Lily Allen - Underrated, or have I gone soft.

Been listening to the new Lily Allen record, thanks to one of my mates from the Alley days who swings me a few tunes to get my fix like the iTunes junky I am.

Normally this would get ripped into the library and sit there unlistened, because on the surface it's bubble gum electro pop, with a dash of country here and a shake of big band there. Not bad enough to change radio stations if I listened to radio and it was catchy, if a little, I don't know, the same as a million other chick artists.

A mate of mine dropped in who likes his disposable pop and asked me if I'd listened to the lyrics of the new single. Not really, I replied, it's just hum along music innit?

Well fuck me, talk about a knife in a velvet glove, this chick is sharp. It reminds me of Ugly Duckling sending up the whole gangsta hip hop image, but with pop. The writing is funny, self deprecating and very cutting, the fact that it is put to bubblegum music makes it even sharper. It's like finding a underlying philosophical discussion about gun control in a book of explody goodness by some Australian author. Matthew Reilly? No that's not his name, who is it I'm thinking of....

Anyway this is a first for me, I love this album and it's something they'd play on Nova, am I getting soft?


Lantanaland from the iPhone

Lantanaland......as a holiday destination.

When we leave Lantanaland it is like a big living animal, all these little bits need feeding and putting away and I like to feel that the land likes having someone around. So one of The Wife mates from work has come down for a few times now and I just love it.

I love the fact that Louisa and Steves kids are getting a taste of the country, getting to know the animals and their habits and taste their food. We are never here, so the kids would see Lantanaland, I hope, as their holiday house, their little slice of paradise that they get to go and visit.

JB talked in his Blunty today about how kids are being denied the joy of the old fashioned backyard and one of the things I really enjoyed as a kid was the few times we got to go and visit a farm and camp or stay. The Wife told me the younger son was very into the animals, he was in charge of feeding and was going down and talking to the ducks. We also returned to a great letter and some hand painted Easter eggs.

Next time that they want to come babysit Lantanaland I'll talk to Louisa and see if they want to do more with the animals, maybe by then I'll have a cow and I could teach the boys to milk!

The postscript to this story - last time they stayed my house pump failed and they had a night with no water, so I'm glad they came back and had an incident free visit.



Lantanaland from the iPhone

Hippys on trains

Despite the accusations of my inner city urban friends, I try not to be a hippy. I mean I have to drive a thousand Km a week for work, but I turn that to my advantage, I can usually find a supplier of something or another, whether it's chooks or bee hive parts that I drive past on my travels. Saves postage.

If I did work a to and from job, I'd try and catch a train. Lucky I don't then because if I had to rely on QLD rail, I'd soon be out of a job and I'd have to sell Lantanaland.

The Wife tried catching the train to work for a while. She works at the biggest hospital in QLD and we are ten minutes from a station that runs an express train to the city. Yet she had to sit on the floor on the six AM train and it took longer and was more expensive than driving her little Toyota through Brisbane peak hour and walking.

That's if the train comes of course. I follow the local radio station on twitter and the first few hours of the day are clogged with announcements on late, delayed or cancelled trains. I mean it's nice that all the gutters on the Gateway Motorway are gold plated, but perhaps the starving transport dog could have been thrown a bone. More trains? A few circle routes here and there? Trains that actually run?

The inner, buried hippy in me rejoices when I hear mates in Europe tell me they haven't been in a car in six months, but Brisbane, that just wouldn't happen.

If I had to catch a train to work, my inner hippy would soon be headbutted by my inner bogan, keen to get into a car and get to work on time.



Lantanaland from the iPhone

Small Things part II

I've bought a few more guinea fowl, keets this time not eggs. They'll be living inside for a week or two, and I'll be making sure that they are as safe as they can be, short of taking a few suggestions on board and contracting HAVOCK to build me a fully operational, laser guided, anti snake and fox missile defence shield.

We've had buckets of rain in Lantanaland, 170mm since Wednesday, so it's been sugar cane mulch in with the ducks, who are finally back on the lay, duck egg pasta for dinner tomorrow night, oh yes.

Another one of this small jobs that needed doing, but is still part of my grand ideas for lantanaland, was the mulberry tree. I wanted to give it a nice umbrella shape over the duck pen. It's been big enough for ages, but again, what’s the rush.





However I'm pretty happy with the result. Once it grows a bit more it'll have lovely shade and free fruit for the ducks. Of course the tree gets watered with the dregs of the ducks water, which is why it's growing like i've been feeding it steroids.

I'm allowing myself a new project this weekend though, learning all I can about clay and straw mix to coat the mesh of the chook run to provide some more shade and cover for when they are confined to the snake proof run. If it works i'm thinking that the rebuild of the big chook house will end up being a organic earth pod instead of the typical box that I usually build.

So really, no small jobs this weekend.


Lantanaland from the iPhone

Small Things

I love the big creative things for Lantanaland, I get fired up, get up with the roosters and charge off, full of ideas. However these small jobs, they just damn well accumulate.

Take my snake problem. I really needed to make a small snake proof pen to keep them safe while I totally redesign the main house and pen. All I want to do is pour my energy into that redesign, but I refuse to hatch or buy more Chooks until I know they're safe. So I bit the bullet last weekend and built a snake and fox proof fortress. Admitedly it looks like a roboticic six foot long catipiller crapped out a coccoon.

( while writing this I thought of a sweet idea to solve a design flaw and make it look better. If you've done any rendering or sculpture can you drop me a line on beeso@mac.com ?)

Where was I?

Oh yeah I have heaps of these jobs and if I don't just get them done I am going to have to write something and put it on the fridge. Something I fear and loath.

A job list.


Lantanaland from the iPhone

Felafel

Some pics from the great opening night of Felafel. Not much to say other than it was an absolute blast and it was good to meet all the crew from the blogging world. The play was sidesplittingly funny and you could tell when a JSpace joke was thrown in as there were only five or so very loud guwaffs in the crowd. Props to Girl Clumsy for the direction and Squire Bedak for the updated script, it was awesome!

Sir Flinthart

I am so weak on Asian cooking. Don't know the basic principles, or the flavour profiles. Got no feeeel for it brother. But I want to get better so when Mr Flinthart's recipes from his ROR trip lobbed into my inbox, I noted the wonton soup with interest.

I'd already stolen the basic principle of using the chicken wings from the stock for snacks for Friday night footy, but this time I followed his stock and soup recipe to the letter, or email as it were. (while I say this, it was a beeso following to the letter, no measurement and added ingredients where I felt like it.)

What a revelation, these beautiful savory packets of pork mince (bangalow pork, the best you can buy in QLD), floating in this delicate, refreshing broth with crispy raw veg. Healthy, cheap and 500g of pork mince did me enough wontons for two meals. The other half went into the freezer for The Wife for next time I'm on the road.

So Dirk you will no longer be Flinty to me, rather you shall be known as Sir Flinthart, teacher of Asian cuisine from afar.

I've included the recipes, (hope that's ok sir flinty) as I know of a least two people who will want them. Jase, this is well within your budget.

Spicy Chinese-Style Chicken Stock

If you tackle French cookery, they start you on making stock. A good, flavoursome stock is the sine qua non of French cooking, providing a base to a thousand different dishes and sauces. Unfortunately, making stock in the French manner takes hours of sweating slavery, skimming a boiling potful of crap until you're happy with the outcome.
I hate doing things like that. I've got better ways to spend my time. But I like stock, because I like risotto and soups and sauces and gravies and curries and cous-cous and... yeah. You get the picture. So what I do, maybe once every eight to ten days, is set up to make a serious pot of stock after the fashion I learned in Malaysia. It's inexpensive. It's really easy. You can store it in the fridge in an airtight container for a couple weeks, or you can freeze it for months if you want.
Normally, I do it with bones and scraps. Works for chicken, beef -- even seafood, if you're careful not to boil for too long, thus leaching iodine into your stock and making it bitter. However in Montville, I couldn't locate chicken frames and necks in time, so I just bought a few kilos of cheap wings and drumsticks, knowing I'd be able to use them independently, once I'd taken them out of the stock.
Here's the recipe:

Materials:
3-4 kg mixed wings and drumsticks (chicken)
half a cup or so of salt (remember, you're making about 10lt of stock. Be generous.)
Zest of three lemons (or two bundles of lemon grass, finely chopped)
two cloves star anise
roughly one full clove of garlic, smashed and peeled
three medium/large brown onions, peeled and coarsely sliced
Thumb-sized chunk of fresh ginger root, coarsely sliced
half-cup or so of fish sauce
tablespoon brown sugar (palm sugar is preferable, but not vital)
(optional) tablespoon sliced hot fresh chili

Method:
Put all the ingredients in a large stock pot with a well-fitted lid. Add enough water to cover the lot. Bring to a boil for about two minutes. Turn off the heat. Put the lid on. Leave the pot alone until it comes back to room temperature. Rescue the chicken pieces, sieve the rest of the junk out, and save the stock. Done.
I know. It seems too simple. It works, though. Oh -- and the business about letting it cool slowly doesn't seem to be a health risk, even in summertime. I've been doing it this way for about fifteen years, and I'm only following the procedures supplied by hundreds of thousands of cooks in Malaysia. I've even asked chefs here in Australia and in Singapore about it; those who are familiar with the technique assure me it's never failed them. I dunno what the classic French chefs would say, but then I don't speak French worth a damn. So
boil your stock very briefly, put the lid on, and let it cool slowly. No problems.

(Again use what you have, i had no star anise so i used a cinnamon stick, but the sugar and fish sauce makes this stock. And the lemongrass and ginger. Hang on thats almost the whole stock!)


Spicy Twice-Cooked Chicken With Polenta Crust

If you chose to use chicken pieces in your stock, you've now got a big platter of very tender, very damp chicken pieces cooked to the bone, absolutely saturated with flavour. Cover them with a teatowel or something, and let the worst of the moisture dry, so they're merely damp to the touch. Ten minutes or so is fine.
Meanwhile, get a freezer bag. Put about a cup and a half of polenta into it. Add maybe two teaspoons of salt, and the spice mix of your choice. (I used chili powder, citric acid powder, black pepper, and basil. If you use the citric acid, keep it to about half the quantity of the other spices, eh? It adds a lovely lime/lemon note, but it can be overpowering.) Shake the bag to mix the spices with the polenta. Add your chicken pieces one or two at a time and shake them to coat them with the polenta/spice mix. Arrange all your chicken pieces on the (lightly oiled) oven racks, and bake at maybe 160-180C until the polenta/spice coating goes golden brown.
Serve the chicken pieces hot or cold. Because the chicken has already been cooked in the stock, it's saturated in flavour -- but relatively low in fat. It will stay moist inside while acquiring a lovely crunchiness outside. You can make a full meal of it with a garden salad and baked potatoes, or serve it as snacks. And as you know, chicken prepared this way makes even the most famous of take-away fried chicken taste like vile, greasy nastiness... so if you make it even once, be prepared to have people asking you to make it again, and again.

(I used chinese five spice, cayenne pepper and lots of salt on mine)



Won-ton Soup

The thing I really like about soups from China, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, etc is the way the vegetables arrive still crunchy and tasty in that delicious broth. There's no real trick to it; you just pour the near-boiling stock over the top of the pre-sliced veg in the serving bowl, and that's it. Won-ton soup is a big favourite in my house. The kids and Natalie alike will gorge themselves on the stuff if I make enough. It's kind of spooky to watch.

Materials:
Plenty of tasty stock
Vegetables for slicing up -- choices of carrots, broccoli, broccolini, baby fennel, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, sugar-snap peas, or anything else that takes your fancy, really.
Two packets of Won-ton wrappers (should get about forty per packet)
About 750 gm pork mince
Spring onions
Fresh coriander
Fresh ginger root
salt, pepper, sesame oil.

Method:
Slice your vegetables, and arrange them in the serving bowls. Add a teaspoon of sesame oil to each bowl.
Next, mince a thumb-sized knob of ginger root, and finely dice four spring onions plus a clump of coriander. Mix the ginger, the coriander, the diced spring onion and one decent dessertspoon of salt into the pork-mince, and work it all together. Scoop teaspoons of the pork mince out and make little packets using the won-ton wrappers. Squeeze the won-ton pastry together to make sure the packets stay shut in the stock.
Bring the stock to a simmer in a decent pot. As soon as it's simmering, put all your newly made won-tons in. The stock will come back up to a simmer in short order, but you will know your won-tons are cooked through when they all float to the surface. Stir once or twice, early in the piece to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Serve with a ladle. Garnish each bowl with a sprinkle of sliced spring onion. Eat.
Note: don't feel restricted to pork-mince won-tons. Chicken mince works too. So do minced prawns. You could probably manage something with mushroom if you wanted. Game meats might be a bit heavy though...

Lantanaland from the iPhone