Looking Out To Sea

Sometimes, the denizens of the internet just disgust me with their absurd ignorance and desperate need to wade in with irrelevant advice. So I thought I’d keep my ignorant ravings on my own blog instead.

Today I am talking about Kamikaze Cookery’s latest Normal Person versus episode, testing the idea that celebrity chef recipes are manageable for the “normal” cook. The latest episode covered Gordon effing Ramsay. Go watch Normal Person versus Gordon Ramsay, it’s rather fun in that car-crash way.

Just don’t, whatever you do, read the comments. I don’t know why, but the majority of the commenters feel the overwhelming desire to point out that they didn’t understand the concept of the episode. “Look at me, I’m an idiot!” They berate the Kamikaze people for a bunch of irrelevant things, proceed to give really stupid advice about what a food processor is.

That’s the price you pay for being linked from Boing Boing, I suppose — an infestation of knuckle-draggers.

There is one element of the show that merits a bit more discussion, and that’s their definition of “normal”. In the first episode (versus Jamie Oliver) they used someone who clearly knew one or two things, like how to knead dough. The next episode (versus Nigella Lawson) their normal test subject didn’t admit to doing any cooking since Guides, and even then it was her mother who did the work. But still, she demonstrated surprising proficiency and flexibility. (I know this makes me sound like a pretentious twat, but I was honestly impressed that someone who claims to do no cooking is so proficient anyway.) In the latest episode their normal person didn’t know what a ramekin was and had never seen the phrase “season” in a recipe before. So, not to be too blunt about it, what kind of normalcy are they looking for here? Will the next normal person know which end of a knife to hold?

It seems to be Kamikaze Cookery’s belief that a recipe book should teach you how to cook, which has never been my experience. Celebrity chef books tend to be the very opposite of expositional — minimal instructions, glossy photos, lots of white space. The books which teach cooking are very different beasts and don’t tend to come with glossy photos. To my mind, expecting to learn cooking from a chef’s recipe book is a bit like expecting to learn the piano from a Chopin songbook.

Which of the books that we own would teach the basics (or help people along the complex steps)?

Complete Cookery Course, Delia Smith

Yes, Delia will definitely teach you how to cook. More importantly, she also tells you not to panic if any of a number of common things happen (something curdles, there are lumps, etc) and explains how to fix things.

The River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I think this book would explain how to handle meat properly but would not introduce a person to meat in the first place. If you’re unsure about getting both hands in to a dead animal then Hugh’s not really your fellow. But if you want to get familiar with the obscure cuts (oh, and read some amazing essays) then it would be useful.

Feast, Nigella Lawson

I’m not sure about this one. There are two recipes I’ve made several times from this book. The mini white rolls were my introduction to breadmaking and were very successful. (Please ignore the batch where I forgot the salt….) The chocolate gingerbread is also a gorgeous beast, but it’s also the most horrifying mess to make. A lot of home cooks seem to be terrified of mess and the notion of dirtying more than one pan at a time seems to bring out the Ramsay-style expletives. Feast is for organised cooks only because all the recipes are so massive.

Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson

This book will learn you to cook by subterfuge. But she doesn’t assume you’re an idiot either. You won’t get anywhere without reading between the lines and paying close attention to the photographs (which are, thankfully, plentiful).

Short-Cut Rhodes, Gary Rhodes

I’ve never done anything from this book but I don’t get the impression that the recipes are very easy. I’ve seen Helen try a few things and they never seem to work out as desired. They’re supposed to be abbreviated versions of traditional recipes but they rarely turn out anything like the originals.

Dough, Richard Bertinet

I can confirm that this book will teach you how to make bread.

This is just the selection from memory. We also have a couple of Usborne kids’ cookery books which are used regularly. They will teach you the basics like no other. Similarly, A Young Cook’s Calendar was what I grew up with.

Helen’s definition of normal is pretty different to that assumed by Kamikaze Cookery, though it’s quite succinct: “a normal person should be able to make a white sauce, a tomato sauce and a chocolate sauce without recourse to a recipe”.

What do you think a normal person can cook?

I have been thinking about a particular problem now for about two years. The problem doesn’t really matter — it’s a computer program that I want to write one day, when I get some time and space to do so.

What does matter is that last week I realised, almost completely out of the blue, that my long-standing problem was very different in nature to what I had assumed. Not only that, but as soon as I realised this the problem became massively more tractable. It was like turning an unknown corner and finding yourself in a familiar neighbourhood: it all just fell into place.

It’s very comforting to know that the fundamental problem I am trying to solve has been solved many times before, and there is a large body of research into the different approaches to take. The surface problem is still interesting, and to the best of my knowledge no-one has done anything similar before. But it’s new in the sense that the latest model of car is new: the problem domain is well mapped out, and all that matters is the details.

Nick’s masked birthday party last week had a large cask, courtesy of Stewart Brewery. The beer didn’t all get finished on the night, so Nick ended up decanting the remains into whatever containers were lying around and brought us a two litre bottle of beer when he visited.

It’s flat now, and not very exciting to drink any more but it makes great bread. I used a recipe from Crust, the “ale and yeast poolish”, and made four small loaves. There is still a lot of beer left, so I’ll need some other means to use up the remainder. If there are no better ideas I might try stewing with it.

If I’d been sensible I would have started the poolish for this bread early so I wouldn’t be baking last thing at night. Best laid plans, etc. Whatever the regrets about timing, the loaves turned out beautifully. I haven’t had much practice at shaping loaves, so they were a bit haphazard. But this turned out to be a good thing because the varying shapes of loaves reacted differently in the oven, and I got a much better impression of how the bread reacts in general.

Specifically, the two loaves which were more compact and loaf-shaped developed a really beautiful burst and a tantalising crust. They expanded up instead of out, which is an effect I’ve been trying to achieve for some time. The two that were more baguette-shaped (flatter and longer) spread apart where they were slashed, rather than bursting up the way. I consider this a very tasty and successful experiment. We’re learning here!

I’m still not completely sure how to maintain the crispy crust after I pull the loaves out of the oven. When I made the pain de campagne last week I didn’t care about the state of the loaves because I wanted them to go stale for the fondue. So I just left them out. And the crust stayed nice and crunchy. So should I stop putting the bread away until they’ve had several more hours to cool? Helen reckons that the heat and moisture inside the bread gets trapped when the bread is trapped in a container, and softens this the crusts again. This seems reasonable to me. Or maybe the only reason the pains de campagne had nice crusts was because they were baked for longer? Something to experiment with on the next attempt.

I gave one loaf to Nick, along with the money I owed him for the beer. (Sorry for being late in my debts!) The recipe suggests that it’s good with a cassoulet and a glass of red wine. Helen improvised a not-cassoulet from the wrong type of beans and some very old sausages from the freezer. It turned out rather fantastic in the end.

This is the bread I was talking about yesterday. After last night and lunch today we have less than half a loaf left. But I have more bread in the works.

I was up pretty late last night, baking. I didn’t particularly enjoy getting out of bed this morning (…but when do I ever?) but the bread was totally worth it.

I made two pains de campagne. They’re mostly plain flour with a little rye for flavour and colour. They start off with a ferment, which I tend not to do for other loaves because I’m lazy and it doesn’t easily fit into my day — but I thought I would make the effort this time.

(Mostly I make up a ferment the night before and put it in the fridge until the following evening. But a chilled ferment is pretty difficult to work and the yeast is obviously sluggish. It becomes a trade-off between letting the ferment come back up to room temperature, and not leaving it too late in the day to take the loaf to completion. In future I might try putting together a ferment just before I leave the house in the morning. The temperature is probably cool enough outside the fridge anyway!)

The loaves, in the end, looked rather beautiful and smelled fantastic. I’m sorry I haven’t uploaded the photographs that I took last night. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Last Friday… it seems so long ago… we went out to Nick’s for a Birthday Masquerade Ball. There were a small number of people who made their own masks, though not always successfully. José made himself a Zorro-style mask with the eye holes too far apart, so wore it round his forehead all evening instead. Oh well.

We decided to go the extra effort and made some moulded masks using a technique Helen learned from a youth drama group. This is how it’s done.

Continue Reading »

This is the most dramatic way to get to work:

My best bit comes after about 3:30. If you’re not actually Jack Bauer it may be a bit overkill though.

There’s been a really interesting discussion going on in various circles about a bug report that was filed against the Firefox 3 browser. The user who reported the problem had been annoyed that Firefox seemed to reject the security certificates of every major website she visited — Paypal, Facebook, Amazon. Each time the browser put up an error message the user would press the button that said “this is all okay, accept this as valid and secure”.

Of course, the sting in the tail is that it was not Firefox that was in error. This user was being subjected to repeated Man-In-The-Middle attacks — there was someone else between her and the desired website, intercepting all her traffic and putting her privacy in serious jeopardy.

The interesting aspect is that every single error message which Firefox displayed to the user was valid and pertinent. She really was under attack. But the user, savvy enough to report this bug, didn’t realise that these messages weren’t in error. Clearly there is something very wrong with the usability of this system.

Continue Reading »

A smattering of random thoughts:

• The tanning salon down the hill sells leather handbags. Wicked humour or carefully thought-out marketing?

• It’s amazing how easy making your own (paper) masks is. Will post more on this when I have the time and the photographs.

• Finally registered for a doctor on Wednesday. Finally.

• It appears shirts are not made for people who don’t have a middle-aged paunch. Took me ages on Thursday to get something suitable. Thomas Pink, you suck! For reference, the man in TM Lewin was very helpful.

• I got IDed buying soft drinks on Wednesday… well, that’s exaggeration for effect, but it’s still true. I was buying cordials from The Drink Shop and they phoned me up to verify that I was over eighteen. So if I want to buy booze closer to Christmas they can rush it out the door now that I’m in their system. Still, it was a bit surreal!

• Started reading The Steep Approach to Garbadale and enjoying it so far. Helen actually complains that she really wants to read the book I’m reading right now, but she’ll just have to wait. I bought her Bad Science last month, but has she opened it?

I finished The Princess Bride a couple of days, the book from which they made the film. I don’t remember much about the film. I tried to find it recently in HMV but it wasn’t there. A lot of other rubbish, but not The Princess Bride. Inconceivable, I know.

I was prompted to buy the book because of a conversation in the pub (it is always the way — pub conversations are the cause of most things, I think) a month or so ago. The interesting thing, I was told after the fourth glass of wine, was that the author of the book doesn’t exist. He is entirely made up by the person who is abridging the book. The abridgement, in fact, is a witty excuse to write a naive and effortlessly silly tale of derring-do — or as they would have it, “true love and high adventure”.

In this respect the book is just like the film, so if you loved that why not check out the book? If you like, you can imagine it being narrated by Peter Falk, or someone else entirely.

If you’ve not seen the film, what more can I say to convince you? It’s whimsical, exciting, comical and dastardly. You can’t really fit much more in 300 pages.