The 3Rs - Reading, Ranting & Recipes

2010-07-07T05:02:00.002+01:00

COME AND VISIT ME ON MY NEW BLOG - JASMINE TEA & JIAOZI

Contrary to my previous post, I am still having real problems posting anything on this blog whilst I am in China, and despite valiant attempts to resolve matters it is still not happening. (BTW a friend in the west has posted this on The 3Rs on my behalf)

As a result I have decided to put The 3Rs - Reading, Ranting & Recipes on hold until I am back in the UK, and start a new blog about my time here in China.

http://herschelian.wordpress.com

Do drop by and tell me what you think, it would be great to have your company and comments.

2010-06-23T08:42:00.001+01:00

HOORAY!! I'VE BROKEN THROUGH THE GREAT FIREWALL OF CHINA

RANTING:

I am now resident in Beijing, where to my horror I found that all Blogger/blogspot.com blogs are blocked - as is Facebook and You Tube. This was certainly not the case back in 2008 and though I know Google and the PRC powers-that-be had a massive falling out back in mid 2009, I can still get gmail and Google ok. Its just the blogs that are blocked. I have not been able to discover why, so the past fortnight has been horribly frustrating.

Fortunately the DH and I were invited to a party here in BJ last weekend and lots of young computer geeks from the west were there, they are all working for a big computer manufacturer here in China. I asked them about my problem, and they gave me sound advice about acquiring something called a VPN, and recommended various on-line companies.

The next day I started on my quest to break through the Great Firewall of China, and with a phone-a-friend helping me, I got a VPN all set up and here I am. Thank god I know El Tel though as it is not as straightforward as it seems and I am not exactly the most technologically adept person.

It is just so bloody frustrating that they blocked Blogger in the first place.

READING:

I've read so many books since I last posted on the blog that I scarcely know where to begin. The book that kept me sane when the final days of packing and moving were driving me demented was a book I first read when I was a teenager, and I discovered a copy amongst my late mother-in-law's things when sorting through boxes that were going to be stored.

Desiree by Austrian writer Annemarie Selinko was originaly published in German in 1951. It was translated into English by Arnold Bender and E.W.Dikes and published by the Reprint Society in 1954

Desiree is a romance, and all the more romantic for being based on a true story, and although it is not exactly what one would describe as a great book, it captures the attention and one learns a huge chunk of European history without really trying.

Bernadine Eugenie Desiree Clary was born in 1777. She was the younger daughter of a prosperous silk merchant in Marseille. When she was 16 or 17, after the death of her father, her older brother was arrested by the local branch of the Revolutionary Government, and the good offices of a young Corsican clerk called Joseph Bonaparte helped to secure his release. As a result, Joseph and his brother Napoleon met the Clary family, and quite soon Joseph married Desiree's sister Julie; Napoleon and Desiree fell for one another and when she turned 18 they became formally engaged. Napoleon then went north to Paris where he met and became involved with the charming and sophisticated widow Josephine de Beauharnais. Josephine's husband had been sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. Napoleon jilted Desiree and married Josephine.

Some years later Desiree married one of Napoleon's fellow generals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, and they had a son, Oscar. Napoleon appointed Bernadotte as a Marshal of France, a move he later came to regret. Bernadotte was an inspired military leader, but it meant that he and Desiree spent much of their married lives apart as he was always away on campaign. In 1809 the Swedish parliament offered him the role of heir-presumptive to the Swedish king who was old and childless. He and Desiree renounced their French citizenship and became Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden, though for many years Desiree continued to live in Paris. Eventually when the old King of Sweden died, they became the King and Queen, thus establishing the Royal house of Bernadotte who are the Royal Family of Sweden to this day.

The book which was hugely popular when it came out, was made into a movie starring Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons, which I would now like to track down on DVD. As a teenage girl I just revelled in the romance of it all and paid scant attention to the history, but I found that re-reading the book made me realise how patchy my knowledge of the Napoleonic Empire is, most of what I knew was from a British perspective. As a result I now have a biography of Napoleon and some other books about the period on my 'Must Read' list.

Rating:4*

RECIPE:

As I am in Beijing and not doing much cooking as yet it seems a bit of a cheek to post a recipe, but I made this for a lunch we had just before we left London. It is always so popular with people who have a sweet tooth. I am told that the concept/recipe originated in a pub in East Sussex called The Hungry Monk back in 1972, though it is so ubiquitous it seems to have been around for ever. I you have some ready-rolled puff pastry in the freezer, and a jar of Dulce de Leche (or a can of condensed milk) you only need a few bananas and some double cream and you can have the whole thing assembled in half an hour.

BANOFFEE PIE

Serves 6

1 pack (220-250g) ready rolled puff pastry - fresh or frozen
4 or 5 large bananas
1 can/jar of Dulche de Leche (Merchant Gourmet make a good one, and so do Nestles Carnation - look for the tins marked 'Caramel')**
300ml double or whipping cream.
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

Pre-heat the oven to 200C

Lightly grease a 21cm loose bottomed cake tin, press the rolled puff-pastry into the tin so that it comes at least 2cms up the sides, cut off any excess. Prick the base all over with a fork. Line the pastry with some baking parchment or greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Bake for about 20 minutes til the pastry is golden and crisp.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

When cool, place on a serving dish and spread the whole tine of Dulche de Leche over the base of the pie. Slice the bananas and put a double layer over the caramel. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks and spread over the bananas, be generous!
Use a small seive to sprinkle the cocoa powder over the cream to garnish. Keep in the fridge until ready to serve.

Now, how easy was that?!

** If you can't find ready-made Dulche de Leche you can make your own quite easily, but you will have to make it the day before you want to make the pie.
Put an unopened tin of condensed milk ( NOT evaporated milk) into a saucepan and cover with cold water; bring to the boil and then simmer gently for about 1.5 hours, making sure the water doesn't boil dry. Remove the tin from the pan and allow to cool completely. It can now be kept in a cupboard until you want to use it. It is always a good idea to make two tins at the same time, then you have one ready at all times, it keeps virtually indefinately.

2010-04-29T11:22:00.000+01:00

YOU MAY BE WONDERING WHETHER I'VE GIVEN UP ON MY BLOG, WELL, I HAVEN'T.

But a word or two of explanation is necessary to explain why I have been posting so sporadically.

Since December I have been having some eye problems which have made life tricky, but the good news is that I am due to have an eye op tomorrow and with any luck that will sort things out.

My other challenge has been that the DH who had been away in China for 5 weeks, returned to say that at the beginning of June we are moving to live in Beijing.

We won't be there all the time, but will spend about 9 weeks there, then 6-8 weeks back in the UK, then another 9 weeks or so in China, and so on and so forth - and this will continue for about 2 years. An apartment is being provided for us in Beijing.

The house we have been renting for the past couple of years has a prospective buyer, so we are packing everything up and it will go into store for the duration, and we will just have a small pied-a-terre here in the UK.

So here I am, surrounded by boxes, feverishly packing stuff, planning a huge farewell party for mid-May, and psyching myself up for tomorrow's op.

2010-03-12T23:15:00.001Z

YESTERDAY I SAW A PAIR OF ROSE-RINGED PARAKEETS* CANOODLING IN COLDFALL WOOD

*Psittacula krameri

READING:

Small Wars by Sadie Jones is one of those books which you find yourself thinking about long after you've finished reading it. It is her second novel, her first -The Outcast - won the Costa 1st Novel Award in 2008, but I think that this is by far the better book.
Small Wars is set in Cyprus and England in the mid-1950s, it is both the story of a marriage, and of British foreign policy. Major Hal Treherne has been posted to the British Colony of Cyprus in during the EOKA Emergency. Hal is a decent man, the only child of a family with a long military history, and after six years stationed in Germany where there was no action to speak of, he is looking forward to doing the soldiering job for which he has been trained. He is joined in Cyprus by his wife Clara and their two little daughters. Hal and Clara have a good marriage, they are very much in love, but living in the army base near Limassol they soon find that they are leading parallel lives and this 'small' war strains their marriage almost to breaking point.
Hal finds he is being expected to ignore incidents of torture, rape and murder by army personnel, and his Colonel, who is a friend of his father, more or less tells him that he must set aside his integrity in the interests of military pragmatism. Suddenly everything he has ever believed in, the army, his country, his honour, his marriage, seems to be crumbling away. For the first time in their marriage Hal and Clara seem unable to communicate their feelings to one another and become more and more distant; she is fearful for her daughters and unable to understand why Hal has become so hard and taciturn, and he cannot begin to express to her the depths of his disillusionment.
I cannot tell you more about what happens without spoiling the book for those who want to read it, but the ending is both inevitable and yet unexpected.

Since World War Two Britain has been involved in any number of 'small' wars, they are often in places where the job of the army is as much to win 'hearts and minds' as it is to fight an enemy, and often the 'enemy' is the population of the country they are in. Afghanistan is a case in point, and the issues of how the military should to deal with 'insurgents' are very much the same now as they were for Hal in Cyprus in 1956.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

What in the world was Lori Mason thinking of when she allowed her husband, maverick chef/restauranteur Daniel Angerer to make cheese using her breast milk and then serve it to his customers?

Yuck, yuck, yuck! Human breast milk is for babies, not for over-sophisticated Manhattanites to munch on whilst sipping a glass of Reisling. Presumably Mr Angerer and Ms Mason have an infant otherwise she would not be lactating, so the poor babe must be losing out as some of the milk he/she could be having is being syphoned off (pardon the expression) so that dad can make cheese with it. Apparently the New York Health Department are not happy about this and are taking steps to prevent this breast milk cheese being made, kept or served at the Klee Brasserie.
Years ago I took my kids to a farm in the Auvergne to see St. Nectaire cheese being made (the expedition triggered a major family row about 'elf an safety, and EU farming subsidies, but that's another story) and I remember being surprised how much milk is required to make quite a small amount of cheese. With that in mind, Ms Mason would have to be 'milked' several times a day to get the liquid volumes required. I have only two words for her: Silly cow.

RECIPE:

Cauliflower is not top of my list of favourite vegetables, it can be so bland and wishy-washy , especially if it has been over cooked. Over the last few years I have learned to appreciate it more, mainly because I have discovered some delicious recipes, and this is one I came across recently. It is from the Ottolenghi cookbook, though I have tweeked it a little. If you like spicy food, and like pakoras, you'll love these fritters.

MIDDLE EASTERN CAULIFLOWER & CUMIN FRITTERS

Serves 4
350g cauliflower
120g plain flour
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 shallots finely chopped
4 large eggs
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
0.5 teaspoon ground turmeric
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
500ml sunflower oil for frying

First, prepare the batter by mixing the flour, chopped parsley, garlic and shallots together with the spices, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add the eggs and use a wooden spoon to mix everything together and then beat the mix into a thick batter - make sure that all the flour and spices are well mixed in and that there are no pockets of dry ingredients.

Prepare the cauliflower by cutting off all leaves and the thick central stalk,and then divide it into small florets. Put the florets into a steaming basket and steam over boiling water for about 20 minutes until very soft. (You can cook the cauliflower in boiling water if you wish but make sure you drain it really well)
Add the warm cauliflower florets to the batter mixture, and mix everything together breaking the florets down as you do so.

Put the sunflower oil into a large frying pan - it should be about 1.5cms deep - and when it is very hot carefully spoon quite large portions of the fritter mixture into the oil, approx 3 tablespoons per fritter. Make sure they are spaced well apart. I find that you can fry four fritters in the pan at the same time. Fry them for about 3-4 minutes each side, take care not to let them burn, if the oil is getting too hot, adjust the heat.
Use a fish slice or slotted spoon to remove them from the pan and drain them on crumpled kitchen paper to remove excess oil.

They are great tucked into pitta bread, with some tomato and cucumber, or served with a dollop of yoghurt or chutney.

2010-03-01T17:11:00.006Z

HERE I AM AGAIN AFTER THREE MONTHS OF BLOGGING HIBERNATION.

TODAY IS ST DAVID'S DAY, SPRING IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

READING:

Hearts and Minds is the latest book by Amanda Craig, and I think it is her best so far.
In the last few years there have been several books (The Road Home by Rose Tremain, The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, My Cleaner by Maggie Gee) and one or two films (Dirty Pretty Things, Breaking and Entering) tackling the subject of what life is like for an immigrant/refugee/asylum-seeker living in Britain. In Hearts and Minds Amanda Craig has given the most readable, detailed – and at times depressing – overview of how our society functions only because of the huge underbelly of people from other countries who live and work here. As I read it I kept thinking that this is the book everyone should read if they want to understand something of London life in the Noughties.

Like many big cities, London is a place of contrasts, and these are unveiled to show everything from the pampered luxury of life in a Hampstead mansion, the comfortable middle-class terraces of Islington, and the squalid apartments in ‘Kill Burn’ and Camden where brothels are called Massage Parlours.

The novel has five points of view: there is Job, the Zimbabwean mini-cab driver who is an illegal immigrant fleeing the horrors of Mugabe’s regime and who hasn’t heard from his wife for nearly a year; Anna, the fifteen year-old girl from Russia, who thinks she is coming to work as a cook or chamber-maid but finds she has been enslaved as a prostitute, her passport seized by the traffickers and without any access to the outside world. Katie, a young American who is escaping from a broken engagement, and is working for a pittance on a temporary visa. Ian is a white South African supply teacher working in a sink school in Hackney, and then there is Polly a divorced mother of two school-aged children who is struggling to advance her career as a human rights lawyer. These seemingly diverse individuals are connected through various chains of events which cross each other and interweave, all beginning when Polly’s Russian au pair, Iryna, vanishes without a word, and later when her body is discovered in a pond on Hampstead Heath.

Whilst I wouldn’t exactly put Craig and Dickens side-by-side in the pantheon of English literature, I certainly felt that the author was a very worthy successor to Dickens’s crusading zeal for depicting London life with all it’s social injustices, and she does so with a page-turning story and real characters who are tragic, frightening, charming, endearing and above all, believable.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

I have never been one for using much in the way of make-up, though as I get older there is no doubt that from time to time my complexion needs a little help to look its best. I call myself 'low maintenance' but what that really means is 'lazy'. However I do tend to put on some lipstick before I leave the house - that is if I remember. For some reason I feel better dressed and more confident if I have applied a quick slick of lippy.

I don't think I'm alone in this, thousands of women would probably choose lipstick as their desert island luxury and nearly every handbag (or purse as the Americans call it) probably has a tube of lipstick lurking somewhere in its depths. Apparently during economic recessions - and we all know about those don't we? - the sales of lipstick actually rise because they are a small, feel-good purchase; if you can't afford a dress by Dior at least you can buy the lipstick.

As I am not what might be called a fashionista, I have a three lipstick policy, one shade for winter, one shade for summer and one shade for special occasions - I also have a little pot of lipgloss, but that is just an optional extra. Last week I had to buy myself a new lipstick as my default winter shade was worn down to a nub. It should have been easy, but no, yet again the lipstick I like, the lipstick I want, has been discontinued.

Instead of just stopping at the beauty counter to pick up a replacement I ended up faffing around for 20 minutes in a swither of indecision whilst being 'assisted' by a young woman with glossy navy-blue fingernails, a tatoo or two, and at least five facial piercings.

I am sure the cosmetic companies do this just to irritate me. I don't mind them bringing out new ranges of colours (although they always seem perilously, but not quite, like the previous range) with wacky names like 'Just enough buff', 'Wine with Everything' or 'Toast of New York' but please, please, please don't keep discontinuing the colours I like.

RECIPE:

This area of North London has many Greek Cypriot and Turkish grocery shops, and I love some of the products they sell. Recently I bought a large tub of Taramasalata (for which I have a great fondness) from a shop I use regularly and which always stocks good quality produce. When I served it up with some hot Pitta bread I was most disappointed, it was artificially pink and bland. On close reading of the listed ingredients it seemed there was very little cod roe in it, and rather a lot of vegetable oil, water and bread. The pink colour apparently came from beetroot juice! Beetroot juice - what the hell was that doing in taramasalata?

I decided to make some myself, after consulting various recipes I phoned a Greek friend and she told me what to do - and also told me to leave out potato or bread which some recipes give to pad it out. Likewise any garlic, the flavour of the cod roe doesn't need garlic. So here is the recipe:

TARAMASALATA - Helen's version

250g smoked cod roe

Juice of half a lemon

250ml olive oil - though you could need a little more

Boiling water

Soak the cod’s roe in a bowl of cold water for several hours or overnight.

Drain and peel off the outer membrane.

Put the roe in a food processor give it a quick pulse - do not over process it.

Bring the speed up a little and add the lemon juice.

Now, just like making mayonnaise, start adding the olive oil in a thin stream, little by little whilst the processor is running slowly Keep adding the oil until the mixture begins to look like a puree . The amount of oil needed varies and you will have to keep an eye on it.

Then add boiling water, a tablespoon at a time, until it becomes light and mousse-like.

Scoop into a serving bowl and scatter chopped parsley on the top.

Keeps well in the fridge (cover it tightly)

2009-11-30T10:45:00.003Z

I'M AFRAID I'VE BEEN SOMEWHAT DISTRACTED. A FEW WEEKS AGO I STARTED SENDING OUT A WEEKLY GENERAL KNOWLEDGE QUIZ TO SOME FRIENDS, AND LIKE TOPSY THE LIST OF PEOPLE WANTING IT HAS GROWN AND GROWN, HENCE MY BLOGGING HIATUS. SORRY FOLKS, I WILL GET BACK TO REGULAR POSTINGS.

READING:

I should start by confessing that maths was never my strong point at school, I struggled with algebra, logarithms, etc and although I wasn't too bad at geometry I admit to a sigh of relief on leaving school, knowing that double maths lessons would never blight my life again. It has therefore been something of a surprise to me how much I loved reading 'The Housekeeper & The Professor' by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder). This is a perfect little jewel of a book, and I read it at one sitting.

The housekeeper of the title is a young unmarried mother with a ten-year-old son who is employed to look after an ageing Professor of Mathematics. This brilliant man has a problem, he received a serious head injury in a car accident seventeen years previously and since that time has lived with an eighty minute short term memory. Every morning when the housekeeper arrives for work, she has to re-introduce herself to the Professor as he lives in the moment, and anything which happened more than eighty minutes ago is wiped from his mind. He has tried to develop a method of coping with this by writing little notes to himself which he attaches to the suit he wears each day. The most important of these notes reads "my memory only lasts 80 minutes". His suit is absolutely covered with these aide-memoires. Despite this handicap, his passion for mathematics is still very much alive and his mental world is composed of equations, numbers, and mathematical problems from the past.
When the Professor realises that his housekeeper has a son who is home alone after school each day, he insists that the boy come to join his mother at the Professor's house. He immediately nicknames the boy Root, as he says the boy has a flat head which looks like the square root symbol, and with clever mathematical riddles he slowly builds a delicate relationship with the mother and son. The housekeeper who (much like myself) has not thought about maths since she was a schoolgirl, is drawn in to the mysterious beauty of pure mathematics and soon she is beginning to learn about prime numbers, triangular numbers, amicable numbers, perfect numbers, the concept of zero and complex formulae and theorems.
Root has a passion for baseball, which is the most popular sport in Japan, and he supports a team called the Hanshin Tigers. He discovers that the Professor also loves the game and is a huge fan of a famous, long retired, player called Enatsu who played for the same team - but of course the Professor does not remember that the man has retired, and Root attempts to shield him from knowing this as it might upset him.
Over time, these three rather lost souls become like a family, a family that each of them had needed in different ways.
Their story is really charming, and very touching - and guess what, I even learned some maths!

Rated 5*

RANTING:

In October the government's Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) became law. The scheme was devised as a result of the national panic following the horrible murders of two schoolgirls in Soham in 2002.

Right from the outset I have been very dubious as to how effective it would be in keeping children safer than they were previously. The government has ignored all criticisms of the scheme, and now it is firmly in place and will become mandatory from next year. For those who do not know what the VBS is, or how it works, basically it means that anyone who works or applies to work with children or vulnerable adults - either in a paid or voluntary capacity will have to apply for clearance (and unless they are volunteers) will have to pay £64 pounds for doing so. Their background will be checked for any criminal records, and non-conviction information from different sources when building a view of an individuals suitability (ie heresay or local gossip) for clearance. The scheme will be administered by a new body, to wit the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA)

This new scheme covers a huge range of people such as teachers, private tutors and sports coaches but also people such as doctors and nurses, opticians and dentists and taxi drivers who regularly take children to school. It will also cover librarians, parents who help out at their children's school on a regular basis, Brownie, Guide and Scouts leaders, and anyone who takes groups of children to such clubs or to ballet lessons, football matches etc. It will cover any parents who host an exchange student for a couple of weeks. It will cover staff in children's clothes or shoe shops, Sunday School teachers and anyone who assists them, I could list more but you get the picture. In fact, earlier this week a primary school in Cambridgeshire announced that when the entire school makes the ten minute walk to the local church for its annual carol service, escorted by the police and teachers, any parent who accompanies them will have to apply for clearance. I kid you not.

In all it is thought that nearly 11 million British adults will have to go through this scheme.
Many charities are worried that they will loose volunteers who do not want to go through the hassle of this process, and school language teachers are concerned that the foreign language exchange schemes will fizzle out because of it.
The ISA has taken on 200 employees and has been set up with offices in a marginal Labour constituency which has a high level of unemployment (and there is a general election coming up in six months or so - hmm, call me cynical but....). With one in four British adults needing to go through the scheme, it will produce shed-loads of money for the government, how handy is that when the national finances need all the help they can get.
The danger with this sort of legislation is that once in place, more and more organisations seek to use it either because they are paranoid, or to cover their backs, or because it is a form of control and empire building.

The example of this purpose-creep ( I don't know if that phrase exists, but you get my meaning) which has me frothing at the mouth today, is that OFSTED (which stands for the Office of Standards in Education - yet another government body) has announced that the parents of home-schooled children will have to go through the VBS and be cleared by the ISA.

What? a parent will be checked to see if it would be a danger for them to school their own child, not from an educational perspective, but in case they are not suitable? This is crazy. What if they are not granted clearance. The child might then have to attend a local school where the staff have been cleared, but at the end of the school day they would return home to be cared for by the 'unsuitable' parents. I think OFSTED are off their heads.

But above all, I think that treating all adults as potential paedophiles or abusers is a very bad thing to do, a society where so many of its citizens are not trusted is a very damaged society, and what is more it is unlikely to achieve its aims. Of course I want children to be safe, -there are nasty people around and each of us has to be vigilant, but this legislation won't keep anyone any safer.
Do you think the ISA has checked to see if Santa is registered and been cleared?

RECIPE:

Did you know that the term Vegetarian was only coined in the 19th century? before that people who did not eat meat or fish called themselves Pythagoreans. Although I, and all my family are what can only be described as greedy omnivores - we love meat and fish - we do eat a great many non-meat meals. Recently there has been quite a bit of comment in the press about how we could stop global warming if we didn't eat meat. Hmm, I'm more than a bit skeptical. But just to show my intentions are good, here is a wonderful recipe from a book I love called 'The Greens Cookbook' by Deborah Madison; you can enjoy this dish and feel virtuous at the same time!

BUTTERNUT SQUASH GRATIN

2 Tablespns olive oil

½ onion, finely chopped

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

¼ teaspoon dried thyme or leaves from 4-6 stalks fresh thyme

1 bayleaf

Salt & pepper

120ml dry white wine

½ teaspoon paprika (or ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper)

450g tomatoes, fresh or tinned, peeled and chopped

1½ teaspoons sugar (if necessary)

1 butternut squash weighing approx 1.3 – 1.5 kg

Olive oil for frying

120g Gruyère cheese, sliced

Fresh herbs, parsley, marjoram, thyme etc, finely chopped.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and add the chopped onion, garlic, thyme and bay leaf, and a little salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until onion is soft, but don’t let it brown; then add the wine and let it reduce by half. Add the chopped tomatoes and the paprika and cook gently for about 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is quite thick. Taste, add sugar if it is too tart and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Whilst the tomato sauce is cooking prepare the squash by peeling, removing all seeds and stringy bits, and then cutting into slices approx 7.5cms long and 5mm thick ( 3ins x ¼ in).

Heat enough oil in a large frying pan and fry the butternut slices on both sides so it is lightly browned and just tender. Remove slices from the pan and drain on paper towel to remove excess oil. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C

Assemble the gratin by covering the bottom of a large shallow oven-proof dish with the tomato sauce. Lay the slices of butternut on top of the sauce in overlapping layers interspersed with slices of cheese.

Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the gratin is hot. Serve with the fresh herbs scattered over the top, a green salad and crusty bread.

2009-10-29T16:27:00.002Z

'THE AVERAGE WOMAN REGULARLY WEARS ONLY ONE THIRD OF THE CLOTHES SHE OWNS. HER FAVORITE ITEM COST UNDER £50 AND IS KEPT FOR 12 YEARS'
I read this recently - and am ashamed to say it is true in my case.

READING:

Asylum seekers seem to be in the news all the time these days, what with the French clearing out the squalid camp on the outskirts of Calais and our own Attorney General being fined for employing someone who had no right live and work in Britain.
Harare North by Brian Chikwava paints a picture of what it is like to be an asylum seeker living below the official radar in Britain today - and it is pretty grim . Harare North is the nickname for London - along with Johannesburg (Harare South) it is one of the destinations of choice for ex-patriot Zimbabweans.

" I disappoint them immigration people because when I step forward to hand my passport to gum-chewing man sitting behind desk, I mouth the magic word -'Asylum'- and flash toothy grin of friendly African native. They detain me."

This young man whose name we are never told, is released after 8 days, and a cousin and his wife who already live in London grudgingly take him in. Some weeks later he drifts to Brixton where he re-connects with an old childhood friend called Shingi. Shingi is living in a squat with various other Zimbabweans who are all struggling to find a way of earning a living wage when they are illegal or semi-legal, and have none of the official paperwork employers demand.
The squat is run by Aleck who works as a BBC (British Buttock Cleaner) ie in a residential care home, which is one of the better paid jobs available - presumably because no native Britons wish to do such work. One of the other squatters is a teenage Zimbabwean girl called Tsitsi who has a small baby.
"Tsitsi have start to bring in small money by going out to the salon; MaiMusindo and them other women is helping she rent out the baby to other women that want to apply for council flats as single mothers. For £50 any woman can take Tsitsi's baby to the Lambeth Housing Department and play out to be single mother, fill them forms and take baby back to salon as she have been interview."

The language used is quirky, often ungrammatical and misspelled, and frequently relies on phonetics, and this gives the tale a flippant, almost casual tone which belies the life our nameless narrator has lead and is now leading. At times I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The Zimbabweans living in the UK are often fleeing from the violent political situation back in their own country, and the news from home gets worse and worse as time goes by. However we learn that our narrator, an extremely self-centred young man, was a member of one of Mugabe's notorious youth squads 'The Green Bombers' who used to mete out 'forgiveness' (beatings) to anyone who has fallen foul of Mugabe's regime, and he has come to Britain reluctantly to try and get hold of $5000 to pay a bribe after having beaten someone to death. He refuses to acknowledge the atrocities being committed by the regime, and does not let his fellow ex-pats know of his history. Although the narrator is actually a rather unpleasant individual he has a very engaging way of expressing himself, and the reader is won over by his unflagging attempts to raise money one way or another. Working illegally at a succession of short-term, poorly paid jobs he manages to amass a little cash, most of which he starts spending on liquor and skunk. Slowly but surely he begins a downward slide into paranoia as the strains of living in Harare North start to tell on him.

I actually picked this book up because of the title, as I have a deep affection for Zimbabwe, and had no idea I was going to be learning about one aspect of life in my own city. London exists on a raft of illegal immigrants who do much of the city's dirty work, and yet their plight is rarely written about. Brian Chikwava is a great new voice in African writing, and I look forward to reading future books by him.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

When you were seven years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? - yes, I realise its a long time ago, but work with me on this.
I seem to remember wanting to be an artist or a synchronised swimmer - not that I knew what scantily clad girls who fooled around in a swimming pool were called - but splashing about for hours on end seemed highly desirable. My son and his best friend decided they would have a chicken farm ( presumably for a constant supply of eggs and chicken nuggets) with an attached diamond mine. Mind you it was a close thing as the lure of joining the A-Team was fairly enticing.

Our esteemed overlords, in the person of the Secretary of State for Education Mr Ed Balls (and that is an unfortunate surname for a politician don't you think?) have decided that primary school children as young as seven can't have these sorts of foolish ideas, and they should now get careers advice. Careers advice for heaven's sake, it'll be pensions advice next.
These are children, let them BE children.

It seems ironic that Ed Balls is introducing another loony government initiative in education when we still have too high a proportion of children who are unable to read by the time they leave primary school aged eleven. Surely basic literacy and numeracy is where any extra effort should be concentrated.
And who is going to deliver this advice to the nation's little darlings? our already overburdened teachers? or will a whole new strata of educational advisors, specially trained at vast public expense, be created to talk little Johnny, Sarah or Mohammed through their options. Hmm, should they be considering the legal profession, horticulture, or joining a scaffolding firm...or perhaps something in the meedja.

Thank god my kids are all grown up, but for the sake of my as yet unborn grandchildren I hope this stupid idea dies a death before too long.

What a shame no-one took the newly graduated Ed Balls aside and whispered in his ear just one word "Plastics" , that might have steered him away from a career in politics, to the benefit of the nation.

RECIPE:

We have had the most gorgeous Indian Summer for the past month, but the evenings are definitely beginning to feel quite cold, and so my thoughts have turned to serving what I call 'winter' food. At the weekend I looked out an old Joseline Dimbleby recipe (I mean the recipe is old, not JD!) which I have not made for years, and jolly good it was too. Use the cheapest piece of bacon you can find for this pot roast.

BACON IN BEER (aka Gammon in Guinness)
Serves 6

1.3 - 1.8kg bacon joint - preferably on the bone
3 onions, sliced
250g carrots, scraped and cut into largish chunks
1 can of peeled tomatoes (approx 400g)
330ml bottle of stout (I used Guinness)
6 cloves
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
Ground black pepper
1 tablespoon cornflour

Soak the bacon joint in cold water for several hours - overnight if possible - changing the water once or twice.
Put the bacon into a large saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 15-20 mins. Drain, rinse with cold water and then slit the thick skin and peel it and most of the fat off.

Pre-heat the oven to 150C.
Put the joint into a casserole dish with the onions, carrots, cloves, caraway seeds and sugar. Pour in the tomatoes from the tin and the stout and season with pepper. Do not add salt.
Bring the casserole to simmering point on top of the stove and then transfer it to the oven and cook for 2-3 hours, basting the bacon with the juices now and again, until the meat is very tender and falling off the bone.

Remove the joint to a carving board and put the casserole on top of the stove . Mix the cornflour with a little cold water, add to the vegetable and juices, bring to the boil and allow it to bubble for 2-3 minutes.

Serve the bacon with the vegetables and juices accompanied with boiled or mashed potatoes and a green vegetable.

2009-10-03T13:30:00.002+01:00

THERE ARE NEVER ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY & NEVER ENOUGH DAYS IN THE WEEK TO DO ALL THE THINGS I WANT TO DO.

READING:

Alone in Berlin* by Hans Fallada is the most remarkable book I have read for a long time, certainly the best book I have read this year. The author's real name was Rudolf Ditzen, and he wrote the book in 24 days and died just a few weeks before it was published in 1947. It has taken 62 years to get it published in English. Michael Hoffman the translator has done a magnificent job.

The novel is set in Berlin between 1940 and 1942-3. 55 Jablonski Strasse is an old-fashioned apartment block and the reader is introduced to various residents, the elderly retired Judge, old Frau Rosenthal whose husband was seized by the Gestapo a fortnight previously, the ghastly Persicke family who are Nazi toadies, Emil Borkhausen a petty criminal whose wife Evie has a sideline as a prostitute, and most importantly we meet Otto and Anna Quangel.

Otto is the foreman in a woodworking factory which made fine furniture in peacetime but now produces large crates for the German war effort. He and his wife Anna are self-contained, conservative and thrifty to the point of being miserly. Otto is fiercely private and independent and has so far managed to avoid joining the National Socialist party as he resents the fact that he would have to give a contribution from his wages to the Party coffers. This refusal has meant that he is regarded with suspicion, gets a lower wage and is passed over for promotion.

When Otto and Anna's only son Ottochen is killed fighting in France, they embark on a scheme of small scale domestic resistance to the regime. Otto starts producing anonymous postcards criticising the Nazi party, and they deposit these all over the city. The first of these postcards reads:
'Mother! The Fuhrer has murdered my son. Mother! The Fuhrer will murder your sons too, he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home in the world.'
Another reads:
'Pass this card on so that many people read it! - Don't give to the Winter Relief Fund! - work as slowly as you can! - Put sand in the machines! - every stroke of work not done will shorten the war!'
This is a perilous scheme, the postcards come to the attention of the Gestapo almost immediately, and one of their most successful officers, Inspector Escherich, is ordered to unearth the writer of the cards. Then a cat-and-mouse game begins between Escherich and the Hobgoblin , as he refers to the unknown postcard writer. Esterich has a big advantage in that of the 267 cards produced by the Quangels, all but 18 are handed in to the authorities straight away, so plotting where they have been dropped and thus where the writer might be based is fairly straightforward.
Whilst all this is going on, the other residents of the apartment building are surviving in the twisted world that is now German civilian life. Some are crushed by the regime, others rise as a result of having made dubious moral choices, and overshadowing everything is an all pervading fear of the SS, the Nazi party, and a lack of trust or faith in their fellow Berliners.

Eventually Inspector Escherich himself falls foul of the monstrous Gestapo, which is like some huge juggernaut being driven by a crazy drunkard.

Finally, inevitably, Otto and Anna meet their fate.

I found this book an emotionally exhausting read, but it is so well written that it is impossible to put it down once you have started reading it. By the end I was weeping.
Apparently Ditzen based the Quangels on a real-life couple, Otto and Elise Hample, who carried out just such a postcard campaign in Berlin in the early 1940s. Their lives stand as an example of how the common man can be obdurate in the facing of great evil even when it will cost everything.

Primo Levi, who was a prisoner in Auschwitz, must have read this book in German when it was originally published for he called it "The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis".
There are many, many books about World War Two, but nothing quite like this. It has such veracity, and made me ponder how I would have behaved in such circumstances. I think everyone should read it.

* In the USA the book title is Every Man dies Alone

Rated 5*

RANTING:

Cycling England, an organisation which is an off-shoot of the Department of Transport, has come up with the proposal that if there is an accident involving a bicycle and a motorised vehicle be it car, lorry or bus, the driver would be held legally responsible under civil law even if it was the cyclist who was the cause of the accident and they would be liable to pay compensation. If that happened the driver's insurance premium would go up which would be yet another penalty they would suffer when they might have done nothing wrong.
I think drivers will be up in arms when the reality of this plan sinks in.

My DD cycles everywhere (for several years she used to cycle back and forth across central London in the rush-hour, which certainly gave me some grey hairs) and her new husband cycles everywhere too, so I am very cautious about cyclists on the road when I am driving but I fail to see why, if I am obeying the highway code, observing the rules of the road and driving with due care and attention for all other road users, it should be presumed in law that I am to blame in any accident.

Apparently Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have all adopted this type of legislation, and I would love to hear from anyone from those countries who can tell me how it works and how the public feel about it.
A few nights ago I was driving along a major road and through a big junction when a cyclist, dressed in dark clothing and with no bike lights whatsoever happily rode through the red traffic light and across my way. I slammed on the brakes, and missed hitting him by the skin of my teeth, and fortunately the woman in the car behind me managed to brake fast enough not to hit the back of my car, but it was a very close run thing. I confess that the language I used was not fit for public hearing. The stupid sod carried on his merry way either oblivious to, or uncaring that he had almost caused a three car pile up. Under this proposed legislation he would get away scot free, whereas we drivers would have had a huge insurance imbroglio. In our increasingly litigatious culture this seems an open invitation for drivers to be sued for compensation by any of the crazy Lycra Louts who think they can do as they please on the highway just because they are on a bike
Cycling England seems to be putting out the message two wheels good, four wheels bad - which I resent.

RECIPE:

I was recently given the present of a recipe book from South Africa called Cakes to Celebrate Life and Love. It is entirely devoted to the most divine looking cakes and cupcakes, and I can feel myself gaining weight as I turn the pages. The other day I noticed that there were some bananas in the fruit bowl that were a tad too ripe for my taste, but perfect for cooking with, so I got out the new book and lo and behold there was just the recipe I needed. It is one of those recipes where you bake the cake, and whilst it is in the oven you make a hot sauce, in this case butterscotch, and when the hot cake comes out of the oven you pour the sauce over it and it soaks in.

The quantities given make 2 cakes, so one went to the DD & SIL and the other lasted all of 12 hours as the DH and son decided to keep sampling it "Just to see if we prefer it to your old Banana bread recipe..." Oh yes?
It is a lovely moist cake, and I think it would keep well if you stood guard over it!

BUTTERSCOTCH BANANA CAKE

3 eggs
400g sugar
330ml corn oil
3 ripe bananas, mashed
80ml buttermilk (or use sour cream)
1 Tablespoon vanilla essence
420g plain flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
Pinch of salt
30g dessicated coconut
60g walnut pieces roughly chopped (plus a few extra for the top)

Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Grease and base line two medium sized loaf tins (approx 2kg size).
In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, oil, mashed bananas, buttermilk and vanilla. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into another bowl. Add this to the banana mixture, beat together and stir in the coconut and walnut pieces. Pour the batter into the two prepared tins and bake in the centre of the oven for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Whilst the cakes are baking prepare the butterscotch sauce.

100g soft light brown sugar
70g butter - preferably unsalted
60ml cream

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat gently whilst stirring until all the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. Let it boil for a moment or two and then remove from the heat. When the cakes are done, take them out of the oven and pierce them all over with a skewer, then pour the hot butterscotch sauce over them and leave to cool in the tins.

2009-09-18T09:37:00.000+01:00

"I AM EXTRAORDINARILY PATIENT, PROVIDED I GET MY OWN WAY IN THE END"
Margaret Thatcher

READING:

After I finished reading Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, I found myself telling friends that they MUST read it. It is a really delightful book, warm, charming, moving and funny.

It is set in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, a few years after the terrible genocide. Mrs Angel Tungaraza and her husband Pius have moved there from their native Tanzania together with their five orphaned grandchildren. Pius,a man of retirement age, has been appointed as Special Consultant to KIST a new university which has been established in the city. They are living in a compound of flats where the other residents are also ex-pats employed by aid agencies and non-governmental organizations. As Angel says “You know how it is when a war is over, dollars begin to fall like rain from the sky and everyone from outside rushes in to collect them.”

Angel loves cooking and baking, and decides to set up a cake baking business. She turns out cakes to celebrate anniversaries, weddings, christenings, a homecoming, an engagement, an escape, an inspiration, and a rising up. With each cake, the reader learns more about life in Rwanda, about the life of the person who has ordered the cake, and at the same time about the diversity of Africa and its people.

Priding herself on her professionalism as a businesswoman, Angel copes with raising her grandchildren, ethical dilemmas with her clients, and the indignities of the menopause. Slowly Angel’s own family life is revealed, and how the scourge of AIDs has devastated African society.

At first glance this book might seem to be of the same genre as Alexander McCall Smith’s books about Mma Ramotswe and her 1^st Ladies Detective Agency, but Gaile Parkin has created an endearing heroine and yet doesn’t shy away from depicting the problems besetting the continent, poverty, female circumcision, HIV/Aids and corruption, but these are all handled with delicacy and woven into the lives of real people in a way that makes it possible for the reader to enjoy the book as an entertainment whilst at the same time being made to think.

If you like eating cake, feisty women and anything about Africa this is a book for you, and it has just become available in paperback (the cover differs from my one).

Rated 5*

RANTING:

Do we know what propaganda this Government is disseminating in our schools? I think not. This week it has come to light that a fairly new Government department - the Equalities Office established in 2007 under the leadership of Harriet Harman - has produced a "fact" sheet for schools ( which we taxpayers have funded) entitled 'Women In Power: Milestones'. It also features on their website. It has got me absolutely outraged, and wondering what else is being twisted to fit a Labour-view of history.

Whatever your view of her may be, you must agree that Margaret Thatcher (Maggie to those who love to hate her) has been a seminal figure in British Politics....the first woman to lead a political party, the first woman Prime Minister, winner of no less than three general elections and the longest serving prime minister of the 20th Century. So it is really appalling that she is not named in this government fact sheet; on the other hand Shreela Flather (who she??) gets two entries. In 300 years time which of these women will be featured in history books? no prizes for the correct answer.

The other glaring omission from the Women in Power list is Shirley Williams, a highly respected politician who was one of the four founders (and only woman) of the SDP - the first new political party in the UK for nearly 100 years. The media cover stories about the airbrushing of cellulite off Kate Winslet's thighs or the enhancing of Keira Knightley's mosquito-bite boobs, but this is the sort of airbrushing and distortion they should really be going for as it is far more damaging, and WE are paying for it.

I never thought I'd be doing this, but find myself chanting
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - In, In, In.
and I urge you all to join me.

RECIPE:

Last night two girlfriends and I went to see the movie 'Julie & Julia' starring Meryl Streep as Julia Childs, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Mind you with food featuring so much on screen we all came out of the cinema ravenously hungry and promptly dived into a nearby restaurant where we wolfed down risotto! Tomorrow I have 10 for dinner, and thinking of the rich French cooking that Julia Childs promoted I have decided to make some pre-dinner canapes which are in that style as a little homage to the great lady. A friend gave me the recipe a year or so ago after I had them at a dinner she gave, they are utterly delicious , have a certain Wow' factor. and they always go down a bomb. The secret to this recipe is that the whole thing is really a cheat (which the fabled Julia Childs would thoroughly disapprove of), as it is merely a question of assembling the ingredients rather than spending hours slaving away beating and stirring.

CASSIE'S CANAPES
First of all you have to go shopping and buy the following items which will all keep for ages in your store cupboard:
A packet of Rahms Mini Croustades - stocked at Waitrose, Sainsburys and most good food shops. A jar of good quality ready-made Hollandaise Sauce - I tend to buy Maille but you can use any brand.A jar of red or black Swedish lumpfish roe available in supermarkets, fishmongers and at IKEA! You also need 1-2 dozen Quail's eggs, depending on how many canapes you wish to make. Allow for two per person.

Ten minutes before your guests arrive pre-heat the oven to 180 C.
Set the mini croustades out on a baking tray and break one quail's egg into each one. Top each with a tiny blob of Hollandaise and bake in the oven for approximately 4 minutes (check that the egg white has cooked).
Put another small blob of Hollandaise on each canape and then a blob of lumpfish roe to garnish.
Serve whilst still warm. Yum.

2009-08-31T15:35:00.000+01:00

WHY I HAVE NOT BEEN BLOGGING

This past two months seem to have gone by in a flash - the wedding has come and gone, all the Australian, South African and American guests have departed these shores, all the loose ends have now been cleared up, our living room is back to normal and no longer like an event management warehouse, and to top it all the bride has just got her PhD.

As so many of you dear blog readers have asked about the wedding I decided that this post would give you a flavour of the event and then from next week I will revert to my normal 3Rs.

English summer weather is never predictable, but we were so lucky, the day before the wedding it bucketed down, but on the day we had blue sky, sunshine and puffy white clouds and the countryside looked lush.
The wedding was in Cambridge, and the reception was in Granchester Meadows made famous by the poet Rupert Brooke and by Pink Floyd,

I'm biased I know, but I thought my darling daughter looked absolutely beautiful in her 88 year old wedding dress. It was first worn by my grandmother in 1921, then remodelled and worn by my mother in 1948. My daughter had some minor alterations done so that she could be the third family bride to wear it. She and her bridesmaid carried bouquets from a very famous London florist, who had made my grandmother's, my mother's and my own wedding bouquets... four generations, so that too seems to have become something of a family tradition.

The guests who were at the ceremony travelled to the reception by punt, and I supplied each punt with a large basket of champagne, flutes, smoked salmon sandwiches and mini-madeleines. The sun was quite hot by then so the ladies in the punts had paper parasols to shade their complexions! At the Meadows other guests gathered on the river bank, and the bridal party was greeted with a blizzard of rose petal and lavender confetti when their punt arrived.

Eventually everyone took their places in the marquee for a supper of Roast Pork - a local butcher had supplied an organic Hog Roast, the pig in question was a Large White sow from a farmer in the village of Somersham,
and a selection of fabulous salads from the Shelford Delicatessen. Drew, the chef/proprietor had done us proud, with spicy cous cous, roasted mediterranean vegetables, green salad, new potato, yoghurt, dill and fetta salad, baby cherry tomato salad in a fresh tomato and chili salsa.

The groom's father had supplied the most superb champagne and wines, and copious amounts were consumed as you can imagine. For those who don't drink alcohol there was the quintessentially English beverage Elderflower Cordial (made by my pal Mrs Dart) diluted with sparkling water - it was both delicious and refreshing.

Balzanos, who are THE Italian bakers in Cambridge supplied wonderful breads, and we had an all British cheese board consisting of Colston Bassett the reknowned Stilton, Lincolnshire Poacher a delicious hard cheddar type cheese with gruyere overtones, and Clava a soft brie-type cheese from Invernesshire in the north of Scotland. Clava has won several awards at international cheese festivals, beating the French at their own game! it really deserves to be better known in the UK - I urge you to try it.

After that there were strawberries and cream (12 kilos of berries lovingly hulled by us the previous evening) and we had a traditional 'Stop Me And Buy One' ice cream bicycle serving a variety of flavours of ice creams and sorbets.

And of course there was the Wedding Cake - or should I say wedding cakes, there were six of them - and it was a triumph. Made specially by JF, a friend of the DD's who is a superb and innovative cakemaker. Moist orange and almond cake layered with orange and lavender curd, wrapped in a honeycomb of white chocolate, topped with gilded caramelised orange peel and decorated with sprigs of lavender, it was utterly delicious.

There were the usual speeches, much laughter, some tears, many toasts and then the dancing began with a disco of Sixties music - well, what can I say, OUR generation had all the best tunes!
Then as a surprise for the Bride and Groom a Brasilian Funk band arrived, beating drums, shaking xequeres, blowing trombones. Saravah Soul are a fantastic band and their music is absolutely compelling, within moments there wasn't an inch of space on the dance floor as everyone from three to 83 was giving it their all.

The festivities continued with the guests lighting nearly 100 Chinese air lanterns which drifted up into the night sky and probably causing some locals to think there was an invasion of UFOs

By midnight I was absolutely exhausted and my face ached from smiling so much, and so to bed, having had a wonderfully happy day and acquired a son-in-law.

2009-06-20T15:37:00.023+01:00

PLEASE FORGIVE THE LONG BLOGGING SILENCE ...

being Mother-of-the-Bride (aka Wedding Planner) seems to be taking every waking moment. The big event is four weeks today, after the hoo-ha has all died down, normal service will be resumed.

A month before the wedding I checked my lists and see

Twelve dozen chairs

Eleven kilos strawberries

Ten dozen canapes

Nine cases Champers

Eight flavours of ice cream

Seven waiters waiting

Six punts a-punting

Five tiers of cake

Four mobile loos

Three types of cheese*

Two gorgeous bouquets

AND

One very large marquee!

Not to mention one organic Hog Roast, eight litres dried flower petals for confetti, 17 bottles of Mrs Dart's Excellent Elderflower Cordial, one firkin of ale, two djs, seven dozen quail's eggs, a truckload of salads, 4 sides of smoked salmon; and last but by no means least, 150 meters of wedding bunting made by my own fair hand - for which I expect to get The Best Mother in the World Award.

* Colston Bassett Stilton, Clava, Lincolnshire Poacher

2009-05-12T09:18:00.007+01:00

THIS IS MICHAEL MARTIN, THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

HE IS A SNOLLYGOSTER

READING:

THIS MAN HAVE COME FROM CHINA TO FIND HIS DAUGHTER WHO HAVE SOME TROUBLE. HE DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH are the first words, written on a card, which introduce the reader to Inspector Jian in the novel Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis.

Jian is a hard-bitten Chinese cop whose arrival in Britain to search for his missing daughter Wei Wei throws him into a totally foreign environment - the English countryside. Unable to speak the language he finds himself rapidly becoming embroiled in a dangerous situation when he falls foul of the Snakeheads who traffic peasants from China into the UK where they are forced to work as virtual slaves. These peasants have often paid huge sums to the Snakeheads in China because they believe they are being brought to "Gold Mountain", a country where they will earn a fortune which can then support their impoverished families back home. Ding Ming, one such illegal migrant arrived a few days earlier together with his wife. He has fallen out with his gangmaster as the couple have been split up, and Ding Ming does not know where his wife has been taken. He and Jian find themselves thrown together in a deadly battle against violent criminals. After various twists and turns, and with an ever mounting body count, Jian and Ding Ming

Simon Lewis knows the Chinese well, and speaks Mandarin, having helped write The Rough Guide to China and his descriptions of modern Britain as seen through Chinese eyes is enthralling. Set against the background of human traffiking Bad Traffic is a roller-coaster read, and Inspector Jian is a character I hope we will meet again in further books.

RANTING:

I realise this may seem very petty and trivial (and a little vulgar), given that the media seem to think many of us are in danger of immenent death from Swine Flu, and the House of Commons is drowning in a sea of corruption, but I am going to have a mini rantette about something that really, really irritates me.

It is an absolute rule in this household that when the loo roll runs out, the person there at the time MUST replace it at once so nobody gets caught short, rushes to the loo and then finds there is no paper. That rule seems to work pretty well, but some members of the family put the paper on the holder The Wrong Way Round, so that the loose end dangles down the back of the roll, when as everyone with any modicum of sense and intelligence knows it should dangle down the front of the roll.

When it comes to loo paper (or 'toilet paper' in non-U speak) I am not a particularly fussy person, the plain bog-standard - hah hah! - white is fine by me; the stuff with puppy-dogs and flowers printed on it is a ludicrous waste of money and resources, and no, I don't need my paper quilted or enhanced with moisturising aloe vera. However I am not such a throw-back as to yearn for the horrible hard Bronco sheets that I had at boarding school, nor do I want to cut up squares of newspaper and hang them on a hook , but neither am I ready to go totally green and save the planet by buying into this method of bum cleansing

Yet again this morning I have had to wast precious nano-seconds changing the loo paper in the bathroom so that it unrolls the right way.

Why should this be? the DH and I have been married for over 30 years, you would think by now I would have cured him of this irritating habit - he says that my way is not necessarily the right way and that lots of people don't give a monkey's which way the loo paper is presented.
This cannot be true, can it? I appeal to you dear reader to give me your views on the correct method of alignment.

RECIPE:

As if I didn't have enough to do organising the DD's wedding, which is now a mere 11 weeks away, last week I was persuaded to hold a Saturday lunch party for 26 Chinese visitors, most of whom had not been to the UK before. The suggestion was that a buffet of "typically" British food should be served. So I racked my brains and my cook books to find dishes that I thought would appeal to Chinese tastes and yet represent British cooking. One of the first dishes I decided on was a pressed Ham Hock Terrine. This had several points in its favour. It is inexpensive to make, it is a meat the Chinese love, it is set in a jellied stock and the Chinese love the texture of jelly, and last but by no means least, it is very pretty to look at.

It takes some time to make but can be done in stages, and once made it will happily sit in the fridge for 4-5 days until you want to serve it. You will probably have to order your ham hocks from the butcher a few days in advance, as they seldom have them to hand.

HAM HOCK TERRINE

Makes a 1kg terrine which will serve 10-12 portions.

2 ham hocks (each approx 1.25kg)
1 large onion, peeled and chopped in quarters
2 carrots, peeled and cut into large pieces
2 sticks celery, cut into large pieces
2 bay leaves
2 star anise
Large sprig of fresh rosemary
2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme
Handful of flat leafed parsley, stalks and all
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons medium dry sherry

½ a sachet of gelatine crystals (or 2 sheets of gelatine)

3 tablespoons capers,
4 heaped tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley.

Firstly, to ensure the meat is not too salty, put the hocks in a large bowl or pan and soak them in cold water for several hours or overnight. Do this once more.
Drain the hocks and put in a large pot, cover with cold water, add the vegetables, the peppercorns, star anise and the herbs, bring to the boil and then simmer for 2 ½ -3 hours until the meat is tender and you can wiggle the bone. Remove from the liquor.

Skin the hocks and pull the meat into long thin shreds, stripping away as much fat and sinew as possible. Press the pieces of ham flat between your thumb and fingers as you do this. You should end up with approx 750g of meat.

Strain off 600mls of the liquor (any remaining liquor can be used in soups) and chill it so that the fat congeals on the top and can be removed easily . Return this stock to the boil, remove from the heat then add the sherry.

Place two tablespoons of cold water in a cup and sprinkle on the gelatine, allow it to become spongy, then stir it into the hot stock until it has dissolved. Allow the stock to cool until it is starting to set.
Line a 1kg loaf tin with a double layer of cling film, allowing enough to fold back over the top of the tin.
Mix the shredded ham, chopped parsley and capers in a bowl, then pour in about half the cool stock and mix well. Layer the mixture into the lined tin, making sure the meat fibres run lengthways. With the flat of your hand press the mixture down firmly so it is level, then pour in more stock, tapping the tin to remove an y air pockets. You may not need much more of the stock. Fold the clingfilm back over the top of the terrine, and cover with another piece of film and top with a piece of card cut to fit the tin. Weight it down (I use cans of beans) and place in the fridge for 8 hours, after which you can remove the weights.

Unmold it onto a serving dish and peel away the cling film. Serve in thick slices with some home-made Piccalilli.

2009-04-24T10:14:00.005+01:00

SOUTH AFRICA HAS A NEW MUTANT NINJA PRESIDENT

READING:

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah is a debut collection of 13 beautifully written short stories about current day Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, and I was fortunate to snag a pre-publication copy as a member of Library Thing Early Reviewers.

I grew up in Central Africa and know Zimbabwe quite well, and I thought that the author had captured the place and the people brilliantly. Living in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe's despotic regime is fairly ghastly, and these stories could have been quite depressing, however Petina Gappah is very skillful and manages to depict the crazy nightmare of daily life in Zim without loosing the humour, doggedness and sheer determination of the ordinary people as they struggle to keep everything as normal as possible. Many of the stories have a core of poignancy but through it all life goes on; people fall in love, marry (even if no-one will tell the bride that the groom has AIDS), gossip about servants, cope with or practice corruption, try to eke a living or complete their academic studies.
One delightful tale is about a low-ranking Zimbabwean diplomat who has been posted to Switzerland where in his innocence he falls prey to one of the infamous Nigerian 419 email scams. Another tells of a night spent in the 'Hotel California' - located in Kamativi - an establishment that should be given a wide berth.
The story of a family waiting at Harare airport for the flight from London filled me with sadness. Many of the passengers who arrive on this regular flight bring foreign currency or goods no longer available in Zim - something to look forward to; but this family is waiting for the body of a son who died abroad, so that he can be laid to rest in the ancestral village. The reader learns how he came to go abroad and die there, and the stresses it has placed on the family.

Petina Gappah is a terrific writer and a great addition to the fairly short list of modern African writers from Zimbabwe, and I am really looking forward to reading her next book, which I believe is a novel.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

Last week London was full of tourists as it was the Easter vacation for millions of school children all over Britain and Europe - God knows, in this economic downturn London needs all the tourist money it can get.
Among the visitors to our fair city were Klaus Matzka and his 15 year old son from Austria. Mr Matzka is particularly interested in modern architecture. They had taken pictures of various famous London landmarks but then whilst photographing some of London's iconic red double-decker buses, they were stopped by two policemen and interrogated.

"First, we were told that it is forbidden to take pictures of anything in conjunction with transport. Then our names, passport numbers and London hotel address were noted. After that we were forced to delete all pictures that included any transport - even pictures of the new underground station in Vauxhall, which is a modern sculpture."

I should point out at this juncture that what they were told is NOT TRUE, there are no legal restrictions on photography in public places. And furthermore, the police had no legal right to delete any photos that the Matzkas had taken. This minor incident leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth, indeed the Matzkas have said they will never visit London again.

Photographers, both amateur and professional are finding themselves stopped more and more frequently, often by PCSOs who erroneously cite Section 44 of the Terrorism Act as a reason. Either these police personnel are poorly trained and don't understand the law on terrorism, or they are power-mad little jobsworths (or both) who feel important when they stop people and demand to see their photographs.

Its rather ironic that this is going on when Google Street View is sending camera cars round the nation, filming anything and everything with impunity - frankly any potential terrorist worth his or her salt would be far more likely to use the Google images than bother going out to take their own. The Government has whipped up such a climate of paranoia over terrorism and national security - out of all proportion to the real risks - that all sorts of people are using it as an excuse to try and limit the freedom of the individual.

From now on I intend to carry my camera in my handbag at all times and whip it out to take pictures of taxis, lorries, buses, police cars, carrier pigeons and bicycle couriers - and just let anyone try and stop me.

RECIPE:

If you are not all chocolated out after Easter, this recipe might be just what you fancy to please family and guests. I served it at a dinner party recently, together with two other desserts, and carefully wrapped the uncut portion for the following day's meal. The next morning I discovered that it had vanished, someone (who shall be nameless) had decided that they would eat it for breakfast! I've made it again, so that I could photograph it, but it didn't last any longer second time round.

CHOCOLATE TART
Serves 8 (or 4 normal people and 2 greedy ones!)

200g plain flour
120g butter
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons cold water
~~~
300g butter
200g good quality dark chocolate
3 eggs
3 yolks
100g caster sugar
2 tablespoons brandy or dark rum

Cocoa powder and icing sugar for topping

Whiz the flour and butter together in a food processor, stir in the sugar, and then the egg yolk and water to form pastry. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Roll out the pastry and line a 23cm loose-bottomed flan tin. Prick the base and bake blind for 15-20 minutes. Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt it together with the butter in the microwave - approx 2 mins on high - until it is all liquid, mix well together. Allow to cool slightly. Whisk the egg yolks, eggs and sugar into the chocolate mixture. Stir in the brandy or rum. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until just firm to the touch.

Dredge the top of the tart with a little sieved icing sugar and cocoa powder.
Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.

2009-03-20T14:57:00.014Z

'ONE OF THE VERY NICEST THINGS ABOUT LIFE IS THE WAY WE MUST REGULARLY STOP WHATEVER IT IS WE ARE DOING AND DEVOTE OUR ATTENTION TO EATING'

Luciano Pavarotti

READING:

Bombay - or Mumbai as we are now supposed to call it - is a huge city with a vast population nearly half of whom live in slums. The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar is set in Bombay and the two women who are the central characters epitomise the contradictions to be found there.

Sera Dubash is a Parsi widow who lives in a spacious, modern appartment. Bhima is her servant, for over 20 years she has worked for Sera and her family, cleaning their home, shopping at the market, preparing food, and although neither of them would ever acknowledge it, a bond of trust and a sort of friendship has grown between them.

Despite her comfortable life, Sera has had a difficult married life with an unpredictably violent husband and the mother-in-law from hell. Since her husband's death her adored daughter and charming son-in-law have moved in with her and she is beginning to enjoy life.

Bhima on the other hand lives a life that is almost unimaginable for anyone living in the west. She has a room nearby which she shares with her teenaged granddaughter Maya, for whom she would sacrifice everything she has. Maya is attending college and Bhima hopes that her education will enable them to escape the slums, where they have little privacy, no running water, and have to share the most primitive of communal latrines. But something happens to Maya which puts a strain on Bhima, and eventually it reaches a crisis point which fractures the relationship between herself and Sera.

The lives of the two women are told in flashback and the reader slowly becomes aware of the events that have formed their lives into what they are today, what divides them and what brings them together. Sera and Bhima are both strong in their different ways, but it seems that even in modern India the accidents of birth, class and cultural traditions still shape a woman's life more than anything else.

A really interesting and absorbing book which was both informative about contemporary Indian life and a moving story of two individuals.

Rated 5*

RANTING:

I thought we were supposed to be in the middle of the worst economic recession known to man; banks are collapsing, house sales are stagnant, the unemployment rate is rising rapidly and the news media are lambasting us with doom and gloom, local councils are warning us that rates will have to rise and services will have to be cut.

And in the midst of all this, how does Leicestershire County Council decide to spend £6000 of rate payers' money?
Fitting sophisticated Satellite Navigation Systems to 14 of the council's lawnmowers.

I'll just repeat that.
They have spent six thousand pounds fitting Sat Navs to fourteen lawnmowers.

I know, I know, you couldn't make it up.

Apparently the council employees who use the lawnmowers to keep the parks, fields, road verges and other public open spaces trim and tidy have been complaining that they might get lost in the long grass.
Have they been cutting the grass or smoking it?

I have steam coming out of my ears....I think I should go and lie down until I have become calm again.

RECIPE:

The Scotch Egg has got a reputation for being one of the worst examples of take-away fast food which is such a shame as a proper Scotch Egg is perfect for picnics, padkos, and packed lunches. There is no comparison between a home made Scotch Egg and the horrible, orange-crumbed travesties that are produced commercially and which can be found in the chiller cabinets of supermarkets, motorway service shops, not to mention cafés and pubs up and down the land.

Nobody seems to know where the name comes from, but Fortnum & Mason's,
the Queen's grocers in Piccadilly claim to have invented them in 1851. Maybe they did, but I suspect that the recipe had been around for quite a while, probably in Scotland, and so F&M called them Scottish Eggs. Anyway, whatever their history, they are a doddle to make and apart from vegetarians everyone seems to like them, particularly children.

You can add any number of things to the sausage meat to change the flavours. I've had SEs with crumbled Stilton or finely diced black pudding added to the mix, not to mention chili and herbs. The one thing you MUST have is good ingredients; top-quality sausage meat (or buy the best available sausages and slip the skins off), fresh free-range eggs, and proper toasted breadcrumbs are all essential. Although they are usually made with hen's eggs, you can also make dinky little ones for canapes if you use quail eggs. Serve them hot with homemade tomato sauce and mashed potato, or cold with chutney and salad

SCOTCH EGGS
Makes 4 large ones

5 large free-range eggs (4 for the SEs and one for coating)
450g good quality sausage meat
3 spring onions
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 heaped teaspoon finely chopped herb of your choice ( chives, thyme or sage)
A good pinch of ground mace
3 tablespoons plain flour
Salt and pepper
Dry breadcrumbs for coating
Sunflower oil for frying

Put four of the eggs into a saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil, then simmer for exactly 9 minutes. Remove the eggs and plunge into cold water.

Finely chop the spring onions, and add them to the sausage meat together with the chopped herbs, mace and some salt and pepper. Use your hands to mix everything together really well then divide the mixture into four and make into patties.
Put the flour onto a plate and season with salt and pepper.
Break the remaining egg onto a plate and beat lightly with a fork.
Tip a good quantity of breadcrumbs onto a plate and spread out.

Shell the eggs and roll each one in the seasoned flour then wrap a patty of sausage meat round it, stretching it and pinching any gaps together so that the egg is evenly covered. Then roll it in the beaten egg and finally roll it in the breadcrumbs pressing them on gently so that it is completely covered.

Put about 5 cms of the oil in a deep casserole or saucepan and heat until a small piece of bread goes brown within a minute of being dropped in it. Carefully add the SEs and fry in the hot oil for about 6-7 minutes, turning them often until they are evenly brown.
Remove from the oil and drain on kitchen paper towel.

2009-03-10T10:32:00.005Z

ANOTHER WONDERFUL EPITAPH - this one is to a man named Knott, and is from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire:

Here lies a man that was Knott born,
His father was Knott before him.

He lived Knott, and did Knott die,
Yet underneath this stone doth lie:
Knott christened,
Knott begot,
And here he lies,
And yet was Knott.

READING:

I have never been much of a short story reader.I don't really know why they don't appeal to me now, when I was a girl I used to love reading them in my parents' copy of The Argosy (British version). Anyway, if I'd realised that Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance by Matthew Kneale was a collection of short stories I would probably never have bothered to pick it up in the library, let alone start reading it; it was only when I was a few pages into what I thought was the first chapter that it dawned on me, but by then I was hooked. In fact, like someone who opens a packet of biscuits intending to just eat one, I found myself staying up well past my bedtime so that I could scoff the whole lot.

The stories have a theme. In this inter-connected world the relationship between the haves (we in the west) and the have-nots has become increasingly complex and however well-meaning we may be as individuals, we can find ourselves complicit in situations of moral ambiguity which often have devastating effects on people on the other side of the globe. When is a crime a 'small' crime? after all, what is small to me may be very big to you - or should all crimes be considered equal?

'Stone' which is the first story illustrates this very well. It is of a comfortably off, middle-class English couple, Guy & Chloe Winter, and their two teenage children who go on a trip to China. At the end of the trip it is planned that they will go to Hong Kong where the Chloe has arranged a business meeting with a business man interested in buying her jewellery designs. Travelling with an organised tour group which transports them around the country to the main cultural destinations is not sufficient for their self image of being "travellers" rather than "tourists" so they have decided to leave the group for a few days and travel alone "to meet people and get to know the REAL China,". Needless to say they do not speak Chinese or know anything of the culture, and phrase books fail to bridge the gap; it all goes awry when they meet up with a helpful, English-speaking young man called Jiao, who they nickname Eeyore. Jiao assists them in finding a hotel, getting a meal and doing some shopping but his presence begins to annoy the family. When Chloe can't find the box of her jewellery samples they feel sure that Jiao, being a poor man, must have stolen them. A huge fuss ensues, the local cops arrive, Jiao is carted off following their accusations. As things have turned sour, the Winters decide to leave the following day. Of course, it being China, a crime against tourists MUST be solved and a forced confession is extracted from Jiao. And theft is a capital offence. As they repack their bags, Chloe finds her box of jewellery which had been carefully hidden by herself in a small inner pocket. They debate going to the police to tell them but decide against it in case they are not allowed to leave immediately as planned. En route to the railway station they see Jiao with some other prisoners in the back of a truck, all with their confession boards hung round their necks, being taken out of the town. They know what his fate is likely to be, but close their eyes to it. Back in England the memory of their trip slowly fades and finally they see what happened as "something far away, that was not quite real and that could not touch them".

The stories are very well crafted, and Kneale has a light touch when pointing a moral finger. There is humour too, especially in the story about a London solicitor whose career has stalled and who finds a big bag of cocaine and a mobile phone, and becomes a drug dealer in his spare time. From the other end of the spectrum is the story of the Colombian family who are made destitute when their legitimate crops are destroyed by anti-cocaine spraying, the spraying being done at the behest of the western countries whose citizens buy the drug.
This collection reinforces that it is as important to think about what we are doing on a personal level as well as on a national one when it comes to how we interact with other peoples and countries.

Rated 3.5*

RANTING:

OK - here's a question, what do you think has made the biggest contribution to the emancipation of women in the 20th Century?
Well, I know what the Pope thinks.

Last Sunday was International Women's Day so L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, published an editorial stating that the modern washing machine had done more to liberate women than anything else. Education, the vote, being able to work outside the home, legalised abortion and effective contraception such as the Pill and the condom (especially the last three) apparently count for nothing compared with the benefits conferred on us by the washing machine.

In some of the poorest countries in the world, where people live in shanties, child mortality rates are sky-high, and the Catholic Church has a huge presence, there are precious few washing machines around - not to mention the lack of safe and reliable water supplies to which such machines could be connected, and I very much doubt that any woman given a washing machine would suddenly find herself emancipated.
What would be really helpful for the women and girls in developing countries (and that means most of the women in the world) would be literacy programmes, work that brought in a living wage, the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies, protection from life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases, equal rights with men. I am sure there are many Catholic priests working in such communities who would agree with me. But back at head office, the Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Prelates live in an ivory tower where the nuns who wash their robes and cassocks probably have had their lives made easier by the wonders of modern domestic machinery; therefore they assume it is true for all womankind.
Lordy, lordy, the Holy See (as it is called) doesn't have a bloody clue about life, women and the real world . From now on I am rechristening it The Holy-Can't-See-What's-Really-Going-On.

RECIPE:

After cooking for a family for umpteen years I have default recipes for certain things, recipes which are tried and tested, totally reliable and practically known by heart - so I tend not to experiment with new versions of dishes I make regularly. Recently I found a new recipe at the hairdressers - there I was, my head covered with foil packets, idly flipping through Hello magazine (what a guilty treat!) and I came across this recipe for an apple pie. How many Apple Pie recipes does one need in life? two, three, more? Well fortunately I decided to copy it down, and last weekend I made it - the DH has declared it the BEST apple pie he's ever had and has begged me to make it again. I will, and so should you, you won't be disappointed.

VIENNESE APPLE PIE
50g sultanas
3 tablespoons dark rum
225g plain flour
175g butter 50g ground almonds
175g caster sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 large egg - separated
700g cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
50g sponge fingers, crumbled
25g roughly chopped walnuts
Half teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon granulated sugar for topping.

Put the sultanas and rum into a small bowl and leave to soak for several hours or overnight. Mix the flour and ground almonds together, then rub in the butter. ( I do all this in a food processor). Stir in 50g of the caster sugar and the lemon zest. Mix together the egg yolk and lemon juice and stir it into the dry ingredients to make a firm dough. Wrap the pastry in cling-film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 180'C/ Gas 4; grease and base line a 20cm (8") loose-bottomed sandwich tin. Put sliced apple into a bowl, add the remaining 100g caster sugar, walnuts, cinnamon, sponge finger crumbs and rum-soaked sultanas (plus any surplus soaking juices). Use a wooden spoon to gently stir everything together. Roll out two thirds of the pastry and line the prepared tin with it, allowing any excess pastry to hang over the edge of the tin. Spoon in the apple filling and press down firmly with the flat of your hand (which I trust is clean!). Roll out the remaining pastry and using the tin as a guide cut out a circle to form a lid. Place it on top of the filling, flip the excess pastry over it and roll or press gently to form a neat seam on top of the pie. Use a fork to whisk the egg white until frothy and then brush it over the top of the pie, sprinkle with the caster sugar. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the pastry is golden. Allow it to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before carefully pressing the loose-bottom of the tin up and gently sliding the pie onto a serving platter. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of whipped cream.

2009-02-18T17:25:00.001Z

THE BUSH FIRES WHICH RAGED THROUGH SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA HAVE CLAIMED MANY LIVES, my heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones, friends and colleagues as well as their homes, pets, livestock and possessions. There is so little we in the UK can do to help, but this is a step in that direction: Victorian Bushfire Appeal

READING:

I am fascinated by local history and although I have never lived in the East End of London, for many years I sat as a magistrate in Bow, and like thousands of others I have flown in and out of London City Airport several times, so the area is not completely unfamiliar to me, but my knowledge was patchy to say the least.

Recently a friend recommended I read Silvertown: An East End Family Memoir by Melanie McGrath, and what a wonderful book it turned out to be.

Written almost as though it were a novel, the author documents the lives of her maternal grandparents, particularly her grandmother Jenny Page, who lived and worked in Poplar and Silvertown from the start of the 20^th century. The reader is transported to a way of life now gone, to a part of London that has changed so much that it is virtually unrecognisable. That part of east London was dominated by the huge docks along the northern edge of the Thames. In those days London was one of the greatest shipping ports in the world. Cargoes and people arrived from every part of the British Empire and beyond; manufactured goods were sent down to London and exported to all points of the compass. The area was a hive of activity, with a vibrant cockney culture, and the story of Jenny and Len Page covers the heyday, decline and eventual extinction of the docklands community.

I became totally absorbed by their life and times: the horror of Jenny having all her teeth pulled out by a local butcher when she was 17 to avoid future dental expenses; the terror of the Blitz when night after night the East End was pounded with bombs and incendiaries, and thousands were killed; and the seemingly bizarre medical treatment of TB which was a common disease in those days. All the life of the East End flows through the pages of the book, the crime, the scams, the unthinking xenophobia and anti-semitism, nights out at the dog tracks, the hunger in childhood and during the two wars, and the struggle to keep up appearances.

Jenny Page’s life began when women wore corsets, horses pulled hackney carriages, and most streets were unlit. To be an East Ender then was to be among the lowest of London’s poor, and yet she never thought of herself as low. She died aged 91, a tiny woman with no teeth who had borne two children but had never seen a naked man; a woman who had been born in London but had never visited the Tower or St.Paul’s. An unlikely heroine, very ordinary and yet totally compelling. A true Londoner.

Rated 5*

RANTING:

Babies have been hitting the headlines in no uncertain terms just recently, and none of the headlines have been doing my blood pressure any good.
The photograph, prominently published in all the newspapers, of the 13 year old boy beside the baby he has apparently fathered (and I have my doubts about whether he is in fact the father and so have others) has triggered some very extreme reactions from the British Public. Some think that the lad should be arrested by the Police charged with statutory rape and severely punished (in Britain it is a criminal offence to have sex with a girl who is under sixteen), some feel that this proves that the whole country is going to hell in a handbasket, and others seem to think that with supporting parents' support it will all be okay in the end. I hope it is, but I am not holding my breath.
My first reaction when I saw the photographs was to feel very sad for the baby who may well end up in care, and sad for the boy and girl neither of whom seem to realise the magnitude of bringing a child into the world. The sadness was then overwhelmed with anger; anger at the parents of both boy and girl - who had let this whole thing happen by not exercising proper parental care and control of their children and then sold the story to the tabloid press; anger at The Sun newspaper for cynically using two vulnerable youngsters in the most sensationalist way in order to boost circulation figures; anger at the wishy-washy attitude to proper and appropriate sex education in this country which could help prevent such situations, and finally, anger that yet again we taxpayers will have to pick up the costs.

How on earth do we start explaining to children why they should wait until they are grown up before they have children of their own? There is a wonderful children's book called Flour Babies by Anne Fine. It is about a class of 10 year old boys who take part in a science project. They are each given a 3Kg bag of flour and are told that for the next three weeks they must treat it exactly as if it were a real live baby. They are given a set of rules:

1) The flour babies must be kept clean and dry at all times. All fraying, staining and leakage of stuffing will be taken very seriously indeed.

2) Flour babies will be put on the official scales twice a week to check for any weight loss that might indicate casual neglect or maltreatment, or any weight gain that might indicate tampering or damp.

3) No flour baby may be left unattended at any time, night or day. If you must be out of sight of your flour baby, even for a short time, a responsible babysitter must be arranged.

4) You must keep a Baby Book, and write in it daily. Each entry should be no shorter than three full sentences, and no longer than five pages.

5) Certain persons (who shall not be named until the experiment is over) shall make it their business to check on the welfare of the flour babies and the keeping of the above rules. These people may be parents, other pupils, or members of the staff or the public.

The boys quickly learn just how much hard work it is looking after a baby, and how being responsible for one changes your life, you are no longer free to do as you please.

What a pity that coupled with some basic sex education, all children are not made to look after a flour baby.

And as for that woman in California who, with no income of her own and six children under the age of seven, deliberately goes and has eight embryos, conceived by IVF, implanted....don't get me started, I might explode.

RECIPE:

Every year I make something edible to give people as a Christmas gift, and last year it was these crunchy cucumber pickles. They proved so popular I have had several requests for more, so yesterday I set about making another batch. In these financially straightened times, a simple Ploughman's Lunch is an inexpensive way of feeding guests on a Saturday, and these add a touch of class when served in place of the commercially produced brown pickles or dubious chutneys. For those who don't live in the UK, I should explain that a Ploughman's (as it is usually called) is a platter of fresh bread or a crusty roll, a lump of cheese - usually Stilton or Cheddar - some chutney or pickle, and an apple, washed down with a mug of beer. It is served in pubs up and down the land, and the quality is VERY variable They are also delicious in sandwiches and with hamburgers, and are simplicity itself to make.

CREDIT CRUNCHY PICKLES

This will make about 1.5kg

Prepare several glass jars by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing in hot water and drying in the oven at 100°C.

900g small cucumbers
2 smallish onions
50g salt
350ml cider vinegar
350g granulated sugar
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
2 teaspoons celery seeds
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon black peppercorns

Cut the cucumbers into 5mm slices.
Halve and finely slice the onions.
Place the cucumber slices and onion into a large bowl.
Add the salt and mix well so that all the vegetables are covered with salt.
Place a plate inside the bowl, pressing down on the cucumber mixture (I weigh the plate down with another bowl containing two or three tins of food) so that it is really compressed. Leave it for 3 hours.
After that time there will be a lot of liquid in the bowl. Drain it off, and rinse the cucumber and onions under cold running water, drain again.
Put the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds, turmeric and peppercorns into a large saucepan or casserole (do not use aluminium or copper pans for this recipe).
Bring to the boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to help dissolve the sugar.
Add the drained cucumber and onions; as soon as the mixture comes to the boil again, rremove the pan from the heat.
Spoon the pickle into the warm, prepared jars, making sure the vegetables are covered with the liquid.
Cover with airtight, vinegar-proof lids and store for at least 1 month before using.

2009-02-07T12:55:00.001Z

THE AGEING PROCESS HAS YOU FIRMLY IN ITS GRASP IF YOU NEVER GET THE URGE TO THROW A SNOWBALL.

READING:

Nicole Mones is an American who lived and worked in the textile business in China for 18 years, and she really knows the country and all its contradictions very well indeed. In her latest book, The Last Chinese Chef, she has entwined a modern love story with the story of China’s culinary culture.

Maggie McEllroy is an American food writer approaching her fortieth birthday when her husband is tragically killed. For many months she is overwhelmed by grief and unable to function properly, and when she is contacted by the law firm for whom her husband had worked to say that a paternity case has been lodged against his estate, on behalf of a five year old child in China, she is even more devastated. She is asked to go to Beijing to sort things out. The editor of the gourmet food magazine for whom she writes urges her to go, and commissions a series of articles on food in modern China.

The Beijing Olympics are looming, and the authorities in China have decided to hold a competition to choose the very best chefs to be part of the national cooking team over the Olympic celebrations. Thus it is that Maggie meets Sam Liang a Chinese/American chef who is last in a family line of famous chefs dating back to the days of the Imperial Court. His father had fled China during the Cultural Revolution and ended up in the USA.

Over a few weeks Maggie and Sam fall in love; and as Sam prepares to cook for the banquet of a lifetime, both Maggie and the reader learn about the place food holds in China’s history, its gastronomic philosophy, and how fine cuisine can be elevated to an art form.

To do this, the author has used the device of a book-within-a-book. Each chapter starts with a quotation from 'The Last Chinese Chef' purportedly published in 1925 by Liang Wei, Sam's grandfather - the opening chapter begins with:

"Apprentices have asked me, what is the most exalted peak of cuisine? Is it the freshest ingredients, the most complex flavours? Is it the rustic, or the rare? The peak is neither eating nor cooking, but the giving and sharing of food. Great food should never be taken alone. What pleasure can a man take in fine cuisine unless he invites cherished friends, counts the days until the banquet, and composes an anticipatory poem for his letter of invitation?"

Over the years I have eaten many meals in China, but it was only from reading this book that I began to grasp some of the ancient thinking behind the various styles of cooking and the choice of foods that I have been served.

The book is a must for anyone who enjoys Chinese food, or is interested in China.

Rated: 5*

RANTING:

I can't remember how old I was when I first learnt the old sea shanty "What Shall we do with the Drunken Sailor?" though I do remember singing it at primary school in Africa. It was also in the family repetoire of songs that we sang to relieve the boredom of long dusty car journeys. However, some dim spark at Bookstart the UK charity which "aims to provide a free pack of books to every baby in the UK, to inspire, stimulate and create a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life", has decided that the song is not suitable for children.

In addition to supplying books, they also organise Bookstart Rhymetimes at local venues such as libraries. These are regular get-togethers for parents, babies and toddlers to sing songs and rhymes. In the Bookstart song sheet, the words "Drunken Sailor" have been replaced with the words "Grumpy Pirate" - removing any references to alcohol, presumably because the idea of a drunken sailor is just too inappropriate whereas grumpy pirates - like the murderous Somalis who have been terrorising the coast of east Africa, capturing oil tankers, container ships and the like - are considered acceptable. Of course, once you remove drunken sailors from the song you have to remove all the follow-on lines . "Put him in the brig until he's sober...Give him a hair of the dog that bit him...Hoist him to the yardarm with a running bowline" and my favourite, "Shave his belly with a rusty razor" are all too violent for the little darlings to lisp.

Therefore they have been replaced with lines such as "Tickle him till he starts to giggle" and "Do a little jig and make him smile". What the hell is this bowdlerised rubbish?
Sea shanties are part of the heritage of a maritime nation, we will be a nation of lily-livered wimps if this sort of PC nonsense continues.
I'd like to get the Bookstart censor then I'd Shiver his Timbers.

Heave Ho and up he rises, Heave Ho and up he rises Heave Ho and up he rises Early in the morning! Scratch his back with a Cat-o'-nine-tails Early in the morning!

RECIPE:

After reading Nicole Mones book (see above) I felt I should make something Chinese, but with the cold snowy weather we're having I fancied something a little more substantial than a quick stir fry. This dish is a classic in China, I should think every household has their own variant of the recipe, in fact I have at least four versions , this one is taken from Fuchsia Dunlop's book Sichuan Cookery, slightly tweeked by me. It is a particularly apposite dish to make at the moment, as the sainted Jamie Oliver is on TV these days banging on about eating British pork and particularly encouraging people to use the cheaper cuts such as belly.

HONG SHAO ROU - Red Braised Pork

Serves 2 as a main course, or 4 with two or three other dishes as part of a Chinese meal.
This re-heats very well on the second or third day, so can be made in advance.

500g streaky belly pork with skin on
Large piece of fresh ginger, unpeeled
2 spring onions
3 tablespoons sunflower oil or similar (NOT olive oil)
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine (if you don't have this you can substitute dry sherry)
Half teaspoon salt
3 heaped tablespoons soft brown sugar
1 whole star anise
1 piece cassia bark (or use half a cinnamon stick)

Bring a large pan of water to the boil; when boiling, put the pork belly in and cook for 3-4 minutes then remove to a chopping board. After a minute or two, when cool enough to handle, cut the pork into 3-4cm chunks making sure that each piece has a layer of skin and a mixture of meat and fat. Use something heavy to slightly crush the piece of ginger, then cut the spring onions into 3 or 4 pieces. In a flameproof casserole, heat the oil until it is almost smoking and then add the pork chunks (take care to stand back as you do this as the hot oil tends to spit out at you) and stir fry them for a few moments before adding the stock, sugar, soy sauce, wine, salt and spices. Stir together and bring to the boil. Simmer, half-covered, over very low heat for about two hours, stirring now and then to prevent it sticking. The meat should become a reddish brown and very tender, and the sauce reduce by half and be dark and glossy.
Serve with plain steamed or boiled rice, and garnish with finely chopped spring onion.

2009-01-26T11:00:00.003Z

TODAY IS THE START OF CHINESE NEW YEAR, THE YEAR OF THE OX.
I have been told that people born in the Year of the Ox are: responsible, dependable, honest, caring, honourable, intelligent, artistic, industrious and practical.
However, they are also: petty, inflexible, possessive, dogmatic, gullible, stubborn, critical, intolerant and materialistic.

If you were born between February and the following January in the years 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973,1985 or 1997 you're an Ox.

READING:

Last week I picked up a copy of A Poisoned Mind by Natasha Cooper from the new books shelf in Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution library. Even though I have a huge pile of books waiting to be read, something about this one made me get stuck in straight away, and I was immediately hooked.

On the cover there is a comment from a renowned crime writer describing the book as one of the best legal thrillers she’d ever read, and I would agree.

The story opens on a failing Northumberland farm, where a company called Clean World Waste Management have leased some land as a site for two chemical waste disposal tanks. The tanks blow up causing a conflagration in which the farmer is killed and the surrounding farmland is polluted.

Angie, the farmer’s widow, aided by members of an environmental pressure group, is taking the corporate giant to court in an attempt to get proper compensation.

Trish Maguire QC, whose sympathies lie with the widow, finds herself having to set aside personal feelings as she has to represent Clean World Waste Management. As the trial proceeds she begins to wonder what exactly has been going on, the eco-hippies who are supporting Angie may have a hidden agenda – not all do-gooders are truthful it would seem.

At the same time, Trish is coping with a troubling friendship between her teenage brother David (for whom she and her husband are responsible), and Jay, a schoolmate he keeps bringing home, who comes from a dysfunctional and abusive family.

Which situation is more poisonous, the chemical waste explosion, or the alcohol and drug fuelled lives of Jay’s family?

I had never come across Natasha Cooper’s books featuring Trish Maguire before, but joy of joys there are another eight for me to read – A Poisoned Mind is the latest – so I intend to read them in order so that I can follow Trish’s progression up the legal career ladder. She is a heroine I took to immediately, intelligent, feisty, professional and very real.

What a treat I have in store.

Rated: 4.5

RANTING:

If a colleague, friend, relative or loved one died in police custody, whilst serving in the armed forces, or when accidentally hit by an emergency vehicle you would probably want to attend the inquest to find out how and why they died, and who was responsible.

Citizens would be deprived of this right if this government has its way.

Last year the clause in the Counter-terrorism Act which would have allowed some inquests to be held in private was dropped, following fierce opposition from all sides. However the proposals have been included in the legislation covering Coroners Courts which has just been introduced to Parliament.

The plan is to have juries, families, and the press excluded from some inquests which would be held in secret with hand-picked coroners, on the grounds of – you guessed it – ‘national security’. I’ll bet that they will use it whenever some death might be going to be an embarrassment, or an inquest might point a finger at the failings of government departments

The whole idea of secrecy in trials or inquests makes my blood run cold – it smacks of Stalinist Russia, and of the old apartheid regime in South Africa.

Why is this Labour government so hell bent on getting this clause on to the statute books?

Yet again they are chopping away at hard won liberties which once kept this country a beacon of freedom and democracy. We must not let these rights be whittled away one by one.

RECIPE:

This dish is a hybrid, not quite a fritatta, not quite a Spanish omlette, a bit like a quiche without a pastry crust. It takes hardly any time to make and is a great meal served with a salad, stretching two salmon fillets to feed four people.

SALMON ‘n EGGS

Serves 4

8 large eggs

2 fillets salmon (300-400g)

Juice of half a lemon

8 spring onions

2 tablespoons chopped coriander

Salt & pepper

1 tablespoon (approx) butter

2 tablespoons corn oil

Pre-heat the grill.

Cut the salmon fillets into smallish dice.

Finely slice the spring onions.

Beat the eggs until slightly frothy, season sparingly with salt and pepper.

Heat the butter and oil in a medium sized frying pan, and when hot add the salmon pieces and drizzle the lemon juice over them. Stir over a gentle heat until the salmon has changed colour and is nearly cooked through, then tip in the eggs, the chopped coriander and the spring onions. Using a wooden spatula, gently mix everything together. Then let it cook for about a minute. Lift the edges gently with the spatula to let any runny egg seep downwards before placing the frying pan under the pre-heated grill for a couple of minutes to allow the eggs to firm up and brown very slightly on top.

Cut into four wedges and serve garnished with coriander leaves. A side salad of tomato, cucumber and lettuce with a tangy dressing is perfect with this dish.

2009-01-14T12:27:00.013Z

A Word to Husbands:

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.

Ogden Nash

READING:

Simon Sebag Montefiore has written two highly acclaimed non-fiction books about Joseph Stalin, as well as several other books about aspects of Russia’s history. Sashenka is his first foray into the world of fiction, and he makes good use of his specialist knowledge. He has divided the book into three sections, covering the story of one family through the huge changes in

Russia

from 1916 up to the present day. As a result of reading it I am determined to read more about this period of history.

When the story begins Sashenka Zeitlin is the sixteen year old daughter of an immensely rich, well connected Jewish family who live in St Petersburg. Her father, who bought his title, is a hypochondriac banker with a more than passing interest in Sashenka’s governess; her mother is entirely given over to self-indulgence, mixing with Rasputin and other debauched friends, drinking and taking drugs at parties every night. Her elderly orthodox Jewish grandparents who have left the shtetl and now live in the rear of the huge Zeitlin mansion, make everyone feel uncomfortable with their old fashioned, religious way of living.

Sashenka has been heavily influenced by her maternal uncle who is a Bolshevik trying to bring down the Tsar. Like many young people she feels the Tsarist regime is unjust and is convinced that by becoming a revolutionary she can help bring about a new, fairer Russia. She seems impervious to what such revolution would do to her family and thousands of others. She becomes more and more involved in the underground movement of Bolsheviks and after the storming of the Winter Palace and the abdication of the Tsar she is given a job at the headquarters of the Central Committee working for Lenin, Mendel, Stalin and the other leaders.

By 1939 Sashenka is living a privileged life in Moscow with a wonderful apartment, servants, American cars and domestic equipment and a country dacha in an area of natural beauty reserved for the top comrades. Married to Vanya Palitsyn who has an important job for the Politburo, she has a young son and daughter. She is working as editor of a magazine called “Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping”, and she and her husband socialize regularly with Stalin, Beria and the other leaders. The country has just gone through a year of "purges" when Stalin had thousands of Soviet party members eliminated. Sashenka and her husband seem completely blind to the violent corruption at the heart of the regime.

“The cleansing of the Party had been a brutal and bloody process. Many had failed the test and fallen by the wayside, sentenced to death…Some of Sashenka’s oldest friends and acquaintances had turned out to be traitors, spies and Trotskyites. She had never realised so many of them wore masks, pretending to be good Communists while actually being Fascists, saboteurs and traitors. With so many comrades vanishing into the ‘meat grinder’ as it was known, Sashenka had, like all her friends, culled their photos from the family photograph albums, scratching out their faces.”

Eventually, the regime turns on her too, and she wakes up to the monster she has helped to create. At that moment she has only one desire, to save her children. And with the help of others she manages to get them spirited out of Moscow to a new life elsewhere, just before she is arrested by the NKVD (latterly known as the KGB).

The third and final part of the book brings the reader up to date. A wealthy Russian oligarch living in London hires a young historian to research his mother’s family background. She has to overcome much bureaucratic resistance and blatant corruption in order to be able to delve through the Soviet archives, and in so doing eventually uncovers what happened to Sashenka’s two children.

I felt the book really only hit its stride when it got to the second part, and from then on I was gripped, not by Sashenka herself or what happened to her, but by how thousands of intelligent, well-meaning people could allow one man to gain so much power and develop such a regime without them seeing where it was heading. In the final part of the book, Montefiore paints a picture of a country which is still evolving, and frighteningly seems just as vulnerable to totalitarianism and dictatorship as it was in the 1920s.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

When I was young the term “Indian Giver” was one of opprobrium – although I suspect that it is no longer politically correct and I could be hauled over the coals for using it. Everyone knew what was meant by the phrase.

Like most other parents I had to adjudicate when one or other of my kids, having given something to their sibling, or to a friend, then had a major falling-out and demanded that whatever they had given them be given back. It had to be explained that when something was GIVEN to someone, not LENT to them, that it then it became theirs and the giver no longer owned it or had rights over it. Sure this could be very vexing when at a later time (be it hours, days, weeks) the recipient and the giver had a bust-up, but learning this lesson is part of growing up.

Someone obviously never taught this to Dr Richard Batista, who donated a kidney to his wife Dawnell some years ago. The couple have now divorced, and Dr Batista has demanded his kidney back (or $1.5 million compensation) because she has left him and taken the kids with her. This is obviously not what could be described as an amicable separation.

The lawyer advising Dr Batista in his claim can't have mugged up on her Shakespeare. In The Merchant of Venice I seem to remember Shylock got himself into a bit of a legal quandary when demanding his pound of flesh. The point being that though in law he could have the flesh, he couldn’t have any blood, and you couldn’t take the flesh without the blood. Presumably Dawnell Batista’s lawyer could follow the same line and say 'have the kidney back by all means but if you take a single drop of my client’s blood we’ll sue the pants off you.'

Actually its all moot, the kidney was GIVEN to Mrs Batista, it is now HER kidney.

Thank the lord that the brief and acrimonious marriage and divorce of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills didn’t involve any organ donations - can you imagine the headlines then?

The moral of the story is: Think before giving, because once it's given it's gone.

RECIPE:

Given my rant, I did consider posting a recipe for devilled kidneys - but then thought that might be a little tasteless (ha ha)! Anyway, the first days of January always seem to demand warm, filling, inexpensive food so I decided to actually write down the recipe for a soup I make fairly often at this time of year. Its real comfort food, and I make it by instinct so I had to stop and note down quantities as I made this latest batch. It freezes well, and with bread and cheese and a piece of fruit is a perfect lunch or supper.

GOLDEN WINTER VEGETABLE SOUP

Serves 6

1 medium swede

2 large carrots

2 medium potatoes

2 sticks celery

1 medium sweet potato

1 leek

1 medium onion

1 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 Bay leaf

½ teaspoon dried thyme

Salt & pepper

Water

Finely chop the onion; scrape the carrots, peel sweet potato, potato and swede, and cut all of them into small even dice. De-string the celery and cut it into pieces to match the vegetables in size. Remove any tough outer leaves from the leek, quarter it lengthwise and then cut across into small pieces.

Put the butter and oil into a large pan and heat gently until the butter has melted. Add the chopped onion and fry gently until it is transparent but not browned. Add all the other vegetables and cook for 5 -10 minutes over medium heat stirring regularly. Add enough water to just cover the vegetables, add the bay leaf and thyme and bring up to simmering point. Simmer gently for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables are soft, add about 500ml water and bring back to a simmer, cover and cook for about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Garnish with chopped parsley and serve with crusty brown bread and butter.

2009-01-08T15:48:00.001Z

I'M BACK !!!!
And wishing a belated Happy New Year to you all.

I snitched this Peanuts take on New Year from fellow book blogger Sam Huston of Book Chase - thanks Sam - because just at the moment Lucy sums up my feelings exactly!

Before normal blogging resumes, my thanks to all who have emailed or phoned to ask why I have not been posting on the blog, particularly BFNorwich who made me feel that I needed to get my arse back in gear. I think a few words of explanation are needed - our trip to China was extended for a couple of weeks and became ever more hectic, so we didn't get back to the UK until late November. Almost as soon as I stepped off the plane in London I came down with a horrible chesty cold, and just as I was on the mend and contemplating everything that had to be done to prepare for a large family Christmas, I was hit with this ghastly flu that seems to have been cutting a swathe through the population. Apparently it has been designated 'Brisbane Flu' but DDF has just been out in Oz for the festive season and he never mentioned it being a big issue there. Wherever this particularly nasty virus - illustrated below - came from, it has taken ages to throw it off and I must admit to feeling pretty washed out.
Lets hope we all have a healthier year ahead.

Now for a few statistics:

WHAT I READ IN 2008:

Total Books read: 144
Non-fiction: 18
Biography: 5
Crime/mystery/thriller: 26
Male authors: 58
Female authors: 86
Books translated into English 11

Definately room for improvement : must blog about more of the books I'm reading, must read more non English-speaking authors, must read more non-fiction.

2008-11-10T14:37:00.003Z

'MAY WE ALL LIVE LONG,
SHARING THE SAME FAIR MOON,
THOUGH THOUSANDS OF MILES APART.'
Su Dongpo (1036-1101 AD)

READING:

Travelling round China it seemed appropriate to read books written by Chinese authors (in English translation of course). The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa has been sitting on my TBR shelf at home for quite some time so into the suitcase it went, and I finished reading it on a flight between Nanning in Guangxi province, and Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan.

The Girl Who played Go is a beautifully written first novel set in a period of Chinese history I knew little about.
In the early 1930s, Japan invaded the northern part of China known as Manchuria, and placed Pu Yi the last Emperor of the Qing dynasty on the throne as a puppet ruler. There was a great deal of Chinese resistance to this, as the Chinese feared that Japan would use Manchuria as a starting point from which to conquer the whole of China. Set against this turbulent background, the lives of two individuals are gradually revealled to the reader. The first is a 16 year old Chinese schoolgirl from an upper class family who live in a small town in northern China, she has just embarked on her first relationship with a boy, and like most teenagers is wondering about what the future holds for her. She is a talented Go player, and every afternoon she frequents a square in the town where people congregate to play the game.
The other character is a young Japanese army officer who emulates the ancient Samurai code of honour. He has been sent to northern China where the Japanese are ruthlessly brutal in their attempts to end Chinese resistance to their occupation. As he speaks Mandarin his senior officer requests that he don Chinese clothing and spend time in the town to spy on the citizens, local resistance groups are thought to meet at the square where Go is played each day. So it is in the 'Square of the Thousand Winds' that these two meet, and start playing a game of Go.

The game of Go has been played in China for over 4000 years, and it became one of the most popular games played in Japan centuries ago. Two players engage in battle of strategy using black and white counters on a board which has been incised into a table top of either wood or stone. Incredibly complex, a single game can last for many days; when play has to be interrupted a careful note of the players' positions is taken, and the game can resume hours or days later at exactly the same point. Sometimes it is difficult to determine who has won and who has lost.
As the officer says when they have been playing for some time: "The black and white stones now form a series of intertangled traps where those that lay siege are themselves besieged....We are battling for narrow corridors and cramped corners." a comment which also reflects the position of the Japanese within Manchuria.

Written in very short chapters which are alternately narrated by the young girl and the Japanese officer, the story takes on something of the character of the game itself, with each player taking a turn. As the game progresses you become aware of the delicate emotional relationship building between them, and one has a steadily mounting sense of foreboding as events lead them towards a tragic ending.

Rated 4*

RELAXING:

We spent five extremely busy days in Nanning, with the usual round of meetings and banquets (a Chinese banquet is a formal dinner and is an integral part of business life out here) and the concept of the weekend as 'free' time doesn't seem to exist, so it was marvellous to snatch a half day to visit Dalong lake which is about two hours drive from the city. Actually it would take much less time to get there if the road were in better condition. Being bumped about until my backside was numb was well worth it, the lake is stunningly beautiful and completely unspoiled.

The landscape is very reminiscent of Guilin which is also in Guangxi province but about 400 kms east of Nanning. The real difference is that Guilin is very much on the tourist trail, and many lotus-eating Westerners have settled there and opened bars, spas and guest houses.

We arrived at a tiny hamlet on the lakeside and hopped straight onto a boat - we were the only passengers - which immediately set off for a two hour cruise. For once I had remembered to take my binoculars, which meant we could do some bird watching as we soaked up the sunshine. It was so peaceful, and apart from the occasional lakeside fishing village and a cluster of sampans here and there, it was hard to believe that this was in the most populous country on earth. By the time we left the lake I was so relaxed and full of fresh air that even the bumpy road couldn't keep me awake and I snoozed all the way back to the city, waking up just in time to change my clothes and run a comb through my hair before that evening's banquet.

RESTAURANTS:

There are so many wonderful restaurants in Beijing and the DH and I have been fortunate enough to have eaten in many of them, but on this trip one of the highlights has been a dinner we had at Mei Fu Jia Yan, or Mei Mansion as it is called in English.

Located in a 200 year old courtyard house in one of Beijing's ancient hutongs, just south of Hou Hai which is a beautiful ornamental lake, Mei Fu Jia Yan is the former home of the late Mei Lanfang - one of the greatest actors with Beijing Opera during 1930s -1950s. Mei Lanfang was famed for playing 'dan' roles, that is to say female roles. As in English theatre in Shakespeare's time, female parts in Chinese opera were always played by men although this no longer seems to be the case.

Mei Lanfang paid enormous attention to his diet in order to protect his voice, his health and his looks. He insisted on eating seasonal food with an emphasis on freshness, with low salt, low sugar, low cholesterol and minimal spice.

Mei Mansion is arranged as a series of private dining rooms set around a beautiful traditionally paved courtyard with bamboos, magnolias and willows and the gentle sound of water murmuring in the background. Owned and run by Mei Lanfang's son, the chef is the forth generation to have worked for the family, and continues to cook and serve the dishes created for the great star.

As is the custom, our host had chosen the menu, which was written on a fan in beautiful Chinese calligraphy, and the meal began with a selection of seven dishes, all presented in the most elegant way and looking like minor works of art. We were then served various delicious hot dishes, I particularly loved the beef with scallops, a combination that seemed made in heaven.
At that point we were invited to go out into the courtyard, where two young musicians were playing the traditional two-stringed fiddles called jinghu, to our great delight a young opera singer appeared dressed in costume, and sang several popular songs from various operas.
We then returned to continue eating, and were each served with freshwater crab. These were served whole, and each had a plastic tag attached to show they were legally caught and met organic criteria.
By the time the meal ended with the usual platter of prepared fresh fruit I was in a blur of taste sensations, and wished I could have taken photographs of each dish without being thought rude.

Mei Mansion is certainly expensive compared with many restaurants in this city, but for a memorable once in a lifetime experience it can't be beaten, and if you are going to be in Beijing it is really worth trying to get a table. I am told you have to book at least a week in advance.

Mei Mansion
24 Daxiangfeng Hutong
Hou Hai, Xi Cheng
Beijing 100000
Tel: +86 106 612 6845

2008-10-24T07:51:00.000+01:00

NI HAO!
While I am travelling around in China I won't be doing any cooking, and its hard to rant in Mandarin, so for the next blog or two The 3rs will be covering Reading, Relaxing & Restaurants. Normal service will resume when I get back to Blighty.

READING:

If anyone had told me that I would be absolutely absorbed by a book about playing cricket in America I would never have believed it as I am not very interested in sports of any kind. However Netherland by Joseph O'Neill hooked me from the first page. Netherland was on the Booker long list this year and I think it should have been short listed. The book is narrated by Hans van den Broek, a Dutchman who is an analyst with the Wall Street office of a British bank. His English wife Rachel is a solicitor and they live in trendy TriBeCa in downtown Manhattan with their baby son Jake. After the horrors of 9/11 the couple have to leave their appartment and move temporarily to the bohemian environment of the Chelsea Hotel. Rachel is very traumatised by the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and eventually return to what she perceives as the safety of London, taking Jake with her. Hans is left on his own. Being at a loose end at weekends, he starts playing cricket - a childhood passion of his; cricket in NY is played in the public parks of unfashionable suburban areas, and the players are the immigrants who have drifted to America from Britain's ex-colonies. West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans all come together to play, eat and socialize. Hans is one of the very few white players. Through playing cricket he meets Chuck Ramkissoon, a street-wise Trinidadian with the gift of the gab, who fancies himself as an entrepreneur - one of his most successful ventures being a Kosher Sushi bar - who runs an old fashioned (and illegal) gambling game called 'weh weh' on the side. Chuck has big plans, he dreams of building a state-of-the-art cricket ground in NY, he tells Hans that cricket was played in the USA long before baseball,
"I'm saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilised when they're playing cricket. What's the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. I really believe this. Everybody who plays the game benefits from it . So I say, why not Americans?"
Hans is very much a bystander, observing the city in which he is living, but not really engaged with it. His marriage is breaking down and he seems to be accepting it with detatched passivity. On the pretext of giving him driving practice so that he can get a US license, Chuck gets Hans to drive him all over the suburbs, stopping frequently for Chuck to conduct mysterious transactions. Eventually it dawns on Hans that he is being used in some way, and that Chuck's business is shady to say the least. Finally Hans decides to return to London and try to resurrect his marriage, and it is there, some years later that he gets a call to say that Chuck's body has been found rotting in a canal where it had been for a year or so. This triggers memories of their short friendship, Hans's time in NY, and also of his childhood in Holland. Joseph O'Neill is a wonderful writer, and the descriptions are so precise, so evocative that the city of New York comes alive to the reader, and in Chuck Ramkissoon he has created a character in the mould of Gatsby, or even of Babbitt. This book is destined to be a classic I am sure.
Do read Netherland, even if, like me, you don't have any interest in cricket!

Rated 4.5*

RELAXING:

One of the most fabulous, sociable and inexpensive things you can do when in China is have a foot massage.
It is SO relaxing and afterwards you feel as though you are walking on air. Before dinner last night the DH, BJBF and I went off to one of the best places for this (Lianzgzi has 400 salons all over China, employing over 20,000 trained staff) and after being shown into one of their many, very luxurious, foot massage rooms we were ensconced side by side in huge electrically adjustable arm chairs. Drinks orders were taken, the enormous plasma screen TV/DVD player was switched on, and a bevy of uniformed assistants arrived with special wooden buckets of hot water full of herbs into which our tired feet were plunged. There they soaked for five minutes whilst our three masseurs rubbed every part of them. Then they were removed, spritzed with more herbal liquids and gently pummelled before going back into the warm water. Stage three was when they were removed from the water dried and oiled before the massage proper began. Whilst one foot was being done, the other was wrapped in a warm damp towel.
By now the DH had sunk into a torpor, and eventually a gentle snore or two could be heard coming from the depths of his chair, which he had adjusted to practically horizontal! BJBF and I were chatting away 19 to the dozen, catching up on all the news since we last met up...we discussed the Chinese milk scandal, our children, the Beijing Olympics and what Londoners really felt about the British 8 minute handover section of the closing ceremony, Madonna's divorce, the new vehicle restrictions in Beijing - how were they working?
Every so often a waiter would come in with refills of green tea, and in this way nearly two hours passed in a flash.

My only moment of disquiet was when the young man , who was massaging my right foot at the time, said sternly (BFBJ translated for me) that my "points" were blocked, the Chi was not moving properly - he felt I wasn't getting enough sleep or drinking enough water, my body was too "hot", I must be sure to eat "cooling" foods.

By the time we were all done, my calves had been beaten into submission, every toe was tingling with new life and vigour and I practically skipped out of the salon like a spring lamb.

I'm thinking of writing to the big boss of Liangzi to suggest he opens a branch in London - I'd be their first customer.

RESTAURANTS:

In the five days we have been in Beijing we have had the most amazing dining experiences, all different, but I thought I'd kick off with the only time the DH and I have snatched a meal together on our own. On our first full day here we rushed off to the Yashou Clothing Market in Sanlitun to order a new suit for the DH. An excellent tailors shop he has used in the past is based there. After being measured up we had 40 minutes to grab a quick lunch before the next round of meetings. Right behind the market there is a great little place which serves Shanghai dumplings, xiaolongbao - I know, it seems crazy to eat Shanghai dumplings in Beijing, but we both love them so what the hell. Xiaolongbao are quite different from Beijing jiaozi; they are round, always steamed, and contain a stuffing of minced pork plus another ingredient, usually some form of seafood. We ordered a round of pork+ shrimp, and a round of pork + crab. The kitchen is open so you can watch your dumplings being made, unless you prefer to watch the huge TV screen on the wall, which seems to be permenantly tuned to some kind of crazy physical game show rather like a Chinese version of 'It's A Knockout'. All the locals were engrossed, loudly egging on the contestants and sighing with sympathy when they were eliminated. When our dumplings arrived at the table, stacked in the ubiquitous bamboo steamers, they required careful chopstick technique, as in addition to the stuffing, each dumpling contains some meaty broth which is extremely hot. The correct method is to pick one up, bite away a small amount of the outer dumpling, suck out the broth with a loud slurp, and then dip the rest into the dish of vinegar and slivered ginger before eating it. For those who like a bit of spice there is a pot of chilli sauce which can be mixed with the vinegar. Each steamer contained 8 dumplings, and together with three beers the meal cost the grand sum of 39RMB which is about £3.25p.
Cheap, filling and delicious, this is what fast food should be about.

2008-10-13T20:10:00.002+01:00

SORRY, SORRY, SORRY - the last few weeks have been hectic to say the least, what with moving house and a full-on calendar of other commitments, I'm afraid the blog has been sadly
neglected, apologies all round.

In a couple of days time I'm off to China for a fortnight, but hope to blog from there as I am taking my latest toy, a small but perfectly formed notebook made by Dell.

READING:

Ruth Rendell is one of Britain’s most prolific and popular authors, in the four decades since I read her first book she has published a further 57 titles, 45 under her own name (21 of which feature her detective creation Wexford and the fictious town of Kingsmarkham), and 13 under her pseudonym Barbara Vine. (to learn more about Ruth Rendell, click here.)

I hadn’t read anything by her for a year or two and decided it was more than time to pick up one of her recent books. In 2006 she published The Water’s Lovely as Ruth Rendell, When she writes as Vine the novels are often multilayered, darker and explore the impact that chance or coincidence has on her characters.

Ismay and Heather are sisters who share a flat in what was once the family house; their elderly mother Beatrice, who has dementia, lives in the flat above them cared for by her sister Patricia. Thirteen years previously, when Ismay and Heather were in their early teens, their stepfather Guy was found drowned in his bath.

Ismay has always thought that Heather drowned him in order to protect her from Guy’s sexual attentions, and has worried whether she should have been complict with her mother in covering her sister’s crime.

Now both young women are working and in serious relationships, but the past continues to cast a long shadow, and threatens their lives.

As always Ruth Rendell has created some memorable characters, and in this book are three of the most compellingly selfish people you could imagine. Andrew, Ismay’s boyfriend, is a truly nasty piece of work. He treats Ismay with contempt and reduces her to abject misery. Heather’s fiancée Edmund has a mother, Irene, who is the most hysterical hypochondriac, using her imagined illnesses to try and control Edmund. Marion Melville, one of Irene’s friends, is a character worthy of Dickens. A manipulator par excellence, she visits several elderly people for entirely selfish reasons and it is through her unwittingly amoral behaviour that Guy’s death comes back to haunt the sisters.

Rendell excels at the psychological crime novel and this is no exception, though I did think it was much more in the style of Barbara Vine, and I am surprised she published it under that name.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

There are times when I begin to wonder what country I am living in, and now is one of those times….am I living in Britain, or East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall ? We are being turned slowly but surely in to a nation that spies on one another, reports one another (sometimes anonymously) to the “authorities” for perceived minor infractions of civil or criminal law.

You may wonder why I am getting all hot under the collar about this today, read on and you may become hot under the collar too.

Lincoln City Council has decided that all council employed plumbers and electricians are to be given training in spotting child abuse, so that when they are in someone’s home to fix a wonky pipe or re-wire an electrical circuit they can spy on the family and report back to Social Services if they think that children may have been abused.

Child abuse is a horrible thing, it harms children and their families. The term is wide ranging, and includes neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It is by its very nature hidden, and difficult to spot even for experts. Just having an accusation of child abuse made, rightly or wrongly, can tear a family apart and do lasting damage which may echo down the generations.
I say this as one who, after 20+ years in the Family Courts, dealt with more cases of child abuse than I care to remember.

To expect handymen (or women) to be able to diagnose children as abused or in danger of abuse after a week or two’s training, when they are busy working on the job of plumbing or wiring is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of.

No it’s worse than that, it is very dangerous and just plain wrong. What on earth do Lincoln Council think they are doing?

The chance of false allegations will be very high; and if a plumber unblocks a sink in Family A’s kitchen and doesn’t report anything, does that mean that all is ticketty-boo and the kids are fine? Does it hell, it means absolutely nothing.

There used to be a good old English phrase “Mind your own business” and the business of plumbers is plumbing, not spying for social services.

I hope that the people of Lincoln rise up and stop this outrageous plan.

RECIPE:

Adjusting to a new kitchen takes time - in the first place you have to remember where you have put everything as you unpacked box after box, and then the regular way you move between sink, stove/oven, fridge etc seems awkward and unfamiliar.
Waiting for the plumber to come and sort out the boiler a few days ago, meant a working lunch had to be re-scheduled from a restaurant to being here in the new house, and the menu was dependent on what I had available. -Some frozen Canadian scallops (which are a really useful thing to have in the freezer, they should not be defrosted before cooking and taste delicious), a packet of Puy lentils, and a small Savoy cabbage provided the basis for a really tasty main course which I will be making again.
Puy lentils are the only lentils which have an A.O.C. (Appellation d'Origine Controlée ), they are small, grey-brown in colour and do not require pre-soaking.

SCALLOPS WITH LENTILS & CABBAGE

Serves 4

400g frozen Canadian scallops
250g Puy lentils
1 onion, finely chopped
200g bacon lardons
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Salt and pepper
1 small Savoy cabbage, finely shredded
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Olive oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce

Place the lentils in a saucepan and cover with about ½ litre of boiling water, cook for about 20 minutes until the lentils are soft. Drain and set aside.

In a frying pan sauté the lardons until beginning to brown slightly then add the chopped onion and continue cooking, stirring regularly, until the onion is translucent, add the drained lentils and mix together; add the lemon juice and season to taste. Set aside.

The lentils can be prepared to this stage well in advance, even the day before, and then re-heated in a pan or microwave prior to serving.

Heat a splash of olive oil in a shallow pan, and when very hot add the shredded cabbage, stir-fry for a few moments before adding enough water to moisten it, keep cooking for a minute or two until the cabbage is softened but still has a little bite to it. Stir in the soy sauce and the chopped parsley. Set aside but keep warm.

Heat a frying pan until very hot, add a splash of olive oil and then the frozen scallops. Cook for 6-7 minutes each side until soft, cooked through and golden brown.
Place a ring of the cooked cabbage on each plate, and heap some of the lentils in the centre. Carefully place about 5-6 scallops on top of the lentils and serve immediately with crusty bread.

2008-09-18T08:17:00.005+01:00

FLITTING DAY

"all that morning a packing up, a sending off, a pushing in—upholstery meeting upholstery in deadly contention; streets encumbered with card-tables and arm-chairs in the most awkward irrelation to their proper circumstances; articles even more sacredly domestic exposed to every idle passerby—a straw-and-ropiness everywhere."

Thank heavens it will all be over by the weekend.

READING:

The Diplomatic Corpse by Anne Marshall Zwack is a wonderfully light and frothy tale of love, revenge and diplomacy, and just what I needed after an exhausting day of packing boxes prior to moving house.

Maggie has spent 25 years being the perfect wife, dutifully following her upper-class husband, Jeremy, from one European city to another as he advanced up the diplomatic ladder. She has attended innumerable boring diplomatic dinners and receptions, hosted cocktail parties ad nauseum, chatted amiably with the wives of other diplomats, and has never put a foot wrong.

Jeremy is British Ambassador in Vienna when he suddenly drops dead of a heart attack. Hours after the funeral, when Maggie is still numb with shock, she finds out that he did not, as she had been told, die at his office desk in the Embassy but in the arms of his blonde Viennese mistress, Mausie.

Consumed with grief and rage, Maggie decides she will exact revenge on Mausie, and with the help of Zoltan, their lugubrious Hungarian chauffeur, she concocts a plan.

It is only after carrying it out that she discovers that Mausie was but the latest in a line of mistresses, Jeremy having had a liaison in each of the cities to which he had been posted ever since the start of their marriage.

Enveloped in fury, and feeling robbed of the life she thought she had lived, she embarks on a round Europe quest to wreak havoc on each of Jeremy’s other women.

The whole process of planning revenge takes every ounce of cunning that Maggie possesses. Aided and abetted by Zoltan and his whacky Italian girlfriend she careers round Paris, Budapest, and Rome plotting ever more hilarious ways of getting her own back.

Eventually she and her co-conspirators end up back in Jeremy’s London flat where they start a new business as matrimonial investigators. And it is through a case that comes to them that she realises that, in fact, Jeremy has had the last laugh.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

I wonder if the word “elitist” has the same meaning in American English as it does in English. Perhaps not.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild is an immensely wealthy, incredibly well-connected British financier, born into the famously rich Rothschild banking family, He owns racehorses, is a patron of the arts and active supporter of various worthwhile charities. He is what would be described in Britain as one of ‘the great and the good’.

His third wife, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is a well known American business woman who has made a fortune in her own right. A life-long Democrat who has raise huge amounts of money for the party, and close personal friend of Hillary Clinton- she and her husband spent their honeymoon at the White House – she divides her time between homes in New York, London and the English countryside.

Yesterday she announced, out of the blue, that she was ditching her long term allegiance to the Democrats and would now be backing Senator McCain in the forthcoming presidential election. This, she said, was because she felt that Barak Obama was too “elitist”.

Excuse me? A woman who is a fully paid up member of the business elite, who has married into one of the most elite families in England, who uses a title and has houses on both sides of the Atlantic, regards Barak Obama as elitist…

Hmm, pot calling kettle methinks.

RECIPE:

When you've been packing up boxes prior to moving, the last thing you want to do is think about what to give everyone for supper, so it was fortunate for me that the decision was made by what I found lying around after emptying kitchen cupboards. This is comfort food, easy to make**, and ideal for students to make at uni as it is cheap as chips. Kids love it because apart from being very tasty it looks mushed together in the way that mothers usually object to; "stop messing your food around and just eat normally" is the phrase I remember using long ago.

Anyway, it is perfect house-moving fodder and we all fell on it like starving vultures.

**The most difficult part of the recipe is opening the corned beef tins. In the interests of health and safety I should warn you to be very careful, I suspect more people get a nasty cut off a corned beef can than from anything else. Wrap your hand in a tea towel to hold the tin, or better still, abandon the stupid little opening key provided and use a normal tin opener to open the tin at both top and bottom so you can just push the beef out.

CORNED BEEF HASH – MY WAY

Serves 4

2 tins corned beef
2 onions, roughly chopped
4 – 6 potatoes, depending on size
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Worcestershire sauce
Tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (not essential)
Salt & Pepper

Peel the potatoes and boil or microwave them until just cooked. Drain and cut into bite sized chunks.
Cut the corned beef into bite sized cubes.

Saute the onion in a large frying pan until soft and just beginning to colour, add the corned beef and continue cooking, use a kitchen fork to break down the beef.

Add a good slug of Worcestershire sauce, and about a tablespoon of tomato ketchup, then add the cooked potato and mix everything together.
Continue cooking, stirring so that as the underneath browns, it breaks up.
Mash down the potato pieces slightly as they cook.
Stir in the chopped parsley if you have any.
Test for taste and add more Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and salt and pepper if needed.

Serve piping hot with a fried egg on top if you are really hungry.

2008-09-09T17:46:00.000+01:00

'HERE LIES JOHN BUNN, WHO WAS KILLED BY A GUN;

HIS NAME WAS NOT BUNN BUT WOOD,

BUT WOOD WOULD NOT RHYME WITH GUN

AND BUNN WOULD.'

British graveyards are full of fascinating, entertaining epitaphs - every month I shall put a new one up on the blog.

READING:

There were moments in my childhood where I felt so completely at odds with my parents that I was sure I must be adopted, and that somewhere in the world were two people who were my REAL parents and who would be charming, loving, and most of all, sympathetic and admiring of me. Of course this was not the case, I was the real child of my parents and merely suffering a typical bout of misunderstood youth. For the novelist A.M Homes whose memoir The Mistress’s Daughter I have just finished reading, such feelings were all too true. She WAS adopted as a newborn baby, and had always known the fact. She, like many other adoptees had always wondered about her biological parents, and had made some half-hearted attempts to trace them.

“In my dreams, my birth mother is a goddess, the queen of queens, the CEO, the CFO, and the COO. Movie-star beautiful, incredibly competent, she can take care of anyone and anything. She has made a fabulous life for her self, as ruler of the world, except for one missing link – me.”

However when, aged 31, her birth mother, Ellen, makes contact with her via the lawyer who had arranged the adoption, it comes as a complete surprise.
She discovers that Ellen was 22 when A.M. was born, and had been the mistress of Norman, an older married man, since she was 17 years old. Ellen has also contacted Norman to inform him she intends to trace their child, and so A.M. writes to both of them.

Almost immediately it becomes apparent that Ellen is a very difficult and needy woman. She never married, and has led a rather ramshackle life, both financially and emotionally. She considers herself sophisticated, but seems to be stuck in a time-warp of the early 60s. It is obvious that she has contacted A.M. because of her own needs rather than any desire to fill any needs of her daughter.

“Why won’t you see me?” she whines. “You’re torturing me. You take better care of your dog than you take of me.”
Am I supposed to be taking care of her? Is that what she’s come back for?
“You should adopt me – and take care of me”, she says.
“I can’t adopt you “, I say.

When A.M. first meets her birth father Norman in his lawyer’s office, the conversation is stilted and extremely odd.
“Tell me a little bit about you”, I say.
“I’m not circumcised. My grandmother was a strict Catholic, she had me baptised, I’m not circumcised”.

He also insists that they both undergo DNA testing to make sure she is his child, and when the results prove it to be the case he tells her that he will now introduce her to his family – he has four other children, all born before she was, and he is still married to his first wife. However, though he continues contact with A.M. for a while, he is reluctant to follow through with this promise, and eventually rejects her completely, even refusing to give her the DNA paperwork which proves his paternity.

Ellen dies unexpectedly a year or two after they have met, and A.M. is left even more painfully confused about who she is than she had been originally. Norman’s subsequent rejection, in effect abandoning her for a second time in her life, enrages her, and she embarks on a quest to discover everything she can about her ancestry.

Using all the tools of the electronic age she turns detective, following the tiniest clues and thanks to the wonders of the internet, and diligent fossiking in old archives, she builds up a picture of each of her parents and their antecedents, as well as the family history of her adopted parents who have remained solidly supportive whilst all this turmoil has been going on.
“The desire to know oneself and one’s history is not always equal to the pain the new information causes”.

Eventually she has a child of her own and at last becomes settled in a sense of self.
“I am my mother’s child and I am my mother’s child, I am my father’s child and I am my father’s child…
Did I choose to be found? No. Do I regret it? No. I couldn’t not know.”

Other people’s lives always seem more interesting than one’s own life, merely because their lives are unfamiliar. In this memoir A.M Homes has managed to distil what it is that people crave when they seek out their family backgrounds, a sense of belonging, a sense of place, and a sense of self. I found the book totally compelling.

Rated 5*

RANTING:

“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. “

These are the opening lines of a poem entitled Education for Leisure* by Carol Ann Duffy, one of our most celebrated modern poets.

For the past 5 years, AQA one of the biggest exam boards in the UK, has included the poem together with others by the same poet, in an anthology of poetry used by students sitting English GCSE.

It is a challenging poem which gives much food for thought and I imagine it would generate some interesting comments during classroom discussions.

In all the years that the anthology has been included in AQA’s English syllabus, there have been three complaints about the poem. Two complaints about it both by the same person, referring to the narrator carrying a bread knife with the possible intention of hurting someone,

and one complaint about the line in the poem which refers to a goldfish being flushed down the loo.

Based on a back of the envelope calculation using GCSE numbers given on the OFQUAL website (Office of Qualifications & Examinations Register), I estimate somewhere in the region of ¾ million 16 year olds have written AQA’s GCSE English exam in the past 6 years

So – over several years and ¾ million students only THREE complaints. AQA say they have bowed to these complaints, given the current media publicity about knife crime, and have instructed schools to remove the poem and/or the anthology.

Why not do away with Romeo and Juliet? surely it is not an appropriate play for young people to study in Britain today; it features stabbings, gang warfare, the teenage protagonists are bunking out to have pre-marital sex and it climaxes with a double suicide. And as for The Merchant of Venice....

In fact, why doesn't AQA go the whole hog and just remove anything by W. Shakespeare from the curriculum, his plays are just far too violent and in the current climate of panic over knife crime it would be better that teenagers were not exposed to such influences.

Sorry if I seem snarky, but really AQA has been ridiculously weak - they should have had the guts to tell Pat Schofield - the complainant - that it is a POEM, not an instruction book. Removing that poem won’t stop knife crime – hells bells, the poem won’t have caused any knife crime in the first place.

What will they feel they should censor next ?

*Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

For signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.

The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

RECIPE:

Way back in 1975 Shirley Conran wrote a bestselling book entitled 'Superwoman' in which she came up with the line "Life is too short to stuff a mushroom", and for many years I agreed with her. But then the delicious large open brown mushrooms known in the UK as Portobello mushrooms became widely available and I revised my ideas. These are wonderful as a side dish, as the vegetarian option on a braai/barbeque, or on their own as a light supper. The foul weather we have been enduring in Britain this summer has meant that these have had to be baked in the oven each time I've made them - too wet for braaing these past few weeks.

STUFFED MUSHROOMS

6 large flat mushrooms – Portobello or similar
3 spring onions, finely chopped
120 g white breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped parsley
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

Optional extras:
A slice of cheese placed on top of each mushroom prior to baking.
A fried egg placed on top of each baked mushroom.

Pre-heat oven to 200°C

Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and chop finely.
Heat a little olive oil in a sauté pan and gently fry the spring onions and chopped mushroom stalks until onion is soft but not brown.
Put the breadcrumbs, chopped parsley, minced garlic, spring onions etc into a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Mix together, add a dash or two of olive oil if needed to make the stuffing slightly moist.
Divide the stuffing between the mushrooms and press it in carefully.
Drizzle a little more olive oil over each one.

Place the mushrooms on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the mushroom is soft.

Alternatively, the mushrooms do well on a braai (use tongs to lift them), place round the sides of the grid when the braai is ready for cooking.