Pumpkin Publog

Pre-Lollards: The great pub winnovation poll!

On the Lollards show three weeks ago, we promised a poll to let you decide WHICH of the fantastic winnovations we ideated in the PUB FOCUS GROUP would most improve your pub experience. Here, at last, is that poll - please pick your favourite three ideas and we will announce the results on tomorrow’s FINAL SHOW* of Freaky Trigger and the Lollards Of Pop.

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*for now - keep an eye on FT for GREAT NEWS for all our listeners.

A dinner with the Pentecostals

I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a Pentecostal church service, or hung around Christians of that persuasion for any meaningful length of time. The last time I spoke with someone I knew was Pentecostal was back in Tennessee; apparently in the UK it’s the fastest-growing Christian denomination of belief. They’re not as insular as the Seventh Day Adventists, but they’re at least as driven — there’s still the faint whiff of the cult about them. The story of Pentecost is the story of true believers surviving a day of reckoning through God’s grace; a wind from heaven scorches the earth and, among flames, boiling smoke and a blood-red moon, His followers become prophesyers, visionaries and “dreamers”. Essentially, Pentecostalism promises its followers that when the sh1t hits the fan, they will be superheros. Or at least Aquarians. It’s a strange cocktail of doomsday science and unbridled narcissism that apparently proves irresistable to more Britons each year.

Unaware of these tendencies lurking so nearby, I found myself surprised that upon sitting down to a dinner party in Holloway, the pleasant Chinese couple to my right who were cracking flavoured sunflower hulls and sucking out the contents with nimble aplomb announced to me, apropos of absolutely nothing (which is how these things always come out), that they were “very religious”. And left it there, picking at their seeds intently.

There really is little I enjoy less than discussing my dinner companions’ religious predilictions, but you have to say something, so I did.

“We’re Pentecostals,” he said, the mound of hulls having now grown to the size of a small anthill. She looked at me and said “Christian!”

“For 15 years,” the man said, grimly, I thought. After dinner was over he went out to the back patio and smoked the rest of a half-finished cigar, by himself.

Before that, though — but after the sunflower seeds — the entire table tasted what our host called “1000-year-old egg”. A delicacy in China and Hong Kong, 1000-year-old eggs are created by essentially burying eggs in mud for several weeks or months, turning the shell black, the white a translucent amber, and the yolk a mysterious dark green. A bit like some crash-landed alien, thawed out only in order to be eaten. (But will it change us if we do?)

The Chinese Pentecostals dug in, and smiled at our giggles and hesitant sniffing. They had nothing to fear from a 1000-year-old egg.

baconbaconbacon!!!

from our friend ms llaura llllew, comes this astonishing piece of high quality pig-based cookery!

what’s next? steak plates? lamb chop pans? or just HOVER BACON?

The Joy Of Tunnocks ♥

The Tunnocks tea-room bakery display features cyclists, and best of all, tea-cake owls! Via Anne at I Like!

Nice to see them still pushing the Dark Chocolate flavours, although I think I’m still yet to see a dark chocolate teacake in this ‘ere London. Then again! I am no teacake fan. Get your marshmallows off me bleeergh cough hack splutter. Even IF they are arguably the most fun to eat in their methodology as long as you do it correctly, ie smash the teacake against your forehead first in order to crack the chocolate coatin. If you like, you can shout “Haaaaaaai-YAAAA!” whilst doing so, but hey, it’s not essential. I’d shout “YAAAMAPIII DAAAAAAI-SKKKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII” - or I would - if I liked teacakes. But as I don’t - my confession remains…. unmade. DAMN YOU FOUL MARSHMALLOW.

Hurry up Harriet!

A friend who was attending london drinker last night pointed me to this new ale. She was as gobsmacked about this as I was. It’s very difficult to think of what else to say really, a lot of my female friends enjoy their ale already, and those who don’t are, I think, unlikely to change their mind just because some 19 year-old has lucked into being able to brew her own ale. The Birmingham Post ran an article that, if anything, compounds the badness:

I didn’t actually approach the longed-for experience with the serious intention of ending up semi-conscious on the bathroom floor, but that is indeed where I found myself after a night swigging alcopops like it really was lemonade.

I can inform ms easton that a night on her beverage (at 4.2%, stronger that bacardi breezers and only just weaker than smirnoff ice) would almost certainly result in exactly the same outcome and, if my experiences are anything to go by, probably a much worse morning after…

I suppose it’s quite handy when your mum runs a social enterprise body though…

BRANDWATCH: Twix Fits! In A Milkshake?

Aahh, the wacky gang at Mars. Is there no craven brand extension they will not try? I thought post Bisc& they had dialled down the rampant dilution of their brands. And dilute is indeed what they have done now with the somewhat uncalled for TWIX & M&M SHAKES.. Mars apparently wants to invent a new snacking category, namely Dessert Drinks. So for your £1.50 you get a thick shake (caramel in Twix, chocolate for M&Ms), a straw and some - er - bits. The bits being either mini-Twixs for dipping or mini M&Ms for you to presumable choke on when one goes whizzing up the straw and straight into your oesophagus. … read on …

Nim Nim Nom Nom Nom

I love Vietnamese food. The perfect blend of far eastern spices and flavours, and French culinary know-how. Admittedly blended through a few hundred years of colonialism, but hey you don’t just leave the baby lying there when you’ve thrown it out with the bathwater. So anyway, on Saturday we popped in to Cay Tre, on Old Street, which is probably one of the more esoteric Vietnamese restaurant in London (ie its menu has a few dishes you won’t normally get here - and are trickier to serve). This review from Jay Rayner covers many of the dishes we had, and some I usually have (the La Vong fish is a favourite I didn’t have because Billy Childish and his daughter Tilly Childish sitting next to us would have been inconvenienced). The starters listed are very impressive, but one which always raises a smile but never ordered is the Wicked Crispy Fog. Which turns out to be spicy battered frogs legs. … read on …

Best Before

This afternoon the mindreading goblins who decide which ad goes at the top of yer Gmail ceased their Cougar obsession for long enough to point me to a site called “Openanduseb4″. This turned out to be a place which sells pre-printed labels which you can put on things you’ve opened so you don’t forget to use them before they go off. I am of course a great fan of entrepreneurial innovations but it does strike me that in this case the basic idea is really quite replicable to, well, anyone with stickers and a pen.

But really I was just annoyed because of what I hoped the site was: a food science exploration into whether or not a given use-by date actually means it. … read on …

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 …