The American meaning of mad. This video made me laugh so much that I cried.
A mad father
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Monthly Archives: February 2012
Super Smart Animals
I’ve enjoyed this series so far. I liked this dog in particular:
Also in this episode, during the cooperating elephants feature, there was a song that I recognised. It drove me mad trying to remember what it was. Finally something stirred in my brain: it was something to do with an Apple advertisement. Much later I realised it was from the ipad2 video. Bloody Apple, finding yet another way to drive me mad. Anyway, this is the song:
Chocs through the post
Today a big box of delights was delivered to me. It must be the biggest quantity of chocs I’ve ever received in one go! Fantastic.
Julie and Julia
Julie and Julia is a charming film. It features blogging, cooking and love – three of my favourite things. There’s a scene that touched me in particular: when Julia Child’s husband gives her the book Larousse Gastronomique as a birthday present. It reminded me of how thrilled I was when I was given a copy by my husband. Not that I’ve used mine as much as Julia Child must have! I also enjoyed the portrayal of an older couple who are enthusiastic and positive about life as well as being completely in love. I hope that’s what’s in store for me.
British identity
Inspired by the Guardian’s interactive article What Does Being British Mean to You? I pondered my own position.
Both my parents’ families are from the same little cluster of villages in Gujarat, India. My parents were among those who emigrated to England in the sixties and seventies. They met through the Gujarati community in England and married. I was born in England and my upbringing and education here has shaped the person I am today far more than my family’s background, in spite of them holding on very strongly on to their culture. I don’t feel Indian; I feel British. My husband is English, we don’t incorporate any Indian traditions into our lives and we work in his parents’ very traditional pub, that most British of institutions. To me, being British means promoting freedom and tolerance.
I’ve never been a victim of overt racism but I feel there is room for improvement. People need to be educated. For example, a few months ago I was talking to an English woman in her fifties. She used, harmlessly she believed, the word ‘Paki’ as a synonym for ‘Indian’. Leaving out the geographical error entirely, I tried to explain to her that she shouldn’t use the word ‘Paki’ because it was derogatory but she clearly didn’t know what derogatory meant. At that point I cut my losses and gave up.
A Serious Man
Sausage casserole
Made some sausage casserole today, using roughly the recipe on the back of the sausage packet.
The casserole was tasty (it always pays to use good quality stock) but more noteworthy is that I cooked sausages well for perhaps the first time in my life. First they went into the oven at 160 degrees until they were cooked through. Then I browned them off on a rack (to stop them rolling about) under the grill, turning them every so often so that they coloured beautifully all round. They did lose a lot of juices but, since they were good quality sausages and they were going into casserole anyway, it didn’t matter. I cooked the casserole part separately and put the components together to be frozen in batches. It’s always good to have a ready meal or two in the freezer.
EDIT 10 Apr 2012: Best way to cook sausages for the casserole: after browning under grill as detailed above, put them into thr casserole and cook the whole thing at 150 degrees. This results in very tender sausages.
Bhajya
My mum has never made anything she called ‘pakora’. What she does do however, is coat certain thinly sliced vegetables in a batter made from gram flour, deep fry them and call them ‘bhajya’. As far as I can tell, pakora are the same as bhajya except that pakora are made with a mixture of different vegetables and end up bigger whereas bhajya are made with only one or possibly two types and end up smaller.
I made some potato bhajya based loosely on the pakora recipe in Veena Chopra’s Real Indian Cookery. The potatoes were peeled and sliced thinly before coating in batter and then deep fried. (Note for future: leaving the potato slices in the batter made the batter watery.) They had to be fried slowly so that they cooked through without the outside burning. The bhajya weren’t very spicy but they were made to be dipped into homemade chilli jam so they weren’t supposed to be. They are best eaten straight away; even reheating in the oven did not recapture the original crispiness.
Dinner at The Atrium
The Atrium is Birmingham College of Food’s training restaurant. This means you can get near enough Michelin star food at a fraction of the price. We went there for a family meal last night. Splendid food, as usual.
