Neal Stephenson, the thinking person's Dan Brown? A review of Reamde.

First off, no disrespect intended to Mr. Stephenson and his books, they kick ass for me.
Dan Brown, not so much, though I have to confess the Da Vinci Code did keep me guiltily glued to the book for a short span of days till it was read.
Reamde would probably be the first book since with a similar impact.
So how do they compare?
The Brown book was intriguing in that for the first time since Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, non-readers were bending my ear about this fantastic book. The buzz about Trainspotting was to do with the immediacy of it's subject matter and the excellence of it's writing.
The buzz about Dan Brown was the inclusion of a tonne of conspiracy theories, studding them with a lot of faux scientific decoration, then packaging the whole lot into a standard thriller. Fair play. But unsatisfying for  nerds already listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain and familiar with such well-rehearsed topics as the fibonacci sequence and golden mean.
Into this breach steps Neal Stephenson. He demonstrated with Cryptonimionc(sp?) how to write a world-spanning thriller, backed up with way more esoteric discursions into crytography. A+ from the nerds, and he writes with a arch levity to keep the non nerds onside.
Loving Cryptonomicon so much I decided to dedicate my life to reading everything the author produced. Slight mistake. Stephenson is prolific and exhaustingly erudite, and I ground to a halt in one of his Baroque novels (btw, a Stephenson novel probably matches a Brown for pages per buck).
Then I chanced upon a favourable review of  Reamde , got the book and goodbye social interaction.
<Spoiler alert>If you are intrigued by this book, stop reading now and start reading the book.
If you're undecided, read the book and look away.
If you've read the book, or are going to read it anyway, the rest of this review won't give away any plot details.
<Spoiler alert book review>
Imagine your favourite Hollywood blockbuster. Say hackers versus spies. Cool. Now wouldn't that be even more fun if some unstoppable Russian gangsters were added in. Mix in some hardcore jihadiis, and a few jokers. And combat system based on video games you play.
All the makings of the best Hollywood blockbuster ever, except it's not made yet, may never be.
</Spoiler alert book review>
</Spoiler alert>
So just read the damn book.

Compromise Gravy

This is an addendum to my roasting experiences (SFW). 

Who doesn't like gravy? It's the one sure fire way to get kids eating their veg and disguising a mediocre meal, or accentuating a fantastic one.

So what's not to like? 

Here's my confession. I am a food snob. Jus ok, gravy granules not. I would forego gravy at my inlaws, but spend ages scraping around the roasting tin and coming up short quantity wise, till I wised up with the following tips.

• Get a gravy boat. Fill it with boiling water when you take the meat out of the oven. Cover the meat with tinfoil and tea towels and let it rest while the gravy boat soaks up the heat.
• Put the roasting tin on a low heat till it starts to bubble. At this point you have a decision to call between yourself and your GP as to how much fat to leave in. Come on, it's a Sunday roast!
• Chuck in some flour, start scraping. When it gets all blobby, time to deglaze.
• Deglaze with wine or balsamic vinegar. Remember you can get cheap ersatz balsamic vinegar which will make a reasonable gravy, but will not get you drunk - the choice is yours.
• Make sure you have some hot stock ready. This can be organic chicken stock from your previous meal or gravy granules. As a half way house, Marigold vegetable stock power. YMMV
• Carve the meat in some chopping board contraption that somehow retains the juices. See above photograph for one such item that somehow appeared in our kitchen years ago without planning. Tip the last bit of meat juice goodness from this into the roasting tin.
• Plate up the meat and keep warm in the oven while you attend to the gravy as follows
• Chuck the stock in.Taste (it will inevitably be delicious) and season if neccessary (it will not be).
• Let it cook to the desired consistency while plating up at the table 
• Decant into gravy boat with "Anyone want some gravy?"

Enjoy

Classic fish curry

The last three weekends have been roasts so time for a break from the meat.  My wife picked up the following monster piece of hake from the local fishmonger. I don't know why hake is so underregarded in Ireland. It's way tastier than cod, is easy to skin and bone and is reasonably sustainable and affordable. Ah well, mine and Spain's gain.

Gonna need a bigger chopping board!
Skinned, pin boned (using the perennially useful leatherman) and we're left with this

One of my earliest cooking successes was a Madhur Jaffray fish curry that surprised me by actually looking like one. And tasting not bad either. I can't remember the recipe but have made innumerable variants of it since, so here goes my bog standard curry recipe.
First of all, dry roast the garam masala.

Here we have bay and kaffir leaves, coriander, cumin, cloves, green cardamon, fennel and mustard seeds. I would have added cinamon and curry leaves but I appear to be out. Sin é. I roast them on the lowest flame for ten minutes giving them the odd shake and picking out some the chaff. Memo to self - go back to black cardamons as the green ones are way too fiddly to skin. Time for a glass of wine, a fine Georgian white from one of Fairview two excellent independent off licences (Martins in this instance, the other being Lilac wines) - Kinsale watch out, Fairview is on the up!

Decant the spices into the pestle and get the onions on the go.

Getting back to Madhur Jaffray, the one thing she really stressed was onions sweated for an eternity was the base of a good curry, so here they are after 15 minutes

According to Jaffray, the onions should slightly brown and just about to start catching. But people are getting hungry so this will have to do.
On the subject of Madhur Jaffray, before even Keith Floyd she was one of the first celebrity chefs for my generation.  And despite being a very personable and attractive woman, she did it before appearing on television. Donal Skeehan, take note.And on that note I vow to keep my highly photogenic family members out of this blog.
Now time to sweat the fresh aromatics (a scotch bonnet, a nondescript dutch chilli and a handful of garlic cloves - ginger and lemon grass would have been included if available) for a few minutes before adding the body of the sauce. btw, I owe Mr Skeehan an apology for singling him out, as the one programme of his I did watch converted me from my highly pretentious but incredibly time consuming brunoising of garlic to simply top and tail, crush, skin then rocking chop.  This will add whole days to my productive life, so chapeau.
Meantime, here's the remaining components of the sauce

  Spinach was defrosted then had as much water squeezed out as possible. Also added but not in camera were a bunch of dried prawns and some nam pla, resulting in possibly the least promising looking dish this side of chick liver pate at the food processor stage:

A bit of turmeric here would have helped, but my store cupboard management has been letting me down today.
Let it cook down for a bit, then after the rice is put on (basmati, washed and soaked for an hour, with pomegrate seeds added to perk up the flavour and appearance), add the fish.
Et voila!

Once again, no points for presentation, but dinner a three lunches taken care for so job done.

Here piggee piggee

Had some success last week with Domini Kemp's roast lamb shoulder so the family want more Sunday Roasts, so this week it's a pork shoulder from the excellent Brady's of Fairview

A simple stuffing of onion, sausage (can't have too much piggy goodness), apple, sage and thyme

Unfortunately there isn't much space inside the shoulder for the stuffing, so most will be cooked outside, and here it is, somewhat rustically tied

Now for my latest experiment in the pursuit of the perfect crackling. Most recipes suggest starting off hot then going slow, but to my mind you want it hot at the end. So I'm going to bypass this this by going long and slow then finishing the crackling off under the grill while the meat is resting.
So here it two hours later

And here's the final plating up (0 out of 10 for presentation, 10 out of 10 for gluttony)

Crackling turned out pretty good, but you have to keep a beady eye on the grill.   So that covers Sunday and the early part of next week where we'll eke out the remains with stir fries and a stroganof/goulash hybrid I stumbled on the week before (pork+mushrooms+peppers+tons of paprika+cream, nom nom)

Moby Dick, a review

One plus of recovering from a fractured spine is I finally got to finish Moby Dick, which is a total rip of Whale Adventure, except with about a 1000 pages of digressions on all matters cetacean. Also, how come the Great American novel is 90% outside of America itself?

How I broke my back and got away with it

So Saturday 22nd started very nice - a try out spin with Dublin wheelers after getting bored with all those solo spins. A friendly gang and apologies if I cannot remember the names of those I spoke with. The weather was just peachy as well, so I was full of the joys of summer as we started exploring new areas of North dublin. Somewhere south of Naul I think the road started getting a bit lumpier and with a few cries of descent we were going down at a reasonable rate. 


I wasn't going excessively fast at all when I started to get some cycle shake and while trying to get it under control (i.e. freezing like a rabbit in headlights) I drifted into the gravel. I'd already scrubbed of a fair bit of speed (post crash the max recorded was 55) so for some reason decided I to scrub off the remainder in the grass rather than the gravel.

Big mistake, I think I hit a big culvert while going a lot faster than I thought I was. At this point I remember thinking, ha, I'm going to have my first crash but at least it's on soft grass.
I was flung head first into the ground, a bit like the rugby spear tackle, then flipped on to my back. Subsequently I think it was the angle of attack rather than the speed that did the damage. A lot pain as I crawled out of the ditch, and difficulty in breathing. So I writhed around until I was able to talk. After standing up and getting some more speech back, passing all the LOC and tingliness questions, I managed to convince myself and fellow riders that I was only winded (though at the back of my mind I thought as a worst case I might have a cracked rib, which I've had before but there's nothing you can do about it), so we cycled on to a nearby service station where my wife was to collect me. Strangely, on the bike was the most comfortable position I'd been in and I toyed with the idea of cycling home, but wiser heads ruled this out.


By the time my wife collected my I was in a bit of state, the pain had been increasing, so she persuaded me to go to casualty. I accepted VHI swiftcare as a compromise where I'd at least be able to get some strong painkillers without wasting the entire day. In fairness to switfcare, they were... swift, so after a load of xrays the doctor said I had a fractured vertebrae and he was transferring me to Beaumount.


I was still pretty blase at this stage, the doctor was a cyclist himself, told me some stories about friends recieving similar injuries and said it would be fine.


It was only when the ambulance arrived and the nurse starting lip miming to the crew that the gravity of the situation started to dawn.


The next 20 hours was a series of different ceiling tiles as I lay strapped down till I went to theatre on Sunday evening. Needless to say all the hospital personnel were professionalism personified so I didn't get unduly worried at any time (though spending the night in the spinal injuries high dependency ward is *not* a recommended experience).
Beaumount are a centre for excellence in spinal injuries so I couldn't have been in a better place.
The available options were 8-12 weeks bed rest or metal pins around the damage. NB bedrest does not mean watching tv while getting up for more grapes now and again - it is spent strapped down with a bladder catheter and watching out for pressure sores. So I went for the pins. The detailed diagnosis was compression fracture of T7 vertebrae , plus fracture of a rib - so I was at least partially right about the cracked rib theory.

And now I'm home , just a few days later, walking about and reasonably functional. The pain in the first few days was bad, the painkillers were paracetomol and anti-inflamtories, none of the good stuff - I don't know where those Hollywood stars develop their Vicodin addiction from back pain, but it sure ain't Beaumount. The projected recovery is something like 2 weeks till safe to drive and do light work duties, a further 4 weeks and the doctor said I'd be able to return to work fully. No word on getting back on the bike, but I presume it will have the same overall trajectory i.e. nothing for 2 weeks, then maybe something light, though the consultant definitely wasn't condoning this. I'll play it by ear.

Lessons learnt?
I now know what crashing is like and will *definitely* make a stronger effort to avoid it.

But the biggest was to be a bit more circumspect with back injuries. I've had a few in my time, mainly from skiiing, and they've always been cracked/bruised ribs, about which there's nothing that can be done. But in hindsight the pain this time as far worse than anything previous, and I think there was a central component to it from the get go. If I'd realised at the time the nature of the injury I'd have lain down and not moved till those friendly ambulance guys arrived (another thing I learned from lying flat in various waiting areas - the ambulance drivers never once complained about time wasters, but did have a lot of venom for people driving themselves to A&E with neck injuries).

The Perfect Cullen Skink

The Classic
Gently poach undyed smoked haddock in milk and aromatics untils almost cooked. Meanwhile saute floury potatoes finely diced with a generous quantity of butter. Season well. When potato is starting to catch and the fish is nearly cooked, strain the poaching liquor into the potatoes. Top up with boiling water as neccessary.
While the potatoes finish cooking flake the fish into the pot, taking care to remove bones.
Final check on seasoning then serve.
Simple, quick and delicious.
Embellishments
Why improve on perfection?  Well heres a few tweaks that can be added without compromising the integrity of the dish.

• Other vegetables
• Leeks, sweet potato or finely diced carrot only. It's tempting to seize any opportunity realise the five a day target, but to my  mind they need to be mildly flavoured and always be subservient to the potato. (The rare occasion in my cooking when onion and garlic are barred.)
• Sweetcorn
• Now we are in controversial territory. Is it a genuine regional dish or a bastardised fusion with the American chowder?  If your sensibilities allow it, I would urge you try it. With two caveats: you must go the whole hog and include bacon, and use corn on the cob (stick the husk in the soup at the same time). Is it still cullen skink? Probably not, but it's damn good.
• Bacon
• Or any pork product.See above. I pretty much always use finely diced chorizo during the potato saute phase, because it's nearly always to hand and gives little bit of colour and a lot of flavour to the end result. Absolutely essential if you have the added sweetness of sweetcorn. 
• Turmeric
• Ok, a bit of weird addition. I have a family history of certain cancers, a number of epidemilogical studies have touted turmeric as a protection against these.  So that was the initial motivation for sticking it in. But it's become a regular on it's own merits - cheap as chips, gives a bit of visual depth - especially complementary with the little red flecks of chorizo, and may even end of make all that butter and fat more digestible.  But keep it small folks! A couple microgrammes too much and the soup will look radioactive.
• "Punching the flavour"
• To be honest, this shouldn't be neccessary. But if the opportunity is there, why not give it a try. Some additions that have  seemed to work: corn husk, nam pla (very small), parmessan rind. I guess we're looking for added umami more than anything else.

Gilding the Lily
When you have such a wonderfully reliable recipe as Cullen Skink it can be tempted to chuck whatever else work in there as well.  And because the Skink is so forgiving, you'll get something that is perfectly edible, but shouldn't claim the same illustrious heritage.
Here I'm thinking of things like the following:

• Prawns
• We typically have some to hand either frozen or dried and it's tempting to use them to stretch out a soup under construction. Just to my mind the sweetness of the prawn is redundant in the Skink, far better to save them for a spicy curry or tangy bouilliabaise.
• Other smoked fish
• The most widely available fish in Ireland is smoked cod. This is one of the blandest fish around smothered in smokey bacon crisp essence then painted mahogany. It is not a welcome addition to any meal.
• Salmon has  it's own merits, but would overpower this soup before it had even rang the doorbell. The applies for mackerel and kippers.

So there you have it...
...a reactionary diatribe in favour of a nativist Cullen Skink.  With sweetcorn. And chorizo. And turmeric.
Nom nom nom