Random Thoughts

Food and book time!

I usually shop specifically for the dishes in the Bistro Cooking book, but today I saw some lamb cutlets and I thought that surely there’d be a recipe for that in the book, even if that meant I had to cheat and skip forward a bit in the Les Viandes chapter. Such naughty.

Oops! There isn’t.

But there’s this, which is a lamb leg slice dish, so it’s… close-ish?

I also decided to make a potato mash, and I thought there’d surely be a mash recipe in the book, but there isn’t? What? How is that even possible?

So I just made a Canna Mash.

The recipe is: Boil some potatoes, add some salt/pepper and lots of thyme…

… and then keep adding butter to it until it says I CANNA TAKE ANY MORE BUTTER, CAPN!

Or you run out of butter, which I did here, after adding 250g butter to 500g potato. So I added some cream, too.

It’s practically keto!

Anyway, back to the lamb recipe… First I saute a bunch of garlic cloves in a pan (along with some thyme). The recipe talked about garlic skins and stuff, but I only had fresh garlic, so no… papery skins. Which I think is a plus, anyway?

After about eight minutes they seemed tender and nice.

Then cook the cutlets in the same pan until desired done-ness (which for me, with lamb, means “remove from the pan two seconds after there’s no redness left”… what is that? Medium well?).

And then the pan is deglazed with some white wine, and then the garlic is returned to the pan to head up again.

There.

Mmm… that mash is delicious. I’ve made it twice before, and the first time it came out fabulous, and the second time it was meh, and this time it was fabulous again. I guess it depends a lot on the quality of the potatoes.

And the lamb cutlets! So flavourful! And the white wine garlicey thymey sauce! Yum!

I was slightly surprised by the garlic, though: I thought they would taste full-on garlic garlic, but instead they were more ok-that’s-garlic? Perhaps using dried (or whatever they call non-fresh garlic) would have been better, because it would have retained more garlicness after sauteeing?

Anyway, delicious!

The book didn’t quite go with the dish, though:

Today’s book is *gasp* Norwegian. It’s not that I avoid Norwegian books, but… they do seem to be somewhat under-represented on my shelves.

This one was a gift from the Xmas before last? I think? I’ve read one book by Gert Nygårdshaug before, and I thoroughly loathed it. But that’s several decades ago… and perhaps this one is… better? Zoo Europa seems to be the nth book in a book series about … well, I have no idea. Looks kinda post-apocalyptic on the cover there? If you can read Norwegian, you can read along with me the first three pages.

Geez. It’s just like the book of his that I loathed. It’s written in a style reminiscent of 50s Norwegian, but liberally sprinkled with words that must have been archaic even then. Well, I don’t really mind: It gives everything a mannered, distanced quality, I guess…

He drops us right into the post-apocalyptic action, with several characters running around the world. There’s been a civil war between the Nazis and the fundamentalist Muslims in Europe, and civilisation has broken down.

Most chapters are short and end on a cliffhanger. The main viewpoint character is somebody who seems unrealistically out of touch, but that gives the other, wiser characters plenty of opportunity to info-dump at him (and the reader) endlessly. I guess that’s a better technique than having people “as you know, Bob, I’m your brother Jim” which even worse writers than Nygårdshaug commonly does, but it’s still rather grating.

As I said, I know nothing about the previous books in this series, so I don’t know whether all the characters are recapping them or delivering new information, but I’m guessing that it’s mostly recaps. There’s a lot of it.

The plot is… I don’t know what word to use. Childish? Child-like? It’s basically a sci-fi novel, but the concepts are so ludicrously simple-minded (a magical forest; a plague that kills 80% of people, but totally painlessly; the Baroness with the Hobbit house) that I started looking around on the cover for something like “for readers age 12 to 16”, but, nope. So I did something I never do while reading books: I googled for it to see whether it’s a kids’ book… and… none of the reviewers seem to touch on it, so I guess not?

It’s just… stupid?

And then it hit me! This is a 50s sci-fi novel! It’s just like a Heinlein juvie! It’s got that “sensawunda” thing going on, with (literally) unbelievable concepts dropped into an adventure story here and there, where our heroes fix the world (or whatever).

After readjusting my brain a bit, reading got easier. Instead of me going “this is silly…” every two pages, I’m now going “this is silly!” Makes all the difference in the world.

Of course Heinlein didn’t make Houellebecq references in the 50s, but he probably would have if he could.

OK, but I need a dessert after the lamb cutlets. And since I cheated with that recipe, I skipped ahead in the cake section of the book until I found something where I had all the ingredients (because no shopping today).

So it’s a lemon pie: My second pie ever.

So it’s got like these ingredients.

OK, there’s a Pâte Sablée pie crust to make first…

So you blitz the ingredients in a fud professer, and it turns into a gooey, horribly sticky mess,

And then… smear it onto waxed paper?

And then try to tip it into the tin…

And then even out everything and smear everything into all the crevices of the pie tin. Because this dough is just impossibly sticky.

And then into the fridge for… FUCKING THREE HOURS?! I don’t have three hours!!! I’m running on fumes (rum and Stargate: SG1) already… I’ll give it an hour…

OK, out of the fridge.

Line it with foil.

Pour the er pie balls? into the tin. (This is the part that took the longest, because I couldn’t find my balls anywhere. They turned out to be… in the cupboard where they were supposed to be, but behind something else.)

And then into the oven for 20 minutes.

And it comes out looking… kinda… pancakey? That’s weird.

Well, back into the over for another 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, I make the filling, which is just lemon juice, sugar, some cream and lots of eggs.

Eep! After 15 minutes, this looks kinda…. done? I think? The edges are…. crispy!

Holey pie crust, Batman! It’s pie crust, and it has holes!

OK, I put it on a baking sheet… perhaps the leakage will… slow…

Well, this isn’t going to be pretty.

Well, OK, it didn’t leak… that much. But was it supposed to raise or something? Hm, I guess not, because the eggs aren’t like whisked that much…

Well, it didn’t. It’s flat as a flat omelette, only flatter.

Hm…

The crust is surprisingly good. The lemon egg thing is very tart indeed… I think it needs like 2x the sugar.

But it’s OK.

Reading this book got easier when reading it as a 50s juvie, but the sheer stupidity flowing through these pages… I get the distinct feeling that the author thinks he’s all kinds of clever (quantum consciousness: it’s particles that make up consciousness), and you feel like you’re being condescended to by a moron.

Beyond that, the sheer amount of repetition is tiresome. Most of these short chapters start with a page or two of people recapping to each others (and the readers) what we’ve read just a few pages earlier. It’s maddening.

But he’s got his fans: A previous book in the series was voted “best Norwegian book ever” in 2007.

That’s the most frightening thing I’ve heard this year, and this is a year with Covid-19.

Food time.

The next starter in the Bistro Cooking book is another rémoulade. And… it does look like a nice slaw, doesn’t it? Celery root and Dijon mustard. But… that’s like the entire dish? Just a slaw as a dish? That’s… kinda… Perhaps this is the the best slaw ever.

Anyway, it’s just those ingredients.

First mix the non-celery ingredients together…

Then I grated the celery root in the FUD professor.

And then just mix them together.

Yes, that’s all.

Well, it’s… a celery root slaw with a Dijon kinda thing going on. It’s very nice. But… as a dish by itself?

I still don’t get it. I added some bread and ate a whole bunch. It’s nice, so I had to find something to read while munching.

Today’s book is by Agatha Christie. A gasp is heard. “Agatha Christie? Surely you’ve read them before?” Yes, but not this one, because it’s a Mary Westmacott book: Christie wrote a handful of books under that name, and I’ve somehow never gotten around to it.

I think they’re… romances? But that’s all I know. Well, I don’t even know that. Let’s read the first three pages together:

Oh, well. Hm. Perhaps there are other reasons these books usually aren’t seen these days? It seems to start off in a very anti-Semitic mode, doesn’t it? The railing against modern music seems par for the course, but I didn’t quite recall that Christie was this conservative this early in her life. I mean, this book is from 1930.

Well, we’ll see… perhaps she’s really making fun of the fuddie-duddies and this “dirty foreign Jew” Levinne will turn out to be the romantic hero of the book, even if he has a “yellow” face and “beady and black” eyes and “enormous” ears.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

Well, time to make the mains.

After yet another not particularly good beef dish from the Bistro Cooking last week, I’m turning to the next chicken dish in the book. The chicken dishes have been somewhat hit or miss, but the hits have been pretty tasty.

Now, this one has the proper number of ingredients. It’s more fun when there’s more to chop.

Patricia Wells is usually very light on the spices. She’ll do salt and pepper, and if very adventurous, add some thyme. But this is a Basque(ish) dish, so it has peppers. She specifies four mild or two not-so-mild peppers, so I did three mild and three not-so-mild peppers.

You can see from the directions in the book that it’s really from another era: She suggests using rubber gloves while cutting the chillies. I didn’t. Hah! And I remembered not to poke myself in the eye with a finger while cutting.

Speaking of cutting: After the previous chicken I butchered, I thought I needed something more sturdy, because my kitchen knife just wasn’t well-suited for the task. Too light. So I got this axe! Hah hah!

Poor little chicken.

Chop chop. Cutting up the chicken was so much easier and almost (dare I say it) fun with the axe. It slices the meat like magic and hacking off the joints was so so easy with it. It’s my new favourite kitchen thing.

And then the chicken bits are browned on each side. I did it in several batches.

This dish has a weird amount of paprika: One kilo. I thought I misread the recipe the first time, but nope. I wonder how that’s going to turn out…

Lots of garlic in this thing, too.

And Parma ham! It’s got everything.

So when the chicken was done browning I had chopped everything in sight, and then it all goes into the same pan.

Behold! The paprika!

So while that’s cooking, there a sauce to make, which is very simple. It’s just onions, braised a bit..

And then a bunch of tinned tomatoes. Add some salt and pepper and that’s puttering away for half an hour…

Until very saucy.

Meanwhile, the paprika kinda… got reduced. A lot! There were no fluids added to the chicken pot: All that liquid is just from the paprika. Which is very tender now.

It’s…

Delicious!

There’s so many flavours going on here, with the peppers and the paprika, and it’s the perfect amount of paprika. It’s really quite special; easily the best dish I’ve made from the Bistro Cooking book. Hm. Except that salted cod one; that was also fantastic.

And the recipe claims that the leftovers are even better the next day. I guess I’ll find out.

I was all kinds of wrong about the book. First of all, it’s not a romance. Second of all, I was sarcastically suggesting that Levinne might turn out to be the romantic hero of the book… and… he isn’t, but he’s best friends with the main protagonist, and has been absolutely 100% decent and swell up till now.

So what kind of book is this? Is this Christie’s attempt at “straight” literature? Because if it is, it kinda doesn’t quite work.

With mystery books, there’s a built-in reason to read the book: Find out who the murderer is. With non-prefixed literature, it can be any number of things, but just telling us the life’s story of somebody we have no reason to be interested in… it’s usually not that. It doesn’t really seem like Christie is trying to say anything much about upper-class English people, either. It reads like she’s writing a mystery book, but forgot to put the mystery in.

That’s not to say that it’s an annoying read. Christie has written some awful, awful books, but when she’s on form, the books are fun to read, and so is this. I guess part of the attraction is just figuring out if she’s going anywhere with all this, because the plot itself (as it is) is preposterous: It’s about a guy who envisions music as a 4D space and is going to revolutionise music. So, Schoenberg, basically. I didn’t really peg Christie for a fan of serial music, but… then again, I know nothing about her.

It’s a slightly odd reading experience. Whenever I sit down to read it, I feel my mind going “*gah* I don’t wanna; I have no interest in this”. But then fifty pages fly past without me being annoyed in any way.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s superficially well-written; the scenes have a flow and everything seems to just happen nicely without there being any snags. But the problem remains in that there’s no reason to be interested in reading about these non-entities.

It is slightly interesting that Christie is so sympathetic to these somewhat bohemian artistic people. As the grew older, she’d get more conservative, I think?

But I wonder what people thought of the book at the time. Here’s the Observer being very snippy:

Giant’s Bread is an ambitious and surprisingly sentimental story about a young man with musical genius, mixed love-affairs, a lost memory, a family tradition, and other commodities out of the bag of novelist’s tricks. Miss Westmacott shows narrative talent; but would presumably be more original if she strained less after originality. I should expect her book to be very popular.

I won’t be reading any further Westmacott books, I think.

This blog post is part of the Bistro
Cooking & Books series.