Just time for a quick final post to see off 2007. I came across
this excellent collection of portrait photos today. My favourite is
this one for the simple reason that one of the kids looks
precisely like "Plug" from off of the
Bash Street Kids in
The Beano. And fuck knows why they thought
this was a good idea.
Have a great 2008!
Monday, December 31, 2007 3:25 PM
I just bought tickets to see
Reverend and the Makers, which will be the first gig at the new
Sheffield Academy, aka The Roxy. All very exciting.
However, I was charged by the cocks at
Ticket Web a booking fee of £4.15. I made the booking myself, so why was I charged a booking fee? Because
Ticket Web are basically thieving bastards, that's why. Also, I was charged £2.15 for delivery. You know what the delivery method is? Email. They charged me £2.15 to send me an email. This is because
Ticket Web are cocks. Somebody should write to Watchdog (not me, I can't be arsed).
Thursday, December 20, 2007 2:04 PM
Radio 1 does not play homophobic lyrics or condone bullying of any kind says Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt. No, but you are happy to employ homophobic shit stain Chris Moyles, and the fetid shite that spews out of his fat fucking face on a daily basis is much more offensive then anything the Pogues have ever sung about.
Speaking of cocks, what the tits was John Major doing on telly on Sunday complaining about Tory sleaze? I mean, that's like Thatcher going on telly and complaining that Labour are too tough on the unions. Shove it up your cock, John Major, you hypocritical bollock-faced arse clown.
And seeing as I appear to be having a rant,
read this:
BMW said the proposals were "naive" steps that would distort the market in favour of makers of smaller cars. That's the fucking point, you gobshite. Big cars = lots of pollution = the planet dies. We only have one planet the last time I checked, unless there's a secret planet that only rich people know about.
p.s. I quite like the song "We're all going to die" by Malcolm Middleton and would quite like to see it as Christmas No. 1. Let's all buy a copy on CD get it to number one, and then drive round Simon Cowell's house and shove the CDs up his arse.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:16 PM
On telly this week, Heston Blumenthal will try his hand at making the perfect risotto. This is easy Heston, you simply go to
this post on my blog and follow the instructions. No mucking about with fancy pants techniques required, risotto is pretty much perfect as it is.
Not that there's anything wrong with mucking about with fancy pants techniques in general, in fact I've just been doing that myself this weekend and it's been a lot of fun.
Apples are to Abel & Cole what Courgettes were to Beanies, and for each apple we eat, two appear in its place. I say we, but as you know I've a thing about apples. I can't be doing with the sound of people eating apples, especially if that person is me, so I surreptitiously put them in Liv's bag each day. Yet there was still a pile of them in the fruit bowl on Saturday morning. So what to do. Well, the first thing I did was a bit of traditional home baking, a simple apple cake. Delicious, so it was. That still left me with a minor mountain of apples, so I decided to give apple caviar a try.
Apple "caviar" (and other types of liquid caviar) came from the kitchens of El Bulli, which is considered by some to be Molecular Gastronomy Mecca. The science used in this case is nothing new to the wider food industry, but El Bulli have refined the technique for use in the restaurant. Basically, you first mix a liquid with Sodium Alginate. When this liquid meets Calcium Chloride it creates a gel, and the liquid is encapsulated inside. If using chemicals in food production sounds scary, remember that salt is actually "Sodium Chloride", Baking Powder is "Disodium diphosphate" and "Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate" and the chemicals used in "Spherification" are pretty much tasteless, like good old H
2O.
The science is straight forward, and so is the technique. You create a bath of Calcium Chloride in a large tub, and put the Alginated apple juice in a syringe, and drip it into the bath. 30 seconds later you remove, rinse, dry, and serve. It tastes like apple juice, but the point of the technique is the unusual texture. It's a bit hard to describe, but basically the fact that a liquid has texture at all is obviously quite novel. Here's the first batch I made:
The effect is better when you make bigger balls of juice (apple gnocchi), giving you a bigger burst of flavour, though these are harder to make; it's hard to get the shape right, and it's a hard balancing act between getting them strong enough to hold together but without the skin being too thick. Hardest of all to create were the apple noodles. They tasted like, well, apple noodles, but were very hard to produce, and didn't seem to be worth the effort.
So there you go, molecular gastronomy in the home. Now, I'm well aware that a backlash against the molecular gastronomy movement is just around the corner, and in a way that's fine. The techniques learned from "Nouvelle Cuisine" carry on today regardless of the backlash against that. People will enjoy eating "good honest food" that may will have been prepared using techniques refined by molecular gastronomy, it's just these techniques will be common place and nobody will give it much thought.
Sunday, December 09, 2007 10:56 AM
