blogjam

An open letter to the Football Association:

To whom it may concern,

Having spent the last hour attempting to buy a pair of tickets for the forthcoming England Under-21 game, it is gratifying to learn that the rank incompetence which has characterised much of the stadium’s construction has been extended to the ticketing process.

Initially I was placed in a queue to buy tickets on the website. Shortly afterwards, the page refreshed to reveal that I was 200 places lower in the queue. The next refresh threw me out of the this process altogether. Since then, I’ve been greeted by a series of different error messages. Meanwhile, attempting to book tickets by phone has resulted in a similar number of variables: a recorded box office message, a recorded message from BT, and a simple engaged tone.

I expect this story will be spun to reflect your surprise at the huge number of eager fans ready to show their enthusiasm for England’s return to their traditional home, as if this technological failure actually represents some kind of triumph.

In reality, of course, it merely confirms the disdain you display for those willing to put money in your pockets, your continued refusal to come to grips with 21st century technology (it’s a website: you can prepare for these spikes in traffic. You can simulate your server being hit by tens of thousands of simultaneous connections. It *really* isn’t rocket science), and the rampant ineptitude you’ve publicly demonstrated again and again and again ever since the Wembley project was first mooted.

Yours sincerely,

Fraser Lewry
Registered England fan # 55355280

Update: Three hours later, through some minor URL hackery (making note of my session id and refreshing the page with the correct variable each time the errors appeared), I made it to the front of the queue, entered my fan number and password, clicked submit, and… after being greeted by another series of runtime errors, was finally told that my ticketing session had expired. Back to the start of the queue.

Lovely.

I went to a peculiar thing on Friday night, a ‘blogger’s screening’ of the new Danny Boyle film Sunshine. Why peculiar? Well, before the movie started, a representative of 20th Centrury Fox stood up and told us that while we were a) encouraged to write about the film, we were b) under no circumstances to actually review it.

So it’s with this ambiguity ringing in my ears that I write this post. And instead of bringing you prose pertaining to plot-line and performance, I’ve decided to exclusively reveal the top five things I learnt during the film.

1. It’s actually possible to get much closer to the sun than scientists have previously thought. In fact, it’s possible to get really close without suffering from much more than a extreme case of eczema and a desperate need for anger management therapy.
2. Seats at the preview theatre in Soho Square are much more comfortable than those at normal, proletariat cinemas.
3. The guy who plays Searle is the spitting image of Kirendip, who works in my office. FACT.
4. The movie credits reveal the presence of a so-called ‘Science Advisor’. I suspect that this role isn’t a serious position, but more of an attempt to lend some credibility to one of the most wildly ludicrous plots ever committed to celluloid. I’m not saying that wildly ludicrous is necessarily bad – and Sunshine is a decent, beautiful-looking film – but there’s really no need to dress it up in some crazy cloak of plausibility. It just doesn’t fit; the key part of the phrase ‘science fiction’ is the second, not the first.
5. If you’re flying through space, and a member of your crew is the subject of a suicide watch, it’s probably best not to leave them unattended in a room full of scalpels.

In summary, I quite like being invited to sample free stuff I’m not required to write about. So if anyone wants to book me gratis flights to Spain and a table at el Bulli, I’m all ears.

Why would I want to eat the stomach lining of a cow? Well, let’s see:

1. Because, like Everest, it’s there.

2. Because I’m an adventurous eater. Dog? Done it. Seahorse? Delicious. Locusts? Bring ’em on.

3. Because my old friend Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall says I should, revealing in his wondrous Bible of Meat™ that his own experiments with the dish have been “a resounding success” (page 199). And, as regular readers will know, when Hugh says ‘jump’, I generally grab my trusty chef’s blade and start chopping chunks of flesh.

Tripe, in it’s naked form (above) is not an attractive prospect. It has the look and feel of a sodden bath mat, whilst it gives off the damp and musty odour of a basset hound that’s just just come in from the rain; one can understand why it doesn’t sit comfortably next to the racks of lamb and beef medallions at your local Waitrose.

Turning the thing into something resembling edible food is going to be a challenge, and I choose the classic Lancashire recipe – tripe and onions – because it seems such an arbitrary mix of ingredients: cooked in milk and flavoured with nutmeg. Why that combination? Why not marry the innards to carrot, boil them in gin and add a dusting of turmeric? Or mix with asparagus, roast in peanut sauce then lightly sprinkle with licorice shavings? I don’t know the answer, and I’m not going to argue with tradition. So we start by parboiling the tripe.

While the tripe is receiving its watery baptism I cut up a couple of white Italian onions, the theory being that this will preserve the pale nature of the dish – if you’re going to cook white stuff, I reason, then why not do it properly?

The tripe is removed from the water and cut into pieces, and then it’s back into the pan, where it nestles comfortably amongst the onions, doused in a pint of milk and seasoned with a healthy pinch of nutmeg and a bay leaf.

And next? We simmer the ingredients for a couple of hours. What you do during this time is up to you, but in case you\’re short of ideas, this is what I got up to: I took some rubbish down to the basement, put up a couple of Zero Gravity shelves in the bedroom, watered my collection of chives, read chapter six of The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division 1 Basketball by the great American sportswriter John Feinstein, and made some mashed potato. What a life, eh?

Then I strain the tripe, making sure to preserve the cooking liquid. Suddenly, it’s looking more like food although, to be fair, it’s not terribly attractive yet, taking on the appearance of a faded orange porridge.

Meanwhile, back in the pan, I melt some butter, stir in a few tablespoons of flour and cook gently for a minute or so, stirring continuously. Then it’s off the heat, and in with the reserved cooking liquid, before returning to the stove and back to the boil, all the time stirring, until the sauce is nicely thickened. Finally, the tripe and onions go back in, and the whole shebang is reheated, plated next to the mash, and garnished with parsley.

To be quite frank, it’s disgusting. It has the texture of mucus. Or glue. And it tastes like decomposing leek. I invite my neighbour to sample a mouthful, but he describes it as the worst thing he’s ever eaten. And strangely, I think this is how it’s meant to taste. The recipe is a ‘classic’, and I’m confident enough in my own abilities in the kitchen to know when I’ve screwed up a recipe – and I haven’t in this case.

I suspect that that tripe has dropped out of fashion for a a very good reason: that in reality, no-one likes the bloody stuff, not even your Gran. And while I’m all for the waste-nothing, nose-to-nail approach to meat eating, this is a step too far, like making a pie out of hair or some eyelid soup: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

The mashed potato was really yummy, however.

Today I received a call from Paul. It appears as though my last entry had created quite a stir at the bakery and, in between rustling up batches of baguettes and piles of petits fours, it was decided that action needed to be taken.

So, I’ve been invited to spend an afternoon in their kitchen, learning some of the techniques involved in producing the company’s fine fare, then enjoying the fruits of this labour over a glass or two of wine. Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do customer service.*

This is obviously very exciting news, and I hope to be able to bring you pictures of this landmark event. Perhaps I’ll even take along one of my own loaves for expert appraisal, maybe my celebrated (by me, as no-one else has tried it) pain à l’ancienne. I retard the dough in the fridge overnight, dontcha know.

* Cadbury Schweppes, please take note.

Working in the throbbing heart of London, as I do, there are thousands of sandwich bars and cafes within a few minutes walk of my office, each attempting to to quell my lunchtime rumblings with a bewildering bounty of buns, baps, baguettes and benoîtons. It’s not easy, but I have a favourite: Paul.

From humble beginnings as a family business in Lille, the Paul chain now encompasses more than 250 stores in France, whilst worldwide the brand can be found on high streets from Morocco to Japan. In the UK alone there are nearly 20 branches, each serving up a delicious range of fresh sandwiches and fancies, with more than 100 types of bread adhering to recipes that date back more than a century. It’s glorious, mouth-watering stuff.

Some Paul bread, yesterday

My particular favourite sandwich is the mixte, a simple mix of crusty benoîton, succulent ham, creamy emmental cheese, and butter so fine it must surely have been suckled from the teats of velveteen cows by busty French milkmaids. It’s really quite something.

In early December I sat at my desk and ate just such a sandwich, each mouthful a treat of rare and dreamlike proportions. Halfway through, however, my blissful reverie was interrupted by a jabbing pain in the roof of my mouth. The source of this discomfort was revealed as I pulled out a splinter of wood an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide, square at one end and tapering to a sharp point at the other.

Being the concerned consumer that I am, I walked the remains of my lunch back to Paul and quietly presented it to the manager, leaving my details and explaining that I’d like to be notified if they could trace the source of the splinter.

Five days later, a letter was hand-delivered to my office. Sent by the company’s Head of Production, it went into great and reassuring detail about the steps Paul take to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen, and offered an explanation for the alien body in my bread:

The style and quality of bread that we make is dependent on a number of things: consistent temperature and reasonably high temperature to name but two. We also adopt and use full artisan skills so that each of our loaves, however small, are hand-made. To fully complete the picture, as a surface to work on we use stainless steel in preference to the artisanal beechwood tables called parisiens as we perceive it to be safer: having said that though we have a beechwood parisien in the bakery at Covent Garden which we have used in the past for bread workshops which we hold for our customers, staff and on occasion journalists. On 5th December the day before you had cause to complain, we had held one of the workshops and had transported the parisien for the purpose during which it had suffered some damage. That night the bakers used it as they were short of space. This is the only route which I can find that could possibly result in you finding the splinter that you did.

All very comprehensive, and highly plausible. The letter went on to list some of the bakery’s safety procedures, and suggested that I should come and tour their premises, to put my mind at rest. It rounded things off by promising to contact me within 24 hours to talk through the matter in more detail.

Now this, you might think, is great customer relations. And you’d be right, except for one thing: contact never came. Not a whisper.

So, after Christmas, I wrote back:

Many thanks for your letter of 11th December (attached). I thought I’d write as I haven’t heard back from you as promised, although I understand how things can get a little hectic over the Christmas period.

I really appreciate the lengths you’ve gone to investigating how the splinter of wood found its way into my sandwich. I’ve been a regular customer at Paul for several years, and I don’t dispute that your safety procedures are second-to-none. The reason I handed the sandwich back was not because I doubted this, but because I just figured you’d be keen to figure out if there was anything you could do to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.

I’ve continued to shop at Paul (albeit at your branch on Old Compton St) and have no plans to stop. As for the offer to inspect your premises, I’d be delighted to do so: not because I need convincing about your food safety procedures, but because I like your cakes and sandwiches. The Mixte is a particular favourite, as are the macaroons.

And guess what? Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Or, as they say in France, rien.

The annoying thing about this entire episode is that I wasn’t all that perturbed by the splinter, despite the fact that it could have torn a gaping hole in my throat, leaving me writhing on the floor gasping hopelessly for air as visions of my woefully unfulfilled life passed swiftly before my eyes; no, I took the sandwich back, not because I doubted the safety of Paul’s methods, or because I thought there was a genuine threat to public health, or even because I wanted a refund or a replacement (I didn’t ask for either). I returned it because I thought they’d be keen to get to the bottom of the matter, to ensure it couldn’t happen again.

What has dismayed me is that they’ve resolutely failed to deliver on their promise to talk through the matter and invite me to their premises, despite my prompting. It’s more than two months later, and not a peep. 48 hours has stretched into 72 days, and I’ve started to use a different branch of Paul, too embarrassed to return to my favourite Bedford St outlet while the matter remains unresolved, instead frequenting their smaller, less salubrious shop on Old Compton Street.

I am not happy.

Update: I’m much happier now.

I genuinely think I may be going a bit mad.

Lately I keep on waking up thinking I’m sharing the bed with someone. And instead of thinking, “Oh my fucking Christ, there’s someone in the bed with me” and panicking because I don’t know who they are, I think, “How embarrassing. I’m naked, with a stranger”. And I reach around on the floor to find my underpants and put them on to preserve my modesty. At this point I generally wake up properly and feel foolish. The other night I went one better, waking up and wondering where the person in my bed had gone — I then wandered naked around the flat looking for my mystery guest before, once again, waking up properly and returning sheepishly to bed.

I have no curtains in my front room.

It’s that time of year again, when popular demand (one nagging e-mail from some bloke in Chile) dictates that I reveal my favourite albums of 2006. Innovations this time round include links to Wikipedia (just click on the artist names), and high-tech, lo-fi, broadband-friendly audio streams showcasing personal favourites from each album. Enjoy. Or otherwise.

	20. Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	19. The Hold Steady Boys & Girls In America Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	18. Chris Knox & The Nothing Chris Knox & The Nothing Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	17. Beirut Gulag Orkestar Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	16. Midlake The Trials of Van Occupanther Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	15. Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	14. Joanna Newsom Ys Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	13. Various Artists Tropicalia: A Brasilian Revolution In Sound Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	12. Sufjan Stevens The Avalanche Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	11. Bruce Springsteen We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	10. Ray Lamontagne Till the Sun Turns Black Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	9. Ali Farka Toure Savane Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	8. Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	7. Ghostface Killah Fishscale Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	6. Flaming Lips At War With The Mystics Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	5. Sparklehorse Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	4. Juana Molina Son Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	3. Lily Allen Alright, Still Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	2. Dr. Octagon The Return of Dr. Octagon Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	1. Lila Downs Entre Copa Y Copa Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Previously:
Best of 2005
Best of 2004
Best of 2003
Best of 2002
Best of 2001
Best of 2000

I read something interesting today. It included the following passage:

I seriously question whether an injection of a million dollars of investment capital into CatsInSinks.com will improve the long-term wealth generation prospects for the founder.

Anyone fancy testing the theory?

Site Update: Blogjam is six years old. Or at least it was three days ago.

Bollocks to this, I’m off on holiday.

Actually, I should have posted this last week, as in reality I’ve just returned from this year’s annual trek to a tinpot dictatorship. Yes indeed: little more than 24 hours ago I was drinking a glass of the splendidly branded Berk beer with a policeman in a hotel bar in Daşoguz, northern Turkmenistan.

Reports and photographs to follow.

So what have I been up to in my absence?

1. Working on the extremely collectible Kittenwar line of products, AVAILABLE NOW TO PRE-ORDER FROM AMAZON UK or from AMAZON US, even though they’re not out until the second half of 2007.

2. Visiting Luxembourg. It’s breath-takingly pretty, yet irredeemably dull. Quite a mixture.

3. Eating testicles. Not in a sexual sense, of course, but in the Lebanese restaurant kind of way. Creamy, delicious, and highly recommended.

4. Recording voice-overs that are subsequently badly lip-synced to footage of Neil Ruddock. Don’t ask.

5. Painting my bathroom day-glo green.

Anyway. On with the show. Upon moving into my new flat last month I decided I needed to set myself a culinary task, something to set the standard for all subsequent cooking projects, and settled on the delightfully-named head cheese (more commonly known in the UK as brawn, as tête fromag&#233e to the French, or as queijo de porco in the favellas of Rio de Janeiro). For the uninitiated, head cheese is a cold-meat jelly constructed from the head of a pig. A staple part of the British diet during the middle part of the last century, it’s popularity has waned of late. I can’t imagine why.

Getting hold of a pig’s head is itself an adventure, entailing an early morning trip to bustling environs of Borough Market, where smug country-dwellers sell delicious yet over-priced provisions to London’s middle-class households. Eventually I procure my porky noggin from the fine butchers representing Northfield Farm, who quarter the cranium according to my instructions (my cutlery drawer lacks a bone saw), much to the bewilderment/horror of a steadily growing crowd of camera-wielding tourists.

This used to be a pig

On arriving home I unpack my porcine parcel and begin the delicate task of cleaning the beast. First up, the ears. These are severed from the skull, cleared of all bristles and washed. The image below demonstrates the before (right) and after (left) stages in this process.

All other parts of the head are then shaved, before proceeding with what must be the least pleasant part of the project, picking earwax from the pig’s auditory canal. Suffice to say, our porker wasn’t the most hygienic of critters, and a hefty residue of aural marmalade has to be mined before being able to progress with the recipe.

Gillette. The best a pig can get.

Of course, we’re relying on our good friend Hugh Furry Whittingstall to provide instruction and, as ever, he provides. First up, we soak the pieces of meat and bone (as well as a couple of trotters) in brine for 24 hours. I use Hugh’s standard brine with the additional of a couple of litres of apple juice.

For those curious enough to wonder at the reason for this lengthy immersion, it’s because brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes. This leads salt ions to enter the cell via diffusion. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis. The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins. The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix which traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from drying out.*

Brining over, it’s time to cook. Various herbs (parsley, bay leaves, thyme and marjoram) and spices (peppercorns, cloves, coriander seeds) are tossed into the pot alongside the brined meat and trotters, and a couple of onions. After four hours of gentle simmer, the meat can easily be pulled from the bone.

I chop the meat, mix with a handful of parsley and some lemon juice, then combine with a few tablespoons of the cooking liquor, which I’ve strained through a piece of muslin (available from the drapery department of the very fine John Lewis department store). This heady blend, rich with gelatin from from the trotters, is put in a dish and refrigerated overnight.

By morning, it’s ready. Turned out and sliced, it’s delicious: nuggets of creamy white fat nestling gleefully next to chunks of snout, cheek and eyelid, all combining to create bite-sized bursts of ambrosial brilliance.

Special meaty bonus: As I enjoyed the end result so much, I’ve decided to make the image above available as a computer wallpaper. Simply download using the links below, making sure you choose the correct resolution image for your machine.

1600 x 1024
1280 x 1024
1152 x 768
1024 x 768
800 x 600

* I didn’t actually know this, I just copied it from Wikipedia.