Category: Food
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Proving my yeast, and mixing pasta flour with semolina flour, strong white bread flour, dark rye flour (first time I’ve tried this), salt and olive oil.🍕
Making pizza today, so defrosting some fresh yeast.
Meantime, it’s breakfast. Egg and home fries for me. Weetabix for the little one, and bagel for the big one.
Big one is in the bathroom feeling nauseous because of the smell of smoked paprika.
I added a few finely chopped and fried onion pieces to my home fries for brunch.
Must remember to try using smoked paprika next time.
Strawberries for pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.
Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').
Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.
In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.
I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.
No one told us.
Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.
Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.
Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.
At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.
At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.
Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.
Unbelievable!
Eating cold turkey, ham, pork pie, Lincolnshire sausage and haslet. Reminiscing about pig’s chap, chine and brawn.
No onions, but plenty of fireworks with bier
Abstract: Gertcha by the wiener. Tags: fireworks, photos, video, bier, Chas ’n’ Dave, hot dogs
Last night, eight of us from Enfield Clubhouse went to Alexandra Palace to see London’s largest and most popular fireworks display. Here’s a video I took. The fireworks were pretty and spectacular - worth seeing, if you like that kind of thing!
After the fireworks, we climbed up the hill to the Palace itself and queued to get into the German Bier Festival. To call it a Festival is really a big overstatement. It’s a few years since I went to a beer festival and it was most likely Up North in deepest, darkest Bury, Lancashire, or somewhere like that. Maybe they do them differently Down South, but this was a bit of a let down. One tiny little bar, like you might find in a marquee at a modern marketed music festival. One brand of German Bier - Paulaner - and only two varieties: Munich and Weiss. The Weiss was off by the time I had been pushed and shoved forward by the ten deep bar queue. If you didn’t fancy Paulaner Munich, you could have that old Bavarian favourite, Foster’s. And they insisted on calling it Bier, which makes me wonder how authentic it really was. Not that authenticity seemed to be high on the agenda as it was all served in the obligatory health and safety plastic beakers.
So, we all got beer and seats in the Great Hall by which time a bunch of Cockney Irish fiddlers and banjoists started murdering Pogues’ classics, much to the delight of the mostly student audience who I’m sure were out of their minds by now. Not that it stopped one of the thieving little tykes nicking my beer when I laid it down to rest and turned my back for five minutes.
What followed is a little hazy - maybe the bier was real, after all.
I fear that I may have danced to Chas But Not Dave or Chas And His Band or whatever Chas ’n’ Dave are now known as. I was a little disturbed by the large, bald bass player, especially when he kept repeating ‘Gertcha!’ like an overly loud belch, totally drowning out scrawny-looking Chas on vocals.
To make matters worse, on leaving, I stopped for a Hot Dog.
‘Sorry, no onions’ said the serving assistant.
‘Oh, that’s a shame. I like onions on my Hot Dog. So. They are £3.00 with onions, right?’
‘That’s right, sir, but we don’t have any onions left.’
‘No, you don’t. So, if it’s £3.00 with onions… how much is it for a Hot Dog without onions?’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
By this time I was already in full Basil Fawlty mode.
‘I’d like a discount, please. If it’s £3.00 for a Hot Dog with onions, then I’d like 20% off for a Hot Dog without onions.’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘How can it be the same price, with or without onions?’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘So, can I have a discount, then or not? I’m willing to pay £2.40 for a Hot Dog without onions. If only you’d removed the empty onion trays and not told me you had no onions I’d never have known. Or you could scrape up the remaining slivers and let me have those….’
Now, I felt like Yossarian in Catch-22 trying to get out of the Air Force by being crazy, but being told that he couldn’t be crazy because he wanted to leave. And only a sane man would want to leave.
‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t give a discount. I just work here. It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘You could give me a discount if you wanted to. I’m sure you could.’
The guy (no pun intended) behind me piped up, offering to call the Office Of Fair Trading. I suggested that they might want to consult the Sale Of Consumer Goods Act.
‘I can’t give a discount, sir. It’s £3.00, with or without onions.’
‘OK, I give in. I’ll have a Hot Dog without onions for £3.00.’
‘You have to pay first, sir.’
‘What?! But you just gave him one! He hasn’t paid yet!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. You have to pay first and then I’ll give you the Hot Dog.’
A young American woman approached me.
‘Please stop harassing my staff, sir.’
‘What?! Harassing your staff?! You’ve got to be joking?!’
‘No, sir. You’re harassing my staff. Now, please stop it or I will have to call Security to come and remove you.’
‘All I want is a Hot Dog with onions for £3.00 as advertised. If you don’t have onions, then fine, I’ll buy a bareback Hot Dog for £2.40.’
‘Sir, you can buy a Hot Dog without onions for £3.00 or go without.’
‘Why can’t you give me a discount?’
‘I only work here, sir. I can’t give you a discount.’
‘Hang on. I thought you were in charge? Surely you can use your discretion and keep your customers happy? I just spent plenty of money tonight on donating to the cost of the fireworks display and buying beer for me and my friends.’
‘What’s your problem, mate?’ asked a student grumpily and who looked like he had dyed his original wiry ginger hair black. ‘It says Hot Dogs £3.00. Doesn’t say anything about onions.’
‘No, I know it doesn’t say anything about onions. That’s a very good point. And that’s why I’m not going to engage you in any further conversation. Enjoy your Hot Dog! Thank you all and goodnight.’
Thanks also, to Lee, Gemma, Michael, Atul, Dan, Raheem and Angelina for making it a fun night out. And my apologies for any offence caused to the Hot Dog stand workers.
Bonfire of the potatoes
Abstract: Everyone needs good neighbours. Tags: Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes, neighbours
On Saturday night, I shared a bonfire - in honour of the last person to enter the UK Parliament with honest intentions - with three Bolivians (all of whom have jobs, and at least one of whom has a cat), a Pole, a Catalan, an Irishman, several English people (one of Asian extraction and one born in Africa), a Roman candle or two, a Chinese lantern, twelve Lincolnshire sausages, some French’s American mustard, a large bag of pomme de terres of Peruvian ancestry, and a guy that looked like Frank Sidebottom.
Oh, and - long-time readers of my blog who have not yet required a psychotherapeutic intervention will be pleased to note - some onions.
The onions went down particularly well. I fried them myself. They were so good, people asked me ‘How did you make them?’. ‘I fried them,’ I said. Did I sweat them, or cook them slowly? Not deliberately. There was a lot of them. No, I have never made French onion soup.
I also cooked the sausages. All I did was put them under the grill and turn them over occasionally, in between supping hot mulled wine in our neighbours’ garden and nipping back across the close to knock back some warm English ale and make sure our house wasn’t on fire. Unfortunately, that’s also when they burned FrankGuy. So, sorry, no pics. (I also conducted a thought experiment about making a vegetarian alternative to sausages.)
One of the Bolivians wrapped the pomme de terres in tin foil and buried them in the burning embers of the bonfire to cook while a committee of English people tried to work out how to set the Chinese lantern alight. The token environmental activist present complained that setting a Chinese lantern alight wasn’t very environmentally friendly, and to be honest, I had some sympathy with her. Still, we were getting drunk, and this Chinese lantern was going up, one way or another. And up it went.
Perhaps the launching committee might have considered the location of the launchpad - well, actually, they did. ‘There’s a park five minutes walk from here,’ I said. ‘We’re not going there,’ they said. So, finally, we lit and launched the lantern in the close, and it rose up and up. Up and straight into the tree. Where it stayed, burning away in amongst the damp Autumn leaves. It’s still there now.
We burned some more pallets on the fire and then dug out the apples of the earth with a spade. The foil came off some of them in the process, to reveal glowing red potato coals within. Someone expertly cut the spuds in half and applied butter to the hot flesh, and passed them around with napkins and spoons. It was the best tasting potato I’ve ever had.
Bangers 'n' Mash
I guess one reason I’m able to maintain my weight is all the healthy eating I’ve been doing lately. So I thought I’d share with the one or two people who come here some of my culinary creations. Who knows where it will lead?
For Valentine’s Day I came up with the original and undoubtedly passionate meal idea of… sausages. Really it’s a sausage casserole (I looked at the back of a packet of Colman’s casserole mix in Tesco for the ingredients and just left out the cancer-causing stuff - not that I’m feeling superior in any way as I’m sure I’ve eaten plenty of it in the past), but I like to call it:
Bangers ’n’ Mash:
- olive oil
- chilli oil
- garlic paste
- herbs and spices: dried sage, parsley, oregano, - paprika, black pepper, sea salt
- baby onions
- green pepper
- mushrooms
- tinned, chopped plum tomatoes
- instant onion gravy
- tomato ketchup
- cooked Lincolnshire sausages
- potatoes
- butter
- milk
This is a nice way to use up some leftover sausages - you don’t have to use Lincolnshire sausages, any will do, same with most of the ingredients. I just use what’s available to me. This will make enough for four servings.
Get a large pan for your peeled and, washed and finely chopped potatoes, adding a drop of olive oil and some sea salt and covering with water. Put it on a high heat until it comes to the boil, then simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes or until the potatoes are soft enough to mash easily.
Assuming you have some pre-cooked sausages and you’ve prepared all the veg, heat up your wok or large frying pan, add a good shake of olive oil, chilli oil to suit your taste and a little butter to stop the oil from burning. When it’s hot, add a teaspoon of garlic paste, a shake of the herbs and spices followed quickly by the onions, peppers and mushrooms and stir-fry on a high heat for a few minutes.
The longer you do it, the softer and smaller the peppers and mushrooms will be, so do it as you like it. Add the tomatoes, make up half a pint of instant onion gravy and stir it in. Add a teaspoon of ketchup (or use lemon juice, vinegar and sugar) and the pre-cooked sausages.
Leave to simmer for at least twenty minutes. When the potatoes are ready, drain and mash with a dollop of butter and a little milk.
Serve.
Like most foods, it will taste even better the following night re-heated.