Flying without baggage

M is in the States for work at the moment, and I am flying over to meet her in New York for three nights. Yes, as I said in my previous post, my life is pretty sweet right now.

I could easily get away with packing only my passport and my wallet. Bear with me while I explain: I know M has bought me a number of undergarments in NZ which are superior to those at a similar price point in the UK. Gold top socks, looking at you.
New York is going to be pretty cold (ie below freezing), so I will just be wearing the same outer casing of coat / scarf / gloves / jeans / boots all the time.
The only garments which I need to pack are three tee shirts. For the comedic value of flying without any baggage (ie no checked in bags + no carry on bags) I would be willing to purchase three tee shirts from a department store once I hit New York.
For toiletries, I can use Marie's moisturiser and deodorant for three days.

I am not sure if this would trump our mate Glen's backpacking around South America for nine months with carry on baggage only, that is < seven kilos. Clue: he weighed every item he took, including shaving products.
But, it would definitely come close.

And yet, I think I will take a hold all, just to avoid the attention of the airport security staff. I like to think I am reasonably open minded toward new experiences, but antagonising non-medical personnel who can legally fondle my prostate is skating on thin ice.

Travelling to New York today sir?
Yes.
How many bags to check in?
Zero.
Carry on bags.
Nada.
Any baggage at all?
Zip.
Please step this way, sir.

Christmas dinner

Merry Christmas wherever you may be, and in whichever time zone you might be.

This year is the first year we have had Christmas dinner in London, and my plan of hibernating until the New Year is coming along nicely. I think I went a little bit overboard with provisioning, I am a bad impulse shopper with food. Marie flies out tomorrow to head back to NZ for a week, and yesterday I could barely close the door of my fridge. "Oh my god, supermarkets are going to be closed for a whole day, I'd better purchase three kinds of cream so every eventuality is covered!" That kind of thing.
My only problem right now is working out how to consume all the delicious food in my house before I head back to work on January 4th, which means my life is pretty sweet.

People over here favour turkey for Christmas dinner, but I can't really see the point of turkey.
If you want to push the boat out on a celebration meal, why not goose? Turkey tends to be around 10 quid a kilo, where goose is around 12 quid so the differential is small. Yes a turkey will yield more food than a goose of equal weight, as quite a lot of the goose will render off as fat, but geese are easier to cook - just stick in the oven and it will baste itself.
If you don't want the strong flavour of goose, why not get a premium chicken? We went for a poulet de bresse, a chicken so snobby it comes with an AOC classification.


To start, 'crayfish' on avocado toast while the chicken was roasting. The dressing was a ketchup base, with horseradish, lime juice, tabasco, and worcestershire sauce. Super easy, super tasty. Next time I might fancy it up by trimming the toast and cutting into triangles.
The crayfish was good. I don't know exactly what kind of animal it came from, it definitely tasted like lobster but was the size of shrimp. Anyway, much easier to deal with than full size crayfish, and not so much mess to clean up afterward.

Onto the chicken. The clip on the cavity in the photo below is apparently proof that this is from the AOC approved area, in the same way that only sparkling wine from around Reims can be sold as champagne.

More importantly, what does this bad boy taste like? I favour leg over breast, and the amazing thing about this leg meat was the multiple and distinct granularities and tastes of the different muscles. I stole some of Marie's breast meat, and that was the most tender chicken I have ever had. She described it as buttery, which is the best description I can think of. The roasting technique was my standard lemon + thyme stuffed inside, with thyme rubbed into the outside, so any differences were definitely due to the chicken rather than my cooking.
Sides included potatoes roasted in duck fat (why have I never cooked with duck fat before?) and brussel sprouts par boiled then fried with bacon. Bacon really does make everything better, including brussel sprouts.



There was a cheese course in there somewhere, and Marie made a pav as well. Mmm delicious.

Banana and Ginger Bread: 7/10

My team at work decided to have a week of baking, and mark each other's creations a la Come Dine with Me. My team is four guys and one girl, so this was not expected.

I haven't baked for years, and the only thing I could think of is Marie's banana bread which she calls idiot proof. Hypothesis, meet test.

I even carefully measured out ingredients using a scale, because apparently you need to do that with baking. The recipe is something like this, I halved the quantities below to do one loaf:
Mix half a pound of butter and half a pound of sugar. I was frightened by the volume of butter and sugar here, I had no idea banana bread had such a calorific starting point.
Beat in two eggs.
Sieve the following in: 3 cups flour, 3 tsp baking powder. At this point I added two tablespoons of ground ginger, my first departure from Marie's recipe.
Dissolve 2 tsp of baking soda in a little milk, and add.
Add 5-6 near rotting bananas. At this point I added a dash of vanilla extract, my second departure from Marie's recipe.
Line tin(s) with baking paper, and pour in.
Bake in a moderate oven (I used 180 fan) until an inserted knife comes out clean. This took about an hour or so for me.

The cake tasted good, and the ginger gave it a nice little kick on the end of the palate. My colleagues seemed to approve. So why only 7/10?
I think baking really does demand accuracy of ingredient measures and sticking to the recipe (at least for a novice baker). Two skills which don't really feature highly in my cooking, I have more of a "what would happen if I added this ingredient?" approach. Which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.
Even though I tried to measure ingredients, I suspect my measuring was off by up to 20%. Electronic scales would be easier to read. And, I couldn't help adding bits and pieces (ginger) I had read on the interweb somewhere.

Maybe if there was some way to bake bread that incorporated meat. Pancakes with bacon and banana and maple syrup work, so maybe banana bread could be adulterated with bacon.

Things which make me cry with laughter

Exhibit 1:
Charlie Brooker. Namely,
This Charlie Brooker column on Man vs Food. Now I love Man vs Food, and I am planning a pilgrimage to some of his temples, but I think I love Charlie Brooker more. I wish I could be this witty.

Exhibit 2:
Marie. More specifically, Marie trying to order her phone around. She got a phone with voice recognition software. Only problem, the software can't handle NZ accents at all. You are meant to be able to say "Text Simon" and dictate a text message to be sent to Simon.
It can't understand her, and thinks she is asking it to purchase tickets to Simon or somesuch. Well I laughed, anyway.

And because I spend most of my time thinking about food, check out my cottage pie. Not that you can see anything apart from potato, but this is still a work in progress.
I started by sweating leek and onion, added chili, beef mince, mushrooms, garlic and carrot in that order, and then dropped in a bit of tomato and some stock**. Mash on top is king edwards adulterated with much butter and parmesan.
I think the tomato lightened the liquids a bit too much, and this pie needs a bit of weight in the gravy. Maybe next time I might try slowly simmered beef shin, which would give it a bit of grunt.




**One giant step in quality assurance would be properly labelling my stocks when I freeze them - this might lead to more consistent cooking. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the blocks at the back might be pheasant rather than chicken.

Man Cooking: Brawn

Warning: the following text contains graphic images and representations of gastronomic carnage, and may not be suitable for vegetarians or fussy eaters.



Last weekend Brendan and I attempted to make brawn. For those of you unfamiliar with a nose to tail type diet, Brawn is similar to terrine and consists of meat suspended in jelly.
And, the part which nearly broke me, the meat is from a pig’s head.







We broadly followed the Fergus Henderson recipe. To summarise:
Simmer the pig’s head with vegetables, a couple of trotters (a great source of gelatin for the jelly), root vegetables and whatever seasoning or herbs you can find for over two hours. We ended up simmering for about four hours in some chicken stock I had made the day before, and some recipes advocate even longer in the pot. We didn’t faff around with brining beforehand. Firstly, I don’t have that much patience, and secondly, I didn’t have three kilos of salt.






Remove head and trotters from pot. Discard any other solids.
Once head and trotters are cool enough to handle, remove all meat and meat like substances (to paraphrase Fergus Henderson - the snout is neither fat nor meat nor cartilage, and yet is tasty) from the head and trotters.





After four hours simmering we could separate the meat with forks. Set meat and meat like substances aside. Bear in mind that for optimal taste sensations there needs to be a small amount of fat included here – this dish will never appear on any calorie controlled menus….
Reduce liquid down, and then cool.

To construct the brawn:
1) Line a dish with cling film, leaving plenty hanging over the sides
2) Add a layer of meat and meat like substances
3) Add a small amount of liquid to cover meat completely
Repeat (2) and (3) until dish is full
Whack brawn on counter top a couple of times, to displace any air bubbles.
Wrap overhanging cling film over top of brawn







Set a weight on top, and refrigerate until firm. I left mine for a week, but the gelatin in the liquid should only need overnight to solidify.

Serve as small slices, on brown toast, with large amounts of salt and pepper. The refrigeration dulls the seasoning, so it needs quite a bit to perk up.

How does it taste?
Really good, unless you spend too long thinking about where exactly it came from.
The meat had a good strong flavour, even though it had been simmered for a while.
After a week in a fridge the jelly was in no mood to crumble, and was very firm.

So what are the down sides, and why did this dish nearly break me?

It started when I was shaving the head prior to cooking - did I mention you have to shave your ingredients, and clean out the ear wax before you cook this bad boy? Before you ask, no I didn’t use Marie’s razor, I used mine. Anyway, I was shaving the eye lashes off when my shaving motion partially opened the pig’s eye. As though it was looking at me, silently reproaching me for my intrusion in the name of gluttony. And yes, I know it couldn’t see me, and yes I know we used to raise pigs when I was little, and yes I know I should harden up, but I still felt a small flutter in my stomach.

It got worse when we removed the meat and meat like substances from the pig head. When I was putting the head into the pot I could fly away to my happy place, and the head meat was still firmly attached to the skull. After four hours simmering the head meat separated from the skull, such that all I had to do was hold up the head meat and the skull fell away. A little gross, especially as the sole part of the head which refused to disconnect from the skull was behind the eyeball which had caused me discomfort earlier.

On a minor point, my kitchen was unprepared for brawn production.





For starters, the pig head I purchased was enormous. I have what I consider to be a gargantuan stock pot, but the pig head filled it up and left no room for the trotters, which I had to decant to a second pot. And, both these pots were overflowing which meant I couldn’t simmer them properly, and had to keep close watch on them. So, already this recipe has exceeded my kitchen’s capacity. And no, I can’t justify purchasing a bigger stock pot, my current pot already looks ridiculously large in our flat.
Second, I broke my tongs and spatula trying to manhandle the head – not only was it bulky, it also weighed in at around four kilos.

Finally, the smell produced from boiling pork, while not unpleasant, is not necessarily nice a la the aroma from roasting / grilling pork or bacon. Mmm bacon.

For five quid it is an extremely cheap day’s entertainment – We started at 930, and with lunch and pub breaks we didn’t finish until 4. However, I think if I was to ever do this again I would start with only half a pig’s head. Or find a smaller pig.

Also, I think I can safely add this to the list of foods I am only allowed to play with in an empty and well aired house.
Now the list reads: mutton pies, muttonbirds, and pig heads. Fair enough, methinks.

Where have all the misbehaving rockstars gone?

Marie picked up some prints a couple of years back, at an art gallery opposite her work which was closing down. Nothing pricey, just lowish print runs of some pretty pictures including this image from a series called Operation Magic Kingdom. We promptly stuck them on the walls, and I never thought to investigate who these prints were by.



It turns out they are by James Cauty, who in previous incantations was a member of the KLF, and a member of the Orb. Damn these multitalented people. Cue my favourite KLF song:



Which brings me on to a comparison with the music stars of today.

When James Cauty was in the KLF they burnt one million pounds in cash, and enthusiastically filmed themselves doing as some kind of expensive performance art. You could argue this enthusiasm was misplaced, given that Cauty publicly regretted setting fire to a million quid about ten years after the event, but rock stars have to engage in excessive behaviours, that is the rules.
(And yes, I am aware of the contradiction in dictating rules of rockstar misbehaviour which involve breaking social norms and rules.)

Where are the comparative excesses and/or ideologically driven impulses of today’s music stars? All the modern music I come into contact with feels commercially sanitised, and rock star excesses seem to be toned down and/or eliminated.

Exhibit 1: Iggy Pop - back in the 1970s he was pioneering stage diving and rolling around on stage in broken glass, and now he shills car insurance. I mean, really?
Yes his level of pharmaceutical consumption circa 1970s was completely unsustainable long term, but Keith Richards is still alive and falling out of coconut trees so at least some of the old guard have managed to avoid descending into wholesale consumerism.

Or have I become so jaded and cynical that nothing rock stars do is shocking or new? Is my nostalgia for rockstar misbehaviour misplaced?