Pimp My Barbie?!

 

One of my inlaws has a weakness (... where in god’s name is this going...Ed?)
As I was saying,  he enjoys alfresco cooking on a huge device which he refers to as the KJ. It is red and would give you the horrors if you met it in a dream. It looks more like a nuclear device than a BBQ++. I was reading my favourite Obscene Publication - The FT’s HTSI ( I can only caution again. Some people might read this gibberish and dob you in to the peelers. I have my professional position to consider as well as a growing family...Ed.) How to spend it, p 57 since you ask. In the Technopolis Column, by Jonathon Margolis, is a review entitled The Big Smoke - An all-American, app connected,  wood-fire cooking monster.
At the end he points out that he likes a YouTube video by Kosmo’s Q BBQ & Grilling store in Oklahoma City  (other stores are available and we’ll name them unless our fee is paid in bitcoin, promptly ...Ed) It suggests what they call a spot of “redneck  engineering” to do the trick, the stripy thing with the meat!
In a much more douce, pastoral, and vegan manner here is a photo I took this morning.
(So much better for our image ...Ed.)

I’m All Ears!

It's Gota Be Goats

Marina Hyde Nails it again!
Goats, The Government of all the Talentless!

Suella Braverman is mesmerically dim... suggesting that she could not only be outperformed at the dispatch box but that she could  be outperformed by the dispatch box. Or indeed any other item of furniture in the Palace of Westminster. 

A bit ad feminem, but still, nice one Marina!

And for those of you that require visual aids can I recommend a fella who appeared previously in this blog goat link.

(Will he be asking for repeat fees, or PHWhat... Ed!)

That was a rather fine goat curry we enjoyed last night. Thank the lord that we have not been infected by any of this veganitry!

Cake News

August can be a cruel month. It is hot and nearly everybody is on holiday. The temptation to hide in the garden with a glass of chilled white wine or a bottle of beer, a pot of tea and cake, a good book, a box of chocolates, a crossword or two is overwhelming. However, we set off for a circular, walk in Lavenham. A short distance from  the Church on the road brought us to a footpath and this led across fields inhabited by a Punch and Judy Show and some desultory rams.We passed  Slough Farm, and not a sign of despond anywhere, took the path of  the disused railway line.  The path is wide and easy, it has several benches for the weary along its length (the beery wenches, however, remained in their gardens with Mr Spooner!) Along St Edmunds  Way we  stopped for the obligatory photo opportunity and for the first time, courtesy of visitors from California, a group selfie! (Regular readers and those of a delicate or nervous disposition should not take fright at this point. This technical  term which is  part and parcel of sociable media and the interweb, is explained by Mr Wikipedia and Mrs DuckDuckGo if you care to pursue them!)The footpath and our route returned us to the trees below and eventually to a stile on Park Road. All passed safely through the hedge via the stile including your correspondent who being a man of some girth and gravity was concerned that he might have to be dragged though it backwards! Turning into Hall Road we took a footpath which returned us to the Church and gave a good view of Lavenham Hall and the lake. A quick show of hands indicated that there was a need for rest and re-hydration and this was provided by the local hostelry. And for those patient enough to wait for it - Help yourselves to a piece of Cake!

A Poke in the Eye with a Sharp Chip!

Didn't I tell you this, so called, snap election is more about food than pictures! The puns and possibilities are endless. What joy! She May be a "BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMAN" or she May be an insecure geography graduate with a chip on her shoulder. The degree comes in useful, no doubt,  as she sCurries about the country from one group of the faithful to another. It is a bit like a Safari Supper for the Nasty Party. There are many reasons people visit food banks, hunger and a lack of money for food being just two of them. I'm sure that poke of chips would have tasted better with  Pickles but then where are your chums when you need them and the chips are down. Speaking of which I'm sure Phil (which one?) will help her out with the poke when she tires of the chips. Lynton Chrispy must be heaving a sigh of relief that she was not pictured with a bit of battered cod or an old haddock!
(Phwhat in god's name are you talking about??? I think this democracy stuff has finally got to your brain or what is left of it...Ed)

Read and Enjoy the Video!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/02/theresa-may-liberal-democrats-defectors-south-west-stick-with-tories?

Paella Marinara

Well what else can you do

on a wet Easter Saturday.

Herself cooks a mean Paella Marinara and with help from family and an anniversary bottle a good time was had by all.
Which is more than can be said for the characters in High Rise (or the audience apparently)

A Pun My Word

Some fun, reported in the Grauniad, with the publishing world, receipt books and authors.
I do like the idea of Honning Makrell. Maybe his latest book should have been Quicksandwich.
Fast food indeed.

A Spoonful of ...?

You might think the book I have my teeth into at the moment, Swallow This by Joanna Blythman, is a tale of medication in childhood, political obfuscation or unpalatable comestibles. Up to a point Chef Copper, up to a point. The further title, Serving up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets, gives you more of a clue .
On p92 the description of in store bakeries as tanning salons for products had me choking on my deep fried Mars Bar. According to Joanna it derives from the wit and wisdom of the  Real Bread Campaign. Really our processed food is the great British Fake-Off.

I recognised long ago  that my critical abilities were at the level of being able to read, but not necessarily comment sensibly on, the backs of sauce bottles. I now read them and tremble!

(I've always had a soft spot for sweet and sour prawn balls myself...Ed.)

Treats

We have been traveling and socialising.

(No excuse for the absence of Blogging...Ed)

M'lud I offer evidence that the absence of Blogging is the Blogging of absence in the following...

(oh very good, very good, I see what you did there, point taken, carry on, my breath is baited... Ed) 

My god what with - English whisky. Is that not taking 'better together' too far.

A birthday treat. Angela Hewitt gave a lecture/recital at Cambridge where she is the Humanitas Visiting Professor of Music. I was entranced by the music, Bach, and her interpretations on the piano. Finished the evening with a meal at the Rice Boat. Well worth the trip!

More culture at the local flea pit which put on a digital broadcast from the British Museum around their exhibition of all things Viking.

To continue to Colchester for a book reading. A small bookseller, Red Lion Books.

Our friend Trish, of Patrician Press which we may have mentioned before, was reading with other authors. It was enjoyable and I'm only sorry I didn't get to buy a book but of course it is an excuse to go back. Over a convivial meal later Trish mentioned Food Fetish.    It had slipped my mind, and more importantly not found its way onto my book list. I downloaded it and so began a very enjoyable romp through food and drink.

I was, as a result, tempted/inspired to try to cook Yottams very simple dish/starter with filo pastry and asparagus. Baked with brushed egg and scattered with parmesan cheese and poppy seeds. As usual, we were short of an ingredient, poppy seeds so substituted nigella (seeds that is) and sesame mix. And as always with ingredients left over put mushrooms and parmesan in the filo parcels. Very enjoyable.

Horsing Around

It may have escaped your attention that there has been, allegedly, sins of the horseflesh in the kitchens of our once great nation. I leave that matter to the purveyors of scandal and pony burghers.
There was consternation, also, for a moment in Buddhist Pizza Stables  as we sat down to our evening meal. Herself is a vegetarian of sorts but is allowed, by the dietary authorities, to eat fish. I will eat anything, though of late I have avoided eating people because it is wrong! On our plates was a wholesome repast of baked potatoes, crunchy salad and tuna mixed with sweetcorn. Lady BP chuckled that one of the benefits of being a sort of vegetarian was that it would prove difficult to consume horse meat unknowingly.
I retrieved the tin of tuna and read :-
Line caught Tuna, may contain traces of Horse Mackerel.
You could have heard the Gopaleen running in Connemara.

I made my apologies and ducked.

Jim Dreams of Sushi

It being a cold January afternoon we turned up at our local flea pit, much improved, but alas sold to the lowest bidder!

It was a one off showing of Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Lots of good press and we did enjoy it. Inspiring, and suitably inspired, three guesses what I am preparing for herself?

 

 

Interesting on a day when horse DNA seems to have been found in inappropriate places allegedly. 

Still, every little pony helps. You know it makes horse sense.

 I wonder if you can have Shetland Sushi?

(Arrgh...Ed)

Wearing out books

In the age of electronica it seems strange to think that if you love a book, a real live book, and want to hold it in your hands you have to go out and buy a new one when you wear it out. We have got through at least one copy of Jane Grigson's Fish Cookery. Currently we have a copy of her hardback Fish Book. We both accept it is only a matter of time before we need to replace it! We were trawling through it, planning xmas meals over our boily eggs, and came across a little gem (under Lobster and Crawfish p 207 in the Fish Book):-

A fourteenth-century German painter, Master Bertram, who lived at Hamburg and should therefore have known better, included a ready-boiled lobster in his painting of God creating the animals.

Note from deity to central catering - I'll have this one later for my tea on Sunday after a lie in!

No fish or fowl this xmas, since you ask.

Pie not in the sky?

A late advertisement from the folks at Thriving Too, pie to live for.
As the man said - times may be tough but pie is always good.
I'm a steak and kidney pud man but I do like the idea, especially the slow politics.

According to the post on PieLab for 26 October a Mr J Swift has stated, allegedly, that

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Perhaps our great leaders, our great helmspersons, the suns in our hearts, should take note.
I think a certain Gauleiter by the name of Eric von Pickles may have broken a few pie-crusts in his time!

I am also reminded of Raspberry Pi.

We should declare next year the international year of the pie. After all, there's not much else likely to be going on. I shall get our lobbying arm, PizzaPie in the Sky (incorporated in the Cayenne Island, Double Blind Trust no. 666) to approach Mr Moon forthwith!

AWOL in BABELFISH Translation

At some point over the last few days a Sainsbury's promo appeared to have dropped out of one of the papers. Always on the scrounge for new recipes I opened it and began to browse. Imagine my surprise when Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter smiled at me from a picture under the title of a dish which promised:

PRETTY IN BONFIRE OF GRUDGES

So, after Lady Buddhistpizza and I had picked ourselves off the floor, soothed our aching sides and dried our eyes, we added the recipe to the lost in translation pile! We giggled assuming the pretty fish was bonito, claro! We assumed the bonfire was of taste not a barbie, a salsa fuerte perhaps, but those grudges they mouldered on for some time. Could they be goujons? No, definitely a false friend. Could they be resentments buried deep in the psyche of the Basque cook? I think they dealt with old Boney, at least, with an armoury of pots and pans. A likely candidate is the noun grujidor which Collins Dictionary defines as a glass cutter. Could it be that the shavings of glass (produced by the grujidor?) find a resonance in the scales of the pretty fish!? Well, I leave that to the fevered imaginations of our regular readers.

However, hats off to Emily Drinking Tea, who got there in this blog:-
Sainsbury's you need a recipe editor
Ain't that the truth.

In Cod We Trust

Up to a point Capt'n Copper, up to a point.
Channel 4 has been running its muckraking paws through our fish.
One aspect of this has been Hugh's Fish Fight the link will give you the idea of the waste of food/fish in the requirement to discard over quota fish! A crime! It will be interesting to see if this campaign will have an impact on the Common Fisheries Policy, I hope it does.

Alex Thomson in today's fish supper "Fish Unwrapped" (Dispatches Series at 19:05) presented a tale of dodgy labeling and treatment of product that would cause Arthur Daley to blush. Catch it if you can and you think you're hard enough! It's on 4oD for the next 29 days as are most of the fishy tales

One good thing to come out of it though is an addition to our supper menu.
Mackerel in a bap, with salad and a wasabi/yoghurt dressing.

(Ed. That wasabi looks a bit wabbit to me.)

Soup Kitchens.

It is that time of year and that point in the political cycle when our thoughts turn to the stock pot. Stock jobbers, hedge funders, merchant bankers, off shore tax dodgers and any members of the Bullingdon Club who have fallen on hard times might like to warm the cockles of their trust funds with the following soup.

The recipe is my take on the
Special Lentil Soup p25 of
The Happy Herbivore
By Jamie Lass
Published by Conongate Edinburgh 1979
ISBN 0 903937 89 0

An interesting aside, one among many, in this age of debate about books and publishing:-
All 129 pages and covers were produced by Jamie from hand written masters and illustrated with a Parker ball point pen.

Serves 5, allegedly, or 3 at a pinch.

1. Cook 225 grams red lentils in 1ltr good stock; add ginger and cayenne to your taste.
2. Half cook 2 chopped onions with oregano and a bay leaf in oil; add 4 cloves of Garlic peeled, squashed and chopped.
3. When the onions are soft chop 225 grams mushrooms thickly and fry off with the onions. Turn them until they have colour, about 2 mins. If you overcook they will dry or go rubbery in the soup!
4. Season the lentils to taste and combine with the onions, garlic and mushrooms; this needs to simmer further for a minimum of 15 mins. The longer the better.
5. Before serving add a good slug of lemon juice and sherry!

So many people have asked me for the recipe!

And the wine to go with it Sir?
The odd bottle of 1990 Château Pétrus, allegedly laid on for David Cameron and friends by the Tory party treasurer, Michael Spencer, at their party conference in Birmingham. It should go well!

34,000 sovs a case since you ask!

Hamming it up

I am fond of the pig. If a man, or woman for that matter, can live on potatoes alone then how much more pleasant and nourishing to prosper with the addition of cabbage and bacon.

Our travels in Spain resulted in frequent stops in places of refreshment where the legs of your porkers hung in the tobacco smoke with inverted paper umbrellas below them to catch any precipitation. We also spent a happy week in cork oak country and indeed watched the sweet little beasts rootling for the acorns. Your Spaniard does like his or her pig; every bit of it! This love affair has not gone unnoticed.

In Galicia they eat everything.

In Andalucia, in Jabugo, a slice or two of pata negra with your manzanillia would leave you thinking you had died and gone to heaven.

However, as with all things, the bad guys noticed too. The Grauniad reports that -

Ham inspectors put 17 tonnes of pig meat into quarantine yesterday as they cracked down on what they suspected was a massive fraud involving Spanish hams that – purportedly – come from the haunches of free-range pigs that feast daily on acorns.

By their arithmetic ye shall know them.
1 pig = 4 legs
X = the number of pigs happy rootling acorns and producing jamon to the required standard.
8X = the number of legs on sale purporting to be of the required standard.
I’ve seen some things in my life but an eight legged pig is not one of them!

Authorities in southern Andalucia said that, to provide the quantity of ibérico hams that now hang from supermarket meat counters, the region would need to double the number of locally bred, acorn-fed pigs…

By the way if you have not seen Jamon, Jamon by Bigas Luna get yourself a plate of pata negra, some fresh pan, a bottle of fino and be prepared for fun.

Chilly Chilies

It has been a good year for chillies. Herself has grown a range in our extensive greenhouse provision round the back of our baronial pile in this pleasant Suffolk messuage which time has gratefully forgotten.
While they have fierce names and impressive ratings on the Scoville Scale adding them to our dishes raw and cooked has resulted in an increase in flavour and not any great heat! Obviously it has something to do with the humour, airs and graces of the village.
A recent overnight trip had herself in fear for her chillies. She had forgotten to zip up the greenhouse. All is not lost and our chillies did not get too chilly.

A far cry from a story in the Grauniad about a chilli measuring 1,176,182 on the Scoville Scale.

The iBoot

So; the good Lady BP and I were discussing important matters over the smoked fish in parsley sauce. We both agree the best bit is when you get to mash up the last of the spuds in the parsley sauce! (Sorry Melissa I couldn't resist it)
In addition to the fact that you can download the podcast of Mr Broon's New Year message
- We're doomed I telt ye. We're all doomed!-
there was the possibility of a good legal punch up between Apple and Nokia with m'learned friends taking refreshers and lots of boodle or whatever!
So herself drops this bomb in with the last of the tatties.

Nokia started off making boots, you know; rubber boots!

BeJaysus, says I; yes, says herself. A quick Google seems to prove the point!
Well now that produces a whole new kettle of herring. (Come on Melissa, keep up, if you don't ring those roll mop out we'll be up to our nostrils in wet fish!)

Along with the wild associations that float through my brain is this idea of the iBoot.
Apple strikes back!

A slight misunderstanding about fish

I received an email recently from a well known Foodie website, from Melissa the Editor and Community Developer to be exact.
She had by all accounts been trawling the web (I know but I couldn't resit it!) for Arbroath Smokies. Smart girl, you would want a few of those. She came upon my recent post Arbroath Smokies, and wanted to offer me the opportunity to have embeddable widgets in my blog, possibly about my person too! I was promised that links from Melissa's site to my site would help increase my traffic and improve search engine optimisation (SEO). I'm up for a bit of optimisation. However, I live in a small Suffolk village to avoid traffic and if it is a euphemism for 'being regular' then I find a judicious balance of red wine and bioactive yoghurt takes care of my needs in that department. I suppose linking the smoked fishblog to the title of my blog, Buddhist Pizza, she had me down as a bit of a foodie. I may be and my profile offers substantial evidence to that effect.

I would respectfully suggest that was to miss the point of the blog and the blogging. So thanks but no thanks Melissa! Feel free to whack yourself around the chops with the above picture just to prove you are a person rather than a bot!

Recipe

Julie and Julia

Greatly enjoyed. So much butter! So much joy of life!
Go see it and look up the you tube additions.

Someone asked me why would you want to bone a duck?
Because you could produce pate of duck en croute.
Perhaps.

It is fortunate I did not have to marry a republican and breed like a rabbit.

A late addition to the recipe question.

Arse covering fudge.
Sadly no recipe from M. Fort.
Grauniad Weekend 14/11/09