The So-Called “Happy World” Exposed
The So-Called “Happy World” Exposed aka “Must we throw this filth at our sweet-toothed kids?”. The phrase “kids and adults love it so” takes on a new and sinister meaning.
Tom in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Pumpkin Publog
31 August 2004
Night Time Milk
Night Time Milk: maybe this should be on PROVEN BY SCIENCE as it is the subject of an experiment! My colleague has just bought me a carton of Night Time Milk which will help me sleep easily. Apparently. I don’t know whether or not it will work but I intend to try – tonight! To be honest I sleep like a log anyway so my melatonin levels are clearly pretty high anyway but I love the fact that the science behind this product is seemingly based on milking cows at night. Either this is totally preposterous or the best science ever – stay tuned for which. Meanwhile I can report that the carton is a lovely shade of deep blue and is very attractive, I almost can’t wait to drink the nummy yet soporific contents.
Tom in Pumpkin Publog • 5 Comments
30 August 2004
Terror alert: Gin in peril
Terror alert: Gin in peril
Gin drinkers of the world unite.
The juniper bush is in sharp decline across Britain. No juniper, no gin.
People are being encouraged to look for remaining bushes. Their reward? Free gin.
Think not of what your gin can do for you, but what you can do for your gin.
Future drinkers are counting on us.
Ben in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
29 August 2004
As an attempt at a revisionist account of my mother’s cooking
As an attempt at a revisionist account of my mother’s cooking (perhaps one day I will be able to discuss cooking without simultaneously discussing my mother, but this is not that day), today, with some friends, I decided to try to incorporate fresh veggies into bhajji pau. Traditionally, this is street vendor fare throughout India, a mash-up of cauliflower, peas, potatoes and carrots, spiced with whatever masala that bhaiyya or his friends have cooked up, scooped up with whitebread that’s buttered and given a turn over the skillet. Mom uses frozen peas/carrots and frozen cauliflower, mostly because a) she hates the taste of fresh peas, and b) it’s a pain to cut the cauliflower and shell the peas.
So, after hearing an program (it’s the Laura Shapiro bit) on the Leonard Lopate show about how the food industry used frozen foods as a way of keeping up market demand for mass-manufactured food after WWII, I decided to sub in fresh produce for instances in which I had mostly experienced them in frozen form, hoping to open up new avenues of goodness in what had been quite nice before.
Little, however, did I realize, that it would take more than just a line-substitution to realize actual, substantial difference in yumminess. It didn?t help that my friends and I were under a lunch-crunch, ‘coz we were slated to watch some old Wes Craven movies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that evening. And as a further hindrance, the only thing that would stand a chance at really changing the taste on dish on it’s own, the green peas, weren’t in season (how am I supposed to know this?! In my world, all vegetables are always in season, I don’t know what planet I fell on today where they aren’t.) They were purchased frozen, at the super awesome Subzi Mandi in Jackson Heights, along with fresh versions of everything else.
The method whereby I realize the bhajji pau, in the style of my mother, goes about as follows:
Two things are to be started at approximately the same time; the pan and the pressure cooker. In the pan go oil, onions (chopped), garlic (shredded), peppers (minced, the hotter the better) turmeric, coriander and tomatoes (also chopped), whatever masala you’ve managed to procure (I get mine from some guy who works down the blocks from my grandparents, but MDH probably makes one) and salt, in that order, with a good interval between the adding of the turmeric and the tomatoes. Into pressure cooker go potatoes, cauliflower, carrots and green peas, all cut into kinda small pieces, with a little bit of water at the bottom. When the things in the pan are sufficiently cooked (indicated when the oil comes out, having taken on the color of the spices), turn it off, and use the time before the pressure cooker whistles to chop some fresh sweet/red onions, coriander, and to butter some bread. After the pressure cooker whistles, remove the pressure by means you feel appropriate and add the veggies to the onion/et al. Mush and cook with a little water, add salt or masala, or ground red pepper, whatever it needs. Serve with the bread (browned butter side down on the skillet), onions, coriander, and a bit of butter melted over the mashed veggies.
In retrospect, it makes complete sense why nothing was really different upon the inclusion of fresh cauliflower and carrots. Since they were pressure cooked to death along with everything else, you don’t get a chance to let them have much character on their own. In the future, along with the addition of good green peas, maybe the way to go is to steam the peas and carrots, while allowing the cauliflower and potatoes to become mush in the pressure cooker? I would add the former to the onions a good while after I’ve added the potatoes/cauliflower, and having decreased the total mushing, I might be able to up the heterogeneity. Just a thought.
28 August 2004
The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook
We have been lucky to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write “a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.”
27 August 2004
Hands up
Hands up who thinks the world’s pubs need more bland, dodgy beer.
(counts) One two, skip a few, ninety-nine, one hundred.
I make that just about everyone, which should mean this comes as good news:
Interbrew/Ambev merge to form world’s biggest brewer (CNN.com)
Mine’s a pint of something obscure.
Chin-chin!
Ben in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
24 August 2004
The correct use of
The correct use of tomatoes
Begins tomorrow, Bunol, Spain. You haven’t lived until you’ve been hit in the face from point blank range with a ripe tomato.
I picked up a cook book, Recipes From Scotland
I picked up a cook book, Recipes From Scotland in a second hand bookshop a year or so again. Mainly because it looked genuinely old and I was interested in the wonders that could be kept within its tartan bound cover. The wonders, one must say, generally involve the offal of fish. I have heard of Cod Liver, as in the oil, but when you have a fish on the bone there does not seem to be an awful lot of space left for distinguishable organs.
Anyway F. Marian McNeill?s book was in its ninth edition by the time my copy was printed, 1969. The first edition was in 1946. But I think that even in twenty three years between editions that items like Fish Custard and Nettle Beer were probably already on their way out. (Mind you I was very tempted to knock up some Nettle Beer whilst on sojourn in Scotland recently). The book seems aware of its own position in the pantheon of world food though, often stating the “heartiness” or “warmth” of the food involved. Which is a pity because a good haggis is a joy forever and Dundee Cake is food of the gods (especially if served with a stiff glass of porter). Nevertheless the book sticks to its guns, as is proved by the final recipe in the book. In the beverages section we get this popular Shetland drink:
BLAAAND
This popular Shetland beverage is simply the whey of buttermilk left to ferment in an oak cask, and used at the proper stage. To make the whey, pour enough hot water on the buttermilk to make it separate, and drain the whey off the curd(which may be pressed and eaten with cream). Pour the whey into the cask, and leave it undisturbed until it reaches the fermenting, sparkling stages.
It is a delicious and most quenching drink, and sparkles in the glass like champagne. After the sparkle goes off it becomes flat and vinegary, but may be kept at the perfection stage by the regular addition of fresh whey.
Mangoes
Mangoes
Y’all CANNOT understand what this, most unassuming of fruit means to a poor little city boy like myself (New York City, thankee). As a former resident of more tropical climes (that’s Florida, where America goes to Go to God), this time of year, of all times of the year, seems to be the finest. For now is when Kent mangoes are in season. And this is when Indian families thrive.
In India, they’re called Haapoosh, at least as I transliterate it, but universally they’re the sweetest, and least fiber-y. While I’m normally one that doesn’t mind things that are a little stringy or coarse, with mangoes, it is absolutely not allowed. For, in summertime, they’re almost always the crucial part of the ground across which the meal is built. The mango must offer the least resistance to it’s adaptation, it must be prepared to submit to blending, pickling, and being served up raw, but it can’t be spotted in the same way twice. If the mango is fibery, then you’ll know that it’s the same fruit that’s in three parts of your meal, but if it’s a Kent, then the mango will be appropriately invisible, the substance in which lunch/dinner inheres.
First: the mango pickle. The mangoes are cut raw, covered in spices (my mom gets them from India, she knows what’s in them, I can hardly guess, other than there’s lots of chili, and lots of coarse stuff). They’re dried for an afternoon or so, covered in the spices, and soaked in oil to soften over months. Whenever I go back to college, I take a big bottle back, it’s amazing in very plainly cooked lentils and rice with a little yogurt.
Next: the Ruus. Mango blended with ice and sugar. Some heathens would elect to add some rum (I’ve suggested this) but since my family hails from Gandhi’s stomping grounds, no such things will be allowed at the dinner table, if you want something, I’ll make you some tea. What have they been teaching you in college?! Ummmmm…nothing. Sorry.
Last, cut up plain, with almost every meal of the day. The best part is the bit around the seed (the Goatloh), mostly because the juice gets all over your hands and the table. And you can be like a big kid and lick it off and no one looks twice.
23 August 2004
Beer Barbie
Beer Barbie
Not the latest clumsy attempt by CAMRA to get women into real ale, but the official (I think) Oktoberfest Barbie doll – story here
Tom in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
