Roasted Parsnip and Parmesan Soup

I cook this at Christmas and it's a belter. You'll need:

450g parsnips
50g parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
15g butter
1 medium sized onion
1 tablespoon plain flour
1.3 litres chicken stock
salt and pepper
4 tablespoons double cream

Ok, start by heating the oven to 200c/gas mark 6. Peel the parsnips and cut them into lengths (halved and halved again is fine). Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and cook the parsnips in the water for about three minutes until they're just starting to soften (check by inserting the tip of a knife into one of them) - don't overcook, you want your parsnips to remain looking like parsnips! While they're cooking, grate the parmesan, and, when the oven is hot, pour the olive oil into a roasting tray and put in the oven for about 4 mins to heat up.

Drain the parsnips and tip them into the heated roasting tray, ensuring the parsnips all get covered in the hot oil. Sprinkle the parmesan over the parsnips, dot with butter, then roast for about 45 mins, basting frequently. While they're cooking, peel and finely chop the onion.

Take out the parsnips at the end of the cooking time, and spoon off the oil in the roasting tray into a heavy based large pan (there should be enough oil to fry the onion, but if it looks a bit meagre add a tiny bit more oil). Put in the chopped onion and cook, gently, until the onion is softened (about 5 mins). While that's cooking, make up the chicken stock (I use Kallo cubes). Don't make the stock too strong, one cube is easily enough for the amount of liquid needed.

When the onion has softened, stir in the flour and cooking, stirring constantly, for about a minute, then, slowly at first, add the hot stock, again stirring all the time. The flour will make the stock thicken at first, which is what you want. Add the rest of the stock, then all the parsnips from the roasting tray, bring to the boil, then simmer gently for about ten minutes.

Turn off the heat and leave to cool slightly. Finely liquidise the parsnips and stock (you don't want your soup to be full of crunchy bits of parsnip, so really blitz it), add the cream and some seasoning to taste (be careful not to oversalt as the parmesan is already quite salty, but this soup is good with generous amounts of freshly milled black pepper), then serve.

Worth the effort, I'm sure you'll agree!

Scrolling Vision Dreams

Haven't been around here much. Back at work which is good for the mortgage but bad for the creative thinking. Anyhows...

I like to take a nap in the afternoon at weekends. I'm not getting any younger and I've been doing it for years, and as I'm an early riser it kind of goes with the territory. And daytime sleeping's good for dreams. However, I have a common dream which has developed over the years. Basically it's not what's happening that's important, but the fact the in my dream I'm suddenly unable to walk, function etc because what I'm seeing ahead of me is like a rolling picture on an old TV set (scrolling top to bottom), which causes a loss of balance and inability to get up from where, in my dream, I am sitting, lying etc.

Ok, so this isn't a good feeling and brings on mild panic in the dream. What's really interesting is that over the years the dream has developed. I'm now so used to this that in my dreams I alert other people to what's happening to me, and ask them to look at my eyes to see if they can see anything. So while I haven't progressed to knowing that it is a dream (and therefore waking myself up) I have at least acknowledged in my dream state that this isn't 'right' and that it's something that's happened many times before. These dreams are so real that when I wake up and realise it was a dream the divison between dream state and waking state is almost interchangeable, except that when I wake up I have no lingering 'scrolling vision' issues.

Isn't the human brain a wonderful thing?

With apologies to Whitney Otto

Three Depictions of Coming to Terms with Art (after Hogarth)

Twombly, Poussin and the Dulwich Picture Gallery Staff

Nicolas Poussin

Cy Twombly

The Dulwich Picture Gallery has finally given punters something to get excited about as part of its 200th Anniversary. In a rare example of contrasting styles thrown together to elicit a common response, the Gallery has mounted a rich exhibition of the Arcadian dreams of artists Nicolas Poussin and Cy Twombly, and has skilfully combined them with the more secular concerns voiced by the DPG staff. This careful balance of the 17th, 20th and 21st centuries is a stunning achievement. In Room 1 for example, the mind leaps between the rounded forms of Poussin's classical figures and the urgent bursts of colour striding across Twombly's canvasses, anchored by the more immediate and stridently voiced concerns of the staff about "who does he think he is, telling me what my job is?" Elsewhere, Arcadian dreams fill the Gallery space, but lest you enter an unchecked reverie of thought and emotion, here are the staff again, lingering in archways and bickering about "who dreams up these lunch rotas?" I left the exhibition slightly tearful, very moved, and determined to visit again to see if this performance can be kept up during the remainder of the exhibition's stay. Truly Poussin and Twombly would be stunned.

Spaghetti and Courgettes

Menu time again - look at me doing food styling photos. Anyway, TV chefs bleating on about how things are so 'simple' are thankfully in the descendant, so it leaves more room for me to tell you about a really quick (and pretty cheap) pasta dish that I make a lot. So you'll need, to serve 2 (increase amounts for more):

4 medium or 3 large courgettes (not the really big ones disguised as marrows, they're too watery - smaller is better for this recipe)
2 lemons
1 big fat clove of garlic (peeled)
1 red chili (not the tiny shrivelled ones, a bigger fat one)
A  handful of chives (finely chopped)
A  big handful of pine nuts
8 oz (about 250g) spaghetti (dried or fresh, depending on budget)
1 generous tablespoon olive oil
A splash of extra virgin olive oil
About 6-7 slices parmesan cheese (I use a cheese slicer to do this, but you can use a knife - just make sure the slices are thin).

You'll also need a big non stick pan with quite high sides (you can use a non stick frying pan, but you'll have to assemble the food on a plate, which kind of misses the point, as it's one of those dishes where everything is thrown together at the end).

First slice the courgettes, discarding the end bits. Cut them thinly (about the width of a 10 pence piece). Then zest the lemon (you'll probably know this but zesting is basically grating the lemon skin in a fine grater so you get a big pile of shavings), de-seed the chilli (or leave them in if that's your bag and you want it more gutsy) and finely chop, then thinly slice the garlic clove.

Cut the de-zested lemons in half and squeeze them to get all the juice out (without the pips). Reserve the liquid.

Ok, heat the pan you're using to a high heat on the hob and, when hot, add the pine nuts - dry fry them quickly until they toast - don't burn them otherwise they take on a bitter taste.

When you've done that take them out of the pan and reserve, add the olive oil (don't be tempted to add more oil, because you want the courgettes to be coated in the oil, not drowning in it and limp), then add the courgettes, lemon zest, chili and garlic. Stir frequently to start so everything gets covered in the oil, then less so, to get the courgettes colouring - you want them browned but not blackened. This should take about 10-12 minutes, more if you're using larger quantities. When cooked, turn the heat down but not off.

While this is happening, cook the spaghetti according to packet instructions. You want the spaghetti to be ready at the same time as the courgettes so plan ahead.

When you're ready to assemble, drain the spaghetti and add the lemon juice, parmesan slices, toasted pine nuts and chives to the courgettes, then the drained spaghetti. Mix this all together, turning up the heat a little so the parmesan melts, adding a splash of extra virgin oil at the end (not essential but if you've got it use it) then serve onto plates while still hot.

Et voila - good food which doesn't cost much and is really filling.

Super Super 8

No, not some advanced fan blah for the forthcoming JJ Abrams film. I wanted to briefly write about Super 8mm. When I was a teenager, there used to be a big shop on London's Oxford Street that sold 8mm films and projectors. 8mm was developed as an affordable alternative to the more expensive 16mm market. It was a mid 70s version of 'Blockbuster' I suppose, except there was no rental facility. You could buy 200' versions (about 5-6 minutes long), 400' versions (about 12 -15 minutes long) or the full film on about 6 or 8 reels. The projection process was exactly like the one used in the cinemas - thread the reel of film through a projector onto a take up spool, close the curtains and watch (although unless you had two projectors there would be an intermission every ten minutes or so while spools were changed). Projection problems were the same too - film escaping the ratchets, hairs in the gate, sticking and burning.

 
The really interesting thing was the choices distributors made in which bits of a film should be included to summarise the whole film. If you had to condense APOCALYPSE NOW into six minutes, where would you start? Often companies took a short cut and just cut in five continuous minutes from one section of a film. Sometimes meticulous care was taken, to the point where scenes would flicker by in a Burroughsian cut up style, leaving you baffled - the fact that unless you were quite well off you'd be buying a silent version of the film to show on your silent projector added to the problems in understanding what you were seeing. My guess is that subtitles were either expensive to add or had copyright problems, because you would be lucky if you got more than a handful per film. Anyway, why am I mentioning all this? Well for my birthday today I was given an 8mm 200' film of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (see pic). I have no means of showing it, but the package itself is a thing of flawed beauty and it looks like it (as well as the contents) was beamed down from another time. So now all I can do is put it on a shelf and look at it. Perhaps in this way it has finally become art.

Just thought you'd like to know dept.

So many music videos are now too obscene for children 'say experts'. The watershed is now an urban myth.  Children go straight from nappies to thongs. Our children can't play outside. Bring back Bob a Job without any of the mucky connotations. What to do? Who will save us from the decline of this once proud country?

This month the Government published a report, commissioned on the back of one of its election pledges to do more to protect children (ah, the return of good old family values), entitled 'Letting Children be Children - Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood'. Anyone old enough to remember Graham Bright and the Video Nasties campaign of the 1980s will perhaps get a slight whiff of deja vu.

Anyway, back to the report. Just read that title to yourselves again. 'Independent'. 'Sexualisation'. 'Children'. It's been written by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of the Mother's Union (Christian Care for Families is their strap line), and published on the Department of Education's website. It looks very professional, and is 108 pages long (so it must be serious). Let's look inside, shall we?

After Reg's chatty "I hope I've done my best" introduction we move into the report proper, where the tone gets more serious (unnamed authorship is provided by someone from HM Government). This wastes no time in setting out its stall. On page 7 of the report there is a fascinating statement: "Insufficient evidence to prove conclusively there is harm to children [over the sexualisation of childhood] does not mean that no harm exists. If parents are concerned...it is their common sense...that tells them this. We should use that same common sense...and say that there are actions we can and should take now to make our society a more family-friendly place." Right, so this 108 page report isn't based on fact, but common sense.

It gets worse. A few words about the robustness of the report in research terms.

Appendix 1 covers the extent of the 'qualitative' research which informed the report (where numbers are less important that what the respondents say). The interview sample was:

"30 research sessions of 1.5 hours each:

10 group discussions with parents (4 respondents)
10 individual interviews with parents
10 paired depths with couples/co-parents"

So I think this is is a total of 24 interviews (it could be less - it's a bit ambiguous). 

Appendix 2 details the Omnibus 'quantitative' survey of 1025 parents (strangely 137 of this sample didn't have kids, so they aren't parents) and 520 children. I've selected some of the responses - the independent nature of the research presumably means that the questions don't always adhere to objective principles which is important - question construction can skew responses if too closed. Let's look at what the morally collapsed people of Britain are telling us (and as importantly what they're being asked):

63% of parents, when asked, had never bought anything for their child that they felt pressurised to do so.
61% of parents, when questioned, feel that children are forced to grow up too quickly 
60% of parents had not seen anything in a public place (eg advertising) that they felt was inappropriate
58% of parents had not seen anything inappropriate on TV before the watershed
35% of parents thought that companies should not market stuff to children by mobile phone 
58% of parents thought that celebrity culture encouraged children to act older than they are 
92% of parents had never complained about something on TV, adverts etc which they felt was inappropriate because of sexual content

73% of children surveyed did not feel that you had to act/dress older to be cool 
52% did not feel that that it's difficult to find clothes in shops that they and their parents would like
56% of children did not agree that it's important to wear the right brands
39% of children buy things because their friends have them
57% of children have asked their parents to buy them something because their friends have it 
84% of children admitted that if they want something that their parents won't buy them, they keep on to their parents about it 

These stunning statistics make it clear (according to the report) that something needs to be done. There's even a last ditch attempt at authenticity by including a 6 page bibliography, bulked out by Government reports and periodicals and websites.

So, the report's in the public domain. Now here's an extract from Hansard on 7 June, by Sarah Teather, Minister of State for Children and Families (the person who commissioned the report), speaking about it: 

"Mr Bailey has made a full and comprehensive report and fulfilled the remit he was given...The voices of parents and children come through strongly in the four key themes identified in his report...Mr Bailey has listened to the concerns of parents and takes them seriously. He understands that they want to set the standards and values their children live by...He believes that their views have a special status as they speak for children, not just for themselves...The Government welcome Mr Bailey’s analysis and the thrust of all the recommendations he has made. We note that the majority of the recommendations are directed at industry and the regulators, and we look to them to see that these recommendations are implemented... Mr Bailey has recommended that the Government should consider strengthening the controls on music videos. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will respond to this recommendation by consulting on the operation of the Video Recordings Acts of 1984 and 2010...We will, as Mr Bailey recommends, take stock of progress in 18 months’ time and consider what further measures may need to be taken to achieve the recommended outcomes."

Now I know this isn't exactly international terrorism, and yes there are other things to worry about, but this is about censorship, and that, like other things beginning with C, starts at home.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Cellular Prancing

George Shaw: The Sly and Unseen Day

George Shaw - Ash Wednesday:8.30am (2004-5)

I don't think I've ever written about art before. Save for the odd 'shout out' on Facebook for shows which I've attended and wanted to alert others to, writing about art seems to me rather an onanistic exercise. But having been to the George Shaw exhibition at the South London Gallery today, I wanted to get some thoughts down.

Shaw is a painter. His subject matter is the mundane, the everyday, the 'built form' (as architects like to call buildings) and their relationship with nature and the elements. The Sly and Unseen Day (a quote from Thomas Hardy) is a series of paintings including depictions of the Tile Hill estate in the West Midlands, where he grew up. Shaw works with Humbrol, a thick, noxious paint normally used by modellers, which produces a glossy, richly coloured canvas. The combination of the palette and the detail in these paintings left me quite light headed, and if you get near to them, you get a huge whiff of paint, like the things are still being worked on.

Francis Bacon once said that 'artists stay closer to their childhood than other people', and George Shaw's work openly acknowledges the impact of memory and nostalgia. His paintings could be anywhere in this country, and viewing them you think "I know where that is," except you don't really. The prefab library, the communal park on the estate, we've all got these images in our heads. Shaw does in his paintings what we do all the time. We romanticise, we gloss, we filter the mundane and the everyday from our pasts and make them nicer places to inhabit.

But unlike our memories, there are no people in Shaw's work, just buildings, backdrops to human drama which he imbues with a drama of their own - the only signs of habitation are lovingly reproduced graffiti on a wall, or traces of litter strewn on a winding path . Consciously filmic (Tarkovsky's and Tarr's static shots of buildings and nature come to mind), these paintings are intensely impressive.

I haven't been this moved at an exhibition for quite a while. It closes on 3rd July. Highly recommended.

I'm making biscuits

Well, two and a bit months between entries. Must try harder. Anyway, I'm going to Bradford tomorrow for the 10th Festival of Fantastic Films (and my sixth). It's an annual get together for net friends from all corners of the squatting dog, where normal routines are suspended (like eating before midnight, seeing daylight, that kind of thing). There's also a fair bit of home baking, and I don't like to feel left out, so this year I'm taking some cheese savoury biscuits. Here's how I make them (bear with me, I'm still using imperial measurements):

Ingredients:

5 oz plain/wholemeal flour (combination of the two is good if you have it)
2 oz grated cheddar cheese
2 oz grated cheshire cheese
2 oz butter (at room temp)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Black pepper (freshly ground)
Whatever's to hand for toppings (optional): celery salt, curry powder, cayenne, anything like that hanging around in cupboards.

First pre heat your oven to gas mark 5 (190C). Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl and add the cayenne and black pepper. Then add the grated cheeses and the butter, and rub the mixture between your fingers until it reaches a crumbly stage. Then bring the mixture together, adding a small amount of milk if the mixture is too dry.

Now roll the mixture out on a lightly floured surface, using a rolling pin - you want it about 1/8th inch thick. Cut out the biscuits with a pastry cutter (I have one shaped like a bat, which makes me laugh - that's bat as in Dracula rather than the cricket variety - that wouldn't be funny, that would just be odd), and arrange close together on a baking tray. Sprinkle the biscuits with selected toppings (you don't have to do this, they taste fine naked - that's the biscuits naked, not...oh, you know) and bake on a high shelf in the oven for about 10-12 mins (they should be brown, but not burnt). Take out of the oven and decant onto a wire rack until they cool.

This recipe makes about 30 biscuits.

Hello punters

Startling statistics in web land state that the number of blogs started triples the previous number every four and a half seconds. That means by 6pm tonight there will be 47 trillion active blogs - and that's just south London. Like many a new blogger, I searched for some tips on good blogging etiquette and became quickly convinced that a lot of people on the net are completely chicken oriental.

Once the need to 'monetise' (shouldn't that be 'monetize'?) is ruled out, I suppose this will be used for me to post up some things, reviews, a few photos, some recipes, random thoughts of the ennui of existence, that kind of thing. I've not promised myself I'll blog every day because I like to take holidays and leave my laptop at home. I'll post when the mood takes me.

I've also heard that it's very lonely in blog land, if no-one follows you, comments on your posts etc. Well I'm an only child so although I mix well I also can happily play alone. Don't feel any pressure. Right let's go.