An Astonishingly Good Read

I rarely post on here about books I'm reading / have read / have hurled into the street below because the author just can't effing write. But I really have to share a little rave-ette with you, having just finished reading David Mitchell's extraordinary 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas for the second time. Why it took me 7 years to come across this book, I'll never know. I was talking to a writer-friend a few months ago, and he asked me if I'd read it. I confessed I'd never heard of it, and a week or two later he presented me with a copy at our flatwarming soiree. I wasn't sure if it was a gift or a loan, but after I'd finished it the first time I told him he'd have to fight me if he wanted it back. I won't spoil it for you by telling you anything about it, except that its interlinked episodes hurtle through the past and the future, and the author slips with apparent ease between various genres and styles of writing in a supremely impressive and entertaining way.

It seems a motion picture is going to be made of it, starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and many other big names. But don't wait for the film - read the book!

Them Molecules Again

I actually made a Molecular Gastronomy recipe today that I was quite proud of. It's Agar Agar Tomato Soup Spaghetti, invented by Ferran Adría of El Bulli.

There are two essential bits of kit needed for this recipe - a big chunky syringe, and lengths of plastic tubing. The tubing has to fit very tightly over the nozzle of the syringe, otherwise all your efforts are doomed to failure. After quite an extensive search, I found tubing of the right size (about 4mm internal diameter) in the gardening department of El Corte Inglés - it's intended to be part of an irrigation system.



So, here's what you do. Make some tomato soup (or even open a can if you're not that bothered about what it tastes like). When ready, whizz it in a blender and then strain through a tamis or bit of cheesecloth. Return to the heat and add about 5g of powdered agar agar. Remove from heat when the agar agar has dissolved.

Now the fun part. Cut a length of tubing about 2 metres long. Coil it up a bit and secure the coil with a couple of bits of sticky tape (you don't have to do this, but it makes things easier later in the process). Fill your syringe with tomato soup - you'll need about 45ml to fill your 2m tube. Fit one end of the tubing over the syringe nozzle, and carefully inject the soup into the tubing. When a bit comes out of the other end, you're done. Remove the tube from the nozzle and pop it into a bowl of iced water. If you intend to make more than one spaghetto, repeat this paragraph.

Now the magic part. Agar agar is a gelling agent, and it sets at room temperature. Once the soup and agar mix has set in the tubing, fill your syringe with air, attach the tubing, and press the plunger on the syringe. You don't want to use too much force at this stage because once the frictional resistance of the spaghetto has been overcome it will emerge pretty fast and you need to avoid it hitting walls, ceilings, floors, cats or houseplants.

You can dribble your spaghetto randomly on a plate, or arrange it in an arty-farty spiral, although they are a little delicate and prone to breaking. You can serve the spaghetti cold or warm them over a pan of boiling water - be careful though, because they will melt at about 70°C.

And you can make them from virtually any liquid you fancy, as long as it's smooth enough to be injected into the tube. I think my next attempt will be with gazpacho.

Oh, and the reason I was proud of this is that the tutorials I'd read warned about the difficulty of using the syringe to extract the spaghetto, and recommended a nitrous oxide cream whipper to blow it out, but I suspect this was because they didn't have a tight-enough fit between their tubing and syringe nozzle. Or maybe they just like playing with laughing gas.

English Airport Procedures - Compare and Contrast

I've been to England twice in the last two months, the first time flying into & out of Stansted, and the second, Gatwick.

Up till now, if I've had to go to London, Stansted has been my airport of choice. Luton is too much like a municipal bus station, while Heathrow and Gatwick are a national disgrace (well, two national disgraces, or six if you count each terminal separately). But for the most recent 2-day trip for the Offspring's graduation, timing was critical, and the most suitable times could only be got by using Gatwick.

So, Stansted. Arrival was modestly painless, involving a mere fifteen minute wait in a snaky, sweaty queue for my passport to be waved through by an Immigration Officer (or possibly a Border Agent). Departure was farcical. The hall was crammed with people and the slow-moving queues were being harangued by stern-sounding people and recorded messages telling us that all liquids, gels and creams must be in a clear resealable bag. Now, I was under the impression that this foolish, pointless and downright inconvenient knee-jerk process had been stopped (certainly nobody at any Spanish airports limits the amount of toothpaste you can take on board). But I was wrong, of course. All I had was half a tube of toothpaste and a big pot (more than 100ml) of skin cream that I'd bought while I was there. I hadn't bothered to get a special bag, so I showed the lady what I had - it was in a semi-transparent Boots bag that could only be 'sealed' if you tied a knot in it. She had a look inside, and told me I couldn't take it on board, because it was in the wrong kind of bag. And you can't argue with these people because they'll have you labelled as aggressive and tasered within seconds.

Moving on.

Gatwick is a building site at the moment - BAA claims to be spending 1 billion quid on refurbishing it. The Immigration hall seems to be finished. When we arrived, we were asked if we had chips in our passports. Yes we did, so we were directed to a self-service machine with slightly odd instructions. It tells you to place your passport details page on a scanner, go through the gate, stand on the feet and wait for it to take a photo and open the second gate. 'Stand on the feet' seemed a bit illiterate, but all becomes clear when you get through the first barrier - there's a sticker on the floor with a couple of feet on it.

So that was quite impressive, and queue-less, but I didn't know what to expect for the return journey and was fretting somewhat because the train we had tickets for wouldn't get us there in time to deal with a long wait for security (in fact we ended up not using those tickets, and bought tickets for a different operator that would get us there half an hour earlier).

I don't know if it was the time of day, or just a super-efficient new system, but the immigration hall was virtually devoid of passengers. We were greeted by a friendly, chatty bloke who had a look at our gels and liquids and then sent us to a gate where you scan your boarding pass. And then we're into the x-ray section where, once again, the staff were friendly and helpful and we were through that in about 3 minutes flat without once being made to feel like criminals. I really couldn't believe it.

Looks like I'll be using Gatwick more in the future.

Moving House & Pie Stuff

Those of you who read my drivel on Facebook will have an idea of the bizzyness I've been going through for the last couple of months. I've really had no time to blog at all. The thing that was driving me nuts was trying to move house. We actually found a place we liked last October, but our landlady said we could only move when the lease has expired (I'm still not convinced this is actually true) unless we find a new tenant or pay all the rent that would be due until the end of April. So that flat didn't happen - we had actually paid a month's rent to hold it, and fortunately the landlord paid it back. We bided our time (not very happily, it must be said - we were desperate for more space) and during April we found an utterly amazing apartment. It's twice the size of the old one, has 2 bedrooms, 2 terraces (one of which is glazed-in and only useful for utility stuff, but the other one is for full-on sunbathing/barbecuing/growing planty things), a well-equipped kitchen and, best of all, an astonishingly low rent.

There was a little catch, though. The owner insisted on using a County Council scheme called Plan Alquila. This is an admirable thing that encourages landlords to rent out their empty property by insuring the tenant's rent. So there's no risk of the property owner not being paid. But, this being Government, there are many hoops to jump through, and nothing happens when it should. We had to apply to Plan Alquila for approval, and the process that they said would take 2 weeks ended up taking 7 very very long weeks. I have no idea why it took so long, but finally the contract got signed and we moved in towards the end of May, having extended our previous lease by 2 months.

Just to complicate things a bit, in the background to the move was a long-standing order for 103 pies for a friend's 40th birthday party. So we got the keys on Wednesday, hired a truck and 2 Romanians on Thursday, got everything moved in by about noon, and then I set up my prep table in the bedroom and started making pies (I couldn't put it in the kitchen because that would involve removing a narrow worktop and we hadn't got permission to do that from the owner at this point). But the bedroom was okay - it has AC and didn't have a bed.

I finished making the pies on Friday, and MamaDuck made a trip to IKEA in the evening to buy us a bed. This cost an astonishing amount of money, and was promised for delivery the following afternoon - the day of the party. I managed to get my pies made, collected and delivered by about 2pm, but the IKEA guys didn't arrive with the bed until about 5pm.

Then we rushed off to Moncloa Bus Station to get up to the party. Our friend had rented a house in the country for the occasion, and all his family from Liverpool and Ireland were there. A fair amount of drink had been taken by the time we arrived, and when I was introduced as the pieman there was a liberal amount of hugging, kissing and handshaking.

The party coincided with the Champions League Final between Barcelona and Man United, and our mate had hired a TV projector and big screen so we wouldn't miss it.

All in all, a terrific day.

The Long Egg-speriment

This post is about Gala Pies and Long Eggs. If you don't know what either of these, I will now elucidate. A Gala Pie is a long version of a pork pie, typically baked in a bread tin and about the size, shape and weight as a brick. But far more tasty, unless of course, you're a troll. Gala Pies have a boiled egg running through the centre and are designed to be served in slices. Magically*, no matter where you cut the pie, you always get the full amount of egg yolk and egg white.

This is where the Long Egg comes in. Long hens became extinct aeons ago (possibly from exhaustion during the never-ending egg-laying), so these days we have to resort to magic technology to replicate their efforts. It seems that every commercial Gala Pie-maker considers the provenance of the Long Egg to be a trade secret, but my trawling of the Interwebz came up with solutions involving tubes of different diameters and the separate poaching of the yolks and the whites.

I rummaged around the kitchen and came up with a squeezy sauce bottle that seemed to be about the right diameter for the outer tube, so I cut the top off. The inner tube was more problematic, but I found some phallic pet feeder things that were only a little too big for the inner tube (I figured that was okay - more yolk, less white - only doctors like egg white anyway) in the local Chino.

I poured my yolks into one of the blue tubes, but was unable to seal the top so I had to rig up something with toothpicks and wire to keep the tube vertical while the yolks set. When it was done, I placed the long yolk into the wider tube, poured albumen around it and popped it back into the pan until it set. Getting the complete long egg out of the tube was a bit of a disaster, however. I hadn't thought to use any lubricant, and the egg white had become quite firmly attached to the polythene. So I had to cut it out with a knife and ended up with a somewhat mis-shapen long egg.

I had my pastry, jelly and pork filling all ready, and no time (or eggs) to make another long egg, so I chucked it in and baked it.



So the egg didn't look great, but the whole pie tasted fantastic.

That was a couple of weeks ago. I made another long egg this morning, using food-grade polythene tubes that I made myself using my heat-sealer. This one seems to have turned out pretty well, so I'll make another gala pie tomorrow. Wish me luck.

*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke, 1961

Disingenuous Smirking - Again

Last night I went out to watch the second leg of the Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Barcelona. The pub we went to was nearly empty - I guess none of the regulars expected to have anything to celebrate, so they stayed at home with a cup of cocoa.

Personally, I was expecting a goal-fest for Barca, but it was not to be. In the absence of the loudmouthed José Mourinho (currently RM's manager, banished from the stadium for this game because of disgraceful behaviour in the previous one), Real Madrid seemed to be off the leash and able to play as much attacking footie as Barcelona let them. Indeed, they scored the first goal of the game, but the ref disallowed it for reasons that are still somewhat unclear.

Both teams plodded on in the pouring rain, and the sight of RM's sub Adeboyar literally leaping onto the backs of Barcelona players rather than attempting to play the ball in the normal manner was not a gratifying one, especially as it went unpunished (and therefore we must conclude this type of behaviour is approved of by those corrupt old bastards at FIFA).

The more I watch modern football, the less I like it. There can be moments of brilliance, sequences of passing and sometimes scoring that almost bring tears to the eyes. But more often than not, it's brutality, shameless diving and writhing, and an over-abundance of hair-gel. The fans pay huge amounts of money to watch this drivel (I could have watched last week's instalment at the Bernabéu, had I been prepared to pay €100 for a ticket with a face value of €230). The fans deserve better.

I'm rambling. The game finished at 1-1, meaning Barcelona go through to the final at Wembley against Man U on 28th May. That is not a match to miss.

Crap Football

After last night's 2-0 loss to Barcelona in the Champion's League Semi-Final 1st leg, über-brat and crap actor Cristiano Ronaldo had this to say in a press conference:

"Messi?" he replied, when asked about the Argentinian's two goals. "It's easier against 10 men. I would like to play against 10 men too, like he does. It is no excuse but they always play against ten men.

"I don't understand why this always happens. I couldn't talk to the referee because if I had I would have got a card for sure. The ref sent off Pepe: what more can I say? Every year is the same.

"I feel bad for us and for Mourinho – because it always happens to him. Barcelona are a great team but these guys have a lot of power off the pitch too. Chelsea, Inter, Arsenal. It's always the same. Is that a coincidence?"


Well, Cristiano, it might be that your team always gets a player sent off because you are dirty cheating bastards. Had I been the referee, I'd have sent many more Real Madrid players off in that game. You yourself would always be sent off within the first five minutes for disingenuous smirking.


Seriously, modern futbol is a crock of shite - grossly overpaid dudes trying to fool the referee into thinking they are dying because an opposing player got within a foot of them, counterbalanced by behaviour that would be considered common assault if it wasn't happening on a footie pitch.

An Interesting Discovery

Having lived in the Middle East, I'm a big fan of hummus, which is pretty much a staple of the diet there. In case you don't know, it's a puree of chick peas (garbanzos) and tahini and a little bit of garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. I have bought hummus once or twice since we moved to Spain, but not been impressed. And I've made it once or twice, but the price of tahini here is incredible - €6 - €8 for a half-litre pot.

I don't know why, but today I had the urge to find out whether tahini was something I could make myself. I'd always thought it was made by some mysterious fermentation process, but a quick trawl of the interwebz proved me (happily) wrong. It is nothing more than ground-up sesame seeds and a bit of olive oil.

I got me a bag of sesame seeds today, so guess what I'm going to make tomorrow!

Moving [Eventually]

They do say that moving house is up there with divorce and the death of a loved one in the stress stakes. And they're not wrong. We've moved twice in Madrid, and now we're onto our third one. Or maybe not. I'd mentioned to my mate the property rental guy that we would be looking to move to a bigger place - at the very least we wanted 2 bedrooms so we could have guests. This was back in September, I think, and almost immediately he came up with an attractive place, not very far from where we are now. Lots of space, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and more or less the same rent we're paying now. We paid one month's rent as a holding deposit, and gave our current landlady one month's notice. She refused to accept the notice, brandishing our original contract which she interprets as meaning 'you can only leave at the end of each complete year'. I personally think this is wrong, but don't have the money, time or inclination to hire a lawyer.

So we were obliged to stay put until the end on March, when the second year was up (had we been able to find anyone to take over the lease, that would have been fine, but winter is less than great in the rental market). Towards the end of March, I spoke to my buddy about moving, and he went kinda pale - he said there were short-term tenants in the new place until the end of June, but was sure there wouldn't be a problem for us to extend our current lease until then. Well, of course there wouldn't, except we really, really don't want to. We are desperate for that extra space. Long story short, he tried to move the tenants of the new place somewhere else, and it didn't work.

So, end of March approaching, we need to move, and we need our 'holding' deposit back.

Sneak Preview

One week today is St Patrick's Day. I've had this date rattling round in my brain for at least the last month, because, obviously, a special pie will be required for it. And I've thought about what this pie should be, but never actually got round to doing anything about it.

What I thought was, it should be a steak and Guinness pie. Irish stew would have been nice, but the traditional version of that is pretty damn runny and just wouldn't work in a pie - the pastry would dissolve before you got a chance to eat it. No, the good ole steak 'n' Guinness, but with a green pastry shamrock on the top (pretty much the whole planet agrees that a whole pie made out of green pastry would be somewhat unpalatable).

Food colouring is fairly hard to come by in Madrid - the only colour stocked in supermarkets is orange - tartrazine, the stuff that makes kids hyperactive. So I thought I would make my own by boiling up some spinach and peas and freeze-thaw gelatine-filtering it. This takes several days, and when I looked at the result it looked like the wee-wee of someone who isn't very well. I made up some pastry with it anyway, but the result just looked mouldy. Grr.

A trip into town was required, to Manuel Riesgo, the chemicals shop. I got the colouring and a couple of other things to play with in my molecular adventures. When I got home, I opened the container and was fairly disappointed to see this tub of brown powder. I chucked a load into a glass of water, and *kshing!* it was green. Oh boy, how green was it? Greener than all the valleys on the planet, I reckon.

I made up some pastry with it, rolled it very thin and froze it, and then cut out shamrock shapes. Here's the result:



Pretty good, methinks.

Dentist

I've had a growing discomfort in the tooth department for a few weeks now, but tried to ignore it in the hope that it would just go away. Of course, it didn't, and by last Wednesday it had reached the point where lots of Novocaine and some attention from a dentist would be required. I haven't actually been to a dentist in Madrid (*hangs head in shame*), but I remembered a mate telling me he knew a good one out in the burbs who didn't get his pricing policy from Somali pirates.

I called my mate, and he called his dentist and made me an appointment for the following morning. He sent me an email with very clear directions on how to find him ('get the 512 or 513 bus to Móstoles, the fare is €1.50'). I wasn't too perturbed when the bus driver said he didn't go to Móstoles - he told me which buses did, and the alarm bells still didn't go off when the Móstoles bus driver wanted €2 to take me there.

My friend had told to get off at the Mercadona supermarket, and across the road I would see a sign for the dentist, but had to walk round the corner to find the entrance. This I did, and I was feeling quite proud that I was only five minutes late - that's actually early by Spanish standards. But the lady in reception denied all knowledge of me, my appointment, and the dentist I was supposed to see. I wandered round for a bit, and phoned the dentist, whose English is much better than my Spanish. He was confused and told me to go back to the main road and look for Calle Sevilla. I did that, and still couldn't find it, so I pulled out my phone and searched for it on Google maps. It suggested Calle Sevillas in Madrid and Alcorcón. Hmmm. So I called the dentist back and he asked me what was the name of the main street I was on. 'Avenida Alcalde de Móstoles', I said.

I could hear the centimo drop. The dentist told me I should be in Alcorcón where he was and not Móstoles.

Aaaaargh.

So, I jumped on the next bus that came along, asked for a ticket to Madrid and was a little puzzled that it only cost €1. The reason eventually became apparent when we reached the terminus at the far end of Móstoles and everybody got off. The driver told me I now had to go to that bus stop over there to get back to Madrid. And pay another €2, of course.

Ho hum. Finally I was back in Madrid, got the correct bus, and found the dentist who thought it was pretty funny and managed to fit me in pretty quickly. He took one look at the offending tooth and said he wouldn't mess about with trying to rebuild it, he'd just extract it. I wasn't too unhappy with that - it's a molar near the back of the mouth so it wouldn't leave a visibly gaping hole, and I think several dentists over the years have attempted to fix it without lasting success.

I had to have two shots of anaesthetic, but once it was properly numb the tooth came out with a wiggle and a tug (I had expected much much worse). He gave me a handful of cotton swabs to place on the wound every half hour until the bleeding stopped. I paid the surprisingly reasonable bill (€36 if you're interested) and made my way back to Madrid, feeling very self-conscious at my bloody teeth and total inability to talk, eat or drink properly, but ever so relieved that the pain had magically gone.

Jazztel: tonto or what?

I had a huge amount of buggeration with an ISP called Jazztel after we moved to our new flat almost two years ago. This was because they had been supplying internet ADSL to our previous flat in Chueca, and refused to accept that we would no longer be needing their service once we'd moved. I actually paid them for about three months' worth of service that I never used, and had one hell of a time getting them to stop pretending I was still their client. In the circumstances, I think I was more than generous. And they were just stupid, arrogant SOBs, to the extent that, once we moved to our new place, we would get at least one phone call a day from their sales folks imploring us to switch to them. I don't have the Spanish to say 'I would only sign up with Jazztel again if I was the last person left alive on Earth', and so I would just say 'no thank you' and slam the phone down as hard as I could. I know, I know, most telecoms companies are like this - they all probably make significant amounts of money from ex-customers because those wanting-to-be-ex-customers didn't resign properly (I believe the only acceptable way of terminating a contract with Jazztel is to write 'I quit' on the left-hand side of a Tibetan mule between 1158 and 0002 on the 30th February and posting said mule to Jazztel HQ (somewhere on Planet Jazztel), supplying enough postage so that it arrives no later than midnight on the 30th February the previous year).