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.

   

HAPPY NEW YEAR - MAY 2007 BE A FABULOUS YEAR FOR US ALL!
I haven't posted on the blog for sooooo long - 16 whole days ...
What can I say, this has been a very busy time, and I am looking forward to long peaceful weeks of nothing much happening! To compensate for the long silence I have decided to offer, free, gratis and for nothing, an extra R. So today this is not The 3 Rs, it is The 4 Rs.
Reading, RAVING, Ranting and Recipes.

READING:

Over the past fortnight my reading has been patchy to say the least, too much going on to really settle down and have a comfortably serious read. But of course I have been reading because I am incapable of not doing so, reading is as important as food and drink to me.
Here is a quick waltz through some of the books I have gobbled up in between visiting friends and family, entertaining and being entertained, and general jollification:

One Stop Short of Barking – uncovering the London Underground by Mecca Ibrahim
This was on my Amazon wish list, so I was really pleased to be given it as a Christmas gift. This little book is both hilarious and informative and should be compulsory reading for all the 3 million people who use the Tube every day.It is lavishly illustrated – the photo of Tony Blair pole hanging in a carriage while reading a Government White Paper and pretending to be an ordinary bloke is absolutely killing, who thought up that little wheeze I wonder? There is a selection of some of the funniest driver announcements: “ I am the captain of your train and we will be departing shortly. We will be cruising at an altitude of approximately zero feet and our scheduled arrival time in Morden is 3.15pm. The temperature in Morden is approximately 15 degrees Celsius and Morden is in the same time zone as Mill Hill East so there’s no need to adjust your watches.” Listing all the wildlife to be found underground from rats and pigeons to drunks and backpacking tourists, the author also gives details of the rules for buskers and the most popular and frequently busked song titles.

This is a great addition to my growing collection of books about London, and is a great gift for anyone who knows this city – especially for those middle-aged men in your life who are so difficult to buy for!

Nigella Lawson – the unauthorised biography by Gilly Smith
I snatched this off a shelf in the local library just a week before Christmas when you couldn’t switch on the TV without seeing the Domestic Goddess thrusting her cleavage at you and licking her fingers provocatively whilst she made and fried crab cakes DURING a drinks party – yeah right.

Anyway, the book gives you all the information available as to her family background, her marriage to the late John Diamond and subsequent marriage to Charles Saatchi, and how her career has progressed. The author is not doing a hatchet job on Nigella by any means, but the reader certainly gets a picture of quite a determined woman who will use anything and anyone to achieve what she wants, but –as Kenny Everett would have said – in the nicest possible way. I must admit I found it ironic that a Jewish woman was presenting a television series on how to cook and prepare to celebrate Christmas, which is a Christian festival after all, and using foods and ingredients which are specifically prohibited in the Jewish faith. Would Delia Smith have been allowed to get away with telling viewers how to prepare food for the Passover seder? I doubt it, well not unless she bought herself a crimson satin negligee to wear whilst cooking on screen!

RAVING:
I am in love with the present my DH gave me for Christmas - a Rolser shopping trolly. My son was absolutely horrified with the idea of me being given this..he thought I should have a blue rinse to match it. But this is in another league, it was featured in Vogue (Paris edition) nogal. Three years ago I broke my right ankle, in 2005 by horrible happenstance I broke it again; now I have a limp and I am nervous of falling and breaking it again. Consequently I am slow when I go shopping and have to carry bags full of things I've purchased, I trek back and forth loading stuff into the car which is parked as near as possible. But now my life has been revolutionised, I have my trolley. It holds a huge amount of stuff, library books, all my groceries, a huge pack of things from the chemist's, and 4 loaves of Dunnary bread and 6 Cornish Pasties from one of the best bakers in the entire world, Dunn's of Crouch End.
Now come on, admit you'd love a shopping trolley like mine.

RANTING:

Just before Christmas an undercover journalist from the Guardian posed as a member of the BNP in order to write a tabloid style exposé of this rather nasty little party; when his article was published, he listed some of the people who are paid-up party members, and Simone Clarke, one of the leading dancers with the English National Ballet, was one of them. This started a media frenzy and the dancer, who had never sought to publicise her political views, gave an interview with a rival paper explaining why she had joined the BNP. Many self-righteous folk have been clamouring for the ENB to sack Miss Clarke because of her BNP membership.

I am absolutely appalled at this, indeed I find this kind of witchhunt extremely worrying. It is Macarthyism in reverse. As anyone who knows me will testify, I am an old-fashionedly woolly liberal libitarian – to the point of being moth-eaten – and personally I have nothing but distaste for the BNP and loathe it’s aims and intentions. Never-the-less, it is a bona fide political party and there is absolutely nothing illegal about joining it as a member and Miss Clarke has every right to be aggrieved that she is being painted as some kind of criminal. To suggest she should loose her job because of it is just plain wrong. For the life of me I cannot see how her dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker is in anyway affected by her political affiliations. People who say that they wouldn’t be able to stand watching her dance now that they know what she votes are just plain silly. Should every programme come with an attached list giving information about the private lives of members of the cast? So that the public can boycott any performance where the background and views of the performers don’t coincided with their own high moral standards? So-and-so cheats on his wife and has a record for shoplifting, Ms XYZ lies about her age and drives an un-taxed car….for heaven’s sake where would it all end? Let dancers dance, musicians play, actors act and to hell with what stupid ideas they espouse -personally I always thought some of Vanessa Redgrave’s political ravings were quite bonkers, but I also thought she was a fantastic actress and would not have missed seeing her in film or on stage because of them.

We are not some country where the tiny new shoots of democracy have just poked through the soil and require protecting whilst they grow, we are an ancient nation with a long and robust political tradition and we can certainly accommodate dissenting views – even if we consider them repugnant.

RECIPE:

After all the rich foods during Christmas and New Year we are back to some rather homely family meals, not to mention some much needed belt-tightening (in both senses). So for Sunday night supper it is to be Cauliflower Cheese with a few additions to gussy it up and make it a little more substantial, and with crusty bread or a baked potato on the side it is an excellent main course.

CAULIFLOWER CHEESE A LA MODE

1 medium-large cauliflower
250g bacon lardons or streaky bacon cut into bits
½ medium onion, finely chopped
1 small can sweetcorn.
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

For the cheese sauce:

30g butter
30g plain flour
250ml milk + water mixed (use the cauliflower water)
Salt + freshly ground black pepper
125g grated cheese

For topping:
50g grated cheese
50g toasted breadcrumbs

Fry the bacon lardons and when browning add the finely chopped onion and continue cooking until translucent. Set aside.
Trim the cauliflower and break into medium-sized sprigs. Cook in boiling salted water until tender – approx 8 mins. Drain and reserve some of the cooking liquid for the cheese sauce. Arrange the cooked cauliflower sprigs in a well-buttered ovenproof dish and keep warm. Now sprinkle the cooked bacon, onion and sweetcorn over the cauliflower, making sure they are under, over and around every sprig.

Melt the butter for the sauce stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook gently for a minute or so, and then gradually stir in the hot reserved cauliflower liquor and then the milk. Bring up to the boil, stirring all the time to make a smooth sauce. Allow to simmer for 1-2 minutes then season to taste. Add the grated cheese and stir over a low heat until the cheese has melted and amalgamated with the sauce. Stir in the chopped parsley.
Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower, bacon, onion and sweetcorn, making sure it goes round everything.

Sprinkle with the toasted breadcrumbs and the remaining cheese.

Put in the oven for 20mins at 180°C or pass under the grill until brown and bubbling.

MY CANDLE BURNS at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light.


Edna Saint Vincent Millay

READING:

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem is a surreal detective story set, you guessed it, in Brooklyn New York. Lionel Essrog is one of four adolescent orphans from St Vincent’s Home for Boys who are taken on by a local fixer/tough called Frank Minna who intends the lads to become “Minna Men”, his sidekicks in the fly-by-night detective-agency-cum-limosine-service he has started. Lionel is known as the Human Freakshow as he suffers from Tourette's Syndrome
and is continually shouting out nonsense and swearwords, compulsively counting things, touching things and twitching or “ticcing” as it is properly called. Because of his condition Lionel’s innate intelligence is discounted by everyone, until one terrible day when Frank Minna is murdered and Lionel is compelled to really become a detective, and to try to find his way through shady undergrowth of Brooklyn’s gangster land and the web of threats and favours that surrounded Minna.

Jonathan Lethem had written Sci- Fi before he wrote this novel, and has obviously been influenced by Philip K. Dick’s writing. What gives the book its USP is the character of Lionel and his daily, even hourly, battle with the behaviours caused by his condition. He is isolated from forming any real relationships by his Tourette’s Syndrome, which is brilliantly described and which I found incredibly moving. I wasn’t sure quite what the author wanted this book to be. As a detective story it is satisfactory but fairly mundane, so was Lethem primarily trying to write a book about someone with Tourette’s?

Tourette’s is a condition which is life-long and there is virtually no treatment for it. People who suffer from it are often shunned in society. I well remember my very first day as a magistrate, 20 years ago. I had to sit in court at Horseferry Road in London. One of the very largest and busiest magistrate’s courts in England. As you might imagine I was nervous, and slightly stunned by the sheer volume of clients who passed before the bench. A case of criminal damage was called on, and into the dock came a man of about 30, f-ing and blinding and throwing his arms around, he paid little attention to the chairman of the bench telling him to be quiet. The chairman was an elderly chap in his late sixties, and he became very red in the face as the man kept shouting “fuckfuckfuckfuckcuntfuck” etc, and he threatened to have the man sent down for contempt of court. I suddenly realized that the man had Tourette’s (although back then I knew it as Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome) so I gathered my courage and managed to whisper to the chairman that I would like us to retire. When we did, I explained what I knew of the syndrome – which was not that much – but persuaded my fellows that the Probation service should be asked to get the man an appointment with a neurologist at Guy's hospital, and find him a place in a hostel (he was living on the streets) and that that would be a far more positive outcome than just locking him up. Sadly, I expect he appeared in other courts at other times poor chap, but at least on that one occasion I felt I had achieved something worthwhile, not a feeling I have had very often in my little corner of our creaky justice system.

RANTING:
Are we going nuts as a society? Maybe it’s just me going nuts, but I am getting really irritated with the ridiculous warning labels on packets of food or household goods, I think it is creeping into this country following the US model. Check out this website about idiotic warning signs in the USA

Today I was making my usual weekly dash round Waitrose when I came across the most blatant example of an illogical, crazy warning I have seen .

A promotion was going on in the fruit & veg section. A Waitrose employee was standing at a little table offering customers free samples of a line of produce – you know the kind of thing, a whole lot of little plastic dishes with a tiny taster in each, and a waste bin beside the table for the used dishes. There was an artistically arranged pile of packets of the goods for customers to purchase once they had been seduced by the tasting. Prominently displayed on the table was a large laminated sign reading ‘May Contain Traces of Nuts’ – and what you may ask, was the product being promoted? Why it was Nuts, packets of Waitrose’s own label nuts. Cashews, almonds, brazils, macadamias, pistachios, and some packets of mixed nuts. There was nothing else in the packets, just nuts.

‘May Contain Traces of Nuts’ – I should bloody well hope they did – they WERE nuts and I went nuts. I rushed up to the employee and asked them (very politely) why they had that stupid warning sign up and I was told ‘we have to have it by law* in case someone who is allergic to nuts eats something without realizing it has nuts in it.’ - ‘but’ I said, ‘these ARE packets of nuts, the samples you are handing out are nuts, why would anyone with a nut allergy even consider taking a sample? You don’t need this warning label’ Anyway, there was no point discussing it with her, she was merely following company policy.

I drove home thinking about how stupid our society is becoming – having to be warned about the obvious all the time, why are we letting this happen? Where will it all end?

* It is not true that you have to label for inadvertent traces of nuts, I have just looked up the UK’s food labeling regulations to be sure. Having said that, I can see that it might be sensible to put such a label on a packet of food containing a mixture of ingredients where there is a chance of the food having some nutty component. I just think companies are taking it to excess without looking at logic because they are scared witless of being sued.

RECIPE:

After that nutty rant, I thought I would include a recipe that definitely contains nuts. This is a cauliflower salad - well I call it a salad - that has variations across Spain and Italy. I like this Italian version, and presume it came from the town of Rimini. You can make it all year round as it is just as good in winter as in summer. The other good thing about it is that you can prep everything several hours ahead, and just assemble it at the last minute, so it is really good as a starter when you have guests.

CAVALFIORI A RIMINATI

Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a main course.

1 medium cauliflower, leaves discarded, broken into small florets.

Generous pinch of saffron

75ml olive oil

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

50g pine nuts

50g raisins

Extra-virgin olive oil to dress

Small handful chopped fresh mint

Small handful chopped flat leaf parsley

Heat a saucepan filled with a generous amount of salted water, add the saffron and when it comes to the boil, pop in the cauliflower.

Cook for just 2-3 minutes, so that the cauliflower picks up a little colour from the saffron but stays very much al dente.

Drain well, and spread on a tray to cool quickly.

Meanwhile, put the oil in a frying pan over a high heat. When it is just starting to show wisps of smoke, add the onion. Fry briskly for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the slices start to look crispy and caramelised. Add the pine nuts and raisins. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes (the raisins will swell and the pine nuts should colour a little). Tip into a sieve and drain off the excess oil, then transfer into a large bowl.

To serve, toss the cauliflower with the onions, raisins and pine nuts and season to taste. Drizzle generously with the extra-virgin olive oil and scatter with the chopped herbs.

The salad is also good when topped with shavings of a salty sheep milk cheese such as Pecorino.