Disaffected but not Dispassionate

A week or so ago, commenter SP remarked, apropos this post that:

By my reckoning Gummo you must be cooking up a storm by now...

I am prepared to own up to creating a respectable low pressure system in the kitchen over the past few days. But, once you've used every clean mixing bowl and cooking pot you can find, you realise it's time to stop at least long enough to wash the large stock pot you'll need to cook the lump of corned silverside you're buying tomorrow. We've nearly used up last week's lump so it needs to be replaced; if it isn't there's half a large jar of mustard in the fridge that will just go to waste. That's not the sort of thing you can afford to allow to happen when you're on a tight budget. Plus there's always a moment of guilt when you throw away mouldy condiments for which those starving orphans in Africa would have given their eye teeth.

Give or take the occasional fit of stove rage - I'm having a few difficulties adapting to working with an under-powered electric stove after years of working with under-powered gas stoves - the activity in the kitchen has been a pleasant escape from sitting in front of the computer, cranking up the word processor and then staring at a blank screen for the next thirty minutes thinking so, what the bloody hell am I actually going to write then?

This whole kerfuffle over Mike Scrafton's recent revelations is a case in point; the Prime Minister lied, the Prime Minister knew he lied so what is there to say about it that hasn't already been said. In two words: sod all.

Actually, there's still some room to doubt the proposition that John Howard knew that he wasn't telling the truth, and you don't have to go through the sort of bizarre reasoning that Henderson, G produced in his weekly Fairfax column on Tuesday; According to Gerard, it wasn't so much conscious dishonesty on the PM's part as a failure of empathy and, despite the fact that the current law on detention of uninvited immigrants appears to be stuffed enough to have troubled a few of our High Court justices, we now have Amanda Vanstone as minister for immigration and we can expect to see her use her ministerial discretion with a compassionate, woman's touch.

As I said, there's no need to trot out such bizarreries as "it's not so much that the PM is a liar as a bit unimaginative and narrow-minded" to arrive at the conclusion that the PM didn't consciously mislead the Australian public. You might consider, as an alternative explanation, that the PM wouldn't recognise the truth if it came up and punched him on the nose. I think I've put just such an argument several times before; writing the previous sentence produced very strong feelings of deja-vu. This time around, it's looking like the truth might go in hard and give the PM a well-deserved slippering too.

I have this vague feeling that I ought to be getting more satisfaction, or at least amusement, out of Children Overboard II but at the moment it's all looking like a rehash of the original. Even the jokes, like Senator George Brandis' extended performance on Lateline last night, are being recycled.

No doubt about it, I've got a bad case of the henries. I think it's time to pop out to the supermarket and buy a pack of instant cake mix so I can benchmark the oven. Zeppo Bakunin suggested this simple test the other day; you get a pack of cake-mix and prepare and cook it according to the instructions on the pack (particularly with regard to the oven temperature setting and cooking time). If it comes out burnt or soggy, you know that your oven thermostat's a bit off and you can either abandon the idea of ever baking in it, or adjust your temperatures and times a little to compensate. Of course if the cake comes out more or less to the manufacturers specification, you might have trouble resisting the temptation to eat it. I think that rules out using anything with chocolate in it.

Afterword: I've just seen Max Moore-Wilton on The 7.30 Report paying out on Mike Scrafton. His concluding remark "I consider myself quite warm and cuddly sometimes" has me thinking that there's some hope that Children Overboard II might yet have some amusing surprises in store after all. If I had the funds, I'd put in a bid for the rights to do the soft-toy merchandising.

Eine Schwalbe* ...

I don't usually buy The Oz but I made an exception today after hearing that Mike Scrafton, a former Defence Department adviser to Peter Reith, had written them a letter casting serious doubt on the Stainless Steel Weasel's claim that he did not mislead the Australian people, Mr Speaker, he did not. In his letter to The Oz Scrafton says:

What would I have told the Senate committee? On the evening of November 7, 2001, after having viewed the tape from the HMAS Adelaide at Maritime HQ in Sydney, I spoke to the Prime Minister by mobile phone on three occasions.

In the course of those calls I recounted to him that:

a) the tape was at best inconclusive as to whether there were any children in the water but certainly didn't support the proposition that the event had occurred;

b) that the photographs that had been released in early October were definitely of the sinking of the refugee boat on October 8 and not of any children being thrown
into the water; and

c) that no one in Defence that I had dealt with on the matter still believed that any children were thrown overboard.

During the last conversation, the Prime Minister asked me how it was that he had a report from the Office of National Assessments confirming the children overboard incident.

I replied that I had gained the impression that the report had as its source the public statements of the then minister for immigration, Phillip Ruddock.

According to Scrafton, he was prompted to make these damning revelation (or scurrilous allegations, depending on your personal bias) by the gang of 43 daiquiri diplomats' recent statement on "truth in government". I doubt that it will be long before we hear from various informed sources that:

a) If Scrafton thinks he can win a pissing contest about personal credibility with the Prime Minister, maybe he should take a look at what happened to Andrew Wilkie and think again;

b) It's obvious from the timing of Scrafton's letter that he's part of some shadowy, elite cabal of ex-bureaucrats who are working hand in glove with the commentariat to bring down the Howard government so they can get cheaper chardonnay and cafe lattes under a Latham ALP government;

c) The whole children overboard affair was so turn of the century and even if Scrafton turns out to be telling the truth, anyone who thinks it matters whether the Prime Minister was telling the truth is completely out of touch with mainstream opinion.

* Sorry about the pretentious German title. I just wanted to avoid any suggestion of the sort of innuendo that would result if I'd the English "One Swallow ...".

Olympic Moment

... and Sara Carrigan joins Kathy Watt [in/from Barcelona*] as the only Australian Olympic gold medallist in the Women's Road Race.

I heard that on ABC radio this morning. I understand exactly what the commentator meant; I come from a family of four only children. But I've yet to hear anything to match my personal favourite in Olympic sports commentary, from the Los Angeles Olympics:

... we're nearing the end of this gruelling, ten-event, decathlon.

There was a bit of grousing from Jon Faine and others this morning about the poor crowd turn-out for a lot of the televised events, with a hint that we'd been short-changed on the atmosphere by poor organisation on the part of the Athens Olympic Committee.

Maybe they could make up for it by re-arranging the schedule a little and giving us a baker's decathlon of eleven events although, to be fair to the competitors, the additional event ought not be too strenuous nor too difficult to learn.

There's probably a pool table in the Olymic village somewhere that they could press into service. Obviously they'll have to get their skates on to organise television coverage but, as the Greeks apparently like to leave things to the last minute, they'll no doubt be able to come up with something and give us some Olympic memories truly worth treasuring.

* I didn't quite catch this bit, but I'm pretty sure that Barcelona was mentioned, with one or other of the two prepositions cited.

My Weekend, By Gummo Trotsky Aged 48 3/4

I wrote the following couple of posts over the weekend. It might not have been quite as exciting as barbecuing yabbies and chops in the Mallee or cooking up a pot of Mauritian monkey curry but I had a good time and got a fridge full of comfort food out of it to boot.

(Incidentally, I'm whether rabbit, which is available at the Victoria Market would be an acceptable substitute for monkey, which isn't. The point's moot anyway as I don't have access to anything like an "ardent flame" in my kitchen; the stove's electric).

Gummo's Veal Shank Casserole (A Step by Step Preparation Guide)

(A simple, hearty meal which is either perfect for eating on cold winter evenings or for throwing out - the results aren't in yet)

Two Days Before Cooking: go to the Victoria Market and buy two veal shanks at two dollars each. Forget to ask the butcher to cut them (this is very important - on no account should you remember to ask the butcher to cut the shanks into shorter lengths). While you're at the market, buy a shitload of whatever else is cheap. Take the lot home, pack it into freezer backs and freeze it, except for the veal shanks.

Two hours before cooking: get out of bed, go to the fridge for milk for your morning coffee and notice that the fridge smells of meat. Realise you forgot to freeze the veal shanks. Ask Zeppo Bakunin what vegetables you have in the house, then go to the supermarket and obtain some carrots, celery and turnips. Forget to buy the ground almonds you were going to substitute for coconut (or muesli) in the PMWU recipe for apple crumble.

Final Preparation: Pre-heat oven to halfway between 150 and 200 degrees Centigrade on the temperature dial. Take two of the onions Mr Bakunin told you that you had in the house and slice them finely. Slice three sticks of celery to more or less the same thickness as the onions.

Take the veal shanks out of the fridge and find your favourite casserole dish; the big oval cast-iron one. Pour enough olive oil into the dish to completely cover the bottom. Place on the stove to heat.

Once the oil is hot, attempt to put one of the veal shanks into the casserole dish to brown and discover that it is too long. Take the shank out of the dish and place it on a chopping board. Search the kitchen drawers for some implement capable of cutting the shank in two. Extend your search to the back hallway cupboard where you keep the gardening tools.

Return to the kitchen and remove the casserole from the heat. Open the kitchen window to clear the smoke from the olive oil. Resume your search for some way to cut the veal shanks.

Take one shank, and with a sharp kitchen knife, cut through the meat about halfway along its length, until you expose the bone. Take the old claw hammer you found in the back hallway cupboard and strike the exposed bone several times until it breaks. Repeat with the other shank.

Return the casserole to heat and try to place all four pieces of veal shank in it to brown. Discover that only two will fit in at a time. Brown the first two pieces, remove to a plate then brown the second two. Set these aside on the same plate, which you now discover is too small to accomodate all four pieces comfortably. Carefully arrange the veal shank pieces in a pyramid on the plate.

Put the sliced onion and celery in the casserole dish, taking care not to disturb the pyramid of veal shank pieces on the plate. Saute until the onion is a translucent white and the celery is bright green. Return the veal shank pieces to the dish. Rearrange them with a wooden spoon and a pair of kitchen tongs until they more or less fit in.

Take a large can of chopped tomatoes from the cupboard, consider the space left in the casserole dish and put the can away again. Take out a smaller tin, open it and pour it over the veal shanks. Discover that there was probably enough room to fit in the larger tin after all.

Peel the carrots and turnips from the supermarket and slice them to bachelor thickness; that is, no thinner than one centimeter. Toss them into the vacant space around the shanks. Open a bottle of pub trivia quiz second prize red, pour one glass and add it to the casserole. Check the remaining empty space in the casserole dish and the remaining level in the wine bottle, and add as much wine as you are prepared to forego drinking.

Raise the heat under the casserole dish until the liquid starts to simmer. Put the lid on the casserole dish. Remove the lid and, with kitchen tongs and a wooden spoon, rearrange the contents until the lid will fit snugly on the rim of the dish without too much forcing. Remove the lid again, and add a generous pinch of ground black pepper and a bay leaf. Place the casserole in the oven and go to your computer. Write up the preparation so far.

After Writing the Final Preparation: Remove the casserole dish from the oven, and taste the contents. If fit for human consumption, remove the bones and serve with potatoes boiled in their jackets, green beans and bread.

Tarte Tatin

I've just taken one out of the oven and turned it onto a plate. It's a real beaut; the apples have cooked to a gorgeous golden brown colour and there are little dribbles of caramelised sugar oozing out around the pastry base onto the serving dish. OK, so the pastry is a fairly straight forward sweet butter shortcrust, instead of the frozen sheet of puff pastry Jenny Sheard went with in last week's Good Weekend and I put the thing together in an ordinary baking dish, instead of building it up in an oven-proof frypan like some bizarre fusion of cookery and ikebana but it looks pretty damn good, smells just as good and Zeppo and I are looking forward to tucking into it for dessert tonight. And, as I'm still thoroughly bored by the political scene (I've tried, but every new controversy that comes up, like the kerfuffling over the Flood report, just strikes me as more of the same old same old. Maybe, as Shaun Carney suggested in Saturday's Age, John Howard's main strategy for winning the next election is to bore us all shitless), I decided I might as well follow on from the veal casserole with a classic dessert.

I think we'll have to go with the step by step description I used for the veal shank casserole thing because, while I tackled cooking the tarte tatin a lot more methodically than I did the veal I did a lousy job of keeping track of quantities, except at a couple of points.

Three Days Before Cooking: pick up two kilos of Granny Smith apples at the Victoria Market for one dollar a kilo. Take home and refrigerate.

One day before cooking: pick up two 250 gram bricks of unsalted butter and a bag of dark brown sugar from the supermarket.

Final Preparation: First make the pastry for the base of the tart. Cut off half of one of the bricks of butter, and cut it into small cubes (roughly 1 cm on a side). Astute mathematicians will realis that this is 125 grams of butter, give or take a gram or two, but it's better to think of it as half a brick. Otherwise you're likely to get upset when I tell you to weigh 5 ounces of flour into a bowl. Add one ounce of granulated sugar, or castor sugar if you're the kind of ponce who keeps castor sugar in the house. Toss in the cubes of butter.

Go and wash your hands. Then wash them again, this time in cold water (seriously: it's uncomfortable, but it's better for the pastry). Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with your fingers, until most of the mixture reaches the consistency of bread crumbs. It's better to underdo this than overdo it; you'll probably find that however hard you try, you'll still end up with a few large flakes of butter that refuse to mix properly with the flour. Deal with it and move on.

Get a cup of very cold water; the precise quantity doesn't matter, you won't be using all of it anyway. Start adding small dribbles of water to the pastry. Really small dribbles. Each time you add water, press the pastry into it with the tips of your fingers. Stop adding water once you have a smooth ball of pastry which you can roll around the sides of the bowl without it sticking (once again, it's better to use too little water than to use too much). Cover the bowl and put the pastry in the refrigerator.

Peel the two kilos of bargain basement Granny Smiths. While you peel them indulge your sensitive, feminine side, by trying to take the peel off in a single continuous strip, which you can toss into the air. According to an article I read in Ma Trotsky's copy of The Australian Women's Weekly many years ago, folklore has it that this will give you the first initial of your destined one true love. Apparently, my destined one true love is an ancient Mayan who died many centuries before syphilis arrived in Europe.

Once you've finished piss-farting around with the apple peel, quarter and core the apples. Ponces who keep castor sugar in the kitchen probably keep an apple corer around the place as well; if so, you can core and quarter the apples instead.

Now check the cupboard for a baking dish; you want something with sloping sides. The one I found was about twelve inches in diameter. Coat the sides of the dish liberally with butter, then put a dessert spoon of brown sugar into one of those flour dredging things that ponces who use castor sugar and apple corers usually have in the kitchen somewhere. Attempt to coat the base and sides of the baking dish evenly with brown sugar, using the dredge.

When you realise that the brown sugar is just getting stuck in the mechanism of the flour dredge, give up, and tip the sugar straight in the baking dish. Rub it over the base and sides of the dish by hand. Repeat with another dessert spoon of brown sugar. If you've been liberal enough with the butter, you should have a dense coating of brown sugar on the inside of the dish.

Now cut some of your quartered apples into thin slices (about 2 to 3 mm) and arrange them in a poncy pattern in the base of the dish. Slice about half the remaining apples however you like; No one's going to see them under the decorative layer anyway.

Melt some butter in a frypan, add a small piece of cinnamon bark*, a quarter teaspoon of cardamom powder and a dessert spoon of brown sugar. Add the chopped apples, stir and saute gently until the apples have started to take on colour from the brown sugar. Leave out the cloves; I've read frequently that cloves complement the flavour of cooked apples but in my view this is like saying that tsunamis enhance the rustic tranquility of Japanese fishing villages. OK, if you really want your cooked apples to smell and taste like a home remedy for toothache, toss some cloves in. See if I care.

Put the cooked apples into the baking dish. Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out until you have a circle, or something approximating to a circle, or something which is nothing like a circle, but at least big enough to cover the baking dish and hang over the sides most of the way round, except for that one gap you can plug with a piece trimmed off the other side of the dish. Allow the pastry to rest for a couple of minutes (this will prevent it from shrinking to a small circle the size of a bread and butter plate when it bakes). Place the pastry over the baking dish, trim it and put it into an oven preheated to 175 C**.

Fret over the oven for approximately 20 minutes to half an hour, then check to see if the pastry has cooked; the tarte is cooked when the top is a light brown colour more or less all over. If it hasn't fully cooked, continue fretting for another 10 minutes.

While you're fretting, you can cook up the remaining apples in the butter, brown sugar and spices mix described above. They can be refrigerated until you need them for your next big batch of comfort food.

Once the pastry has cooked, remove the baking dish from the oven and run a table knife gently around the inside edge of the dish. Place a plate on top of the dish, and invert the plate and baking dish together. Lift the baking dish gently and admire your handiwork.

* I know, this sounds like one of those pieces of ginger 5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide, except I haven't even specified the length and thickness have I? Well, it came out of a bag of stuff labelled "Cinammon Bark" and I suppose it was somewhere between 5 cms and 6 cms long. If it really bothers you, you can either leave it out or go with a teaspoon of the powdered stuff. The cardamom isn't essential either, but it's definitely worth adding.

** On balance, I think this temperature was a little too low; the pastry would probably benefit from a few extra degrees on the oven thermostat, so next time I'll be upping the temperature to somewhere between 180 C and 200 C.

Bugger!

After seeing Lateline last night, I thought today might be a good time to attempt a return to form on the political front. I figured there'd be a lot of kerfuffling about the Flood Report and John Howard's classic performance on The 7.30 Report. I thought maybe we could revisit Mr Howard's Address to The Nation. Back then, Mr Howard was pretty clear on his main justification for going to war:

Therefore the possession of chemical, biological, or even worse still, nuclear weapons by a terrorist network would be a direct undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people.

That is the reason above all others why I passionately believe that action must be taken to disarm Iraq. Not only will it take dangerous weapons from that country but it will send a clear signal to other rogue states and terrorists groups like Al Qaeda which clearly want such weapons that the world is prepared to take a stand.

Or we might revisit Sixty Minutes interview with Charles Woolley - the one where Woolley lumped opponents of the war into the "mob" and Howard picked up on the usage and ran with it. Howard's line back then was pretty much that if the mob knew what he knew, they'd be a lot happier to go along with him.

But today, I checked out Troppo Armadillo and decided that it would be a waste of time. Because faux-centrist Ken Parish has gotten hold of a rhetorical Ramset gun and nailed it good and proper.

I guess I'm going to be stuck with topics like Tarte Tatin for a while longer. But here's an invitation from the Stainless Steel Weasel I'd urge everyone to take up come October (or November, or whenever that photo of Mark Latham with the gumboots and ewes ever does turn up):

To those in the community who may not agree with me, please vent your anger against me and towards the government.

Ivy & Zeppo & Me

I still haven't shaken the disgust fatigue that brought on the long hiatus. I thought I might be on the road to recovery, but recent events in the news brought on a relapse. It started with Paul McGeogh's report in Saturday's Age of the allegations that the new Iraqi Prime minister had personally topped six prisoners to demonstrate the sort of procedural fairness he expected from the police force in the new Iraq. Then there was the report in Monday's Age of Martha Stepford's little chat with Barbara Walters over the weekend, where Martha had a good whine about the injustice that's been done to her by the American legal system.

The Martha Stepford thing looked promising as blog material, until I mentioned it to Zeppo Bakunin; he was taken by Ms Stepford's remark that "Many good people have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela.". It didn't take him long to develop a completely new theory of why Nelson Mandela got jailed in the first place; it was for insider trading in apartheid futures. Where Mandela went wrong wasn't in opposing the apartheid regime, it was in going short on apartheid on the Johannesburg futures exchange, then setting out to wreck the regime so that he could cash in big-time. And getting caught at it, of course. Had things gone according to plan, Mandela would have been a national hero years earlier and a rich man into the bargain.

That's more or less Zeppo's take on it; personally, I think he got done for growing hydrangeas, rather than an acceptable South African native plant like the Protea. Life in prison for growing hydrangeas does seem a bit harsh; although if he was fart-arsing about treating the soil with lime or potash to manipulate the flower colour, I can understand that being considered an aggravating circumstance warranting a more severe sentence. Particularly if the hydrangeas are in pots, set out in a row of with the pink and blue flowering bushes alternating. Call me soft-hearted, but I wouldn't even call that criminal; more like an unconscious cry for the sort of help that the Backyard Blitz crew inflict on hapless suburbanites at the behest of friends, neighbours or family. The real criminals, here in the Great Southern Land at least, are those stupid bastards who plant ivy in their gardens.

The ivy in "our" garden is coming along quite nicely; that cold snap over the weekend did for the stuff clinging to the big date palm in the south-west corner of the yard. The ivy dropped enough leaves that you can see the twelve to sixteen year old vines wrapped around the trunk of the tree and the branches up around the roof-line of the house. You can also see all the dead palm fronds that fell into the ivy and got stuck. It's a very left-wing garden feature; it's been thoroughly undercut up to a little above fence height leaving the bulk of the overgrowth to wither away and die until we can borrow a ladder from somewhere. If we ever do, we can add the ivy from the date palm to our other main garden feature, the big pile of ivy cuttings under the back bedroom window.

I suppose, in our own small way, we've been doing our bit for our land, as featured in the latest series of government advertisements which have nothing at all to do with any upcoming election, in the same way that a big bank of cumulo-nimbus on the western horizon has nothing to do with an impending piss-down of rain. But the work on the ivy had nothing to do with a patriotic attachment to the golden soil of our whale foot oiled land girt by sea, nor was it motivated by a desire to garden - well not in my case anyway. And for Mr Bakunin, clearing up accumulated garden waste doesn't count as gardening; it's what you do so that you can start gardening, in the same way that I regard measuring out ingredients as what you do so that you can start cooking and John Howard regards running a lot of government announcements as what you do before you actually call the election and start the real campaigning (which by my reckoning won't happen until someone comes up with a good photo of Mark Latham wearing gum-boots in the vicinity of a flock of ewes). Our big motivation to get rid of the ivy was to get rid of the bloody wasps that came with it.

Apparently, the little buggers love the stuff - at least that's what this site says. So do several others. I have found nursery sites around the place where ivy is proudly offered for sale, and sites listing ivy as a suitable plant for low-allergy gardens, on the strength that it's not a big pollen producer. I guess it's not very common for people who are allergic to pollen, like some asthmatics, to also be allergic to wasp stings, like some asthmatics. But not necessarily the same asthmatics. So that's alright then.

I was going to segue into the cooking section of the post around about now, with a consideration of Tarte Tatin, the classic French upside down apple tart. I now know at least three versions. Jacques Pepin offers one in La Technique of which he says:

There are many interpretations of [Tarte Tatin] which are quite simple and satisfactory. The one below is a little more involved, but the result is quite distinctive.

Then there's Jenny Sheard's version, featured in last Saturday's Good Weekend, which makes Pepin's version look like a quick roadhouse cafe knock up. And there's the one I might try later this week, which ought to provide a simple and satisfactory test of what the new oven can do. But I think we'll skip the details for now and finish off this week's home hints from Gummo with a couple of tips on surviving a wasp infestation in your backyard:

If you must go out into the backyard for a morning heart-starter cigarette, leave washing your hair until afterwards. Especially if you use a herbal shampoo, like Clairol Herbal Essences for Receding or Thinning Hair.

Never wear a brightly coloured machine fairisle jumper in the backyard during daylight hours.

As Cooks Go ...

I've been hitting the books pretty hard lately. To be precise I've been hitting the recipe books, in particular The Essential Madhur Jaffrey, Italian Food by Elizabeth David (co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking) and Zeppo Bakunin's copy of the PWMU Cookey Book. This is what happens when you move in with someone who expects you to be a gourmet cook; you find yourself under pressure to deliver, and you spend a lot of time re-acquainting yourself with basic stuff that you used to take for granted, like how to crack an egg.

I'm not convinced that it's been paying off, particularly when it comes to cookery in the Indian style, which is what I'm looking to Madhur Jaffrey for. I know, this isn't the sort of acerbic comment on political events you came here looking for, nor is it particularly irascible, but give it time; I'm still warming up after a hiatus of more than 40 days, so bear with me. In any event, there's only so many jokes you can make about John Howard's prime ministership before you start repeating yourself and you'd be damn lucky if you end up having to take off at least one sock to count them.

Madhur Jaffrey has been high on the reading list because I've been looking for "interesting things to do with mince". I think you'll admit that this is a challenge; mince is inherently boring in the same way that ivy is inherently garden waste (since moving into our new place, Zeppo Bakunin and I have thrown out 1.25 cubic meters of the stuff; we think it was orginally planted as ground cover, but sometime during the past twelve to fifteen years (I counted the growth rings on one of the stems we cut down) it turned into a rampant fence and generic-shrub-with-orange-berries-that-give-birds-diorrhea cover as well). So far the results I've had following Ms Jaffrey's recipes have been a bit disappointing and I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth the effort. It's a bit like trying to convince yourself that John Howard has the quality of statesmanship, which I suppose makes him the political equivalent of mince and I may have to take that sock off after all.

I used to get perfectly acceptable results by grabbing a jar of Patak's Madras paste at the supermarket and tossing it in a pot with some chopped onions, garlic and tinned tomatoes. Which is a lot easier than the rigmarole of measuring out spices onto a saucer in at least two piles (one to go in with the browning mince, the other to go in when you add the tinned tomatoes), plus the intellectual effort of working out how many teaspoons of crushed garlic out of a jar of the same make up four cloves and how many teaspoons of crushed ginger amount to "1 piece fresh ginger 5 cm (2 inches) long and 2.5 cm (1 inch wide), peeled and coarsely chopped".

I don't think I really have the right attitude to get the best results from Madhur Jaffrey's recipes anyway. Take the recipe for kheema (minced meat) of which Ms Jaffrey says "This is the first Indian dish all Indian students abroad learn to make." It includes the following instruction:

... In about 10 seconds, when the peppers turn dark, add paste from blender, keeping your face averted.

I'd take that as a pretty clear indication that, despite the fact that in some of Ms Jaffrey's recipes various ingredients are identified as "optional" or "if available", when it comes down to putting the whole dish together, you have to approach the task with a proper sense of religious dedication. On that score, I'm afraid I'm an abject failure; I can't see any good reason why I should be restricted to seeing only the nether parts of what I'm cooking. In fact, I'd rather not see the nether parts of what I'm cooking at all, because I find the whole idea of cooking nether parts rather unappetising.

Even if I were inclined to follow a recipe with the sort of religious devotion Ms Jaffrey implicitly demands, I couldn't; I don't have a blender, so there's no way that I can turn two medium sized onions, four cloves of garlic and the aforesaid piece of ginger into a "paste from blender"; the best I can manage is a pile of finely diced onion (see Mastering the Art of French Cooking for the definitive approach to dicing onions; be sure that you use a very sharp knife and well refrigerated onions) topped with similarly diced ginger and garlic. Unless you really want to show off your knife technique, you might as well use the stuff in jars. I really don't have time for quasi-religious culinary rituals that require the use of electricity. Unless it's beating egg whites into stiff peaks; one of those electric beater things will spare you a lot of inflammation of the elbow and shoulder joints.

Elizabeth David's Italian Food got on the reading list because I was looking for good desserty/cakey things that I could whip up that would fit within budget. Mastering the Art of French Cooking has a recipe for a killer chocolate cake but it takes about 800 grams of good quality dark cooking chocolate to do it justice (around 400 for the cake from memory, and another 400 for the ganache, (which you'll find in Jacques Pepin's La Technique - or Larousse, which has specific recipes for the essential stuff, and enough descriptive notes on obscure things like panade that you can figure something out for yourself). When you factor in the eggs and butter (but not the flour, which you should have in the larder already), it costs big time to produce a good quality chocolate cake. And I'd be working with a new, totally unfamiliar, oven, so I'm not going to spend all those ackers until I know how the bastard behaves. Nor until I have some occasion that warrants all the time, effort and money that I'd have to put in.

So I was looking for an alternative to cooking up elaborate and hideously expensive chocolate cakes, and I found a recipe for Torrone Molle, which requires no baking at all. You need 6 ounces each of cocoa, butter, sugar, ground almonds and plain biscuits such as "Petit Buerre or Osborne"; I'm not sure what that translates to in an Australian supermarket, I suppose you could see how you get on with Arnott's Scotch Fingers or Milk Arrowroot. You also need one whole egg and one egg yolk. If you don't know how to acquire an egg yolk, ask your granny; as long as you haven't ignored the proverbial advice, I'm sure you'll find her guidance useful. If you haven't, please don't invite me around to your place for coffee and Torrone Molle; I'm not confident that it will be hygienic. And if your idea of good coffee is that Vietnamese weasel coffee stuff, just forget the whole idea.

Basically, you combine the butter and cocoa into a soft paste, then stir in the ground almonds; melt the sugar in a saucepan with a little water and add it to the cocoa mixture (if you've got a good kitchen reference, like Larousse, check out the section on stock sugar syrups for guidance); stir in the eggs and finally the biscuits and turn the whole mixture into an oiled turban mould and put it in the fridge. I'm not sure waht a turban mould is, but Ms David provides the following informative footnote:

That [the turban mould] is what was used by Lina, the Tuscan cook who introduced me to this delicious recipe, rather different from the one usually known under this name in Italy. The torrone is easier to turn out from a rectangular loaf tin, or a cake tin with a removable base. The oil should be sweet almond oil (to be bought from the chemist) - E.D. 1963

If this all sounds too elaborate, you might prefer a simpler home grown equivalent. Particularly if your granny's advice on the egg yolk has left you with the impression that separating eggs involves considerable discomfort in the nether parts. According to Zeppo Bakunin's copy of the PMWU Cookery Book you'll need 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons cocoa, 1 egg and 250 gram biscuits.

You put the butter, sugar and cocoa in a saucepan over low heat and dissolve the sugar. Once it's dissolved, take it off the heat and add the egg. Then combine it with the crushed biscuits. If you have a turban mould coated with sweet almond oil from the chemist, you could toss the mixture in that and pass it off as Torrone Molle as found on page 277 of the Penguin edition of Italian Food by Elizabeth David. If, like the rest of us mere mortals, you don't, you'll just have to settle for pressing it into a flat tin, putting chocolate icing over it, cutting it into squares and calling it "Hedgehog". I think that it will probably taste more or less the same.

24 - The Final Season

I think I'm probably the only person I know who's still watching 24 on Monday nights; the sensible thing woould be to check out the episode guide, find out the ending (which has something to do with the world being kept a safe place for democracy) and have done with it. Looking back on the previous 21 episodes (or at least those of them I didn't miss), the whole series has been one big shark steeple chase.

For those who came in really late, or had the good sense to skip it entirely, the series kicked off with the discovery of the corpse of someone who had died from a deadly haemorrhagic virus which had somehow got into the hands of Latin American drug-lord, Hector Salazar. Hector's brother Ramon, a psychopath whose lawyer should really have insisted on hazard pay, was in a Los Angeles prison and Hector wanted him released. Hector more or less got what he wanted, thanks to CTU agent Jack Bauer who, in pursuit of his sworn duty to keep the US safe from the threat of all forms of terrorism, engineers a prison riot to cover his escape with Ramon (this happens at around 4:56 pm).

Over the next couple of hours, Jack flees Los Angeles with Ramon, arrives in central America where he appears to be working with Hector and Ramon to obtain the virus that they used in their attempt to blackmail the US Government to obtain the release of Ramon. I can't remember the rationale, but a lot of money was involved; I think the idea was to buy up the entire world supply of the thing, then sell it on to someone else at a profit. If that makes any sense at all to you, I can put you in touch with someone who owns the exclusive world commercial rights to the bubonic plague.

Later that night (or perhaps some time in the wee small hours of the morning) we learn that, contrary to appearances, Jack hasn't decided to take early retirement from the bureaucratic drudgery of defending whatever it is he defends, in fact the whole engineer a prison riot, get a few guards killed, run away in a hijacked helicopter business was an elaborate sting operation, which was intended to get the virus out of the hands of the terrorists (who can't be trusted) and into the hands of the Counter-Terrorist Unit (who can be trusted, but only by definition).

By the next morning the sting operation has gone completely wrong, the virus is back in the hands of another terrorist, who enhances and weaponises it, releases it into the air-conditioning of a Los Angeles hotel and sends the US President a special cell-phone so that he can make his demands without his calls being traced; presumably he was able to pick up what's left of the Iridium satellite telophone network at E-Bay, or wherever it is that international terrorists get their stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if were E-Bay; the terrorists on 24 are very web-savvy; they even run to creating their own "hostage-cam" sites when they want to need to do a spot of personal extortion.

I'm not sure if there's going to be a fourth series of 24; if there is, I won't be watching it. Unless they shift the action from Los Angeles to Washington, and the first episode starts out something like this:

Wide Angle view of committee hearing room in congress. Senator John Keeler is centre screen, flanked by several other senators, obviously committe members. The room is crowded with journalists and onlookers. Senator Keeler raps the table with his gavel.

SENATOR KEELER: This hearing is now in session. We will continue with the testimony of CTU agent Jack Bauer. As Agent Bauer is already under oath, I propose to proceed directly to my next set of questions.

Agent Bauer, is it correct that last year you were involved in a CTU sting operation and that during that operation you held prison guards at the Downey federal holding facility and demanded they release all prisoners from their cells?

Cut to: Jack Bauer at the witness table. He takes a sip of water from the standard senate committee tumbler, next to the standard senate committee water jug and mutters something to the woman sitting beside him, who is obviously his lawyer.

JACK: Under legal advice I wish to assert my fifth amendment rights in answer to that question Mr Chairman.

Cut to:

SENATOR KEELER: So far agent Bauer, this committee has put 168 questions to you and you have answered every one by asserting your fifth amendment rights. At any time in your career with CTU did you ever do anything you can tell us about without risking self-incriminination?

Cut to: Jack, in sotto voce discussion with his lawyer again.

JACK: ...no, it's OK, I can answer this one. On my first day at CTU, I had to go out for the office lunches. They always make the newbies do that (his lawyer interrupts - they mutter some more) ... under legal advice I must assert my fifth amendment rights in relation to any further questions on CTU lunch procurement.

Vince Gair and the Sioux Nation

Yes, it's true, I did see Boynton last wednesday night night and we did exchange a few messages by semaphore and she has been trying to persuade me to get back to blogging and I guess she finally succeeded. I thought I'd start with some long overdue words of explanation for my absence form the blogosphere. There's a piece on a hard disc somewhere called Long OVerdue Words of Explanation but the title doesn't work for me. Every time I see it I get depressed and a little guilt stricken and decide to do something else while the piece writes itself in the back of my head. As if.

The something else is playing FreeCiv, which is installed on my new Linux box. It's not really new - it used to be a Windows box at a Roman Catholic secondary school somewhere. Shortly after Zeppo Bakunin andI moved in together, we decided to replace our dud PCs and paid thirty sevendollars each for a couple of Acer boxes through an on-line auction place. Iturned mine into a Linux box by getting rid of the old hard-drive and whackingin the Quantum Fireball hard-drive from my old PC with the dead motherboard.That was pretty much it, apart from flashing a new BIOS to get rid of thepassword protection on the old BIOS so that I could add a CD and a Floppy discdrive. Two days after Zeppo brough the boxes home, I had a functioning Linux PC.

Complete with FreeCiv 1.12 which I find perversely fascinating; perhaps I enjoy being irritated by obvious absurdity.

Getting a game started is one of those slightly roundabout nerdy Linux tasks; suffice it to say you first start the game server which actually runs the game, then you start the game client which actually allows you to play it. Thisisn't absurd; it's designed to be played as a multi-player game over theinternet, so a client/server setup makes sense. Once the game's started you chooseyour nation from a list of about fifty. I usually take the Australians, ruled by Vince Gair. I tried out a few other names for rulers (in preference to the default Robert Menzies) like Alan Cadman, Rex Connor and Joh-Bjelke Peterson but the game seems to go best with Vince.

The object of the game is to conquer the world, or something like that. You begin by building a couple of cities, explore your local neighbourhood, do the scientific research which will eventually enable you to become a world-dominating superpower. If you're lucky, you'll make it; but what usually happens is that around 50 BC, when the Australians, under Vince's benevolent despotism, have just mastered the wheel so they can build chariots and finally knock off the bloody Welsh (or the Incas, Welsh, Cornish, Mordors or Dunedan depending what nations the server picks for the AI players) the bloody Irish (or the Russians, Arabs, Israelis, Canadians, French or Lithuanians) turn up with steam-powered warships and level Canberra.

The trick, I've found, is to survive long enough to research two key "technologies" - communism and powered flight. It's remarkable how easily you can take over a coastal city with a galleon stuffed with knights in armour, as long as you have air support. Imagine what Henry the Fifth could have done at Agincourt if he'd had a couple of Sopwith Camels on his side; history would have turned out pretty much the same.

The idea of knights conquering cities with the assistance of fighter aircraft, bombers and helicopters doesn't irritate me; it's actually quite amusing. It's the designers' ideas on the nature of government, and the way those ideas are reflected in the game that gets my goat.

There are five forms of governemt available; despotism, monarchy, republicanism, democracy and communism. Here's how they're described in the game's help system:

Under Despotism you are the absolute ruler of your people. Your control over your citizens is mainitained largely by martial law. Despotism suffers the highest level of corruption of all forms of government.

Under Monarchy, a king or queen serves as the hereditary figurehead for your government. Monarchy suffers the same amount of corruption that the Republic does.

Under a Republican government, citizens elect a representative who will govern them. Since elected leaders must remain popular to remain in control, citizens are given a greater degree of freedom. Citizens under a republic become unhappy easily but the self-sufficiency of your citizens allows high levels of trade.

Under Democracy, citizens govern directly by voting on issues. Democracy offers the highest levels of trade, but also offers to most potential for unhappiness. There is no corruption during Democracy, but citizens become very upset during wars.

What all this boils down to when you play the game is very little: the whole thing runs on a soviet-style command economy anyway. It's just that if you choose one of the openly authoritarian or repressive forms of government, the bitizens will indulge in some pointless electronic pilferage which cuts into your ability to raise funds, research your next major scientific advance (such as Literacy) or distribute "luxuries" (the digital equivalent of baby-bonuses) to keep the population docile.

The end result is, that if you have the sentimental idea that freedom is a good thing and you want all your bitizens to enjoy a representative form of government, you're stuffed. The most practicable forms of government are despotism, monarchy and communism; you can keep the populace under control with martial law, you don't pay heavy penalties to maintain your knights, galleons, fighter aircraft and attack helicopters and it's cheaper to maintain the work-crews which build your infrastructure (like roads). On a good day, I can have King Vince of Australia turned into Chairman Vince of the Australian Union of Soviet Republics by around 1650 AD. Then it's time to start creating lots of spies to run around nicking the really advanced technologies (like Gunpowder and steam engines) off everyone else.

I reckon I'll probably give up on it in a couple of days or so; but first I want to find out how the Sioux nation will stand up to a mass invasion of charioteers. After the shock and awe bombardment with cruise missiles it ought to be a walkover.

Tram Rage

I had to wait fifteen minutes for tram number 109 at Port Melbourne. Next time, I'll check the time before I leave the pub. We came second in the trivia quiz; it was the questions on AFL team corporate sponsors that did us in. Still, we got two bottles of wine out of it; one of them because I was finally able to dredge up the title of one of Roger Moore's James Bond films from the back reaches of memory.

When the tram arrived, I took a seat three rows back from the driver, facing forward. I took the window seat, with my bag on the aisle seat; there were two empty seats facing me. At that time of night I expected to have the four seat bay to myself all the way to the city. I took my book - the last volume of one of those interminable science fantasy epics - out of my bag. I'd read it several times before but it was a way to pass the time.

I had a pleasant journey until you got on at Crown Casino. You with your maroon vee-neck pullover and your perfectly pressed schoolboy grey flannels and your seven decades of aging and your short back and sides haircut. I should have known you were going to be trouble - I did sense that you were going to be trouble - when you stood beside the aisle seat where I'd parked my bag and demanded that I move over. Like a damned fool I picked up my bag and dropped it my lap and went back to my book.

But that wasn't good enough for you. When we got to Flinders Street you tried to poke your elbow in my ribs - you got my elbow instead - and demanded "Get out of my seat." I looked at you. You said: "I want my own seat. If I don't get it, I'll job you."

I felt like telling you what was what; I had three decades on you at least and if you tried to job me you'd end up on the tram floor. But I didn't want to provoke you to violence - however superannuated and ineffectual - with that kind of a challenge. I didn't want to end up in front of the beak explaining why I'd jobbed a vulnerable senior citizen. So, instead, I told you, "Look, I'm not in your seat, I'm in mine. You're the one getting aggressive. If you're not happy, go find somewhere else to sit."

You weren't having any of that. You replied: "All I want is my own seat." (I looked across at the two empty, backward facing, seats which you could have taken instead of the one next to me), "And if I don't get it I'll job you."

I felt like telling you that you were crazy; like the bloke I saw once at the Elizabeth Street terminus, who waved the business end of his umbrella at the crowd waiting to get on the tram as he got off. I thought, give it thirty years and this might be me and maybe I should cut the old bugger some slack. I tried to carry on reading my book.

But you'd spoiled it; I couldn't help wondering why you were so pissed off that you had to take things out on me. Had you blown your last pension cheque two cents at a time on the Crown pokies? Were you just some old bloke who'd been an arsehole all his life and now didn't know any better? Or had you copped the gold watch and an inadequate super payout at 65 and decided that's it, no more Mr Nice Guy? Maybe you were pissed off because you couldn't march on Anzac Day or join the RSL because you'd never been in a proper war.

In the end, I decided I didn't give a rat's arse why you were an obnoxious old bastard. So, when I got up at William Street to change trams, I said "Good Night yersenileoldgit." I took a look at you as I went out the front door of the tram; you were sitting there gaping and slack jawed. A thin dribble of saliva hanging off your lower would have made my satsifaction complete, but you can't have everything.

Sweated German Violinists Demand Piece Rates

BERLIN - Violinists at a German orchestra are suing for a pay raise on the grounds that they play many more notes per concert than their colleagues do - litigation that the orchestra's director on Tuesday called "absurd."

azcentral.com

Link via Miss Boynton in the comments here.

So much for taking the week off.

Home Town Boy

I cam across this site on James Prescott Joule while I was Googling up biographical information on famous scientists of the past who were foolish enough to think that measures of temperature were in any way meaningful or useful.

Remedial Mathematics for Education Ministers

I heard Brendan Nelson on AM today, being very huffy about the peace deal between the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Sydney Catholic Education Office which allows the Catholic Education Office to offer twelve male only teaching scholarships as long as it also offers twelve female only teaching scholarships. Doctor Nelson demanded to know how this measure could possibly increase the percentage of male primary teachers:

[It's been told that in order to attract more men into teaching, it has to attract more women into teaching as well, and if you offer in this case, 12 male and 12 female scholarships, how on earth does that change the percentage of primary school teachers who are men?]

Here's a simple answer.

Imagine you have 76 primary school teachers (who all play trombone in their spare time), all of whom are female. The percentage of male teachers is, therefore, zero. Now add 24 new teachers, 12 male and twelve female. You now have 100 primary school teachers 12% of whom are male and 88% female. The percentage of trombone players is at least 76% but we can't say any more than that without knowing if any new trombone players were added.

Update: Now that today's AM is finally on-line, I've been able to add the relevant excerpt from the transcript to this post. Of course, Dr Nelson sounds much better in audio.

Qu(ot)e?

Climate variables are described by non-linear stochastic relations, which in simple language means that they cannot be used to project or forecast anything. However, like econometricians, many climate scientists are in awe of the processing power of computers, but utterly unaware that garbage-in = garbage-out. This is a continuing problem with the social sciences - using techniques of the physical sciences without understanding the limitations of those techniques.

Post Modernists would, however, disagree with this statement. As they would.

Louis at Bizarre Science

Well, that explains why the Bureau of Meteorlogy has such a hard time predicting Melbourne's weather; basically they're a bunch of jumped up sociologists. Maybe it's about time they employed some real scientists.

Commenters are cordially invited to speculate on possible post-modernist approaches to meteorology or to compose short excerpts from academic papers by deconstructionist climate physicists etc.

Update: there's also a chuckle or two to be had from the comments thread, where Louis questions the statistical validity of atmospheric temperature measurements:

It is not too difficult to show that measurements of temperatures, as published, are statistically unsound. The science of statistics was initially conceived to deal with measureable attributes of discrete objects, be they humans, cannon balls, marbles, tennis balls, etc. When restricted to these categories, statistical analysis is sound.

However when extended to mining and other phsyical objects, statistics hit a conceptual wall. When one measures the temperature of the air at a particular place, say in Australia, what is one measuring?

Is one measuring the attribute of some physical object? If so, what is that object.

In the absence of an objective basis, measurements of "un-objects", while measuring something, cannot be amenable to statistical analysis, since the measurements do not have, in the statistical sense, uniform "support".

What was that about post-modernists again?

Enough Already

I'm getting thoroughly sick and tired of all the witless Lerner and Loewe jokes I keep coming across in blog posts and opinion pieces about Spain. There's only one of them that's any damn good - you'll find it if you scroll down the page a little. As for the rest, the headline of Ann Coulter's bilious offering at Yahoo is pretty typical. It's another one of those "the Spanish have no cojones" pieces. At least Coulter has the good sense to recognise the lameness of the joke in her headline; by the end of her piece she's abandoned Lerner and Loewe in favour of a humorous riff on a theme from Rogers and Hammerstein:

No matter how many of our European allies may surrender to the terrorists, America will never be alone. This is a country founded in a covenant with God by people who had to flee Europe to do it.

Sailing to the New World in 1630 on the ship Arabella, the Puritans' leader and governor, John Winthrop, said Americans were entering into a covenant with God to create a "city upon a hill." We would be judged by all the world if we ever broke that covenant. But if we walked with God, "We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies." He has intervened in our affairs before, such as in 1776, 1861 and 1980.

With the Spanish election, we are witnessing a capitulation to savagery that makes full-scale war inevitable. The Democratic candidate wants to represent godless Europeans. The Republican candidate wants to represent Americans. As Winthrop said: "The eyes of all people are upon us."

I had to check out the dates to work out which historical events Coulter believes show divine intervention in American affairs. 1776 was, as I vaguely remember from high school history, the year of the Declaration of Independence. 1861 was the year the American Civil War started and in 1980 Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as President. God truly does work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

The Condensed Andrew Bolt

(We misread and misrepresent Andrew Bolt so that you don't have to)

Today, Andrew takes up more or less where Mark Steyn left off, and draws out the local implications of Al-Quaeda's recent victory in the Spanish elections. He remarks that:

... journalists everywhere are insisting the Howard Government tell them a reassuring falsehood -- that, like Spain, what makes us a big target is that we went to war in Iraq.

How this is meant to be reassuring I'm not sure. It's not as if we can turn back the clock on the war in Iraq; it's a done deed. I'd be more reassured if the Government told me that Australia is a terrorist target because too many Australians still practice the religion of Pope Urban II: that's something you could actually do something about, if you were of a mind to appease terrorists. Not that any government would, unless they were determined to commit electoral suicide. Back to Andrew:

It is now said again and again that these bombings are the price Spain paid for being a "strong ally of the US" in Iraq. And that Australia is therefore in greater danger now, too. Both claims are false, or desperately misleading.

"Said by whom?" you may ask. Andrew doesn't say, so your guess is as good as mine on that topic.

Turd Way Watch

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.

Sunday Herald On-Line (via Crooked Timber)

Paddy Hill figured spending 16 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit was bad enough, but now, to add insult to injury, the Scotland resident is being charged by the British government more than £3,000 for each year he was incarcerated to cover the cost of his housing and food.

And Hill is not alone. Many others wrongly convicted are receiving similar demands from London.

Britain's David Blunkett, the Labour home secretary, sees nothing wrong with charging an innocent man for what he cost the government in upkeep, reported Scotland's Sunday Herald.

In fact, Blunkett is scheduled to fight in court tomorrow for the right to charge victims of wrongful convictions.

World Net Daily

This has to be one of those urban legends, doesn't it? Perhaps not:

A judge’s ruling which increased compensation to two men wrongly convicted for the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater was being challenged in the Court of Appeal today.

The independent assessor asked by the Home Office to work out the scale of compensation is appealing against parts of the High Court judgment which includes the quashing of his 25% deduction for “board and lodgings” while in jail.

scotsman.com ( via morons.org)

Losing the Plot (II)

Australian interests overseas and foreign interests here were at increased risk of a terrorist attack because of the Iraq war, the nation's top spy said today.

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) director-general Dennis Richardson said the close alliance with the United States and participation in the war on terror contributed to Australia being a terrorist target.

"Threat levels in respect of some specific foreign interests in Australia however were raised because of the war in Iraq," Mr Richardson said.

The Age