Thursday, January 02, 2014

Skin, good and evil and blue worm

Orange skin composition

Look deep into a single human heart to find all the evil in the world; and in the same heart enough good to vanquish it!

A dish of spicy chicken in a paste of pounded coriander.  An unexpected bonus is a rubber band  used to hold  the herb in a bunch which for a moment causes consternation because it looks like a blue worm

4 comments:

Lucy said...

Orange skins sometimes make me think of Gulliver's giants, whom he found repulsive because of their visible pores, an ugliness which belied their goodness.

Your elastic band reminded me of a couple of things: first, how working in kitchens we had to use blue plaster when we cut ourselves. A co-worker couldn't find one once and remarked how she'd have to use an ordinary one. At least it won't show up in the food if you lose it, I said.

Second, an obituary I read recently, for Robert Capon. I'd not heard of him before and thought to myself (as I often do) 'I must mention that to Joe and see what he knows about him...' I thought it was a wonderful name for an epicurean and food writer, and also it jumped out at me because we had a capon - a real one, you can still get them here - for Christmas dinner. It seems he sometimes deliberately teased his family by dropping 'a cigar wrapper in the casserole, or a match in the gravy'. He was also a theologian, who said that 'grace, not willpower, dealt with sin', and another quote 'food and company... don't slake man's thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds'.

My micro-coriander, grown from seeds on the windowsill like mustard and cress have been sad and weedy, but I'm sure since the turn of the shortest day they have picked up just a little. Maybe it's just because I watered them!

Rouchswalwe said...

Snow and snow and more snow here. I've been shoveling the walks and my cheeks look like apples. Funny, but my snow shovel found a blue scrap of cloth. At first I thought someone had lost a glove, but no, it was just a bit of cloth. Funny. I'd certainly love a plate of your spicy chicken dish now!

Roderick Robinson said...

In Heston Blumemthal's new coffee-table book - presently resting on our coffee table since neither of us has the strength to put it on the bookshelf - there is a recipe for rubber bands. Mace is recommended together with ten seconds in the LHC.

Capons are available here at Tesco from time to time. I think. I've always sheered away from them on the grounds that it might be catching. Thank goodness I don't have catholic reading habits.

Unknown said...

Lucy Robert Capon is new to me. Love the quotes. I have been growing rocket under our hedge for two years. Astonishingly it doesn't bold and go to seed and and survives winter frosts and summer drought.

R Perhaps because of the weather and the circumstances I am experimenting with several spicy dishes at the moment, which Heidi's daughters, staying with me at present, seem to appreciate.

RR Heston Blumenthal whom I couldn't help admiring, seems to be rather over exposed at the moment. Are you sure that the coffee table book is in fact a book and not a soluble coffee table?