Food and Drink

I’m writing this post in part to recommend Charles Stross’s _The Jennifer Morgue_ (publisher, Powells, Amazon, As Brad DeLong says, if you’re into Cthulhu mythos, operating system humour, spy novels and parodies of bureaucracy, this is the novel for you. But mostly, I’m writing it to perpetrate the pun in the title, which in addition to being atrocious is also almost certainly incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t read the book already. But it could have been worse … [worser]Goldfingerling? Branzino Royale? Flounderball?[/worser] _Much_ worse.

New York City Councilman Joel Rivera (representing the Bronx) wants to change the zoning laws to restrict the number of fast food restaurants. The Times notes that Calistoga, CA has a similar law on the books banning chain restaurants from its historic downtown, for aesthetic reasons. Mr. Rivera’s reasoning may be aesthetic as well, though he would surely defend it as hygenic: he thinks New Yorkers are too fat. He’s probably right about that, but his proposed solution seems of dubious utility, in addition to being a gratuitous restriction of his constituents’ right to do what they please. And now let’s hear one of the least compelling defenses of the nanny state ever offered by a well-intentioned politician: [click to continue…]

Making Light points us to Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars which in turn refers to the epic battle over what makes an Irish Breakfast an Irish Breakfast. It’s a lovely example of how Wikipedia should work. The bizarre and repulsive heresies of the fried kidneys and the baked beans are duly anathematized and dispatched into limbo. A blatantly political attempt to assimilate the meal that nourished our fathers under the rubric of the entirely inferior morning repast of the Hated Anglo-Saxon Oppressor is vigorously repelled. And a harmonious consensus finally prevails, which not only correctly identifies the proper constituent parts (sausages, rashers, eggs, mushrooms and black and white puddings), but contains much useful information (e.g. Iarnrod Eireann breakfasts, the great expense of) for the interested inquirer.

These are serious matters. When in Belfast, one of my uncles once spotted a colleague declining to partake of the Ulster Fry that was provided for breakfast, and instead ordering muesli – _with skim milk_. He knew at once that the man wasn’t to be trusted.

Soon after I moved to the United States in the autumn of 1995, I went to visit a friend in Boston. We went to a pub in Cambridge called — possibly — Grafton Street. It was an early example of the Irish Pub in a Box, sold as a unit and built to look like a slightly heightened version of the real thing back home. On the way I asked whether was like an Irish pub really, or just a poor imitation. “Well,” my friend said, “it’s not too loud, the tables are clean, and you can find the bathrooms. So not like an Irish pub at all.”

Via Alan Schussman, I see that a similar thing has arrived in Tucson, just down the road from my office. (Or, if it’s good, just up the road from my old office.) The website says the pub will “echo the pathos of rural Ireland to a tee,” which does not augur well. [click to continue…]

The British “pro-war left” blog Harry’s Place, to which we still link in our sidebar, has recently expanded its roster of bloggers. One of the new crew, Brett Lock, has now posted a lengthy diatribe about the sinister campaign that has led Palestinian schoolgirls to bake a Pizza in the shape of a Palestine that appears include Israel too. This on the basis of an article in a small circulation London local paper. I thought this kind of thing — objectively terrorist cake-blogging — was the preserve of Fafblog or The Onion, or of wingnuts like Malkin (remember the “crescent-shaped” UA93 memorial?). Whatever next?

I’d like to thank Chris and Kieran for inviting me to guest blog here for a while. Since I’m under no obligation to conform to the self-imposed strictures of my own blog, I thought I’d begin by relating my dismay this afternoon upon noticing the headline “Beer better for you than wine: official”. Since I live in Paris, where good wine is cheap and beer is hideously expensive, I was horrified. Luckily, the article in question goes on to prove its own nugatory level of reliability, for the man telling us that beer is healthier than wine is, um, a “beer specialist”, no less than the “Anheuser-Busch endowed Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California”. Phew, that’s ok. It’s more like a PR agency for fossil-fuel companies telling us that carbon dioxide is good for you. Of course, I have nothing against beer, and will indeed be taking out a large bank loan in order to toast England’s victory on Saturday with a small glass of Amstel. Now, will some kindly scientist please tell me once and for all whether the vast quantity of coffee I drink is, on the whole, good or bad?

Laura berates her readers for not coming up with America’s most popular Cookbook author in response to her plea for good cookbooks. Unlike Laura, I rarely get recipes from the internet. Sometimes I make them up; other times I reverse engineer them (upcoming later this week; my reverse engineered recipe for Tesco’s fresh pesto). My own favourite cookbook of all is out of print: Katie Stewart’s wonderful Times Cookery Book; my mum gave me the more beaten up of her two copies a few years ago and I treasure it no end. But the best internet recommendation I got was in this thread; cranky observer recommended Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible. She leads you through both the stages and the science of baking good cakes; I’ve yet to have a failure. Better still is The Bread Bible; again, she shows how you to deal with yeast and flour, and tells you enough of the science to instill the necessary patience. I have had failures with this, but not many, and because the book is so well designed I’ve actually learned from the failures!.

A long promised post for one of our readers in a bi-national marriage.

Use a soft whole grain bread. Spread crunchy natural peanut butter thickly on the first slice. Spread a sweet or medium lime pickle thinly on top. Cover with the second slice of bread.

This is an incredibly annoying recipe because I have been unable to find a really good peanut butter anywhere in the UK, or a really good mild lime pickle in the US (Pataks is occasionally find-able here, but frankly nothing beats Marks and Spencer). Still, if you can find the ingredients, enjoy it.

Update: if, like jr, you’ve no idea what lime pickle is, here’s a recipe and picture. Now it occurs to me I could make my own; has anyone reverse-engineered the Marks and Spencer recipe?

Via Lifehacker, I found a helpful video on how to peel potatoes without too much trouble. Not wanting to pass on a recommendation without having tried it myself, I dutifully boiled a potato to test the method. It worked great! Note that the water at the end doens’t have to be ice water, it’s enough to put the boiled potato in some cold water.

While we’re on the topic of how-to videos, if anybody missed the instructions for folding a shirt, it’s also worth a visit. I found it harder to follow than the potato-peeling guide though. It may help to look at this piece as well to figure out what’s going on. I haven’t made this technique part of my everydays, but depending on your current method you may decide differently.

This scallops dish is a lovely special dinner for two. It’s fast, delicious and impressive. It requires two pans (you’ll likely be happier if one is a non-nonstick 12-inch pan) and a few unusual ingredients, but nothing special-ordered. If you can stir, and you can measure out three minutes, you can make this. As a bonus, it leaves you with an open bottle of champagne to drink with dinner.

Reproduced from memory from the highly-recommended Les Halles Cookbook.
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JoAnne at Cosmic Variance discusses graduate student culinary experiences inspired by this article in Symmetry Magazine.*

Jonathan Bagger, a Physicist at Johns Hopkins reminisces about his grad student days: “I lived with four housemates in Princeton. We had an ongoing competition to see who could make the cheapest meal. The winner, at 17 cents a serving, was pigs’ feet. Not cooked the way pigs’ feet normally are, but simply broiled.”

At least some people can recall their grad student eating experiences (then again, are these experiences you necessarily want to recall?). For me, several years are a complete blank although Kieran may want to remind me – having shared offices for a couple of years – that junk food does not equal blank. What saved me was a fellowship in my fourth and fifth years that came with money to be spent at the student center cafeteria. It was more money than you could possibly want to spend in the dining hall so you ended up inviting friends. That was a nice perk. Unfortunately, it was only after my fellowship with that program had run out that we realized you could spend those points in the faculty dining room eating good meals. Not that I’m complaining. At least I had some regularity in my eating habits for those two years.

[*] If I didn’t happen to own symmetry.org they could have a much cooler URL.

Websites which regularly enthuse about the man are linking to this quasi-interview with Hitchens in which he vaunts his atheistic credentials:

bq. He’s not just an atheist who doesn’t believe in God, he says, but an “anti-theist,” who actively denies the existence of same, a distinction he insists on making. …. His new book, _God is Not Great_ , is a call for people to grow up and abandon the self-comforting fantasy: “I personally think that’s the only answer. In the meantime, any government that allows any privilege to any one faith is preparing to commit cultural suicide.” And any state that retains even a quasi-connection to Christianity, he adds, will have to face Muslim arguments exploiting it. It is all gloomily predictable.

Last week Nick Barlow pointed to the website of the Family Research Council (“Defending Family, Faith and Freedom”) with a picture of a man looking rather like Hitchens who had given an address to the group. One can only suppose that evil biotechnologists from the idiotarian left have produced a clone of Hitchens which now goes around acting in a way that would discredit the real one. Somehow I doubt that such a risible scheme will discredit the “Dude” in the eyes of his faithful admirers.

I’m back in the UK after a trip to the US which included a week spent at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Thanks to Harry and everyone else who made it such a memorable and enjoyable visit, and to those Crooked Timber readers who made suggestions about what to eat. (The frozen custard was excellent, but I passed on the cheese curds.) One piece of good luck I had there was the following. Having eaten dinner and enjoyed interesting conversation with some of Harry’s students, I was wandering down State Street last Thursday when I saw a poster advertising a Mary Gauthier gig. When? I wondered. Tonight! I produced my $15 dollars admission and made my entrance. It was a terrific performance by Mary and her German guitarist Thomm Jutz, leavened by some great monologues including one about “Brits who listen to Radio 2.” Afterwards, I was able to identify myself as such whilst getting my copy of Mercy Now autographed, a memorable evening.

Browsing people’s Flickr accounts I came across pictures from CANstruction.

Canstruction® combines the competitive spirit of a design/build competition with a unique way to help feed hungry people. Competing teams, lead by architects and engineers, showcase their talents by designing giant sculptures made entirely out of canned foods. At the close of the exhibitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers.

The official Web site has pictures of this year’s winners, but I think it’s much more fun just to browse the Flickr photos tagged with “canstruction”. Check out the list of participating cities to see whether you can still catch the show somewhere.