Mackerel – don’t overcook

However, I have a pleasanter fishy thing to blog about – mackerel. Among the cheapest of fish it is also a favourite for me and, I think, at its best prepared very simply. Those who follow this blog will know that I like cooking classic French cuisine, often a very complex and long-winded preparation, but for mackerel simple is super. So I thought I would share the way I do it, our meal last night, with you.

Too big for our 10 inch dinner plates, this fish takes about 14 minutes to cook. Very important not to overcook.

I have mentioned before that I am fortunate in having very good fish close at hand – in Leeds Kirkgate market where Marks & Spencer was born. Of course they would be even better straight from the sea and every time I eat them I remember childhood holidays in the Yorkshire east coast resort of Bridlington, getting up very early in the morning to go out on a small boat, line fishing, and returning with the boat full of mackerel just as most other holiday-makers were getting up.

The fish we had last night were large – way too big for the 25cm (10inch) dinner plate you see in the picture. We’re gluttons so had one each, but the only accompaniment was some crusty wholemeal bread.

As with pretty well all fish the only difficulty is making sure you don’t overcook them. At the size shown they take about 7 minutes a side under a hot grill (on a good summer day I’d do them over charcoal outside but this is a bit more difficult as you need more than usual separation between the coals and the fish, otherwise the outside can be overcooked before the inside is done). The meat close to the backbone should only just be cooked, still very moist and juicy and slightly pink.

I prefer the head left on but it can be removed for the squeamish. Make deep slashes, but not cutting right through, on each side of the fish. This helps them cook evenly. Rub the fish with oil then squeeze ‘French mustard’ (I use the best – Dijon) in each slash. No other seasoning at all; if you like things salty this can be added while eating but personally I prefer them without. Then under (or over) the grill, turning half way through. That’s it!

Gravlax, Scottish smoked wild salmon, monkfish tails or turbot – all wonderful – but none of them beat the taste of this simply prepared mackerel for me.

Birthday treats

So yesterday was my birthday – don’t ask how old but it’s very. I got some real treats.

First, a lovely Romanian lady found the one post I did manage to make a few days ago and followed this blog, so of course I went to hers. A wonderful site mainly devoted to Romanian food. She writes in Romanian but also in very good English. The title, amintiridinbucatarie (‘Memories of the kitchen’), is a clever play on the title of a very famous book by the Hans Christian Andersen of Romania, Ion Creanga, called ‘Memories of childhood’.

A ‘liker’ in this Romanian blog took me to my second treat – a young lady in Canada, of Romanian descent, who blogs not only on food but on my second passion too – photography. She provided the basic recipe for today’s evening meal but also, praising her father’s photography, took me to his blog, so I’ve signed up to that as a third birthday treat. I will not reproduce her recipe here , just click that link to find it, but I made one or two minor modifications which are noted below.

My modifications

1. I did think of eliminating the ‘g’ from the oil, making it rapeseed oil (from Yorkshire) but decided to go for the authentic Romanian – sunflower – instead.

2. I had some genuine homemade sausage in the freezer – made by my mother-in-law and smoked by my father-in-law in Romania, so I used these (we usually put them with another Moldovan staple – beans – which I adore). We also make both potato and bean casserole with smoked ribs of pork, or bacon ribs.

3. It doesn’t apply to the whole of Romania but in Moldova, in the north and east of the country, where my Romanian persona was raised, a dish without dill is almost unthinkable, so a generous handful of chopped dill went in a couple of minutes before serving.

100+ followers

My other treat? I saw that the number of my followers had just passed 100. I know that’s small beer compared with many but it’s a great thrill to me, especially as my blog doesn’t meet the rule of four Us: I think it is usually ‘Unique’, and often ‘Useful’, especially when about food; but this blog is certainly not ‘Ultra specific’ – intentionally so – nor ‘Urgent’. Nor does it follow WordPress’s constant urging to post every day (from my observations bloggers who do that rarely manage to keep a high standard).

PS. Why no picture? The aroma from the ‘ceaun’ (Romanian pot) so excited my wife when she came in after her day of teaching she couldn’t wait to get it on the table, so I forgot to take the picture until after it had been eaten!

The only problem with the place is the difficulty of making a choice from the multitude of delicious tarts and tortes. On my recent weekend trip to Germany, for my grandchildren’s birthdays, I chose gooseberry and meringue tart – delicious. They have great coffee and a wide choice of teas too, but this time I chose a refreshing glass of Sekt.

Gooseberry and meringue tart with a glass of Sekt

“I’ll have that one”

Being a girl, I chose the pink one

The charming little town of Kempen – a model of it that is, to be found in the town centre

If you’d like to see some other delights of the area, my grandchildren, you’ll find pictures from their birthday parties, during the same weekend, on my film photo blog - grumpytykepix. If you’re a photographer, you might like to know that the pictures in the Ring cafe above were taken with a classic Olympus OM20 camera and Zuiko 28mm f/2.8 lens, on Fuji Superia 200 film. The model of the town was shot with a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, also loaded with Superia 200.

This is the first post I’ve been able to make on this blog for quite a time. Worse, I’ve got scores of email notifications of new posts from those I follow yet to read. I’ll catch up, eventually.

What has this lovely lady to do with disaster at Dusseldorf? – Read on

This is usually a very quick, easy (and low cost) journey thanks to Jet2.com as my grandchildren live only 20 minutes from Dusseldorf and I live even closer to Leeds/Bradford.

The security personnel at the German airport decided to have a 24 hour strike. We were warned to be there at least two hours before our flight was due to board. I took heed.

If anyone suggests to me again that the Germans are masters of organisation they will get a very rude retort. This usually efficient, pleasant, modern airport descended into complete chaos and the most obvious measures – like getting passengers to sit comfortably and call the flights in order – did not happen. I stood in a queue for 2.1/2 hours but even after that I would not have got on the plane had I not used some subterfuge. I was one of only seven passengers who made it on to the plane, despite delaying the take-off till a minute before the airport closed (yes, this major German airport closes at night!); over 50 were left behind.

“I’m going to Istanbul!”

The subterfuge? I noticed that passengers for Turkey were being escorted through (there are a lot of Turks who work in Germany – at the airport too?). So I said I was going to Istanbul and in I went!

Then wonderful things began to happen. At the boarding gate I began to chat to a fellow passenger – clearly not British but speaking English extremely well. However, on the plane I saw that she was anxious to study a music manuscript so I left her alone. But as we arrived at Leeds/Bradford we began to chat again and I mentioned that I was lucky as I lived close by, and hopefully the buses would be running. She said she was being picked up by a friend, asked me the name of the place where I lived, and promptly telephoned her friend and asked whether I could be dropped off there. I was taken to my door.

In the car, remembering the music manuscript, I asked her what instrument she played. “The human voice”, she said. “And what is your name, so I can look out for your singing?”, I asked. “Helen Lepalaan”, she replied.

Now Helen Lepalaan (pictured above) is a wonderful Estonian mezzo soprano, and it turned out she was coming to sing with Opera North, in a production of Mozart’s ‘La clemenza di Tito’, a work of which I was unaware though I’ve been going to the opera for about 65 years. There were only two performances left in the season – the nearest in Manchester but I could not make that, the final one in Nottingham. So I determined to go.

Tito

I was not prepared for ‘La clemenza di Tito’. A stupendous production which belied what seemed at first to be a sparsely simple set with equally understated costumes. Without exaggeration, I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish, as gripped as in any episode of Spooks (a UK television ‘spy’ series). David Cameron would do well to watch it attentively. I can tell you it was the most exciting experience of opera since I saw Aida in Verona, elephants and all, or my first opera ever – Carmen with the Carl Rosa company, in Bradford over 60 years ago.

I’ve come to expect excellent voices from Opera North. It wasn’t always so. When I first began to go to their performances in the late 1970s I was often disappointed; I was used to the likes of Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland and of course Maria Callas on my vinyl discs at home. I usually found the men even less satisfying – but with discs of recordings from Tito Gobbi to Robert Merrill and Jussi Bjoerling, and of course Pavarotti, at home that wasn’t surprising.

No such reservations now. The singing was superb and it was an odd satisfaction that the tenor Paul Nilon (Tito) is a fellow tyke; he comes from Keighley, a few miles from where I live now and where I went to school.

Sesto – the man that Helen becomes so convincingly, even to me

But I came to Nottingham to hear Helen Lepalaan. I had listened to a short clip of her singing on YouTube so her beautiful voice was no surprise; what was a surprise was her acting. Cast in the role of a man, despite the ‘affinity’ I felt I had with her having met her off stage, she just became Sesto.

He (she) has two wonderful arias, one in each act. What a pity there’s no recording of the production. I’d be listening to it again and again, especially these two arias.

Of course one of the great roles for a mezzo soprano is Carmen, for which not surprisingly I have a special fondness. Helen has played the principal role and you can hear her singing from it on the following clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyYYeSv0EU

So my disaster in Dusseldorf introduced me to a fascinating opera and a beautiful woman with a divine voice. I could live with that kind of disaster on a regular basis.

Her determination to win the ‘My Destination’ contest has been quite something to follow.

As a former journalist I couldn’t resist her invitation to interview her about it so I sent her some questions and got back the replies below.

Interview with Lesley Carter

Some might say that making ‘Bucket Lists’, especially one as demanding as yours, just puts a lot of unnecessary stress into a person’s life. What’s your response to this?

Creating a bucket list isn’t about stress or worry; it’s about setting goals and having something tangible to look at and achieve. I put a lot of thought into creating a list every year and while it’s extensive, it’s all achievable. It gives me daily encouragement and direction.

You recently moved into what looks to be a superb new house. Do you really want to leave it behind for such a long time to go ‘adventuring’?

We build the house as a haven during the “down time”, but traveling and experiencing new countries, cultures, and adventures is just as much a part of my life as family and friends. Regardless of where I live or how long I live there, I will always want to explore more. There’s too much out there not to.

What advantages do you think that winning this competition will add to your family life?

This competition will open up the world to myself and my family. I will gain first-hand knowledge and experience in countries around the world as well as connections and contacts for my blogging career. Blogging has already given us so much as a family. Darren and I have been able to experience adventures and travels beyond our wildest imaginations and we want to teach Athena that the world is at our doorstep. Rather than learning about ancient history in school, I want to give her an actual look into the past by traveling and exploring. This competition will set the stage for future travel and experiences that she will enjoy for years to come.

What does your husband think about it?

My husband is my biggest supporter and he’s taught me that we can be completely unrealistic with our dreams and goals and still make them happen. We will be apart for a few months at a time during the travel if I win, but he sees it as the opportunity of a lifetime and he’s is just as excited to see me win. We view the world in a similar fashion so he totally gets my desire to see the world.

I think you said that the final stage of the competition was a ‘face off’ with other contestants in the UK. Does it include some potholing in Yorkshire (that really would be an adventure though I’ve never done it myself)? If not, what aspects of this stage of the competition do you think you will enjoy most?

I don’t know what My Destination has in store for us during our week in the UK, but I know that I’m prepared for anything they throw my way. I think I’ll enjoy meeting the judges the most. Everyone that I meet instantly recognizes my passion for travel and for life. It is unmistakable and could be the deciding factor in helping me win The Biggest, Baddest Bucket List contest.

If you do win, do you think it will ‘cure’ your thirst for adventure?

If I lived a thousand years, I would still crave adventure. I’m addicted. Life is worth living! One of my favorite authors wrote, “The true value of time is that you’ve got to make your decisions in each day count, otherwise you could live forever and it won’t make much difference.” I can only hope that each day for the rest of my life will include adventure.

Good Luck Lesley!

The Romanians are almost uniquely able to have a joke on themselves and, being far better generally educated than the majority of people coming out of UK schools, are able to do it with a wit and substance sadly lacking in much of what we see from British commentators. I just love the poster campaign launched by the Romanian paper Gandul (‘The Thought?) in response to that from the Guardian. The posters are in English so English speakers can understand them even if the accompanying text is in Romanian.

http://www.gandul.info/news/why-don-t-you-come-over-raspunsul-gandul-la-campania-britanica-nu-veniti-in-anglia-update-10528548

So here are some of the Romanian poster words, each of which has a postscript “Why don’t you come over. We may not like Britain but you’ll love Romania”. There are many more gems.

Your weekly rent covers a month here – pub nights included

Our Tube was not designed with sardines in mind – sorry sardines

Our newspapers are hacking celebrities’ privacy, not people’s phones

Our air traffic controllers have seen snow before. They were unimpressed

We don’t have a congestion charge here. We believe congestions are punishment enough.

Our draft beer is less expensive than your bottled water.

And my favourite – almost absolutely true:

Half our women look like Kate. The other half, like her sister.

Most of my followers will know I have a serious love affair with Romania and Romanians and the majority of Romanians coming here so far are very well educated, hard-working and an enormous benefit to our society. But this doesn’t mean my eyes are closed to the problems: corruption is endemic (but worse in Bulgaria) and certainly a large number of Romanians coming here have come to commit crime and will do so in the future (the Romanians would say that they are not Romanians, but gypsies, and while I cannot support this racist statement there is an underlying truth).

So, much as I love Romanians and their country, the concern about freely opening the door to them is well-founded.

But it will be great for Britain to have a boost to the population of people who can actually speak English!

But I don’t think bloggers contemplating this move realise that even when the new site works it is so much more complicated for people to ‘like’, follow and comment.

Another blog I enjoy following has also gone to WordPress.org but at least she has left the original site operational but says this is only temporary. If she does close down the original site I will be very sorry as I will not be able to comment (of course I am able to do it but will not go through the extra hassle).

Another blog I wanted to follow was set up originally on WordPress.org (for those who don’t know this means that it is not on the WordPress server) so I cannot follow it. I’m suggesting to this person they set up a WordPress.com blog even if their main site is on their own domain.

I understand very well the reasons for having a commercial site hosted elsewhere than WordPress.com, but I think it is a disaster for the kind of ‘friendly’ blogs which I like to follow.

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/educators-on-wordpress/

The special ‘Allstars’ project room at industrial High School No.1, Burdujeni, Suceava, Romania, from which we did internet teaching projects using first one, later (here) two, ‘obsolete’ laptops. This is ‘Allstar’ Daniela with me, 1994

I think I might have been a bit of a pioneer in this field; the teachers in UK, Canada and USA with whom I did the projects in 1993/94 certainly were. Oddly enough, I had referred briefly to my email projects for teaching English only a few days ago when I did a post about how I became an English teacher in Romania.

For most of the projects we used a single obsolete lap-top on which the children took turns; it had been discarded by some Arizona school; later I got a second. There was no Windows available to us (though it had been launched about 10 years previously); we used MS-Dos and saved our work on ‘floppy discs’. We supplemented the emails with airmailed communications and exchanged photographic prints. The slide show below, click on any picture to see it, tells some of the story.

The ‘Allstars’ as they chose to call themselves, from class 9s (‘gymnasium’ or middle school) in the industrial school no.1 in Burdujei, Suceava, did projects with schools in Liverpool, Canada and Northumberland on histories of their respective countries and other subjects; the much younger Bunnies, a special needs class in school no.11 in Suceava, did a project with special needs children from the ‘Jim Allen’ elementary school in Pensacola, Florida, on their respective towns.

Both these groups of Suceava children were not expected to achieve very much by the Romanian system. However, the head teacher at School no1 was very supportive, even giving the group its own small project room (top picture). The head teacher of school no.11 told me at the beginning I was wasting my time with the special needs children. He was gracious enough at the end of the year to admit that he had been wrong, when they invited him to a year end exhibition of their project. Their teacher, Vasilica, never had any doubt; she had no special needs training, no special needs resources; she taught them with love alone.

The Leo Club of Suceava Burdujeni

The Allstars went on to form a Leo Club, despite their parents’ objection to them doing any voluntary work (this came from the enforced unpaid labour as ‘Pioneers’ under the Communist system) and, among other activities, they worked with special needs kids in the orphanages; some of them eventually took some of the 30 available places at one of the two top high schools – the leading school for humanities and languages – in Suceava, something no-one would have believed they were able to do. There was already a Lions Club in Suceava, instigated by a French Lions Club soon after the revolution.

Working with the Allstars and Bunnies and many other Romanian children was probably the most enjoyable and satisfying part of my time in Romania, if not in the whole of my life.

That year, or the year before, I presented two or three papers on the use of internet for teaching English as a foreign language at a conference which had physical audiences at centres in the USA and Mexico but contributors from around the world via internet. I had to go 600km to the capital, Bucharest, to find the facilities to take part, which I did in the middle of the night in Romania. The papers were eventually published in the conference proceedings; I’m hoping those will turn up in my ‘store’ in Romania.

I worked in one school which had a more ‘modern’ computer network and I think the operating system was Linux; if I remember correctly we emailed using a program called Pine. I think I first saw Windows in about 1996, when I began to teach English in the computer studies high school in Iasi, though I didn’t do the email projects there; I taught the curriculum more conventionally.

Two students on the week long course I did at the University of Bratislava, Slovakia, on using computers and doing internet projects for teaching English

The work with computers and internet projects not only took me all over Romania, showing teachers and pupils how to use computers and how to do such projects, I was even lucky enough to go to Slovakia for a week and do similar things with students as the University of Bratislava. What a lovely town!

Old battered films

Although most of my photographs taken in Romania seem to have been left there – prints, negatives and slides – as I cannot find them here, a few weeks ago I finally got around to taking some films which I did bring back from the canisters in which they had been stored for years. I had to leave them under some weight for several weeks to get them flat enough to cut into strips for the scanner, and I cut them a few days ago. I’ve just sorted out some to scan for this post – it’ll take weeks or months to do them all (about 60 35mm films). Unfortunately the pictures I want for here are on three, four or more different films and as I might as well scan them all rather than just the shots I want it’ll take a couple of hours or more (Tuesday 5 Feb: in fact it took all day and more so the intention to post this on Sunday went by the board!).

The films are rather battered and bruised and the colour is way off after their treatment over the past 20 years or so. I hope they are interesting nevertheless as I don’t have time to do any ‘repairs’, though I hope to do so sometime.

Back to cooking and tv

However, after I’ve finished with the films for this post I’ll go and scan a film (black and white) I shot yesterday for my photo blog – while making some bread (we’re out) and getting ready to cook the evening meal – it’s pork chops from a named farm nearby via our excellent local butcher; left to my Romanian wife she’ll cook them Romanian fashion – for at least an hour – rather than the 10 minutes they deserve. Some things can benefit from the long cooking like, strangely enough, runner beans, which become something quite different and eat very well with mamaliga (Romanian corn meal mush or ‘polenta’) when cooked for an hour and a half.

And all this before my Sunday evening tv marathon begins with the news at 6pm (over dinner). Then there’s ‘Country File’, followed by ‘Call the Midwife’ (how good to have a drama with good stories, no violence and where the characters have a vocabulary other than four letter words), and then ‘Ripper Street’, which has enough interest to overlook the sometimes gratuitous violence.

Although I’ve said before that photography and cooking have quite a lot in common (or perhaps because of it), it’s quite difficult to scan films and cook at the same time. Apart from trying to remember to wash my hands before putting on the cotton gloves to handle the film, or remembering to take the scissors to cut the film but the knife to cut the vegetables (for braised red cabbage with Juniper, steamed caulifower and brussel sprouts, and roasted potato wedges) I have a big worry that I’m going to cut off a finger or steam a film!

I’d better get the scanning done soon. It’s creeping up to 6pm and I’ve started on the cook’s obligatory (unless they have a medical condition forbidding it) red wine; although it’s vital for cooking it ain’t so good for scanning. In fact, it’s beginning to look as though the scanning will not finish by 6pm, so this post will not be posted until tomorrow (didn’t make that either).

This blogging ‘lark’ has taken over my life; how the bloggers who post ten times day, especially those who write something rather than just post a picture each time, do it I don’t know. I started this blog to write about my interests but now blogging itself has become an interest and I find myself writing about that.

I’m conscious that I wander about a bit in my posts but no apologies – two of my favourite blogs do this too. Food and Forage Hebrides hides super recipes among all sorts of insights into life on a Hebredian island; My French Heaven tucks anything from Coco Chanel or how to clean silver to long distance sailboat racing in his wonderfully illustrated food blog, though admittedly not usually in the same post.

As far as Facebook is concerned, I have a strong aversion to it – born of my wife’s announcements like “?? says she’s sitting in ?? celebrity restaurant drinking her seventh vodka and ?? (celebrity chef) has just spoken to her” and then shows me a picture of said ?? obviously very drunk in said restaurant. Who cares?

However, for promoting an organisation it’s a different matter so, having recently created a blog for a particular activity of the small charity for which I work, I’ve gone the whole hog and also created a Facebook page and a Twitter account for it. Now I’m getting out a flyer promoting the three communications media to all local libraries, community centres, etc.

The blog is very simple, it is just a weekly update of the activities in our specialised community centre, catering for people with sight loss and additional disabilities, posted every Monday as a reminder for the activities during the following week.

The Facebook page is used to post very short reports of activities with one or two photographs.

As for Twitter, I’ve now got participants in the courses and other activities doing live tweets during the sessions.

There have been some very interesting and helpful posts from WordPress in the past couple of weeks; I was particularly taken by one describing how a magazine, Beatroute, had used the Oxygen theme to make a ‘blog’ version of the magazine.

I’ve been pondering for some time how to distribute ‘electronically’ the quarterly newsletter I produce for the charity for which I work. Sending PDFs isn’t really satisfactory. The ‘blog’ magazine seems the ideal solution though it will be a lot more work than just turning my newsletter InDesign files into PDFs.

It’s worth mentioning that the text here is not in the typeface which is default for the theme. The default text is a seriffed typeface – like this

typeface

 - which can be very difficult for people with sight loss to read. I also bumped the size up a bit and immediately got some ‘thanks’ messages from people who would not be considered to have a ‘visual impairment’.

However, ‘electronic’ communication is often much better for people with sight loss as the computer and other devices can make things much easier, including of course speaking a text. Apple have excelled in this.

bones interred together        warmed

peace       buds in waiting

Early morning view from my sitting room window: the clock tower – about 1/2 mile away – of the once notorious Victorian “lunatic asylum” at Menston, now luxury flats. Over 2,000 bodies of former inmates are buried, together, close by