pumpkinstrokemarrow

Been making a fair bit of lentil soup lately so thought it proper to record the experience.

Base mix is tap water, orange lentils, usually between half a pound and a pound, butter, onions and some form of diced pork. Simmer lentils and water; gently fry onions and pork in butter; blend with a spoon (not a blender) 5-10 minutes before consumption. Overall cooking time about an hour. Lentils should be soft but not completely dissolved; texture should be slightly grainy rather than smooth like custard. You should get a little surface water as the stuff cools and, depending of the sort of pork you use, it may set to a soft jelly when cold. One might, I suppose, serve it upside down with a garnish on a cold buffet.

Best fresh but does stand. Never tried freezing although we did take a thermos of the stuff up Schiehallion once.

Variation 1, is adding a bit of chopped garlic to the hot butter before the onion. Doing this more often than not at the moment.

Variation 2 is the supplementary vegetable. In the past I have mostly used carrots, not peeled (peeling takes away from the bite), sliced crosswise and added to the water and lentils about half an hour before consumption. But I am getting a bit tired of them. Have tried parsnips and mushrooms in the past: the parsnips did not work at all, the mushrooms did not work very well. Not helped by being a bit elderly; only in the soup at all to use them up. Yesterday I tried finely sliced (not chopped) white cabbage and that worked rather well.

Variation 3 is the pork, which really needs to be the bacon or spicy sausage sort. Otherwise the soup a bit bland. A couple of weeks ago I used unsmoked gammon without soaking it first. But what you lost in nicotine you certainly gained in salt, the resultant soup being a bit salty for our taste. Smoked gammon good. Kabanos (see http://www.kabanos.net/) and saucisson sec (see http://saucissonsec.net/) good. Sainsbury's bacon OK, getting better the more your pay for it. Yesterday we tried some smoked bacon from the Portuguese delicatessen attached to the Madeira Café just down river from Vauxhall Station (see http://www.madeiralondon.co.uk/. They also do very reasonable bacon sandwiches). Smoked bacon which comes in brick shaped lumps weighing maybe a quarter of a pound and which worked very well in the soup. Must remember to keep some in stock.

Variation 4 is the presence or absence of dead flies floating on the finished soup. This is not under user control and we have failed to find out what these unsavoury looking but tasteless & harmless black specks are, despite returning a packet of lentils to Tesco for investigation. We suspect that they are to do with the lentils having been stored for too long and the built-in bugs having started to hatch. Grains, for example pearl barley, certainly do this sort of thing. As it happens, the dead flies have been missing for a bit, but have surfaced once again in the most recent soup. Lentils from Sainsbury's.

Some time in the first part of October we had a problem with red lentils in that some rather dodgy looking black bits were floating to the surface as the soup simmered. Some of which looked rather like small flies - but one could not be sure without a magnifying glass - which we have, but I did not think to use. We thought that they might well be flies on the grounds that insects can infest peas and beans while they are in the pod, laying eggs for hatching later. Not visible from the outside. Same sort of general idea as the weevils in the ships' biscuit in Hornblower. So we thought we would test the Tesco after sales service and send them an email about this important problem. I got a reply the same day - which was a Sunday so impressive - which explained that the proper drill was to take the lentils back to the place of purchase where they would issue a refund and complete a form 123abc(z) to accompany the lentils back to HQ for analysis. All sounded very efficient. A couple of days later, on the 19th October, we make it back down to the Tesco in question, at Leatherhead. The customer service place was also the place where they do fags and lottery and was manned by an efficient young lady who was perfectly happy to go through form 123abc(z), not appearing to be the least troubled by those waiting for their fags. She swiped BH's reward card through the form to ensure that it knew who to report back to, after which we left thinking how terribly efficient Tesco's were. The only catch is that we have heard nothing since.

Of a sort anyway. Just finished the second reading of 'Denier du Reve' by Marguerite Yourcenor, an author whom I only know through charity shops. The first of hers which I read was an impressive autobiography of Hadrian - impressive at the time that it. Took another peek more recently and was not so sure. This was the second, in French this time, and for a Belgian I found her vocabulary quite hard. Much recourse to the dictionary. Took me a long time for example, to puzzle out the word luciole, a collective noun for fire flies (feminine) and glow worms (masculine). Odd, because their words for both, shining flies and shining worms, are more or less the same as ours. But it took ages to twig. I wonder if the flies and worms are related, perhaps by the latter being the larvae of the former? I have the idea that the worms dangle off twigs by a thread like that of spiders, thus occupying much the same space as the flies flying among the twigs. But this is, maybe, little more than guessing.

An oddly compelling book, with some striking images. So, for example: "Le peu d'argent que Paolo Farina donnait a Lina chaque semaine lui servait a payer une illusion volontaire, c'est-a-dire, peut etre, la seule chose au monde qui ne trompe pas." Page 20 in the Gallimard edition. Must learn how to do accents; the French looking very deficient without them. It is certainly possible as accented letters pop up by mistake sometimes, when one hits the wrong keys. But how does one find out how to do it? And then, towards the end of the book, the dying painter, Clement Roux, is maundering among his memories, maundering on the sic transiting of his gloria mundi. And then: "Au fond, je n'ai pas beaucoup vecu. C'est astreignant, la peinture. Se lever de bonne heure... Se coucher tot... J'ai pas de souvenirs." Not the same take as Simenon, another Belgian as it happens, in his memoires. He got up at the crack of dawn every day when he was 'en roman' to crack out his 5,000 words, and then had the rest of the day free to amuse himself. He did not seem unhappy about the arrangement.

I now learn that my sense of the English astringent was not quite right. The aura of the word was about right, so the translation worked, albeit slightly wrongly, as I had the core meaning of drying, rather than binding. The OED entry more or less allows drying by extension, but binding is core.

After all this brain strain, I find that the supply of red lentils is rather low and decide to pay a New Year's Eve visit to Mr S on the way back from Cheam. It took a while to warm up on the way out, fingers very cold. Despite the fact that quite a lot of passers by seemed to be managing without gloves at all. And that the lady in the baker assured me that my money was warm if my fingers were not. (On the other hand, the day previous, the crown of leaves of my principal cyclamen corm, my pride and joy, looked very sad first thing. It clearly did not like the frost, although I dare say that it recovers. Must check). But warmed up by the time I got back to the turning to Mr S, nearly back to Epsom. Entered the warm red glow of the giant store full of beans; the warm red glow being a product of a cluttered and crowded store, the bright red uniform jerseys (or maybe fleeces) worn by a lot of the staff and, perhaps, a touch of red in the decor. Set out in search of dried vegetables. Get up to aisle 40 or so and find myself among the toothpaste. None of the above aisle signs having mentioned dried vegetables. Ask youth with clip board. He ponders then suggests that I try aisle 1. I suspect that this is just a wheeze to get me as far away from him as possible, but I go along. Trundle back down to the other end of the store where I find that aisle 1 is fish. Nothing to do with dried vegetables. Ask a young lady in blue. We agree that maybe dried vegetables live in the same part of the world as rice, and she takes me to the rice aisle, passing a well known, nectar loving denizen of TB, recently employed by Mr S, on the way. How long will he last? Still no dried vegetables. Ask a slightly older lady in red. A shelf stacker who seems quite happy to be relieved of stacking duties for a few minutes. She ponders, seemingly uncertain, and then leads me off. A few aisles to the south of the rice we find the rather small section of dried vegetables and the pleasant lady in red wanders off, continuing away from the shelf that she had been stacking. Perhaps she got back to it eventually. Red lentils all present and correct on this occasion, £1.38 for a kilo of the things. But I wonder for how much longer. The dried vegetables rated about 2 feet of aisle. Hugely less space than was devoted to either rice or pasta, let alone that devoted to various sorts of potato crisps. Not a very popular line. Somewhat chastened, march off to the self service checkout. Manage it first time without needing any assistance and recover bicycle. And so ended another successful visit to Mr S. Time, 13 minutes and 37 seconds.

First irritation, is the huge amount of coverage that one erring school master (kidnapping school girl) and one erring politician (shouting at policeman) generate. In the first case, I imagine that all the coverage and subsequent shemozzle will do far more damage than the kidnapping, so called, ever did in the first place. The second case just seems silly. It is a nature of the game that politicians are a bit highly strung, they are going to blow off from time to time. Are we gaining that much by paying so much attention to one such blowing off? Is the man's ability to control his tongue, or rather lack of it, all that relevant to his business of whipping? Who cares, apart from the press? I dare the policeman concerned has heard far worse in the badlands of Peckham. But were his copious & contemporaneous notes made in the interests of providing himself with a bit of cover in the event of trouble or in the interests of a having a bit of fun at some else's expense, of whipping up the press?

Second irritation arises from the packaging industry. In their efforts to preserve the sterile state of their products, the packagers have produced packages which are hard to open without introducing a whole lot of insterility of one's own. First example is band aids. These are now so sticky and so cunningly wrapped up that it is impossible to get one on one's bleeding finger - one cannot usually call on help at these times - without getting on's grubby & bloody fingers all over the things. Second example is Sainbury's full strength (vegan friendly) peanut butter, with the containing jar being sealed by a circular foil like disc glued to the top edge of the jar. Once again, the glue is so strong that one cannot get the foil off without a great deal of fiddling about, quite likely to result in fragments of fingered foil reaching the pristine surface of the peanut butter.

The packagers of dried fruit and vegetables are just as bad, with ever more cunning openings to the packets which I can rarely get open and emptied without some of the emptying being on the floor. And trodden in raisins are neither a pretty sight nor particularly savory to clear up.

But there is better news on the pulses front. Spring cleaning a kitchen cupboard prompted me to use up a few ounces of green lentils and a few ounces of orange lentils. All helps to keep the dead flies under control  (see September 21st). Boil the green lentils for ten minutes, lid off, remove red scum and then strain the red water off. What unpleasant chemicals does one get rid off with this boiling lid off business? Why do green lentils generate red waste water? After these wonders, add fresh water, the orange lentils and three stalks of celery, sliced thin crosswise. Bring to the boil and take off the heat. Some time later, bring to the boil again and simmer gently for a couple of hours. For the last quarter of an hour add 2 cubic inches of Portuguese bacon (see 27th September) chopped fine and two or three cooked potatoes chopped coarse. Adjust the water content as you go, as necessary. Serve with brown bread without butter. My first venture into the world of mixed pulse soup for a very long time - and very good it was too.

I close with a report on the LRB picked up on a recent passage through Waterloo, a picking up which involved my first unaided use of the self-check out machines at Smiths, which now I have got used to them are rather better than their queues.

Unusually dull issue, for a magazine which I usually enjoy after having left it alone for a while, as I had done on this occasion. Apart from the usual slew of intriguing small ads, there were just two items of interest in the 40 or so pages. One was a piece about being incarcerated in rather insalubrious circumstances for a day or so in New York as a result of being picked on for some elderly non-payment of speeding fine in the margins of being picked up for turning right when one should not have, or some such. A bit depressing that in the land of the free they find it necessary to be so heavy handed. Puts one off going there. The other was a review of a book about a son of Queen Victoria, whom everybody had thought was hopeless. But this turned out to be a good thing. He did not meddle in affairs, but he liked dressing up, waving at crowds and spending time with his various lady friends. He was unusually untouched for somebody of his time and class by snobbism, racism or antisemitism. And a lot more people turned out for his funeral than for that of his mother. Constitutional monarchy rules!

From time to time I have recorded the appearance of what look like small dead flies floating on the surface of our lentil soup. Perhaps something which hatches if the lentils have been stored too long. Happily the dead flies have been absent for some months, but I am sorry to report today that they have reappeared. Not in large numbers, but reappeared nonetheless.

We had become rather relaxed, with the result that I am unable to say from where these particular lentils were bought, or when. Most likely Sainsbury's, but I cannot be sure.

I do know that the last time I made a serious effort to complain about dead flies, it was the Tesco at Leatherhead, where, despite the complaint being logged by a very nice young customer service support officer, nothing ever happened and by the time I checked back with them all trace of this particular incident had vanished from the log, at least that part of the log which was visible from the customer service station.

Following the report of 30th September (on http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/), to Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic yesterday. Half price Wednesday afternoon matinée, reasonably full stalls, bit sparse in the upper regions. Quite a lot, but by no means all, the audience looked retired like ourselves. Some of their accents were quite bog standard, not the sort of thing one would hear at a full price performance at all.

But before the off, to the noodlarium in Lower Marsh, a place we may not have visited since before FIL came to live with us. Still there and busy - our previous visits being in the evening. Same sort of grub, excellent value for money, but something seems to have happened to the mixed seafood noodles. I remember the noodles in question being soft noodles, but the choice yesterday was crispy noodles or soup noodles. Not being that keen on crispy, opted for the soup, which was fine apart from the liquid portion being rather peppery. Rather too peppery by the time one had got to the bottom of the bowl. We will visit next time when it is not so busy and have a proper study of the menu.

I notice in passing that the vegetable market in Lower Marsh seems to have given way to lunch tents (like those in Whitecross Street, near St. Luke's) and the second hand book shop seems to have given way altogether. A book shop to which I owe my account of the Cromwellian invasion of Jamaica, an invasion known quaintly at the time as the western design.

Onto the play itself which seemed very familiar, even making allowance for having had a quick read, but cannot find any mention in the blog, so the last time must have been at least six years ago. But probably not as long ago as for the lady in the queue for the (disabled) loo who was explaining that when she last saw the play it was Peggy Ashcroft in the lead. Or perhaps I have got this wrong - and this was not my fault for eavesdropping. It was the sort of voice which wanted to be eavesdropped - and it was that she thought that this was the best Hedda that she had seen since she saw Peggy.

But she was right that it was a good show, with a strong cast, even if I thought that the Brian Friel had been a bit over enthusiastic about padding the play out. But then, what do you expect if you invite an Irishman to pad something out? But I did like his injection of an interest in words, particularly words from the US, into the character of Judge Brack. I note in passing that Friel has been awarded the Ulysses medal by UCD, an honour he shares with the tarnished ex-president Clinton, among others. See http://www.ucd.ie/.

The play retained for me its primary impact, being for me a play with two linked strands: first the proper place of women and second the work of creation in the academy (as opposed, for example, to creation in the studio), with the second of these being the one which struck me yesterday. I got to ponder. This primary impact is the response to the thing portrayed. Later, one might respond to the quality of the portrait - when one might love the portrait but hate the subject of the portrait. Or wax lyrical about the place of portraits of this sort in the history of civilization as we know it. Later still, one might respond to the quality of this interpretation of the portrait. I was very conscious that most of the comment which one overhead in the margins of the performance was about this last, this secondary impact or derivative interest. As if people had either lost interest in what was primary or were embarrassed to talk about it in a public place. Which I thought was a pity, particularly as this was a translation of a play which is not poetry. One does not spend all that much time lost in admiration of the language, although one does respond to the odd neat turn of phrase.

Only really bad thing was the cold draft coming out of somewhere on high. Not as bad as the Duke of York's last week but I could still have done with a scarf.

PS: back home with the orange lentils, had a  new experience. Having simmered the lentils for a couple of hours, left them to stand overnight. In the morning, they had separated with a fine white layer maybe a quarter of an inch deep lying on top of the much deeper orange layer. Don't recall this happening before. And then, by the time I had finished cooking these new-to-us lentils, there had been a modest invasion of dead flies. Clearly time for another try with Sainsbury's customer services, not having got anywhere with Tesco's last time and as a result I was impressed to get though to a nicely regionally accented call center person within about 30 seconds of dialing the number printed on the packet at around 0830 on a weekday morning. As well as being accented, she was also very keen on the word 'fantastic' which she must have used at least a dozen times during our short conversation, following which I will deliver the (near empty) packet to Kiln Lane later this morning and await developments.

Notwithstanding all this, I think I prefer the slightly coarser texture of lentils which have not been cooked for quite as long.

Off to Tesco's Leatherhead yesterday to check up where my complaint about flies in the red lentils had got to, the complaint having been made on 19th October last. Oh, said the helpful lady at customer services. You should have had a reply long ago, maybe 5 weeks or so after the original complaint. Do you have any record of the complaint? No, we wipe them at the beginning of the year. But you can phone head office she says, proffering a slip of paper on which she had written a telephone number. Maybe I will let it go this time, and next time the flies appear try the Sainsbury's customer service people.

This week's lentil soup was made from red lentils from Whitworths, via, I think, the new Tesco on Horton Lane. Plus chunks of Danish gammon, soaked overnight and pre-cooked. This in an endeavour to keep the salt content down given the amount being put into bread. Dead flies present in the finished soup, but not very many of them. Must get down to Tesco Leatherhead to find out what their customer services people made of the whole problem (see March 7th).