More bad food photography - I don't know if it's the stabiliser in my camera failing or the DTs are finally catching up with me but these came out quite blurry.
That said - this ratatouille (old-style, no aubergine eggplant) came out spectacularly well. One doesn't get the opportunity to throw around word bombs like "unctuous" much but hot damn - the spirit of Elizabeth David was moving through me on Sunday night. I feel compelled to stand up in the street and WITNESS, brothers and sisters, because surely the only way to salvation is through this ratatouille. If possible it was even better the next day. I wept. Openly and without shame. Seriously.
I should therefore be critical about the lamb which was more hit and miss. I cleaned up the rib bones a little to make them more 'french' but then was too lazy to wrap them in tin-foil to keep them pristine and pure, which is the way that god and Gordon intended.
I did them for about 20 minutes at 200°C (400°F) then glazed them with a mixture of dissolved brown sugar and dijon mustard and put them back in for about 10 minutes (or until the tip of the knife I stuck in came out warm to the touch on my tongue) and they were pretty perfectly cooked - pink in the middle chops and crusty on the outside as per the teachings of Friar Gary of Rhodes.
The glaze however - wasn't in love. It was a bit of a compromise since I didn't have any honey and so made a syrup with demerara sugar (light brown) when I would have preferred muscavado (dark brown). I also didn't have any English Mustard or even any proper Djion and had to make do with the squeezy bottle of djion in the fridge. Which turned out to contain high-fructose corn syrup (WHY?!) which gave the glaze a slightly sickly undertone. The Housemate loved it though so either a) I'm being way too self critical or b) He's become immune to the evils of HFCS. Or, I suppose d) He's been brainwashed by the Bilderburg group and the shapeshifting lizards of the British Royal Family/Bush Family NWO secret government. They orchestrated 9/11 don't you know? It's true! I saw this documentary on the internet and everything.
As always, the final plating money-shot is as graceless as it is badly exposed.
Drunk with a very, very good '06 Owen Roe Sharecropper's Pinot Noir which I'll be ordering a case of sometime soon.
There's a saying, often misattributed to Mark Twain, about the coldest winter being summer in San Francisco. Personally, coming from a country where the summer time is measured in hours rather than months (and from the colder, northern part of the country at that) I think the people who complain are being great big Jessicas but then that's just me.
It is miserably overcast today though, especially compared to Saturday's rather more idyllic weather and the ensuing Breakfast Club showing in the park.
Aaaaaaaaanyway. So, to recap - was warm and sunny, now cold, grey and miserable. Which really calls for some Radiohead.
The thing I love about Jonathan Glazer's work is the incredible grading and colour palettes - see for example his adverts for Levis and Wranglers
Cast your mind back to 1992 - Boutros Boutros-Ghali has just become Secretary-General of the United Nations, Windows 3.1 has just been released and the Manic Streets Preachers haven't started their determined spiral into bloated, pompous crapitude.
In fact, they have just released this rather catchy cover of the M*A*S*H theme song "Suicide is Painless"
Another interesting factoid about the song - the lyrics were written by Mike Altman, Robert Altman's song who was 14 at the time and who earned over a $1,000,000 in royalties whilst Altman himself only received $70,000 for directing the movie.
...
Ok, I find it an interesting factoid but then again I revel in that kind of deliciously nerdy factoid. Which may explain why my nights are a lonely procession of gaping emptyness punctuated by obsessive reordering of my bully button lint collection.
So, in order to scratch the itch I dug through the giant pile o' stuff and dug out the Nightmares on Wax album. And lo, it's as chilled as my feverish brain remembered. Bizarrely I also dug out a copy of Paula Abdul's "Forever my Girl", a second copy of the Sneaker Pimp's seminal "Becoming X" and an unopened, still shrink wrapped copy of "Miss Kittin and the Hacker".
Oh, and the CD with the best. case. EVAR
"a cinematic stab at trip-hop with a mix of retro soul strings, canons, and live instrumentation (bass, keys, guitar, organs, and vocals [by Sara Winton] are live). You can almost see the warm bodies, smell the smoke rising, and feel the listless sensuality in this song. It feels epic in scope yet tight as a clenched fist."
which just about sums it up.
Almost a year ago I packed my wordly belongings up into a motley collection of cardboard boxes and stashed them in a storage locker in North London waiting to get shipped to the US.
Now, after various trials, tribulations, diversions and disasters too copious and distressing to enumerate ... I finally have it back and, fingers crossed, the only thing that appears to be broken is a Le Creuset roasting tin.
I've missed my carefully accumulated collection of cooking stuff and all my recipe books (up to 76 now I think). I've missed some of my games consoles (although not as much as I thought). And my camping and climbing gear's going to get used a fair bit now that it's here.
But I've also enjoyed the zen feeling of a nearly empty room and being one bag away from being to able move everything.
I suppose a first step is to triage each box as I unpack it and start seriously thinking about getting rid of some of it. Second step will be to rip the CDs and DVDs and then pack them neatly out the way.
I do love books though - the tactility and the smell. It's just that I've got so many of them.
Hmm, we shall see.
That said, now that I have my didgeridoo back I can forsee a spot of daytime neighbour bothering coming on.
