pancake fillings OF THE FUTURE

a scientific report

the project: to road-test some of the fillings people have (incomprehensibly) not yet adopted

the fillings of the future:
i: mushrooms fried in pumpkin seed butter, with garlic oil and red wine
ii: fried bacon and date syrop
iii: chopped avocado and marmite
iv: spinach and ginger syrop
v: ham and gentleman’s relish
vi: brie and japanese plum sauce
vii: grated carrot and cinnamon … read on …

you can’t have grated parmesan w/o GRATE

YOU WILL NEED
3-4 fennel bulbs
2oz butter ( = quarter of a butter)
1 x cup double cream (use the whole cup-sized carton)
6 oz parmesan (this is abt 3/4 of the slice you generally get)
Pork loin chops

THEN DO THIS
a: grate the parmesan
b: meanwhile heat oven to gas mark 6-ish, 350°F, 175°C
c: slice the fennel (top and tail, then quarter vertically)
d: place fennel in large oven-proof dish, dot with butter, float in cream, smother in parmesan (but keep abt 1/3 back for later), grind fresh pepper on top — ideally it should all be packed in there … read on …

unholy substitutes for muzak: #1&2 (my local) pret and (my local) somerfield

ok my local pret — the one in angel — generally plays reasonably demanding jazz (ie hard bop mostly not “smooth”): this seems to me quite a daring move, given that (surely?) more ppl willingly dislike jazz than like it? (at least to me hard bop always seems like a music most people don’t listen to in a background-y don’t-mind-either-way kind of a way?)

as for somerfield: before xmas i found i was strangely heartened that they were playing “best of elton john” (the “future of rock’n'roll” ©j.lennon c.1970?) on endless loop — i don’t know why i wz pleased, it just suited my mood always to be surprised at this… however today it was “once in an lifetime” from tolkien and his headzes’ remains and lights LP, which surely means simon reynolds’s work is done here!

(on our) back back BACK

[naughtyclanger.jpg] Tonight’s Freaky Trigger And The Lollards Of Pop gets Down and Dirrrty with international pop: should we be scared of what we don’t understand? (We share our experiences so you don’t have to.) Plus what else scares us: the irrationality and roots of fear — what is the REAL fantastickal menace? And once we’ve found it, how — in today’s hyper-messy hyper-smuttified society which shows every sign of worsening — shall we keep ourselves safe and clean? Chips, tips, sex by dicethrow and and a SCARY SPECTRAL GUEST (maybe), all in our Junket of muck!

It’s at 7PM, on Resonance 104.4 FM if you’re in the South Bank area and at www.resonancefm.com if you’re not - broadcast over the internet and then podcast afterwards on www.freakytrigger.co.uk. Junk Bondsminx is Sarah Clarke, Hi-Tech Jinxmonkey is Eli Sessions, the Massed Menks of Vulgar Panic are Magnus Anderson, Tom Ewing, Kat Stevens.

And (below the cut) is that special plea once more from Ed Baxter, programming director of Resonance FM. If you like Lollards (or indeed anything else on Resonance), act accordingly! … read on …

paper versus rock: marianne dreams at the almeida

as her xmas present, doctrah becky took the younger of her two little godsons (he’s seven) to this dramatisation of catherine storr’s puffin-club children’s classic, a book she and i grew up on — and i got to tag along (i’m 47): marianne, 10 and very ill, discovers that when she draws with a particular pencil she can visit what she’s drawn in her dreams; as her illness progresses, she learns to take responsibility for her powers in this very particular dreamworld, and to help the — rather difficult — person she has inadvertently trapped there and made life grim for… that’s a relatively unspoiler-y version of the story, which is intensely atmospheric, complete with awesomely sinister watcher-monsters, a very non-cute problem to solve, an adventure which can — very realistically within its dream-context — be undertaken by the children it features, and a lot of cheerfully inventive wit about the sometimes tricky relationship between what you drew and what you intended to draw…

The outing got exactly the right result, since smaller godson chattered very earnestly about it all the way home (including clearing up an important plot point which bears on intra-sibling jealousy, a big issue in his relationship with his older brother*), and then declared to his mum and dad on arrival home: “i think [very long pause to choose words exactly] that it was the GREATEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!” [in what follows there BE spoilers, subtext spoilers especially, though i'm keeping narrative ones to a minimum] … read on …

did you think i would leave you crying, when there’s room on my toast ect ect

so last night i discovered two inter-linked and utterly heartwarming cookery FACTS

one is that in cookery, if angels are played by OYSTERS then devils are played by PRUNES!

two is that in these recipes, for every horse (= small piece of toast) there are TWO RIDERS! bless!!

excellent warming stew

this is perfect for winter, nice and easy (a variant on all-purpose fish stew)

YOU WILL NEED
chicken <– deboned if lazy, and chopped small with scissors, or else with a CHOPPER
sausages <– any cheap type will do; last night was lamb-and-mint as i live in a turkish quarter

2 onions, garlic, tomatoes, big bag of white mushrooms
chillis <— powdered or dried fine, i use fresh scotch bonnet cz they look so nice in the shop, IF THIS USE ONE AT MOST

butter and olive oil, thyme, mixed herbs, bay leaf, saffron if you have it, chicken stock

^^^OPTIONAL BUT AN AWESOME PURCHASE: lee kum kee panda brand oyster flavoured sauce <— this is the best thing EVAH to go with wok-fired chicken, easy to find in vietnamese supermarkets, maybe also chinatown … read on …

modern finance: the subprime debacle as a failed heath-robinson* contraption

<—- clearly this contraption will work
click to see why this one won’t —->bucketworld

key:
RSMB = residential mortgage-backed securities
CDO = collateralised debt obligations
transparency = the contraption has it (you can see why the system failed); the alphabet soup of acronyms precisely doesn’t <— just because you mastered the shorthand doesn’t mean you see where it’s going to crack
tranche = i love this word so much, it basically just means “slice”, but if you asked for a “tranche of cake” the cakecutter is certainly obligated to give you MORE
*yes yes rube goldberg

in a hole in the ground there lived a MELCH-DICK

“What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, Bloody Bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorn, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, … read on …

amisquake: or u can’t spell “ESTABLISH THE CALIPHATE” w/o a “q”

i. BUQSHA, BURQA, FAQIR, INQILAB, MBAQANGA, MUQADDAM, QABALAH, QADI, QAIMAQAM, QALAMDAN, QASIDA, QAT, QAID, QANAT, QI, QIBLA, QIGONG, QINDAR, QINDARKA, QINGHAOSU, QINTAR, QIS, QIVIUT, QOPH, QWERTIES, QWERTY, QWERTYS, SHEQEL, SHEQALIM, SUQ, TALAQ, TRANQ, TSADDIQIM, TSADDIQ, TZADDIQIM, TZADDIQ, UMIAQ, WAQF, YAQONA … read on …