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.

   

MY BFCT BECAME A GRANDMOTHER YESTERDAY - HER BABY GRANDDAUGHTER SHARES A BIRTHDAY WITH ELVIS, DAVID BOWIE AND SHIRLEY BASSEY, MAYBE SHE'LL GROW UP TO BE A FAMOUS SINGER TOO. WELCOME TO THE WORLD LITTLE GDC!


READING:

When I saw The Bethlehem Murders by Matt Rees on the new books shelf in the library I vaguely remembered reading a positive review of it in the Economist, and because the title seemed so appropriate in the week before Christmas I added it to my pile of reading material.

The first thing to say about the book is that it is far from festive reading, life in modern day Bethlehem is bleak, hard and dangerous. In this difficult environment Omar Yussef, a middle aged history teacher who works in a UN run school in a Palestinian refugee camp just outside the city, takes it upon himself to solve the murder of one of his former pupils. He has to contend with the various lawless Palestinian factions dodging both their wrath, and Israeli fire in equal measure, but he is determined to get at the truth. Yussef is a great new addition to the long list of memorable detectives such as Morse, Marlow, and Rebus.

In addition to being a cracking crime story, the book told me more about the situation within the occupied territories of the West Bank than I could have learned from reading any number of serious articles in the news media.

Many years ago we visited Bethlehem, and I have clear memories of the town as it was then, thronging with tourists, and relatively easily accessible from Israel proper. How different it is today; reading The Bethlehem Murders I felt I was IN Bethlehem, walking the hot, dusty, rubble strewn streets. I could sense the fear and feel the overwhelming hopelessness that now pervades the people who live there, particularly the young people.

Matt Rees, who lives in Jerusalem, was Time magazine’s bureau chief in that city from 2000-2006 and Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman and Newsweek, so he knows the area very well indeed. This is his first novel, though he has written a highly regarded non fiction book about Palestinian-Israeli divisions. His next book featuring Omar Yussef The Saladin Murders is to be published in February and it is already on my Must Read list.

For some reason the titles of Matt Rees’s books are different in the USA and the UK – I really can’t understand the need for publishers to do this:

The Bethlehem Murders (UK) is titled The Collaborator of Bethlehem (USA) and his new book The Saladin Murders (UK) is titled A Grave in Gaza (USA).

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

What kind of society are we becoming? I felt really horrified and angry when I heard about Ama Sumani being taken from a hospital bed to be sent back to Ghana. I know she has broken the UK visa regulations, and she has failed to communicate with the immigration authorities, so in strictly legal terms her removal from the country is justified.

But this woman is very, very ill. She has malignant myeloma which has fatally damaged her kidneys. If she were entitled to NHS treatment she would have been given a bone marrow transplant to treat the cancer; as she is not entitled to such treatment she has been kept alive by having kidney dialysis three times a week. If she is sent back to Ghana this grievously ill woman will not be able to have regular dialysis and the doctors at the University Hospital of Wales where she was being treated say that without it she will die within weeks.

In effect, our immigration bureaucrats, by sticking strictly to the regulations, are condemning her to death.

What happened to compassion, to pity, to care and concern for a fellow human being? Making an exception in Ama Sumani's case would not open the floodgates for other visa violators, it would merely demonstrate that we are a civilised and humane society.

Or are we?

RECIPE:

The excesses of the whole Christmas/New Year season are well behind us now and I, for one, am glad to be eating simpler meals. This year I am determined to try a new recipe or two every month and this is the first of what I hope will be many successful experiments. As a weeknight supper dish it has several advantages; firstly it is a 'one dish' dish so there is minimal washing-up, secondly Halloumi keeps for ages and ages so buy some, put it in the fridge and then you can rustle this up when you have to provide a vegetarian meal. The DH and son both gave it the seal of approval two nights ago and I think it will become an old favourite very soon.

ROASTED VEGETABLES WITH HALLOUMI CHEESE

Serves 4

1 butternut squash
4 potatoes
2 red peppers (The Romano variety are best for this dish)
2 red onions
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
250g block Halloumi cheese, cut into chunks
Handful of pine nuts
Fresh basil leaves to garnish

Pre-heat oven to 200°C

Put the pine nuts on a small baking tray and place in the oven to toast – it will take 4-5 minutes. Set your oven timer to remind you as they burn ever so quickly! Remove from the oven when lightly toasted and set aside.

Peel the butternut and remove the seeds and stringy material. Cut into chunks and place in large roasting tin.
Peel the potatoes and cut into quarters. Place them in the roasting tin with the squash.
Cut the stalks off the red peppers and remove the seeds, cut the flesh into large pieces and add to the squash and potatoes.
Peel the onions, halve them and cut each half into 3 wedges, add to the roasting tin.
Drizzle the olive oil over all the vegetables, and season with a little salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper; mix to ensure all the vegetables are well coated.
Roast in the oven for 30-35 minutes until the veggies are becoming slightly charred at the edges, remove from the oven.

Sprinkle the balsamic vinegar over the vegetables, and scatter the chunks of Halloumi cheese over the top.
Return to the oven for 15-20 minutes until the Halloumi is golden and beginning to brown.

Scatter with the toasted pine nuts and shredded basil leaves, and serve piping hot with crusty bread.