Sunday, August 30, 2009
Cooking times
On Friday, to the Leather Bottle of Garrett Lane. One of perhaps four Young's houses on or in the vicinity of that lane. This one now a gastropub with smoking dens front and back. Must have spent a fortune on umbrellas. Does H. Harman have shares in their manufacturer? On Friday, mainly home to bright young things, a noticeable proportion with (old) colonial accents. However, they also did snacks. So instead of pie or cheese & onion roll, one had a choice of three platters at around £10 a pop. One cheesy, one fishy and one ducky. We elected for ducky and were soon presented with a very fetching slab of tropical rain forest - which could have graced an art gallery if one had bothered to erect it on a tasteful stand - with duck on top. Hot duck leg to be precise, presumably fresh from the freezer via the microwave. Plus one pot of slivvered cucumber, one pot of slivvered green pepper and a rather large pot (without spoon) of plum sauce. Plus six cold pancakes. Plus a special knife to get the duck off the bone. All very nicely presented. There was also a squareish white plate for each of us, with good quality knife and fork. Restaurants are getting much better as regards cutlery; mostly it is quite decent these days. All in all, an interesting snack. A bit exotic, while easy on the kitchen. But let down by both quantity and quality of pancakes, which were a little thick by Chinese standards and a little rubbery in texture.
On Saturday, to the Cricketers at Stamford Green Pond, where they do quite a decent line in Greene King IPA. Plus native rats scampering around outside. BH not too sure about these last. Are they ecological for preservation or vermin for extermination? The barman thought that, give the proximity of the common eco-preserve, ecological had the edge over vermin. But, more important, more interesting grub. It seems that Ember Inns are going in for charity stunts this weekend, and the Jamaican cook at the Cricketers offered some Jamaican grub as his contribution. So we had jerk chicken with pink rice (the pink coming from a modest admixture of beans) and Johnney cakes. The chicken was good, although I doubt whether it had ever been jerked. My understanding is that meat is jerked by tearing the fresh meat into thin strips then drying it in the sun. One then has a chewy product which lasts more or less indefinately provided it is kept dry. A technique for preservation favoured in the South West of the US according to Cormac McCarthy (born Charles. Changed, presumably, to something thought more catchy). The Johnney cakes were something else. A bit like cheese scones in taste and texture, but looking more like dumplings and actually made of corn meal and flour then shallow fried. Somehow they got to be brown all over. Excellent. But cutlery neither nice nor clean (see above).
The DT also excells in ranting over the last few days. First there was the piece about the national scandal of some deserving middle class family being ripped off to the tune of perhaps £100,000, as their contribution towards the care of their demented relative. It seems that there is an emerging rule whereby if you are old and demented the cost of your care is met by central funds whereas if you are just old the cost of your care is met by you or your family. DT announces which much gusto that this case will open the floodgates of people suing for restorative action. Approving quotes from the lawyers who will make hay from this flood. But not a flicker of interest in the rather tricky issues involved here. Who should pay? Why is being demented more deserving than being blind or deaf? Why should someone previously feckless now demented be treated for free while someone previously careful now demented have to pay? Standard of public debate remains feeble on this, as on most other matters.
At some point in the past, I feel sure that I have promoted the idea that the financial services sector gobbles up rather more corn that its contribution to the nation would suggest was appropriate, prompted by a review in the TLS. But I cant' find it; in the process becoming convinced that the search blog facility is rather capricious in its workings. Can't find financial services and can't see the logic in what it does or doesn't find. Have to poke around the help pages. Maybe it only indexes words which it judges to be important, rather than all words.
Anyway, yesterday the DT saw fit to publish a prominent piece sourced from one Lord Turner (Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell), previously a grand fromage in Merrill Lynch, now a public servant, presumably in a final salary pension scheme, about how, maybe, we need to cut the financial services sector down to size. That maybe the parasite element was getting a bit big relative to the useful element. The peice was decorated with some very large graphics telling one very little, certainly nothing bearing on whether these people were really earning their oats or just coining them. Which reminds me that coining used to be a very serious offence. Hang draw and quarter job if memory serves. I had thought to make enquiries about Merrill and their contribution to the world, but it seems that their web site is not Chrome friendly. So that will have to wait.
# posted by Jim @ 2:36 AM 
