...as Apple Pie

I'm rather disappointed Norman Rockwell didn't do any pictures of Apple Pies- or rather, none that my extensive research has been able to uncover. He was all over the Thanksgiving Turkey like a rash (see below) but sadly a bit reticent on the subject of apple pie. Seems like an opportunity missed, in my opinion, but there you go. The reason being, despite the risk of being called Meryl Streep again by Iain, this is another recipe-based post, and it’d have been nice to illustrate it thusly.

It’s getting to what I believe to be the most American-flavoured time of year. Forget 4th of July, it is the end of Autumn, Halloween and Thanksgiving, which has the true flavour of the USA running through it. It’s pumpkins and pilgrims, colonial times and cranberry sauce. It’s the time of year when the American climate starts to resemble the British one, and if we look at a part of the States which looks a bit like England- New England, say, or upstate New York- at a time of year when the temperature is starting to chill and the fog rolls in somewhat Britishly, it’s easier to feel the actual cultural differences in your bones.  Wooden churches with white picket fences, and so on. Oceanic coastline. Let Washington Irving take us there:

Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

-The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1819)

For non-British readers, by the way, it was rare, when I was growing up, to make your Halloween lantern out of a pumpkin. You were posh if you could afford a pumpkin in the North-East in those days. We used what is variously called swede or rutabaga- we call it a turnip (we call what everyone else calls turnips white turnips. Don’t let’s get into that just now though.) There is nothing quite as soul-destroying as trying vainly to hollow out a turnip with a teaspoon. It has to be a teaspoon because it’s got a sharp edge. A knife is downright hazardous. You can’t carve them worth a damn, either. But I will say two things in defence of the Turnip Lantern: Firstly, you didn’t have to be able to carve them well to make them look scary. This purple and yellow monstrosity, with its craggy surface and hairy, tentacular roots, looks like the severed head of a scarecrow’s decomposing corpse.  You can have jolly, happy pumpkin lanterns, but turnip lanterns are posessed of an inherent malevolence which no amount of jollying-up could ever remedy. They are naturally as scary as all hell.

Secondly, after an hour or so of illumination the candle flame starts to scorch the inside of the turnip skull. This happens with pumpkins, but rarely. Pumpkins are generally larger and juicier than turnips so don’t scorch as easily. As the underside of the cranial lid turns black, the bitter-sweet smell of burning turnip bestows upon you a gift greater than rubies: that is, that whenever you smell burning turnip- whenever a piece falls on a hot gas-ring or a pan of soup starts to catch on the bottom of the pot- you are instantly transported back to the Halloweens of your childhood, when the pinnacle of life’s desire was a bottle of fake blood and some luminous plastic fangs which would wear through at the hinge after an evening’s serious vamping.

So we have this time of year upon us, when our fictional ideas of Old America start to coincide somewhat with the reality outside our windows as harvest season comes around and old traditions are celebrated. Along with the season comes that dish which is as American, we are told, as motherhood (a value peculiar to the Americans, presumably because everybody else on the planet hatches from eggs.) Apple pie.

I’m not giving you a recipe for the stuff because that would be a waste of everyone’s time. It’s pastry, with  apples inside. Go knock yourselves out. But a couple of tips which might not come amiss. One good idea is to sprinkle a tablespoon of semolina on the pastry before you put the apples in. This soaks up excess liquid which means the base doesn’t become soggy, and you can’t tell it’s there. Secondly, don’t cut even-sized pieces of apple. Cut some chunky and some very small. The small pieces will combine with the brown sugar and spices to create a kind of apple sauce, while the larger pieces retain a certain amount of texture. Also, what’s better than plain egg wash for making the top brown nicely, is egg wash with a heavy dredging of Demerara sugar. There you go, rocket science.

But while we’re on the subject of Halloween, witchcraft and the American-ness of the same, let me give you what is much closer to being a spell than a recipe: Double chocolate cookies. In Europe, when you put something in the oven, it comes out the same shape. We’ve got biscuit cutters. Sometimes they are in humorous shapes. However, American baked goods- no matter how respectably shaped- appear to be the work of the devil. You have no control over them. You put blind faith in the recipe, dark forces take over, and at the end there are cookies. You put ball-shaped blobs of dough in the oven, they puff up, and then flatten as they cool. That’s THREE different shapes.

The reason, incidentally, that I attribute these cookies to the forces of darkness rather than light is that all the pictures of Jesus I’ve seen show him as quite a slim bloke- one might almost say skinny. If these cookies were kicking around heaven in any number, I’m fairly sure there wouldn’t be as many paintings of Jesus with his shirt off. Also, after taking them into work I have seen people’s eyes glaze over as if possessed. I’m fairly sure blood may have been spilled were there to be a fight over the last one. I took it myself just to save my friends from clawing each other to death. Also, I’m fairly sure Satan got round to inventing these some time after he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, because I feel sure that if he’d had them at his disposal at the time he would have used them straight away instead of all that stuff about the Kingdoms of the World. I don’t know; that’s just what I’d do if I had to tempt somebody who I thought would be able to resist most things. Perhaps that’s just me.

Hershey’s Double Chocolate Cookies

1 1/4 cups butter 
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 cups flour
3/4 cups cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips (I coarsely chopped a 200g bar of Bournville instead- worked VERY well indeed)

One and a half quantities made 50 cookies. Not small ones, either.

Heat oven to 350°F (180°C).  Cream butter and sugar until lightly and fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.  Add flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.  gradually blend until creamy.  Stir in chips.  Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 8 to 9 minutes.  Do not over bake; cookies will be soft.  They will puff while baking and flatten while cooling.

The waiting game.

Estragon: Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.
Estragon: (despairingly). Ah!

-Waiting for Godot

 

Davis: Let's go.
Pottsy: We can't.
Davis: Why not?
Pottsy: We're waiting for the bloody Embassy..
Davis: (despairingly). Ah!

-Probably not Waiting for Godot

 

We wait. It’s what we do. And I tell you what: tick followed tock followed tick followed tock followed tick.

Any day now, a letter from the US embassy stipulating date and time of interview will drop through my letter box. It didn’t today. It didn’t last Monday either, although I had the strongest sense of preja vu that it would.  But it didn’t. So we go through the motions of working, and getting rid of stuff, and never being sure, and talking on MSN and having dates via webcam.

And it’s fine. But frustrating. There is a seemingly indefinite list of things to save up for. Visa, plane tickets, freight, medical examination (to prove I’m not carrying TB or HIV, or any of those other nasty acronyms), wedding rings, Christmas, and on and on and so on…

It’s making life take place somewhere between Melville, Beckett, Kafka and Bridget Jones, all of which came neatly together a couple of weeks ago. At 5:45am my alarm goes off, so I can chat to Stacey for an hour before work. Now usually, she does most of the talking and I confine myself to yeses, noes, LOLs, brbs and emoticons because, well, it’s still bloody night time.

But the morning in question, the old grey matter was somewhat shocked into what passes for alertness at a time of the morning when one could comfortably convince oneself that it’s still yesterday, when a litany of alarming MSN messages from the Dearly Beloved carried somewhat perturbatory news.

We’d fucked it up, royally. Oh boy. Wake up. Wake the fuck up. The paperwork is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You have not only dropped a bollock, but you have dropped an extremely rare 15th-Century lacquered Ming bollock with mother-of-pearl inlays, which was one of the only known remaining pair of lacquered Ming bollocks outside China. And it had just gone ka-ching on the floor.

In all the hurry-up-and-wait which is the visa application process, we had sent all the embassy forms off in August, but had failed to attach my personal documents. Police certificate, Birth certificate and so on. The reason we hadn’t heard was because we’d been put to the bottom of the pile, having forgotten to attach the documentation. We were sure we’d been right not to include this at the time. And now we were equally sure that this had been the equivalent to putting on boxing gloves before handling a precious, extremely rare 15th-Century lacquered Ming bollock with mother-of-pearl inlays.

It all boiled down to Form DS-156K (as distinct from for DS-156). I knew I hadn’t sent my documents. But looking at my copy of DS-156K it specifically stated that we had to attach them to it. We had held off sending them. We may or may not have enclosed the DS-156K without the personal papers. We weren’t sure. We weren’t even sure which-if either- of these courses of action had been correct. I had to phone the embassy and ask whether we’d been right to wait or not.

A very tense day followed, as I waited to get home from work so I could pay £1.20 a minute for the privilege of speaking to Shaq, a Scotsman with an Arabic name working for the American Embassy in London. He could tell me, at least  (for the princely total sum of nine pounds) that I was NOT supposed to attach the documents. So far, so good. But he could not say whether or not the DS-156K had been in the envelope with forms DS-156, DS-157, DS-230 and DS-2001. This was crucial. If we’d withheld it in order to send it with the birth certificate and so on, our application would be held up and our petition might expire, leaving me this side of the Atlantic for another 9-12 months and having to pay for another petition. Shaq gave me a code to put on an email to the consular office, so I could make a proper enquiry. I sent a newly filled-in DS-156K to the embassy by special delivery (£5 for one sheet of A4- thank you, Royal Mail)

Two days later, the reply appeared:

Thank you for your email correspondence.

According to our records, the Immigrant Visa Unit received all of the necessary forms in your case yesterday. You will be notified of your interview appointment date and time shortly.

Sincerely,

Consular Information Unit
U.S. Embassy, London

So, at the price of £14 total and three days of feeling as sick as a dog, the message from the US embassy is this: Everybody, be cool.

And so we wait.

Davismania!

Stace has graced England with her presence once again. We have had an awesome time. Truly fantastic. We were, sadly, forced to operate within the constraints of what was possible. We had a list of what we wanted to do while she was here, and this list was about three weeks long. We had 11 days.

We did the important stuff:

 

1. Going to see Newcastle thrash the living crap out of Aston Villa, and getting on the telly in the process. At 45-6 seconds, the blonde with the blue-star t-shirt in the front row is Stace, and the idiot to her right is me- dishonourable mentions go to Stephen and Claire to my right, disgraced, cheering for Newcastle United. Credit where it’s due- Claire survived another assassination attempt to go to the match she bought the tickets for. I’ll get you next time, Graham, next tiiiiiiiiime……..
   
   
   
   
2. Going to Durham, and reminding ourselves what good people our friends are. Naomi and Jen were as sweet and supportive as ever, and Dave and Ella took time out to travel from different parts of the country. Not only was it great to see people for the sake of seeing them, which is always great, but the extra effort they put in was touching.
   
   
3. Visiting York. I am increasingly jealous that I have no personal connection to this wonderful city. I’ve never lived there, I didn’t study there; none of my family is from York. It would be nice to say any of these things. The pubs in York range from the dreary to the phenomenal. With the benefit of a bit of first hand research (nothing is too much for you guys) we can recommend The Black Swan, The Old White Swan, and if you’re cygnophobic and happen to enjoy a bloody good burger, The Lendal Cellars.
   
   
   
4. Going on a proper date. To quote the wise and lovely Kristina Rimpley, who knows what it means to do the long-distance, long-term thing: “People say, like ‘You’ve got Skype’. I’m like, BITE ME!”. Yes, the internet makes maintaining a long-distance relationship easier. It might not have been possible, once upon a time, to sustain a relationship as well as we have. MSN and Skype are better than phone and letters and emails. I honestly don’t know how far we’d have made it without modern technology. It might have failed horribly. It might not. I don’t want to think about it. But if you think the internet has made this easy, really, really, bite me. It’s not easy. A lot of the time it’s not even normal. Sitting together watching a film doesn’t happen. Getting a hug doesn’t happen. Having a beer together doesn’t happen, because when it’s teatime here it’s breakfast time there, and people look at you funny when you’ve got a bowl of cornflakes in one hand and a bottle of lager in the other. So the opportunity to get dressed up and hold hands is frankly mind-blowing. The Blue Coyote played host to our first night out together in six months. The South African waiter there can recommend some first-rate reposado tequilas, like Partida Reposado. We didn’t get to go dancing. Maybe next time.
   

And we did lots of other things too, which I won’t bore you with. It was just nice. we did soppy romantic stuff and social stuff and civilised stuff and geeky stuff. I handed in my paperwork for the visa. It’s a matter of obtaining some documents and waiting for an appointment for an interview now. The amazing thing is that next time I see her, we will be together, more or less, forever.

Soul for Sale

Things are getting serious. Not that I didn’t expect them to. But it’s my books. “Books” says Lord Peter Wimsey, “Are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”

The more books a person surrounds themselves with, of course, the more detailed fossil record of their earlier stages of development is. It was a strangely forensic process. I identified approximately 130 books which could easily be sold online and about the same number which will more than likely have to go to a charity shop as I’d make a loss selling and posting them.

I have promised myself that I will try and retain all my German books, all my Terry Pratchett 1st editions, the majority of my cookbooks, and anything which was antique or irreplaceable. Apart from that, nothing is sacred any more. I’ve sold Harry Potter CDs, Patrick O’ Brien books and sword-and-sourcery novels. I’ve sold history books from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to D-Day. I’ve sold V for Vendetta, Phonetics and Phonology and Dead until Dark.

Let me know if there’s anything you want that I might have. I have a massive amount of cookery books which I doubt I’ll be able to take 100% of, a large range of military history books, most of the Lord Peter Wimsey books and a disgusting amount of trashy spy fiction.

5 American things I love

Sunday is Independence Day. I have reasons to be cheerful that the Thirteen Colonies won the war, and so do you. Here are five of them, plucked at random and in no particular order. Obviously there are more than 5 things to like about America, but this is what I chose to write about today. Oh, and I was wrong, Iain. It turned out to have a recipe in after all. Call me Julie.

 

1.  The First Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Freedom of the press, of thought, of speech, of conscience and of faith enshrined in law. I am entitled to my opinion and to express it, and so are you. I can pray the way I choose to, and so may you, or choose to not at all. I can associate with whom I want, and for whatever purpose as long as we’re mellow about it.

On a more abstracted level, it boils down to this: the State will not tell you how or what to think. This is the absolute basis for a free society, and was passed in 1791.

 

To contrast-  almost 30 years later, a peaceful demonstration of 60,000 was brutally put down by cavalry at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester. 15 unarmed civilians were killed, and more than 600 wounded.  They had dared to suggest that the city of Manchester should be represented in Parliament, as it had no MPs at the time (compared to Old Sarum, population Nil, which had 2.)

Four members of the Manchester Yeomanry were brought up in court, for having killed people guilty, it seems, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was found that they had acted quite lawfully in dispersing an illegal gathering. Henry Hunt, the radical orator who the 60,000 had turned up to see, got 30 months in Ilchester prison for “sedition”. Not for planning or calling for bloody revolution and heads on pikes, but for asking if Manchester could have 2 MPs, please.

Incidentally, John Ashton, who was one of the civilians murdered because, like Hunt, he had neither the right to assemble nor to speak freely the way an American would have done 28 years previously, was carrying a flag on which was inscribed “Taxation without representation is unjust and tyrannical”. Sound familiar?

 

 

2.  San Francisco

 

I’d quite like to buy San Francisco. A groovier place existeth not. It’s got class. It’s relaxed. It’s a large collection of wonderfully insane people doing whatever they want in a very relaxed way. It gives the impression of always being at the absolute optimum time of the day, no matter what time that is. Time for a really great morning cup of coffee. Time for a walk by the harbour. Time to meet up with people. Time just to chill under this nice big tree. Time to clock off work and go for a beer. Time to dress up and go out.

It is soaked in its own remarkable history. It was built on the strength of the Gold Rush, which turned it from a village to amajor world city in a matter of a few years. The price of one city property went from $16 to $45,000 in three years between 1848 and 1851. San Franciscans are more eccentric even than the English. They have the weather for it. For proof that this has ALWAYS been the case, please go here and here.

  

 

3. Reuben Sandwiches

I'm talkin 'bout enjoyin' a bowl of chicken soup, with a Reuben, and then makin' dirty Reuben love.”

                                                  - Legendary Anchorman Ron Burgundy

Reubens are an American classic. I would find any theory which suggested that this was not a Jewish-American dish hard to believe- salt beef, sauerkraut and caraway all scream Ashkenazi to me. Wherever it comes from, the effect is the same. The senses scream for seconds; the digestive and cardio-vascular systems protest loudly.

1 cup sauerkraut, well drained
1/2 tsp caraway seed
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 cup Thousand Island dressing (or, better yet, Russian Dressing, if available)
12 slices of rye bread
1lb thinly sliced salt beef (good pastrami would almost do at a pinch- this variant is called a Rachel)
6 thick slices of American cheese (Or mild cheddar)
3tbs melted butter
serves 6

-Toss the sauerkraut, caraway and garlic powder together in a bowl. Set it aside.
-Spread the rye bread on one side with the dressing.
-Top 6 of the slices with the beef, sauerkraut and cheese, and then the second slice of bread. Brush with melted butter.
-Dry-fry the sandwiches butter-side down. Butter the other side and flip when browned.
-Continue cooking until the cheese melts and the bread is lightly browned.

4. The Chrysler Building

 

I really want to see this up close. When I was about 12 and getting into Jazz in a big way, I fell in love with Art Deco. Seriously, it’s no wonder they all thought I was gay. But never mind.

It’s one of the most beautiful buildings in the world and won a very bitterly-contested race to build the world’s tallest building after its architect, William van Alen, got permission to put a 53m spire on top of the stainless steel-clad crown. It was assembled in secret within the skyscraper and then hoisted up at the last minute, making the Chrysler Building the first man-made construction over 1000 feet in height, beating the rival 40 Wall Street project, which had been the tallest building in the world for all of a month. It retained the title for a year or so, before the Empire State Building was completed in 1931.

The Chrysler Building represented the end of an era, though. It started construction in 1928, and was completed in May 1930. Between these two dates, Walter P. Chrysler, the automotive giant who financed the building project to provide his children with a legacy was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1928, only the second time it had ever been awarded. Also, the Wall Street Crash occurred.

Gone were the days when magnates would compete to build skyscrapers. The Jazz Age was mortally wounded, and the days of the Great Depression had arrived. What remained was the Chrysler building, a gleaming steel obelisk commemorating the infallible style and arrogant ambition of the previous decade.

 

5.  Tom Paine

Napoleon said of Thomas Paine that “A statue of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe.” Tsk, the French, eh?

Paine wrote pamphlets which helped whip up popular support for the American Revolution. Born and brought up in England, he first moved to America in 1774 at the age of 37. He had few original ideas, but he did have a way with words. Tom Paine articulated complex, avante-garde  ideas in a way which struck a chord with the common people. People who can do this are often groundbreaking. Lenin, for example, or Stephen Hawking, or Abraham Lincoln, would fit into this category.  He came out with some crackers.

 
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”, and

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” and

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

His first job was an apprentice corset-maker and then in his teens he enlisted and served as a privateer. Years later he escaped execution during the French Revolution (which he had helped to foment) because his door, which would have shown the chalk mark which indicated one for the guillotine had been opened to let the air circulate, making him the world’s first draught dodger.

After his death, his bones were dug up by the English radical William Cobbett, who took them back to England to give him a triumphal re-burial. But apparently, reburying your political hero is one of those things which keeps slipping your mind, because Cobbett died before he got round to doing it. His heirs lost the bones, and Tom Paine was never seen again.

 

Happy 4th July, everybody!

Whiskey Sours

One reason President Josiah Bartlet would get my vote, were he, you know, a real person, is that he hoards trivia and inflicts it upon those nearest and dearest to him. While many would consider this a character flaw I recognise it for what it is: the tell-tale mark of a true genius. Also genetically indicative of one who is likely to be extremely handsome. Or so I’ve heard. But Bartlet did, on at least one occasion, get it a bit on the wrong side. He said that to be Bourbon, a whiskey had to be Kentuckian; otherwise it was “Sour Mash”. T’ain’t necessarily so, Jed.

Bourbon is, indeed, named after Bourbon County, KY- indeed 95% of all bourbon is from the Bluegrass State, but legally, bourbon can come from anywhere in the USA. The relevant legislation- The Federal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits (27 C.F.R. 5.22) doesn’t narrow it down any further than that.  It does tell us one or two interesting things about why Bourbon has such a distinctive flavour. The legal requirements for whiskey to be classified as Bourbon are as follows:

• Bourbon must be made of a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn.^[1]
• Bourbon must be distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume).
• Neither colouring nor flavouring may be added.
• Bourbon must be aged in new, charred oak barrels. ^[1]
• Bourbon must be entered into the barrel at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume).
• Bourbon, like other whiskeys, may not be bottled at less than 80 proof (40% alcohol by volume.)
• Bourbon which meets the above requirements and has been aged for a minimum of two years, may (but is not required to) be called Straight Bourbon.^[2]
• Straight Bourbon aged for a period less than four years must be labelled with the duration of its aging.
• If an age is stated on the label, it must be the age of the youngest whiskey in the bottle.

 

So, what does this mean? Lots of the flavour comes from the maize. In practice, Bourbon usually consists of 70% maize. This is starchy, resulting in a potentially sweet, mellow product. In addition, the use of American white oak barrels results in the same beautiful, balmy texture which is imparted to fine Rioja, whose producers use old Bourbon barrels to age their wine. The result is incredibly smooth; nothing like Scotch; much more like Irish whiskey. Really, the difference is so great it’s like comparing tea to coffee.

 

Therefore, the drink should be treated differently. Good bourbon should be drunk on the rocks, unmixed. The slow release of water from the melting ice allows the whiskey to express itself in the same way warming a glass of good single malt scotch in your hand does. it spreads out the individual flavours of a highly complex drink. Unlike single malt, though, the virtue of bourbon does not lie solely in its complexity. It is not- unlike good scotch- a drink of the upper classes, redolent of the corridors of power or the sage-green leather upholstery in a London club. Bourbon speaks rather more of the frontier; of the drinker who had to carry several nights’ worth of alcohol in as small a package as his horse need deal with, of cowboys, gamblers, bootleggers and speakeasies.

And so, riding the crest of a wave of Americana, we run aground upon the shore of the dimly-lit, muted- trumpet-imbued world of Raymond Chandler, the writer whose books gave us the storylines of so many films noir. If I said to you that Humphrey Bogart in a rain-soaked West Hollywood represented Chandler’s greatest creation, Phillip Marlowe, you’d know what I was talking about. And Marlowe drinks his whiskey, sour:

We leaned against the bar. ‘Whisky sour,’ the big man said. ‘Call yours.’
‘Whisky sour,’ I said.
We had our whisky sours.
The big man licked his whisky sour impassively down the side of the thick squat glass. He stared solemnly at the barman, a thin, worried-looking negro in a white coat, who moved as if his feet hurt him.
’You know where Velma is?’
Farewell, My Lovely- Raymond Chandler

You can almost smell the tobacco smoke, can’t you?

Whisky Sour is a cocktail which, like so many others, is easy to get right but even easier to get badly wrong. It has to be just so. Basically, it is sweetened American whiskey, soured with fresh lemon juice and balanced out with sugar. There are recipes which call for those three ingredients to be shaken together with ice. This is a half-arsed job, simply because sugar does not dissolve very easily in liquid the temperature of ice. I have another recipe from an otherwise excellent book which calls for egg whites and angostura bitters, which is frankly daft. It doesn’t need to be that complicated. You keep it simple by sticking to the three basic ingredients. You make it right by helping physics along a little and melting the sugar in advance.

Sugar syrup for cocktails:

Put half a kilo of sugar in a pan over a moderate heat. Slosh in, bit by bit, as little water as possible to melt the sugar. By the time the sugar syrup is nearly boiling (if it starts to boil it’ll caramelise, and you don’t want that) it should become as clear as water. Turn the heat out, transfer it to a cold jug and let it cool, then chill.

Whiskey sour

50ml Bourbon (supermarket own brand is absolutely fine, but don’t use Scotch.)
50ml sugar syrup
Juice of one small lemon
Ice

Stir all ingredients together thoroughly in a short, roomy tumbler. Let it stand for a minute for the ice to chill the cocktail, and then serve. The perfect whiskey sour is, above all, balanced in flavour. Neither the sweetness, nor the acidity, nor the alcohol should dominate; this drink should be the perfect triumvirate. You’ll know if it tastes wrong.

Everything Looks Cooler In Armenian.

The Armenian alphabet is quite frankly amazing. If you ever produce a sci-fi series and need to invent an authentically alien-looking alphabet, use Armenian. On reflection, not the most politically correct sentence I’ve ever written, but I do genuinely mean it in a good way. Armenian looks phenomenally cool. Below is Article 1 from the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

In Armenian, this is:

I think we all know which one looks cooler. And that’s not even using italics. If you don’t think this is the greatest alphabet ever, I will fight you. That’s no lie.

 

The reason I mention this is because it came up when I was researching what was introduced to me as the “Lulu burger”, an Armenian-American classic. It is a very savoury, spiced lamb and beef burger, which is quite probably what God cooks on his barbecue when he feels he deserves a treat.

The city of Fresno, California is in many ways the home of the Lulu burger. Although Fresno no longer has the biggest Armenian-American community in California, the community is one of the oldest and most significant in the history of the Armenian Diaspora in the US. California’s first Armenian-language newspaper began publication there in 1908. Conversely, the community has played its own part in the development of Fresno. Fresno is, overwhelmingly, a farming community. It’s a farming city. It has a million people, and the reason  it is there is fruit farming. Figs, melons, grapes, olives, avocados. The famous Sun-Maid girl (see right) is a portrait of a Fresno girl. You could almost say that fruit-farming was the city’s raisin d'être. And it was Armenian pioneers who first grew figs and melons in the Fresno area.

Back on the meatier side of things, if you google the term “Lulu Burger” it’s quite hard to find what I’m talking about. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, there’s no agreement about how to spell- or say- the word. You get varying levels of success when you search for Lulu Burgers, Lule Burgers or Lula Burgers. On the Russian-language Wikipedia article, for example, it comes out as “Lulya”. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough Armenian to be able to research it in the source language.

The Russian page raises another issue. The second word of the page title looks like our word for kebab. That’s because it’s the Russian word for kebab; i.e. Kebab. So suddenly you have a choice of Lula/Lule/Lulu Kebaburgers. Is it a burger or a kebab? In Armenia- and many Armenian-American restaurants- it’s definitely a kebab.

But to my mind, burger is better. It’s not Armenian food, it’s Armenian-American food. That’s fine. Eat it in a good bun, with pickles (very Armenian) and ketchup (not). And a big pile of chips. The combination of both lamb and beef gives the burger a meatier, less overtly sheepy flavour than a pure lamb burger, while retaining more interest than an old-fashioned hamburger. Here’s my recipe, adapted from one on www.armeniapedia.org :-

Lulu Burgers

½ lb each of lamb mince and good steak mince.
⅓ cup dry bread crumbs
1 med onion, chopped fine
2 crushed cloves garlic
⅓ cup chopped parsley
¼ tsp. allspice
⅓ cup passata
⅓-½ cup water
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
generous teaspoon of cumin

Mix all ingredients together. Shape into patties.

Grill close to heat. Turn over when brown, about 7 min. per side.

Welcome!

One of the many changes which moving to America is going to bring is the opportunity to write again. I will have lots to say and less time to do it in. The blog is the way forward, I feel.

In around 6 months’ time I expect to make my home in the New World and I intend to have celebrated my wedding to Stacey within 12 .

This blog will provide a means by which I can share some of that experience with you all. For those of you who remember Münchener Freiheit this will be a return to more-or-less familiar territory. But this medium means that the variety of what I can share with you can be considerably broadened. Expect photographs, links, recipes and general garbage in addition to what I hope will eventually be fairly regular pieces on life as a Briton in the USA.

Obviously, I’m not there yet. My life in England, such as it is, continues. So welcome to the embryonic phase of Going Coastal, an English take on the Special Relationship, the American Dream, motherhood and apple pie. Until I leave I will be blogging on, well, anything I like really. It’s going to be largely American-flavoured, I guess. You are my trial readership for now; it’ll properly go live when I can dangle my toes in the Pacific. Obviously not with my laptop on my knee; that’d just be asking for trouble.

I encourage you all to comment on the articles, too.

Pottsy.