After a year and a half dating a Frenchman I am finally taking some proper classes at the Alliance Francais so that I might understand a word he says. No, he and my French flatmate both have very good English but as I don't speak French, they are polite and speak English all the time so I can understand. It would be great for us all to be able to have conversations in French, non?
So to celebrate my imminent mastery of the language, and a year and a half since this frenchman and got to talking croissants and Jacques Cousteau, here's a song about wonderful French stereotypes, made by Kiwis.
I love the 60's styling of the clip - an apartment we stayed in in Paris had such brilliant 60's style (as in it hadn't been redecorated since then)- massive patterned and colourful wallpaper everywhere and nothing but floor lamps for lighting. I better go learn some past tenses so I can write 'I loved it!' in French.
This recipe comes from a wonderful recipe book I bought recently - Yotam Ottolenghi's 'Plenty'. I love this book! The writer is a chef whose restaurants are famous for their fresh and original salads and vegetable dishes. Although the restaurants are not vegetarian, this recipe collection IS, which trills me so. The Guardian commissioned him to write a column on vegetarian cooking on the basis of his knowledge of fresh produce and how to treat it which he attributes to his family's recipes and the farmers markets in Israel where he grew up. The recipes from that column plus others make up this appetisingly photographed cook book. Everything I've made from it so far has been delicious and very well-received. These leek fritters are so much better than their name sounds and were all gobbled up straight away by just three of us!
Leek Fritters
Serve 4
450g leeks (about 2 or 3 leeks) trimmed weight 5 shallots, finely chopped 150 ml olive oil 1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and sliced 25g parsley (leaves and fine stalks), finely chopped 3/4 t ground coriander 1 t ground cumin 1/4 t ground turmeric 1/4 t ground cinnamon 1 t sugar (I used raw caster sugar) 1/2 t salt 1 free-range egg white 120g self-raising flour 1 T (yes, T) baking powder 1 whole free-range egg 150ml milk 55g unsalted butter, melted
Sauce 100g Greek yoghurt 100g sour cream 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 T lemon juice 3 T olive oil 1/2 t salt 20g parsley leaves, chopped 30g coriander leaves, chopped
Start by making the sauce.Whizz all the ingredients together in a food processor until a uniform green. Set aside for later.
The boys were pretty happy to eat the bread covered in the sauce too - it makes a delish, if garlicky dip.
Cut the leeks into 2cm thick slices; rinse and drain dry. Saute the leeks and shallots in a pan with half the oil on a medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until soft.
Transfer to a large bowl and add the chilli, parsley, spices, sugar and salt. Allow to cool down.
Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and fold it into the vegetables. In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, whole egg, milk and butter to form a batter. Gently mix it into the egg white and vegetable mixture.
Put 2 T of the remaining oil into a large frying pan and place over medium heat. Spoon about half of the vegetable mixture into the pan to make four large fritters. (I actually ended up making 12, not 8 fritters with this recipe as that seemed like the fritter size I was used to). Fry them 2-3 minutes on each side, or until golden and crisp. Remove to kitchen paper and keep warm. Continue making the fritters, adding more oil as needed. Serve warm, with the sauce on the side or drizzled over.
As many of you will know, thanks to the tour de france, yesterday was bastille day - France's national day. We didn't find any cool events happening (they're happening tomorrow) so drank French wine and watched a French movie and some tour de france. Those guys just work so hard! And we just sat and sat on the couch!
But to honour their hard work, and France, and for fun, here's a gag video from prankster Rémi Gaillard. Please ignore the ads and just enjoy the clip.
I've been hibernating a little this winter which is silly because my house is easily one of the coldest places to be - colder than sitting outside most nights! But the promise of good live music the other night lured me out of the house and down to Fremantle. The company of my old flatmate Andre and Freo friends added with the relaxed atmostphere at Kulcha and warm tunes of two local bands made for a very warm evening.
As you may have noticed, many new bands I like still sound like they are old - like they're from the 60's or 70's. This band Big Old Bear from the Perth hills sounds even older though, like an oldtime bluegrass band full of harmonies and fiddles. Here they are perfoming their version of a song that is 100 years old!
This next one is just two of them singing what I believe is one of their own songs. (I couldn't find anything else on the internet with that title).
They also did a cover of a song I love, 'Morning Birds' by the Be Good Tanyas.
I love that Be Good Tanya's video but I also love this version by Jolie Holland:
Also check out the other band that evening, The Lonely Brothers, an all-girl band from Fremantle who describe their music as having a 'folky roots-ish sorta sound with bits and bobs of jazz phrasing, pop hooks, orchestral strings and worldly rhythms, tying it all together into an old-but-new sound'. They met at highschool and are still very young and ever-so polite- thanking me personally when I went to the bar at Kulcha to buy one of their albums. The 5 track album I bought IS really rather obsessed with loneliness but has one upbeat song on it. Their website has other tracks you can listen to, too. They're very feminine, esp for brothers.
Who says just because you're a white chick, sorry, a shiela, from Australia that you can't rap?
That first song is from the album Like a Version (Vol 3). These Like a Version albums are put out by an Australian radio station who records Aussie, and some overseas musicians performing accoustic covers of famous songs. They're brilliant. Whenever I listen to it at work I am doing a favour for the small record store next door as customers inevitably rush over to ask what album I'm playing - it's like this:
America just celebrated its Independence Day. As someone from an ex-colony (that hasn't got independence yet), I've always found it interesting that like America, our main language is English - not just from another continent but named after 'the mother country'. Now it's not England but just its language that's doing all the 'colonising' around the world and in turn the language has been influenced by its colonies. Since England 'gave' English to America, America has contributed more new words to the language than England has. Here's a list of some of them from Bill Bryson's geeky but entertainingly readable 'Mother Tongue':
commuter, bedrock, snag, striptease, cold spell, gimmick, baby-sitter, lengthy, sag, soggy, teenager, typewriter, radio, to cut no ice, to butt in, to sidetrack, hangover, to make good (to be successful), fudge, publicity, joyride, bucket shop (Rose doesn't even know this one), blizzard, stunt, law-abiding, department store, notify, advocate (as a verb), currency (for money), to park, to rattle (to unnerve), hindsight, beeline, raincoat, scrawny, take a backseat, cloudburst, graveyard, know-how, to register (as in a hotel), to shut down, to fill the bill, to hold down (as in to keep), to hold up (as in rob), to bank on, to stay put, to be stung (cheated), and even 'stiff upper lip'!
Now, you can put them all into a story, or, better yet, a rap?
Yes, there's so much contention with language ('a definition of a language is a dialect with an army and a navy') but let's keep it short and celebrate some variety in our amazing language. So - Another book I love for its exploration of how English has been influenced over the years is Rotten English (ed Dohra Ahmad), an anthology (vernacular poems, sections from novels, and essays) written in English as it is spoken around the world - slang, creole, pidgin etc.
From Glasgow (and back in time to 1984) here's Unrelated Incidents -No. 3 by Tom Leonard
this is thi six a clock news thi man said n thi reason a talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff. if a toktaboot thi trooth lik wanna yoo scruff yi widny thingk it wuz troo. jist wanna yoo scruff tokn. thirza right way ti spell ana right way to tok it. this is me tokn yir right way a spellin. this is ma trooth. yooz doant no thi trooth yirsellz cawz yi cannay talk right. this is the six a clock nyooz. belt up
After having delicious home-made bread every time we had dinner at our friends' place, I was inspired to start making my own - hence the focaccia post a little while ago. The bread my friend Johanna makes though is a round, sliceable loaf that you can use for sandwiches or just eat as is. She's perfected the art of home bread-making and so can now have much better bread than you can easily buy here, and at a fraction of the cost. She and I both have French partners so going through a loaf of bread a day is nothing unusual.
So as you can guess, I weaselled the recipe from her - and the best part is, it's SO EASY - meaning she can and does make a loaf a day. All you need to do is leave it overnight (or longer) to relax the gluten. That's why I call it magic elf bread - it's as if little magic elves have visited your kitchen at night, doing all the kneading for you! Even though I quite enjoy kneading dough, there isn't always the time. The other good thing about this recipe is that leaving it for so long really improves the flavour (through slow fermentation) and the moist dough baked in a closed pot creates a wonderful crust - C'est magnifique! (The recipe by the way is not a French one but developed by a baker in Manhattan - see video below recipe)
My first attempt: I made the dough yesterday (in about 30 seconds, no kidding, and baked it today. Here's a video of me discovering the result:
No Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour (can use 1 c wholemeal an 2 c plain if you like), more for dusting ¼ teaspoon instant yeast (that's right, only 1/4 t!) 1¼ teaspoons salt Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 20 degrees celsius (70 degrees F).
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 230 degrees celcius (450 F). Put a 24-32 c capacity (6- to 8-quart) heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.At first it might be hard or heavy feeling but after you've left it to cool, it will have a great slightly chewy texture with an incredible crust (not too thick). Yield: One 680 g (1½-pound) loaf.
Oh yeah, and did I mention you don't have to just make round loaves?
You can make baguettes that even the French will squeeze and nod approvingly at: separate the risen dough into three or four pieces, shape them into rectangles, fold into thirds like a letter then roll into stick shapes. With this dough it can be a bit tricky as it's very soft and wobbly, so don't worry too much about achieving a flawless baguette shape. Place baguettes on an oven tray covered with ovenproof paper (pinch up paper between each one to keep them separated when they rise some more and spread out. Cover with a clean tea-towel and leave for about 1-3 hours. When risen, pull paper flat to leave 'breathing room' in between each baguette so they'll cook evenly. Place tray in an oven preheated to 200 degrees celsius and cook for just about 15 minutes (depending on your oven). The don't need to be covered and will cook quickly because of their greater surface area - see? I learnt something at school!
After 4 years living in Perth, I finally made it to Heirisson Island where the kangaroos roam free. Well, it turns out that there's a fence across to stop them bouncing ever-so-cutely onto the road (see the road behind us in the video?). They live beside a wetland and when Johanna and I visited on our walk, the grass was lush and green and they just couldn't get enough of it. Bless. Just look at them nibble! Yes, this is like a cute kitty video, nothing fancy, just us petting their soft, soft SOFT fur. And just look at those adorable eyes they have - so easy to be a vegetarian when animals are this cute (also easy if they are disgusting and scaly looking). Ok, so their claws are quite scary and would be at least as unappealing as chicken-feet on a plate. But forget their lack of manicures (and mine) - just look at these girls!
I wish my bookstore was a little more like this. I love ours but I don't get to sit in a leather armchair reading and smoking a pipe. What I'd most like is that the little boy who visits our store to have a little imagination - kids these days: are they not creative or just not this one? OK, many of my old students were actually very creative, talented and funny. Some not only loved stories but were great storytellers themselves. Long live stories!
I just found this film for sale at the video (ok, DVD) store and watched it again for the first time in years. I hear 'they' (in this case Leonardo di Caprio's production company) are going to do a new movie which will more closely reflect the messages of Michael Ende's brilliant novel. I'm glad to hear it as there's so much in that book (not just in plot but messages, themes etc) and so little of it was brought into the films (to the point where Ende wanted them to change the name of the film or cancel production as it was not a strong enough reflection of what he had created with the novel). You really should read the book, dare I say it is 'powerful'? Hope that didn't put you off. It's also a challenging and affirming book for children - not one of these flimsy adventures but has a lot of depth.
