. Directions were unimaginative to say the least, and ill-advised when it came to balancing the sound levels of speech versus background atmosphere brought in from the tape. The best moment was certainly a morning scene when couples from the houses look out of their windows commenting, because the house on the left must have been the YMCA and the one on the right a house for fallen women (or maybe the suffragettes HQ).

Even the snowball fight failed to bring fun into the theatre: the stage children weren’t given real snow balls or any stage equivalent thereof, but had to mime it empty handed. This clearly took the fun out of it for them and failed to bring any fun into the auditorium.

The fun came back at the end, when the staging of snowfall brought in more than just a chuckle, as 1 1/2 small handfuls on white confetti rained down on a 3 square feet area in centre stage.

Too bad the best jokes of the show were all unintended.

For Questors and their ongoing quest to find and increase public recognition, one can only hope they’ll do better next year.

My applause goes to the many children in the audience, who sat very bravely and well-behaved through a 2 hour production that failed to bring either scare or fun into their lives,  sparkle into their eyes or Christmas Cheer into their hearts.

Thoughts Christmas, Ealing, theatre

France: 18.
Australia: 6.
Chile and Italy: 5 each.
Spain: 4.
Portugal and Germany: 3.
New Zealand and South Africa: 2 each.
Hungary and California 1 each.

These are the countries of origin of The Independent’s list of the best 50 wines and sparkling wines for Christmas. 3 out of 50 for Germany, and only one from the Pfalz? That’s 1.5% for Germany, and 0.5% for the Pfalz.

Shame on German Wine marketing.

Thoughts foot, German

When I went and bought some stamps for letters to Australia and the US at the post office the other day, the post office guy handed me the usual sheet of free "Air Mail” stickers to go alongside.

We’ve gotten so used to those that I don’t normally think twice. Until today.

Surely, nobody would even contemplate to deliver my letter to Australia or the US by ship or on camelback, should I fail to stick the tiny blue Air Mail adornment onto the envelope.

Would anyone care to tell me the purpose of this sticker, in this day and age?

Thoughts Post Office;

The telly is full of cooking shows with TV chefs showing off their latest Christmas menu thoughts, or how to do things proper and in the traditional way – recent comment here.

But, the commercial breaks are full of adverts recommending the purchase of scented candles or similar artefacts, designed to get that chemical Christmas cheer into the house.

Tell you what.

Spike an apple with cinnamon and cloves and bake it.

Make a bread or a cake or a sage pork roast.

Simple, non-chemical, and you’ll get the smell and the taste.

Thoughts Christmas, television

This week, I’ve been mostly eating things I am not prepared to talk about just yet, and here’s why: The festive season is rapidly approaching, and with it comes a multitude of repeated and new TV cooking programs.

Delia tells us all about a truly traditional Christmas. I watch her preparing a traditional Christmas pudding with moderate interest (because mine isn’t traditional), and switch off after she makes a sticky mess with scallops.

Gary Rhodes is blacklisted at W7 Hall since the making of slimy risottos some while ago, and Gordon Ramsey is off limits due to his preference of focussing on foul language.

Nigella Lawson is nice to look at, Rick Stein nice to listen to. Nigel Slater is not seen on TV these days as far as I know.

I always end up with Jamie Oliver, who even makes me watch Channel Four. He’s the only one who consistently delivers fresh ideas and enthusiasm like none of the others.

Too bad the price to pay is that I had to abandon my earlier plans for this year’s Christmas menu. Back to the drawing board and the kitchen experiments. So, this week, I’ve been mostly preparing and eating Christmas menu experiments. Oh, it’s a hard life!

Food and Drink Christmas, cooking, food

I got quite a shock when the phone rung the other day: Charles Henderson Construction, the man who made our extension happen so brilliantly. After an exchange of pleasantries, he informs me that this is his six-months-after courtesy call…

WHAT? Six months already?

Gosh. Time flies.

I can’t believe its six months already, and have long forgotten how life was even possible without the extension, and our much beloved new kitchen.

Nice of him to call though. I am watching a similar project at a friend’s house right now. I assume they hope to pay a few pounds less in the end, but progress is nowhere near as swift as ours was; Charles’ logistics and steady flow of materials and manpower, let alone his six-month aftercare, was well worth the money for us.

In the same time frame, we also received five photos that he had made. Too bad he didn’t pay a professional to take them (I think it shows), but it is still nice to see photos showing the finished thing, including our day-in, day-out clutter: One, two, three, four and five. Enjoy.

home home

He wasn’t quite sure whether it meant good news or bad news. Given the the BBC’s current main weather presenter, Rob McElwee, presents himself as quite a fool, a certain level of uncertainty fits the image well. So anyway, it would be getting colder, and foggier, he tells us.

And it does. As I wake up in dense fog, I check my alarm twice. No, all is as it should be; 5:45am. What’s wrong?

Nothing is wrong. The whole town is wrapped in thick fog, and muffled better than any earplug could do.

They say the city never sleeps. It sure sounds like it does now. Lovely.

Thoughts Weather

Popp, she said, it just made Popp! and the light bulb was gone. (Thus are the ways of my domestic assignments.)

The bulb was gone, and with it, a good piece of history: it was one of the last remaining good old incandescent light bulbs. Oh, how I hate to see them go! The modern, “energy saving” fluorescent lamps have a very questionable overall ecologic value (given they are full of electronics, toxic substances and some heavy metals). They tend to give a greenish light rather than a comfortable warm one, and take minutes to reach the full brightness.

At this point, nothing and nobody stops me from stockpiling huge amounts of incandescent light bulbs in all wattages, shapes, clear or matt, with bayonet socket (UK) or a regular E14 or E27, … The world of light bulbs is my oyster!

Or, is it? I cannot really ignore the argument of 60 watts (incandescent) compared to 12 (fluorescent). Not now, when folks meet in Copenhagen, agree to cut CO2 emissions, and probably plan to build a couple new nuclear power stations to fill the gap with “clean” energy.

I don’t need to tell you where the madness lies in this, but in terms of replacement light bulbs, I am defeated. At least, I notice that they do get better in terms of start-up performance and colour temperature.

Bye Bye, Thomas Alva Edison!

Current Affairs, Thoughts energy, energy saving light bulbs, home

My favourite time of the year is right now, right when the Christmas run-up begins to gather momentum and the first are heard to complain about season’s stress syndrome.

This time of the year includes that special, magic and utterly rewarding day, when I can lean back with smug satisfaction and say:

Christmas presents – done.

Christmas puddings – I’m on top of things. Steaming this weekend…

Christmas cards begun – tick.

Christmas menu – sorted.

Christmas food shopping – scheduled.

Now I can lean back and look forward to what is to come. Happy Days!

Thoughts Christmas

This week, I’ve been mostly eating… meat, by the looks of it:

Braised lamb shanks with a rich gravy, saffron rice. So nice, and cooks itself if only given little enough heat and plenty enough time. I make a bed of root vegetables, add a little stock, lots of thyme, clean the shanks carefully, place on top, hermitically seal with tin foil, and slow-cook at 160 Celsius for 4 hours.

Friday is Schnitzel Day – Schnitzel with leaks and steamed potatoes (the taste of home). This is one of the fall-outs from South Australian cuisine. I shall tell you all about that, some day. Just need to find the right words for it.

Fillet of Venison with Sauce Bernaise and roasted potatoes – ah, lovely. First, I love venison fillet. It’s rich in flavour, extremely tender, and virtually fat free. Second, I love Sauce Bernaise (which I make myself, of course – only takes half an hour of time at least half a day prior to serving the meal). Finally, I love roasted potatoes. So, what’s not to like in this dish?

Food and Drink cooking, food, recipe

We are members and fairly frequent visitors to our favourite, local, and pretty good quality amateur theatre. Every once in a while, however, we venture into town for a professional production. Last weekend, we went to the National Theatre’s Lyttleton Theatre for The Pitmen Painters.

This is a play about the Ashington Group, a group of North England miners, who started to paint and rose to fame in the 1930s. How nice. We are already making plans for a long weekend in Northumberland.

I can’t really say this is the ultimate play to see – it’s good, but doesn’t deserve a place among the top twenty plays of all time.

I can’t really say this was the best acting ever – it was good, but again, not extraordinary.

What made this play so fascinating is that the playwright, Lee Hall, understands the process of discovering art through the process of discovering painting extremely well. I could find myself and my own experience in this matter many times over during the play.

The worst thing was that the play describes a painfully slow process, that took many weeks and months, in little over two hours, with a vast amount of key events and personal development crammed into the first act. Those events had to come all too quickly and in rapid succession within the time permitted for the play; maybe the play should have told a shorter part of the Ashington Group’s story.

A very good evening though. Enjoyable and recommended.

Thoughts london, theatre

You’d think it’s just like riding a bicycle: once you learnt to do it, you’ll never forget, and you’ll never have to think about it again.

I have been very lazy with my cake baking over the last couple of years, especially on the more traditional, yeast dough based cakes from home. A quicky of Muffins or a Lemon Drizzle cake here and there, and even a Black Forest Gateaux once, yes, I will admit to those. Savoury cakes (such as quiches, pizze, onion bakes) are frequently made, and extra-rich desert cakes such as the Clafoutis au Pommes or a good old Tarte Tatin also feature regularly. And, there is regular bread making, too.

But, I have been negligent in the sweat yeast dough cake department. When I made an apple cake just this Saturday, I had to look up the recipe for sweat yeast dough that I wrote down many years ago. On cup of milk, it says. Bummer. I don’t know which cup that meant. In the end, I had to correct the dough while kneading.

It worked out all-right, but I used to get them perfect straight away.

Then, it goes into the oven. I had to fiddle around with the temperature after starting too hot (you’ll see the dark-ish corners in the picture here), and couldn’t quite remember when to take it out again.

I ended following my grandmother’s advise and used “as much milk as necessary,”  and baked it “until ready.”

Clearly not like riding a bicycle. Needs more practise to prevent loss of the skill.

Food and Drink, Thoughts baking, cooking, food