Mushroom Ragout

Set off a day in your calendar, wake up at five am, and go to the forest, where you'll spend ten to eleven hours gathering about three mushrooms, two of which are rotten and must be thrown away, while you're a little unsure about the edibility of the third. Danish folklore goes like this:

Samler i Skoven du ukendte Svampe

Saa lad først Lillebror smage derpå

Dersom han dør under Skrigen og Krampe

Så bør du selv lade Svampene stå

Og hvis der intet er sket med den Lille?

Ja, så gik den portion svampe til spilde.

which I translate to:

As you gather unfamiliar mushrooms

It is prudent to let your younger brother taste them first

In the event that he passes away gagging and foaming

You will be well advised to avoid that type in the future

But should he click his tongue and ask for seconds?
Then you have wasted no more than a handful of good mushrooms

(yes, I was absent the day they taught rhyming and poetic metrics in school, but you get the gist.)

Anyway, back to the ragout: after you have discarded your gatherings, stop by the Farmer's Market on the way back and buy wild mushrooms and some garden compost there. Unpack the mushrooms in your car, and mix them with the compost. Smear some compost on your hands and face, too. When you come home, triumphantly present them to your family, and be sure to bore your children with stories of how dangerous the foray was, what with wild animals, tasting unfamiliar mushrooms, avoiding crazed Bambi-killers, and raging forest fires. Rinse mushrooms very carefully. Chop the mushrooms with a couple of shallots. (No, with a knife, you dolt. Chop the mushrooms and the shallots with a knife.) Heat a heavy frying pan, and add a couple of tablespoons of butter. Don't be shy about adding butter. Lots of otherwise fine cooking has been lost to humanity when the cook hesitated with the butter. And don't worry: butter isn't fattening anymore like it used to be in the 1990s; it's now very good, in fact indispensable, for a balanced diet. Now add the mushroom and shallots with a little bit of turmeric and chili powder, and stir gently; watch the moisture leak out of the mushrooms as they are fried. Open a bottle of nice white wine. Pour yourself a generous glass. As a rule of thumb, the cook should consume about twice as much as you pour into the mushrooms; in that respect you may think of the mushrooms as your mother-in-law. When the leaking of moisture starts to stall, add the wine with a bit of soy sauce and some pepper. Stir gently. Pour yourself another glass of wine. Now add some coconut milk, and watch the mushrooms absorb back about half the fluids, this may take another 10 to 15 minutes. Hey, add some more butter, too. Scrape a bit of parmesan over it, and serve on whole-wheat toasted bread. At this stage you may have to open another bottle of wine. Spend 20 minutes pulling kids away from computers, and wife away from American Idol.

Enjoy!

California Journal

Gratuitous Digressions or Your Money Back

California 26 June - 5 July, 2008

3 hours delay in Hong Kong did little to endear us to Cathay Pacific, but the girls were amazing and made friends with the other tweens at the gate, and were in fact not a little miffed when we finally boarded. “But we’re playing, Dad!!” We’re honoured and privileged to travel with girls of that caliber.

We right away descended on Ting’s place like so many locusts on Egypt. By way of introduction, Ting is my twin; tragically separated at birth, only to be re-united in 2004 in UBS. Ting left UBS in late 2007 choosing Wisdom over Mammon, and very nice it is, too.

And then we were off! Your investigative team is happy to report a theological break-through on only the second day of our adventure: the answer to the riddle of who created the Creator is apparently: Burma. (Note: another theological subject that was briefly touched upon was the insight of Blaise Pascal leading to his famous wager, but the conclusions are not pertinent to this journal). Ting took us on a delightful trip to a beach teeming with marine life: sea anemones, starfish, crabs, blistering barnacles, and brown pelicans to name but a few.

A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill holds much more than his belly can
He can keep in his beak
Enough food for a week
I’m darned if I know how the Hell ‘e can

But I digress. The trip down required a short hike through a field swarming with platypus. Note, not ‘platypi’. Platypus is Greek, so we can’t use Latin grammar. Incidentally, the guys that named it would have had more plastic rings than cans in their Foster six-packs by the time they got around to thinking of a name for this remarkable animal – did I say remarkable? listen to this: the interface to its visual cortex is, unsurprisingly, the eye. But only when it’s not diving. When diving, the interface switches over to its beak. So through sonar impulses picked up by the beak, its visual cortex creates a 3D image of everything under water while the platypus’ eyes are closed. Nature can be awe-inspiring at times. Where was I? A digression within a digression. Oh yeah, the name. Platypus means flat-foot. Duh. Not only would you think they could come up with something a bit more dignified for this extraordinary animal, but as luck would have it there was already a Platypus. It’s a beetle. In Africa. With flat feet.

But enough with this digression. It was Patricia’s sharp eye for fauna that spotted and categorised them. My money was on a type of squirrel, but I’ll grant the platypus sounds better. Besides, she has young eyes while I use bifocals. We then made our way up to the Wayfarer’s Chapel perched high on a precipice overseeing the Pacific Ocean. The chapel was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, and words fail to describe the beauty of the spot. Well, my words do. A still photo does a far better job:
After the chapel we went for lunch at Redondo Beach where we chanced upon a Scientology recruitment officer performing auditing on a prospective scientologist. Now, a word on Scientology here. People generally have only bad things to say about Scientology, in fact it is banned in some countries in Europe. I think that's unfair. Scientology is a completely logical, reasonable belief system. Apart from the fact that they believe that Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy 75 million years ago brought billions of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them using hydrogen bombs, and that these alien spirits now live through us. The rest is perfectly reasonable. Well, obviously not the bit about "...when people die, they go to a landing station on the planet Venus, where the thetan is re-implanted and told lies about its past life and its next life. The Venusians take the thetan, capsule it, and send it back to Earth to be dumped into the ocean off the coast of California." But other than that I see no reason to view Scientology in a negative light.

And this brings us almost inevitably to the subject of corn. Corn has succeeded in domesticating Americans! Yes, it’s true. Corn is now an ingredient in their sodas, their ice-creams, their bourbon, their nuggets, their french fries, their washing powder, their gasoline, the plastic that wraps their christmas presents, and their dieting books. Corn starch was used in the plastic components on Mars Lander (a pre-research factoid)! And you know what? It really isn't good for them. The supercharged starch is simply too efficient, and their metabolisms can't cope with it. The results are unsurprising. And we thought American sitcoms depicted reality, specifically the reality of near-by Hollywood. So it’s all an illusion? They’re not all beautiful, ironic and worldly? Walking in Disneyland certainly made the whole team feel conspicuously skinny, including the 100-kilo father. Who would have thunk…

The discussion of American nutrition gathered data in this wonderful Google interview with Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We learn among other gems of culinary wisdom that ever since the USDA declared that fat is fattening (which incidentally it isn’t), Americans have added 1.5mio tons of blubber to the weight of the continent (hint: not by population growth, well, not as such), which leads us to the second pre-research factoid of this blog: the Earth’s rotation will be affected! Unless the Americans change their eating habits, Earth will inevitably start spinning faster, leading to shorter days, thereby forcing the banks to pay even less interest on our saving accounts. (Note to self: perhaps I should be a counsellor, not a philosopher. I am usually quite good at forming opinions of other peoples' issues, sometimes just by taking a cursory look at the way they dress, and have often experienced a very gratifying look of relief on peoples' faces when I have concluded my observations.)

Next up was a joyous trip to Universal Studios. Note here how selective memory has already happily erased the moment when Jojo disappeared for 20 minutes sulking because she couldn’t get on the Simpson ride, and Patricia whined and moaned about a 2-dollar cap which was presented as a bargain at 20 dollars after some wit had thought of adding the term ‘Disney Princess’ to the shade.

One must marvel over the Universal Studios business plan which requires 10 junk food outlets and sunglass stands for every amusement ride, but it was not all guff; the Blues Brothers R&B Review live on stage was a nice reminder of how dependent soul music is on the unique musical talent bestowed on white trash from Chicago. (Err, not…)

We had decided to spend $8.49 per day on a GPS system for the car given the complicated freeway system in and around LA – as Ting once put it: “We Drive Therefore We Are” – although perhaps a word on the concept of ‘getting lost’ would be appropriate here: There is no place on this planet where we could get lost – at least not on a holiday. This is a truism. Lost is a state of mind. Enjoy where you are. Live in the present. (sobbing into keyboard now – must break to find Kleenex). But I digress. The GPS woman has been an endless source of amusement – we opted for the patient, conciliatory voice; apparently it is available in a version that heaps abuse when the driver gets it wrong. “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TURN HERE, YOU MISERABLE BABOON! NOW I HAVE TO RECALCULATE! DAMN YOU!” Next I suppose they’ll have an inflatable version pointing the way, which would allow them to drive in the car-pool lane – actually probably not since any competent highway patrol officer would be suspicious seeing a woman giving driving instructions. Yes, it’s always women. Male drivers would feel very self-conscious if they were given driving instructions by another male, and it would more likely than not lead to a fistfight. But there’s a dark side to the GPS system: people follow the instructions like sheep. You don’t have time to question given the heavy traffic on the six-lane highways. And that gave us a sinister, if rather obvious, idea. We could aid corn in its mission for World Domination by playing subliminal texts via the GPS. Or perhaps subliminal is to assume too much of the Americans. Maybe a simple “Drive point five miles and keep right for the next MacDonald,” or “Take next left, drive point two miles, and stop at Taco Bell to buy corn syrup based junk for your kids.” Aye, fascinating opportunities abound.

Mea culpa: In the delightful Balboa Park in San Diego (we gave Ting a deserved break from the Haagens and stayed in Coronado - which is Spanish for Corn Nation by the way. (Warning: third pre-research factoid!) But I digress - how many brackets am I behind? Will hazard one), and while Patricia and Jojo were frolicking in the fountain, I was accosted by two students. "Sir, we're conducting an informal survey for our university; do you have any views on spirituality and religion?" Gulp. As a rule I see no benefit whatsoever in discussing religion. Has anybody ever heard of a religious debate that ended with one party saying, "You know, Larry, when you put it like that I suppose my belief system has been wrong all along. Haha, thanks for clearing that up for me." No, I maintain that the BEST you can expect from a dialogue of that sort is Jack Squat.

But seeing as how the last time anybody actually ASKED MY OPINION was in 1975 when our neighbour's half-witted son asked if bell-bottoms were fashionable in our school (they were), I don't really see how I could have refused. Be that as it may, half an hour later Irene lassoed me and dragged me away still rambling leaving two dazed college students whose eyes by then had grown to the size of teacups. And I was just getting into my stride. I suppose they learned a valuable lesson about risk. Naturally they thought approaching a white boy in San Diego they would get their beliefs confirmed, which was obviously all they wanted. (Note to self: is this rambling, or a digression?)

And now it's the Fourth of July. We signed up for a Whale Watching tour, but were informed in the last minute that it had been cancelled; fourth pre-research factoid: locals had complained that the whales were Illegal Immigrants, and that they were stealing jobs from true-blooded Americans. To help myself as much as anybody else I have compiled a couple of images which I hope you'll find instructive in distinguishing between Americans and Whales:

Note how Man spends considerable sums on designer clothes and accessories, and keeps his beard nicely trimmed. I would venture he also keeps three shelves full of dieting books, and that he'll eat three times what he needs if it has a label saying "Low Trans-Fats" or whatever is the latest fad.

BUT - we were badly wrong. For the locals in Newport Beach were nothing like whales. Ting speculated the local sheriff would round up overweight people on sight, take them to the county border and shoot them like dogs. Because it turns out after money management, the biggest business in Newport Beach is "Aesthetic Medical Services". Which Ting and I with our sensitive bullshit antennaes concluded meant boob-jobs and botox treatments. I myself found opportunity to study the technical qualities of the local surgeons' handiwork, and have to confess I was very impressed. From a purely aesthetic point of view you'll understand.

As compensation for the missing whale-watching trip we took out a gondola and enjoyed a serene ride around the canals where the parties had been going on in the gardens and on the roof terraces for most of the day already. A sublime Italian dinner at Villa Nova was a fitting end to a wonderful holiday.

And so it ended. We're back at the boat enjoying Mercy's frikadeller which is probably just as well, since my pre-research factoid quota is expended.

Difficult Working Conditions For Ancient Artists Justify Exorbitant Prices

This bronze statue vividly illustrates the difficulty experienced by the arts before the invention of photography. It was not unusual for models to have to spend several days in the same position, and more often than not the artist was trying to achieve an artistic effect very much in demand at the time, meaning the model had to pose mostly naked.

We can easily imagine the conversation taking place between the weary model and the sculptor:

"Stop waving your arms like that. I can't concentrate."

"What, you think it's easy balancing on this fitness plate? I'm getting cramps."

"Just keep your arms still. And be quiet."

"Can't you ask Dolly? I'm getting cold, too. Can I put my shirt back on?"

"Listen, you stay where you are, or I'll file a complaint with your union."

"But why can't I just wear my shirt? This is embarrassing. Imagine if one day my son discovers a copy of this sculpture under his classmate's bed? Then what? My name will be mud."

"Will you be quiet already?! It's almost finished - two more days at the most. And stop waving those arms."

And so the conversation must have gone on and on. No wonder many artists went mad.