I Had a blast earlier this week at my nephews 2nd birthday party.
Sam with his Aunt Sally
My sister put on the usual party food spread of sausage rolls, twiglets, tortillas, dips and for my dad some cheese straws. To finish the meal there was some lovely slow cooked chilli-con-carne, with chunks of beef....not mince. Present time was a hoot, Sam bless him, unwrapped some and casually put them to one side and asked for “More”, others he howled with delight and had to rip them open there and then. He will need to have his own little garage for the amount of tryches and ride on toys he has now. Christmass this year is going to be so much fun for Sam.
And then came the cake.
I was busy making the birthday cake on Sunday night whilst watching the NFL. I chose a standard Victoria Sponge from Nigella'sHow To Be A Domestic Goddess. This is probably the one book of hers I keep coming back to the most. It's easily worth £12 of any ones money.
I bought a kilo of baby blue sugar paste to cover my 9 inch/23 cm cake. I rolled out and covered the cake on Monday. The videos on YouTube, make this look a lot easier than it is. It arrives in a kind of hardish block. You treat it like a dough, knead and stretch it to warm it up and to make it pliable. For the 1st attempt I think I did OK. I had a go at some fancy building blocks. I also had a go at some letter icing for the first time. I would have liked more time to practise, however my cake supplies only came on the day of the party. And by the time I had got my sugar paste on the cake, cut out the building blocks. I only had about 30 minutes to ice the cake. I gotta say I got the hang of it after I remembered some tips from Rachel Allen's Bake series. The beauty of icing on the sugar paste is its quite forgiving, you can make a mess of it and you can scrape it off and start again, which I did 2-3 times. I am looking forward to practicing some more and getting the hang of it. I thought the red sparkly gel and green edible glitter gave the cake a bit of a WOW factor.
I was very busy on Sunday making the Sunday roast. I also made probably my favourite chocolate cake from Nigella'sHow To Be A Domestic Goddess. The delicious Chocolate Marsala cake is very tasty and heaven for dark chocolate fans, with its light almost moussey base and dark chocolate icing that sits on top. Only the best double cream poured over the top will do.
Last week saw The Philly’s win the baseball World Series for the 2nd time in their 125-year history. Their last success came in 1980. Philadelphia has been dry of sporting championships since 1983 when Dr.J and The 76ers won the NBA Finals. The Philly’s were often referred to as perennial losers, because of their long history they hold the record for the most losses in the MLB. They have lost a whopping 10,000+ games.
This Philly’s turned things around with some choice draft picks and free agent signings a couple of years ago. They won back-to-back division titles in 2007 & 2008, this year they finished with a 90-72 record and beat The Brewers and The Dodgers in the play-offs. In The World Series The Philly’s came up against the underrated Tampa Bay Rays, who had cause for celebration as they had reached their 1st World Series in only their 10th year of existence, incidently it took the Phillys 32 years to reach their 1st, and 98 years to win one. The Rays came into the World Series hot as they had come off impressive wins against The White Sox and The Red Sox.
The Philly’s proved too strong and won the 5 game series 4-1, in Philadelphia. That sounds quite one-sided, it wasn’t, only one game was a blowout. Game 4 ended 10-2, the rest were won by only a run or two. Game 5 had lots of twists and turns, the biggest been how rain suspended the game. This was the first time a in a World Series the game was delayed because of rain. The game was resumed 2 days later 2-2 in the bottom of the 6th innings. 4 innings left and it was some the most exciting baseball I had ever seen, it is such a shame The Rays couldn’t have pulled out a win to take the series back to Tampa for a 6th and 7th game.
Unlike UK Sports, The owners of the Franchise in the US lift the trophy
I gotta say I am not the biggest baseball fan, I check out the odd game in the early hours till I fall a sleep in front of the TV. My biggest moan is its loaded towards the pitchers and that I hardly ever see any homers. However this World Series really caught my interest. I only missed one game, sadly that was the blowout game that included 7 homers. I just wish I had caught some of the play-offs. As I am not an avid watcher of games, I learnt that pitchers do not play back-to-back games, they need 3 days rest. This is quite understandable when you think about it as they play a 162 game season in about 6 months, it really is the endurance game of the big four US Sports. Although I would say it’s the least physical, Football is only 16 regular season games, Basketball and Ice Hockey play 82 games in a season.
Channel 5’s coverage of the World Series was 1st class, a “Proper Hardcore” goes out to Jonny Gould and Josh Chetwynd, for the times were they effortlessly filled dead air waiting for delayed games to start. A great feature was how one of the shows US reporters reviewed the fast food at the stadiums. This feature definitely got my taste buds salivating. The traditional king of fast food from Philadelphia is a Philly cheese steak sandwich. After watching this I went to my local farm shop (Club Hill Farm) and Paul my butcher sliced some thinly cut prime Aberdeen Angus ribeye. I have to say I felt a bit guilty as I comment on how gorgeous the deep red ribeye looked and Paul told me it had been hung/aged for 6 weeks.
Knowing I needed some choice bread to enhance this sandwich. I used my basic Farl recipe and split the dough in two, I made a small loaf and a sausage shape to make a baguette. The beauty of having a baguette pan/tray. Is that you get the little dimples on the underside that makes it feel like you are eating the genuine article.
To start with I gently fried a couple of sliced onions for like 20-30 mins, till they are sweet and brown, but not burnt. To enhance the beefiness I included some of the beef fat to render down with the onions.. I warmed the baguette and buttered it, then gently fried the beef. I Layered the meat, onions and then some smoked Monterrey Jack to melt on top. The beef on its own was very nice, but the addition of onions and cheese made this probably the best steak sandwich I have ever had. And about as authentic a Philly cheese teak sandwich, I am going to taste outside of visiting Philadelphia for myself.
The steak was about 2 inch thick and cost me about £6.50. That is expensive, however it was basically 2 x steaks and I got a foot long sandwich out of it. I had one half for dinner and then the 2nd half as a midnight snack with a cool Michelob beer whilst watching Smokey and The Bandit (1977) on ITV 2 or 3. Watching the film perhaps I should have been drinking Coors, a beer I love, as Reynolds aim in the film is to bootleg 400 cases of Coors from Texas to Georgia, plus I saw someone wearing a Coors T-Shirt in the film. Another interesting side note, apparently Reynolds Pontiac Trans-Am SE, sale price with all the extras cost about $8000 back in '77. Second interesting fact in just 2 years by the time of '79 sales of the car had almost doubled from 70,000 to 120,000. Third fact a 1980 version of this car pops up in Kill Bill 2 (2004). Final Fact, The Prodigy borrowed a Jackie Gleeson (Sheriff Buford T. Justice) line from the film "What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law" for the song Their Law..
Anyway back to the sandwich, I baked it in the oven for 30mins, the sandwich was even better, the baguette crisper, the cheese gooier and the meat and onions even more sweeter. I have to say for sheer satisfaction whilst eating, The Philly just beats out The Muff. Its all about the fried meat and the juices… that's the secret
(William Hartnell, Bill Owen and Eric Barker in Carry On Sergeant)
Since my last Carry On blog entry in September I have clocked up another four and a half films. I managed to catch some early gems on UKTV Drama, as they were having a season of the early films on Sunday mornings. Sadly this came to end recently, as some of the UKTV channels have been re-named and re-branded.
Carry On Marathon Part 2:
Carry On Sergeant (1958) Carry On Nurse (1959) Carry On Teacher (1959) Carry On Cabby (1963) Carry On Emmannuelle (1978)
First up appropriately is Carry On Sergeant (1958) the very 1st film in the franchise. It was great to see William Hartnell the first Dr.Who, in a different role and looking a little younger. My mum told me he got the role because he played a tough Sergeant in The Army Game (1957-61) which incidentally also starred Carry On regulars Charles Hawtrey and Bernard Bresslaw. Looking at Hartnell's list of films on IMDB, it is obvious he suffered from been typecast, as he played 6x Sergeants, was promoted to Major and then Colonel.
I had a strange feeling I had seen Carry On Sergeant before, the only thing that I seemed to remember was Kenneth Conner been chased by a lovesick tealady. The clip on YouTube is superb, probably the best scene in the film, for all the stars and Carry On regulars, the bit that cracks me up most is for Private Gallowway and his “Andy…A“ line. Bob Monkhouse is excellent, he starts the film getting hitched to Bond girl to be Shirley Eaton. Sadly he gets called up before he can consummate the relationship. I gotta say I didn't recognise Eaton with her clothes on and without her gold make-up on. The film also starred Last Of The Summer Wine's Compo (Bill Owen) as Hartnell's right hand man Corporal Copping . Owen pops up in quite a few of the early films.
(Shirley Eaton publicity shot for Carry On Nurse)
I then followed this with the 2nd film in the series Carry On Nurse (1959). One of the most apparent things with watching these early Carry On films is that they are a lot more innocent than the smuttier late 60s/70s films. They have more in common with the post war Will Hay or Ealing comedies that were been made from about 1944-1964. One of the joys of watching the first couple of films, was discovering the beautiful Shirley Eaton. She really stood out for me, she had the looks with her striking blonde hair and some very dark eyebrows. What surprised me the most was that she could act and had a very effotless natural acting style, that glued me to the spot for every scene that she was in. She is probably one of the most recognizable Bond girls of the 60’s if not the franchise. We all remember her in her gold birthday suit,,but I can’t even remember if she had a speaking role. I find it a real shame that Eaton stopped acting in 1969, perhaps she found it hard getting jobs that didn’t call for her to be naked or sprayed gold.
I really need to check out Goldfinger (1964) again, especially with all the Bond razzmatazz for Quantum Of Solace. I had to agree with Andrew Collins recent blog entry Quantum of Sellers about the colossus Bond advertising machine and how shameless it has become.
(Shirley Eaton on the cover of Life magazine in 1964)
Carry On Nurse is a lot of fun and a prototype for future Carry On films as they would return to the hospital ward for three more outings in Carry On Doctor (1967), Carry On Again Doctor (1969) and finally Carry On Matron (1972). Carry On Nurse sees Hatti Jacques get a larger role than the previous film and one that she would become synonymous with. Of the 14 Carry On films she made, she would play Matron five times. It made me chuckle whenever Matron said “Carry on Nurse”. Another great thing about the early films is that it’s great watching the regulars before they started playing caricatures of themselves. A fine example of this is Carry On Cabby. Kenneth Conner, Sid James and Hattie Jacques really shine in this one.
Carry On Teacher is pretty funny although it is a blatant take off of the St. Trinianians films, with a mob of riotous kids sabotaging a school inspection. Leslie Philips is a scream delivering his trademark "Ding Dong" line as he sets eyes on Joan Simms. Double checking Philips "Ding Dong" catchphrase it turn s out it originated in Carry On Nurse. The film also features an early role for Dick Turpin and Man About The House Richard O'Sullivan as the lead saboteur.
Come the mid-sixties there was a writing change as Talbot Rothwell replaced Norman Hudis in 1963. Around this time they switched to shooting just in colour, bigger budgets and began to spoof period films like Cleopatra (1963), The Scarlet Pimpernel(1934) and Dracula (1958). Couple that with the women's lib movement and relaxtion of nudity and censorship laws Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers took full advantage and pushed it to its limits. This came to a head in 1978 with Carry On Emmannuelle which turned out to be the final film, . I only caught the 2nd half of this film on BBC3, it was mildly amusing, very soft and at least I can say I have seen it.
I wish I could say it was my first Emmanuelle film. I can't that honour goes to Emmanuelle (1974), and the unofficial Black Emanuelle film Emanuelle and The Cannibal Jungle (1977) . For some the mix of gratuitous sex and bloody gore is heaven. For a short period this became a popular sub-genre of cannibal films, that were all the rage in the 70's Even Bond girl No.1 UrsulaAndress went bare chested for some good frolicking fun deep down in the Amazon jungle in The Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978). And then you can't forget L'Infermiera (1975) aka The Sensuous Nurse, where she played a saucy nurse.
For me when Carry On films did a pastiche or spoof of a genre of film like in Carry on Cowboy or Carry On Screaming, it was done well with plenty of genre markers that iconic moments to allow you to identify the film been referenced. The key point is that they were always first and foremost Carry On film. Carry On Emmannuelle sadly forgot this as it is very much an Emmanuelle film first, with some aging Carry On stars in small roles to satisfy die hard fans and to help sell the film. I had to laugh when I read the story that Barbra Windsor turned down the film because of the films opening scene on a airplane with her character giving oral sex in a toilet. I won't even mention Carry On Columbus (1993).
I make it I am about half way through the 29 films that they made.
I have been lost the last few weeks. The unimaginable happened...my flash stopped working on my camera. Thankfully it was within its warranty and I sent it back to Ricoh to get fixed. Anyone spot the nod in the blog title to a classic film of Russian cinema?
The past few weeks I have got a bit behind with listing some new DVDs on Ebay,,but more importantly I have not been able to document stuff for this blog. What goodies have you missed, well I made, some gorgeous treacle pudding and custard this weekend, tiramisu the weekend before, I made a Cyrus Todiwalla inspired curry on Friday night.
This one is a tomato and coconut milk based curry, served separately with fried coconut (grated) and sweetcorn, the trick of this dish is to toast the coconut in its own natural fat till its brown. I added prawns instead of Orkney crab...with some rice,,it was very tasty.
I was very impressed with Cyrus Todiwalla stint on Market Kitchen (UKTV Food Sky Channel 249) a couple of weeks back. He came across well and I found his recipes to be very original. He even did an Indian Sheppard's pie, normally I wouldn't even look at this,,as I have a thing about mince,,all I will say is I had a traumatic time at primary school eating the stuff. Anyway Todiwalla'singenious twist, besides spicing up this British classic was to use small chunks of lamb and not mince. So for that reason i will be trying it in the coming weeks.
This hilarious send up of Keanu Reeves is from series 1 of Robot Chicken. Robot Chicken is the creatuion of Seth Green, who made his name in Buffy, Austin Powers and as Chris, Peter Griffin's son in Family Guy.
I had to put this clip up on my blog as the Christopher Walken bit is priceless. Check out the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special as it's as good,,if not better than the Family Guy DVD.
The only difference is that I used a selction of brown/rye flours to make a qualtiy Brown Bread. This rustic brown Farl had a lovely tatse, texture and bite to it because of the wholesome grain in the Granery and Seeded Brown Flour.
My Flour Mix:
100g Granery 100g Strong Seeded Brown 100g Super Strong Premuim White 100g Wholemeal Rye 100g Plain Wholemeal
Man I love this show,,I don't catch it as much as I should. Caught the More Crap episode from Season 11 on Paramount 2 last night. My god its as funny as hell. Bono is so funny in this.
Cucumber farmer during the week, masked masterbaker come the weekend. From lovingly handmade artisan breads, cupcakes of all sizes, pies to pancakes, there is nothing I wont throw my hat at. I don't eat to live, I live to eat. I can't get enough Triple D, I would love to be a MasterChef, do something with food, hopefully this blog will help me crystallise just were my path should lead.
(Shirley Eaton publicity shot for Carry On Nurse)
(Shirley Eaton on the cover of Life magazine in 1964)
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