A Pinch Of Arsenic

Summer Soup Interlude

2011-06-29T15:00:00.000+01:00

Dear readers,

apologies for the lull in posting - there are some changes happening, and there's no way of telling whether they are going to go a David Bowie or Judas Priest direction at this stage.

But while I've been running around like a headless chick, I found comfort in the ladle of a brilliant, family run, local soupery, somewhat cheekily named Naked Soup. The jury is still out on the amusement factor of this name. But be that as it may, I find that, when summer consists of a maximum temperature that would count as winter in other parts of the world, soup is reliable, spoonable tummy joy.

Summer and Soup in Glasgow

Photo: kalico 10 on Flickr

So, today, when I paid a visit to the abovementioned establishment, I mentioned to the young, handsome lad behind the till just how yumsome the soup of my choice was. And hey, presto, here's the recipe. (Of course, if you are in town, please check out the cafe! Their coffee is on par with the soup, served with a corner of caramel slice.)

Lentil-Sweet Potato-Coconut Soup
(serves about a third of customers at lunchtime - adjust to smaller portions as necessary)

Add water to 3 sweet potatoes, 2 large onions (both in chunks), 100g stock cubes and 1.6kg red lentils. Boil untill the lentils are soft.. Add 1 tin of coconut milk, season, blend, and enjoy the goodness!

Here's One I'm Preparing Right Now

2011-06-04T16:44:00.001+01:00

A quick post while I'm anticipating the arrival of six hungry dinner guests (and the accompanying logistical problems that arise from living in a rental flat clearly not designed for entertaining the masses): a recipe which allows even those of us who have not been raptured to partake in heavenly experiences.

I discovered this recipe while sharing a flat with a young gardener at Hardwick Hall - a young gardener with a brilliant cookbook collection which turned me as green with envy as his thumb. There it was: stripey, colourful, and so full of brilliant, exciting and mouthwatering recipes that I a) didn't even mind that there weren't many pictures in there (a no-no when it comes to cookbooks otherwise - I want to see what I'm going to make, even if it is a cold, hairsprayed version of the real thing), and b) almost missed an appointment because I kept on saying "I'll just read one more recipe and then I'll go".

Photo from sarahraven.com

The book in question is Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook. Month by month, it lists fresh produce and a multitude of recipes for each. And not your bog standard recipes, either, as you will soon see. Aforementioned gardener made me promise to put all the words back into the book before I leave. I nicked a few on a notepad. Apologies. Here's what's chilling in the freezer compartment of my fridge right now, waiting to be spooned onto plates with fresh strawberries.

Basil Ice Cream (adapted from Sarah Raven)
Take one bunch of fresh basil, chop it roughly and then mix together with 250g caster sugar. Add 150g mascarpone and stir for a while to get rid of the sugar crystals and infuse everything with the basil aroma. Add the juice of one lemon as you go along. Finally, add ca. 600g of full fat natural yoghurt.

Put into a freezer friendly container, the container then into the freezer, and give a good stir with a fork (breaking up any solid masses that might build up) every couple of hours. If your freezer is too cold, do something about it. It's best made the late morning of your dinner party, for perfect consistency. Raven warns that this ice cream doesn't keep for long. I'd say, rather, it doesn't last long. Mmmh. Serve with fresh strawberries.

Imagining Voices

2011-05-23T20:19:00.000+01:00

Me me me meeee! Yes, indeed, I have started taking voice lessons. For the spoken word (not singing), the vehicle of my strange thoughts in the absence of pen, paper and keyboard. When I mentioned this exciting little piece of news to a colleague she quipped: "I never thought you had a speech impediment!" I swiftly and somewhat filled her in on the difference between speech therapy and voice lessons, growing more and more conscious of my glottis and its motions as I went along. It's a bit like learning a new type of dance at this stage: at some point I will start stumbling for no reason whatsoever... and hopefully, at some stage, the fruit of my croaks will improve my everyday delivery of delightful tidbits of wisdom as well as smoothen my presentation of conference papers.

His Master's Voice Print by Michael Sowa

Available at an Amazon near you (whence this image originates)

But back to the issue of voices and control over the same: in my initial session I already learned a lot about physiology, the connection between breath, speech organs, brain and 'what-I-sound-like', and about the inadvertent sneaking of emotion into every aspect of voice production. It's this very connection between emotion and voice which creates forensic linguists' daily bread when they analyse the voices in distress calls and or nuisance callers. It's fascinating stuff. And too intricate to be repeated here, right now, when I should really be opening the windows, do a bit of a tai chi exercise and then shout "Baaaaahhhhhh!" at the blustery windy world out there.

One point bears mentioning, though, since I noticed a connection of my interest in the voice to my own daily keep, writing history. I don't know if everyone does this, but I often wonder what type of voice my historical protagonists had. Bess of Hardwick seems to come in at a comfortable alto, while her husband George evokes a thin yet raspy baritone. And wouldn't it be weird if John Dee had a lispy falsetto? In many cases we will never know - lucky is the historian who finds a contemporary commentary on a historical person's voice!

John Dee, image (as so often on this blog) sourced from Wikipedia

But I think I can be a little more confident about the impact of all of the abovementioneds' voices: Bess, George and Johnny were all charismatic, influential personalities, as witnessed by their careers, their fans and even their enemies. There was no one, it seems, who did not have a connection and an impression of their personalities upon meeting them. They made themselves heard, which must have reinforced their confidence, their style of writing and their overall impact, even now, when all that remains is an impression of their tone in their written words.

I had not previously appreciated the connections between voice, confidence, physical composure and personality, and can't wait to find out more. And even if (ok, I'll admit it) I cannot draw any strong conclusions about the voices of historical characters - I suspect this is just as it is tricky (and often dodgy) as is the search for someone's character traits in his or her handwriting - it'll be even more fun now to orchestrate historical conversations in my mind.

To finish, a little recipe (this, too, no rocket science and probably seen in many incarnations elsewhere - but indulge me in thinking I invented it) for a beverage that promotes wonderful voiceness (and here I speak from experience, in a beautiful, melodious contralto) ((who sniggered there?)):

Grate some fresh ginger into a mug and top with boiling hot water. Let steep for several minutes. Add a spritz of freshly squeezed lemon juice, some honey and a sprig of mint. Sip slowly while reciting alchemical poetry.

Now You See It - Now You Don't

2011-05-08T16:49:00.000+01:00

The British Public are a curious beast when it comes to elections. Sometimes the unpredictability, or rather the ability to pick, en masse, an option which shoves 'common' sense into a sad, lonely position, makes me want to flap my ears in the sad rhythm of Tanita Tikaram's Twist in my Sobriety. Yes, it is that bad.

Photo from reasonandmadness.co.uk

I am, of course, talking about the TV show we call So You Think You Can Dance, where Brazilian hip hop dancer Rithy, who is just plain brilliant, landed in the bottom four and had to dance a solo to stay in the competition not once, but two weeks in a row. The public's phone-in vote was not strong enough to keep her safe. I watched in disbelief: had the other viewers not seen what I see? And while I was relieved that Rithy and her also-very-talented partner Shane made it through the dance-offs (twice), three themes kept bubbling up in my flabbergasted brain. And all of them link voting and dance to alchemy (because that's the way this brain works).

Poster available from Paper Scissor Stone

1. Perception & Preferences
Had the other viewers seen the same show I did? Their eyes certainly did (allowing for minor fuzz which their friendly optician could fix in a spec), but their minds did not. Viewers may like a dancer for any reason, but more often than not the reason will be something 'special'. What stands out to the individual viewer relies much on his or her background and preferences. So, while the technical ability, effortlessness and talent of Rithy might seem very obvious to me, others might pick up on something completely different, like hair styles, costumes, the perceived attractiveness or the regional origin of a dancer. What they like and what I like is therefore completely different, and may even change over time: a viewer who becomes more educated about dance may concentrate on different aspects in the next season. And needless to say that our grandparents, who grew up dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in the background, would make a completely different story out of the contest.

This 'now you see it-now you don't' effect also shows itself in the history of alchemy. A relatively young field in the history of science, the history of alchemy has left its bibliographic conception behind, went through an infancy of considering alchemy an inferior, esoteric predecessor of chemistry, and is now half-way out of an adolescence which connected it with social and intellectual history as well as truly interdisciplinary approaches (including archaeology and chemistry, not only for the reconstruction of historical experiments). Its future looks bright, partly thanks to its openness to diversity and eagerness to communicate with other disciplines. We now see different ways of approaching alchemical writings, concepts, language, experiments and material culture which the founding fathers of the discipline did not spot. And I am certainly looking forward to changing my mind about those in the next few decades.

A fire and water-damaged manuscript

from jeffpeachey.wordpress.com

check out this blog for a technical discussion of manuscript rescue and preservation!

2. We'll Always Have...
Like anyone who is really good at something, Rithy seems, I'll say it again, effortless. That makes her prone to being taken for granted. Those who phoned in to vote for other dancers probably thought that she would not need their support, or rather, that others needed it more than she did. In that sense, her repeated (wail!) landing in the bottom four is not a surprise. The very assumption that she will always be there may send her home.

It is here that I recall, with more wailing, the flood which damaged many unique and irreplaceable manuscripts in Prague in 2002. Among them were alchemical manuscripts - and I need barely hint at the significance of the court of Rudolph II of Prague to tell you how lamentable this loss is. Apart from being stored in what I can only assume were inadequate surroundings, the majority of manuscripts in the archives had not been microfilmed or preserved in other formats, either. The assumption that they would always be there contributed to their loss. To read more about the attempts at recovery of what the Prague flood had not swallowed whole, check out the Guardian article. And if you find any way to support archives operating on a shoe string (be it through donations, adoption of a manuscript or volunteering), please go ahead. While you can.

Not quite the type of alchemical scholarship I'm after...

Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy, on Amazon

3. The Meh of the Common Man
I'll say it again, Rithy is really good (I refuse to use the word 'awesome', which is not only an ugly word but also pretty much meaningless). But it is for this reason that she is getting as little attention as, say, those who do well at school. Perhaps (though I certainly hope not!) she will eventually find herself whizzed out of the way by those who need help, receive attention and therefore support and lessons that would further anyone. Their best will still be worse than her unaided best, but will be more appreciated: everyone likes a struggler who overcomes obstacles. Why else would reality TV glorify extreme slimmers and ignore those who have a perfectly normal figure? (I can hear a general 'meh' in my ears as I type this).

Some themes in the history of alchemy, science, or even generally in scholarship are similarly meh-ed at. No one picks a good, solid topic just for the sake of it any more, perhaps in the hope that a 'sexy' topic will get more attention when the researcher applies for the all-important fellowship or lectureship of his bill-paying, life-beyond-mere-survival-living, young and hopeful dreams. And it is a world of survival out there. Some acquire big scholarly elbows, others become professional box tickers on the skills sheet, yet others hope to impress with more degrees, another conference and, certainly, a list of publications longer than their longest article. Does it work? I'll tell you when I get there. I have a suspicion, though, that there is no patent recipe for lectureships or happiness. (I find myself flogging a dead self-help manual here). And I openly admit that I picked the history of alchemy as my poison, sorry, passion because there are just so many interesting, special, unusual things to research!

Meanwhile, though, there really are topics no one wants to poke with a stick, much less pick up and run with: the general overviews, the obvious questions and the topics which seem just too unspectacular or unfashionable to receive attention. The unwritten studies are those I often try to find in secondary literature, for hours, thinking and then screaming "Can you believe no one has written about this?" followed by "Goodness, where will I find that basic, vital information?". They will always be there for someone to do, I suppose. But tell you what: give me a lectureship, and I'll do them.

Mad Men & Scientists

2011-04-27T13:59:00.002+01:00

What's in a soap? Would a certain award winning American television series created by Matthew Weiner smell as sweet by any other name? What is this thing called Mad Men and have we analysed the cr*p out of it yet? Cynicism aside, as a child of the '70s, born far, far away from Madison Avenue geographically and culturally, I cannot be but fascinated/ shocked/ absorbed by Mad Men. Even now that I have looked beyond the style and the music, pondered the historical period and the fact that my parents' generation came of age in the same, strange, post-war mixture of excitement about and terror of tomorrow - even now this series continues to put its spell on me.

Christina Hendricks in Mad Men

Image from ephemerist

A note to an ex-colleague: I forgive you. In 2008, during tea break, you rolled your eyes at me when I asked "What's Madman?" to catch up with the general flurry of a conversation that was going on all around me. I forgive the eye rolling. I still resent having to go and google it later that day because you didn't answer verbally...

If you, reader, are still in the mollycoddled cave of escapist antitellyism, as I was a few years ago, you will have heard about the series by now if you read the papers, or anything, really. And you, too, may have been amazed to hear that the lifestyle Don Draper and his colleagues follow is not the slightest bit snazzed up: no, like many of the ad campaigns shown in the series, the life is for real (4real? Excuse me, I haven't quite caught up with the times yet). A book by one of the original ad men of Madison Avenue, Jerry della Femina, goes into much detail about the booze, the fags and the, er, ladies. (Read his German interview with the paper Die Zeit or the Guardian article if you're interested, but not so keen as to buy the book).

Doris Day in Lover Come Back (1961)

Image via Daily Mail

But memory is a funny creature, wriggling imperceptibly like a kitten to squeeze events and their meaning into every nook and cranny of the imagination and make them fit. If only we knew what the '60s ad machinery looked like from a closer perspective, say, the '60s... I had hankered after an alternative perspective for, oh, probably days when I came across Lover Come Back, a comedy starring Rock Hudson (woo hoo!) and Doris Day, first shown on a big screen near you in 1961. The plot is as simple as it is (I would soon discover) annoying: Rock Hudson's Jerry Webster is an ad man who lives the life (yes, indeed) we know from Mad Men: smokes, drinks, kissies and more. On his way to work on a rainy NYC day he splashes Doris Day's Carol Templeton, and out-of-work computer operator [note: the movie is worth seeing for its technicolor take on ginormous machines and the girls who work them]. Jerry sends one of his minions to apologise, mix-ups happen, and in an annoyingly "that's what we all wanted" sort of way, eventually, boy gets girl (and girl gets idiot). Twee fun for the whole family, perhaps. But read on.

Image from Wikipedia

Just like Mad Men, Lover Come Back caught my brain more than I had anticipated, thanks to the figure of a scientist hired by Jerry to develop a product; any product, in fact, that will go with an ad campaign he already created (without a product at hand) to impress a busty blonde. Its name is "VIP", and the nobel prize winning scientist is hired to create something fabulous that will go by this name. Incidentally, the '60s social perception of scientists is not far off the stereotypical media image we all have etched into our brains from countless photos and movies: white lab coats, glass vessels with colourful, steaming liquids, explosions, and of course the mad scientist himself: unkempt, uncouth, uncanny. Eventually he comes up with a mint which intoxicates three times faster than alcohol. Both Carol and Jerry try it and end up in bed together, waking up to a surprising morning - and (luckily?) married the previous night, as the certificate on the bedside table tells us viewers as we stare in disbelief. Marriage annulled and drunken love birds separated by many miles, Carol finds she is pregnant. When Jerry finally finds out she is mid-labour, and they both agree it's the best thing to get married again. Happy end? I won't drink to that.

Mad chemists in Lover Come Back

Image from dustedoff.wordpress.com

As the short closing credits crawled across the screen (of course, the movie was made when opening credits carried all vital information and reading speeds were not what they are today, or perhaps when people really bothered readint who actually made the film) I was, nevertheless, at peace with myself and the movie: just like scientists do not work chaotically amidst colourful bangs and stinks, and just like modern day ad agencies do not create genius out of cancer-inducing orgies, no woman would be happy to get the boy who splashes her, undermines her professional career, thinks he can buy her, knocks her up in drunken stupor, and marries her just because she is carrying his child. Phew. Or is it? Please don't say anything now. I think I'll go back to watching the comparatively cheerful version of the advertising industry, circa half a century ago, that is Mad Men...

Pictures Of An Exhibition

2011-04-14T21:05:00.000+01:00

Unsealed - The Letters of Bess of Hardwick is now open to the public at Hardwick Hall.

Join the crowds to learn more about Bess...

...and other faces familiar and unfamiliar.

And while you're at it, let me know what you think!

I'm still recovering from the birthing process, but will be back with more news this weekend. Thanks for indulging my exhibitionista side for these past few months!

Yours faithfully,

Yours Truly

The Blog Thickens

2011-04-04T13:36:00.003+01:00

The exhibition is nearly upon us, and since exhibitions are all about experiences, excellence and excitement, this post will appeal to some senses usually neglected by ye olde blogging game.

Stop
This exhibition is on the letters of Bess of Hardwick, a formidable dynast of the 16th century whose life experiences will make anyone's brain boggle. Or, to put it into the words of the official blurb:

Dukes and spies; queens and servants; friends and lovers – all of the Elizabethan world populates the letters of Bess of Hardwick. Bess herself wrote hundreds of letters throughout her life: they were her lifeline to her travelling children and husbands, to the court at London, and to news from the world at large. And when she moved to Hardwick Hall in the final years of her life, the old countess received current news and gossip into her house through her correspondence.

Unsealed presents the world of Bess of Hardwick’s letters to the public for the first time. This exhibition lets Bess and her correspondents tell their stories in their own words. See her life, her loves, intrigue and passions unfold – visit Unsealed at Hardwick Hall.

Unsealed – The Letters of Bess of Hardwick. Coming to Hardwick Hall in April 2011.

Look

Listen
You, dear readers, are the first to have a listen to the podcasts for this exhibition. Go to www.bessofhardwick.org/listen and listen your dear little hearts out:

Unsealed: The Podcasts

1          The Many Faces of Bess of Hardwick (5:32)
2          Who’s Who in Bess’s Address Book (6:33)
3          Details on Lifestyle (3:55)
4          Stories from Bess’s Bedchamber (6:42)
5          A Peek into Bess’s Parcels (5:13)

Bonus podcast: Unsealed: A Look Behind the Scenes (11:53)

To be enjoyed with ale and mince pies. See you soon at Hardwick Hall!

Bending Old Corners

2011-03-27T18:35:00.000+01:00

Sunshine after a cold, wet Autumnering (or whatever the long, gloomy season is called). A new, exciting discovery. A half-forgotten memory (complete with smells, butterflies and an automatically recreated smile). Many good things can happen out of the blue. Often, these revelations come in little bursts when you do not really expect them; sometimes they do not present themselves at all, for months on end. But this past week, a switch flipped and a multitude of wondrous, frantic, curious, dizzyingly bizarre things happened.

The theme of the past few days is hard to describe without sounding cheesy (as much as I like cheese, particularly from Mellis) or yawnworthy. Let's just say that people who have lived a long life and the exercise of thinking about life as a little old lady cheered me up no end. And if that sounds odd, some of the following may explain things a little.

Image from Critikat.com

Mid-August Lunch
I love my local FOPP (record/DVD shop): there's nothing like walking along the shelves and picking up a DVD you would never have stumbled across while browsing online. FOPP was once at danger of being closed altogether -the fate that its saviour, HMV, is now suffering on the big scale and book chains like Borders (not around in the UK any more) and Waterstones (gone soon if we don't do anything) know all too well. Save your local shoppery - even if it's a quid more than online. Please?

The film that caught my rheumy, post-work eye on the way home (ingredients for a delicious dinner on my back, brain in need of entertainment, preferably food-related) was Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di ferragosto (2008)): an Italian low-budget affair starring no less than four ladies in their 90s! The story (based on the film maker's life) is too simple to be summarised here - it might put you off. Let's just say that a man, his mother and three elderly ladies are spending two days together in slightly unusual circumstances: five strong personalities who are skeptical about each other, but soon find common ground in their zest for the good things in life. And how could they not? Rome, wine, food (lots of pasta), summer, and a feast day conspire to set the atmosphere.

The most wonderful aspect are the four elderly ladies: they are full of life and authentic spirit - none of them is a professional actress, and much of the script is improvised. In the Special Features they talk about how the unexpected invitation to make the movie was a gift to these advanced years of their lives. A gift, indeed. To be enjoyed with a glass of wine and a large portion of baked pasta (the star of the film).

Recipes (and this image) can be found at the Living Room Theaters' blog

End-of-March Surprise
An almost obsessive fan of Frasier, I have a funny fascination with The Radio - not the thing that has little men and women inside them who read out the news, but rather the technology and the practicalities of producing radio shows. Before this week, I had never seen a radio studio from the inside, when a rather unlikely incarnation of fate knocked on my door: desperation.

The desperation was on the part of the radio producer who needed an expert for a light-hearted chat show on BBC Radio Scotland. Since term just ended and everyone's flown out of the nest, someone suggested me as the next likely candidate - never mind that the show segment theme ('The therapeutic value of keeping a diary') is only very vaguely related to, er, alchemy... The angle into the theme was the question whether blogging kills the diary (like video killed the radio star, I suppose), and what ho, I am a blogger. Overall, the opportunity was too curious to pass up, and so I went.

Although I'd been warned I was surprised to find the show host veer from the script after just a few seconds. His questions went down a path which did not need me, an expert (who sniggered?), to tread down it. But when I'd prepared my bit the day before, I'd noticed the connections between diaries and letters (something I do know a little bit about now, mid-exhibition preparation). So, for good measure, I threw that into the discussion and found that the idea was received with enthusiasm, especially when I mentioned an elderly friend's letters.

Image from edwud.com: Ed O'Keeffe Photography

Was it worth spending 11 of my 15 minutes of fame? In many ways it was: I saw the gorgeous building and a studio from the inside (those microphones brought out the dork in me); I mentioned to squeeze in some history; and I was reminded of how good it is to have friends of different generations. And on that note, I'll now sit down now with pen and paper, and write a long letter.

Room for Thought

2011-03-21T12:46:00.001Z

...that'd be the kitchen. And this post is The Antidote to Information Overload - your invitation to trot into the kitchen (away from screen, news and noise) to whip up something delicious. I just found this recipe for Apple Dutch Baby Pancakes which, for some reason, seems seasonal and the kind of inspiration that makes you want to put on a pinny and whisk a whisk around - with an image like this, who needs a recipe to get going?

Image from eat make read

(The recipe does look good, though).

Talking about fabulous food and yummy pictures - Dorie Greenspan takes things to yet another level in her tantalising, New York-Parisian blog - her latest images, she informs us, were "taken by David Prince. Brett Kurzweil did the food styling and Robyn Glaser did the prop styling". Well, given that she writes for the Wall Street Journal, publishes books and generally leads a life that makes me turn as green as a fresh artichoke, this professional attention to detail does not come as a surprise.

Surprises of the pleasant, mouthwatering kind aplenty are assembled in her blog, though. So, once you have your Apple Dutch Baby Pancake ready, and a cup of coffee with it, I suggest you trot to http://www.doriegreenspan.com/ and check it out.

So much goodness. It might as well be spring.

Sneak Peeks & Treats

2011-03-05T13:28:00.000Z

Exhibition preparations continue... ...and here's your first sneak peek...

ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (There will also be

podcasts!)

...and you will get your hands on more information in the next 5 weeks.

Portrait photos courtesy of Dr Nigel Wright, not to be reproduced without permission;

all the abovespotted portraits live at Hardwick Hall

and may be viewed in all their splendour during its opening hours.

Suffice to say: Unsealed - The Letters of Bess of Hardwick opens at Hardwick Hall on 8 April. Featuring the ladies and gentlemen above, life sized!

* * * * *

On a different note: Lent is waiting to pounce upon us next week. This time rather late in the calendar year, it does not carry the additional sting of February and all its greyness, but still: who is not in need of some cheering up these days? So, without further ado, here are a few treats which will make you stand on your hind legs and clap in rapture.

Leek and Lemon Soup

(courtesy of The Kitchn)

2 large leeks
6 cloves garlic
2 tbsp butter
2 lemons, juiced and zested (not necessarily in that order)
4 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup white wine

Sliced leeks and crushed garlic hit hot melted butter to be softened up for about 10 minutes. Add all the other ingredients and simmer until everything's nice and juicy (the recipe says an hour - I'd reckon 30 minutes would also do, but don't take my word). Puree, then season to your very own personal taste and gobble down with some crusty bread and white wine on the side.

Guanaja

No, this is not a typo - think chocolate and far-away islands (sweet escapes - what more could a girl want just before Lent snatches away all illicit pleasures?) and read more about it over at One Peppercorn.

Image from iainmcintosh.co.uk

Corduroy Mansions

The latest (I lose track, but I hadn't seen this before so let's say it is the latest and newest) series in Alexander McCall Smith's oeuvre is the perfect bedtime/teatime/oh God please beam me to a tropical island now-time reading: Corduroy Mansions brings stories from a London we'd all move to in a snip. And don't tell me it does not exist like that. I'm not listening. I'm reading.

Big Sleep & Silent Reader

2011-02-19T14:45:00.001Z

Maybe it's something in the stars, maybe it's the month of February, but everyone seems to be stretched to the limits (just one more email/ task/ emotionally needy vampire friend and *snap*). I am afraid I am no exception at times. Of course, it is at those times that the phone rings, an important email comes in or there's a knock on the door. Reliable, mysterious, rubbish. And there's not even anyone to blame: the tension really is just an accumulation of unfortunate circumstances paired with one planet or other finding itself in the wrong house.

There are several techniques to avoid unpleasant encounters of any ordinal number's kind. Sleeping, a good diet, more sleeping, exercise, sleep... I'm drifting. But most of the time the situation is not completely in our control, and no manner of Olympic sleeping will clear the inbox or magic up an exhibition. Let's be frank, mid-frenzy, pressure, isolation due to being glued to one's office chair and the instinct to flap one's arms madly until everything goes away all blend into each other, even if you hope it's all going to be right eventually. What is a girl/ boy /woman /man /lady /lord /nerd (circle as appropriate) to do?

Not everyone can stay as cheerful under pressure

as Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (1940)

Image from Wikipedia

On a faux (you'll see) non-sequitur, allow me to muse on the solitary writer for a minute. In days before electronic communication (including the telephone), letters were the most immediate form of communication when visiting was out of the question. (I've been thinking about this a lot while preparing my exhibition, glued to my office chair, flapping my arms wildly, see above - the exhibition is on early modern letters, more anon = in a different post closer to the opening). Picture the scene: you are a Renaissance woman/man, write a letter and, no, you don't affix a stamp and put it into a funny red/ blue/ yellow (circle as appropriate) pillar/ contraption/ box-with-a-flap (ditto) - we are talking pre-Royal Mail/ USPS/ Deutsche Post (ok, circling the dead horse now). Instead you hand it to someone who has offered to carry the letter to its destination. If you're

lucky it's one of your family or a trusted servant
semi-lucky, a professional letter bearer who will also carry half a gift horse to the recipient, and is known to be reliable
unlucky, someone who appears shifty but hey ho, you're desperate and have sealed the letter, written in cipher, extra carefully

Miraculously, most of the time, your letter got to its destination, and an answer was soon on its way, sometimes even returned by the same bearer (who is chatting up the recipient's maid while waiting for the former to write a reply). Point: instant gratification. You might have been a lone letter writer, but the writing and receiving of letters made connections which warmed the heart and its cockles.

Nowadays, awash with emails, many don't have a choice but to let emails go unanswered, promises un-followed-up, gift-horses unacknowledged. And life has probably taught us all the lesson that this silence is, more often than not, an unintentional and unfortunate effect of the general overwhelm. The same (ok, slightly different) rationale applies to blogs: comment forms don't always work, who has the time to log in anyway, and blogs are not really meant to be interactive. But in both cases, any reaction or reply, however brief, does warm the heart!

Yet I am keenly aware that some recipients consider thank-you emails unnecessary bulk and thank-yous a waste of time. It is a tricky situation for both parties, but two events (of several years and several hours ago respectively) made me realise how much I appreciate the extra step.

Scene from The Big Sleep (1946)

Image from IMDb.com

1. Many moons ago, while blogging for a former employer, I was wondering why there were very few comments coming in even on controversial posts (you see, I was trying to provoke to elicit a reaction - the only one I ever got was censorship, but hey ho, I was desperate). One post asked readers to get in touch with the lone blogger and comment on the absence of comments. And voila, three types of comments materialised: the common-sensical (no time); the nice (sorry, and we really are enjoying the blog); and the elaborate. This final one explained on a grander scale that most blog readers read many blogs, consume them, and take away what they liked in a private sort of manner, mulling it over in brains of their own. At the time, though, I appreciated the feedback, and blogging became easier in the knowledge that there was a silent crowd of appreciative readers, most of whom needed to sleep more.

(On a proper non-sequitur, I still haven't read any Raymond Chandler, nor watched The Big Sleep. And anticipating your silent reaction this very moment, let me say: I KNOW!!)

2. Last week, I was pottering along, alone, writing while putting myself into the shoes of the average exhibition goer, when a student popped his head into my office. First thought: He must have a question. Second thought: Not. Now! Third thought: Students, eh? Silent crowds that only pipe up when they have a problem. But life made my cynical, isolated old self beam with joy within seconds that very second: in fact, the student popped in to let me know how much he enjoyed my lectures. Nothing more and on his way. How nice!

The moral of it all? A little thumb-up (to someone who is otherwise a solitary figure writing for imaginary friends or giving without receiving) can help make a rainy, cold, occasionally stressful February feel like spring is just around the corner. If this post inspires you, I'm glad - if not, no harm done. And I vow to return with more mysterious, more alchemical and less twee posts very soon...

Recycling Again - The Valentine's Edition

2011-02-14T20:06:00.000Z

Reader (because, as someone quipped on last week's Just a Minute, I assume there is one), I am head over elbows in work, preparing an exhibition while the head is spinning and the elbows need greasing. But it is Valentine's Day, and as much as I mock those who buy into the consumerist pan-loverian rituals (farmed roses, cheap chocolates and high expectations) and applaud those who use the day as an excuse to do something really nice for their partners (not that that should be restricted to mid-Feb, but why not then, too) - as much as I do not agree with my mother's theory that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with the first man I spot on the morning of the 14th of February (after all, a taste in plumbers scented with bacon butty aroma, drinking (the cheek!) builder's tea and having personal hygiene problems is an acquired one)... ok, now I've lost the plot.

Just to say: whoever you are, wherever you are, this is for you. A recycled bit of work done at the Chemical Heritage Foundation three years ago, explaining love and chemistry in a slightly unusual and highly scientific way. To be enjoyed with fairtrade roses and Zotter chocolate. Enjoy!

Distillations podcast: The Love Episode

(note the PG warning at the top of the page - for the very delicate among you-

and the credits, including those for the fabulous picture above!)

Using It Up

2011-02-05T18:45:00.000Z

The other day, I almost choked on my mid-morning digestive biccie-cum-coffee, and only managed to hold back a wail of frustration because I did not want to cause a scene - a scene that would be playing in similar form around the country another 999 times (or thereabouts). But I bet the 999 other people who received the very same email that had so unpretentiously, with a little plink, popped up on my screen also had an urge to stamp a foot or two, tear hairs and punch someone. That plink was the sound of failure. And that email was a rejection letter from an application to the BBC, to be exact to the AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinkers scheme. Although I knew that this was not a personal rejection (rather, I had become the victim of difficult and efficient decision making, and there is no way of telling why someone else's writ appealed more than mine), I found, still find, and insist: 'snot fair!

Well, I am one of many academics who go through the constant strain of researching, teaching, simultaneously applying for funds for more of the above, and receive rejection letters on a regular basis. It's a good day if they spell your name right... I have also been on the other side of the table, in committees, and learned that in many instances, really good applications really do have that certain something. Sifting through the pile of applications may take some time, but decisions are often rather easier than expected. And those candidates who were chosen because they looked good on paper, against that little voice of intuition that found them, without knowing exactly why, just plain funny, were, upon personal inspection, well - just plain funny, really. That's funny-strange, not funny-hilarious. (This did not apply to the New Generation Thinkers, I suppose: picking 60 out of more than 1,000 candidates cannot be a cake walk; it sounds more like a stream of coffee and paracetamol and a healthy look beyond all distracting funnity).

I am currently heating up more irons in the fire of my intellectual... ... oh no, reader, I'm plain exhausted and cannot follow through with even a simple metaphor. Exhaustion probably also accounts for the weird dinners I've had lately. Weird-nice, not weird-weird, that is! Upon the current daily mix of teaching, applying for grants and organising an exhibition, I was often lost in thought (and in Glaswegian rain) on my way home and made do with what I found in the fridge. In the spirit of using things up I had a lot of vegetable omelettes which were actually quite delectable.

On a semi-sequitur: I find cooking for oneself does not furnish one with leftovers, and hence deprives me of enjoying the art of using up the same. If I want bubble and squeak, I have to make myself cook extra potatoes - and more often than not I have seconds which make those extras vanish in an act of alchemical gluttony. Nevertheless I seem to have inherited my parents' streak of The Fear Of Letting Things Go To Waste - not only in food-related matters.

And in this spirit, I present the little review I wrote for the abovementioned application, in the hope that it may delight in some way or other.

Image from guardian.co.uk

Review of ‘High Society’ –

Exhibition at the Wellcome Institute, London (11 Nov 2010-24 Feb 2011)

As I enter “High Society”, the exhibition on drugs and drug culture at the Wellcome Collection, my head starts spinning – from the large, looming case full of drug paraphernalia to the object notes, stencilled onto the wall opposite, and back again. I see betel nuts and mate spoons, snuff boxes in the shape of ladies’ boots and pragmatic injection kits, objects from more than two millennia and from all over the world. And coffee, served freely in the café just a few steps away, is included among these objects. The mission of this exhibition is to document the history of drugs, their definitions and risks, and the constantly changing concepts of blame and responsibility. Right here, at the entrance, I am reminded that my gut reaction to drugs is a result of my cultural background and education. I proceed towards the core of the exhibition with the intention to succumb to its many colourful, bewildering and fascinating facets.

It is not coincidental that both medicines and illicit substances are known as ‘drugs’ in the English language: deriving from the word ‘dry’, ‘drug’ became a medieval shorthand for dry medicines made from plants. The line between medicines and illicit substances has always been thin. Little did the eleventh-century scribe of the Bury St Edmunds herbal know that the beautiful plants in his manuscript would cause significant harm just a few centuries later. Nearby engravings of opium farming sit uneasily beside references to the Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars, which took place only shortly after Alexander von Humboldt had explored Latin America; Sigmund Freud had proposed an understanding of the human mind through psychoanalysis; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had put his drug-enhanced creativity to eternal rest. The nineteenth century was a mind-altering period on many levels.

Famous minds who defined our culture feature throughout the exhibition: in a section on ‘self-experimentation’, Humphry Davy’s writings on nitrous oxide are closely followed by first prints of Alice in Wonderland and a wonderful 1955 documentary on Dr Humphrey Osmond’s mescaline experiment. But there are also unfamiliar faces, in photos of Venezuelan and Mexican rites illustrating a section on ‘collective intoxication’; or in contemporary artist Tracey Moffat’s series of nostalgic, disturbing photos of Victorian women’s laudanum experiences. Installations designed to induce a state of altered perception through a flurry of lights and flashes add the visitor to this list of personalities in drug history – a cue for the cautionary tales told in temperance movements and inspiration behind the exhibition’s section on ‘Sin, Crime, Vice and Disease’.

As I leave the Wellcome building, once more foregoing the smell of coffee and cakes (which feature prominently in “High Society”-related events), I applaud the curators for an approach to a difficult topic which induces a sense of wonder, and a curiosity not about drugs, but about their meaning in different contexts. The overall effect of “High Society” is neither sobering, nor unduly alarming. It is stimulating. And that is perhaps the most appropriate effect a well-executed exhibition on drugs can have.

Burnt To A Creme

2011-01-23T18:09:00.001Z

Life has a way of sneaking desserts onto your plate, doesn't it? I, for one, have come across creme brulee* and its relatives time and again. My first proper exposure to it was at a friend's house in Heidelberg, where a small group of dancer-cooks (dancing cooks, even) used to get together monthly (or thereabouts) to share in culinary excesses. Many a time, creme brulee was served up after midnight, as a sweet finale to a sumptuous dinner, only to be followed by a bitter-sweet coffee and heartfelt good-bye-until-soons. Unsurprisingly this friend and I gasped in rapture when we first saw Amelie - that iconic scene in the opening sequence, when Amelie cracks the caramel atop her creme brulee with a spoon!

A few years later, while at Cambridge, I heard that iconic story that gives Trinity College an upper hand (at least in my greedy, sweet-toothed view) over St John's College: so what the latter is allowed to serve swan (a privilege otherwise reserved to the Royal Family)! Trinity, I heard, was the birth place of 'Cambridge Burnt Cream', the dessert now commonly known by its French name of the same meaning (minus the 'Cambridge', of course). A seventeenth-century cook at Trinity College, the story goes, tried to prepare a sweet cream dessert for a formal hall (=evening dinner, whose setting is, unfortunately, known to the world now as a Harry Potter-style feast - but don't let's go there); and failed to succeed when he put too little sugar into the eggy cream mixture. A resourceful person unwilling to let good ingredients go to waste (or to be beaten with the head chef's wooden spoon), he put the remaining sugar on top, and grilled it to create a caramel crust. This new dessert was spoon-lickingly yummy, and soon became a staple of the college's dinners.

Formal hall at St John's College, Cambridge

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

A story Hollywood should pounce upon:

In a world... where swans are for dinner... a sous chef from the slums of Cambridge... a man suffering from recipe illiteracy... overcomes all obstacles... and creates... heaven in a ramekin.
Cream - the dessert story. In a cinema near you. Soon.

Recently, the original recipe of 'Burnt Cream' has indeed enjoyed some celebrity attention: Prince Charles, who is an alumnus of Trinity College, is producing a commercial version in his Duchy Originals range. Read the full story in the Cambridge News! And this is where the story could end, happily ever after. Except...

Warning: If you are of a sensitive nature, you may want to skip this next section and go straight to the recipes at the end of this post!

Except: At a closer look, the wonderful story of burnt cream is a bit dodgy. First of all, there are several stories about how exactly it was created. Wikipedia claims (a bit clumsily), and backed by the authority of cookbook authority Elizabeth David, that

"a version of crème brûlée (known locally as 'Trinity Cream' or 'Cambridge burnt cream') was introduced at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1879 with the college arms 'impressed on top of the cream with a branding iron'. The story goes that the recipe was from an Aberdeenshire country house and was offered by an undergraduate to the college cook, who turned it down; but that when the student became a Fellow, he managed to convince the cook."

Secondly, Trinity College declares this story to be humbug on its website, declaring the story to be a nineteenth-century myth.

Thirdly, there's the issue of the French, the creme and the national pride. Something I will not contemplate here, because...

...finally, I found a much more intriguing recipe among the collections of a German celebrity chef, Alfons Schuhbeck. The German answer to Nigella he may not be (he's 61 years old, not exactly eye candy, and cooks for real - without shortcuts or an abundance of antics; mon dieu - the man has a Bavarian accent!), but his recipe makes me want to break out my ramekins! Judge for yourself. I've listed two recipes below. In any event, I hope this gets your spoons cracking! Let me know which way your spoon is inclined (or indeed, if you have a favourite way to burn cream of your own).

Alfons Schuhbeck

Photo courtesy of RP

* I apologise for not inserting any accents into this post. If I spent time importing those little accents into the script provided by the blogging software, I'd be drooling all over the keyboard...
_ _ _ _ _

Cambridge Burnt Cream
(recipe paraphrased from the Guardian which, in turn, nicked it from Rebecca Seal's Cook: A year in the kitchen with Britain's favourite chefs)

350ml double cream
150ml milk
1 whole nutmeg
6 egg yolks
100g caster sugar, plus extra for the topping

Preheat oven to 120C. Pour milk and cream with the crushed-into-pieces nutmeg, cover in cling film and bring to simmer on a low heat. Place aside and allow to infuse.

In a bowl, mix yolks and sugar, whisking madly, then add the infused milk and remove the nutmeg, sieving the mixture. Pour everything into a large ovenproof dish (holding ca. 600ml), so that it is filled to the top. Place into a water-filled oven tray serving as a water bath with 2cm water all around.

Bake for 30-45 minutes until set. Allow to cool. Sprinkle on sugar and do the creme brulee thing. Enjoy!

_ _ _ _ _

Alfons Schuhbeck's creme brulee
(German recipe on his website)

180ml cream
180ml whole milk
1/2 vanilla pod
1 sprig rosemary
40g sugar + more for the caramel top
4 egg yolks

Preheat oven to 150C. Boil cream, milk, half the sugar, vanilla and rosemary and leave to stand for 15 minutes. Then whisk together egg yolks and the remaining sugar, without frothing (the bubbles would make a yucky creme brulee bubble-texture), and slowly add the cream mixture, removing rosemary and vanilla by sieving the whole mixture.

Pour into ramekins (ca. 100 ml each), set into oven dish for water bath, adding just enough water so the bottom third of the ramekins is covered. Bake for 40-50 minutes, checking consistency frequently. Leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours, better even over night. Then sprinkle with sugar and do the caramel thing, which I'm too lazy to reiterate since we've all seen it done so many times. Voila.

Timeless

2011-01-16T17:29:00.001Z

Greetings, patient awaiter of this very belated blog post. This very moment, as you are reading this, I am preparing my teaching for February, spending much time staring at possibly inappropriate images of zodiac men (like the one below), reading astrological charts from the fifteenth century and transcribing instructions for blood-letting. As you do on a slow Sunday afternoon.

From Wellcome MS 8004

thanks to their fabulous digital online edition

My preparations are speeding ahead at an unusually urgent pace, fuelled by a recent conversation that got my blood racing - rather appropriately in the context of zodiac men, those diagrams indicating veins and their connections to the stars which help determine advantageous times for letting blood. Mine would've been positively spurting out of my body in the Sign of the Phone. You see, the other day a friend I've known for more than a decade called me. She is a journalist, widely travelled and fluent in several languages. This friend and I have some synchronicity going: we call each other, more often than not, at exactly the point where we both need some comfort, a fresh burst of energy or just someone to tell us that everything's going to be all right, and it always works. Used to work, I should say. This time she managed to make my skin crawl when I mentioned a recent success of mine in my pet discipline of the history of science, to be exact an official acknowledgement of my expertise in the history of alchemy. She exclaimed: "Fancy that! There you are, pottering along on a crusty old subject with no relevance to the modern world whatsoever, and you're considered on par with proper scientists!"

Now some of you may agree - why should history of alchemy be relevant to, well, anything? And why should I be looking forward to teaching students of the history of English about medical manuscripts? The answer to the first question could go on forever, but I am keen to get back to my teacher-like plotting and scheming activities. Suffice to say that an understanding of how those who experimented before us thought about matter, about the world and its workings, and the meaning of it all, should give us a healthy impression of uncertainty and passion, the two main movers and shakers of intelligent man. Uncertainty about 'how things really are', and indeed whether there is a fixed inventory of facts that may be discovered for total wisdom and knowledge, keeps things interesting for modern scientists, philosophers, and ponderers alike. The passion to investigate, no matter how long it takes or where it may lead, gets them off their mental and physical butts and into studies, labs and other places of uncovery. For me, the idea that this is a process that keeps going, in waves and spirals, forever, is fascinating and comforting. There are always more 'eureka' moments to be had.

The reasons why I like teaching palaeography (that is, reading old handwriting), manuscripts and old forms of English based on medical manuscripts are also many: firstly, medical manuscripts can be really pretty, contain intriguing images, some of them gory, and hence draw in the eye of even the most reluctant student to the image, and the brain of the same student to the subject at hand. Secondly, the medical context gives a human element to it all: in the fifteenth century, sick people consulted doctors who treated them to the best of their knowledge. Doctor and patient shared some sense of how the human body works (and what to do when it doesn't), and how it fits into God's creation. It all made good sense. Today, we still do the same thing. And although different cultures have different understandings of the body, illness and cures, it is the body itself, and the urgency that drives a patient to seek advice, that is a constant among the many variables which constitute 'medicine' in different times and places. The recognition of this familiar element, and the wonder of (even an initial rejection of) strange methods and cures, gets everyone's brains going. Students will want to read those bits of text around the zodiac man. And they will have that eureka moment when they realise that, within the late medieval system of medicine and astrology, it all makes as much sense as, say, Prozac does today. One day I'll get my journalist friend on board, too, and take her on this time travel device called history - with a twist.

On that note, this blogging doctor is busy. Go eat your greens, and don't miss your next appointment!

Detecting Alchemy

2011-01-04T17:46:00.000Z

'Twas a peculiar Christmas this year, treeless and improvised, but thanks to fraternal company quite enjoyable. Then a mysterious illness struck yours truly: a finger swollen to triple its size, an infection or virus, or maybe an allergy? In any event, I snoozed through New Year's eve, spent New Year's day in hospital and, well, 'twas all very peculiar. But now, during my convalescence from whatever-that-was, and using my newly deflated finger to press the 's's and 'w's ever so gingerly, it all comes together. Indeed, one question, an old chestnutty favourite of mine, has permeated this holiday season: what, and why? (Ok, technically, that's two questions, but you will soon see why they are really conjoined twins.)

History and storytelling, apart from their obvious etymological connections, have at least one thing in common, in that they phrase and package, arrange and alter (often unwittingly) information, and knock it into a shape that makes sense to an audience, be it amateur armchair sleuths or academics. They identify a 'what', manufacture a coherent 'why', and present it all in a more or less straightforward fashion. Incidentally, if your academic writing mimics the plot of a mystery novel (it takes 63 pages of lead-up to produce one resounding, simple, 'duh'-inducing answer), you know you've been raised in a German academic institution. Kidding. Maybe.

Behold the fraternally bestowed Christmas goodie!

Image from Amazon.co.uk

Anyway, to take one example that has distracted me so entertainingly while I was half adaze with antibiotics, consider Lord Peter Wimsey, the 1972 BBC series. I distinctly remember seeing similar scenes in school programmes (our form of media entertainment beyond the overhead projector): ESL resources from the '70s, packaged in twee, twilled Englishness, complete with silver tea pots and butlers. Even back in my school days I wondered, was England really like that? A school exchange with a posh private school for privileged boys (which, to be honest, scared the be-jeezes out of me, as they say these days) gave a clear answer: yes and no. Funnily enough, those things I could not imagine anyone having, doing, wearing or eating all materialised (think Laura Ashley-style curtains, horse races, dressing gowns and cold cuts for 'tea'). But some supposedly quintessentially English items introduced in these programmes were nowhere to be found in this London suburb I visited; they had all but vanished into obscurity, or perhaps never existed, who knows?

Hugh Fraser as Hastings, David Suchet as Poirot, busy sleuthing

Image from IMDB

Beyond cultural stereotypes, mysteries-made-film like the abovementioned Wimsey, or indeed Poirot, even CSI sell 'sleuthness', the only way to detect and solve, and far from the everyday experiences of those who figure out whodunnit down the road. Much more than the novels they are based on, these TV adaptations sell a style, an atmosphere which we recognise and like so much. Tweeds. Afternoon teas. That sort of thing. But beware of confusing the speed of CSI's DNA analyses with actual forensic lab work. And honestly, no detective, or indeed any other person, will exclaim "I say!" when making a discovery. And yet, the traits we educated mystery viewers recognise in TV detectives do bear some relation to what it is their real-life models do for a living. Perhaps filmed mysteries are like those plastic presentation dishes in Japanese restaurants. You'd never want to bite into one of the latter, nor live in Poirot's world, but looking at either is, oh, so tasty. To learn about the nitty and even the gritty of real forensic science, detection, and the horror of real-life crimes, you'd have to see the sites, smell the smells and look at millions of insignificant dust specks through microscopes in police stations, forensic labs and at crime scenes. Personally, I find that reading the newspaper, walking the streets of Philadelphia on an early Saturday (post-clubbing-night) morning and trying to find my house keys is enough of an impression to put me off an internship at the Met forever.

But for me as an alchemy scholar and person who cooks, the implications of spruced-up stories about certain professions go one-and-a-half steps further. The half step is the realisation that dinner parties have changed in the past few years. What with cooking shows and utterly self-conscious, self-fashioning TV chefs, it seems impossible to talk about food, cook a meal or entertain guests without absorbing some of this attitude. What are you - an adjective-abusing, dangerously luscious Nigella-in-the-making or a **** Gordon Ramsey, a homely '70s Delia or a hands-on eccentric, Julia Child-style? Do you call your desserts 'beau'iful' or adopt a Swedish Chef approach, in defiance of the dictum of modern chefness? By the way, Junior Masterchef, a cooking competition for ca. 10-year-olds who talk about their 'passion for food', the fact that they've been cooking 'from a very early age, about 2 or 3' and their hopes that appearing on Junior Masterchef will be 'good for my CV' (your CV? You're 10 years old!) makes me queasy. But that's just an aside.

Back to cooking: I have lost the sense of what it is that professional chefs actually do, and why everyone wants to be one. Cooking fifty of the same dishes day in, day out, in the heat, on one's feet all day cannot possibly be much fun. More to the point, what it is like to be a chef I'd only know if I were to work in a professional kitchen. The same goes for alchemy, and this is where I take the full step from mystery to alchemy (as promised above). I truly don't know how much self-consciousness went into the fashioning of an alchemist. The recipes that survive in manuscripts are either mere reminders to the proficient alchemist, stripped to the bones, or elaborate presentations of metaphorically dressed narratives. The images drawn, mostly by Dutch painters decades or even centuries after the heyday of alchemy, present alchemists as the non-alchemical public wanted to see them, recognise them and draw comfort from this familiarity. None of the historical evidence provides a full picture. So, what is a historian to do? And why?

The Alchemist (detail; 17th century, school of David Teniers II)

Image from the Chemical Heritage Foundation website

One answer, and in my humble opinion a rather smashing one, has been proposed by Professor Pamela Smith: observe, handle, do, smell... learning about practices by observing, or even practising, them. Because it gives an understanding of a craft and skill that goes beyond intellectual appreciation and further than the written words surviving today. Pamela has applied this theory to her work on ceramics (see her wonderful The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution) and given me and others the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the worlds of metal casting and silver smithing (in an observing capacity, of course). And all of a sudden, while watching silver smiths at work, using skills that have been handed on for many generations and using their hands and bodies, their timing and senses in a way purely motivated by what works best for their craft, far away from cameras and public audiences, a lot of information, knowledge and the puzzle that is the history of alchemy fell into place in my head. Of course, that was just the beginning (and moreover, this was five years ago). Here's hoping there's more of this to come in my future.

And with this, a note with (I am sure) a moral (somewhere), I wish all my readers a happy, curious and eye-opening new year. May it sparkle in its own way.

The Grand Finale

2010-12-24T06:04:00.001Z

Well, what can I say? This was too wonderful not to be posted.

From the Stern photo community

Merry Christmas - may yours be... tastier.

Twenny-an-a-three

2010-12-23T06:51:00.002Z

Escapism is the only way when things tumble down all around you. Whether, like many of my friends, you are held hostage by millions of tiny snow flakes which have taken over airports and streets like one big raspberry into the face of Christmas, or just indulging the winter blues, it's time to face the music and dance. That is, it's time to get out cheesy and grossly inappropriate ways of entertaining the self.

Alternative One
I suggest a trip to the past, where the sweaters were fluffy, the hairstyles even more so, the cars were fast, then men dashing, and ski resorts a somewhere only the privileged used as a, well, last resort when things got snowy. May I (re-)introduce you to the Harts?

Check it out on IMDB!

Make mine a large one, Max!

Alternative 2

Embrace the cold, get a sled! But which one? I was amused to read about the alternative of using a bin bag... in this otherwise rather informative and amusing Guardian article.

Alternative 3

Just dance. Seriously. It warms the feet and the soul. Soundtrack? Oh, I dunno... but for the sake of continuity in this post, how about Rod Stewart & Dolly Parton's version of Baby It's Cold Outside? It comes with a slide show whence I nicked that Christmassy Dolly shot above. How great is that? Shudders down your spine - added kinetic energy.

Now go and have a cookie...

XXII

2010-12-22T07:44:00.000Z

What's this?

If I were an alchemist, this might be a riddle - something involving a regal substance and a baked one. Or something sweet and something blue. Or a recipe for making queen tea. Perchance even a china spout. Don't know what that is? If I were an alchemist, it'd be up to you to figure that out, young man/missy (delete as appropriate).

But seeing as I'm not an alchemist, it's a Christmas cookie. On a plate.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

Twenty-and-one

2010-12-21T06:58:00.001Z

Und ist auch noch so duenn der Tee
und tut dir irgendwo was weh -
Rum, Rum, dann sind gleich alle Schmerzen stumm.

Theodor Fontane

20

2010-12-20T06:56:00.006Z

"All you really need is love,
but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."

- Lucy van Pelt

Neunzehn

2010-12-19T13:46:00.000Z

Let it snow? Well, upon hearing this, many of my readers will hide in a corner with a stuffed toy by now. Rightly so: the weather messes up many people's Christmas plans, and I say 'Bah, humbug!' to showers and ice and everything crap.

Artificial snow is a different thing, though, when contemplated from the safety of one's own desk. Even reading about it makes my brain spin, hence warm up with kinetic energy. Here's a taster from an article on artificial snow:

Snowflex, for example, has a slippery polybutylene terephthalate fiber surface layer that sits atop a shock-absorbing pad that has a woven backing. Water piped through the layers exits recessed nozzles and mists the surface, which helps reduce friction even further. This new type of dryslope can be laid out like carpet and cut to fit features such as moguls.

Read more of the same (but no worries, the beginning of the short article is much more accessible and really rather interesting!) in a 2004 issue of Chemical and Engineering News!

Now back to the chemistry of hot chocolate...

Photo from huettenhilfe.de

18

2010-12-18T15:35:00.000Z

Call me sceptical - but Dan Leppard's recipe makes me... suspicious. "The alchemist's chocolate cake"? No gold involved? Pears?!! Low-fat low-sugar? Reverse alchemy, more like!

Photo from the Guardian

Nevertheless, here goes, and I quote the whole recipe:

The alchemist's chocolate cake

(created by Dan Leppard, full article in the Guardian)

One 415g tin pear halves in juice

75g cocoa powder

125g caster sugar

3 tsp vanilla extract

50ml walnut oil

1 large egg

225g plain flour

2½ tsp baking powder

Drain the pears, reserving the juice. Measure the cocoa, sugar and 125ml of pear juice into a saucepan, madly whisk it all together and bring to the first 'plop' of a boil. Spoon this mixture, along with the pear halves, into a mixing bowl and leave to cool for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile line the bottom and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper and preheat the oven to 170C (150C fan-assisted)/ 325F/gas mark 3. Spoon the chocolate mixture, vanilla and oil into a blender, and purée until smooth. Pour this back into the bowl, then beat in the egg. Stir together the flour and baking powder, sift into the bowl and beat until smooth.

Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

And if it explodes around your head, don't say I didn't warn you! I, however, will be investigating full-joy recipes now. Toodles!

Seventeen

2010-12-17T07:02:00.000Z

The goodness doesn't end: Upon some browsing, I found a Yahoo group with science jokes, and thence the following (here's just the incipit - read the full tale here). Huzzah!

CHEMISTRY CHRISTMAS

'Twas the night before Christmas,

The lab was quite still;

Not a Bunsen was burning

(Nor had they the will).

The test tubes were placed

In their racks with great care,

In hopes Father Chemistry

Soon would be there.

The students were sleeping

So sound in their dorms,

All dreaming of fluids

And Crystalline forms.

Lab-Aids in their aprons

And I in my smock.

When outside the lab

There arose such a roar

I leaped from my stool

And fell flat on the floor.

Out ot the fire escape

All of us flew.

What was the commotion?

Not one of knew.

The flood-lights shone out

O're the campus so bright

It looked like old Stockholm

On Nobel Prize Night.

My fume-blinded eyes

Then viewed (dare I say?)

Eight anions pulling

A water-trough sleigh.

And holding the bonds

Tied to each one of them

Was a figure I knew

As our own Papa Chem.

With speeds in excess

Of most X-rays they came.

As they Dopplered along

He called each one by name.

"Now Nitrite, now Phosphate,

Now Borate, now Chloride

On Citrate, on Bromate,

On Sulfite and Oxide.

Forget what you know

Of that randomness stuff,

Let's go straight to that roof,

If you've quanta enough."

As fluids Bernoullian

Behave in a pinch,

Those ions said "Alchemist

This is a cinch."

So up to the lab-roof

Those "chargers" they sped

With Pop Chemistry safe

In his water-trough sled.

...

Sixteen

2010-12-16T19:02:00.000Z

Rather late in the day this is, but I was distracted by a shiny and oh, so appropriate new thing I got for Christmas - how cool is this?!

Mug shot of the back:

Inspiration for more blog posts. Now, what shall I drink out of it? Suggestions welcome. Meanwhile, I'll keep looking at it. Boy oh boy, this is too good to be true!

By the way: the bottom of the mug tells me it was designed by McLaggan & Smith, but I couldn't find it (or a decent photo, hence the blurry ones above) anywhere on the net. I am one lucky Paracelsa!

Fifteen

2010-12-15T07:12:00.001Z

Nuff said.

Check it out on IMDB!

Fourteen

2010-12-14T07:34:00.001Z

Imitation, flattery and other people's advent calendars are the best thing in the world. Enter the online advent calendar of the German newspaper Die Zeit, on their Heiter bis glücklich blog. And what did we find behind yesterday's advent calendar door? Finest chocolate from Atelier Cacao. I say!

Photo from abovementioned blog. Yum.

13

2010-12-13T07:57:00.001Z

"Knock knock."

"Come in?"

Well, that's how I responded when someone tried to pull the first knock-knock joke on me, ca. 10 years ago. You see, Germany does not have pantos. Or knock-knock jokes. But it does have its own Christmas traditions, among them the tree that the British so gracefully adopted a century-and-a-bit-ago and then transformed it into something... for want of a better word... wrong. Sorry, folks. But a tree needs real candles. And a dad who ties it to a nail in the wall so it won't fall over. And a mum who puts a pragmatic plastic blanket underneath it all to catch dripping wax. And kids who like matches.

But even German Christmas trees (and this is where I gingerly hop off that soap box) are not perfect any more. Why? One word: tinsel. Over here in the Great of Britain, you probably get something akin to a cat's excited tail in plasticky shininess when you ask for tinsel. In Germany, you get linguine-style threads. What's wrong with both of those is the material: tinsel used to be made of aluminium, but nowadays it's plastic. How alchemical: a tin foil turned into PVC. Whether that is really better for the environment remains to be proven (please do enlighten me). What is tragic about this is that it's near impossible to get proper tinsel, old-style.

Before I share the good news, here's your bit of knowledge for the day: the German word for tinsel is 'Lametta'; and the German word for tin foil, only in the context of tinsel (at least where I grew up), is 'Stanniol', and it's been around since the 17th century.

Now for the good news: someone's selling GDR remainders on ebay (just google 'DDR Lametta' on image search to have a peek). And the ever helpful Manufactum (ta for the pic above) sells the real thing. It doesn't come cheap, but it's reusable if you bother taking it down before chucking your tree. Deck the halls with strands of tinsel! Falla lala laaa, la la. La. La.

Elve

2010-12-11T19:19:00.000Z

A short post for the weekend: Did you know that some people (well, one) write their PhDs about elves? Check out Alaric Hall's page!

For everyone else: if you haven't seen the new Harry Potter movie yet, brace yourselves:

no new potions to discover
take a hot beverage - the movie's wintry throughout and made me shiver
Hedwig dies
Dobby dies
hope I didn't spoil it

And while I am grinchy, why not check out Carol Ann Duffy's Christmas poem for last year?
(Sorry, more, and cheerier posts soon. It's just... Dobby...).

Ten

2010-12-10T07:44:00.000Z

I recently saw the Wellcome's wonderful exhibition on drugs and drug culture, High Society. And lo - they do fabulous events to go with it! Today:

Kaffeine and Kuchen

Image from the Wellcome announcement of this oh-so-tempting event.

Quoth the blurb:

Be transported to the coffee houses of 18th-century Leipzig in this immersive evening of music and mind-altering substances (of the legal variety!). Sample delicious cakes served up by the award-winning Peyton and Byrne chefs, let our coffee expert demonstrate the effects of caffeine in a guided coffee tasting, and be entertained by the Early Opera Company performing J S Bach’s miniature comic opera 'The Coffee Cantata'.

Oh my, I'm feeling intoxicated already. Hopefully I'll catch one of the January repeats!

Nine

2010-12-09T07:38:00.013Z

Look what I found! A Christmas Tarot!

From christmastarot.wordpress.com, by Corinne Kenner.

Eight

2010-12-08T10:49:00.000Z

Germany 'Uni-Kino' - how I miss it! Picture the scene: an old lecture theatre with wooden seats and tables, steeply arranged, and a small screen (intended for projection of academic importancies onto it). Lots and lots of students, who pay an almost nominal fee to get in. A movie. And in December, they always show Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944), a movie of similar cult status as the Rocky Horror Picture Show elsewhere in the world.

Image from WDR archives

The story revolves around Hans Pfeiffer, a fairly famous writer, who goes back to school (at 40 going on 14) to experience life in a classroom and recapture some of that fun that escaped home-schooled young him. Hilarity ensues. Including mock-drunkenness in chemistry class. Marvellous!

The drink whose intoxicating qualities spark Pfeiffer's idea to go back to school is also the inspiration behind the title: Feuerzangenbowle. Red wine heated, spiced (so far, so mulled wine), and then topped with a sugar cone drenched in rum and ignited. Only try this at home if you have high ceilings!

Feuerzangenbowle
(recipe from Suedzucker)

2 bottles nice red wine
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
juice from oranges and lemons (2 each)

Heat all that up for a nice mulled wine-like potion. Now, you need equipment:

1 sugar cone
1 sugar cone tong suspended over a heatproof pot which holds the mulled wine (seriously, without this it's just plain dangerous)
1/2 bottle of rum, poured over the sugar cone
1 brave person to set the cone afire

Watch sugary rummy syrup drip into mulled wine. Keep watching. Nope, don't touch yet! When it's all done, stir, pour into mugs and sip, carefully but with much gusto. You're welcome.

Seven

2010-12-07T07:34:00.007Z

That's "se-VEEEN!" to you, if you don't mind.

Catch up on your Strictly on the BBC iPlayer

Diverting from all nosh, poison and mystery today, this post is for everyone who, like me, against their own better judgement, finds this year's Strictly strangely fascinating.

Here's a tip for a stocking filler: Watch that wonderful Anton, who twirled Ann Widdecombe around with so much grace (seriously, hats off to him!) live next year (Glasgow in February)! Now, if that doesn't make you cheer up, I can't help you.

Six

2010-12-06T07:18:00.015Z

Happy Saint Nicholas' Day! If I were anywhere near Heidelberg (or any other university with a sense of pride, tradition and traditional fun), and if I were a student, my day would probably shape up like this:

get up, have a hot cup of tea and a fresh roll
get act together
brave the streets and resist temptation of bakeries offering Christmassy goodness in the form of baked, spiced, sweet goods
make it to the Christmas Market, conveniently located en route to the university - in fact, one part directly in front of the Old University building, where 21st-century electronic, Micky-Mouse versions of Christmas songs (as dispensed from the ginormous speakers next to the carousel) make concentrating on lectures near-impossible
collect some mulled wine from a stall (those who are prepared bring a thermos and their own cup, to indulge during lectures as needed); alternatively, some hot chocolate with rum (known as 'Lumumba' for indefinable reasons)
go about university business
meet friends for some potato pancakes, waffles or dip-dyeing of candles, at the Christmas Market, on the way home
fall into bed
sleep and dream of doing it all over again the next day

Memory may have eliminated the biting cold, the scary icy pavements and the fact that life is not so sweet when you live on a very small income. But the remaining, air-brushed memory still puts a smile on my face.

Image from Heidelberg Marketing

Now, why are my boots empty? I think I'll bite the head off my self-bought chocolate Santa right now...

Five

2010-12-05T07:55:00.023Z

It is with pride and some wistfulness that I share my grandma's recipe for oat biscuits here. They are quick, easy, tasty, and once made my Indian flatmate at the time exclaim "They taste like the cookies the street vendor in India made when I was a little child!" (The good news is, you are bound to like them).

Note: Using coarse brown sugar makes them crunchy; caster sugar has a softer finish; and you can add salt to taste.

Photo from BBC Good Food

Oma's Oat Biscuits
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup dessicated coconut (unsweetened!)
1 cup sugar (see note above)
1 cup flour
125g butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
pinch of salt (see above)

Combine into a dough. Set small balls of dough onto a baking tray lined with parchment (use teaspoons, which create balls the size of a walnut), and bake at 180C for 10-15 minutes (they are done when they smell nice and have turned golden). Kept in a tin, they may just last for a couple of weeks. But like any food stuff, they may suffer from consumption first...

Four

2010-12-04T12:16:00.000Z

A Christmas-themed mystery novel and a nice cup of (well, don't mind if I do) mulled wine is the only thing on icy weekends like this one. I am lucky enough to have snatched up an audio book of this one at Galloway & Porter, the Cambridge institution that is no more. But maybe you have someone to read this to you (with a David Suchet-like French accent)?

Get your copy at your local bookshop to make sure it continues to exist (or at Amazon, if you must, but I don't approve - even if I nicked this cover shot from their website).

Three

2010-12-03T08:00:00.002Z

Coming to you from Manufactum, place of good, solid, make-my-heart-sing products - old-fashioned goodies, in short: Cookie cutters that are welded together to provide foolproof, smooth, reliable Christmas cookie shapes. No edges. No tears. Just joy.

Oooh, how alchemical! Metalworking meets nom!

Two

2010-12-02T08:05:00.021Z

Glass is magic. It's turning sand into, well, something transparent and hard. It's Pyrex (named after 'pie', I kid you not! See here) and laboratory equipment. And to alchemists and their contemporaries, it was one of the most mysterious and challenging materials man continued to improve.

You missed the fabulous exhibition materials on Glass of the Alchemists at the Corning Museum of Glass, but there is much to be discovered on their website. Enjoy!

One

2010-12-01T14:15:00.000Z

Crystals: little flakes of wonder

W.A. Bentley, Snow Crystals (New York, Dover: 1962)

Photo from Wikipedia

...perhaps not unique (no indeed, there is no chemical/scientific reason why two snow flakes should not be alike), but still marvellous. Thanks to Wilson Alwyn 'Snowflake' Bentley (1865-1931), who endured many a cold second in front of his microscope-cum-camera to capture these on film!

Ringing In The Future Of Alchemy

2010-11-27T15:37:00.000Z

Cambridge and London. That's where I was while not posting last week. And what a wonderful trip it was! Two of my very favourite people took me change ringing in Cambridge: a joyful combination of all my favourite things! Gentle exercise and extending the spine (move over, Pilates); observing mechanical technicalities of bells ringing in the lofty heights of the belfry; an imminent understanding why that poor character in Dorothy L. Sayers' Nine Tailors did not survive those nights in the bell tower; amazement at the mathematical musicality of the changes; general intrigued-ness that has prompted me to find change ringers in Glasgow (first session next week - stay tuned!); chocolate; and pubs. Huzzah!

Readily available for instant Christmas cheer

at Amazon.com

The occasion that had taken me to London was a celebration, retrospective and pointing future-wards, of the history of alchemy and chemistry: SHAC (the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry) celebrated its 75th anniversary, complete with a lecture by the always informative-and-entertaining phenomenon, or rather personality, that is Prof. Simon Schaffer. (Seriously, if you want to know why I was jealous of the undergraduates who could attend this lectures while I was sweating blood over my thesis, check out his BBC series The Light Fantastic).

Other celebrities in history of alchemy/chemistry circles left me with a lasting ponder and slightly wistful feeling. In a panel entitled "The good old days", three living legends talked about their careers as historians of chemistry, and the twists and turns fate had subjected them to to make them the researchers, teachers and people they are. Professor Maurice Crosland, who has written the hitherto only comprehensive study of alchemical language, managed to write his excellent PhD part-time while teaching at UCL, then joined the University of Leeds as faculty member to teach many students in the history of science and allow them to discover their interest in a field they had never heard of before.

This enthusiasm that seems to come naturally with the history of chemistry (and, oh, it does hit hard, I can tell from experience!) was recalled by David Knight, emeritus professor at Durham: when he first started historical investigations, after reading chemistry at Oxford, he once got so excited about a book he picked up in the library that he (and I quote from memory) "had to take a walk around the park to calm down and continue my studies." Finally, Professor Colin Russell told about his early days at Open University, and the exciting experiments he was allowed to perform on camera, at a time when TV was a new medium for teaching. Many of the experiments would be prohibited by health and safety these days - but I could tell how much fun they were (for him as a chemist and a teacher) by the way they still light up his face, decades later.

Simon Schaffer, photo for The Light Fantastic/BBC

What all three historians emphasised was simple but effective: they could not have proceeded in their career without the support of and collaboration with their colleagues; that they had a lot of luck that opportunities arose at the right time; and that they are very thankful to both fate and colleagues, that magical mixture that makes for a good career.

These days, none of us has a crystal ball; but here's to the future of the history of alchemy and chemistry. May it receive the luck and support it deserves. I know that I am not the only one who would be incredibly thankful for that.

Antidotal

2010-11-16T19:02:00.044Z

Poisons have been following me around this week - luckily just in the historical, literary and anecdotal sense. I therefore proudly present, in sequence of coming to my attention:

The Cabinet of Poison

1. Waiter, there's something in my coffee

With a big thank-you to Carin Berkowitz, I giggle to share a photo of Cafe Arsenik in Montreal. Cake, anyone?

2. Literature with a bitter twist

Roald Dahl's "The Landlady" may well be one of the nicest-yet-creepiest short stories I read as an impressionable young adult. It features a B&B, a guest of the same, the landlady, a dog (of sorts), and a cup of coffee with a hint of bitter almond about it... Intrigued? Your fireside reading has just been sorted. You're welcome.

Roald Dahl, Kiss Kiss (1960)

3. History of Arsenic

Just a couple of years ago, I was happily munching my lunch while listening to a talk about the history of arsenic. It sure made for a good story: arsenic, if I remember correctly, was the first poison that could not be detected even in thorough investigation of a murder victim (with the methods of the time). We're talking early nineteenth century here, and the world was becoming more and more afraid of chemicals. Was I happy I had made that sandwich myself, though!

Image from the Chemical Heritage Foundation

As David Caudill, lawyer at Villanova and an intriguing storyteller, outlined, new occupations popped up in the court room of the nineteenth century as a result of a few high profile cases of arsenic poisoning. Meet the physician as an expert in court - I might as well say a fish out of water. Indeed, physicians had not been involved in murder trials to that extent before, and they had to figure out what to say and how to say it very quickly to avoid confusions that could end up very nasty for the accused.

What surprised me the most at first, and then not at all in hindsight, is that an increasing number of wives were accused of trying to poison their husbands soon after the first cases were tried - an explanation that tells us more about the nature of Victorian husbands and their trust in their sweet wives than an actual poisonous sophistication on behalf of the latter. I wish I could remember more details - but luckily, David wrote an article about the prehistory of the Arsenic Wars in connection with abovementioned Brown Bag Lunch lecture. Enjoy the read!

4. Astrology, alchemy and a body

The most curious news of the day: Tycho Brahe, the 16th-century Danish astronomer of widespread fame, even wider spread infamy and metal nose, has been exhumed again. Yes, you read correctly: given a generous trace of mercury in his locks, the mystery of his death is picked up again.

Tycho Brahe

Image from the Galileo Project

Theories abound: "Brahe was also an alchemist and some have suggested that he would have handled mercury and may have administered it to himself as medicine. Others have suggested he was poisoned."
Read all about it on the BBC website (whence this quote originates). I, for one, can't wait to hear more!

To All The Scones I've Loved Before

2010-11-08T20:19:00.000Z

Drama. Scream-out-loud outrage. Desperate sobbing. No, I did not lose my choo-choo toy, but it certainly feels like that: Kember & Jones, who I praised so sincerely just a few posts ago, decided to raise the price of their scones from 95p to (whisper it) ((with Parseltongue-like disgust)) One Pound And Twenty-Five-Pence-You-Must-Be-Kidding-Me! I, for one, am boycotting this sconeflation. Bye-bye, buttery buns of bliss! That'll learn them!

Meanwhile, does anyone have a good scone recipe (I am not fond of Delia's --they are too baking-powdery-- and have not dared try any other)? Please help. Please post a comment.

From Delia online

With a scone like that, leftovers are rather likely in my house...

I Can't Believe It's Not Better
...is not only the title of a segment in the hilarious Graham Norton Show on BBC Radio 2, but also a reaction I had to scones and many other food items in the USA. Scones, indeed, are a different type of baked good over there, whose manufacture involves a good dollop of cream and more sugar - perfectly delectable as a cake item; rather surprising as a breakfast item.

Oh, the culinary differences between the United K and the Ditto S of A could fill screens and screens of be-blogposted monitors. To give but one example, I've heard many a story about Europeans' first lips-on experience of 'cider' in the US = fizzy apple juice sans alcoholic zing. Yet no one warns you up front! Be that as it may, even familiar food items can make for surprising tastage in a different country.

Colm Toibin, Brooklyn

I was recently reminded of this while reading Colm Toibin's remarkable novel Brooklyn: a tale of a young Irish woman who emigrates to that part of New York City in the early 1950s. With a wonderfully clean style, Toibin describes that confusion that enters every cell of a traveller's body in food situations: the tongue and brain expect one thing but sense another. One pithy paragraph has Eilis, the Irish woman, mention that even the butter does not taste like the real thing in Brooklyn. In a way, she can't believe it is butter! And I still remember my first sip of organic milk after coming back to the British Isles, wondering how I could have forgotten how satisfyingly deep the taste milk can be.

I do miss Trader Joe's frozen cherries and proper bagels, though. Especially in this scone-deprived recent world of mine. Woe is me. Please send chocolate (but not Hershey's or Cadbury's, if you don't mind).

Hallow & Boo-Bye

2010-10-30T14:51:00.000+01:00

I don't do Halloween. Not in the trick-or-treating, dress-uppity, drunken kind of way, anyway. There are so many things wrong with it, and I won't bore you with a rehashed story of the Americanization of a Celtic tradition or my rather sensible theory (if I say so myself) that it should really be 'treat or trick' ('Gimme a treat or else I'll play a trick on you', no?). No, you won't find me scantily clad in haphazard fancy dress (read: an inappropriate Lady Gaga or Dead Nurse costume) on the October-beaten pavements of Glasgow - although I must admit that a friend's friend's idea to transform herself into the devil from the Master and Margarita sounds like my cuppa pumpkin punch. Nah, if you mention Halloween, I say boo-bye and thanks for calling.

Found on Adam's Tarot Weblog

Yet there are other festivals and traditions observed around this time of year which inspire evening entertainment these days. Most in-your-facely, there's All Saints and All Souls, an opportunity to think of those who have passed away before us. And even without religious inclinations, the music, art and poetry inspired by people whose spirits haunt our lives long after they have moved on can make rainy, windy evenings ever so snuggle-up spookier. Yeats has the right inclination and adds some refreshing spirit of the alcoholic kind to the scene, so be my guest and picture it:

'Tis All Souls Night and the great Christ Church Bell,

And many a lesser bell, sound through the room,

For it is now midnight;

And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come,

For it is a ghost's right,

His element is so fine

Being sharpened by his death,

To drink from the wine-breath

While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

[...]

W.B. Yeats, All Soul's Night (1928)

W. B. Yeats published this poem in his collection The Tower, a volume heavily influenced by his interest in the occult. As a young man, Yeats tried his turn-of-the-century soul at a variety of occult traditions: Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, the Hermetic Order and anything else that made sense to him who had grown up in an Ireland marked by folklore, myths and confusing political times, and who had moved to a London on the brink of Modernism amidst all sorts of uncertainties.

In 1890 he finally joined the Order of the Golden Dawn and found himself in the good company of many a brilliant artist and intellectual, among them Oscar Wilde's wife Constance, writer Algernon Blackwood and, eventually, the master of a troubled existence Aleister Crowley. Incidentally, here's someone who liked to play dress-up. A lot. But don't let's go there. At all.

Aleister Crowley/Frieda Harris, Thoth Tarot
Trump XV "The Devil"

What united Yeats and Crowley (though they could not stand each other's guts) was the Tarot. Yeats had been introduced to the Tarot, its symbolism and skrying techniques along his path from novice to master within the Order, like any other adept. Crowley went beyond the mere understanding and use of the deck and designed his own set of Tarot cards, which have a disturbing history: the poor artist recruited by Crowley, Frieda Harris, had to interpret Crowley's inspiration into pictures. He talked in trance (or under the influence or substances stronger than muscatel), and she drew with beautiful colours, undoubtedly diluted with some blood and tears. Much like a gruntled diner who describes a taste sensation to a chef and then finds the latter's creation not quite what he imagined, Crowley sent Harris back to the kitchen, er, drawing board. Again and ditto. It therefore took Lady Harris several years to finish, but the result is still stunning (see above).

Crowley was not the only one to create a new version of a Tarot set - far from it! Let me introduce you to Adam McLean's Tarot site, a branch of his Alchemy Website: Adam is collecting and blogging about Tarot decks from all walks of life, all corners of the world and with all levels of artistic sophistication. I might return sometime soon to tell you more about the history of Tarot cards. And like the history of alchemy, it is a fascinating, haunting and wonderful tale indeed.

Penelope Cline's Wild Green Chagallian Tarot,

found on Adam McLean's Tarot Blog

Smorgasbord

2010-10-24T13:27:00.000+01:00

Nightmares, successes, rainbows, and delightful tidbits of information made up the weird wonderfulness of this past week. In an attempt to unload the overload created in yours truly's brain, here is a smorgasbord of factoids and thoughts, for you to graze and amaze at. Napkins ready - here goes.

Sweet success
Last week's caramels have been a success to the point of causing cat fights among my friends, both Facebook and real. I feel like Monica in Friends around Christmas time - call me candy lady...

The caramels were also a potential source of foot-in-mouth disease: I had been around the mixture for so long on the day of manufacture (the equivalent of spritzing yourself with 5 different perfumes to the point of total nasal confusion), that the experience of tasting one the next day was novel, surprising and surprisingly pleasant. Briefly forgetting I was in the company of others, I shoved a sticky piece of heaven into my mouth and exclaimed "Goodness - these ARE good!" - much to the amusement of the munching bystanders. What they did not know is that I was complimenting the recipe, much as I would slag the cookbook if something turned out spit-out-loud disgusting. Every girl her own food critic and whatnot. If you think I am complimenting myself in suchlike situations, then that's the way it is. No more caramels for you, though.

Nigella Lawson

Photo (appropriately) from dailymail.co.uk

Nigellan nightmares
Prior to this week, I had never seen Nigella Lawson in action. In fact, I had barely browsed her books, since they seem to involve too much meat and fat to apply to my idea of a good meal. Browsing on the BBC iPlayer, however, I recently came across her latest series and decided to tune in, to see what all the fuss is about.

Dear reader, I am traumatised. What is wrong with that woman? Apart from her appearance (please tell me it's an ironic take on herself) and the sloshing around of cream, butter and other questionable ingredients to excess, she bites the heads off prawns, declaring, with a creepy smile, that "there is something primitive about prawns, like they are creatures we used to be millions of years ago. We have evolved, so now we get to eat them". I paraphrase - I could not watch it a second time. Sometime along the line she must also have eaten a thesaurus. Her adjectives (many of them neologisms of the cheesy kind, yet not so bad that they're fun) are all over the place and distract from the cooking. Maybe that's their purpose.

If I ever declared I wanted to be the next Nigella, I take it back a thousand times. Heavens, I'd rather be the next Alfred Biolek, and cook with the stars. Applications will now be received.

Alfredissimo, a German cooking show

Alfred Biolek & comedian Anke Engelke

(photo from amazon.de)

Nom & nommer
This Saturday, a dear Italian friend turned a crisp, sunny morning into perfection by inviting a bunch of hungry girls to shop at Mansfield Park farmers market, followed by brunch at her place, made from the fresh produce snatched up at the market. So many revelations! A smoked mozzarella, fried and served on organic bread; heather honey; Greek delicatessens; the best tomatoes in town; carrots with dirt on them, the way nature intended them to be; duck eggs!

Farmers markets are really like think tanks for cooks, presenting better versions of familiar foods and enticing unfamiliar ones. They are also cures against food ruts. Accompanied by accordion music and friendly Glaswegian banter, this could not have been more pleasant. If you do not have an Italian friend with superior barista skills to cook up a brunch for you, do still go - if you're anything like me, you'll love it.

Tapa can be found on Mansfield Park farmers market,

on Facebook (whence this picture originates)

and in two fabulous locations in Glasgow

Colour me criminal
The final tidbit for today comes to you courtesy of aforementioned multicultural brunch. I learned that Italian mystery novels are known as gialli - named after the yellow covers of early paperback publications, mostly translations of Agatha Christie & Co. And that is my cue to return to noshing and reading. Farewell, dear reader, whatever colour or taste your day may assume today - may it be a good one.

Of Boiled Sweets and Humbug

2010-10-16T19:01:00.000+01:00

After a rather long and busy week, which included some news that left a bad taste in my mouth, I decided that today was (and still is) the day to take some time and hand the same over to an activity which I have no control of. None whatsoever. Something that will dictate its own time frame and has a chance to go wrong, but will demand my full attention (thus leaving less time for gloomy ponderings) and, if anything, will be exciting. A substitute for dancing while my knee is still on the mend. In short: an ill-advised food experiment.

Dear reader, I made them. Salty caramels. Without a thermometer. Surely (I told myself), I cannot be the first person to work without one, in spite of many recipes' warnings that it'll all go wrong, friends vanishing from sight, children pointing and laughing, etc. I decided that my eyes, ears and tongue, although not too sure about what to look/listen/taste out for, could judge the caramel situation just as well as a dial with a stick calling itself thermometer - after all, alchemists had had produced fine metal concoctions in pre-Celsian or -Fahrenheitesque times without such equipment. So, I tapped into my inner daredevil-cum-alchemista, crossed my tummy and hoped to end up with something edible. Here's the whole story, sugary start to sweet end.

Salted Caramels
-adapted from three recipes beyond recognition-

300g sugar
250 ml honey
250 ml heavy cream
110g salted butter
more salt to taste

Warning: caramel is insanely hot. Never, ever, ever risk getting spatter, boiled-over caramel or other spillage onto yourself, and if you want to try it, coat a cold spoon very thinly with the finished product and wait before trying!

Sugar and honey go into a pot and are heated, swished around (not stirred - a useless act that makes everything messier than necessary) and heated more, until the sugar caramelises, one recipe said. It did not mention the bubbles, nor that this would take quite some time with these proportions of ingredients. I must say, a gas hob might have helped, but I got there in the end (ca. 20 minutes in).

Observation 1: bubbly sugar-honeyness

While that is doing its thing, heat the cream in a pot and keep it very warm. That made sense. I had experienced the surprisingly quick, rock-hard mess you get when adding cold-anything to caramel in a pot - something that will not be molten again (not even with alchemical methods, I imagine) and ruins both whisk and pot. Lesson learned while making caramel pudding (or not) aged 10. Right. Cream heated. Next step.

When the caramel is the right colour (and smells nice - hanging your nose over the sugar-bubbles is really nice and potentially good for your skin - ok, I made that up, but it cheers one up beyond measure), whisk in the butter in small knobs (buttery caramel smell, observing lumps sinking into oblivion, it's all good).

Now stir in the hot cream, little by little. This is danger at its best: just a drop too many, and everything goes over the rim of your pot, big mess, game over. If you're anything like me, you'll play around with this a little bit. Then cook the mixture for a while to get the right consistency.

Observation 2: mixture and consistency

Yes, this is where every recipe tells you not to heat above 120 or 125 C. It does things to the crystals and makes your sugar brown even more. Well, I stuck to heating it on a very low heat so it was simmering away, watching the mixture turning slowly (really slowly) from runny into something more creamy - eventually, frantic whisking (something you're not supposed to do, but it's so much fun) will clear the bottom of the pot for a second, leaving whisk marks like motorboats in deep waters. Of course, watching the caramel drip from the whisk helps, too. Now is the time to add more salt if you like.

Observation 3: slow caramel drops

But how do you know when it's done? What is the right consistency? Well, here's something I learned from The Kitchn: drop a bit of caramel into a glass of cold water, and it will cool down and show you what texture the sweet will have. If it's still too liquidy for your taste, keep boiling it. In my case (since I was very cautious, being a caramel virgin and all), the process took 30 minutes after all ingredients had been combined. I ended up with a toffee-like consistency.

Pour the finished caramel onto a baking tray or similar, lined with parchment paper, and let it set for a while, until it's warm and pleasant to the touch.

While you're waiting for this to happen (it took much less time than I anticipated - somewhere between half an hour and an hour), cut more parchment paper into squares fit as wrapping paper.

You will know that it's ready for the next stage when you can cut through it quite easily, too - the mixture will not stick to the knife.

Now find someone to help you - without a helper, this final stage took me an hour (with the result of ca. 100 neatly wrapped caramels).

Take each cut square and roll it a little to make a neat caramel, then wrap. Mine are good - much more intense than anything you buy in a shop. Very little goes a very long way, and I am more than ready to share. If you live in Glasgow, leave a comment with your 'scary yet successful food experiment' story to get a sample! Comments from further afield are also very welcome, but I'm afraid I don't deliver beyond city bounds. Your comments will be edited and posted on Wednesday.

So, what have I learned today? A lot of things. For instance, making sweets is better than eating them (I only had one try-out caramel and am perfectly content). Thermometers are humbug. It's fun to figure out how to do something that seems too tricky to try. And so on.

Most strikingly, though, I learned more about how I learn: it's a messy process which consumes all my brains and senses while I'm at it. It's therefore something that slows down time and accelerates it at the same time - it feels like I spent a whole day in caramel land, and I am late doing what I was supposed to do today. So, I'd better re-join reality and get on with my work. Luckily, the world is a little bit sweeter again.

The Golden Spurtle

2010-10-10T12:48:00.001+01:00

Alchemy and mystery need to take a back seat today, because this day (10/10/10) marks World Porridge Day! Never heard of it? Well, this extravaganza brings together oodles of spoon wielding, oat stirring cooks from around the world in the Scottish highland village of Carrbridge. They compete for the Golden Spurtle, an award marking excellent porridgemanship if ever there was such a thing; and they also raise some money for charity while they're at it.

Oh my, even a quick read of that first paragraph gets my scholarly heart racing, my historical brain brooding and my stomach, well, growling. I shall suspend the dash into the kitchen for my elevenses (guess what's on the menu?) to elaborate - I suffer for my art.

From undiscoveredscotland.co.uk

The world in a grain of oatmeal
Basics first: the origins of porridge go (and I use the technical term here) way back. It is a fact that the human bowel does not like raw grains. A couple of spoons of uncooked rice or barley would not only be very unpleasant to chew and swallow, but also difficult to digest, which defeats the whole point of food: no efficient nutrition, no pleasure, just rubbish. Soak the grains and cook them, and it's a different story. Ancient cooks picked up on that rather quickly. In fact, hot cereals predate the baking of bread and the brewing of beer as we know it. I call porridge the bread/beer for beginners.

Nutrition and food science have relaunched the porridge as a superfood. Cue buzz words like wholegrains, protein, fibre, vitamin E, several B vitamins, zinc, antioxidants and, golly, even phytochemicals! Slow release of energy, food of both gods and athletes. There is even more information on the Golden Spurtle website, but I think, like porridge, some of this is to be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps we can just agree on the fact that porridge connects simplicity, culinary cunning and comfort in a bowl, and connects people across the world and its ages with a heartfelt 'yum' and a pat of the belly.

International intermezzo
At this point, I cannot help but throw in this video, made by one American guy who travelled across 42 countries and got the people from all over the world world dancing for this wonderful, wonderful clip. Click on the link below the image and enjoy!

Youtube video here

Un-Recipe
Right. Now you want to know how to make porridge, right? Or more likely, you've been using the same method for years and are waiting for me to propose a perfect method, only to feel superior (because, quite obviously, yours is so much betterer than mine!). Well, I shan't comply. Porridge production is as touchy a topic as religion or politics. Don't let's go there, shall we?

Viewed from a safe distance, porridge shows different characteristics in different countries. Scottish porridge is traditionally made without milk, just from water, oats and salt, and it is this mixture that will gain someone the Golden Spurtle today. My impression of English porridge comes with the authority of the University of Oxford behind it: for what it's worth, my brother returned from his first stint at that place of learning with a formula shared by one of his professors: O-W-M 2:3:2. That is to say, two parts oats, three parts water and two parts milk; pinch of salt; cook, stir, let sit, eat, Bob, uncle.

Whatever you do, do not be fooled by those sachets of 'quick oats'. Admittedly, the Dorset cereal variety (no added dodginess, just oats and dried fruit) are handy for the office. But 'quick'?? How much quicker could a dish be? If you use the slightly unorthodox yet perfectly acceptable method of pouring some boiled water on oats and shoving everything into the nukomizer for a minute or two, there you are!

Steel cut oats (image from Wikipedia)

Finally, a word on oats. Depending on where you live, you'll have a choice of 'traditional' or 'rolled', 'quick' or 'porridge' oats, and it's all rather confusing. The difference is in the violence exerted upon the oat as it is crushed into a flake. The more force, the smaller the particle, the quicker the cooking and the mushier the result. It comes down to taste, I suppose - but given how cheap oats are, go on, spend that extra 50p on a bag to discover whether the organic ones are really better than the traditional ones. You might be surprised, either way. It is thus that I discovered steel cut oats, which are readily available in the US but much harder to get over here. For steel cut oats, the oat is not squashed but rather cut into two or three pieces. They require soaking overnight, but they have a wonderfully nutty flavour, a hearty texture and yet an overall delicacy that makes you want to enjoy them just as they are, with a tiny drizzle of honey and a dash of milk (or, even yummier, soy milk) sloshing around it.

The golden spurtle
I know, I know, the golden spurtle has been on your mind since that first paragraph. You can follow the competition on the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Champion website. By the way, a spurtle is a wooden Scottish kitchen implement (dating from the Middle Ages, apparently), used for traditional porridge stirring. Now you know. What I don't quite understand is how it is superior to your regular wooden spoon - smaller base surface? Better hand/wrist feel? Some scientific connection between stirring behaviour and the smoothness of the resulting porridge? Oh darn, here's history repeating itself... now I want one...

Ceci N'est Pas Un Blog Post

2010-10-03T18:29:00.001+01:00

October - a time when the academic term is in full swing, Christmas sweets smile sickly-ly from shop shelves, the days are getting cool and shorter, and the constant debate when to turn on the heating threatens one's good relations with one's flatmates - even when one lives alone. That's one perspective.

Another view of autumn in full swing is that it's time to break in your boots, break out the tea cosies, snuggle up in front of a fire with a good book in the evenings, see friends over cups of coffee, and above all, make the most of the sunny hours there are during the day. Platitudes? Cuteseyness? Perhaps. But who cares when it feels good? Yours truly has enjoyed a lot of suchlike goodness lately and will hence not spend much time waxing lyrical about things when there are boots to be waxed and books to be read. There is time, though, for two notes that might warm up your autumn. Here goes.

Kember & Jones, Glasgow

Lunch
If you find yourself in Glasgow's West End while peckish, Kember & Jones on Byres Road offers pretty much all your heart desires: excellent scones, dashing soups, a very wicked raspberry-banana bread, savoury tartlets, and much more - not least the occasional waft of chocolatey warmth from the oven. The queue during lunchtime is long, but this is food one likes to go to lengths for. And while this food emporium (oh, whatever - they can get away with it if anyone can) is good any time of the year, autumn transforms it into everyone's favourite home away from home. Take a friend and watch the rain through the windows. Fall for it.

Dinner
'Tis squash season! Shout it from your kitchen window (though better not too loudly - been there, done that, scared the squirrels). Roasted, souped and risottoed squash are well-established yummities which are great to revisit every year. But let me introduce you to a version which has been an eye-opener as much as a mouth-opener to me in recent years. It was recommended by a famous historian of alchemy, and goodness, the man knows what he talks about in both lecture room and kitchen! Ladies and gentlemen, I present

Butternut Squash Gnocchi

Cut 1 butternut squash of ca. 2lb in half, de-seed and place face down onto an oiled baking tray to roast at a medium temperature until soft (takes about 45-60 minutes); then scoop out the flesh and mush it up with a fork. Add another splash of finest olive oil, a very decent dash of salt, some pepper, spices or herbs as inspired (rosemary and thyme go well with this; some like nutmeg), and finally some flour (ca. 2 cups), which is to be mixed in delicately until the dough holds but is not too stodgy.

*** Beware: gnocchi dough does not like to be manhandled (that goes for the potato variety as well) - if you do knead too much, it takes its revenge by sulking itself into a chewy mess that will cling to your teeth. So, take the loving approach, not the I-will-punch-the-living-daylights-out-of-you one.***

When it's all akin to gnocchi dough as you know it, wrap in clingfilm and rest for at least 30 minutes in your good old refrigeration device (that might be your fridge or, in single-glazed flats, your hallway...).

When dinner time comes around, divide the dough into manageable portions (4-6, I'd say), roll into sausages and cut off gnocchi-sized bits, which you then imprint with a fork on one side to maximise surface area. Put onto a lightly floured surface in a single layer and keep covered with a damp kitchen towel or aforementioned clingfilm until ready to cook.

Bring lots of water to the boil, salt generously, and tip in a test gnoccho. It should float up to the surface after 3-5 minutes, at which point you remove it with a slotted spoon, gobble it down and proceed to cook the lot, in batches, adjusting cooking time according to the taste test.

The finished gnocchi are best on their own, perchance with a bit of melted sage butter on top, some grated Parmesan and more black pepper. They feel incredibly comfortable beside a selection of perfectly cooked wild mushrooms, and (just for colour and crunch) some steamed broccoli topped with roasted flaked almonds.

I'm afraid I have to break off here - there's a squash that wants roasting in my kitchen and squirrels waiting to hear the good news just outside it. But go ahead, try it, and feed a friend - because that's what food/autumn/life is all about, isn't it?

One In The Oven

2010-09-25T16:26:00.001+01:00

Baking is the generation of goodness, and really a little bit like magic. It's no coincidence that we talk about women having a bun in the oven when they are pregnant - two major ingredients, some waiting around, and out comes something completely different!

Anyone who has baked and enjoyed cakes knows that satisfying smell that comes from the oven, the resistance of a knife against the cake crust, the way those tiny crumbs tumble platewards as you sink your dessert fork into the freshly cut slice... Unfortunately, everyone also knows that wrong proportions, dodgy ingredients, wonky ovens and many other, more elusive parts of baking can result in brick-like buns, smelly situations and, inevitably, tears. An even more embarrassing scenario when you're having guests over. I am speaking from the experience of someone who has sworn at many a malfunctioning oven in a host of rental hovels. But I soldier on in the knowledge that I am not the only one suffering from oven envy. (Incidentally, some people who have had children can take the image of the ruined baked good as a metaphor for buns of the other kind - but I won't dwell too much on that.)

From J. J. Becher, Physica subterranea (1st ed. 1669, here 1703)

Image from the Chemical Heritage Foundation

Alchemists had their own ideas about ovens and reproduction. Curiously, not about cakes, as far as I know. Anyway, many metaphorical images that are ubiquitous in alchemy involve the conjunction of male and female bodies resulting in the birth of a child (read: the mixing of two different components, who join to become a third); and the gestation of matter in a hot environment. Sometimes, the father will eat the child (the third substance is mixed with one of its original components); in other scenarios, they both go into a sauna (moist heat, think baker's oven).

If you think about it, this way of thinking about chemical processes makes a lot of sense: it allows for the distinction between of similar and different substances, the definition of their origins, and for the development of a theory of how these metals, minerals and other materials can, and cannot, be used. And all with the help of a (forgive the pun) familiar picture. This is particularly useful when things go wrong in the alchemical workshop. For example, if mixed ingredients refuse to mingle, they might both be 'male'. If the child they produce is not sweet but a rather frightening brat, they were not compatible. If it comes out resembling charcoal, the oven/womb was too hot. What you end up with is a network of materials and procedures that will produce reliable results. And to be honest, even if this alchemical shorthand is not an exact science according to today's standards, it is much more attractive than a hexagonal molecular structure.

Molecular structure of caffeine

found on Wikipedia

On that note, I'll end this short and sweet post, because I've got a cake in a rather crappy oven. I fear it may come out charred on one side and uncooked on the other. But I shall love it anyway.

****ing Off - The Culinary Way

2010-09-19T12:48:00.001+01:00

September always puts me into the mood for thinking back to Septembers past. This particular month that has always seen me deliberately rustling through the first few fallen leaves (which is really rather squidgy and disgusting up here in Scotland most of the time, but hey, that's why God invented the ankle wellie); it has observed me tuck into onion tart, washed down with barely fermented 'new wine' with much gusto; and a few years ago, it saw me stumble over many a pumpkin during my first autumn on the East Coast of the United States of America. I had just moved into a flat in a brownstone - the flat that would turn out to be below neighbours who added not only many a slammed door to my sleepless nights but also inspiration for many new additions to my voodoo doll collection. This was also the flat whose landlords lived just down the road and made me fantasize about writing bad, bad words onto their dirty living room windows in mirror image. But I get distracted.

Image from www.pfalz.de -

the Pfalz area is definitely worth visiting just for its onion tarts and new wine!

Said landlords were part of a neighbourhood movement that looked after the cleanliness of the street. Fair enough, except it involved dumping the sweeping and snow shoveling of the pavement outside my 3-party building onto the lucky tenant on the ground floor. Guess who that was. Much later, I found out that that was actually illegal. You sweep and you learn. Anyway, one day, I found a piece of paper in my letter box inviting me for (read: ordering me to) a street sweeping event (11am-5pm, arrive on time, bring your own broom, smiles optional) followed by a 'cook-off'. I was fraught. I hate prepositions. Whatever was that "-off" meant to be?

It turned out to be a barbeque competition of sorts: every neighbour placed his own 21st-century version of an open fire onto the street, charred some pieces of meat and assured me that his sauce was saucier than the others'. Their wives had a bitchy version of the same contest, but they were ranking the cuteness and cleverness of their offspring. Needless to say, the fact that I was a childless vegetarian did not go down well. Someone pointed into the general direction of a group of individuals who did not fit in, either, and exclaimed "Violet over there is a vegetarian, too... I think". Her name was really Rachel, but whatever.

For more information on the Great British Bake Off,

see www.bbc.co.uk

Much more to the point, I have observed an increased use of the "-off"-appendage since that day, especially in the media. My beloved Great British Bake Off is not called the Great British Baking Contest, and there are 'dance-offs', too. (I resist the urge to wax punnical about 'doze-offs' and 'write-offs' here, but you get the drift). Funnily enough, cook-offs often seem to resemble the act of frying off (as in "Jus' wait a minute, luv, I'll jus' fry off this spam fritter - be right with ye!"). Generally, though, no matter how hard I try, I cannot help but perceive the "-off" less as a snazzy slogan and more like an invitation to, well, 'off' others and their cooking pride. Surely this cannot be the point of baking? What do you do with a perfect cake, the one that trumps all others, if there's no one there to eat it? Does it even exist if no one is there to hear the crunch of its crust or see its crumbs fall?

Blog-off
In the interest of working with rather than against one's friends and peers, here's a shout-out to Shana, whose wonderful blog on food-related words and their history may be found at http://onepeppercorn.com/. It is here that I first heard about jostaberries, and the etymology of 'omelette'. Hats off (without a hyphen) to her!

F*****-off (Thats 'fridge-off', if you don't mind)
If this post reminds you a bit of the style of the Tony Hawks, this might be because I have spend a recent bout of sleepless nights in his company. Well, to be fair, he was the reason for my lack of sleep. In an attempt to delegate bed-time reading to someone other than myself, I was listening to the audiobook version of his Round Ireland With A Fridge - Hawks's account of his hitchhiking adventure around Ireland in the mid-90's with a fridge in tow (a drunken bet lost, a hilarious experience gained). Yep, it really does not help your going to sleep when you find yourself in giggles at regular intervals. But Tony and his fridge were the perfect company these last few increasingly chilly nights. Highly recommended.

On that note, my research for feeding the friendly with cakey goodness next weekend calls. So, I'll leave you to your own devices for now. **** off and read something, or cook something - and enjoy September while you can!

Mystery Food And Oxonian Tales

2010-09-11T14:13:00.000+01:00

Unbeknownst to most faithful readers, I spent last week in Oxford at a summer school that was a challenge all around: the classes startled and bemused; the accommodation (undergraduate digs in Teddy Hall) made grateful for one's humble but private bathroom arrangements at home; the schedule induced skiving urges; the breakfasts developed into battle grounds between hot beverage enthusiasts; and the food was not so much a challenge to the taste buds as an exercise for the sleuthing part of the brain (What the deuces _is_ that?).

Eventually, I decided to suck all the learnage that could be had from the classes; slept soundly in the arms of student day recollections - followed by a long, hot shower upon returning home; skived generously, mystery novel in one hand and a cup of milky tea in the other; won the tea battle; and yearned for Hogwartsian feasts most every night.

You wish to hear more, especially more detail? Then fetch yourself a beverage of your choice, settle down, and listen to this woeful account of my Oxonian adventures.

The-Thing-That-Shall-Not-Be-Discussed
My official mission, to conquer the world of encoding and transforming for the benefit of my current bread-winning activity, shall be glossed over here. Suffice to say I learned little about the official summer school topic, but much more about human nature. I also collected marvellous material for a future sitcom.

- - Did someone say tea?

The Tea and Me
College food is a frightful affair in general: produced on a budget in a professional kitchen that dreams of a life with Jamie Oliver when no one is cooking, it combines the magic of large volumes of food with a lack of imagination when it comes to vegetarians. More of this anon, but first, a focus on breakfasts.

Picture the scene: a large group of largely middle-aged professionals, some American, some British, gathers around bowls of cheap cereal (a fellow-eater shouted gleefully 'Mmmmh, sugar!' upon his first bite), pounces upon the offer of cooked brekkie, or (in the case of yours truly) makes do with some cardboard toast and jam. But we all know the breakfast is really about the beverages anyway, right?

Anyone who has lived in college (any Oxbridge college, I dare say) knows that the coffee is a no-no. Germans actually have a name for this type of beverage: Bluemchenkaffee. This roughly translates as 'flower coffee' - so weak that you can see the flowers painted at the bottom of the cup through a full cup of brew. Scarred by many a previous disappointed expectation, I lithely dodged the thermoses of coffee and looked for tea, which was, curiously, only served upon demand. Here I hand over to excerpts from my diary:

Day 1: By the time the teapot got round to me, its 7 (!) tea bags (in a 5-cup pot) had swum themselves into exhaustion, and I was greeted by a dirty puddle of scum-topped, steeped-till-slurp-do-us-part tea. Quick trip to a coffee house round the corner.

Day 2: Ordered and hogged pot of tea for self, removing bags after precisely 3 minutes. Bliss.

Day 3: Ordered pot of tea for self, made to remove tea bags after an already dodgy 3.5 minutes, and got barked at from across the table: "Oy, there are British (sic) people here who like strong tea - do not remove the tea bags - why don't you just put more milk in if you want it weaker?"
The lady in question did not know who she was dealing with: a historian of chemistry who knows very well to distinguish between the strength and the muddiness of tea; who can explain what happens to tannins (and your stomach lining, not to mention taste buds) after 3 minutes of water hitting tea; who can go into molecular detail about the differences between leaf tea and tea bags, and their purposes when it comes to sloshing around in a tea pot. She was also accosting a very hungry vegetarian who could manage a whole pot of tea on her own and ordered another pot of tea for the querulous over-stewer. Problem solved.

Days 4-6: No one has dared talk to the Teagirl over breakfast. Breakfast in peace. All is good. Plotting to make same strategy work in order to get toast before it's cold. Quick trip to the bakery round the corner.

The-Other-Thing-That-Shall-Not-Be-Discussed
College dinners. They did not involve pastry concoctions (thank goodness), but filled aubergines, tomato gunk, limp pasta and a dire need for spices. And for afters? Sponge and 'custard' (cue: package), Angel Delight (hello, '70s) and the infernal profiteroles... a decent summer pudding on the last night, though. In recognition of the logistical problems faced by college kitchens, I shall keep my peace and whip up one of my specials tonight, which will be enjoyed without the tedious background noise of conversations best not repeated.

Skiving with Lord Peter
Skiving lessons, nipping across the street to Patisserie Valerie for a bracing bucket of coffee and macaroon or to covered market for the best bath buns and quiet cuppa tea, one needs the right company to enjoy it all thoroughly. I chose to take Lord Peter Wimsey along and read, slurped and munched my way through Gaudy Night in this more than appropriate setting.

The setting is Oxford in 1935. Harriet Vane, Wimsey's long standing love interest, revisits her old college for a reunion (the 'gaudy') and gets caught in a series of crimes, thoughts about women's role in life, a dilemma between learning and life, and her own investigations which bring her heart closer to the ever sweet Lord Peter. Yes, yours truly has a major crush on the latter. In many ways, Gaudy Night is the bookish equivalent to a really good old movie: very stylish, wonderful and a classic. It's just a pity that the edition pictured above has a rather generous sprinkling of typos throughout. Lord Peter would be appalled, make a witty remark about it and then make it all better by taking one out for punting and tea. I, on the other hand, shall keep my eyes open for a vintage edition and adopt the (correctly represented) use of an apostrophe for 'phone and 'plane.

Incidentally, Harriet remarks upon the poor quality of college coffee early on in the novel - perhaps a college tradition? And with this thought in mind, I shall proceed to make myself another cup of brew from beans brought back from covered market, and read the conclusion. I cannot wait to find out whodunnit!

Bad Cooking

2010-09-04T18:35:00.002+01:00

The best and worst dressed A-Listers. The Golden Globe and the Golden Raspberry. The fabulous Bad Science column in the Guardian vs. the Nobel and IgNobel Prizes. The good vs. the bad and the ugly. And the lists go on. As consumers, voyeurs, self-styled experts and just plain human beings in a media world, we seem to be obsessed with extremes. Or when was the last time you praised something as 'wonderfully mediocre'?

Much more than the fact of 'best' and 'worst' lists and their popularity, I am intrigued by the emotions they elicit. In the first instance, there is admiration of the beautiful and disgust or displeasure at the sight of the ugly. But then it gets twisted: we scrutinise the beautiful for flaws and points to criticise, to the point where 'too perfect' becomes the worst property, and the muttering of 'photoshopped' a redeeming feature for someone - even if we are not sure who we are trying to compliment (or shoot down even more) by pointing to digital Frankensteinianism. On the other hand, ugly things are praised for their uniqueness; 'interesting' is used in a positive fashion; and, in the case of talkies, 'it's so bad it's good' (for a laugh) makes a bad flick better than a boring one.

Sitting over a completely self-inflicted mediocre cup of coffee this morning, I started thinking about food and history along these lines. Come along for a few thought bites, if you like - you might want to bring a napkin.

Starred Alchemy
To alchemists, the best recipe was one that worked, and the best product one that did what it said on the, um, cover. Alchemical texts had a resilience to vanishing from sight, because they were supposed to work by default: if they did not work out, it was the alchemist's fault for misinterpreting the recipe or not having the right equipment, skills or brains to make it work. Nevertheless, the canon of the most popular recipes changed with the times, with some classics topping the charts for many centuries. I'll return to this point in a minute. Overall, though, alchemists strove for perfection and were always keen to find the best advice, equipment and ingredients for their trade. They discovered what worked along the way, and made experiences of the character-building kind, too. They were not perfect, but not hapless, either. Something many home cooks can sympathise with.

Early historians of chemistry, for whom alchemy was one big burnt piece of toast best forgotten, focused on colourful tales of botched alchemical experiments and anecdotes about foolish men who believed they could turn lead into gold. What makes failure so much more delicious in hindsight is the assumption that progress equals improvement, that today's attitudes are more sensible than yesterday's, and that (and this is the crucial point) those who have gone before us could have seen what we see if they'd only looked more thoroughly. Would alchemical recipes win Michelin stars in the chemist's kitchen? Of course not. Like anything, the story of alchemy is made up of the successes, the failures and the vast amount of everyday dishwashing in between. Thank goodness the history of alchemy has reached a point where we know a little about the success stories already; are curious about the failures from a historically more balanced point of view; and have the luxury to write about everyday practices, too.

Star-Crossed Cooking
The Observer recently published a list of the 50 best cookbooks. And what a joy it was to read! More intriguing, however, was a discussion of why we buy cookbooks (for reading rather than cooking, or at least with best intentions to do the latter but ending up doing the former) and a few anecdotes about recipes published with typos or botched measurements which no one ever put into practice. Which made me wonder: are there lists of the worst cookbooks? A little later, the Guardian delivered an answer in the form of reviews of bad cookbooks. Fair enough. But like their alchemical predecessors, canonical recipe books remain popular for long periods of time. The written word here, too, has a life of its own.

What about good or bad food, though? We all fancy ourselves food critics these days and think we can do it better; yet parents notoriously think their children's grubby biscuits are the most delicious thing in the world (which reminds me of a story my mother told me: when she was a child, the neighbour's daughter would come over to make cake sometimes, and enjoy kneading the pastry dough so much that she reduced it to a grey ball of unshapely better-not-ask-what-it-is. Even my eight-year-old mother was revolted. Maybe this trait runs in the family?). I am not sure what the moral is. But being a wannabe know-it-all, a Foodie With A Capital F or Gourmet (with fancy French undertones) can spoil meals just as much as throwing health and safety overboard to please your offspring. Nuff said.

Cooking for one (as in 'oneself') day in, day out, I am my own best, worst and can't-be-arsed chef, food critic and dishwasher. And in this case, the worst food is that which is not properly anticipated. It's worth getting really, really hungry before tucking into cheese and toast to make the ditto and ditto the most delicious meal in the world. Of course, I am reading a recipe book as I eat. Munching into the sunset.

Bad Food
Ok, who am I kidding? I am not a figure in a romantic novel involving food instead of men. I am opinionated. Yes, indeed. And when I heard about the supposedly low-cal version of Twix being released on the market, I ranted to everyone around or at a monitor near me. The idea of this new product is to replace the delicious buttery biscuity bit with a curly wafer, which is topped with the caramel and dipped into the chocolate as we know it. I have a thing about low-cal inventions, and no, please don't get me started.

In a sudden bout of aspiring self-improvement and experimentalism (motto: don't bad-mouth it before you've had it in your mouth) I was tempted into buying one of those Twix Fino bars and giving it a go. Dear reader, what can I say? I really wanted to like it, to prove myself wrong and mend my karma. But it just does not work. The caramel overwhelms when not balanced with a proper biscuit, the wafer is sickly and pointless, producing a pathetic crunch opposite the caramel's munchiness, the combination with milk chocolate is just too sweet, and the low-cal message (wrapped into a slinky steel-coloured wrapper the whole thing is, too) too deafening to ignore. Save yourselves and your money. Rather, go get some flour and eggs for the kids so they can make something equally disgusting at home. You know what? It might even be better...

The One Where They Would Not Allow A Kettle

2010-08-31T19:52:00.002+01:00

Moving house has many advantages, one of them the discovery of Things Thought Lost. (A disadvantage is the recovery of Things Deliberately Forgotten - but don't let's go into that). I could not help but blog this follow-up to a previous post, which detailed how American Bureaucracy stood between Me and a Decent Cup Of Tea.

Much to my glee, I found the evidence (a printout of my email asking, for the third time, to bring in my own electric kettle to make tea in the office).

(I removed my name at the top and the spoiltea's name at the bottom,

but yep, that was all I got as a reply in my pigeonhole).

I tell you two things:

1. This was worth the story - never mind my initial bafflement about the whole situation.

2. My next cup of tea at Tchai Ovna will taste even better - I'm back in a country of like-minded teaple!

Of Mess and Men

2010-08-28T14:36:00.000+01:00

This post is about recipe books. Wait, wait, don't yawn already! I assume that most of you think I'm talking about those things that you get in a bookshop, under the impression that they will boost your cooking prowess and spice up your culinary life, then all too often end up sitting on your counter gathering splashes of you default pancake batter?

But no - I'm talking about proper recipe books: handwritten compilations of recipes that were carefully selected and copied with much finger grease into previously extra virgin notebooks, to be used and then passed on to the next generation. And they all have one thing in common: if they are really good, loved and useful, they are messy...

Exhibit 1: Alchemical recipe books
Ever been to a manuscript exhibition? Do illuminations and freakishly neat script come to mind? Then I'll have to disappoint you: not all manuscripts look like that. In fact, most manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were quite different, rather akin to your trusted Moleskine diary - practical, plain, and often just plain illegible.

Unfortunately, most of them were discarded at some stage (why keep them when there are, ooh, printed books around and so much neater, prettier copies of texts without mistakes?). But let me let you into a secret: any alchemical historian's heart will work itself up to a whirligig whenever a scruffy, everyday notebook turns up on a library desk.

Exhibit 2: The perfect housewarming gift
While alchemists debated the perfect combination of substances for the perfect recipe, they were, true to their trade, rather secretive about any specifics and changed their minds quite often. If this was the case for modern cooking today, the home cook could be scared into repeating trusted recipes over and over... oh wait! That's what most of us do!

Think about it: there are some foods and flavours that are clearly made for each other (chocolate and caramel; onion and garlic) and others which disgust even as a possibility (meat and anything for yours truly - but you know what I mean). Celebrity chefs tap into the common consensus and add a twist here and there; or, in the case of Heston Blumenthal and peers, deliberately set out to shock and amaze with unusual ideas. But even then, it is often hard to move beyond one's comfort zone in one's own kitchen. One finds. If one is the writer of this blog.

Niki Segnit's Flavour Thesaurus, a house warming gift from a dear friend, is the cure for all the flavourally challenged. It brings structure, history, new ideas and background info for 99 different flavours and their combinations. It brings order, yet creativity, to kitchens of any state of messiness. And rather than reviewing it here in detail, I refer the reader to the Guardian's review and move straight on to today's recipe, which I concocted, inspired by this publication, for my kind moving helpers a couple of weeks ago.

Exhibit 3: The recipe (now copied into my own messy handwritten recipe book)

Lemon Pasta

-ingredients for 2 portions-

Soften 1 shallot, finely chopped, in 2 tbsp olive oil. Add 2tbsp white wine and cook a little longer. Then add the juice and zest of 1 lemon, some fresh basil, generously season with salt and pepper. Stir through 200g freshly cooked linguine (fresh pasta is best for this purpose), with a good knob of butter. Top with grated parmesan.

Eat with friends. Follow up with ice cream and hours of good conversation.

Now you may yawn.

Home Sweet Ditto

2010-08-24T11:58:00.002+01:00

Good news everyone! The pinching continues from its new headquarters.

Looking on the bright side (out of my new living room window).

Ready to cook up a storm.

So, watch this space for food and fun - more to come this weekend.

And if you feel bored in the meantime, do check out the most comprehensive resource on alchemy and alchemical art, put together over the decades in painstaking labour by a fellow-Glaswegian, the Alchemy Website. Enjoy with a philosophers' scone.

The Letter and the Gooseberry

2010-08-03T10:43:00.005+01:00

Dear faithful reader of this writ,

I do apologise for the delay in posting. You see, last weekend I gave a sad final pat to Her Cattiness, and moved my self into a new abode (aided by dear friends whom I would give a kidney any time now). Consequently, yours truly found herself truly knackered and was going to skip a blog post. What happened (I imagine you saying with anticipation and relief)?

Well, I was at my dressmaking class, sewing seams. And let’s be frank: there is only so long that sewing can entertain you (if you hum ‘On the Road Again’, imagining your right foot on the gas pedal of a car and pretending your needle is on an exciting road trip across vast deserts of plaid, perhaps – but no, the novelty wears off…). So, I sat back and came up with a few thoughts about England and letters.

From CELL, Centre for Editing Lives and Letters

Blogging, 16th-century style

A workshop on early modern letters a few suns ago not only exposed me to some very nice and interesting people and to rather marvellous food, but it also introduced the following thought: if 16th-century letters were often read by various people, commented upon, anticipated, picked up and circulated, could letter writing be considered an early form of blogging? Thought number two followed almost instantly: nah, of course not. Letters were not placed into a public sphere (unless they contained some dishy dirt and featured in a court case – but that is a completely different story that cannot be told here, because everyone knows most blog readers switch off after the first screen. Do stay with me, will ya?).

But the connection between letters and blogs is not as outrageous as some other thoughts of mine that never make it to the screen. Both step outside of the privacy of the own mind (or diary) and communicate with readers. And while letter writers censor their own writing in order to avoid offence even to accidental readers, bloggers with ambition select their topics with their readers in mind, too. And this is where we have to leave this topic for now, because I think I can read your mind as you glance at the title and theme of this blog:

‘What does this have to do with alchemy?’ I wish I could see an early alchemist’s letter!! My own work has not dug up any, perhaps because I concentrate on recipes by anonymous writers. If anyone out there has examples to share, please do leave a comment.

‘So, surely there is some mystery in letters, then??’ Again, I have to admit ignorance (or rather that curious failure of my brain to pull specific information out of a hat when quizzed): all I can come up with right now is Sophie’s World, that rather sorry book for young readers that became a Matrix-like phenomenon and seduced many a young person into studying philosophy at university. Yes, I am on my soapbox right now. And I just have to say it:

1. Sophie’s World is pants (that’s ‘trousers’ for the British among you);

2. Philosophy is not ‘thinking about things’.

There. I’m coming down now. But if you can recommend a good mysterious piece of writing involving letters, please do let us all know about it in a round robin.

‘Letters and nosh, then???’ Um, no, sorry – but England and nosh, re: English summer! ‘Tis the season of the gooseberry, a sadly underrated piece of fruit, which I recently served at my house cooling party. It’s a Delia recipe, which I care to share because of its marvelosity, in my usual shortcut style (but a more detailed set of instructions, for those who have never made custard from scratch, is just a hop, skip and google away).

Gooseberry elderflower ice cream

1. Make a custard from

- 275 ml whipping cream
- 3 large egg yolks
- 50 g sugar
- 1 tsp cornflour

2. While that is cooling, cook

- 1.5 lb gooseberries with
- 75 g sugar

for ca. 7 minutes, then remove the pips and skins with the help of a mesh sieve, and stir in

- 8 tbsp elderflower cordial

3. Combine both mixtures. If you are the lucky owner of an ice cream maker, you know what to do next. If not, pour everything into a Tupperware box with a lid, put into a freezer and stir every 2 hours to break up those nasty crystals that form. If you make the ice cream more than a few hours before serving, depending on the potency of your cooling device, it might be a good idea to take it out of the same a few minutes before serving to soften it up and stir a bit more.

'So, you didn’t really have anything to say in this blog post?' And that’s why I still like old-fashioned letters (my pen pal and I just celebrated our 18th anniversary) – it is fun to be talked back to by a real person, rather than talking to yourself, as demonstrated here. And yes, I did have something to say. Letters are wonderful. Blogging can be great, too. But as in anything, it helps to figure out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you are addressing. As for me, I’m still practising.

Yours faithfully,

Paracelsa

PS: Sorry about the formatting - Blogger is slow and buggy today...

From the OED

Baking Bones

2010-07-25T16:45:00.017+01:00

...a colourful catch-up of the past week.

1. Alchemical Magic
Picture the scene: a sunny day in July; Aberdonian architecture; a packed audience; and four alchemists. All right, all right, four historians of alchemy, then. A series of talks discussing the connections between alchemical texts and practice; the idea of forgery and fraud relating to alchemically produced gold coins; the future of research on the history of alchemy-cum-medicine; and desiderata of research from an archaeologist-chemist's point of view. If you weren't there, believe me: this year's BSHS conference was sparkling with possibilities, enthusiasm, ideas and laughter. A warm thank-you to the organiser, the audience, and the participants, who discussed alchemical matters with the perfect balance of serious thought, blue skying and humour. Here's to the future of the history of alchemy.

(If you love the history of science as much as I do, check out the BSHS's travel wiki, which lists scientifically historical sites around the UK. Do I need to say more than Camera Obscura, or Lepers? Um... better check it out for yourselves, methinks).

From Antiquity, December 2003

2. What I (re)Learned This Weekend, or: how alchemists separated metals and made their own vessels for that purpose which would be quite yucky but I cannot wait to try sometime...
Long title, short story: Marcos Martinon-Torres, abovementioned archaeologist-chemist, a dear colleague and someone who has snatched a job and research topic that makes us all go green in the face with envy, has been working on the remains of medieval and early modern alchemical laboratory equipment at UCL for some time now. His insights into what alchemists actually did in the workshop (something often barely accessible to those of us who read those rather obscure manuscripts) are constantly evolving. And given my blogging activities, I could not help listening very carefully when Marcos explained the gadget that is the bone ash cupel.

The idea is pretty simple: you have a composite metal or metal ore, in other words a substance that is made of two parts, one of which you want to extract from the other, but they are difficult to separate. Think oil film on gravy - but then someone invented those bi-level spoony things to solve that problem. Well, alchemists had their own solution for separating silver from dirty useless metal bits: bone ash cupels. These are vessels (see above) made from ground bones (or wood ash), and bound with water or urine. They are porous like a hard sponge in dish form. Actually, a pumice comes to mind. When a composite metal is heated up in such a cupel, one component sinks into the dish, never to see the light of day again; the other remains as a nugget at the top. The cupel can now be thrown out, and the silver or what-have-you retrieved. Nifty, no?

The really cool thing is that alchemists made those cupels themselves. They were much too brittle to be transported and really rather easy to make, so home production was the thing to do. Here's hoping I'll see the whole process from bone to stone in an interdisciplinary workshop sometime!

3. The Baking Connection: Drunken Cake
In the absence of bone grinding, the principle behind the bone ash cupel can be observed in the species of drunken cakes (and I do not mean the above, taken from the always fabulous Cakewrecks, but rather cakes soaked with booze). I won't post a recipe just now, because I am all abuzz with alchemical goodness and eager to do some work before the week starts - but consider one (or more?) of the following:

Base

sponge cake
pound cake

Booze/Fluids

orange juice mixed with cointreau
some liqueur of your choice
lemon juice
(you get the drift without further superfluous variations)

Floaty bits

fruit zest
granulated sugar
sprinkles

Method

make the cake
let cool a little
meanwhile, mix the booze/liquid with the chosen floaty bits
consider whether the combination is a good one; if not, return to 1)
pour 3) slowly but with flourish over the cake
marvel at the floaty bits staying at the top of the cake, while the cake itself gets saturated with boozy fluids
eat cake
sense how everything gets absorbed in a cakey booze fest inside your body.

That's it for today! But soon this blog will be sent from a shiny new kitchen, with many more recipes and the usual zest for bad puns and alchemicality. Cheerio for now!

Prime Infusion

2010-07-17T15:42:00.000+01:00

Huzzah! The First, Fabulous Competeation has produced marvellous results: tea concoctions that are a true elixir of life this summer, no matter whether you find yourself in cold or hot climates. So, without further ado (but some embellishment by yours truly), let me send you adrinking: here are the winners!

From the Cabala mineralis manuscript,

courtesy of the AlchemyWebsite

Thea Regia
This is so wrong it works - thanks to Lorraine the Lemonator.

Take some Lemon Ice Tea and pour over vanilla ice. Add some mint leaves. Slurp slowly and with gusto in hot weather.

Thea Fortis
This is simple and intriguing, and comes with a recommendation from Deena the Drinkess:

Qi (tea liqueur).

Yep, that's it. But here's a little more background: it is a San Franciscan concoction, comes in white and black, and looks nice on their website. Mind you, I will hold out on my verdict until I've tasted it.

Thea Vitae
Long Island Iced Tea - cunningly not containing any tea: how magical is that?

Take equal parts of vodka, gin, white rum and lemon juice; add a little sugar syrup and lots of crushed ice. Top up with cola. Enjoy with some appropriate music playing in the background.

Not my cup of tea, but there it is. Thanks to David the Drinkmaster.

Thea Miraculosa
This was sent by Konoisseur Katie - a G and Tea!

Make lemon verbena tea, chill it, and serve with a dash of gin.

And if that does not get you dashing to the nearest tea shop, here's the final, ingenious

Thea Philosophorum
This was sent by the Delightful Dagmar, who openly admits to adapting this recipe from a ready-made product she saw at Tea Gschwendner:

Mix equal parts of peppermint tea and apple juice, and a good dash of lemon juice. Drink chilled (both you and the tea).

And that's what I am sipping right now!

***

The winners will receive a little something in the mail. In other news, I just produced some almond biscotti with lemon zest to go with all of the above. Here's to you, dear readers: have a fabulous week!

Tea Break

2010-07-13T13:01:00.002+01:00

This post is short and sweet - almost the opposite of a perfect cup of tea, which should be bottomless and, to my taste, unsweetened, but there it is!

1. A reminder: the Fabulous Competeation (see last post) ends this Friday at midnight. Get brewing now, and share your tips via email, in a post or by pigeon.

2. Talking about tea making tips, check out this fabulous clip from 1941, published by the BFI for our education-cum-entertainment (click the link below the image to watch):

Watch Tea Making Tips

Sipping happily,

Paracelsa

Coffee, Cogitation & Competeation

2010-07-10T14:34:00.000+01:00

Coffee

It's been a busy week, and business does not necessarily like company - unless it comes in the form of a good cup of coffee. My office cafetiere is probably one of the best investments I have made in the past few months: my afternoon mug of hot, comforting brew is consistently up to my admittedly high standards.

It may just be me, but at weekends I enjoy an experimental cup of coffee: a different type of milk, frothing and heating procedure, slowly slurped from an unfamiliar mug (that one that's been hiding in the back of a cupboard) or even a bowl, French style. At this point I cannot resist pointing a cocoa dusted finger at the 'bol' offered by Manufactum:

This bowl is made in the old glazed pottery workshop »Moulin de Loup« near Valenciennes, in a style typical of the 19th century, with a raised pedestal base. They were more often seen in less well-off households in the poorer region around Horchis, where people were more likely to drink coffee made from chicory rather than coffee beans. The pattern, which is characteristic of rural artefacts, dates from the beginning of last century.

In case you are wondering, Manufactum is a marvellous shop which unearths all those places where skill meets quality, where really nice, functional things that will last a lifetime (and more) are on offer. Alchemy, indeed!

And while I am sipping from a rather inferior cereal bowl, I can almost imagine rubbing shoulders with the young, the rich and the beautiful in a Parisian 19th-century cafe...

Cogitation

Kelvingrove Art Museum, Glasgow

Manuscripts open

Thought meets historical thought

Nods to lives long past

Competeation

It's summer, and while Glasgow is seasonally cool and calm, other parts of the world are awash with heat and sweat. Attention spans are short, days are long, and drinks in ample supply (matching the need for hydration). And let's be honest: the best drinks do often involve tea in one form or another. Therefore, I want to know:

What is your recipe for a good summer drink involving tea?

Leave a comment or, if you know me well enough to know my email, send me a ditto.

Deadline: Friday, 16 July 2010.

The best entry will be published in next week's Pinch of Arsenic and receive a surprise thingumabob. So, get brewing and writing! Ta.

The Real Thing: Jamie vs. The Alchemists

2010-07-03T21:37:00.002+01:00

Oh, s*d the nice introduction and eloquent transition into blog topic. Guess what I did today? Here's a hint:

And of course

Jamie's Italian is opening on George Square (see reflection) in Glasgow, and I had the privilege, thanks to a well-connected friend and two more lovely people, of sampling it in a pre-eat, at half price - - an absolutely fabulous lunch.

Allow me to gush for a bit: the staff were very friendly and knowledgeable, especially our waiter, who kindly pointed out that the cheese was not vegetarian (low point there, but thanks for mentioning it!), knew all about the origin of ingredients and the preparation of the dishes, and made us feel very welcome. The food was divine, and lived up to the Jamie Oliver philosophy: simple, good ingredients prepared immaculately and presented in a share-inducing manner. Voila exhibit A - the vegetarian antipasti starter:

The mains were lovely fresh pasta dishes, mine with butter and truffles. Voila exhibit B - the fresh pasta on display:

All washed down with a fabulous house white, an organic Chardonnay which should make any other wine blush; and followed by a strong, appropriately serious Lavazza coffee. Add a space populated with rustic tables, surrounded by the bar, hanging hams and shelves full of Jamie's books and Italian tins and boxes; and consider also the loos that produced oohing and aaahing from the interiorally designy among us (no, seriously - there's a marriage of style and functionality if ever I saw one!), and some lovely company, and you have the perfect Saturday. Call me a lady who lunches.

Apropos recent news about schools' reactions to Mr Oliver's school dinner revolution, you might be curious what I think about his ideas, his idealism and his general approach to educating people about food. But all I say is: I like his food. A lot. Can I live there, please? Nuff said!

Then came the bill. But even at regular prices, it would make the sorry 'Italian' restaurants in the neighbourhood blush! A perfect place to take friends and gush over simply delicious food - and certainly a place that will see me more often.

Alchemists?

What do they have to do with Jamie? I hear you cry. Well, eating at Jamie's Italian after reading his recipes (and not actually cooking any yet) was an experience that matched the palate of the mind (the faculty that kicks in whenever you hear about food and think you can taste it with your mind's, um, tongue). Being a somewhat experienced cook, I could imagine the taste as the menu was elaborated by our waiter: and I maintain that a good restaurant should manage to write a menu that is neither pretentious nor elliptic, neither too clever nor unimaginative, but simply describes what you get in an appetising manner. In this case: Menu + waiter = recipe.

Alchemical recipes, in spite of their many similarities to other recipes, do not quite work that way. Even reading through the whole thing does not help! Alchemical style is very metaphorical, so that ingredients are often referred to by other names ('king' for gold; 'queen' for silver, and many animals like eagles and pelicans feature, too), and the method is not necessarily written down in a straightforward manner, either. Often alchemical recipes read more like inscrutable, dark fairy tales than instructions for craftsmen, and there is no recipe to deciphering them.

Furthermore, alchemical recipes were not filmed for an Alchemy Channel; there was no celebrity alchemists who knocked others into shape in his own show, or tried to teach others how to do good alchemy. Quite contrariwise: alchemy was taught from master to apprentice, and the tips and tricks stayed between the two of them. Overall, it is very difficult for us today to figure out how a specific alchemical recipe was applied, what it produced, and what the product would look like.

This is what archaeologists who analyse finds of alchemical materials find out these days: they look at residues that remain in vessels alchemists threw away, and then work their way backwards to chemical processes that produce these finds. The step thence to identifying an original recipe in a manuscript and matching it with the real thing is yet another story. But until we find a recipe for gold, a little of Jamie's Italian goes a long way...

recipExperiments

2010-06-26T21:35:00.001+01:00

Pretzels and Nutella. Cheese and jam. Marmite and... anything, really - there are just some things that don't seem to go together. But we all know people who like them, which means at least one person was sitting in a kitchen one day, or perhaps rather standing in front of a fridge, and thinking silently, "Let's try something different. Something outrageous. Something that might make me gag but... ooooh... I wonder...". I am certain that's how Marks and Spencer's cheese and celery sandwiches were born, anyway.

The same self-fashioned gourmet-inventor must then have convinced others to try these unlikely creations, and slowly built up a following. We all know families with weird family recipes, no? And say what you like, but Auntie Agatha's accidentally-on-purpose burnt veggies, when presented and re-created with confidence, will always taste better than something fool proof out of a package, slopped onto a plate with a sigh.

Paracelsus, from Aureum Vellus (1708)

at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia

The Gordon Ramsey of alchemy, Paracelsus, was a sixteenth-century genius with a temper. He flat out refused to follow tradition. But his motivation was not so much the attempt to create something unheard of, but rather, to make more sense of alchemy. He had developed a new set of principles, an adapted alchemical theory, loosely comparable to previous models as, say, any new diet is to the uninhibited foodie's munchinations. For Paracelsus, some alchemical materials were taboo; others were miracle ingredients; and the methods for their preparation were complicated.

Of course, people were sceptical: who was he to propose that everything that had gone before him was rubbish? How could you take a man who dubbed himself "greater than Celsus" seriously? And wasn't the man a swearing drunk who had broken with academics all over Germany (and beyond)? He refused to write or teach in Latin, for goodness sake! But only shortly after his death Paracelsus' methods proved themselves worthy of all his boasting, and he is still credited as the founder of modern pharmacy, leaving all others who were toiling away in his oversized shadow behind.

It is difficult to say what we should learn from the curious life of a single megalomaniac, but one thing is certain: he dared to be different. And like any alchemist, he was fascinated by experimentation. Invention, whether in the form of Marmite and pickles, modern medicine or just a plain old dinner that turns out unexpectedly well, happens only where we dare to mess up, and enjoy throwing together the unlikely. Go on, give it a go!

Whatnots

This recipe is a very recent creation of my own. These tasty little biscuits are called 'Whatnots', because they are perfect with a cup of coffee. "Would you like a cappuccino and whatnot?" - very Jeeves & Woosterian. But they are also perfect, because the throwing in of spices, the choice of nuts and the nature of sweetness can all be adapted and mucked around with to your hearts' desires.

1 cup walnut pieces

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup porridge oats

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

100g butter

1 egg

chocolate for wild drizzling action

Roast the walnut pieces in a pan. Right towards the end, when they smell nice already, add a third of the sugar and stir like mad, so that the sugar coats the walnuts as it caramelises.

Then mix all other ingredients together with the remaining sugar. Add dashes of cinnamon, ginger or cloves, or indeed anything else you fancy. You might need to drip in a bit of milk to get a nice homogeneous mass that still holds its form.

Place on a baking tray with the help of two teaspoons, in the form of heaps the size of a walnut. Bake at medium heat for 15-20 minutes. Finally, drizzle with melted chocolate. Alchemy! (I mean: Magic!)

Next time, try replacing things with others - and let me know if you find a perfect combination! If not, don't worry: these are pretty darn good, and very medicinal for sore hearts, aching heads and empty tummies.

Midsommar Murders

2010-06-19T17:35:00.001+01:00

The longest day of the year is almost upon us: a special day without any Christian connotation whatsoever. I therefore applaud the countries in which midsummer is marked with traditional celebrations - what better excuse to see family, dance yourself dizzy and enjoy good food and drink at the mid-point between Christmasses?

Sweden has particularly beautiful ways of partying until the sun goes down. Mind you: even up here in Scotland, which is on the same latitude as southern Sweden, the sun does not fully set these days, but bathes the world in a milky-pink stripe surrounded by blue haze until the birds twitter in the new day. But somehow there does not seem to be a Caledonian Summer Extravaganza on par with the Swedish custom, which involves a ginormously jolly pole around which to jig. There are bowls full of new potatoes, served with herring, sour cream and chives. And there's a flock of prettied-up maidens who collect seven types of flowers from seven different meadows, in absolute silence, so that they may dream of the man who is going to dance around the maypole with them until the end of their lives. If they tell anyone who it is, legend has it the dream won't come true - a handy way out if it happens to be the village idiot...

Summer Reading: The DVD
No matter whether you see family this coming week or have the man or woman of your dreams tied to a maypole, this time of the year is certainly one for summery joys: rose wine (I recomment Pinot Grigio blush); light suppers (see below) and... some shivers down the spine with a local twist?

I just acquired Ian Rankin's Rebus series on DVD, an archetypal example of the Tartan Noir genre. I've been enjoying its aural incarnation on the BBC, and am keen to see how the TV version will fare. Thank goodness it's set in Edinburgh, far, far away from my current abode.

Vegetarian dinner (phew!)
Even if you are a meatarian, you may want to go veggie while you are reading or watching some Rankin. Here is a little something I have from a new cookbook which I cannot reveal right now, because it will be a present for at least one of my faithful readers in the near future. Suffice to say it is so good the cat started to drool when looking at the photos. And here's the gist of the absolutely stunning

Caper & Almond Pesto

250g almonds, lightly toasted
250g capers in brine, drained
1 small red chilli
2 cloves garlic
250ml olive oil

Whizz up pesto. Done! Easy to eat while you're hiding behind the sofa, too.

PS: More serious posts on alchemy and its perils soon - but the weather is just too gorgeous at the moment to be sitting inside blogging!

The Teas, the Quease and the Alchemist

2010-06-12T17:29:00.002+01:00

"Why does tea make me feel naseous? And what can I do about it?" asks faithful blog reader D. Before answering his question, and finding surprising parallels with alchemists' queasiness and a literary tummy soother, here's a little

Medi-tea-tion

The British love of tea is often belaboured by other cultures when they have exhausted all the other traits that make this people so distinct from any other. And it is not even exaggerated that man an Englishman's cup of tea is what a bottle of wine or glue, a fag or a large box of chocolates is to others: tea helps. There's the breakuppa tea; the brew that beats the blues; the pick-me-cup; even if you've lost your sense of smell or taste, a cup of tea is in order. But seriously: putting on the kettle gives your hands something familiar to do when your mind is racing. And the taste of tea is strangely reassuring. Whatever happens, we'll always have tea.

Actually, dear reader, there was a time when I almost did not have tea. Upon arrival in the United States and induction to my work place, I noticed that the generally accepted method of making 'tea' was using the hot water dispenser at the sink to dump hot, old water onto something resembling a tea bag (containing - oh, better not ask...) in a mug, then putting everything into the nukomizer (microwave) for a minute, and finally sipping along (without taking out the bag-o-tea) as a thin film of scum forms at the surface. Adding coffee creamer (mmmh, so deliciously artificial, and look, it's best before 2025!) optional.

I was willing to bring in tea, milk and a kettle of my own, but since the powers-that-fancied-themselves were not familiar with the marvellous institution that is the electric kettle, my request to put it up beside the communal toaster was refused 'for fire safety reasons', and with a note scribbled onto my written request: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". I did as the Germans do - and got permission to use an old-fashioned kettle on the office kitchen's stove. The electric kettle was introduced when an older colleague forgot to turn the stove off while heating up water for hot chocolate (!) one day, producing a rather inadvertently alchemical glob of metal and plastic that had once been a kettle. Be all that as it may (and it does make a good story now, doesn't it?), the point is, not all cultures have a natural affinity to the comforts of tea. And I used this knowledge for a lot of really, really bad tea puns.

Tea, tummies and alchemists

Back to D and his tealemma. It is true that tea without the addition of milk can be rough on one's stomach lining. I find that particularly acidic concoctions like green gunpowder are jarring, whereas many herbal teas do not offend. This is due to the tannins in black tea - and if you have ever seen a traditional tea pot, which is only swished with water but never washed, so that it acquires a thick layer on the inside, you can imagine why. Much has been written about tannins in the media, so there is no need to repeat it here. Suffice to say, they're nasty buggers for the delicate tea drinker.

The good news is that adding milk to tea cuts through the tannins (which then attack the milk rather than your mouth or tummy), although this changes the taste of tea completely. By the way, if you have trouble with black tea, coffee (and particularly filter coffee) will also be trying on your inner life, both the physical and the psychological: there seems to be some connection between sensitivity to acidity and caffeine. Unfortunately, there is no rule when it comes to picking a nice blend: there's nothing but trying out different kinds of tea. A good reason to visit teatotal friends and work one's way through their infusions! Organic tea without artificial flavourings has a higher chance of making the cut than their cheaper equivalents.

Another option is eating something with your tea: a biscuit, a little scone or sandwich, or just some bread and butter. The power of bread and butter was also believed by alchemists to protect them from toxic fumes in the alchemical workshop. Alchemical notebooks show that a quick nibble of this kind was advised when alchemists felt faint and queasy in front of their furnaces. Of course, they'd still get mercury poisoning and other nasty experimentally transmitted diseases, but I say, a bit of bread and butter has never hurt anyone. Except when the bread is bad (Wonder Bread, anyone?). But that is a matter for another blog post.

Mysteriously soothing novels

Suppose you had an ill-advised mug of cheap gunpowder tea, or were too passionate about that mercury-copper alloy, and now need some time to recover and a hug? I recommend Martha Grimes' mystery novels to sweeten the convalescence period. These little masterpieces of entertainment feature inspector Richard Jury, reluctant Lord Melrose Plant, London, and the English countryside. Although (or perhaps because) written by an American master of the genre, this series is so English that you'll rush to make cucumber sandwiches after reading the first few pages, washed down with pots of tea-cum-milk and co-read by a cat on your shoulder. Each novel is named after a pub; each one sees lovable characters sitting in pubs doing the crossword, cream teas, red phone boxes and buses, and anything else you imagine when thinking 'England circa nineteen-oh-fairytale'. True, they become darker as the series continues. True also, if one is not in the mood for escapism mixed with grisly crime, this experiment could go wrong. But much like a lapsang souchong, or a strawberry-vanilla flavoured black tea, there is a time when Martha Grimes wants to entertain you, and you are oh, so ready to sink into the arms of your favourite character...

Crackle-Scrape-Boink: Sound Recipes

2010-06-05T22:08:00.003+01:00

Food writing is the new novelising: everyone thinks they've got a food book/blog inside them (oops... um, moving on swiftly...). You really cannot swing a dead pan without hitting the umpteenth variation of spaghetti carbonara in a glossy yet uninspired foody publication. No wonder Oxfam bookshops are awash with tepid foodery. But every once in a while there is a book which is enjoyable for its knowledge about food, its creativity with ingredients and its way with words. Among them is Jeremy Round's The Independent Cook, which inspired today's blog post.

In his seasonal recipes for May, Round finishes off his 'Spinach with Eggs' (perhaps best described as an English take on huevos rancheros) with the instruction:

To serve, hot or warm, scrape up each egg with its spinach base to plonk on the plates in a single wodge.

Apart from inducing a smile (sans spinach teeth), this sentence makes me want to pick up my favourite spatula and make the dish, just to hear onomatopoeia and food noises join forces in the kitchen. Scrape! Plonk! Wodge! Kapow!

(From Robert Sabuda's America the Beautiful)

On a recent trip to the USA I could not help but muse about the distinct soundscapes of different national cuisines. There is the crisp crunch of a proper French baguette; the satisfying slow globbing of Italian pasta sauce; the sizzle of American Barbeque; the dry squish of a German dumpling; and I could go on! But have you ever noticed that the same dishes, when wonkily prepared, not only dissatisfy because they taste funny, but also because they do not sound the same? And even if Heston Blumenthal's sound experiments (cue microphone near mouth that turns a crunchy carrot into an earsplitting snack) seem a bit over-the-top to many of us, can you deny that your mouth starts watering when you think of the delicious snap of a newly opened chocolate bar?

I was going to write more, about the sounds of alchemical laboratories. But I get distracted by my slurping, smacking lips and 'aaaaaaah!' sigh that accompany the consumption of an iced coffee. I wonder if I could rustle up some chewy-yet-crispy biscuit to go with it...

For Good Measure

2010-05-23T12:44:00.005+01:00

My measuring methods for cooking follow the "pi by thumb" rule, as the Germans call it: a phrase that conjures up the image of holding up one's thumb to the ingredient to be measured, slowly winking with one eye and intently staring at the measuranda with the other, followed by a shrugging of the shoulders and dumping of said ingredient into the communal bowl, shared by the other ingredients who already huddle together, content that they are in good hands and everything will turn out fine. Funnily enough, it usually does. And the fact that this laissez-faire (fancy French for "that'll do") attitude does not translate into sewing came at the price of a cheap length of calico - but that is a topic for another post.

The reason why I, a lover of order and perpetual exposer of the self to new experiences (in the hope of mastering them perfectly in an unrealistically short period of time) embrace both attention to detail and creative chaos in the kitchen is probably a result of my literary exploits: I often read alchemical manuscripts which are roughly 500 years old. Alchemy is, in fact, the story of the triumph of skill in the face of seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties: just how do you measure temperature pre-thermometer? Even if you knew to which degree to heat up your mixture of minerals and metals, how would you achieve that on a furnace, basically a barely contained open fire? And while we're at it: scales, regulated measurements and quality control of organic materials were not in place in the alchemists' heyday, neither were "Ye Olde Alchemy Shoppes" which would provide tried and tested alchemical equipment. Looks like alchemists had no other chance than winging it...

But alchemists had skill, a tool that is worth much more than a calibrated thumb or a high-tech oven. Alchemists found ways to make their recipes work, and to describe their experiences in their recipes. Heat, for instance, could be regulated by controlling the air that could get into the furnace, and by lowering or lifting a crucible to the point where the fire heated it to perfection. Alchemists often used feathers or other combustible materials, held at the hight of the pot in question, to figure this out: if the feather singed, the fire was too hot for a delicate mixture; if it did not burn to a puff of smoke within the wink of an eye, it was not potent enough to break down metals. Crude? Perhaps - but it worked. As for measurements, I have not come across many thumbs in alchemical manuscripts, but certainly some sticks: placing a stick into a pot of powder or liquid and marking the level of the same makes it possible to measure out the same amount next time round - the equivalent to measuring cups that are so popular in American kitchens today.

Of course, any measurement still involves opening a can of worms on the side. Hot, almost feather-burning debates have been occupying bakers' minds while their hands are wrist deep in dough: is measuring by volume, with abovementioned measuring cups, all right, or does any self-respecting home baker need scales to measure by weight? Culinary chemists have figured out what happens on a molecular level when ingredients vary in their proportions. But like alchemists, many cooks develop skill as they cook (and burn) food over the years, the skill to measure weight, volume and time, even without scales, cups or a stopwatch; and the skill to rescue mishaps, or feed the cat with homemade charcoal.

If you would like to catch up on your theory before plunging into the kitchen of uncertainty, Julian Barnes's The Pedant in the Kitchen is a wonderful collection of witty essays around the perils and joys of cooking. Here, he puts his finger on the issue of measuring, or to be precise, the correct application of recipes to the home kitchen:

For recipe writers, onions come in only three sizes, 'small', 'medium' and 'large', whereas onions in your shopping bag vary from the size of a shallot to that of a curling stone. So an instruction such as 'Take two medium onions' sets off a lot of pedantic scrabbling in the onion basket for bulbs that fit the description (obviously, since medium is a comparative term, you have to compare across the whole spectrum of onions you possess).

On this note, I say, so what if there's a bit more onion in one batch of your onion bhaji? Like alchemists, we can only find out by trial and error if we've got a knack - and possibly create an elixir of life or dish of deliciousness in the future, without relying on the pragmatic prose of writers of cookbooks.

Today's dish is a salad I enjoyed at a wonderful restaurant in Inverness, the Cafe 1. I am recreating this from memory, and not doing as good a job as their chefs, who are alchemists extraordinaire when it comes to creating transformative experiences in food. You know how to make a salad (I hope), so without further ado, here are the ingredients for you to throw together.

Pomegranate & Halloumi Salad

crisp lettuce leaves
some shaved fresh fennel
slices of halloumi, grilled
a scattering of fresh pomegranate seeds
dressing: creme fraiche with lime juice and spices

Bon appetit!

Alchemical Desserts

2010-05-16T15:33:00.001+01:00

Alchemy, and let's just get this out of the way, was a marvellous science of its time. Alchemists plunged into the world of cooking up a storm in a retort, discovered quite a few things along the way (including the properties of alcohol and the art of dyeing), and showed a determination in the face of failure that can only be admired. Their goal, to understand how nature works to transform metals in the earth and make bags of bones and blood, the human body, function, still drives many a young child to become a scientist today.

Before you scoff at the lead-into-gold thing: it's been done. With particle accelerators, just a couple of years ago. Admittedly the cost was higher than the reward, but the feeling of living an ancient dream? Priceless!

Still sceptical? Let me ask you: do you think science can find a cure for cancer? Are you sure? And if you have a smidgeon of a doubt - should all cancer research be stopped right now? You see, alchemists had no reason to believe that it was not possible to transmute lead into gold. And that's what makes them not the figures of ridicule they became in centuries after their heyday, but rather people who are curiosity and tenacity personified.

These days, 'alchemy' is an overused and fuzzy concept appearing in the titles of businessmen's self-help books and in the culinary area. But at the risk of flogging a dead tofu: I still marvel at things that happen to ingredients when mixed together and heated up in processes that are handed down from generation to generation. There really are many parallels between alchemy and cooking, starting with the use of recipes and ending with the unpredictability of the outcome, especially for the apprentice alchemical/culinary whiz.

Today's recipe stands for all those things that you cannot even imagine working when seeing the recipe. Lead into gold? Bah, humbug! Pumpernickel in a pudding? Blech, pass the humbugs, please. But trust me, this recipe transforms a few simple ingredients into something more yummy than its parts.

This dessert appears to be of Westphalian origin (hence the pumpernickel), and is perfect for a cold spring like this year's: substantial, with the promise of summer and a hint of decadence. Like many concoctions of mine, this is even better the day after the preparation. In the true alchemical spirit, why not make two portions and test this theory for yourself?

Black Forest Mess

(aka Westfaelische Herrenspeise)

500g quark*

1 cup single cream

a little sugar

lemon to taste (optional)

500g sour cherries in a glass**

a dash of Kirsch or other spirit of your choice (optional)

100g milk chocolate***

100g pumpernickel****

-----

1. Whip the cream and stir it together with the quark, a dash of lemon and sugar to taste (see ** below).

2. Drain the cherries, and if the spirit takes you, marinate them in the tipple for a little while.

3. Crumble the pumpernickel into small crumbs, grate the chocolate with a knife and mix it under.

4. Assemble: layer quark, cherries and crumby chocolate in glasses or a large bowl, finishing with the quark. For serving, grate a little more chocolate and place, of course, a cherry on top.

Lecker!

_______________________________

* Quark is a milk product, a pre-stage in the cheese making process. In emergencies it can be replaced with non-fat Greek yoghurt (the good, expensive stuff)

** Really sour cherries are best. If you can only get cherries in syrup, reduce the sugar in the quark mass

*** This has to be good stuff, with 35-40% cocoa (not more, not less). I recommend Ritter Sport or Green&Black's

**** This is an unnegotiable. It has to be packaged pumpernickel, not dark bread. It is available in the UK and the US, though you might need to look carefully before spotting it

Apple And The Pips

2010-05-06T21:01:00.033+01:00

Recently, while travelling to cake land (aka bread heaven) and back, dodging volcanic ash and convincing my mum of my baking skills, I inadvertently entered a parallel universe. One where cakes are secrets and apples do magic.

Item 1: the curious incident of the forbidden photo

I have been travelling internationally for too long as not to appreciate airport food that makes my heart and tongue go ‘wheee!’. Some German airports (dreary, clinical affairs with high security like anywhere else in the world) have a little oasis in the form of Moevenpick cafes: latte macchiato, fruit tartlets, proper sandwiches (crusty bread and aromatic cheese), freshly pressed fruit juice… you hanker for it, they have it.

Generous being that I am, I wanted to share the visual wow with my faithful blog readers, hence pointed my camera and clicked – only to be told off by staff – twice in different cafes! I could not help but ask for the reason. You guess: was it

   a) an airport security measure;

   b) the protection of trademark cake concepts; or

   c) the rule that photos of employees
   must not be circulated without their permission?

Leave a comment. He/she who is the first to guess correctly wins.

Item 2: The book

Apples and their pips feature in a wonderful book which, alas, is not yet available in English translation: Katharina Hagena’s Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen. In fact, I wonder whether it is possible to translate it. Sure, you’d get the plot: twenty-something librarian inherits her grandmother’s house in northern Germany and tells her family’s history, in all its mundane and wonderful parts, while reminiscing about a tragedy that hit her cousin when they were both teenagers. You would also pick up on the suspense, seeing as the circumstances of each character’s fate and background are only revealed as the present-day plot (involving a steamy love affair) move along. But what you might miss out on reading this in any other language than the German original, or indeed if you do not know Germany, is the acute, almost invasive observation of the sensations that come and go with the seasons, the consummation of food and the flavours of individual lives. The title of the book, ‘the taste of apple pips’, captures the bitter, or rather indescribable, unique taste of hidden things. Go, learn German, read the book!

Item 3: The Cake (aka Ther Cake, as in Winnie Ther Pooh)

This cake, the piece de yum at a recent brunch of mine, combines apples and cakes. I nicked the recipe from Food52, but customised it (less sweet, more bite). It is absolute perfection. Try it if you don’t believe me!

Apple meringue cake

Preheat oven to 170C/350F/gas mark 3.5, and prepare a round tin (26cm diameter) or an equivalent square-ish one (do the math, as they say).

2 large egg whites
1/2 cup brown sugar Make a meringue mass and set aside.

1/2 cup unsalted soft butter
3/4 cup brown sugar mix together, whisking like mad, then add
2 egg yolks.
Now stir together the dry ingredients:
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves and add them together with
2 large, grated apples into the sugar-butter. Finally stir in

1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts
1/3 cup raisins

Put all of this into the tin, then pour the meringue mass on top and bake the whole thing for ca. 45 minutes. If the meringue goes dark too soon, cover with some parchment paper or foil, so it can bake to perfection without being scorched.

Ain't that heaven on a cake fork?

Sheepish Saturdays

2010-04-24T12:21:00.008+01:00

I live in a flat where everything, from the most basic porridge to the finest homemade four-course extravanganza, frequently but sporadically comes with a generous sprinkling of no, not love, but cat hair. Mind you, I do add a whole lot of love, too, and I love the little nipper who is sharing her hair so generously: but the split second when you realise that you have feline coiffe on your tongue, that cough that you stop immediately because it is just too eery, like coughing up a hair ball, so you swallow and feel a bit queasy and the dire need for another beverage, make it a strong one... it does make you wonder whether animals and food really go together. I never thought I'd have to contemplate this thought, given that I am a vegetarian.

The question of compatibility is less dicey in the case of animals and crime: cue Akif Pirincci's famous Felidae series with its boisterous tomcat detective (which I will resist from discussing, not least because I have not read it), and the delightful Glennkill (English title: Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story), by Leonie Swann. (Is animal sleuthing a German thing? Better not ask...).

George Glenn, shepherd in the Irish village Glennkill, is dead, cruelly stabbed through the chest with a spade. You'd think he'd see it coming, living in a place with such an unfortunate yet apt name, but he was too drunk to notice, living life on the edge (of his flock), and now his sheep face either a merger with a particular unpleasant neighbouring flock or an unmentionable trip in a lorry, ending in, um, food. There's Cloud, the woolly one; Miss Maple, the wisest of the sheep; Heather, a lamb who cannot forget what the shepherd did to her tail after she was born and is therefore not so sorry that he's dead; Othello, the black sheep; and a clover connoisseur who fancies himself a philosopher, too. The sheep decide to find the murderer: think stealthy tip-hoofing into the village, balancing on top of each other to peek through windows, and pretend-grazing to overhear conversations. This book may not be the best ever written, nor is it a classic. But it is good fun. The perfect read for a trip, whether to Ireland or not; and for meals featuring cat hair and feline company.

Glennkill/Three Bags Full at Amazon

Felidae at Amazon

Feta tarte

Talking about sheep: this is my version of tarte flambee, featuring tomatoes and feta. It's like a pizza with shortcrust pastry instead of a bready base. Nom, nom.

Make a savoury shortcrust pastry out of the following ingredients:

1 cup flour (all wholemeal, or mixed with some plain)
1/4 cup butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp smoked paprika powder
some cold water

Chill in the fridge, and in the meantime, make a thick sauce out of

diced onion
garlic
a little olive oil to fry the same in
fresh and/or tinned tomatoes
pickled green pepper

...and anything else that looks good in the fridge: peppers are a good addition; mushrooms work too, though I'd add them raw rather than frying them with the onion.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry, making sure the shape of the resulting thin base represents your mood. If you feel OCD, by all means, make it round/square and smooth around the edges; but I prefer a blob similar to the woolly torso of a sheep.

Distribute the sauce on top, then sprinkle with

feta to your taste

Bake at medium heat (whatever that is on your oven) until the aromas waft through your kitchen and your cat starts drooling. Cat hair on top optional. Serve with a glass of red and some salad.

* * *

Note: you may be wondering about my haphazard approach to cooking - most of the time I don't even measure, but more on that in another post. These recipes are for experienced everyday cooks who do not need to know how big the onion is to be diced, or how many grams of cheese go on top. The point is experimentation (more on alchemy in yet another post): go ahead, make onion rings instead of cubes; put mustard powder into the base; add some cat hair! This recipe is very forgiving. Guten Appetit!

Of Detectives and Comfort Cake

2010-04-18T14:05:00.002+01:00

Have you ever noticed that food features a lot in children's books? Literary theory has it that these scrumptious picnics, midnight feasts and other culinary excesses are like scenes (of, ahem, a different nature) that make adults go 'yum' when they read their novels.

This somewhat-baked theory came to mind when I was recently reminded of Erich Kaestner's novels for children, which had ten-year-old me galloping along with boys and girls around my grandparents' Berlin while I was really tucking into a piece of Sunday cake (an appropriate action of gobbling, as you will soon see).

Picture the scene: it is some time in the 1920s, and provincial but feisty boy Emil boards a train to Berlin. His father is dead and his mother a self-employed hairdresser, so that Emil has the important task to deliver some money to his grandmother in Berlin - money he guards with much care, checking every so often that it is still pinned to his jacket's pocket. But when he wakes up from a brief nap, his money is gone, and he has a suspicion whodunnit.

The remainder of the book parades a very distinctive post-WWI Berlin, introduces the merits of having a telephone for detective work, and creates a mob of children detectives who eventually force the guilty thief into the hands of the police in a rather satisfying manner: imagine rounding up all your friends to drive those who harm you into a corner! Honking a horn!

Finally, Emil meets the book's author, Kaestner, who appears in the character of a journalist interested in Emil's story. And before they go off writing it out, they go celebrating with cake and whipped cream. Cake, detectives, and a classic tale: who could ask for anything more?

Oh, yes, cake: here's the recipe for a classic. It is also the first cake I made on my own, age ca. 6. If you do not have a child at hand to do the baking or to lick the bowl, you will enjoy this all the same (licking allowed).

German Marble Cake

This cake is a lighter version of pound cake. It keeps well, can be frozen, and can be customised with a dash of rum, raisins, almonds or other ingredients added to the basic dough. But why mess with something perfect?

Ingredients

200g butter (yes, butter - margarine is vile!)

100g sugar

4 eggs

some vanilla (from a pod if available)

some cinnamon

250g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

some milk

---

ca. 3 tbsp cocoa (the raw stuff, best if not Dutch processed)

a little milk

Cream together butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time and scrape in the vanilla and cinnamon to taste. Add the flour (mixed with the baking powder) gradually, perhaps adding a splash of milk as you go along, until you have a thick, creamy dough.

Put 2/3 of this into a cake tin.

Add the cocoa and a little more milk to the remainder of the dough, whisking madly until fully combined, then distribute evenly on top of the light dough.

Now take a fork and dip it horizontally into the cake, and move it along the form in a wide spiral, thus swirling the dark and the light dough around each other once. Lick the bowl.

Bake the cake in an oven at medium heat (ca. 180C/gas mark 4 - but you know your oven better than I do) for ca. 1 hour.

Let cool a little, place onto cake stand, cut, marvel, take a piece and a cup of freshly brewed coffee, take a book, go to your room, close the door, and dive into a different world!

A Day In Spring

2010-04-11T17:50:00.001+01:00

"There are too many blogs. So does the world need yet another one?" I kept asking myself before taking fingers to keypad and starting this latest experiment of mine. But then I realised that thoughts are funny, unruly little creatures: they whirl around in your head, screaming to be let out and get a spin around someone else's brain. So on this present, fine day in spring I took heart, and here we are.

A Pinch of Arsenic in a nutshell

Who? Paracelsa, a historian of alchemy with a penchant for mystery novels, cooking and writing

Why? Because I feel like it - no hidden agenda

When? Whenever the spirit takes me

What? Posts about all my favourite things, and other thoughts that want out

For whom? Anyone who enjoys reading this

Famous first words? Welcome!

Cheesy? Perhaps, but I am only just starting...