Cooking for crowds is a practice in self-restraint

I realise that if you outsource half of the food for a Christmas party (or any other party, for that matter), you can still have fresh, home-prepared food on the table and with minimum hassle. Traditionally, out of sheer laziness, my parents order turkeys and assorted roasts, usually lamb and beef, from Cold Storage- they arrive cold, and we simply heat them up in the oven. Opposed as I am to reheating cooked roast, and the usually inferior quality of such preparations, laziness works, because no one, I've realised, actually gives a damn about lamb being medium-rare and turkey being moist and tender by the time they survey the spread of food. Singaporean buffet instincts take over and it's quantity over quality anytime. Even if the meat were to be impeccably prepared, I wager people would just ho-hum and offer some compliments in a very non life-changing way. So for a couple of ho-hums and compliments (more likely, nobody will notice), one would have to go through at least a week's hoary preparation and countless hours of mad worrying (is the turkey DONE, is the lamb undercooked?) and, on top of that, negotiate oven and fridge space between large, irritatingly septic cuts of meat. So yes, I happen to think that ordering roasts is a perfectly noble thing to do when catering Christmas dinner for a crowd. 

It saves the host crazymad work, freeing up time to walk around and make everyone feel comfy, serve drinks (alcohol, I think, is often more important than perfect food at large parties) and generally get into a state of mind that isn't, for lack of a better word, militant. It also leaves the host-cook lots of time to do other interesting things in the kitchen- apart from meats, sure winners and requisites at any decent buffet are soups, salads, casseroles and dessert. My family has come to a consensus about this- there is no point focusing energy on anything other than some fantabulous accoutrements, all of which we have become mini-specialists in- mushroom soup, potato salad, vegetable casserole, some random dessert, raw vegetables with dips; cushy, easy, pseudo-gourmet and reliable. No frills, no stress.

Last year, I tried my hand at making all sorts of fabulous gravies and sauces to go with the meal- I turned out a wonderful bread-sauce, made cranberry-orange sauce, a caramelised onion relish, parsley sauce and cheese sauce, most of which were untouched at the end of dinner, not because they weren't tasty (I spent several hours on Christmas afternoon making sure they were), but because no one bothers with sauces. So this year, I've decided not to bother. Except for a caramelised onion gravy, which itself is a by-product of the mushroom soup, I'm really not bothering much about over-furnishing the table. It has saved us all a great deal of money, time and energy. As my mum intones, put in more effort for smaller groups, big groups don't notice small details. 

As and when I do host an intimate gathering of friends around the table, no more than 6, I have the following menu in mind-

Appetiser

1. Bread basket with assorted cheeses, olives and patê

The bread, of course, will be a medley of my favourite beer bread and a 10-grain laof, both spectacular with sliced parmesan, or gorgonzola or bresse de bleu; certainly olive oil will not be out of the question (I have a bottle of Olio Bello kalamata olive oil, it is excellent), though I am very partial to bread and (unsalted) butter. 

2. Cocktails

Entree

1. Mesclun salad with red wine and walnut vinaigrette, dressed with a mollet egg and bacon

or 

2. Salad of prosciutto and baby rocket with honey and balsamic vinaigrette 

or

3. French Onion Soup or Cream of Mushroom

Main

1. A roast, likely leg of lamb, served with creamed potatoes and dressed with its juices in a red wine reduction. Maybe fish, probably salmon, but I had a very bad experience with fish for dinner once, so it's not one of my favourite things to cook. 

or

2. Risotto- I love risotto and how versatile it is, perhaps my personal favourite is mentaiko and parmesan risotto, it is really GAH wonderful. 

 

or 

3. Pasta- probably carbonara because it is such a reliable dish, though I really do wish to serve spaghetti puttanesca, that intensely flavoured sauce of tomato, capers, anchovies and kalamata olives. 

or

4. If it's a very, very intimate bunch of friends, I will make beef stew, perfumed with orange and allspice, throw in a couple of home-made sausage by the side and serve it all atop mash or apricot-studded rice. My favourite meal in the world for a bunch of my favourite people, why not?

Dessert

Depending on what goes before, it might be anything from a couple of macarons to chocolate cake or pudding, or simply some sorbet or ice cream, cut fruit etc, but dessert will always be tasty and the perfect way to collapse into a satisfied heap on the couch. 

Anyway, to the few people who read this blog, I hope you get great food and drinks this Christmas, I know I will!

Joyeux Noël à tous et avez-vous une bonne nouvelle anée!

  

Things we learn by cooking for others

I learned many things about cooking these past few days, and all hinging on the basic principle of expectation versus result, assumptions versus reality. 

For instance, you'd assume that turkey is a formidable thing to prepare because it is so huge in relation to most other roasts, and because so many people in books, the internet and TV make, as Nigella writes, such a song and dance about timings, stuffings (or not stuffings), brining, storing and other turkey folklore, mainly descended from American craziness in the kitchen. You'd expect that turkey, because it is so unfamiliar to most Singaporean kitchens, would be strange and difficult, hard to manage, hard to predict. Yet, when I actually got down to doing it this year, it wasn't quite as problematic as I (perhaps) wanted it to be- it really is essentially roasting a giant chicken. It roasts reliably and, if brined, turns out fabulously moist. No two words about it- it is not a bitch to prepare. Many props to the recipes that informed me along the way, Jamie Oliver's basic roast turkey from 'Cooking With Jamie' and Nigella Lawson's turkey from 'How to Eat', both of which, I think, are excellent recipes, though brining the bird before roasting seems to me an important step which neither mention; plenty of information on the Net, no point waxing culinary here.

So if you ask me if I will attempt turkey again, I'm really quite sure I will. The turkey I prepared for Juling's wonderful MJCAB Christmas gathering was moist and cooked through, flavourful and tender from the brining and really quite unlike the delivered turkeys we've had for family Christmas. I loved the stuffing, and many people at the table did so too. So yes, against all expectations, turkey is really quite worth the effort involved in cooking it yourself.

Apart from the turkey, preparing for tonight's dinner also taught me to count on the inveterate late-coming of people to dinner parties. Having nearly ripped my hair out in frustration to make sure the turkey came out at exactly 5.10pm, in time to be served hot for a 6.00pm++ dinner, I was most shocked to find that Rickson, who drove me, and I, were the first to arrive at Juling's house and we had to sit around for about an hour and a half before mostly everyone arrived and we could start eating. I don't mean to gripe, but in order to make a 2pm meeting in school (I was late, regardless), I had to take a cab after shoving the turkey into the oven at 1.30, and cabbed home to make it in time to fuss around the completed roast. That's a total of almost $20 on taxis. 

If anything, this has taught me to simply let go and stop micro-managing cooking, things tend to take care of themselves and more so if you have a level-head atop your shoulders; panic, as my mum loves to intone, only leads to the unnecessary spending of money and you screw things up that needn't have screwed up. Patience and a loving tolerance of people's propensity to be tardy make cooking for others an infinitely less screwy activity. It is a hard lesson to learn, and one that has taken way too many freaky-Joel dinner parties to internalise.

But fussing aside, I really enjoyed tonight's gathering, fraught as it was, initially, with panic and irritation surrounding hot turkey (it turns out hot turkey can be kept reasonably warm in a recently used oven if covered in foil); and I'm happy to have contributed something which I personally thought was good and sincerely made to that table, and basically to have been with everyone tonight. I count it one of my happiest blessings to be surrounded with such reliably fun and charitable friends who value as much as I do the times we've spent together. You realise as you age and get bogged down by things like school and the future, that anchoring yourself in a group of old friends is perhaps one of the best ways to stay healthy in spirit; throw in lots of food and beer and you have, I think, a good game.

Anyway, I now have leftover turkey and stuffing EARLY this year, and shall make quick work of the good stuff even before the major eats on the 24th. Yes, happy days. 

Things doodubbledoowop

This is looking set to be a most hair-raising weekend. Juling's party is on tomorrow night, and Itotally forgot about the DnD meeting at school I have to attend in the afternoon, which equals madhatter tumbling about for a taxi from NUS to Pasir Ris as soon as the meeting's over to remove, rinse, drain, dry and roast the turkey in time for dinner AND then transporting the damned thing to Juling's house. I think I might use a big cardboard box for the purpose. In addition to that, my brother wants me to make potato salad for some gathering of his tomorrow, and I haven't gone grocery-shopping for both the turkey and other miscellanies yet. It is hair-brained and BAD PLANNING at its best. 

GAH. I sometimes wish I could trust other people to do the cooking for me and, indeed, my family is more than capable of rising to the occasion, but I'm just too much of an attention-whore. 

Anyway, below is the song I wrote for Chelsea, who left for Vancouver a few days ago to read psychology. It is a most ridiculous song. Wanting to be original, I intended to simply write some lyrics and ham up some music on Finale to paste a score in her goodbye scrapbook, but I found myself actually writing a melody to go with the lyrics in an attempted homage to Bernstein and Sondheim's strange and fluctuating tunes. It turned out to be pretty singable, too, despite the augmented 2nds, 4ths and 5ths splattered about very gratuitously. It is a song that warns against the liberal excesses of Western society in music that is decidedly grounded in 20th century Western styles, it is a silly, stupid song. The piano part is absolute rubbish, but given how fond I have become of the whole thing, I might rework it into something marginally decent sometime.

I really have become explicitly fond of this song, and it's inspired me to embark on a grand and ambitious scheme to write a musical called "Singapore!" which sets into music (less chirpy, patriotic and squeaky-clean than Dick Lee's) songs about frustration, migration, love, joy, money, sex and homosex that so paint our country its delightful shade of red and white. Yes, it is already frothing in my mind.  

Me is emcee

It is the third Wednesday of my hitherto tepid December vacation, and I am spending most of it sitting at the VCH backstage watching flame-haired people walking around adjusting poorly-knotted neckties in the mirror; the smell of hairspray, gel and cheap perfume is heavy in the air and I feel I could be doing so much better for myself. Like, I have a turkey defrosting in the fridge which needs some attention, and there are raspberry macarons I'm supposed to be turning out for Christmas that are still stuck in my mind's to-do list. There's also the foregone prospect of lying in bed finishing the 800+ more pages I have left of 'A Suitable Boy', Vikram Seth's exercise in waxing excessive. Instead, I am here, waiting to emcee for SP's band concert, feeling generally morose and grumpy that all I received in payment was a packet of vinegary fried noodles which I quietly put back on the table. 

This is the 3rd Leonard Tan concert I am emceeing for this month, which is kinda cool cause I feel like a part of his entourage or something- $500 for the Leonard Tan package, emcee included. This is definitely going on my resumé when I apply to NUS Centre for the Arts to be the official CFA Emcee du jour. I don't suppose I might earn quite a tidy sum from standing in front of bored audiences every week going "(insert acronym) will now play Random Overture by Obscure American Composer" in my best TV announcer voice, but it is tremendous fun picking shirts to wear and thinking of ways to inflect "good evening Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to (insert Italian musical term)!" 

2 weeks ago, I emceed for the Philwinds concert, also conducted by the amazing Leonard Tan, though the reception I got was kinda stinky. People gave me judgy "who the hell are you" looks while, in the grand tradition of that indefatigably standoffish ensemble, treating me like the little nyonya. A colder bunch never I conceived, I swear I heard sniggers coming from behind me when I took my position on stage, tried inflection #4 of "good evening (see above)" and the mic wasn't on. I tried my double-dimpled smile at the audience, and must have stood there for the most hot-collared 30 seconds of my life before the bumbling backstage guy came out with another mic.  

People should be nicer to emcees. It's not easy to stand in front of a crowd and talk, simmering in full knowledge that everyone just wants you to get it over with and let the performance go on. Sometimes I wonder why all these groups insist on having emcees when no one really listens to us anyway, and most of the time, most emcees are either terribly bad or, especially if they come in pairs, lame, uninspiring and badly scripted. I consider myself quite the sterling example of a good emcee, being not too unattractive and capable of a great Singapore-good-English accent. It's all swoopy bass and dramatic pauses, it's like playing Scheherazade with a microphone. My genius, I believe, stems from years of writing scripts for hopeless emcees and listening to good emcees reading shitty scripts, and I am, of course, being a little turd.

-Intermission-

Anyway, random SP band people have been walking up to thank me, which is such a pleasant gesture, though some moolah would be nice, considering the expensive lunch I ate to prep myself emotionally for the ritual stoning of the emcee. 

It's now the intermission, and the concert's been pretty good, though there was the typical audience-mumble and occasional mocking titter at something I pronounced impeccably (people find it amusing how simple words like 'familiar' sound when enunciated as they should be).   

Anyway, fun as this has been, I really can't wait to skidadle out of here, and now there's a huge 30-40 minute lull before I go out to send the audience of ingrates off to their happy suppers and margaritas while I plod on home, lonesome as a bee. 

Self-pity looks so good on me, I should really make it a trademark.

Merk

That evil sucking sound coming from behind the bookshelf can mean a number of things, each more dastardly than the other- I suspect it is either one of the giant beetle creatures that haunt the study or the lizard who eats said beetle creatures behind the books. Either way, I do not appreciate the evil sucking, clicky sounds late at night when there's no mother and brother to protect me by wielding slippers and bugspray. 

I realise that the bastards only come out at night, like after 12 am, and my nocturnal habits as of late have made them my nighttime companions, what with the copious amounts of food I bring into the study, ala the ants and assorted shits who clamour around cake crumbs and drops of honeyed water. I wish I could say I've been staying up late studying and stuff, but it's fat hope by any measure. Facebook, youtube and google images will kill my CAP for my first ever sem at school.

It all stems from my increasing appreciation for broadway musical soundtracks- I'm listening to the OST from 'The Last Five Years' by Jason Robert Brown right now, it's an off-broadway musical but has the most wonderfully witty lyrics and beautiful accompanying score ever. I love broadway musicals, the singing is consistently fantastic, and there's always a song for the whole spectrum of shitty life moments. 

Gah, I am tired, and shall go to sleep now.

Late nights

I hate staying up late at night, and at the same time I think sleep is so repressive.

Late at night, you feel uninhibited so you discuss things a lot more candidly, but at the same time you know at the back of your head that being drunk on night dilutes reason, and the hangover isn't something you can shake off with sleep and whining. 

I hate late nights. You wake up in the morning realising how unspecial the twinkle was. 

Je suis perdant spectaculaire

FWARGH. Je connais bien cette émotion, elle est l'impuissance. 

J'ai essayé de faire mes devoirs aujourd'hui, mais tout ce que j'ai completé un topique de sociologie. Merde, je suis complètement con. Pour l'entier jour, j'ai assis sur ma chais et regarder ces ordinateur, surfer sur l'internet, le Wikipedia, le FACEBOOK... je deteste ça mais je ne pouvoir pas vivre sans ça, c'est une relation tres drôle.

Ah, je manque mes cours français. Vraiment, je dois completer beaucoup d'affaires, ce sont plus important que faire du 'emo'. 

Mon dieu, pour ecrire ce paragraphe court, j'ai prendu 15 minutes. 

 

C'est parfait!

In Chatterbox, last night, Chong Ming was waxing most lyrical about French Onion Soup which, until today, I had never made before. I was so inspired that I decided most decidedly to make some today. I shall now attempt to write SOME bits of this post in French, since it is about France's greatest contribution to the world of simple cooking: French Onion Soup.

J'aime beaucoup la soupe à l'oignon française! Ma expérience premier de cette soupe a été à Le Bistro Au Petit Salut dans la rue Chip Bee pres de Holland Village. Elle a été pas mal, mais ça n'a pas mémorable. Tout ce que je me rappelle elle a été tres cher.

En typique, la soupe a l'oignon française est préparé avec les oignons caraméliser, le consomme de boeuf, des émincés de baguette et beaucoup de fromage (en typique, il est gruyére). Le Wikipedia dire le fromage est juste pour embellissement, mais je pense il est tres important (vous pouvez voir l'image au-dessus!).

En Anglais:

I LOVE French Onion Soup, oh my god. My first experience with it was at Le Bistro Au Petit Salut at Chip Bee road near Holland V. It wasn't bad, though it wasn't memorable, and all I can remember is that it was very expensive. 

French Onion Soup is typically made with caramelised onions, beef stock, slices of baguette and lots of cheese (usually gruyére). Wikipedia says that the cheese is mainly for embellishment, but I think it's very important (and you can see for yourself in the picture above!). 

That took me way longer to write in French. 

This is a dish that, I figure, if you want to enjoy thoroughly, you have to approach with a certain French sensibility of obsessive compulsion. Not that it's complicated, but you have to be patient and insist on getting things right. For one, the onions have to be caramelised until dark mahogany like bejeweled, sickly-sweet toffees or sticky Christmas yams. Any lighter and French obsessive compulsion will take over and make you stick the onions back over the heat. 

The best way to do this, as my laziness drove me to discover, is to abandon the French sensibility of doing things like Escoffier would have (which is with back-breaking stirring of onions in a sweaty kitchen), and to use the slow cooker. The slow cooker gives you the right amount of heat over a fiendishly long period of time to reduce the sharp, tear-jerking onions from pearly white to luscious brown, sweet, sweet spheres of jam. It is also infinitely less hands-on and fussy than being enslaved to a frying pan of onions for 1-2 hours on end. 

To do this, simply throw 6-8 (8 for largish local varieties) yellow onions into the slow cooker with 125g of butter and about 280 ml of stock (any will do, but beef works very well). Set on low, cover and wait for 14-16 hours. Toward the end, lift one onion out to check the colour. It should look like one of these:

I cannot stress the importance of wrapping these up and chucking them in the freezer immediately after they are drained (cover the liquid in a bowl with clingfilm and plunge into an iced-water bath) because the warmth attracts bacteria. I stupidly forgot to cover the cooking liquid when I was cooling it in a bowl of iced water, and subsequently got a really bad tummy ache from drinking the soup later. Count yourself warned. You should also skim the butter off the cooking liquid and save it for other useful things. 

For the soup, individual portions are, according to Rose Levy Beranbaum, 1/2 a cup each of the caramelised onion (sliced, of course, that's about 1 onion), cooking liquid and beef broth. Combine in a small pot, bring to the boil, pour into a bowl and throw in 2-3 slices of toasted baguette. Place over the preparation a few thin slices of gruyére and grate some more over to completely cover the soup. Place under a hot grill (like that in your oven) until melted, golden and making pock-pock sounds. 

The soup I made today was prepared with lousy Gardenia Country Loaf, which tasted bland and uninteresting. As Rose writes (see above link), the best soupes a l'oignons are made with the best bread and cheese. I am baking a sourdough loaf tomorrow, which I think will make an excellent addition to this dish. My sense with this is that the blend of perfectly caramelised onions and broth will make an excellent soup to go by even without the calorie-laden cheese and bread, though the latter is filling enough to have constituted my dinner. 

I confess that I am not terribly fond of gruyére cheese, though, because it smells to me like a very unpleasant bodily substance (if you don't know what I'm referring to, you're better off not knowing). It works very well with the dish, though, the tartness of the cheese seems to complement the sweetness of the onions very well, holding its own amidst the assault on the taste-buds. Anyway, one can't really go wrong with caramelised onions- the flavour of the soup is incomparable, sweet, savoury, cheesy, wholesome, elle est parfait. So happy happy if you're trying this out!

Amusez-vous bien!

School is evil

Oh my lord, I have resigned myself to failure of the most depressing and unglamorous sort this semester. I have a continent of readings to complete, and one week to do it- one stupid week is not enough to make up for my semester's worth of not-reading, they really should make it reading month.

Today was my first serious attempt to actually study for my impending exams (they arrive next week, so maybe impending isn't a very accurate adverb), and I spent it in school with Charmaine, Shereen and Bernard at the arts canteen trying to make sense of a really dry sociology reading about declining rates of marriage in Asia. I really detest sociology so much, its flouncy claims and theories trying to dress up things we already know as theoretical frameworks for understanding society- I mean, seriously: if a particular society has parents actively arrange marriages, there will be more marriages in said society? 

What transpired from today, as I'm sure anyone who's spent more than 5 minutes with girls before will know, was 3 hours of complete unproductiveness, the only thing even remotely sociological emerging from it being long discussions of who we would marry/shoot/shag and why, and ogling of cute boys on facebook. We then proceeded to Chatterbox to chat with Leonard and other seniors, and I discovered that not only are many of them food lovers, they love to COOK, and with such aplomb too! I have found nirvana in USP, seeing as to how the only other response to my kitchen-love from some damned fool at FASS was: "eh, you like cooking ah? That's not normal leh, guys don't normally like cooking what." Oh my god, these people are the bedrock of good grades in FASS, thank goodness for the bell curve. 

FWARGH, this was precisely why I didn't study in groups back in JC. I can't wait for these damned examinations to be over so I can focus (more legitimately) on Christmas baking, novels and other happy things. 

If only gossip counted towards grades. It really should, seeing as how gossip, and not love or sex or religion, is the one thing that unites all humanity. Gossip helps you make friends by slathing on dirt about old friends and people nobody likes, it is a crucial life skill and one that deserves far more academic attention and instruction than is currently accorded by our educational institutions. 

Anyway, this being school-less reading week and all, I shall hole myself up at home and bake sourdough bread amidst frantic reading of boring readings. I really really realllllyyy regret taking the intro module to political science- it is dry and technical beyond belief, and the study of politics just convicts you as to the general stupidity of Man and his never-ending search for power over others. Politics helps you understand God and why he doesn't exist- God is the invention of people too innately powerless to exert power over others, God is the original example du jour of bullshit that worked, and we invoke God every time we shit out essays and get As anyway. I cannot stand political science and will never understand what force of hubris made me declare with such vigour to everyone who asked that I intend to major in the damned subject. I can't wait to start on my lit modules and will meantime spend myself in self-flagellation for not having taken the intro this semester.

Ah, Joel, such stupidity. 

Bwargh

Having been galvanised to much gushiness at watching Highschool Musical 3 (musicals make me teary-eyed), I was struck by my inability to understand the largely fairytale teenage romance thrust unto us from Hollywood in the form of Zac Efron's amazingly blue eyes and ripped body and Vanessa Hudgens' sweet little do-re-mi giggles. Perhaps it is because I, myself, have never had a grand romance to call part of my slapdash existence so far, less so a teenage romance. God forbid, I was moved beyond comprehension by the sweetness of it all, the idealism of it all.. all to which I offered a smug "aww", knowing inside that such a romance was doomed to failure. The thing is, I couldn't have been "aww"ing from experience, or knowingness- from where does my cynicism spring?

I think it's just my bitterness at not having (had) something similarly saccharine to pop into my mouth. In the same way people force themselves to sit through horror movies for the kicks, I sit through love stories pissbad and glorious to jump-start that little part of the brain we all have that responds to tearjerky chocolate & flower romances, or to convict myself with the cattiness of my life (ie. doomed to a life alone in a house with many cats). It scares me that I am having such a teeny moment at this, the supposed prime of my life, but watching HSM3 helped me see that teenhood is largely lost in Singapore, and it is in university that the diversity of personalities and sounds and activities resembles anything the singing, rocking, dancing kids of HSM so steep themselves in. 

Call it a quarter-life crisis, but I know there's something I'm not doing right :(

Thought experiments

I love inventing little scenarios in my head where I can put my mangled French to use for my own entertainment (and, rightfully, practice). 

Today's petit scénario en français is 'Joel à la pâtisserie', inspired from my all-too-often recontres terrible with the dubious service at Canele. Some of the staff there are just incredibly snooty with the whole "are you sure you know what you're doing, sir" look about them and an attitude that's so full of.. of... je ne sais quoi (snickers). This is my imaginary, albeit terribly cowardly, revenge on those pissfaces.

[Enter Joel, gesticulating wildly] 

"Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour! Ahh, cette pâtisserie est trés beau! Ahh, le chocolat, j'aime beaucoup, ahhhh les macarons, j'adore ça!" (Good day! Good day! Good day! Ahh, this patisserie is very beautiful! Ahh, chocolate, I love it muchly! Ahhh, macarons, I adore them!)

"Hi sir, can I help you?"

"Bonjour! Bonjour!" (Good day! Good day!)

"Er... bonjour?"

"Bonjour! Attendez un moment, sil vous plait! [answers handphone] Salut Mummy! Oui, je suis  à Canele! Ah? Ah hah? Ah, non, je n'ai pas prendé mon médicament! Alors, j'ai oublié! Non, non, c'est pas probleme, je suis en forme. Okay, bye bye Mummy, milles bisous! Muacks! [turns back to patissier] Pardon. Comment ça vas?"

(Good day! Oh hold on a moment, please! [answer handphone]. Hello Mummy! Yes, I am at Canele. Ah? Ah hah? Ah, no I did not take my medication! Oh dear, I forgot! No, no there's no problem, I'm feel fine. Okay, bye bye Mummy, a thousand kisses! Muacks! [turns back to patissier]. Sorry. How're you doing?"

"Er, sorry I don't parlez français?"

"Pardon?"

"I don't speak French you laksa-eating wannabe."

"Alors, parlez-vous français?" (Ah, do you speak French?)

"No, I don't parlez français."

"Ah? Vous parlez pas français? C'est trés choquant!" (Ah? You don't speak French? That's very shocking!)

"Sorry sir, er. Voulez vous quoi?"

  

"Ah! Trés bien. Je voudrais des macarons, sil vous plait." (Ah! Very good. I would like some macarons, pelase!)

"Pardon?"

"Je voudrais des macarons, une boîte de six piéces, sil vous plait. Un assortiment, preferablement. Pouvez vous choisir pour moi?" (I would like some macarons, a box of six pieces, please! An assortment, preferably. Can you choose for me?)

"Pardon, I don't comprend you?"

"Alors, c'est trés mal! Ici est une pâtisserie française, non? Vous vendez les pâtisseries françaises, non? Pourquoi vous ne parlez pas français?"

(Ah, this is very bad! This is a French patisserie, no? You sell French pastries, no? Why can't you speak French!?)

[Enter manager]

Manager: "Parce qu'on n'est pas français. Alors, bienvenue à Canele, qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" (Because we are not French. Welcome to Canele, what would you like?)

Joel: "Oh screw it, you're no fun. Merde!" [storms off] (Oh screw it, you're no fun. Shit!)

Lemons

Even lemons shrivel in this place

you exclaim, as if surprised that

something so natural could happen in

your home.

 

We are trying to leave the house

and you cannot bear to leave behind

things as they have migrated

across the floor, settled

onto tabletops.

 

You tidy a lemon, wipe it clean

of age and dust,

satisfied that they have been suitably

fixed and arranged.

 

Pottering out of the house, you

give them a quick glance;

overripe to a dull yellow,

perhaps they will turn to each

other in our absence and make

mischievous love. 

It's taken me a while, but

I.

I’ve thrown God off my shoulders

let him crumple behind my feet

and there is no enlightenment

no rasping cough and gasp that usually

follow such unwrangling

God, when you’ve reduced him to

stardust- niggling doubt

settling sandlike on a bed of coral-

is really no more than an

awkward silence

 

you talk… and talk,

it is important to exercise strange words

when you learn a new language

it is important to ask the usual questions

to get a grasp on someone new

II. 

it makes life strange to see with such

frightening clarity- all of a sudden

like scales removed from eyes

the mind breathes greedily

when the body feels so clean.

 

The emptiness they warn you of

‘godless void’, they call it,

is really the vacuum left behind when

anger at thou shalt nots

implodes with that final, knowing amen 

III.

Dinner, ‘heavenly father bless

the food before us that it may

nourish and strengthen us

in Jesus’ name amen’

 

Tooth-picking at cockles,

one fingers the grey, hardened thing

but all attention and desire is for the

raw, red warmth inside

to be picked clean of grit and sand

 

smut between the thumb and

forefinger.

one finds strange

satisfaction at teasing and smoothing

shit between one’s fingers

 

the cockle is all bleeding heart

warm like primal breath,

checked against the light, it proves

clean, plump and fresh.

 

I think I hear rolling thunder

but it is my head flushed with

hunger for symbolism

 

A final communion, body and blood

all at once, I take my piece of heart into my mouth

suck, bite into muscle and with a soft

pop it spills thick, sweet and forgiving

 

and I know, somehow, now that I have been

bathed by the blood of the cockle,

that I am truly clean and free and

saved. 

Every night

I walk into the room and

see you lying on the

couch.

 

A movie is playing

but you nod in and out

of scenes, and

 

I wonder if it is the

lying down or the thought of

reclining at the end of the day

 

(to watch a movie

thumbed apart,

smudged by the heaviness of your eyelids)

 

that you value like it is

time

snatched back

 

from the day that trod on your feet

 and knocked against your knees

until you keened forward, breathing hard

 

you say

‘Look’ and fold your arms across

your sleepy chest, battered legs cradled

in pillows,

‘look how I claim

 time back from you’,

 

and you

stubbornly blink to sleep

as if tomorrow might prove kinder. 

Culture

It sometimes saddens me to think

of my humanity and how

it brings me in gnashing inside

sucked into this seething, churning

culture- it froths, heavy with the

hot, wet breath of eating

and drinking, of living- cannot

stop even when turgid, swollen

paled and cracked at the seams, bubbles

rising in the heat of victors,

soured by those emaciated

in panic to live and produce

life- sponges, spoils milk and honey,

snapping wheat, such rancidity

knows no dignity, meteoric

though the rise, come the fall this

culture screams to be fed, it shrieks

deflating, limp and useless and

     really, it’s

just so saddening. 

Theology

The world, primordial, lies beneath

  God, hermit world, greyclasped, blackened

like the deep rocktomb, vacuous

  inside Man’s aching heart and bones.

 

Stargazing eyes will feed souls struck

  by the vastness of all things;

arms stretched beyond mortal trappings

  harvest meaning to break the dark

 

dark is the night of Man’s spirit

  who in naissance was cast onto

dirt and gravel, see, one so new

  lone, carnal, grabbing from the grit.

 

We sat, ourselves played out as now

  on Time’s precipice, creating

cosmos, companions, attempting

  vengeance on Nature’s tooth and claw.

 

O life where is thy sting? Fable

  we smear as salve upon your brief,

ephemeral, transient

  loneliness.

  

Isolation

  rocks God’s cradle.

Write a novel

It’s on nights like this that you

think of writing a novel

a night like this follows a day that while,

not bad or sad, but middling and tepid,

reminds you of how unremarkable it is

that days like these and nights like these

are all you can fall upon to call your life

 

and you think of writing a novel

because it would be putting a finger on what

substance you feel gilds your mind

your heart, the quality of your thought

that people all around who take their positions

to judge worth and not-worth

can see and read and admire and

quantify

 

people, after all, are all that matters

one is pressed in always by people

caked clodded crammed with people

and what good does it to a soul

to be just a person down the aisle

along the corridor on the bus

but feel so singular

all the same?

 

It would make far more sense to write

a novel and tell a tale in that great

expanse than to think about what life

what night you settle into only

to wake up tomorrow and find it all

the same.

Hm

I think I finally know why I so detest children

on the surface, it is a feeling quite like watching National Geographic- particularly the monkeys or gorillas, and the infants that cling so pathetically to their mothers (mournful, swollen things) while the alpha male father charges about cocksure and virile and obnoxious. It is the feeling I got today when, sitting on the bus, I saw in front of me a man carrying his little two-year old daughter- before boarding the bus, at the interchange, the same little girl had been bawling her brains out ('wo yao wo yao!') and I thought at that moment 'if I were the parents, I would beat her brains out'. Seated, the girl became a groggy little monkey brat so vulnerable and helpless, it reminded me of monkeys or gorillas and how much they irritate me. I looked at the father, stroking the girl's hair, rubbing dirt from her face, and I thought 'how animal it all is', this business of making children, like chest-beating or shitting territorially. 'Look at me' he seemed to say, offspring clinging to his singlet, 'look at my sperm'. 

I try not to be so disparaging when I look at children, but I can't help it. People reproduce too much, as if all of humanity weren't black and dirty and tiring enough, people keep on coming and coming. And these children, for what they're worth, they go through a moment's cuteness, and then they become vile little screeching things, and then they learn to talk instead of bawl, and they combine both where convenient, and mouth off and act intelligent (precocious children are the worst of the lot) and then they grow up some more and become noisy schoolchildren on buses, screaming, gloating creatures with burgeoning senses of what hurts others and what feels good, and then it's downhill into adulthood- teenhood is just adulthood with far more stupidity and less power to wreak havoc on the world, and by the time he realises what's happened, he's made more and more and more, chug chug chug and we wonder why the world's behaving the way it is. 

and then at the end of it, I think all this might be denying some hidden truth, like I know it's a niggling doubt at the back of my head- I look at children and the breeders that cradle them, and I think, maybe, I detest them so because I can never have one, or can never want one.

BLTs

Yesterday, I was mildly gushing about bread and why I love making (and eating) it so much, and the idea of making BLTs for lunch over the weekend surfaced somewhere. True to form, I woke up (at 11.50am) with an itch to make some sandwiches, and almost immediately after shaping a loaf of brioche dough reserved for moresome peanut butter snackies tomorrow, started fussing about the kitchen.

I can't say that I was brought up in a very strong BLT (bacon-lettuce-tomatoes) tradition, because I wasn't- my childhood breakfasts were always unnervingly eggy, but I think BLTs are going to become a bigger part of my life now. There is something deceptively healthsome about how the lettuce and tomatoes disguise the fact that there is calorie-rich bacon lying surreptitiously within, and I am nothing if not the paragon of self-deceit.

The one claim to healthfood that I could find was, of course, the excellent bread. It was sweet, yeasty and wheaty from all that great wholemeal flour, with an incredible depth of flavour from the pre-ferment (in this case, a biga- a small portion of the dough left to steep overnight for added yum) I had included. 

Lightly toasted just to warm it up rather than to create palate-rasping wheaten scotch-brite and then filled with crunchy lettuce, tomatoes (which could have been fresher!), and oven-crisped bacon, this bread makes an excellent sandwich. The BLT was satisfying on so many levels that I don't think I need much sustenance for the rest of this busy Saturday.

A note on the bacon- for a few weeks now, I've been experimenting with ways to cook bacon apart from frying it, which I find makes the kitchen way too greasy way too early in the day. I have found some success with microwaving it (on a plate lined with paper towels on high for about 3 minutes), but it takes quite a lot of precision to crisp it. With today's BLT, I grilled the bacon with the overhead grill function of my oven (most ovens will have this feature) for about 3-4 minutes per side until there were some brown and crisp bits which is how I like my bacon. The best part is definitely the no-greasy-floor thing and, certainly, no lingering smell of bacon in my clothes and hair (not that it's a bad thing, the smell of bacon, but you get what I mean).

I suppose one could experiment with a whole range of ingredients, but I like the simplicity of bacon, lettuce and tomatoes (or ham, lettuce and tomatoes), with nothing but a squidge of mayo and maybe some black pepper for effect. My brother likes his sandwiches with slices of raw onion and olives, and I think I shall try that for dinner tonight, assuming no one has whisked off my remaining quarter of a loaf. 

Anyway, I'm off to spend the rest of my relatively unproductive recess week reading "The Other Hand" by Chris Cleave, which is a semi-depressing, generally uplifting novel, which kinda describes how the past 6 days of schoolessness have been for me. 

Bread frenzy

It being recess week, I've lots of time for bread baking, the essence of which is, really, time. I could wax lyrical about why bread baking is so enjoyable in all its zen-like meditation, waiting and watching, or why it is poetic in its ancient-ness (bread baking goes back as far as Man's first cultivation of plants, which kinda works itself in as the start of civilisation :P), but it wouldn't be anything I haven't already done in tremendous excess elsewhere. 

I like how bread-baking is two-pronged (for me, at least)- it is a tremendously satisfying hobby while at the same time providing my family and I with a happy supply of yeasty, wheaty cushions to couch with cheese, eggs, a gliding of butter, ham, the works. Right now, for instance, I am trying to reproduce a 50% whole-wheat loaf from Rose Levy Beranbaum's amazingly generous blog (www.realbakingwithrose.com) with the greedy ambition of

turning out some fabulous BLTs for lunch over the weekend. To this effect, I think I shall make a trip to town later to buy some buffalo tomatoes. Alas, bread-baking is not expensive in itself, but it inspires expenditure on wonderful ingredients worthy of home-baked bread (both the making and the eating of!). 

That is the proofed (proven?) and risen dough waiting to be popped into the oven. It's quite an active dough and smells delicious even in its wobbly, airy, unbaked state. 

Popped in the oven for a 35 minute bake, this is the dough in its "oven spring", the rapid expansion of the dough as the yeast cells do a final, frenzied dance before the high heat kills them off. 

And here, the baked loaf- misshapenness courtesy of yours truly. 

Anyway, to start off the ham and eggs portion of this blog on a suitably greedy note, I shall now include a recipe for an excellent artisinal bread to encourage those of you who, while avid bakers and food lovers like me, have yet to venture into the mysterious valley of yeasted milk and honey- it takes an initial push like the one Rose Levy Beranbaum gave me with her beautiful volume, The Bread Bible, to start you on a journey of kneading, shaping, stirring and self-satisfied munching at 2 o'clock on a lazy weekday afternoon. Once you see the magic in coaxing deep, satisfying flavours and textures from hardly anyyhign more than flour, water, yeast and salt, I think it will become clear why I sometimes elect to stay at home just to tend to bread rising in my bedroom. 

This recipe (for Rose's basic hearth bread, not the one above) comes from "The Bread Bible", but also appears on the back of "Harvest King Better for Bread Flour" packets, and Rose, in that post, also includes some extra instructions (she is the goddess of meticulous instructions). This is one my favourite breads to make by virtue of it being so simple, and I hope you find it enjoyable too!

Tabula Rasa

There are few things in life that smart the ego and sentimental softspots more than losing 5 years' worth of writing in one fell swoop of a net-maniac's random cum-spurting. Indeed, that was what happened to www.dailybacktrack.com, and if you click on that link, you will see web ads for daily devotional bibles, back ointment and racing tracks. 

I know there are many people out there, very likely the same artless people who saw it fit to erase my presence from the internet, who think it no great loss that, overnight, a treasure trove of pointless, noisy, partisan, polemical, frankly very boring self-congratulatory hogwash was decimated, along with equally pointless posts with far too many eggs and too much ham. Maybe it's a good thing that it has all been washed away, like the internet was put on a brutal wash-and-spin cycle- I was probably getting too absorbed in a community of critics and cynics than fits my rather more amicable character. 

This is not without a lot of sadness, of course. As any person who invests a great amount of thought- lucid or not- in putting words on paper (or words on the net) should know, it is a terrible thing to lose it all, to never be able to look back at it with masturbatory pleasure, and to never again look at how one's writing, character, beliefs and, perhaps, identity had evolved over the years. It is like the death of a pet, for years I had taken it for granted that I could turn to my blog to write something pointless, or something terribly clever that I simply HAD to put down before I lost the thought, or simply angst as was the initial function of my blog- in the final weeks before this happened, I made a note to post some updates, to ruminate, to wax lyrical about stuff that was happening around me, to pay the damned bills, and I didn't have a last look before it was all gone.

This may all sound sooooo unnecessarily melodramatic, but I really did love my blog. I had entertained a thought that I would keep it going for at least another 5 years, that I would be able to look back in a decade and smile or wince or laugh or cringe at all the things I had written. Not everything was positive, a lot of it I regret writing and am ashamed of having posted (before it was shredded to bits in other blogs), but all of it was written by me, at different points in my past 5 years, no doubt, but there was a charming evolution about my blog that always made it fascinating to backtrack.  

With this new blog, I am going to tone things down a bit. I don't see any direction that it's going to take and chances are it will be very much like the last one- ridiculously, maybe even frustratingly *unfocused* (or eclectic!), but I do invite you, whoever is out there reading this, to play along with me and make happy potty time in my new sandpit. Yes, there will be no end to my awkward metaphors and my love of long sentences, because that's ME, dammit, and I hope that, if you were expecting this semi-tragedy to have thrown me off kilter into some emo pill popping net hobo, then you are going to be sorely disappointed, because I don't take well to destruction- I just rise above it and become sunshinier. Yes, that means more ham and eggs.