Camelot!

happy new year!

2010-12-31T19:54:04Z

(the grounds of) Versailles, France. June 2010.
Sadly, the fountains weren't in operation that day.

Happy 2011, my lovelies! ♥

Here's wishing everyone an absolutely spiffing year ahead!

Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. June 2010.

PSA

2010-11-30T20:25:41Z

Sorry, guys. Have literally just come back from the hospital I'd been stuck at since Monday morning. I'm more or less fine now, but I still have a billionty things to start/finish and deadlines to meet, both from my stay and the weekend before, so it'll be a while before I begin to play catch-up instead. Please just text me if there's something particularly urgent and you're in the UK. Thanks!

Daring Cooks: Souffle (November 2010)

2010-11-14T04:18:13Z

Possibly the most terrifying challenge ever, methinks. I was freaking out on Twitter the day the challenge was released. The souffle. The souffle. Cue much panic on my part. It didn't help that I don't own an electric mixer of any sort, and would as such have to whisk any egg whites by hand.

Somehow, I ended up doing two kinds of souffles, both of which were successful. I'm still in shock, actually. Though I may have overcome my fear of souffles, which is yay-worthy. *g*

Left: Blackberry Souffle
Right: Cheese, Smoked Salmon & Dill Souffle

The only mandatory aspect of this challenge was to make a baked souffle. We were also given three souffle recipes (found here), though we were free to use others if we so desired. I took the latter option.

Blackberry Dessert Souffle

My first souffle was based on this recipe from Stonesoup. It seemed particularly appropriate, because:
a) I was really, really ~~terrified~~ nervous about it;
b) I knew I would have to whisk the whites by hand, and it seemed comforting to have a recipe which said explicitly that you could; and
c) I figured that the fewer ingredients there were involved, the less likely I was to screw up.

What I used for the souffles:

- 4 egg whites
- 1/2 cup caster sugar
- 1/2 cup blackberry jam
- pinch of salt
- melted butter to brush the ramekins

I whisked the egg whites with the salt together until soft peaks were obtained. Sugar was gradually added at this point, and I kept whisking until stiff-ish peaks were reached. Jam was folded in, and I baked it at 200 deg C for 8 min, then lowered it to 50 deg C for another 5 to 7 min.

Stiff peak! Yay!

Incidentally, it took slightly more than 40 min for me to whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks. I recommend putting on a film while doing the whisking.

Before-oven and after-oven shots. I love how much they've risen.

In the oven. I was all OMG THEY ARE RISING!!!!! on Twitter.

These were pretty much a success. The souffles were light and airy and an absolute treat to eat. Strangely enough, they got a bit too sweet after they'd sat for a while, though the batter (I'd tasted it!) was just right, and the sweetness hadn't bothered me either when the souffles were fresh out of the oven. Guess I'd be using less jam in the future.

A shot so you can actually see the colour on top.
Pretend it's not sitting on top of my radiator (cover).

I had these with Green's white chocolate and raspberry swirl ice cream.

Cheese, Smoked Salmon & Dill Savoury Souffle

Emboldened by my success with the dessert souffle, and confident that I'd grasped the basic idea behind the souffle, I decided to challenge myself with a savoury souffle that was a little more complex.

After studying Nigel Slater's cheese & tarragon souffle, I came up with this:

- 4 eggs, separated
- 50g smoked salmon, finely minced
- 1/2 cup grated cheddar
- 1/2 cup shredded gruyere
- 50g unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- pinch of salt
- 300ml milk
- dill, finely chopped, about 2tbsp
- 1 small onion
- 1 bay leaf
- melted butter & grated parmesan for the ramekins

I began with the milk. Heated it up, let it steep with onion and bay leaf. Then came the basic white sauce of butter, flour, and milk, whisking until smooth and creamy.* Took it off heat, beat in the yolks. Set aside.

* Nigel Slater stated in his recipe to simmer the sauce for at least 5 min until thick and smooth. I didn't, so mine was probably more watery than his. Which probably explains why his recipe was for 2, but what I did would have served 3.

Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to stabilise. This time, I timed myself against the first LotR film: 54 min 6 s. This was considerably more nerve-wrecking as, without the sugar to stabilise it further, the 'stiff peaks' never became quite as stiff as I'd liked, and I was paranoid about over-beating the whites. (Starting over would have been a massive pain. Literally. Particularly for my arms.)

The whites one minute or so before I stopped whisking. I had to go with what was in my bowl, not on my whisk, as it just wouldn't collect on my whisk.
Didn't dare beat much more either, because subsequent passes of the whisk made the whites a little 'watery' and the 'peaks' even smaller. :X

Once the egg whites were done, I returned to the sauce. Any 'skin' formed over the hour just gone was skimmed away, and I stirred in the smoked salmon, dill, and cheeses. I folded some of the sauce into the whites, then the whites+sauce into the rest of the sauce. Was a tad worried here, because it looked really watery. Another worry was the smoked salmon; I wasn't certain whether the smoked salmon I'd added would weigh the souffle down enough that it wouldn't rise. However, I decided to just go ahead with the oven bit anyway.

Yellow sauce is yellow.

Ramekins had been brushed with butter and dusted with parmesan. (Oh. Almost forgot to mention. For both souffles, when brushing the butter, I did my best to use upward motions, since I'd read somewhere that it'll encourage the souffle to glide up and rise more.) I spooned the fillings in, sprinkled more parmesan on top, and baked for about 27 or 28 min at 200 deg C. Interestingly enough, while I did the knife-around-edges thing for both the souffles, only the dessert one rose as I imagined souffles should. This savoury one just took on the appearance of a demented cupcake.

In the oven. Forgot to take a pre-oven shot.
I trust you see my point about demented cupcakes.

Out of the oven.

I have to say this about these souffles: they deflate really, really bloody fast. Notice how high they were post-oven? In the approximately 5 seconds it took for me to transfer it from the tray to the pre-dressed dish, it'd lost most of its rise. Yikes.

I had these souffles with a pear, fig, and walnuts salad.

Taste-wise, it's definitely not quite as airy as the dessert souffles. (I wonder if this might have something to do with my whisking?) However, it was absolutely delicious, and it had strings of melted cheese with every bite. Yay!

All in all, I've definitely overcome my fear of souffles, and I think I can say that I've vaguely managed to grasp its principle, and can probably add it to my list of culinary-things-I-know-I-can-do. However, I probably won't be making them much, if again/at all, unless I finally get an electric mixer. Almost an hour just to whisk your egg whites by hand is insane. I've no idea how souffle-makers did anything else before the invention of the electric mixer.

Hurrah for one of the most fun challenges to date! :D

Blog-checking lines: Blog-checking lines: Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

i take no responsibility for this.

2010-11-05T00:44:42Z

In fact, I blame this entirely on kimboosan.

There I was innocently remarking on Twitter how much this picture of Sam and Dean (taken from here) reminded me of a trashy m/m romance cover.

She had to wonder if the m/m equivalent of a 'bodice ripper' was a 'codpiece yanker'.

And so, here you have it:

The Hunter's Tale [947 words, PG13, crack, AU, Sam/Dean, one-sided and/or future Dean/Cas]
A medieval tale of Sam, Dean, and a voyeuristic angel. In which codpieces also feature, and the yanking thereof.

There was once a Hunter yclept Dean, and oh, what a Hunter was he. Well-versed he already was in the Fine Arte of Slaying even before he came to serve as an apprentice under the learned Lord Singer, for his father had taught him well, and young Dean had taken great pride in applying himself as diligently to mastering the intricacies of the dagger and the bow as other young boys his tender age would have their grammar at dame school. Young Dean’s reputation only grew even as his apprenticeship progressed, and by the time his seven years were up, even the busy folk of distant London knew of how many a child of the occult had died cursing Dean’s name. He was fair of face and his hands were quick with any blade. He held his drink well and was a formidable opponent at cards. He also had an impressive codpiece.

Everyone who spoke of Dean spoke too of his codpiece, for it was truly worthy of much speech and praise. Rumor had it that a witch had made it for Dean, shaping it out of cloth blessed specially by a traveling monk and stitching it all together with an enchanted needle. Fair Dean generally agreed with the praises most people sang of his codpiece; he was proud of it, and rightfully so, for many a foe had quailed at the sight of it peeking out from behind the skirts of his jerkin. He took great care in checking its shape every night before he went to bed, stuffing and re-stuffing it every other week with a variety of protective herbs and charms.

Unfortunately, Dean had many cares plaguing his still-young life, chief of which was the strange disappearance of his father, Mad Ol’ John, who, after depositing Dean with Lord Singer, had gone out to avenge his late wife. No one had heard from him since, and so Dean took to travelling the length and breadth of green Britain, seeking out any and all traces of his absent sire. It was on one of his journeys that he met Sam.

Dean was watering his trusty steed, the sleek and black Impala, at a babbling brook, when he chanced upon a dark-haired stranger resting beneath a tree. Dean would later learn that this dark-haired stranger bore the name of Sam, but in the meanwhile, he found his gaze drawn to the stranger’s codpiece, for it was an impressive codpiece indeed. In fact, Dean was most certain that the stranger’s codpiece was bigger than his, and he said as much after calling a friendly greeting.

“It is not much,” said the fellow who, now that he had risen, was clearly much taller than Dean. “It is but a mere piece of linen.”

“That’s impossible,” cried Dean, who knew a thing or two about codpieces. “Surely you jest, good sir, for it is verily huge.”

“Alas,” exclaimed the stranger. His brows were knit in dismay. “In sooth, what you see in size is but my taile, which doth strain against the cloth of my drawers and hose.”

“I hope you forgive me, good sir,” said Dean in his most apologetic manner as he strode forward and knelt before the stranger, “for I have seen much over the course of my long travels, and I have learnt never to simply take a man at his word. I will have to see this for myself.”

Nimble were Dean’s fingers as he undid the knots which fastened Sam’s codpiece to his hose, and trembling were his hands as he yanked the now-detached flap away. Sam began to moan, and it was a while before they spoke again.

“What drives you onto the road, Sam?” asked Dean after they had finally exchanged their names, and more besides.

“I seek vengeance,” sighed Sam, pausing in his study of Dean’s freckles. “I knew a lass in Oxford who died in an unholy fire, and now I hunt for her murderers.”

“I had a brother once,” said Dean contemplatively, for Sam’s thighs were hard beneath Dean’s hands and most worthy of contemplation. “He ran away to Oxford shortly after I began my apprenticeship to join the university.”

“I had a brother too,” murmured Sam. “I left him in the city of Winchester when I ran away to the university in Oxford. I loved him dearly, and I miss him still.”

“How strange,” cried Dean, sitting up and pulling himself out of the circle of Sam’s arms. “For I myself hail from Winchester, and my brother was called Sam.”

“My brother was called Dean,” Sam exclaimed, sitting up too.

They stared at each other in horror. A blackbird sang from its perch amidst the branches of the tree.

“But,” said Sam meaningfully, “Winchester is a big city, and there are many people.”

“Yes,” agreed Dean thoughtfully as he carefully settled himself in Sam’s embrace once more. “You’re probably right.”

Let us speak not about what the startled blackbird saw.

=-=-=

High above in heaven, Castiel, an angel of the Lord, watched the two brothers with great interest. He figured it was never too early to get to know the one whom he would one day have to grip tight and raise from perdition. It was unfortunate that he didn’t know which brother it was to be; specificity had never been the strongest suit of Heaven’s various prophets. He hoped it might be the fairer one, for he liked the look of the fairer one’s face and, impressive as the darker one’s taile might be, he was still more enamored of the former’s codpiece.

Castiel himself didn’t wear a codpiece. He was always fond of a good breeze.

END.

I don't even know if I should crosspost this anywhere.

And now I must return to working on a moot submission. ~~I must write a Good Omens version too. chairman_wow, I'm looking at you.~~

epic The Fat Duck eating adventure is epic indeed.

2010-10-29T13:27:06Z

As some of the f-list probably already know, yesterday found me lunching at Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck. I'm still a bit stunned that I have actually (and finally!) eaten there (3 Michelin stars, best restaurant in the UK, currently the third best in the world etc), but ah well. Exciting eating experiences, hurrah!

It began when ambientlight (J) saw me whine on Twitter last week about how I wanted to go The Fat Duck but couldn't find anyone to go with me. She generously agreed to go with me if I were to go. One thing led to another, and I managed to snag us reservations for 28 October, Thursday, 12 noon. (I suspect this may have been the last slot available for that day.)

28 October dawned as most London mornings do in October - cold, grey, and threatening rain on the horizon. I was running somewhat late, but I still managed to get onto my train to Maidenhead on time. J and I had earlier ascertained that we'd quite possibly be riding on the same train from London to Maidenhead, so what followed next was the somewhat hilarious spectable of J and I sticking our heads out of different carriages and waving down the platform to locate each other. :D;; We got to Maidenhead quickly enough, agreeing en route that the name 'Maidenhead' did sound rather dodgy. From Maidenhead we took a cab into Bray. Amusingly enough, the first thing the driver said to us when we told him that we wanted to get to Bray was: "The Fat Duck?" Guess it's something very many people do. *g*

We got into Bray a little more than half an hour before our reservation, so we took to wandering around instead. We decided against going into the pub in Bray which Blumenthal also owned, explored the bit of village near the restaurant and the the grounds of the village church. We also spied fellow diners milling around outside, exploring the village like we were as they waited for their time. I may have also tried to grab a few snaps of chefs briefly leaving the restaurant premises too. *g*

Outside the restaurant! It has a discreet sign!

The Pre-Meal Bits

12 noon came, and we got in. It's a small restaurant - probably fits 14 tables, I think - and very cosily decorated. We were directed to our table after they took our coats, and given olives (surprisingly nice, given that I'm not actually fond of olives) to munch on. We were also presented with this huuuuuuuuge wine menu (seriously, it's thick), and the general menu which opened accordian-like. (Note: It's a standard taster menu for everyone; the staff just wish to check whether you might have any dietary requirements.) We declined champagne, and chose still water over sparkling. They gave us bread - mine was wonderfully chewy - and unpasteurised Welsh butter which J said tasted surprisingly mild. (I wouldn't know. I rarely eat butter, and as such am no judge of it.)

Quick interior shot.

Thick wine menu is thick!

The olives which were surprisingly tasty. The empty dish is for pits.

The unpasteurised Welsh butter. I did wonder what that black bit of marble was for.

And then, the food -

#1. Lime Grove: Nitro Poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse

Taken of the waiter serving this man near us who'd booked a table for one. (I want to be like this man when I grow up! *_*)
Liquid is poured. Cue much impressive smoke.

L: Squeezing out the bulb for the meringue.
R: Poaching said bulb.

This was the palate cleanser. A trolley was wheeled over to our table. It bore a variety of things, chief of which was this 'steaming' tub of liquid nitrogen. The waiter began by spraying some lime essence into the air above our table. He then squirted a bulb of egg white, lime, and vodka mixture onto a spoon. This bulb was dunked into the liquid nitrogen and 'poached'. It was dusted with powdered green tea before serving. We were instructed to pick it up with our fingers and to eat it immediately.

Conclusion? It was fabulous. The huge burst of lime was tart and refreshing. I didn't really taste the green tea, but I didn't mind as I loved how the lime flavour filled my mouth. The meringue was one of the most delicate of its kind that I'd ever eaten, melting/crumbling rapidly on my tongue. Oh, the bliss. It definitely set the tone for the rest of the meal, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in a heightened state of excitement.

#2. Red Cabbage Gazpacho: Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream

The next dish consisted of a quenelle of savoury, mustard-y ice cream on cold red cabbage gazpacho soup. The ice cream was gorgeous, and the soup even more so. I'm not generally a fan of mustard, but I didn't have an issue with the ice cream at all. The level of mustard-ness was just right for the dish; it was definitely not overpowering, which is my main issue with mustard. (You know how sometimes you have a sandwich, or a sausage in a bun, or a burger, and there's mustard in it, and you can only taste the mustard which, incidentally, is also making your nose run like mad? Yes, that's what I mean when I say Too Much Mustard. J has since suggested my not-minding of the mustard might be because it's grain mustard, not English mustard, the latter being the one which I hate.) The soup was a blend of sweet and lightly vinegar-y. I particuarly liked how there were these tiny cubes of (I think) cucumber beneath the ice cream. They lifted the dish, lending it a refreshing crunch. The entire dish reminded me somewhat of red cabbage coleslaw.

#3. Jelly of Quail, Crayfish Cream: Chicken Liver Parfait, Oak Moss, and Truffle Toast

Much dry ice smoke from pouring water(?) onto the bed of moss. The smoke also gave the air a slight green scent.

Container for a flavoured film.

Note the many and different layers in just this one dish.

Now this - this was the dish which J says made the entire experience for her. While it isn't my absolute favourite of the lot, I still loved it very much, and I was definitely wowed by the amount of detail tha had gone with it, and the number of layers it embodied.

A bed of grass/moss was placed in front of us. On it were two containers, each containing a piece of film, much like the sort you'd use to freshen your breath. We were instructed to put a piece of film on our tongues and to let it dissolve, giving us oaky, earthy flavours. (I think it was supposed to cleanse our palate for this dish too?)

The waiter then poured a liquid onto the bed of grass/moss, the latter of which began to smoke. Dry ice and water, I'm guessing. The entire thing reminded me vaguely of a forest right out of a fairy tale, complete with wisps of white mist and green scents in the air. We were given a piece of truffle toast, and an egg-shaped cup containing the jelly/cream/parfait. We were instructed to use our fingers to pick up the toast, and to alternate bites of toast with spoonfuls of the jelly.

The toast, oh the toast, how I loved it. Crisp, truffle-y, and with tiny slices of (I think) radish, it was absolutely divine. And gone entirely too soon. I kept half of it to finish the end of this course, and I did wish that the slice could have been bigger, because it was so, so, so gorgeous.

And the jelly! This, ladies and gents, was a truly a masterpiece. It had so much going on, and everything came together more or less just right. The jelly itself consited of three layers: a pea puree (green), the quail jelly (dark brown), and the crayfish cream (light cream-brown). The quenelle you see is the chicken liver parfait, which was absolutely, absolutely, absolutely divine. I can't decide which I liked more of this dish - the parfait, or the toast. The parfait rested on a sprinkle tiny (I think) cucumber cubes which lifted the dish even further. I'm not certain what the crisp at the top was made of, but it was sweet, and complemented/brought out the richness of the dish beautifully.

J and I had mixed opinions about this dish. J loved the pea puree, as she felt that it cut the richness ('a bit too rich,' I think she said) of the quail jelly wonderfully. I, on the other hand, didn't like the pea puree, as I found the pea puree itself too rich and its flavour too overpowering, detracting from the flavour of the jelly and making a mouthful with all the layers on it too rich. (I had enjoyed every mouthful of it until I hit the pea puree.) To be fair, however, the layer of pea puree started where the quail jelly was the thickest, so it's possible that I may have gotten my flavours mixed up. I also think it worth noting that I'm incredibly sensitive to this bitterness I swear practically all (green) vegetables have, so my opinion's probably biased and not quite what your average person probably would have had.

#4. Snail Porridge: Jabuyo Ham, Shaved Fennel

Oh my god. This was one of the two dishes I was looking forward to trying. One of the two dishes which prompted me to overcome my inertia and try to get a reservation at The Fat Duck. And, I'm glad to say, I absolutely loved it. Loved. ♥

Amusingly enough, the waiter was, like, "Are you ready?" in this vaguely ominous-sounding voice before he lifted the cover of our bowls and announced the name of our dish with glee. Is the average Brit squeamish about eating snails? Because seriously, I was expecting something much more exciting from the way he told us to prep ourselves. Or maybe I'm just incredibly blase about trying new and/or exciting foods, and may have eaten worse. Incidentally, I also happen to love snails.

Anyway. This dish. THIS DISH. !!!!! It was one of the most gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous things I'd ever tasted. It was warm, creamy, and hearty, with a wonderful mixture of flavours which almost had me weeping with joy. I'm not generally fond of fennel, but the shaved fennel in this dish might just change my mind about it, because it went beautifully with the porridge. There were hints of coriander and mint in the porridge too, and the snails were melt-in-your-mouth lovely with a bit of a bite. I think I understand now why Heston Blumenthal's snail porridge is so famous. Trust me, it's absolutely mind-blowing. I wish it were possible for me to order this a la carte. I'd order a huge bowl of it and eat it all in one sitting. ♥

#5. Roast Foie Gras: Gooseberry, Braised Konbu and Crab Biscuit

A small rectangle of foie gras was placed on a sheet of braised konbu. I can't remember what it was sprinkled on top of the foie gras - J says it was green stuff and possibly sesame seeds - but whatever it was, it was tasty. The foie gras was topped with two 'wings' of crisp crab biscuit, and finished with a streak of gooseberry jam by the side.

I know some people have this thing about not eating foie gras, and I completely respect that. However, for those of us to do, I have to say that I loved this piece of foie gras very much. Prior to this, I'd eaten foie gras of varying qualities and quantities. Some were lovely, some not quite so. Some were overly rich and heavy, some just right. I usualy prefer my foie gras on the lighter side, and tend to depend heavily on whatever jam or conserve is served with the foie gras if the piece I get is overly rich. This, however, was one of the lightest foie gras I'd ever tasted. Its flavour was delicate, and its texture was the sort which just about melted in your mouth. The knobu went remarkably well with the foie gras, as it was somewhat briney in taste, and it gave the entire dish a lovely burst of umami-ness. The crab biscuit only enhanced this, and also provided, along with the still-forgotten topping, an interesting textural contrast. The jam was sweet, but not overly so, and went nicely with the foie gras, though frankly, the foie gras was light enough that I probably wouldn't have minded at all even if there weren't any jam.

Again, J and I had differing opinions. As you can probably tell, I loved everything about this dish. Every bite was the perfect blend of flavours. J, on the other hand, felt that there might have been too many things/flavours going on in that dish. However, she also noted that the immense love she had for foie gras could possibly have led her to prefer something which focused/concentrated more and/or solely on the flavour of the foie gras itself.

#6. Mock Turtle Soup (c. 1850): Mad Hatter Tea

The bookmark! I was so happy we could keep this.

Golden fob watch dissolving in hot water to make 'tea'. Bad picture, sorry.

Soooooo preeeeeeetty! *loves*

This is the other dish which, together with the snail porridge, forced me to overcome my inertia. It's no secret that I'm a Alice in Wonderland geek. I'd first heard about this dish when Heston Blumenthal made it for a Victorian-themed meal on his Fantastic Feasts TV programme, and just watching how he made it, how he presented it, had me falling madly, madly in love. Mock turtle soup is made using the head of a cow. What Blumenthal did was to make the soup, centrifuge it to remove all impurites, concentrate it, and have it frozen in the shape of fob watches that he subsequently coated with edible gold leaf. To serve, his guests were too pour hot water over it, much as one might to make tea, and voila, one had soup again. Doesn't it all just sound so amazing?

Prior to the dish being served, we were given pretty bookmarks featuring a few lines from Alice in Wonderland and a short write-up about the origins of mock turtle soup. As those who know me well will probably expect, just those bookmarks alone had me wriggling in my seat with glee.

Soup-bowl-ish plates were then placed before us. Arranged on it was a mock turtle's egg (in reality turnip mousse for the egg white, swede puree for the egg yolk, and a few tiny and carefully-placed mushrooms for garnishing) and a piece of (I think) veal (I guess it was to be mock turtle meat?). Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to take a picture of it pre-soup. We each also received a tea cup of hot water.

The waiter told us that we'd been invited to the Mad Hatter's tea, and that they had gold watches (presented very prettily in a wooden box) for us. We were then instructed to immerse the watches (or rather, they did the immersing for us) into the hot water, and to give it all a good stir. The watch dissolved, and we poured the soup over the 'egg' and veal. I love how fun this dish was, and the presentation was so, so pretty, especially with the bits of gold leaf swirling about the soup.

Taste-wise, I'm having some mixed feelings about. There were again differing opinions between J and me too. I personally found my first sips of the soup alone far too vinegary, though I have to admit that it grows on you, and it certainly did go well with the 'egg' and the veal. J didn't have this issue with the soup, but commented that it tasted rather Asian-y to her. I didn't find the soup Asian-y - because, well, vinegary; almost like tom yam but without the spice, actually! - but I did find the 'egg' Asian-y in taste. Make of that as you will, I guess? I did like the egg, though, and I really loved the veal. I'm not a fan of red meat, but the veal took me completely by surprise. It didn't that heaviness I usually associated with red meat, and each mouthful was tender and melt-in-your-mouth wonderful. (Yes, I'll be using this adjective a lot in this entry. Now shush.)

As for how it compared to real turtle soup, well... *g* To be fair, the turtle soups I've had before were slightly vinegary too, though not quite as much as the one I had at the restaurant. However, the previous turtle soups I had were also heavily flavoured with Chinese medicinal herbs, so that would have in any case masked some of the sourness. (Believe me, when you have something that's heavily medicinal, you do actually want something tart to cut it.) The veal did taste somewhat like turtle meat, and its texture did feel somewhat like it too, though far more tender, so I guess the Victorians did invent a pretty decent substitution for turtle soup after all!

#7. "Sound of the Sea"

Fabulous idea, this.

The plating brought to my mind the sort of dishes which might be served at a Japanese kaiseki, in which every plate is supposed to tell a story.

Another dish that was presented in a fun way! We were first given huge sea shells that had an apple iPod shuffle (I think? I don't actually own any portable mp3 players, so I'm completely unfamiliar with the various models) playing oceanic sounds. We listened to it as we ate this dish.

Presented on a transparent panel of (I think) glass above a bed of sand, the dish consisted of one line of edible 'sand' made from tapioca and baby eels, and one line of 'sea' foam made from vegetable stock and seaweed. Arranged on the sand were three types of sashimi fish (front to back: kingfish, halibut, mackerel) and seaweed. The entire thing looked a jewel display.

Again, mixed feelings about this dish. I loved the fish and the seaweed. Loved, loved, loved. The fish was sweet and fresh - everything I could wish for in a slice (or three!) of sashimi. I'm not so certain I liked the edible sand and the foam. It was a bit odd. I first had to tell myself that I wasn't eating the garnishing, because seriously, the sand did look like garnishing. The sand was also simultaneously powdery and sticky (when it was mixed with the foam) in a way which didn't quite appeal to me texturally. When we were told after finishing the dish that tapioca had gone into the making of the sand, I immediately had this 'oh, no wonder' moment. That funny mix of powdery and sticky, ladies and gents, is the same reason why I'm not very fond of tapioca (except as cooked tapioca flour pearls in bubble tea).

I also found the 'sand' too salty, and the foam (which J said made the sand more palatable when mixed with it) even saltier. To be fair, however, I rarely add salt/soy sauce to my food, so I'm probably being a tad overly sensitive here to the saltiness of the dish. I noticed J slathering her fish with the sand; I chose not too, because I loved the slices of fish as they were. I did manage to finish most of my 'sand', but I gave what I had left to J.

#8.Salmon Poached in Liquorice: Artichoke, Vanilla Mayonaise and Golden Trout Roe

Oh, be still my heart! Tremble not in the face of this tender, tender salmon! *loves*
Note too just how thin the liquorice layer is.

Oh my sainted aunts. This dish! ♥ I still can't decide if I loved the salmon or the snail porridge more, but either way, they're definitely my two most favourite dishes of all the ones served. The salmon was poached in liquorice, served on a bed of pink grapefruit pips, and topped with a sprinkle of roe. Also present were a couple of pieces of roasted (I guess?) artichoke and dots of gorgeous vanilla (I swear you could smell the vanilla!) mayonaise.

Where, oh where, shall I begin? The salmon was absolutely divine. I think the word 'foodgasm(ic)' may even be applied here, because seriously. Soft and meltingly tender, I don't think I've ever had salmon this delicate before, and believe me, I eat plenty of salmon. (I eat plenty of fish, for that matter. You can take away my meat, but you can never take away my fish/seafood.) I absolutely, absolutely loved it. A tear or two of joy may even have been shed. Oh, the way the salmon wobbled just so on my fork...!! I'm spoilt for life now, guys. Simply spoilt for life. The only thing equally gorgeous is aburi salmon belly sashimi/sushi, but it's still a bit like comparing apples and oranges. They're just different, y'know? So yes. The salmon. I almost feel as though I should compose an ode in honour of it. It was gorgeous.

I was pleasantly surprised by the liquorice. I'm not a fan of liquorice, so I approached the liqourice layer with some amount of trepidation. However, the layer was thin, and its taste was barely noticeable, possibly just a touch sweet. I hardly noticed it at all, and it certainly went very well with the salmon. The roe and the pips both added a beautiful crunch to each bite, not to mention a lovely burst of umami-ness (from the roe) and tartness (from the pips) that was absolutely perfect. J also thought it quite clever how both row and pips had approximately the same texture, and I agreed with her, and thought it even more clever that they matched both in terms of texture/bite and in colour. The artichoke was nice enough as artichokes go (not an artichoke fan in general, sorry; I ate one, and gave the other to J, who didn't mind, so I guess it will be good to artichoke non-haters), and I loved the fragrance of the vanilla mayonaise.

#9. Powdered Anjou Pigeon (c.1720): Blood Pudding, Potted Umbles, Spelt and Pickles

The pigeon.

Umbles! :D

Fond of offal as I am, I was greatly looking forward to this dish. (For what umbles are, and to know where offal comes into play, please see this.) On the plate we had juicy pieces of pigeon, served with blood pudding puree sauce and pieces of pigeon ~~keropok~~ crackling. There was also foam of ingredients I know not of, pickled/caramelised onion, and some other bulb-ish vegetable thing. In the tiny cup were the umbles made from pigeon offal and meat, topped with (I think) a pigeon heart sliced in two and a sprinkle of mildly sweet and very crunchy toasted spelt.

The pigeon was gorgeous, dark and tender and juicy as it was. And the blood pudding? Rich and creamy and perfect. It reminded me a little of the pig's blood jelly I used to eat as a young child every Chinese New Year until it was banned in Singapore for hygiene reasons, actually. The foam was light and pleasing. I gave half my vegetables to J, though, being neither fond of vegetables and pickles. And J let me grab some of her blood pudding sauce, which made me even happier. Yay!

And the umbles, oh the umbles! Rich, divine, and a beautiful mix of textures and flavours. It had some chewy bits in the pudding too, which enhanced the dish further. The sweet and crunchy spelt was a brilliant addition too, I felt, highlighting the richness of the dish and giving it even more bite. J suggested that it might be a touch too rich, and that the tartenss of the pickles greatly helped, but I felt it was just right. Mind, I'm used to giving away vegetables which cooks normally include to cut the richness of dishes, so I probably have a higher tolerance for rich food than the average person. But rich or no, I just have to say that this dish was beautiful. Possibly my third favourite of all the savoury courses, maybe!

#10. Hot and Iced Tea

Another palate cleanser, this was so incredibly fun and mind-blowing. It's a cup of tea that's both hot and cold at the same time. I know right? :D Here's the science behind it, apparently. As mentioned, you tasted both hot and cold tea together. The first sips of the cold part of the tea were a little jelly-like still, and there was more hot at the start, but more cold at the bottom. Earl Grey was one of the components of the tea. I think there might have been lemon in it too, or maybe peach. Something fruity.

#11. Taffety Tart (c. 1660): Caramelized Apple, Fennel, Rose and Candied Lemon

Yay, dessert! That was too pretty to eat, seriously. There's a mille feuille of crisp pastry, caramel, apple, cream, and some tart-tasting fruit jelly like thing at the base. And there's a quenelle of blackcurrant sorbet (I swear it tasted like Ribena) with candied lemon peel, candied rose petals, and, I think, fennel (there was this strong liquorice taste in a couple of bites :/).

The tart was gorgeous, light and airy, and I was very amazed by how strong and tart the flavours of the apple were despite the apple pieces being rather small. The sorbet was refreshing, and I loved the candied petals and peel. No quite as keen on the surprise!liquorice, but that totally didn't detract from the loveliness of the rest of the dish.

#12. The "BFG": Kirsch Ice Cream and the smell of the Black Forest

Note the gleaming gems of cherry jam/puree.

Cross-section. Note the aerated chocolate especially on the right.

Another very lovely dessert! The waiter first sprayed some kirsch essence in the air, to set us in the right mood. The quenelle you see is a kirsch-flavoured ice cream, and goodness was it alcoholic. Bliss, I tell you. Bliss. The trail you see consisted of crumbled chocolate, cherry jam (I think), and, get this, coffe beans. Oh, be still my heart. There was also a sprinkle of coarse sea salt, which I felt lifted the sweetness and milkiness of the ice cream to new heights.

The cake was a black forest cake, but oh, what black forest cake it was! It had so many layers to it. There was mousse. There was sponge cake. There was a praline core. There were kisch-soaked cherries. There were bits of chocolate. And there was an aerated chocolate base, paired with a (I think) somewhat brownie-ish base-base. Lovely loveliness. *happy sigh* The cherry on top of it was also soaked in alcohol (of course!).

Optional Cheese Course

Cheese.

Biscuits. I especially liked the darkest.

We opted to share an optional cheese course, which cost £15. A trolley came along with a variety of cheese, and we were allowed to pick 5. The waiter was more than glad to give suggestions. The five we picked in suggested eating order (based on strength), were (with much help remembering from J), clockwise from two o'clock in the picture above: a brie-style soft cheese which might have been from Wales, a goat's cheese (the round one) from Sussex, a hard cheese, a blue cheese (which was too strong for J, too tart for me), and a washed-rind one which was apparently seasonal. We were offered a choice between biscuits and bread. We went for the former.

We also declined (optional) tea/coffee.

#13. Whisk(e)y Wine Gums

As the name suggests. We were presented with a framed map, with whisk(e) wine gums stuck to the various areas which made the whisk(e)y they were purportedly made with. We were given a suggested tasting order too. Incidentally, the law student in me was very, very amused by the way they spelt 'whisk(e)y'. Oh, the cases fought in court about whisk(e)y terminology... *g*

Incidentally, this was yet another amazing, mind-blowing, and incredibly fun dish, and possibly my favourite of the desserts. It definitely brought me back to the whisky-tasting lesson I had in Edinbrugh some time ago. Know how whisk(e)ys are supposed to taste of where they're from? Yup, these totally did. Speyside's (1) was light, fresh, and had a hint of fruit. The one from the West Highlands (2) was a touch mellower, and I felt that it had a slightly floral note to it. Orkney's (3) was somewhat ocean-y, a bit of salt air and possibly seaweed. Islay's (4) was smokey, reminiscent of peat bogs. Interestingly enough, J mentioned something along the lines of how the last, the one from the US (Jack Daniels, ahahaha), was not quite as 'challenging'. Which makes sense, I think, since I've always found whiskey blends to be of less singular a character than single malts, but there you go. I also found it interesting how we were also told to eat the gums in the same order I remember tasting whiskies in Edinbrugh - lightest single-malt first, heaviest single-malt last, and a blend to wrap it up. The gums were incredibly soft and incredibly flavourful. They also melted on my tongue, just like that. Oh, gorgeousness. *happy sigh*

#14. "Like a Kid in a Sweet Shop"

Inside the bag!

Another impressive dessert! We were given a pink-striped bag with various sweets in it, and a scented (it was supposed to smell like the interior of a sweet shop!) list of said sweets.

The sweets were:

Aerated Chocolate: Mandarin Jelly

Aerated chocolate (think Aero chocolates) topped with a mandarin orange jelly before the whole affair was coated in chocolate. Delicious.

Coconut Baccy: Coconut Shreds Infused with an Aroma of Black Cavendish Tobacco

(Bad picture, sorry. But you get the idea.)

The strips of coconut were wrapped up in a brilliant imitation of a tobacco pouch, and i must admit that the strips themselves did look vaguely like tobacco leaves too!

Apple Pie Caramel with an Edible Wrapper (no need to unwrap)

Very apple pie-ish, I have to admit! And very cute too.

The Queen of Hearts: She Made Some Tarts...

Note the berry jam inside.

Oh man, this one. Possibly the best. It came in an envelop, sealed with what looked like a red wax seal with the logo of the restaurant pressed into the wax (or was it? dundunDUN!). The card itself was incredibly, incredibly pretty, printed on both sides (!!) of a piece of white chocolate. Inside the chocolate was a strawberry (I think - I felt some strawberry-ish effects after the meal; though I've been feeling somewhat poorly recently too, so it might have been that instead) filling. It was gone too soon... when I noticed that the 'wax' was melting where it was on the envelope. There were red smears on the plate and on my fingers. And remembering just how much Blumenthal is reputed to like messing with the minds of his diners, I ventured to suggest that the wax might not be wax after all, and actually be edible.

And so, with more than a little trepidation, J tasted a bit of 'wax' which had broken off... and anounced that it was white chocolate (dyed red)! Which led to us licking the 'wax' of the envelopes. By then the 'wax' was gooey, and to be honest, it reminded me vaguely of eating lipstick. Not that I've ever eaten lipstick before, but with that colour and that texture... *g* But yes. Definitely not real wax. *nods* J has since told me that she cannot find any other account mentioning the wax used on the envelopes, so either we were just a little more observant than most other diners (because J and I, too, were fooled, until I got annoyed with how the red smears were getting every-bloody-where), or the seals weren't actually meant for eating, even if they had not been made of wax (in which case, oops).

Conclusion

We were given a copy of the menu to keep. It's sealed with a black wax seal that has the logo of the restaurant - and yes, I'm pretty sure this one's of wax - and, get this, the envelope's velvety to touch! Cue much squee on my part. Yay.

All in all, the taster menu had cost us £150 per person, not including service. We took 4.5 hours to work our way through everything. I ordered a glass of Austrian white wine ("Gruner Veltliner, Kamptaler Terrasen, Weingut Brundlmayer" said the menu) which was absolutely gorgeous: slightly sweet, slightly fruity, and definitely the kind which goes down well. I'm now determined to get a bottle of this for myself. J had a glass of Tokaji to go with her dessert/cheese. The staff of the restaurant offered to call a cab for us too, which was awfully nice of them (or maybe they were just used to tourists needing cabs after their meals *g*).

I'll just round up by saying that eating there was one of the most incredible experiences in my life. And totally worth my bank accounting hating me, and possibly my eating cheaply for the next month or so too. I've been grinning all day since the meal, and making entirely random noises of glee.

With many a thanks to J for being willing to join me in my madness!

a special thank you, and cookies

2010-10-14T00:03:23Z

A little belated, but I really wish to say a massive, massive thank you to all the wonderful, wonderful people who wished me a happy birthday over the weekend just gone. Thank you for your wishes on LJ, FB, Twitter, by e-mail, over the phone, in person; for your wonderful presents; and for being the fantastic people I know you guys are.

I also particularly want to thank the fabulous ladies who were with me at Winster over the weekend. I ♥ you ladies, I really do. *hugs everyone very, very hard*

Here, have some chocolate chip, rum and raisin cookie/shortbread things:

Thank you! ♥

Remember how I'm always in awe of people who bake, because I just don't get along well with ovens?

After the swiss roll cake which wouldn't rise, the garibaldi biscuits that were overly crisp, and the rabbit manju that came out hard and crumbly and cookie-like, here's the latest exhibit proving why I just. cannot. bake. *g*

These cookies were made using night_child80's recipe, but with a few modifications. I replaced the vanilla essence with rum flavouring, and switched half the chocolate chips with raisins. More importantly - and this, I suspect, is where I went wrong - I soaked the raisins for a bit in a mixture of water and rum.

The result? They went into the oven looking like normal pre-baking cookies. They came out of the oven looking like, well, this.

I suspect I may have amused many people with my Twitter freak-out. :D;;

I've now taken to calling them shortbread squares instead. *g* On the bright side, they still taste quite good. I can't really taste the rum (boo), but they're sweet and crumbly and (possibly just a little too much, but I tend to keep my cookie-consumption to a minimum anyway because of the butter I know is involved and am consequently somewhat skewed in my perception) buttery.

Just for fun - today's breakfast/lunch:

I believe some might recognise the mug. *g* (That's Twinning's green tea & mango in it. I can't make my mind up about this tea. It smells wonderful, but it's awfully weak. I prefer my green tea stronger.)

And for those who made it to the end of this post:

♥ ♥ ♥

Daring Cooks: Stuffed Leaves (October 2010)

2010-10-13T23:09:46Z

Seeing as how it's past midnight on the 14th and all...

Stuffed Leaves Served Two Ways

This month's challenge, hosted by Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, was to stuff/roll grape leaves. The mandatory bits were to make your own filling, and to stuff (grape, though variations were allowed) leaves.

Alas, I was unable to find grape leaves. My initial plan was to use napa cabbage instead, as I'd been told that grape leaves were rather similar texture-wise with napa cabbage leaves, and that grape leaves were essentially rather tasteless (I've always found napa cabbage rather tasteless too). Unfortunately, the napa cabbage I found was much too small to do decent wrap parcels... but! there was a discount on savoy cabbage, and I was quite taken by how huge and textured the leaves were, so I ended up settling on the savoy cabbage instead.

Prior to using the savoy cabbage leaves, I cut out the thickest part of the vein, at the base, sort of like a triangular thing at the bottom of the leaf, if that makes sense. I then blanched the leaves individually for a handful of seconds in boiling water to soften them.

Left: Two fillings for use. (bottom: meat; top: vegetarian)
Centre: Rolling the filling into the leave. You can see a completed one in the background.
Right: Completed rolls ready for cooking.

We were given two filling choices, one meat, and one vegetarian. Neither of them particularly appealed, though - I don't like beef, and I didn't have all the ingredients, particularly the spices, required for them - so I decided to do my own, using the basic idea the ingredient lists presented (rice + middle eastern-ish spices).

I did two types of fillings, one meat, and one vegetarian. (You can see a clearer picture of them here.) Both used the same basic filling: long-grain jasmine rice that had been soaked for a bit in hot water, minced mushrooms, diced red bell pepper, diced onion, raisins, pine nuts, crumbled feta (my brief nod to the link the challenge had with Greek cuisine), ground cinnamon, ground paprika, pepper, and a dash or three of light soy sauce. The meat one had extra raisins added (the better to cut the meatiness), some shredded fresh mint, and minced pork seasoned with cumin, paprika, and pepper.

To cook, I sweated the rolls in oil for a bit, then added a few good squeezes of lemon juice and just enough water to cover the rolls by the top segment of my index finger (much as I would do if cooking rice, which this essentially was, really) before letting the rolls simmer for about an hour. It was suggested that we add dried apricots, and possibly tamarind, to the simmering liquid for extra flavour, but I chose to forego them.

I served the meatless rolls with a Moroccan-inspired meatball dish with bonus egg.

(Here's another version of the picture on the left that's been lit differently and, arguably, more regularly. I've recently grown rather taken with sort-of back-lit subjects in photographs, but I suspect it's probably not the best kind of lighting for food photographs. Which version does everyone prefer?)

While the ones with meat were served with a healthy dollop of Greek yoghurt and a sprinkling of toasted ground paprika.

(It's not the most inspiring of things to take pictures of. Sorry.)

Here's a cross-section of the meatless version:

I don't know if the savoy cabbage actually worked, because I couldn't bring myself to eat the leaves. (I hate cabbage, and they were very cabbage-ish. ._.) The fillings, on the other hand, were incredibly delicious, so hurrah for that. I probably will give this a try again should I ever get my hands on some grape leaves.

In the meanwhile, I still have half a head of savoy cabbage to dispose of. Oh dear. *g*

Blog-checking lines: Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Daring Cooks: Pierogi (August 2010)

2010-08-14T05:06:17Z

Another Daring Cooks post, hurrah. Which I appear to be doing once every two months now, instead of monthly. Ah well. *headdesk*

Anyway! This month's was pierogi. I'd never heard of pierogi before prior to this challenge, and was as such rather eager to try my hand at it.

Pierogi

The challenge was essentially to make the dough and filling from scratch. We were encouraged to go wild with the filling - sweet, savoury, something that reflects your local cuisine... I confess that I'd started off with many Grand Plans. Different fillings! Different doughs! Different ways of serving! Then their labour-intensive nature caught up with me, and I ended up only doing one type. *wilts* Ah well!

Right! Best I could figure out, the pierogi is something like a western version of the Chinese jiao zi, only with a slightly different dough, with a rather different filling, and a considerably different way of sealing and thus shape.

We were provided recipes for two kinds of dough.

Dough #1
½ cup (125 ml) milk (can be whole milk, 2% or skim milk)
½ cup (125 ml) whipping cream
3 large egg whites
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
3 cups (450 gm) all-purpose flour

Dough#2
2 to 2 1/2 cups (300 to 375 g) all-purpose (plain) flour
1 large egg
1 teaspoon (5 ml) salt
About 1 cup (250 ml) lukewarm water

I went with the latter, which reminded me vaguely of how I'd make pasta dough, only with twice as much flour in proportion and no olive oil. I'd like to try the first one some day - the potential richness of the milk and cream had put me off, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that it'd probably make a lovely skin for a sweet dessert dumpling.

Fun fact: While making the dough, I ran out of flour (the dough at that point in time was, quite literally, pasta dough sans oil, down to the colour of it), and had to run out to buy a new bag. Thank goodness for living an approximately 7min walk away from a supermarket. *headdesk*

So!

Some days before I made the pierogi, I asked my f-list about their pierogi-eating experiences, the better to figure out what an 'authentic pierogi filling' was, to find out how pierogi were normally served, and to hopefully be inspired.

In the end, I went with a filling of mashed potatoes mixed with onions, mushrooms and ham that'd been been browned and softened/crisped (depending on their nature *g*) in a pan. To this I also added shredded red cheddar and mozerella. [top picture]

I cut the circles with a cup, as I was given to understand is the 'traditional' way of making pierogi. *g* The edges are a little funny, because I stretched them a little before piling on the filling, so that there'd be thinner edges when they were sealed.

After sealing them, I decorated the edges with a fork, in a bid to mimic how it might have turned out if I had used a handy pierogi mould (mold?). [bottom picture]

I served them two ways. The first was by boiling, which was really nice.

They were dished with broccoli, cheesy German bratwurst, and sour cream.

Another fun fact: I may have broken a knife whilst cutting a sausage, taking out an electric fan in the process by dint of Flying Metal Blade.

The second was by pan-frying after boiling. This became my preferred means of serving them. They were glorious, the skin crip (or tasting like roti prata, as my sister commented) and the filling hot, a perfect contrast to the cool creaminess of the sour cream. I ate it with chilli sauce too (this fabulous one they serve at this stall on Syed Alwi Road in Singapore with Hakka beefball beehoon, a dish which is itself very lovely), the spiciness cutting through any grease and adding a whole new dimension to the already-wonderful ball of flavours and textures. *happy sigh*

And here's a shoddy attempt at a cross-section:

Fun fact the third: Holding something up in chopsticks with your right hand while trying to take pictures with your camera balanced in your left hand without shaking when you're right-handed is really, really, really bloody hard.

I'd definitely like to make these dumplings again, with different fillings (and different skin(s)) even. Defintely once with dried or drained cottage cheese, which I've been given to understand is the traditional cheese for pierogi. They were a delicious and fun mix between jiao zi and stuffed pasta, two things I already adore very much. They're most certainly worth the effort, though with the time involved and the mess which will result regardless of how hard I tried to keep things neat (I'm not a very neat cook, I must admit, especially when flour and doughs are involved!), I suspect this will probably be more of a 'special occasions' kind of thing.

My thanks to this month's hosts, LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen, for giving us such a fun challenge!

Blog-checking lines: The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

two things to do with taro

2010-08-02T12:45:27Z

Or yam, if you're Singaporean. The different uses of the term 'yam' confuzzle me. Just so we're clear - THIS is what I mean by taro/yam.

For Celeste, who wanted the recipes. I'm so sorry I kept forgetting, hon. I'll try to get the cupcake pictures done over the next few days.

They're both recipes I developed, so the usual might-not-be-of-cookbook-certainty disclaimer applies. However, I think I've made them often enough that I can guarantee that they should in all likelihood work, and I have it on good authority from the people I've fed it too that they're good, so hopefully that'll be reassurance enough.

#1. Baked Yam Ring

This is a Singaporean Chinese dish. It's supposed to have some sort celebratory connotation to it - the ring itself, when cooked, is supposed to be this wonderful golden colour, signifying gold or wealth, and filling the ring with as much food as possible symbolises abundance. Whatever. I just like to eat it. *g* The ring itself is normally deep-fried, and accompanied with deep-fried rice vermicelli puffs. This is my 'healthier' take on it.

Need:
- 250-300g taro, peeled and finely sliced
- approx. 3 level tbsp of wheat starch flour
- 0.5 tbsp of sugar
- 0.5 tbsp of salt
- 0.5 tbsp of Chinese 5 spice powder
- 1 tbsp of (olive) oil + quite a bit of extra for brushing

Should serve 4 to 6.

1. Steam the peeled and finely-sliced taro until soft, approximately 15 min. Let cool.

2. Once the taro has cooled just enough for you to handle it (it should still be warm/hot, not cold!), begin mashing. To it, add all the other seasonings and such, mixing well until you have a smooth-but-a-little-lumpy-and-slightly-dry-but-not-crumbly dough. Depending on how wet or dry it is, you may have to add a little more flour or oil/water.

3. Start pre-heating your oven at 200 to 220 deg C. On a greased baking tray, plop your dough down and begin patting your ring into shape. (I'm always very fond of this bit.)

4. Brush your ring with oil. The more oil you use, the more golden your ring will probably turn out.

5. Stick your ring in the oven until it's golden. This should take about 30 to 40 min. If you don't find it getting as gold as you'd like, brush more oil onto it and keep it in the oven a little longer.

(5a. Alternatively, be authentic and deep-fry the ring. Use one of those massive seive things to lower it into the oil. Or punch some holes into the base of a disposable baking tin/dish/tray thing, and use it to lower the ring into the oil. In this case, deep-fry it until it's golden and crispy. You may want to stick the ring in the fridge for a bit first, for its shape to harden, before you fry it.)

6. While it's baking, begin preparing your stir-fry of choice. Preferably with cashews involved, but that's really a matter of taste. Make sure your stir-fry isn't too wet. When the ring's done, pour the stir-fry into the centre, and serve.

#2. Abacus Seeds

Abacus seeds (or beads) is a Hakka dish. The Hakka/Khek are a Chinese dialect group (and incidentally, if we're going by blood, also my predominant dialect group). These seeds have a very distinctive shape, as you can probably see from the picture. They're supposed to symbolise wealth (abacus --> abacus seeds --> counting money --> wealth, apparently). It's actually rather amazing just how many celebratory dishes the Chinese have to symbolise wealth and such, now that I think about it.

Need:
- 200-250g taro, peeled and thinly sliced
- approx. 200g tapioca flour *
- 1 tbsp of light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp of oil
- (optional) a couple of good shakes of white pepper and/or Chinese 5 spice

Serves about 4 to 6.

* A note about the flour: To be honest, it's really hard to know before hand just how much tapioca flour you're going to need. Much of it is going to depend on various things, e.g. how wet your yam is after steaming. The whole point of it is to achieve a balance between fragrance and bite. The more taro there is, the more fragrant it will be, and the more flour there is, the chewier it will be. If you want to stick with something safe, just use a weight ratio of 1:1. However, I prefer to start with a taro:flour ratio of either 2:1 or 3:2, depending on how damp the taro looks/feels, and slowly work my way up if necessary (which it sometimes isn't) until the dough feels right.

1. Steam the peeled and thinly sliced taro until soft, about 15 min. Let cool.

2. Once the taro has cooled just enough for you to handle it (it should still be warm/hot, not cold!), begin mashing. To it, add the flour, soy sauce, and oil, and spices if using, and keep mixing/kneading until you have smooth and somewhat soft and vaguely elastic dough.

3. Begin shaping the seeds. Pinch out a bit of dough, roll/flatten it into a disc, and press your forefinger and thumb into either side such that a bi-concave shape is obtained (something like how a red blood cell is supposed to look, if you will; or, you know, an abacus seed). OR Roll out the dough into long strips, and begin slicing them into thick slices/discs, before finally doing the bi-concave thing with each disc.

4. Cook the seeds in a pot of boiling water until they're done, i.e. they start floating. Fish them out and, if you want, dunk them immediately into cold water to give them a bit more bounce/chew/bite. You don't have to, though, if you're feeling lazy (which I sometimes am). Drain, and set aside. You might want to drizzle in a bit of oil to prevent the seeds from sticking to one another. You may now use the seeds in a stir-fry.

The seeds are usually stir-fried with a mix of minced stuff that have a bit of a crunch to them, the better to contrast with the chewiness of the seeds. The usual stir-fry combination will often include dried shrimp (soaked until softened), dried black Jew's ear fungus (soaked until softened and finely diced), minced pork, minced garlic (duh), chopped spring onion. Also consider stuff like mushrooms, cuttlefish, coriander, even chilli if you like things spicy... it's all up to you, really!

And, if you like, here's a third thing you can do with taro.

opinion needed!

2010-07-24T18:48:13Z

Making this a quick one, because I kinda need to make a decision of sorts in about 7 hours.

View Poll: cameras!

And to those who answered the dSLR question - why?

The general impression I get is that Nikons have better amateur lenses (18-200mm VR, anyone?), and personally, I like their chunkier bodies, because I like my cameras chunky, even if it makes it a pain to cart around/hold up without shaking for pro-longed periods. However, Canon does have better image quality, and I believe most of my friends in Singapore use Canon dSLRs (but those I know in the UK use Nikon dSLRs - perhaps it's partly a geographical trend?), so hm!

And there's also whether I want to get a bigger and better camera, as I've always wanted, or to get a smaller (but still better) camera (Olympus PEN EP-1! So, so much love!), that I've often toyed with the idea of having too, because heavy cameras can be terribly inconvenient and painful on the neck/shoulders at times. Though it'd mean a lot more saving. Hm.

SPN/J2 BB: Here Burns a Candle Out

2010-07-20T22:35:04Z

Fic title: Here Burns a Candle Out
Author name: erushi
Artist name: peach_gurl
Genre: RPS AU
Pairing: Jared/Jensen, past JDM/Jensen
Rating: R
Word count: 24,600
Warnings/Spoilers: Minor character death which happens before the events of the fic.

Summary: WWI steampunk AU. Aeronaut and part-time spy Jensen Ackles has every intention of leaving the spy service after his last job in Europe during the Great War ends poorly. Instead, he finds himself sent to a resort outside the city to recuperate, where he meets Jared, an eccentric ghost hunter who is determined to unlock the secrets of a nearby haunted house. Unfortunately for Jensen, things at the resort aren't quite what they seem, and when matters take a sinister turn, Jensen discovers just how impossible it is for anyone to truly ever leave the world of espionage.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

peach_gurl's gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous art ♥

PDF with art embedded.

Notes, Thanks & Acknowledgements

Notes, Thanks & Acknowledgements

2010-07-20T22:25:26Z

Oh my god, it's finally done. I think I'm still in shock.

This fic would never have been completed without the following people:

♥ ambientlight and ariesdraco, who agreed to beta for me despite their busy schedules and their not being in the fandom, who offered me invaluable advice, who put up with my inability to keep to self-imposed deadlines, and who even patiently listened to me whine in real time when the going got tough. Thank you so much, my dears. Drinks are on me the next time we meet. ♥ ♥ ♥

♥ mikes_grrl, who very kindly agreed to Ameri-pick for me and consequently had to put up with all my last-minute questions about the US, and who offered me brilliant feedback (in between making me laugh *g*). Thank you!

♥ My artist, peach_gurl, whose art is so, so, so darned gorgeous. I still can't get over how gorgeous the pieces she did for me are. Go give her love!

♥ mikes_grrl, elanorelle and ambientlight, who volunteered to read (or was coerced into reading *g*) the very first few bits I had written for this fic, months and months ago, and who somehow managed to convince me to keep going even though I was fully convinced that everything I had written thus far was rubbish and that I'd be better throwing in the towel. When I say that this fic wouldn't have been written without you, I mean it quite literally! :)

♥ squeeful, who I swear is a one-woman walking encyclopedia of all things historical. Thank you so much for being ever so generous and patient!

♥ My wonderful f-list, for their support and encouragement, even though most of them aren't even in the fandom. I know I'm not the easiest person to have around on LJ when I'm panicking about a writing deadline, so thank you for putting up with me! And a special shout-out to those who replied to these two entries - your comments were of massive help in the plotting off the fic!

♥ The fabulous people over at little_details, who answered many of my history-ish questions.

♥ thehighwaywoman and wendy, who organised the spn_j2_bigbang. This is my first time participating in the challenge, and I enjoyed every moment of it. Thank you for making it such a welcoming challenge!

I wish I could claim credit for the arbor device used in the fic, but I can't. It's actually lovingly borrowed from John Dickson Carr's fabulous short story, Strictly Diplomatic. No commercial profit is being made from this use, and no copyright infringement is intended!

Here Burns a Candle Out masterpost

Daring Cooks: Pate and Bread (June 2010)

2010-07-05T00:44:25Z

Oh man. I'm posting this so, so late. 3 weeks after it should have gone up, in fact, nevermind that I'd actually completed the actual challenge more than a month ago. I plead a busy schedule. Anyway!

Seafood Pate and Multigrain Bread Rolls

The full challenge, complete with recipes and such, may be found here.

I confess I went into this challenge feeling rather anxious. I've never been overly fond of pate; most of the ones I've encountered tend to be overly rich and far, far too seasoned, which, well. Yech. (Maybe I've only had bad pate so far.) And baking my own bread! Yikes! The very concept of baking (doughs, batters, ovens, oh my!) and me never go hand in hand. And since I'd conveniently managed to miss the previous DC challenges which too required the baking of breads...

The Bread

Right. Bread first. I cheated, and went with a pre-mixed flour and multigrain thing bought from Sainsbury's. Partly because I didn't want to go through the expense of buying more bread flour and yeast than I'd ever need or use, but yes. I did use a different method from that on the back of the packet, though - kneading and resting times etc were somewhat similar to those listed for the bread rolls in the provided recipe list - and I used milk instead of water, which (I think) made it much richer and possibly a little cake-ish than it ought to have been. Still, they came out well. I think.

They also came out with a bit of an identity crisis. Poor bread rolls which thought they were muffins. (I have no idea why I did that funky cross thing on top. It seemed like a good idea at that time, but they looked bloody ridiculous when they came out of the oven.)

The Pate

We were given a choice between four kinds of pate. I went with the seafood one, because a) I like seafood, b) I didn't think it'd be as rich as the meatier ones, and c) I don't like vegetables much. Deal.

Variations:
- I used proportionately more prawn and trout in the pate than was called for, and, consequently, used less cream. (I can't remember the exact proportions, but I'd say close to 300g prawn and 300g trout.)
- Light single cream instead of heavy double cream.
- Plenty of chopped dill for an extra bit of flavour.
- I skipped the flambe bit because I didn't feel confident enough to handle it (I'm paranoid about melting the non-stick on the pan, alright?), and settled instead for adding a dash of Japanese sake to the prawns when stir-frying them.

The set-up (note the handheld blender thing. oh, my arms.):

Arranging it before it goes into the water bath and into the oven:

And after the oven - note how the sides of the pate have drawn away from the tin; there was also plenty of liquid which had been drawn out, and the final volume of the pate was at most 75% of the original:

And it's done!

To be honest, I wasn't incredibly sold on the pate at first. The first taste upon taking it out of the oven had me convinced that I'd added too much dill. It tasted, well, harsh, for want of a better word. Strong dill-ness - too strong, in fact - interspaced with bland-bland-bland powdery fishy paste (perhaps I should have added more pepper?).

My opinion changed, however, after I'd let it keep overnight. The sharpness of the dill had faded, and the flavours had (finally!) begun to blend beautifully. I had anappletree over for lunch that next day, and kuuumo for dinner the day after, and I was given to understand that they both liked the pate very much, so I guess it was a success after all. Yay.

Blog-checking lines: Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

in which she leaves a recipe for duck

2010-07-01T03:38:40Z

For the wonderful Celeste, who asked for the recipe:

#1. Some time last month, I decided to embrace my inner sheep, and leapt onto the Tumblr wagon. Since then, my Tumblr appears to have degenerated into a sporadic sort-of "I cooked/ate this" log. I'll be moving most of the non-Daring Cooks food posts there now. Just a note.

#2. hopei stayed over two nights ago, and got fed duck braised in orange juice infused with aromatics and spices, served with oven-crisped smashed potatoes and sauteed asparagus tips.

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that there's been some interest in the duck. I suspect it's because it just sounds vaguely exotic. Anyway! I'm actually very proud of this duck recipe. I thought it up ages ago, in one of my more random moods, and I now usually whip it up whenever there's a need to impress. *g*

The usual disclaimer re: how absolutely rubbish I am at giving exact quantities applies. Exercise common sense, and just go with whatever feels right. I usually do.

Ingredients:

- your duck of choice
- 1 regular carton of orange juice (you probably won't need to use all of it)
- 2 to 4 star anise
- 6 to 14 cloves
- 1 to 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
- 1/4 to 1/2 onion, peeled and roughly cut in large chunks and bruised (can be substituted with a shallot)
- 1 to 2 stalks of lemon grass, cut into large segments and bruised
- pepper
- fish sauce (can be substiuted with light soy sauce)
- sugar
- optional, to give the dish more of a kick if you want: ginger, chilli

Notes:

- Obviously, the amount of spices to be used will depend on the amount of orange juice you see yourself using, which would in turn depend on the kind of duck.
- I usually work on a ratio of 1 star anise to 3 to 4 cloves.
- By all means substitute fish sauce with light soy sauce. However, the flavour will definitely be somewhat different. Soy sauce is on the whole stronger in taste and saltier, so please use it with a lighter hand than you would with fish sauce. Also, light soy sauce. Light. Dark soy sauce will you a very, very, very dark (and, I feel, unattractive) sauce. You'll also need to use more (if you choose to go down the dark soy sauce route) as it's generally not as salty as its lighter counterpart, and often has slightly caramel-ish sweet notes to it.

The steps:

1. Clean the duck etc. Rub pepper into it and let stand for a bit. If you're using a whole duck/duck crown/some cut of duck where the rib cage is intact (you know what I mean!), lightly score the skin as well with a knife. Skip the scoring if using duck legs, or if the duck body has already been chopped into smaller pieces. If using a whole duck, consider stuffing the cavity with things like orange peel, garlic, even pandan leaves...

2. In an oiled pan on high heat, brown the duck on all sides. Remove now-browned duck and set aside. Drain all but approx 1 tbsp of the duck fat/oil you'll now find collected in your pot. (Duck fat is brilliant stuff. Use it for other things, like roast potatoes. Mmmm.)

3. Return the same pot to (high) heat. Toss in the garlic, onion, lemongrass, star anise and cloves (and ginger and chilli if using) and fry until fragant (for the spices) and golden-brown or even vaguely charred (for the aromatics).

4. Return the duck to the pot (with the spices and aromatics still in it), and add enough orange juice such that it reaches approximately 1/2 to 3/4 way up the duck. Cover, and once it starts to boil, turn the heat down and let it simmer until the duck is cooked, which, depending on the cut of duck used, can take anywhere from 20 or 30 minutes to an hour. Remember to turn the pieces over halfway through.

5. (optional, but highly recommended) While waiting for the duck to cook, pre-heat an oven. When the duck's done, remove it from the pot and pop it into the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes at about 200 deg C to crisp up. Remove the duck from the oven, and let it rest for at least 15 minutes, preferably (again depending on the cut of the duck) closer to 30 minutes.

6. Once the duck is done and has been removed from the pot, strain the orange juice to remove all the spices and such. Place the orange juice on high heat, season to taste with fish sauce, sugar, and pepper, and vigorously boil it down into a sauce of desired consistency. If you're lazy/impatient, by all means use a corn flour slurry to speed up the thickening process.

To serve:

Carve the duck up if necessary. Serve with the sauce on the side, drizzled over, however way you think appropriate for the cut of duck used.

in which she speculates about SPN 5.18

2010-04-16T20:30:11Z

Right. Just had my 6th watch of it, and...

I was just kinda thinking:

Dean had said yes to Michael and had meant it at that time, even though we're led to think that he decides against it by the end of the episode.

Dean tells Zachariah that Michael can't have Dean until Michael kills Zachariah. Then Dean kills Zachariah. And, well. Didn't Uriel say in s4 that only angels could kill angels?

Then! Dean's eyes have this strange glow to them after he kills Zachariah. I mean, they actually bothered making a point of it, with full camera shot and all.

So... DOES THIS MEAN DEAN IS ALREADY PLAYING HOST TO MICHAEL? OMG. OMFG.

Even that wink, that wink which made me a puddle of Wincest-shipping fangirl, looks ominous now. Because it's no longer Dean telling Sam that he's got his back, but more like, Dean/Michael has something up his sleeve. Or something in Dean. Or... Gah.

Someone convince me otherwise? Please? Pretty please?

Daring Cooks: Brunswick Stew (April 2010)

2010-04-14T06:36:52Z

Obligatory monthly DC post, yay. Which will probably be kept as short as possible on account of my feeling antsy about a myriad of things and this really bloody awful headache I'm currently having. Yes, I'm being grumbly, I know.

Anyway, this month's is (was?) Brunswick stew, as determined by Wolf. (Thanks for hosting, hon!) Which is vaguely happy-making, since I've always wanted to try American southern cooking. Though the fact that I had to cook it probably counts against the trying-new-food experience some. Erm.

Brunswick Stew

We were given a choice of two recipes, the first supposedly more traditional, the second faster. Both recipes may be found here (I say lazily). I went with the first.

Which called for, amongst other things, rabbit. Which I couldn't find. Such is life, one supposes.

Here, have the obligatory spoon-standing-in-stew shot:

(Apparently, it's supposed to, on account of the stew being very thick or something. Still. Hurrah for standing spoons!)

I stuck pretty close to the ingredient list of the recipe, since I'm a rather uncreative bint as far as stew-making is concerned, and I wanted it as 'authentic' as possible.

Variations used:

- Shallots were used instead of red onions, and fried/toasted at the very beginning with the chilli.

- Garlic was added too at the aromatics-frying stage above.

- Fresh red chillis were used instead of their dried cousins, since I had the former and couldn't be arsed to get the latter.

- Brunswick ham was used instead of bacon. (Couldn't resist the pun, sorry. And I dislike bacon.)

- Turkey was used instead of rabbit. Figured this was the closest I could get. And duck was too costly.

- Deglazed the pan with wine. Stew should always have a touch of wine, imho.

- I kept the ~~bacon~~ ham and the celery in because I didn't want to waste it. Yes, this from the girl who doesn't like celery. But it had lost its taste by the end, so I wasn't too fussed.

- Extra stew ingredients: chesnut mushrooms, spring onions

- Extra herbs/spices: fresh rosemary and thyme towards the end, fresh chopped parsley to serve

- Stock used was the same one I made for last month's challenge.

- Chinese black malt vinegar instead of red wine vinegar, which I didn't have. Plus, I've always liked the mellowness of the former.

Speaking of which, am I the only one who preferred it without the lemon and the vinegar? Hm.

Click the picture if you want to see it bigger, or something. Though heaven knows why people would want it so.

Anyway, pretty much loved this stew. It's a gorgeous blend of flavours. (Since I'm pretty sure there're people from the American South on my f-list, I'm actually wondering - how close is the recipe(s) given to what you know of Brunswick stew? *is curious*)

Blog-checking lines: The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

Pros Fic: Of 6 Things which Happened In and Around Kitchens, and 2 Things which Technically Didn't

2010-03-27T21:49:01Z

This fic's a very, very, very belated help_haiti fic, written for sc_fossil, who honestly deserves to be nominated for sainthood after all her patience. I hope you like it, K - I sort-of took your prompt and ran away with it.

Of Six Things which Happened In and Around Kitchens, and Two Things which Technically Didn't
(Pros, Bodie/Doyle, NC-17, 2,274 words)

Original prompt: Doyle cooks Bodie an extra special spiffy expensive meal because he's decided that he needs to tell Bodie he loves him and he wants to soften him up first. Bodie's already figured it out, but he's decided that it would be more fun to take the piss with Doyle for just a bit before he has his appetites satisfied.

The new kitchen is a collection of dirty whites and greys. It has tired-looking cupboards which sag against age-stained walls, a grease-smeared counter riddled with cracks in a way which reminds him quite uncannily of a London A-Z map, and a tarnished silver tap in the corner which drips, a steady plink-plink-plink that scatters in child-like patterns across the base of a pockmarked sink. Bodie helpfully suggests that Doyle ought to kill himself.

“Think you ought to kill yourself, mate,” is what he says. He even manages to sound somewhat pained. “Kitchen like this – the Cow’s trying to tell you something, sunshine. Budget and all that, you know.”

“The living room’s alright.”

“Doyle, your kitchen makes me want to kill myself.”

“Fancy that.”

Outside it is November, rainy and wet and cold, and inside it is even colder, dim and vaguely damp, the air smelling uncomfortably of mildew. The cardboard boxes they have set on the floor (which would have matched the walls if the walls weren’t dirtier) suddenly seem too big in a room which is otherwise too small, and when Doyle slits the sticky tape and lifts the rib-papered flaps aside the blue rims of his plates and red bands about his bowls seem almost too bright.

Bodie takes to scrutinising the battered door of the refrigerator with something akin to alarm (the door swings open in a lazy arc and appears to prefer to hang loosely from its hinges) after Doyle finishes setting the last of his mugs on surprisingly clean shelves. The darker-haired man punctuates his examination with five uncomplimentary remarks about the housing and agent-safety policies of CI5, noticeably invokes divinity on three separate occasions, and makes a cloaked reference under his breath to dubious parentages involving farmyard animals. Then he looks up, smiles, and suggests that they visit the pub down the road instead, for a pint, and when Doyle tentatively suggests unpacking the three other boxes in the living room and the four in the bedroom first Bodie throws his hands up in the air (in despair, one assumes) politely demands that he shut up, calls him a stupid sod, and announces that he thinks the bloody flat’s already driven Doyle mad, Christ.

It doesn’t take long for Doyle to discover how easy it is to say yes after that, all seven cardboard boxes with their squashed corners forgotten where they had been stacked, and he mulls over the effectiveness of techniques like Rhetoric and Name-Calling in the fine art of Persuasion as he slips on his jacket and turns the key in the lock.

=-=-=

They take to spending their evenings in Bodie’s kitchen, because it’s nearer to the CI5 headquarters, because Bodie claims that it’s easier.

(Doyle privately suspects that his partner has acquired an irrational dislike for his kitchen, the latter having come to associate asylums with bare expanses and greys furniture one rainy laundry Wednesday afternoon while sorting socks. He likens this to the other man’s inexplicable hatred for pieces of cheese he claims are platypus-shaped.)

On Friday they eat spaghetti bolognaise off chipped earthenware dishes with bent metal forks. The sauce has too little ground beef in it, too much celery, and Bodie announces this second fact every five bite-chew-swallows with the mournful air of a basset hound, the tiny mound of diced vegetables at the top of his plate growing with every scornful flick of a spoon. It is nine o’clock at night, a time best reserved for crisps before the telly and sardonic conversations over frosty bottles of beer, so Doyle seizes the last of the grated parmesan (there are grasping hands involved, and elbows, one Oi, give that here and a you miserable bastard, Doyle you bloody arse) and flips the first of their newly-acquired folders open, slap-flap of cheap paper on use-worn wood.

The menu which slips out is as gaudy wrapped in yellow electric-fluorescent and green tiles as it was in the four-o’-clock glass-filtered sun and CI5 austerity, all scarlet lettering and gold braid with a smear of black in the corner where Cowley had tapped his pen once, twice, their latest assignment laid out in clipped words over amber swirls of whisky.

“A line cook,” Doyle says, eventually, when they tire of discerning shapes in the blots of ink, an impromptu Rorschach test over pasta and brew. He thinks that Bodie may, quite possibly, have had the right of it after all, confusing kitchens with sanatoriums. “In some place on Kensington with fancy chairs and an awning and a bloody menu written in bloody French.”

Doyle also suspects that he sounds vaguely hysterical.

At ten o’clock they move from the stiff ladder-backed chairs and cracked vinyl cushions to the brown monstrosity more charitably known as the settee, fresh bottles of lager clasped loosely in blunt-fingered hands. The low coffee table is the unfortunate recipient of propped feet, white scuffs marking the positions of dusty boot heels, and it is not long before its black-painted surface (chipped and worn and bearing every indication that coasters had long been disregarded in the noble house of Bodie) acquires two identical rings of condensation, rough-edged curves bracketing the smoothly-polished bases of green glass bottles and faintly glistening.

Bodie is on his third bottle when he pauses in his slurred speech on the merits of raspberry jam (raspberry, not black cherry, and stop interrupting me you tasteless wanker) to remind Doyle that going undercover in some nancy kitchen for a drugs case wouldn’t stop Doyle’s partner from watching his back, and really, Doyle, at least you won’t be playing the bloody piano. He punctuates every other word with the hollow clink of cheap glass against a much-abused table, and by the time he’s done the bottle has left a pattern of interlocking circles in the wake of its impromptu tap dance, a dozen or more peculiar Celtic knots.

There is a faint waft of smoke, too, when the bottle finally comes to rest, and Doyle finds himself much obliged then to rescue the loaf of garlic bread in the oven from its imminent fate of black-crumbed burning. When he finally returns the bead is charred, though not hopelessly so, and he occupies himself with the careful removal of blackened crusts as Bodie begins disparaging the qualities of blueberry preserves.

=-=-=

It takes Doyle four busy lunch-hours, an equal number of dinners, and three separate nights to master the twenty-three different methods needed to prepare his share of the seventeen different dishes listed according to price. He celebrates by turning up at Bodie’s flat one sleepless night to reproduce each and every single potion he has been assigned (mainly fish and potatoes and white sauces arranged in mystical compositions), and receives nine good-natured insults for his pains.

In April he realises that he has been cooking the same collection of insipid dishes for months, and when he does he gives the dill-peppered sauce a final stab-and-stir before spending the next seven and a half minutes chopping a handful parsnips much finer than the hapless root vegetables need to be. There are waiters in black vests and trousers, cooks with white hats and blue-checked aprons, busy hands and black-shoed feet and raised voices mixed with the flick of knives and clang of pans and flash of silver-domed trays; when the door to the dining area opens the sounds of civilised dining creep in to the rhythmic clink of silverware and the faintest echo of piano-sound. Doyle spares a second to picture Bodie on the tiny raised platform which the management called the stage but the other staff of the establishment called the bench, fingers slip-sliding-dancing over black and ivory keys as he plays the piano performer to his line cook, jazz sings, show tunes, vaudeville. Then he laughs.

And he laughs again at a quarter past twelve, when the rest of the kitchen surreptitiously gathers to see good ol’ Reggie Doyle leave shoulder-to-shoulder with the new pianist, the line cook’s habit these four-and-twenty days.

(“Should had expected it, mate,” Bodie had said when they toasted the first of his bi-weekly performances with soggy chips held tremulously aloft in greasy fingers that first night. “Bloody poncy name, if you ask me, Reginald.”)

=-=-=

In July it finishes as abruptly as it starts, with the rip-fire staccato-rattle of gunshots and desperate slaps of rubber soles on cracked concrete floors.

Doyle allows himself the vicious satisfaction of giving the last member of the drug-running troupe – Tim, Timmy, Timothy Green: loved to talk about what he’d thought he’d seen, threw nasty tales of his colleague’s penchant for the pianist as fast as he could spin – a punch to the eye and a hook to the jaw before the glowering man is shepherded out.

Bodie gleefully remarks on the ingenuity of hiding cannabis in crates of vegetables, knew eating your greens weren’t all it’s made out to be, let this be a lesson to you, Ray m’ lad, and does his best imitation of a snow angel in the centre of the warehouse as he listens to his voice echo off the rafters and the walls.

There is a brief contemplation of joy and the possible significance thereof, laughter bubbling up like so many golden balloons (or like champagne: neither was too picky about his similes), before both men ascribe it to the lingering effects of adrenaline.

=-=-=

Six o’clock on a Saturday evening finds Doyle’s kitchen enjoying a riot of temporary colour. There are splatters of red sauce on the counters, yellow ink-smears of dandelions on the walls (posters which Bodie had put up only yesterday, in a sudden fit of helpfulness), and Doyle finds himself much obliged to dive towards an ill-placed plate to prevent a sudden spill of chopped green peppers on the floor.

“Thought you said you were done with cooking, mate.”

“Shut it, Bodie, and keep peeling those potatoes.”

“Ray – ”

“Bodie!”

“Pot’s boiling over, Ray.”

“Christ!”

Quarter-past brings with it further enquiries as to the necessity of this bloody mess, honestly, Doyle, I’m not quite sure what to make of your idea of a relaxing evening; half-past is greeted with a decided pronouncement on the sanity of the cook.

“And Doyle – ”

“Not now, Bodie.”

“Think the sauce’s burning, mate.”

“Set the table, Bodie, if you must be so bloody helpful.”

Quarter-to is marked by steaks, mash, parsnips and squash and Brussels sprouts just this side of done. At eight they remain untouched, fingerprint-smears of gravy their only companion, five and five again on the wall.

=-=-=

This is how it happens:

Doyle is standing by the table, wooden edge a hard ridge against the back of his thighs.

Bodie’s smile can only be described as cunning.

The kiss, when it comes, is a clumsy bump of gentleness, of dry lips on chapped, hum of inquiry and mmmm of agreement, fingers fisting loosely in the soft cotton of shirttails that have been untucked by crafty fingers.

“Oh.” Oh.

The second kiss is wet, hard: open mouths, warm breaths, click of teeth and the spill of bitter-salty-foreignness across their tongues, red, red, moist. When they part a syrupy rope of saliva stretches thin, snaps in the ragged inhale-exhale of one-two-three-four.

“You knew.”

“I knew.”

“Could’ve told me.”

“You seemed set on cooking, mate. Didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

“Bastard.”

“The gravy’s not too bad.”

Fingers, to taste.

There’s a third kiss, a fourth, a Do you – and a Yes, a Bodie what’re you – and a Setting the table, Ray, just like you told me to, an easing in to stand between parted knees, a kiss to a nose, to a chin. There’s a Bed, you fool, bed, and there’s a chuckle, a laugh, low and deep and dirty, a fifth, a sixth against a wall, bed, bed, bed and now.

Now is the tumbling into freshly-laundered sheets at eight o’clock, preceded by a careless bumping against walls, against doors, against furniture, fingers flitting over gradually bared skin as they leave crumpled shirts and trousers in their wake, a peculiar sort of breadcrumb trail (for grown-ups, two parts insanity and one part lust) scattered in reverse. Lips chase fingers, soft and tickling.

They shift.

Doyle slides down, down, down, chest skimming a belly, thighs, warm skin on warm and tiny curls of hair rough, crinkly. There is a trail, and he follows it, deviating now and then to place tiny kisses (licks, nips) on shivering skin (beneath a nipple, at the base of a sternum, to the right of a belly button, in the sensitive crease tucked between hip bone and thigh). Then he pauses, touches, holds, tastes. (It’s like their second kiss, but more.)

Beneath him, Bodie jerks. The man’s grip in Doyle’s hair is almost too tight.

They shift again.

Kisses, again, this time to the secret places behind the ear, beneath the jaw, purple and red smudges which will invite much cursing the following morning before a mirror. It is Bodie’s turn to shift down now, and he does, hands caressing the rise and fall of a frantic chest as he sucks on a raised brown nub, nibbles, blows, fingers tip-tapping their way past canted hips to the trembling smoothness of spread thighs before fingers become calloused palms which slide warm across the curve of muscle and flesh to cup an arse and to urge up, up, up.

“Planned this, didn’t you?” Bodie asks, eventually, tongue lapping at a puckered oval, lapping in, quick thrust, plunging, once, twice, thrice. He doesn’t protest at the tug on his shoulders, his grin a slick crescent as he nuzzles into the soft muskiness of the other man’s balls, smoothes his fingers down the warm length of the other man’s cock.

“Bodie, fuck – ”

This time they’re side by side, legs tangled as they jerk, rub, thrust, pearl trails smeared clumsily across the soft swells of lower bellies, the sweat-slick grooves of hips, the insides of thighs. Their kisses are sloppy, now, rough, frantic, not so much kissing but just breathing.

It doesn’t take much more.

=-=-=

Some time at night they stir, lazy limbs shifting in the yellow light-spill of a passing truck with high-beams before fitting once again in the places they fit.

“Your eyes are blue,” one of them remarks as he proceeds to tuck his head beneath the other’s chin.

“Your eyes are green,” is the reply, a hand sliding down the dip-curve of a back to cup the hard swell of a hip bone.

(Ah, men.)

=-=-=

In the morning the dandelion posters do not look so much helpful as uninspiring.

“Don’t see why you dislike it,” Doyle says, now, in a manner he likes to think of as gently chiding as he wrestles a kettle on the stove to boil, one arm gesturing to encompass the kitchen in its sauce-speckled and dandelion-papered entirety. “Bloody irrational, that’s what this all is. Like that bit of yours about the cheese which looked like a platypus.”

“Daft thing to do, if you ask me, making pieces of cheese look like platypu – platy – ”

“Platypus? Platypuses? Platypi?”

“Daft. Don’t know why people do it.” The hollow thunk of an empty mug placed decidedly on the countertop makes for a particularly convenient full-stop, loud in the Sunday ten-o’-clock hush.

“Things are different now, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Oh.” Bodie pauses for a moment, hand poised over the sizeable collection of tea bags (of tea brands, always a difficult decision, that) on the shelf. Then he grins. “They are, aren’t they? They’re better.”

The yellow pair of rubber gloves tossed in his general direction – Dishes, Bodie, and it’s the Lipton this morning, ta. – is answer enough.

It’s a while before the kettle whistles, and when it does overnight plates have been scraped, pans have been placed in the sink, and four eggs and six strips of bacon have been fried. They manage to finish half a loaf of bread between them, thick slices toasted and dripping with butter. Neither protests when the other slides his chair closer, and they sit like that for a spell, elbows bumping as fingers chase elusive crumbs across the tabletop in an impromptu race, all laughter and boyish delight.

Their kisses afterwards will be reminiscent of the morning’s tea, soothing and milky and just a touch too sweet.

Daring Cooks: Risotto (March 2010)

2010-03-14T00:50:07Z

The 14th, at last! And 'tis once again that time of the month during which I inflict bad pictures of and nonsensical babbles on food upon hapless passers-by. Ah, life. *g*

(Please ignore the fact that I completely missed last month's challenge. Again, life.)

This month's DC challenge was risotto, hosted by Eleanor of Melbourne Food Geek and Jess of Jess the Baker. Which made me happy, because it gave me an excuse to use all the chicken bones I'd been hoarding (though I now once again feel the need to go about bone-collecting), and an opportunity to finish the arborio rice in my cupboard which needed finishing.

I had wanted to title this post The Tale of Two Risottos. Then I decided that it'd be too cheesy.

Left: Japanese-inspired Mushroom Risotto with Miso Cod
Right: Chinese Pear, Orange, and White Chocolate Dessert Risotto

So yes. Risotto! The mandatory elements were the making of our stock and risotto base. A suggested recipe for the stock and a standard risotto base were provided, as well as optional recipes for a pumpkin risotto and a preserved lemon risotto. A downloadable copy of these four recipes may be found here.

Needless to say, me being me, I ~~didn't follow~~ heavily deviated from the provided recipes. Since risotto was one of those things I was already extremely familiar with, I decided to use this opportunity to play around with the basic recipe/technique. This resulted in two very different (by which I mean 'sitting on opposite ends of the spectrum') risottos - a Japanese-inspired savoury risotto, and a sweet fruit-and-chocolate-infused one.

Japanese-inspired Mushroom Risotto with Miso Cod

This is, like, everything I prefer risotto-wise, and thus how I usually do it - dry, minimal dairy, and light flavours all around.

Stock:

The stock was a combination of chicken, mushroom-y, and ocean-y flavours. One of the previous DC challenges had involved an oriental spice-infused stock which I had greatly liked, so I decided to use the same spice combination (though not in the same ratio/quantity) here of star anise, coriander, and cloves. Other things which went into the stock: ginger, shallots, konbu, bonito flakes, the soaking liquid of shitake mushrooms and of porcini mushrooms, dark soy sauce, chicken bones. If I could (i.e. if I had them at hand), I'd probably have added soy beans and dried anchovies (ikan bilis) into the mix too.

The obligatory picture of the stock being cooked:

Toast the spices and char the ginger and shallots before dumping them into the stock pot. (top left) Add konbu, soaking liquid of the two mushrooms, chicken bones (blanched before hand to get rid of the scummy bits; alternatively, just skim the finished stock before use/storage to get rid of the scum which rises), and top up with cold water. Put on medium-low heat and let similar for at least a couple of hours. (bottom left)

When the basic stock is done, transfer some of it to a smaller pot to simmer. This would be for the actual risotto, or if you're using portions of the stock for other things. Toss in the bonito flakes, and let cook for 3-5 minutes before skimming the bonito flakes off. (right)

For the risotto itself, season the portion of stock with dark soy sauce, and add the chopped shitake mushrooms to let cook/simmer in the broth. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so...

Risotto:

Stuff which went into the risotto itself: shitake mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, edamame, shallots, sake rice wine, olive oil, unsalted butter, arborio rice, stock.

Begin by soaking dried shitake mushrooms and dried porcini mushrooms (separately) in hot water for at least half an hour, preferably much longer (like, for a couple of hours). When they're softened, strain and reserve the soaking liquid to use in the stock. Dice the shitake mushrooms, and when the separated portion of stock is ready, dump them in and let them simmer in the stock. Shred the porcini mushrooms, but do not add into the stock.

Boil up in salted water a portion of edamame. Cool, shell, and set shelled beans aside.

My risotto base is pretty much like the one stated in the given recipe, though perhaps not in the same quantity/ratio of ingredients. Heaven knows. I usually just go with what feels right in the kitchen. Anyway. Differences basically were the use of shallots instead of onions (and keeping the shallots in with the rice rather than take it out), and the substitution of white wine with a dry sake.

When adding the stock to the rice, add the shitake mushrooms as well. By the time the rice is almost done, all the shitake mushrooms should be in the pot with the rice and not the pot with the stock.

Here, have an obligatory (and ugly, as my process pictures generally are) shot of the base being cooked:

After an addition or two of the stock.
Note the shitake mushrooms. I wasn't kidding about them.

On the final addition of stock, stir in the shredded porcini mushrooms. Stir in a pat of unsalted butter and the edamame before serving. Ikura (salmon roe) sprinked on top makes a very pretty and delicious addition.

For the cod - marinate cod with miso, mirin, sake, and sugar (about a 1:1:1:0.75 ratio) overnight. To serve, pan-fry until the surface mildly caramalises.

Chinese Pear, Orange, and White Chocolate Dessert Risotto

The dessert risotto, on the other hand, is everything I don't usually prefer risotto-wise. It's much wetter, and very much milkier/creamier. But ah well. I very well couldn't not do so for a dessert risotto. I mean, can you imagine a rice pudding-ish dish being otherwise? And I was positively determined to try my hand at a sweet risotto (or just to make a risotto on the other side of the spectrum), having never heard of it prior to the challenge, much less eaten one. Hurrah for experimentation.

I also have another confession to make: I don't like Chinese pears, better known by its Japanese name of nashi. See, I like my pears soft. Chinese pears are by their very nature hard. And not as sweet. With strange, squishy cores. No.

But! I figured their crispness would go well texture-wise with the otherwise soft and milky risotto, so in it went. Other things which went into this risotto: orange zest, milk, vanilla essence, ginger, milk, arborio rice, white chocolate, sweet dessert wine.

Speaking of dessert wine, I used Malaga dulce, a sweet fortified Spanish wine (and a gift from the globe-trotting ambientlight after her Spanish travels - thanks J!). And they weren't kidding about the sweet bit. It's practically like drinking wine with sugar. (left)

It's also incredibly dark, as can be seen in the centre picture (which, I suppose, can serve as the obligatory shot of the risotto base). I was all omg! when I first splashed it in, because it was supposed to be a white chocolate risotto, i.e. I wanted a pale colour, so I ended up diluting it with a couple of splashes of regular white wine too.

Anyway. For the 'stock', i.e. the milk (right), heat but do not let boil a pan of milk, steeped with orange zest, ginger, and vanilla essence.

Melt a slab of butter, and stir in the rice until evenly coated. Splash in the wine, add the milk etc. On the last addition of milk, stir in the peeled and diced Chinese pears and the chopped bits of white chcolate. Add sugar to taste/sweeten, if necessary - I highly doubt you'd need it. Stir in a bit of butter too, if you'd rather an even creamier texture.

To assemble/serve: Peel oranges, stripping the pieces of the membrane, and place at the bottom of the serving dish. Scoop risotto on the oranges, and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

Blog checking lines: The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

my respect for people able to write Pros case fic has increased a thousand-fold.

2010-02-08T17:25:35Z

Currently, I am

a) locked out of my flat,

b) sicker than a sick dog, and

c) discovering how hard it is to write a Pros case fic, however abbreviated.

The saddest thing is, I'm not even sure which of the three's most tragic.

So anyway, who wants Pros drabbles? I've no idea how long I'll be freezing my arse off in the frigid cloisters of my university, and I'm really supposed to be reading stuff for my dissertation, but I'd be willing to entertain a prompt or two while I'm stuck here.

[eta] And one of my flatmates is finally home! *does a jig*

In the meanwhile, here's a drabble about the lads being locked out. *g*

[eta2] The lads argue over the 'correct' brand of tea here...

[eta3] And the lads get lost in a strange town here.

[eta4} Finally, we have the lads in summer.

in which she shows that fangirls are really simple creatures at heart

2010-02-05T20:59:04Z

If nothing else, I must say that there's something quite lovely about stumbling out of your flat early in the morning, bleary-eyed from Lack of Sleep and Too Much Dissertation, and all tense because you're running late for class and you've two hours left before you have to submit an essay which you still haven't completed despite aforementioned all-nighter, when you see, right across the block of flats you live in, this:

Oh my. Why hello there. :D

Literally just stopped in my tracks and stood there for a few seconds blinking stupidly, certain that my sleep-deprived brain had finally started hallucinating. That definitely wasn't up on the door of the phone box the afternoon before. Then I scuttled away, cheerier than I was a minute ago.

It's a bit tragic, I think, how little it takes to brighten up a fangirl's day.

Spotted these two over the course of the day:

Left: Still on my way to class. It's a couple of feet away from where I tripped last week.

Right: Walking back from a bit of retail therapy tonight. It's like, a sudden invasion of these publicity things. Not that I'm complaining, mind.

SPN Fic: A Girl Who Sang The Blues

2010-01-19T12:31:33Z

Good Lord, I'm done. Hurrah, hurrah, rejoice etc. I wonder if the School of Last-Minute Fic-Writing hands out degrees...? (And please ignore my lack of a suitable Bela!icon.)

Title: A Girl Who Sang The Blues (2,236 words)
Fandom/Characters: Supernatural, Bela Talbot-centric with brief mentions of Sam, Dean, and Crowley.
Rating/Warnings: PG13-ish, gen. Implied child sexual abuse, implied character death (everything which was implied in canon, really). Use of Britishisms.
Summary: In which the origins of one Bela Talbot are explored.
Disclaimer: Characters used are not mine etc.
Author's Note: Written for lavendergaia's prompt - I just want Bela being badass. Maybe something origin-y? - in the spn_women ficathon. Title taken from Don McLean's song, American Pie. My thanks to the ever-brilliant ambientlight, who beta'd for me and who's an absolute star.

Four o’clock in the afternoon brings with it memories of a funeral.

She fancies now and then that she remembers the mourners, dark and somber in perfect contrast to the waxy white lilies they clutched in their hands. She remembers the raspy boom of the pastor’s voice in the nave, the fingerprint-smears she’d left half-formed on the shiny wood of her sister’s coffin, the tired thud-thud-thud of loose earth being shoveled down-down-down back into the ground. She remembers the black-clad adults who thronged their living room afterwards like so many black crows, sympathetic murmur of voices a poor substitute for the rustle-startle of absent wings, and she remembers sitting silently in the corner, huddled by the fake potted plant which always gathers dust, watching them.

Her mother remembers it differently; she knows this because she’s heard her mother mention it often enough, about how she’d run through the house, screaming that she’d seen Little Annie outside in the garden and could she go out and play please Mummy please please please, and Really, Abby, how could you, telling lies like that, the Lord would have wanted you to be a better girl, Abby Talbot.

She doesn’t mind too much. She knows that six-year-olds aren’t particularly known for their memories, especially after watching the death of two-year-old siblings happen before their eyes. Instead she turns the knob for volume on her cassette player two careful silver ridges clockwise, and does her best not to listen to the rise and fall of her mother’s voice while the latter reads the bible to a child now eight years gone, Let the little children come to me.

It’s even better when she presses her ear up against the rough metal cross-hatch of the speakers, she discovers as she works her way through a roll of Hobnobs. The thump of bass through her bones is infinitely better than the whispered cadence just down the hall of a distant Amen.

=-=-=

At eleven her door will click open, clockwork-like, the faint ticks of her watch echoed by the rhythm of three careful footsteps past the threshold and the snick of a lock. It’ll be a game that has grown old and stale with the familiarity of years, and when she closes her eyes she’ll re-paint the room in Technicolor to compensate for the ugliness of its wood-planked floors and red-papered walls. These, then, will be the things with which she marks solitary afternoons after school by: biscuit crumbs hidden in the folds of half-made covers, butterfly-folded paperbacks creased down the spine, half-drunk cups of now-cold tea. And these will be the things only she knows about: one leather-bound diary and five stolen library books snuck beneath the loosened floorboards below the bed, sixteen different candles of black and white and red slipped into the knife-slit on the underside of the mattress, seven packets of herbs with labels neatly printed at the bottom of a navy pile of school sweaters.

(These will be the things she tries to ignore: the clumsy brailing of fingers down her back, the flutter of hot breath across her breasts, the slick wet of saliva between her thighs, Our Father who art in heaven and the warm spill on her knees, Forgive us our trespasses.)

Afterwards the yellow glare of the lamp will have stamped itself across the backs of her eyelids, white bursts which linger when she finally dares shower at two. In the morning there will be orange juice, toast, jam and butter and honey, milk. There will be porridge eaten after her father recites the Lord’s Prayer, lukewarm tea drunk just as her mother begins another prayer for a long-dead daughter.

=-=-=

The talking board is barely visible, obscured by a ghastly pair of porcelain shepherdesses and faded from months of sun in the smeary London shop window. That afternoon she sits on the three o’clock train home from Paddington with a newspaper-wrapped rectangle tucked firmly under her arm, a planchette (thrown in for free) that she fiddles between four fingers and a thumb, and a pocket which is nineteen pounds and ninety-nine pence lighter.

=-=-=

She was thirteen when she first told someone.

Miss Holly was new to the school, bright and smart in her sharp blazers and skirts and shoes, and that afternoon she’d smiled, nodded, mmm’d and aaah’d and made sympathetic noises at the right moments over steepled fingers, It was brave of you to come to me, Abby and I’ll see what I can do.

The next day there’d been a call, her mother’s knuckles clenched white against the bright green Bakelite of the telephone receiver. It’d been the principal, she would learn, in between the How-could-you’s and Annie-would-never-have’s, and it would be eight before she would be allowed (be made) to apologize, whisper barely audible through lips numb with the repetition of Proverbs 12:22.

She was thirteen when she decided that she would never tell anyone.

=-=-=

On Tuesday the house is alive where it’d been still before, raised voices stirring sunlight and dust and frantic hands gesticulating themselves into a frenzy. She pushes the front door open to the hollow thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump of someone pacing upstairs (pacing in her room, seven steps forward and seven steps back, listen and count), and when she sees the talking board in her father’s hands (snapped and snapped again, edges jagged and strips of sticky tape trailing limp on the four original corners) she winces, winces (Your mother had found it stuck under your desk whilst cleaning how dare you Abby how dare you).

In the evening she carefully lies on her stomach because it hurts to sit and hurts even more to sprawl, welts marching across her back in a curious parody of a military parade, red-purple-black, bars of regimental colors. Eventually she tires of her bed, and elusive splinters dig into her heels when she makes her way to the open window. Outside is a strange mix of muggy and crisp, the sunset perched precarious and indecisive between late summer and early autumn, and when she closes her eyes she imagines she can still smell the last of the cheap wood burning, chemical-like and pungent, the ash soft and grey.

(He is harsher that night, too, fingers pinching where they’d previously stroked, mouth biting where it’d previously only breathed, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live against the soft mound of her belly, Abby, you know the bible tells us so.)

On Wednesday she scavenges a felt-tip pen left unwanted at the end of art class and buys a suitable sheet of cardboard on her way home from school. The skid-stutter-stop of the nib as it slides across the rough papery surface is strangely satisfying, alphabets and numbers and YES and NO and GOODBYE written in broad sloping script, curlicues traced into the corners. The glide of the planchette is whisper-rasp-quiet beneath the studied murmur of her question, and when she leaves the house the next morning it is with a tiny bottle in her pocket for graveyard dirt and a frown between her brows as she ponders the acquisition of a black cat’s bones.

=-=-=

This is how it happens:

There is a crossroads conveniently located a little more than a mile from the house, and its surface is conveniently of packed earth and scattered gravel and not of asphalt.

When she slips out of her window it’s a quarter to midnight, and she discovers that oak trees are harder to climb when you’re fourteen and six years out of practice than when you’re eight.

She has a spoon in her pocket, stolen from the school cafeteria during lunch, and she uses it now to help her dig. It’s not terribly effective: four nails are split to the quick by the time she deems the small hole deep enough, and she’s vaguely aware that the latticework of cuts her hands have acquired will sting in the shower.

It takes her three tries before she finally manages to pry the lid of the box (rough wood pieces held together at the corners by rusted metal staples and girlish hope) open; her fingers leave ghostly whorls on the glossy surface of the photograph she slips in.

The hole is filled quickly and neatly, nervous palms patting the last of the grainy soil down and scattering gravel back into place.

One o’clock passes without incident.

At two o’clock she leaves, with nothing to show of the night but a pair of dirt-stained knees.

Seven in the morning finds her eating butter with her toast instead of marmalade, milk with her porridge instead of honey. The Lord’s Prayer is uttered over a plate of scrambled eggs - lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil – and she leaves before questions may be asked about the stubborn black of dirt trapped beneath her fingernails, the skitter-skritch of chair-legs across the floor neatly cutting her mother’s inevitable prayer into two.

=-=-=

Lunch that day begins with a scuffle outside the girl’s loo. Words are exchanged, hair pulled, and the fight only ends after a blouse-collar is torn (not hers; it hasn’t been hers for a couple of years, regardless of the odds against her) and a teacher is sighted in a neighboring corridor. Then the other girls run, feet thudding past poster-lined walls and identical smirks thrown over sweater-clad shoulders, Witch.

The decision to sneak out early comes easy enough, after. No one pays her any mind as she leaves the school grounds.

There’s another girl at the swings by the time she arrives, younger than her, eight or ten, all fine blond hair and chubby cheeks and mischief in her smile. The girl also looks exactly as she imagines Annie would have looked like had the latter not died, and later she will suspect this to be the reason why she lets the other stay. For now, however, she digs her fingertips into sun-warmed links of chain and her heels into the sole-worn bit of sandy soil at her feet, up, up, up, legs stretched out into the air and the creak of the frame a strange sort of lullaby.

She isn’t surprised to find that she still has company when the swing finally slows down.

“I can take care of them for you,” the other girl has started to say, and she listens because there isn’t much else she can do, hears the grin in the younger girl’s throat. “And it won’t even cost you anything for ten, whole, years.”

Theirs isn’t so much a kiss as the bump of dry lips on chapped, a child’s careless nuzzle of affection, but it’s enough.

=-=-=

It’s a while (twenty-four months, two years) before she remembers what had been said about ten, whole, years, and when she does she breaks a cup.

The cup’s still there when she returns from London a week later with library-found knowledge and a bottle of coarse-powdered lye, broken pieces of teal eggshell accusing against the milky-brown puddle-stain of forgotten breakfast tea. She pauses at the doorway of the kitchen for all of twenty-three seconds before she carefully steps over the mess. She figures that the fruit knife she retrieves is sharp enough to part the skin on her fingertips, though the cuts make picking up the tiny pellets with a pair of tweezers to slot into the pinkish-red slits a little more difficult than she likes.

It certainly hurts far more than she’d thought it would.

=-=-=

She celebrates her second day in America by picking ‘Bela’ on a whim.

(Dracula had played on the hotel television the night before, flickering and splendid in its black-and-white grainy glory.)

=-=-=

Crowley is dark-suited and unctuous, and she gratefully embraces how much of a relief he is after the enigma that is Sam and Dean Winchester, falls into the familiar pattern of bargain and offer with relish. She supposes she likes John Winchester’s boys well enough: Dean looks good in a suit, Sam looks better (she’s always been partial to taller men), and she’d gladly have angry sex with either or even both of them. They just puzzle her, leave her rattled with their unsettling questions and their inexplicable desire to help, and every encounter with them these days has her feeling insubstantial and over-exposed, taffy pulled out beneath too-bright kitchen lights and stretched thin.

Still, she likes to think that they’ll understand – Dean and his increasingly frantic terror as his deal draws to an end, Sam and his desperate determination to beat the odds and to win – when she strikes a deal with the demon on the price of Sam’s head.

=-=-=

The hounds are everything she has come to expect from their nightly howling, and for an unpleasant moment she is reminded of all she had ever read as a child. She thinks of Fenrir with his dripping jaws as he waits impatiently for Ragnarok, of Geri and Freki riding into battle with Odin and feasting on flesh in Valhalla. She thinks of Cerberus guarding the gates of Hades, of the Black Dogs said to roam the British Isles. She even thinks wildly of Harry Potter, and of the Devil’s Shoestring she’d left hanging above the door in her hotel room two states away.

Her gun is heavier than she remembers when she picks it up again, but it doesn’t hurt as much as she thinks it should.

Daring Cooks: Satay (January 2010)

2010-01-14T04:35:32Z

Right! It's the 14th again, otherwise known as 'that time of the month I post food pictures of dubious quality and babble incoherently about cooking'. *g* This month's challenge was satay, chosen by Cuppy of Cuppylicious (Thank you very much for hosting, Cuppy!). And so, without further ado:

Satay

I was quite pleased when this month's challenge was revealed. See, satay's such a common/popular street food in Singapore that any semi-decent hawker centre (places where street food stalls gather) would be bound to have at least one stall selling it. You don't really think about how to make it. You go out and buy it. I've never actually given any thought into how satay was made, so to be given a marinade recipe was absolutely brilliant.

We were given a choice of meat(s); from the quick browse of the already-posted challenges, I think someone even went with kangeroo. I, however, being boring and a picky eater to boot, went with chicken.

These were the ingredients required for the satay marinade:

1/2 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T ginger root, chopped (optional) (2 cm cubed)
2 T lemon juice (1 oz or 30 mls)
1 T soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp ground coriander (5 mls)
1 tsp ground cumin (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric (2-2.5 mls)
2 T vegetable oil (or peanut or olive oil) (30 mls)
1 pound of pork (loin or shoulder cuts) (16 oz or 450g)

the obligatory process pictures
top: dicing stuff for the marinade, preparing to marinate
bottom: waiting to be cooked, the actual cooking

(Let us take a moment to admire the cleaver. There's no way I would have been able to chop things finely enough to approximate a rough swirl with a food processer without it. Not a day goes by in London where I don't think fondly (and a little wistfully) of it.

Then I inevitably drop whichever knife it is I'm handling, narrowly missing my foot by inches (or not at all), and suddenly, I'm glad that it's not a cleaver. Though I must say that in all my years of using them, I've never dropped a single cleaver. Must be a small knife thing.

Moving along!)

I was greatly heartened when I took the marinating meat (chicken thighs de-boned and cut into small bits, and I must say the amount of fat I managed to remove before cutting it up horrified me somewhat; to think that's my favourite part of the chickn! *headdesk*) out of the fridge. It smelt satay-ish. All looked well.

Normally, in Singapore, satay is barbequed over hot coals for that wonderful, smoky flavour. However, I wasn't about to yank out the barbeque grill to cook a few tiny sticks of satay (you probably can't tell, but I made them miniature, with the smaller skewers of about 12cm). Instead, I went with pan-frying them on the stove. Or wok-frying, if you will, since the only suitable thing I had at my disposable was the huuuuuuge family wok.

I feel a little bad about saying this, because everyone thus far seems very pleased with the recipe. I liked the recipe too, but! I couldn't help but feel (and my family pretty much agreed) that it wasn't sweet enough. Were I to repeat this recipe, I'd probably add a good dollop of honey and/or a heaping tablespoon or two of brown sugar to it, for a bit of sweetness and to give it a lovely brown caramelisation upon cooking.

I'd probably sear the meat first, too, the next time I cook satay on a stove. Though this might mean using bigger pieces of meat; I'm not entirely certain searing works when the mean is but the thinnest of slivers.

We were also given the recipe for a peanut dipping sauce. Ingredients were as follows:

3/4 cup coconut milk (6 oz or 180 mls)
4 Tbsp peanut butter (2 oz or 60 mls)
1 Tbsp lemon juice (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 Tbsp soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp brown sugar (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground cumin (2.5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground coriander (2.5 mls)
1-2 dried red chilies, chopped (keep the seeds for heat)

Plonk it all in a pot over low heat and stir until peanut butter melts.

peanut dipping sauce for satay

I admit I heavily doctored the recipe. Much less coconut milk was used, for one. To the mixture I also added chopped peanuts for extra crunch, sweet chilli sauce, a dash of chilli oil, and sambal belacan (a type of chilli paste made of fresh chillis and toasted shrimp paste). Why yes, I do like my food spicy, thank you very much for asking. Sweet and spicy, so in went an extra spot of sugar too.

Oh! Oh! Admire the container used to hold the sauce. Isn't it adorable? << shameless acquisition pride

In Singapore (and, I suppose, Malaysia, and Indonesia), satay is normally eaten with chopped bits of red onion and cucumber and this packed cake of rice thing called the ketupat. Since I was in Singapore the time I did the challenge...

satay accompaniments: ketupat, red onions, and cucumbers

The green woven thing you see is an unwrapped ketupat. The scattered, tightly-packed clumps of white rice scattered about it (along with the bits of onion and cucumber) are how a ketupat looks like when it's been unwrapped and cut along the lines of the leaves. And before you ask, the ketupats used were store-bought. I haven't mastered the fine art of ketupat-making, I'm afraid. Probably because it's never occurred to me to, the same way it's never occurred to me to learn what goes into satay. *sheepish grin*

And that's that, I suppose!

Blog checking lines: The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

Happy 2010!

2009-12-31T17:29:10Z

[taken in (very sneakily *g*) in Cornwall in June 2009]

Happy New Year, m'dears!
May 2010 be a bigger and brighter year for everyone. ♥

of christmas wishes

2009-12-25T10:47:46Z

[taken along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris]

Wishing everyone and their loved ones a very merry and blessed Christmas. ♥

hello, world!

2009-12-22T04:42:01Z

In case anyone had wondered at my general online absence over the last 1.5 weeks, let's just say it may have involved some of this:

Plenty of eating of sinful dishes like this:

And possibly not quite enough of this (I blame the cold):

[sneakily taken by my sister]

Things have finally wound down some, but it's still going to take me a while to catch up with everything, so please bear with me if I owe you e-mails and such and am slow to reply.

(Also, not a word about photo backlog, please. I'll just, erm, sit here and ignore the ever-increasing mountain of photos I still have yet to wade through.)