Cooking with Gas in Lowry Country

According to the urbandictionary.com website the phrase ”cooking with gas“ means to efficiently perform a task after a long period of inefficient performance, or possibly failed attempts at a task or project. Hardly Dr Johnson, but there you have it.

Firstly may I extend my thoughts to the good folk of Salford, Greater Manchester, who got caught up in the gas explosion yesterday. Especially so to the poor elderly lady who is critically ill with 30% burns. On the face of it she appears to have been the unwitting cause of the conflagration that partially destroyed a terrace of houses. The fact that the lady in question was blown out of her kitchen into the street was a bit of a clue to where the problem started.

Gas, or more precisely, any combustible gas is a hazard. Cooking with gas became popular in the 1880s. Initially appliance rental schemes were introduced. Ironically, the first scheme was pioneered by the Manchester Gas Committee in 1884.

It seems that following the recent explosion in Salford, up to 30 families may have to be temporarily re-housed. Three houses have been totally destroyed in the unfortunately named Merlin Road.

The Health and Safety Executive is on the case. The fact that a company had recently been doing some work in the kitchen that became the epicentre of the explosion may not escape their notice.

A spokesman for the Manchester Fire Service said that wreckage was strewn up to 100 metres from the blast and that the first thing they noticed was a bath in the middle of someone's garden. I have to say that this by itself is not a discriminator for devastation as you will find a similar sight in council estates across the UK.

One wonders how the artist Lowry, who painted so many of his pictures based on life in Salford would have portrayed the scene in Merlin Road.

Don't forget. Always check that your cowboy - sorry, your home appliance engineer is Corgi registered.

Let's hope that all of those injured make a speedy recovery.

An Anglo-French Naval Agreement - Entente Frugale?

The Anglo-French agreements signed today herald a new dawn of co-operation between two closely matched military powers. Perhaps.

It will mean that UK planes will be able to land on a French aircraft carrier and vice versa. 

I can see a lot of co-operation in the form of fact finding trips over the next few months. We will just have to accept that catering on the French side will far outstrip anything that the British Navy can manage afloat.

Meanwhile, I would advise the French fact-finders to adopt the “Thank you, but we've just eaten” approach.

With this in mind I offer the following simple recipe that even the gallant crew of HMS Overindulgence should be able to knock up.

Coq Sarkozy

A tough old bird with a hint of Eastern Europe.

Preparation Time: 12 hours, but some of that is while you are sleeping.

Ingredients

Meat

2kg chicken, cut into 6 large pieces or 10 boneless chicken thighs

100g of short Hungarian or Polish sausage, cut into slices

Veg

2 white onions, chopped

2 carrots, cut into 2-3cm pieces

• 100g tiny onions or shallots 
• 100g of mushrooms, sliced

2 stalks of celery, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

Liquids

1 bottle of red wine - ask the chaplain

30ml brandy

30ml Olive oil

Extras

• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 5ml dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 30ml of chopped fresh parsley
• 3ml ground black pepper
• 5ml salt
• 10ml sugar
• 30g butter for frying
• 30g butter, softened for the beurre manié or kneeded butter, used to thicken the sauce, just before serving.
• 20g of plain flour

Preparation

Put the dismembered bird into a large casserole dish. Place the vegetables, herbs and seasoning over the meat. 

Meanwhile in another bowl mix the wine, brandy and the olive oil. Then slowly pour this mixture over the chicken and the vegetables in the casserole dish. Place the dish and its cover in the fridge overnight.

Wash your hands, wash up and then have a cup of tea and a fag outside.

Allow the marinate the mixture overnight, for 8-12 hours.

Next day

Get the oven to 220C. 

Meanwhile in a large frying pan melt 30g of butter. With a slotted spoon remove each piece of the chicken and brown them on each side in the frying pan. Set aside the chicken in a separate bowl. Then fish out all of the vegetables and cook them for 5 minutes, until they start to become tender.

Arrange the chicken in the casserole dish, add the vegetables, then pour the liquid over the whole lot. Add the sugar and salt and bake it in the oven for 20 minutes.

While the chicken is baking, fry the sausage until it is golden but not crispy and then set it aside to drain in a strainer. Now, using the same frying pan sauté the mushrooms and onions until they soften. Remove the casserole dish from the oven, then add the sausage, mushrooms, and onions. Put the lid back on and return to the oven for 30 minutes.

To prepare the beurre manié or kneeded butter, mash the softened butter and the flour together with a fork. You will end up with a paste. 

Add the beurre manié to the chicken and vegetables for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Then remove the casserole dish from the oven and stir the beurre manie throughout the dish to allow the sause to thicken uniformly. 

Braized Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Veg

• 1 red cabbage, shredded
• 1 onion, shredded

Liquids

• 125ml water
• 30ml red-wine vinegar

Extras

• 30g butter
• 60g brown sugar
• 3ml teaspoon black pepper
• 5ml teaspoon salt
• 5ml cinnamon, ground fine
• 
  

Preparation

1. Cook the cabbage and onion in butter in a large pan, until it collapses down.
   
2. In another bowl, mix together the water, vinegar, brown sugar, and seasoning until the sugar has dissolved.
3. 
   
4. Add the liquid mixture to the cabbage mixture. Bring it to a boil, then simmer. 
5. 
   
6. Continue to cook the cabbage until it is tender. This may take 15 to 20 minutes. 
7. 
   
8. If you prefer you could make the cabbage at the same time as the marinaded chicken and keep it in the fridge overnight too.

Good luck. 

And never, ever say “Bon appetit”.

Picture of a politician

I've never thought that highly of David Miliband or for that matter his smarter kid brother of "Mithter Thpeaker, the prime minithter hathn't anthered my quethtion" fame.

Come back Spitting Image.

- Until the weekend that is. Since then my respect for him has risen enormously. Well from about zero in fact. And it's all to do with a painting and the right to hang whatever you want on your walls at home. And it all happened by accident.



We're not talking Che Guevara or Hieronymus Bosch posters here - we're talking about 13 ladies dancing, naked in a circle. The artist was Michelle Dovey.

An amateur photographer kindly asked if she could take a picture of Mr and Mrs Miliband, in their home. They obliged, as it was for a competition, rather than the usual paparazzi. This was the result.


The photographer won her competition, the picture was published, then despite other more significant matters in national and world news, all he'll let loose.

Stephen Bayley, a style critic, whatever that is, wrote a long piece about the picture in the Torygraph. It attracted 150 comments on the electronic version.

Extracts from the piece include:-

Criticizing David's shirt - fair
Criticising part of a visible cushion - overzealous

As to the painting he described his delicious voyeur’s sense of delight at the discovery of a hitherto secret (and very horrible) family indiscretion. A bit like finding a severed head in the linen basket, a gun in the bathroom cabinet, a whip in the downstairs loo.

He poured scorn on Louise Miliband for having bought tfor picture for David’s 40th birthday.

He Even implied that it was one of those decisions possibly made after lunch.

He described the painting, that looks like it was based on Matisse's La Danse series as not even bad. "It is middle-brow junk. It is the sort of thing you can find arriving in Ford Transits at the dreadful Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park."

He quoted many other writers, presumably on the basis that it's easier than producing original thought of ones own.

In summary, the piece was hurtful, snobbish and smug to the point of inducing nausea.

This is the same Stephen Bayley who was involved in the Millennium Dome fiasco. Even Mandelson sussed him out and he resigned from the project. His contact details on the web are self-opinionated beyond belief.




This is the same Stephen Bayley who wrote a pile of crap called Woman as Design, Conran Octopus £50, all 336 pages of it.

But revenge is sweet. Amazon is selling this for £27.

His book called Taste at £47 is going for just over £4.

Well done David, for standing up to this nonsense. You can hang what you like on your own walls. But hold back on the flying ducks.

There's probably never going to be a better time to buy a Michelle Dovey painting. She does trees too. You don't have to keep it in too prominent a position, but you could make a few pounds over the next five or ten years.





And finally, the winner of the caption competition.



Hillary Clinton explains the length of Bill's problem - to the nearest inch.




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Cathedrals

It seems that some people would beg to differ on my analysis of the relative merits of Lincoln and the cathedrals of Northern France.

Actually there was no begging involved. Just the "You are totally wrong" approach, as favoured by Newish Labour.

So, in the spirit of fairness I enclose some pictures of the buildings in question and some more besides. In no particular order!

Lincoln - the finest

 Amiens

Beauvais

Caen

Chartres

Rouen

I stick to my opinion.

Removing road signs in the UK to confuse invaders was a good idea, but installing a British phone box outside Caen cathedral was a stroke of genius.

 Back to June 1940

Heinz:         Also, wir haben Canterbury schneller als erwartet. Und unsere Stiefel sind noch trocken.

Fritz:           Ich denke, wir sind etwas fehlen sollte hier.

Heinz:         Sie haben eine britische Geld? Ich möchte Telefon meine Mutter in München.

County flags - How did we let it happen?

When I was at school in the 1960s, we had a large printed poster on the classroom wall. The poster was entitled Flags of the World.

There were the local ones, the Commonwealth (the pink bits), Europe and worldwide. A strange way to classify things, but probably just as good as alphabetical.

Even at that early age, I got the idea in my head that people liked to have some common symbol of belonging and this was true both for civilians and the military.




I was educated in an ancient establishment in Kent. Occasionally we would go to watch the county cricket matches in Canterbury. This was probably the only time that I saw the Kent county flag, or Invicta as it was known.



Well, I've clearly been on a different planet for the last 45 years. In Lincoln this week I noticed county flags on shops and other buildings too. Rows of them. The same must be true in other counties too - I'll be looking now.

I had assumed that there must have been a national strategy that followed the resurgance of regional identity. For example, through heritage trails, those awful brown road signs and perhaps county councils wanting to increase car parking revenue.

Not a bit of it. I've found to my horror that some of the county flags were developed following some sort of missionary zeal in local radio stations. It seems that the BBC featured too.

It gets worse. It appears that the scourge of the highway, the caravan fraternity feel let down if they haven't a local flag to hoist at rallies. Poor souls.






So I've looked into this a bit more. I've found a company that sells county flags and displays the whole range. There are some real horrors. Here's my list of the tackiest.

3rd is Derbyshire





2nd is Sussex





1st is The Isle of Wight





Guess what? Two of those seem to have been influenced by BBC local radio.





Alan Partridge lives. Following on from those memorable jumpers, you can now buy something regional and tacky in polyester for £4.99






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Lincoln Green - But I'm learning

I've just spent a few days in Lincoln. I stayed up the hill, beside the cathedral. It's one of the finest in Europe - far more elegant than Chartres or Caen.

While taking tea in Woodthorpe Spa with my friend of some 45 years, I saw the remains of one of Barnes Wallis' bouncing bombs. And for the first time I tasted Lincolnshire plum bread. It has in my opinion a better taste and texture than our local bara brith or speckled bread.

So this is how my little experience unfolded. 


During the last world war, we tried to confuse any potential invaders by removing all the road signs, on the assumption that Johnny Foreigner couldn't read maps. Well it seems that the same process continues through the naming of local food delicacies. For example we have:-

• Yorkshire pudding - It's not a pudding
• Laverbread - Not cooked on hot lava and not Icelandic either
• Stilton cheese - Though Stilton is in Cambridgeshire, the EU says that Stilton may only be made in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire
• Welsh rarebit - Nothing to do with Wales
• And finally Syringed Fritters - Also known as Nuns' Farts

(You may want to look that one up, but it does exist and it's a bit like Spanish Churros).

I was very impressed with the local plum bread and before leaving I called into a well known tea shop to buy a plum bread to take back to Wales.


I asked about the plums and from then on I was on a roll. The nice lady behind the counter explained that “plumming” refers to the process of drying soft fruits for later use during the winter months. There are no plums in Lincolnshire plum bread.


So I nodded my understanding and I pointed out that it was the same with figging. That's got nothing to do with figs either.


The other lady behind the counter gave out a little squeak, started to giggle and suddenly felt the need to do something under the counter. In theatrical circles this is known as corpsing. 


I could still hear her as I left the shop and she was still down there. 
Clearly she'd read the Wikipedia article too*.

Then there's the flag. Another saga.


*Figging reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figging

Saints Preserve Us - The Re-branding of Saint Patrick

The Southern Irish tiger economy is a thing of the past thanks to people believing that the bubble would never burst and spending, building and expanding beyond their means. Lean times are ahead and this is affecting Northern Ireland too. In fact the North saw it coming.





The late JF Kennedy, United States president and supreme womaniser had spotted this one. He said "If you ride on the back of a tiger, you will end up between the tiger's teeth." And he'd ridden more than most.

What do you do in these difficult times? The answer seems to be to hope for external cash - from tourism.

The Northern Ireland Tourism Board has grasped the nettle. I can imagine the focus group set up for this.

"What can we flog to the visitors?"

A silence follows, before the usual suspects are trotted out. Rugged coastline, whiskey, tweed, Ulster cuisine. Then the brainwave.

"Let's get some mileage out of Saint Patrick. he's not the exclusive property of the South."

Well done lads. Doubles all round.





Thus was born the St Patrick's Trail. A consultancy group was commissioned and then it dawned on them. If we are going to extract some money from our visitors, preferably US dollars, then they're going to want facts. Most of the history of the saint reads more like a fairy tale, like the driving snakes out of Ireland bit. The piece about the shamrock representing the Holy Trinity is a nice touch though. Provenance is a different and far more difficult matter.

Did this lack of facts put them off? Not a bit of it.




After all, even the English had spotted a similar trick hundreds of years before. The Pilgrims' Way, to Canterbury for a glimpse of the shrine of Thomas Beckett was well trodden. The Church of Rome had a winning formula. The three Ps.

Pilgrims + Penance = Profit

So The St Patrick's Trail is now an up and running concern.

The initial consultation document makes good reading, especially the bit about a desk-based assessment of facts about the saint. What does that mean?



Have a look for yourself. www.nitb.com/file handler.ash?id=280

If you'll forgive the pun:-

Never mind the saints - just bring on the profits.



One final problem. There seems to be some evidence that St Patrick is buried in Glastonbury. Sorry to mention this.





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