It’s been a long time since we had a recipe, hasn’t it? Here’s a good assemblage that I, er, assembled on Wednesday night.
First, go shopping and get some fresh mackerel. They should be gutted (footballing mackerel?) and de-headed. Give the fish a rinse. Chop a fennel bulb in half, reserving the little fronds. Put the halves in some boiling water to soften up for about five or ten minutes (or half a Coronation Street, which is a pretty good timing for most things).
Take the fennel tops, some sliced lime and some thyme (it’s a rhyming recipe) and stick it all inside the fish cavity. Slop some olive oil over that lot. Leave that to one side while you chop a onion, a pepper, and two of the vegetable of the moment, sweet potato (everyone’s going to learn to love sweet potato – can you buy shares in a vegetable?). Don’t chop them too fine, as you’ll be putting them all into a hot (180 or so) oven to roast, and small bits will turn black and horrible. You can either chop your sweet potato into cubes (about 20mm) or into wonky discs, so you have a kind of circular triangle affair. Retrive your fennel, splash them with cold water to cool them down so you can chop them up lengthways, and add to your roasting tin. Slop olive oil over the whole lot, add some salt, toss, and put them into your oven for thirty minutes.
Get your Le Cruset griddle pan out of the cupboard without dropping it on your foot. Put it on the stove (clank) and heat it up. About ten minutes before the vegetables are done, put your mackerel on to cook. Gently turn them over halfway through. You’ll know they are cooked when the flesh is opaque and they’re firm to the touch. Try and keep the limes and things inside the cavity. You’ll probably fail, but everything will still be fine. You’re not in a competition here.
Serve with some spinach in a balsamic and olive oil dressing. Mmmm, healthy.
I’m just starting to get interested in this podcast thingy. I’ve got Ricky Gervais’s podcast in iTunes, but then that was almost a reflex action, there wasn’t much thought involved there. I’ve also got some people talking about typography (feed).
But there was one radio show which I used to listen to religiously in Australia, and the thought of it must have been sitting idly in the back of my mind since I arrived in England. Then, a few days ago, like a bolt from the blue, I connected radio show – podcast – mp3 player – and a google search for ‘HG Nelson and Roy Slaven’…
And, yea, didst HG and Roy have a podcast. Now the lazy Saturday afternoons spent listening to two big Aussie blokes talk absolute idiocy about sport, ‘stink’ and ‘cracking a fat’ can return. The show is in the middle of a run at the moment in Australia, as HG and Roy dissect the Winter Olympics as only they can. If you love sport, or can enjoy almost Homeric levels of verbal improvisation, the church of HG and Roy is waiting for you.
Some background first: I’m just starting these book reviews, they probably won’t be very good for a bit, but I do read a lot (thank goodness for University libraries, or I’d be brassic), and if people want to send me free review copies eventually, go ahead. OK, to the book under discussion.
The Edifice Complex looks at the relationship between architect and patron; in particular, the kind of patron who believes that architecture can give them immortality. So Sudjic’s book takes in Hitler and Speer, Mussolini, the Shah of Iran, Mao and modern China, the British Raj, Presidential Libraries, and, in the section about Frank Gehry, various Museum Directors and Trustees. The French grand projets get compared with the mess Tony Blair made of the Millenium Dome. Sudjic goes into a fair amount of detail about the buildings, and gives a good account of how the architect and architecture worked with or against the desires of the rich and powerful.
The book mainly sticks to narratives and descriptions; it’s a pretty easy, though involving, read. There was one ten or so page passage that seemed to be about architectural theory, which I skipped, because it just seemed a bit tacked on. One big let-down was that about ten or so pages in I started to look for the strip of plates in the middle of the book, and found… just more book. There’s no pictures, which in these google-ated days isn’t so bad, but it would be nice to have some images of the projects.
I’d definitely recommend tracking this book down if you’re interested in modern architecture, or in the relationship between art and power.
One of the benefits of having a florist for a partner is that you learn a bit about flowers and the florist industry by osmosis. It’s a massive undertaking getting flowers distributed around the world; there are Dutch lorries delivering to UK florists’ doors every day of the week, and every morning in the massive flower market at Aalsmeer, just near Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, thousands of pounds worth of flowers are bought and sold.
Of course, the next few days leading up to Valentine’s Day are rather busy for florists (that’s one of those English understatements). Here are some tips for buying flowers:
Avoid any arrangement with gypsophila ‘gyp’ as it’s know, is made up of bunches of tiny white flowers, which is usually mixed in with the bouquet to bulk things out. It smells bad and looks fussy. Using gyp in an arrangement is the florist’s equivalent of using font tags on a webpage or comic sans in a layout.
Order in advance: Yes, us menfolk aren’t good at sorting ourselves out in time, but if you can, find a good florist and see them as soon as possible.
Go see your florist in person If you order on-line, or you call your local florist for a delivery outside their area – a ‘relay orders’ (say you lived in London and wanted flowers to be delivered to someone in Manchester), you can’t be sure who the order will end up with at the other end. There’s no objective rating system for florists to follow – if your London florist doesn’t know any of the florists in Manchester, they’ll just pick the closest one to your delivery address on their relay company’s list.
Florists will make bouquets up for you They are quite happy for you to choose from the stock in the shop and assemble something for you. You can give them guidance on the kind of thing you want (and the price you want to pay) and they’ll interpret it. Or if you choose one main flower, they can add others that will compliment it.
Don’t order red roses There’s one florist in London who refuses to sell red roses for Valentine’s Day – I can’t remember who. But if you think of it in economic terms, you have the whole world wanting red roses for February 14th, so the price will skyrocket. Florists know that most men only go into florist’s shops on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, so their customers won’t know that you can actually get a magificent arrangement of anything but red roses for the same price as twelve stems on February 13th.
What should I get then? Tulips are spring flowers, so they’re in season, look beautiful and come in loads of colours and shapes. Or buy an Orchid plant – they like the indoors and the flowers last for ages. Don’t get red and white flowers – there’s a superstition about it being ‘blood and bandages’
How do I stop flowers from dying? Every few days, empty the vase and put in fresh water. Re-cut the stems at a 45 degree angle. If some of the flowers are dying, just take those out and keep the rest. If the florist gives you flower food, use that. Anything else (bleach, etc) is a waste of time. All flowers will die eventually – the longest lasting are woody flowers like proteas.
I need some links: OK, here’s a good florist in Cheshire, and one in London. The floral trendsetter at the moment is apparently a guy called Gregor Lersch, though his site has rubbish pictures, and if you really love tulips, visit Keukenhof in Holland in the next few months. It’s pretty good.
Oh, and if you aren’t going to buy flowers, or do anything soppy, at least send one of these anti-valentine cards.
Apparently the Grammies were on last night, so it’t time to dust off the ‘Favorite Albums of 2005’ entry that never quite made it on-line and turn it into the first annual Cloth Ears Awards. I can’t wait.
The first award for ‘Writing the best five songs on the last Go-Betweens record?’ goes to Robert Forster.
Now I love Grant McLennan, I have all his solo stuff, and I think his songs on Talullah and 16 Lover’s Lane are genius. But on Ocean’s Apart, it’s Robert all the way. Here comes a city. Mountains near Delray. Darlinghurst Nights. And the other two songs. Robert’s hit a real purple patch, and in comparison, it sounds like Grant McLennan by numbers. Grant’s songs are too lush. I have a soft spot for Boundary Rider, but that’s about it.
The second award for ‘Most absurdly neglected record of 2005’ goes to Supergrass and their Road to Rouen. Every track on this record is worth a listen. Sure, it’s not bouncy happy pop music, as we might expect from the ’grass, but the music has a mood of defiant dejection that grows on you. It snuck up on me a bit like R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant, another one of my favourite records, and another one sporting a silly little ditty in the middle, like Road to Rouen’s Coffee in the Pot. Low C and Roxy are fantastic proper songs.
Our third award for ‘Best discovery made by me of an obscure band that’s an offshoot of an even more obscure band’ goes to the Small Knives’ Rain on Tin. This soft, countrified record was made by the bass player of the Welcome Mat, an early 90s favourite band of mine. If you have a sister who can find it in an Australian record shop, tell her to go buy it for you.
Our fourth award for ‘I don’t know who you are, but I like the idea of what you do’ goes to three Jazz artists, Acoustic Ladyland, Solveig Slettahjell and the Tord Gustavsen Trio. I own exactly one track from each artists, but what music… Acoustic Ladyland make jazz that rocks (a track called Nico), Solveig Slettahjell has a band like a jazz Galaxy 500, slow, spacey music (her cover of John Hiatt’s Have a little faith in me is great), and I’ve only heard snippets of the Tord Gustavsen Trio, but they are on ECM, so they must be good.
Our fifth award for ‘Most evasive records’ is given to Tim Roger’s double record, Dirty Ron/Ghost Songs, which I still haven’t heard, and anything by Melanie Oxley and Chris Abrahams. If you run an mp3 search engine, you might find a few ‘Oxley’s in there from me.
Our last award for ‘You should be huge all over the world, but because you’re from Australia, you aren’t’ goes to Brisbane’s Screamfeeder and Geelong’s Magic Dirt. These two bands have been going for ages, getting better and better, but it’s entirely possible that when they aren’t touring, their drummers are working at McDonalds. Or something.
And that’s it. I’m off to watch my new Go-Betweens DVD. Ahhh.
Have been really busy.
I’ve given a talk to some students about ‘Databases and the Web’. You can see my slides (in this .pdf file), if you really want to.
I’ve had a quick look around a new exhibition on the modern graphic designer Abram Games we have on here at the Manchester Metropolitan University. It’s on in the Holden Gallery, in the lovely old School of Arts building, until the end of February – lots of sketches and original poster artwork.
And I’ve booked a place at the @Media 2006 conference in June.
Oh yes, RealFrench.net is now subscription only as well.