Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum

Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer

As I mentioned recently temperatures in the UK have apparently been playing on a see-saw. That matters not one iota to yours truly as part of my summer ritual every year is too look for recipes that complement the warm weather.

Veggies, please, look away now for this is yet another meat-rich dish. Pork belly, in this case.

As you know, if you have been reading this blog long, I am a fan of Nigel Slater’s cooking. Not just the cooking but also the way he writes and talks about food. He is an artist, as far as I am concerned. So, I shall let him pick the thread of tonight’s post from here.

The roast is resting – those precious 20 minutes after the Sunday joint and its crackling are taken from the oven and left to sit quietly before we carve. The roasting tin may no longer hold the meat, but there is much treasure there to plunder. We could make a simple gravy, and I usually do, dissolving the good things left by the roast into wine, stock or Marsala. But today I use it for something more substantial altogether.
What lies beneath the meat? Caramelised sugars mostly, sweet, gooey and firmly attached to the roasting tin. It is the concentrated essence of the meat, some charred herbs, sizzling fat, a sticky smudge of roasted garlic. A little magic perhaps. To waste it would be a crime.

I pour batter into the roasting tin. It will take 25 minutes in a hot oven, time enough to rest the meat and carve. But there is more to it than that. I have tossed some diced apple, softened first with a few thyme leaves, into the pan. The little cubes of apple sit in the batter, holding it down a bit, soaking up the juices and savour left behind by the pork. It arrives at the table a little late, slightly eccentric looking, but dark and golden, its surface all pits and furrows of batter and fruit, smelling of roast pork and herbs. I could have cooked the batter pudding separately, all spick and span like a clafoutis without the sugar, but that would be to miss out on the opportunity of using the good things left in the roasting tin; of exploring what lies beneath.

Pork belly with apple and roast potatoes

I ask my local butcher to leave the skin on the belly, but to score it in lines about 2cm apart or in a lattice pattern, whichever he thinks will produce the crispest crackling.

Serves 6

belly pork 1.5 kg, boned weight, skin scored

new potatoes 500g
olive oil 3 tbsp
rosemary 3 large sprigs
garlic 4 cloves

Set the oven at 220C/gas mark 8. Place the pork belly flat on the work surface, skin side down, then slice it horizontally, cutting almost all the way through, to give a large hinged flap. Season generously inside and out.

Put a pan of water on to boil and salt it. Wash the potatoes, but don’t feel the need to peel them. Cut each potato into three or four “coins” then lower them into the boiling water. When the potatoes are tender to the point of a knife, drain them carefully and tip them into a bowl.

Pour the olive oil over the potatoes, pull a few of the needles from the rosemary and add to the potatoes with a grinding of salt and black pepper. Place the pork in a roasting tin. Lay the potatoes, as near as possible in a single layer, in between the two layers of pork. Tuck the remaining sprigs of rosemary and the cloves of garlic amongst the potatoes. Pull the top flap of meat over the potatoes, then place in the oven and leave to sizzle for about 25 minutes.

Lower the heat to 180C/gas mark 4, then leave the pork to cook for about an hour and a half, basting occasionally. During this time the potatoes will soften and soak up some of the juices and fat from the meat.

Remove the pork from the oven, check the potatoes are fully tender, then remove from the tin and cover lightly with foil and leave to rest in a warm place. Serve the pork as it is, carving in thick strips, or utilise the roasting tin and its fat with the recipe below.

To get you in a summer mood, I will start with Thievery Corporation. In the same way the caramelised sugars drip onto the roasting tin, Radio Retaliation will drip into your eardrums. Such a beautiful catchy tune.

Talking of catchy, this next melody is by a band that started very raw-blues, but have mellowed down with the passing of time just like those charred herbs, sizzling fat and roasted garlic. The Black Key’s Fever is pure music heaven and groovy, too.

Let us go back now a few decades and sing along this classic. Beautiful vocals and harmonious accompaniment. Just like the diced apple soaking up the juices and savour left behind by the pork. Canned Heat’s On the Road Again is gorgeous.

We finish tonight with a Chilean rapper. Ana Tijoux first came to my attention when I started watching Breaking Bad. Her song 1977 was part of the series soundtrack. Got the album immediately and have been playing it nonstop ever since. Great artist, just like our dish tonight.

Next Post: “Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On”, to be published on Saturday 20^th June at 6pm (GMT)

Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

I am having sleepless nights. Nothing to do with insomnia and all to do with an article I read a few days ago in the newspaper. Apparently in the next 200 years or so we, humans, will be able to move on to the next, ultimate step of evolution. A step so far-fetched that I keep thinking it might be connected somehow to the recent release of the Mad Max film. This piece of news could only be thought up by a marketing team. Yet, I suspect that once more I am being naïve and disingenuous. This is, I am afraid, the shape of things to come.

According to a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, we will eventually progress (I am using that word cautiously) to an amortal, divine state, either through biological/genetic manipulation or by the creation of part-human, part-non-human beings. Phew! So, after all both Ridley Scott and James Cameron were right. But in the case of the latter, this won’t happen in 2029. It is 200 years, not fourteen more. That means no “I’ll be back” from Arnold the “Guvernator”.

Why the sleepless nights? I should be jumping up and down at this piece of news. Amortality for all! Forever! Just take this chip, dear, and put it… let’s see.. shall we go for the ear? I know, I am being facetious but the article filled me with horror rather than joy.

First off, this supposed injection of eternal life will not be only for yours truly. Participants will include: the colleague who always borrows your stapler and never hands it back (you’re on your tenth stapler now), the politician who lies and then acts surprised that people want him out of office for his lying. Another amortal being will be the bully who tormented you on the school playground all those years ago and who never moved out of the barrio and neither could you because your low wage as a shelf-stacker in the local supermarket doesn’t give you the opportunity to up sticks and leave for good. That is why you keep bumping into the same bully twenty years down the line at work. Your work. Imagine that scene being repeated ad infinitum. Amortality? No, Dante’s Inferno.

Secondly, can you imagine out-living those you love the most? I am thinking that once these intravenously-injected nanobots are created they will not be a free-for-all product. You will have to cough up a lot of dosh for them and not many people, even in the same family, will have the means to acquire them. What if you out-live your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren? From the class division we have at present we will move on to a different division between those who will become amortals and those who will remain mere mortals. I think someone used the word “evolution” in the article I read. I think they were wrong to use it. I cannot think of a different term to describe this amortality malarkey but it is definitely not moving forwards, but backwards.

One hundred and fifty-two years down, three hundred more to go

Thirdly, happiness and satisfaction as we know them will probably be lost to amortality. As I mentioned before on this blog, to me happiness is the moment, the instant that makes us smile and love life just that little bit more. Satisfaction stays with you longer because it is a process on which we invest time, energy and financial resources.  Remove the need to seek out that self-fulfilling moment and we will become a planet of automatons. Well, I have mentioned robots in this post.

Part of the magic of life and being human is our constant endeavour. As hunter-gatherers that we were and still are, we set ourselves goals in life and we endeavour to achieve them. Sometimes we fail and we learn from our failures, or we do not and we fail again. It does not matter, it is still magic. Sadly, death occasionally robs us of the opportunity to taste our success. But it is the deal we make when we are born. Amortality would probably sound the death knell of human strife.

However, I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that if/when amortaility becomes a reality there will be people taking the opposite route, bumping themselves off just to show that there is more to life than eternal life. You could call it death perhaps (by the way, amortality is not immortality. The former does not exclude physical demise through violent means). As in a beginning, a middle and an end. The irony of it? All they would be demonstrating would be the magic of life, human life.

©2015

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts” to be published on Wednesday 3^rd June at 6pm (GMT)

Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

On a recent spring morning during the Easter break, I was doing the washing up at home when I saw a girl, a female adolescent, crossing the road opposite our house. She did not look either way before venturing forth. Two seconds after she reached the other end a car sped around the same corner she had just left behind.

My first thought on being witness to such distressing scene was one of anger. Anger at the driver and his (it was a man) carelessness. After all, our road has a 20mph limit. I also felt anger at the girl and her lack of alertness. How many times do we tell our children to stop, look and listen before they cross the road? My second – and much calmer – reaction was one of reflection.

We would normally think of fortune, good luck, when being confronted with a situation like the one I described before. But this near-miss also made me ponder over the nature of humans. Most of us live pretty well-organised lives, dictated by a certain rhythm and pattern like an orchestra rehearsing for a big concert in which we are both musicians and conductor.

Yet, when we forget to look either side before crossing the road, are we not defying the perfection we are (un) consciously trying to create? Are we not entering the realm of “If…”?

I do not wish to romanticise the almost-death of a teenager. I am attempting to explain what I sometimes think of as a small “subversion of our daily routine”. In choosing not to look – for that was a decision on her part, even if unconscious – either side of the street as she was crossing it, the girl broke the mould into which she had positioned herself or into which she had been placed by her family. If we see the quotidian as the natural order of life, how do we describe and define our “If…” moments? I dare to improvise an answer: the length of one’s routine life acts as the long-term goal we set ourselves at some point in our young adulthood. The “If…” situations are the shortcuts we take to achieve the same goal.

Where is this post going? Nowhere and everywhere. Nowhere, because it has stayed in that London street a few weeks back, during Easter. Everywhere, because through this post I am fashioning answers that take me away from my comfort zone. In thinking up this “If…” scenario for the girl, I have to face up to the brutality of the shortest route to the goal I mentioned before. If the car had turned the corner two seconds before it did, the girl would have been run over. End of the story? No, there would have been tears, accusations, recriminations and guilt. However, there would not have been any analysis on the “tyranny of the quotidian”. Funny title, that. I know of at least one author who would probably use a title like in one of his books.

We do not need to die or put our lives in danger in order to confront the routine of life, the regimented style some of us follow. Sometimes it is enough to cycle to work taking a different route, get stuck in the doors of a train in motion or find yourself on the yellow line, in the middle of a busy road with rain pouring down and 60mph wind gusts pushing you around from all sides. A clear example of the theory of “If…”. As in, “If I had put my waterproof on…”

© 2015

Next Post: “Killer Opening Songs”, to be published on Wednesday 13^th May at 6pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

By now you will probably know that David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and leader of the Conservative Party, made a fool of himself on the David Letterman show a few days ago. When asked to answer who'd composed Rule Britannia and what the meaning of Magna Carta was he fluffed his lines whilst looking rather uncomfortable.

As soon as I found out the first thing I said to myself was: send that boy to Cuba! There's still time to save him. You see, in my native land he'd have been given a ticking off by his teacher, sent to the back of the class first and straight after that to the headteacher, because of "ideological problems".

On a more serious note, I can understand the brouhaha about posh Cameron not knowing bits of the history of his own country. Especially when those two questions are apparently included in the citizenship test all non-Brits have to sit in order to become a citizen of this nation. Shall we, then, deport our PM? Perhaps to France?

However, I suspect ulterior motives behind Dave's alleged "lapsus mentis". His slip happened days after the Andrew Mitchell incident. The Rt Hon MP for Sutton Coldfield, supposedly insulted a police officer at Downing Street, swearing at him and calling him a "pleb". All hell broke loose. Both broadsheets and tabloids laid into the Member of Parliament. Comment pieces remarked on the very conspicuous fact that the coalition is made up of "toffs", rich boys who have turned the government into the equivalent of a private club. After everyone calmed down, though, I began to think, oh, well, that's a coincidence. First Andrew allegedly insults a police office, then, Mr Cameron goes on the Letterman show and... hmmm... I smell a rat here. And I think that we, Joe and Joanna Public, have been taken for a ride.

Look beyond the smokescreen created by Mitchellgate and Cameron's Rule Britannia "moment" and you'll be able to see what the government doesn't want you to notice The coalition knows that they're in deep trouble. The cuts they've implemented for the last couple of years are not working. On top of that they had no mandate to do so. Andrew Lansley was fully aware that by messing with the NHS he was playing with fire. And yet he did press on. And even though he got his wish in the end, most of his reforms were passed through Parliament, even David Cameron realised that Lansley was damaged goods. He was moved to another department during the recent cabinet reshuffle. The word on the street is that Labour wants to call a general election as early as 2013. And the polls point at a heavy defeat for the Tories.

Hence David's "oops" moment. Even a posh boy like Mr Cameron should know very well that Americans are suckers for all things royal and historical. They don't mind the Queen as long as she doesn't attempt to rule them again. Look at the reception the Jubilee got across the water. I remember reading a piece in The New York Times online (luckily, it was one of the freebies that you didn't have to pay for). I was surprised at the sycophantic tone used with Ma'am and family.

My guess is that David knew the type of questions he would be asked. And his spin doctors gave him just the one option: pretend you don't know the answer, that way you don't come across as too public-school boy (thus, distancing himself from Andrew "pleb" Mitchell). Plus, you can put one over Boris Johnson, the London mayor, who had been on Letterman a few months before and proved to be a very likable and funny guest.

These are not easy times in the UK. Contrary to The Economist's recent editorial, growth is still too negligible for us to make a song and dance about it. And the scenes being streamed to our television sets from Spain and Greece are not pretty. Massive protests and rubber bullets being used on protesters. Graffitis showing that people have no fear because they have nothing to lose. I don't think the coalition would be too happy about a UK version of these events. And if in order to avoid this it takes the British Prime Minister going on a  popular talk show and making a total tit of himself, then it's a price worth paying for.

There's a similar situation across the pond, in the States with the race for the White House in full swing. When you get political spouses like Ann Romney making comments like: "I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out" you know that she's trying to divert your attention from the issues that really matter. Sorry, luv, thanks, but, no, thanks, put it away. Alternatively, can you two get a room, please? Because I don't think the US electorate is interested in seeing that Romney. What they would like to know is what sound policies he's got in store. If any.

That's why I couldn't give two hoots about what Andrew Mitchell thinks of hoi polloi. I know exactly what he thinks of people like me. Same with Cameron. Who cares if he can't remember who wrote Rule Britannia or Beowulf, for that matter? No more distractions, please. We're intelligent people. Tell us how you're planning to fix the country. Otherwise, I will have to send you, naughty boys, to the headteacher.

© 2012
 

Next Post: "Of Literatue and Other Abstract Thoughts", to be published on Wednesday 10th Otober at 11:59pm (GMT)

Photograph: Reuters