flanerie

Lovely legs

I’m a sucker for good octopus, if you’ll pardon the pun, and Pulpo a la Gallega is a supremely easy, wonderfully tasty and very impressive dish – be it as a main course or a starter.

Octopi are fairly difficult to get hold of, at least in my experience in the UK. If you are fortunate enough to live in Spain, you shouldn’t have any problem. Here in Manchester, though, the only place I know where fresh, whole octopus can be bought is the wonderful Bury Market.


So, once you have your octopus, you will need to clean and tenderise it. I just bashed it all over with a rolling pin for 5 minutes, and it turned out OK.

Done that? Good. Now bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. I have heard various people swear by using a copper pot, but I don’t see how that can possibly matter. Once the water is boiling, dip the whole octopus in it three or four times, just enough that the tentacles start to curl.

Now boil the octopus for between 20 and 30 minutes. The bigger the octopus, the more time you’ll need, obviously.

Once this time has elapsed, take the pot off the heat and leave the octopus submerged for a further twenty minutes or so. You can use this time to boil up some spuds – floury or otherwise, the choice is yours.

Once the taties are ready and you’ve cut them into bite sized pieces, remove the octopus from the water and cut the head away from the tentacles. Most people discard the head, as it isn’t used in this recipe as a rule, but it’s less wasteful to keep it and use it in a salad or something the following day. Cut the tentacles into pieces.

It doesn’t say so in any other recipe for this dish that I’ve read, but I tend to flash fry the octopus pieces and the potatoes together for a minute or two, and add some sea salt and a dash of pepper in the process.

Arrange on a plate (a wooden dish is more traditional – I must remember to get some sometime), add parsley and sweet paprika/pimentón to garnish, and enjoy.

Protected: An epiphany and a resolution

Protected: Ups and downs and rounds and rounds

2 nanoseconds to liftoff

Taken near Chatillon-sur-Indre, France, in August.

Dramatic chipmunk

Getting myself together, slowly but surely. Will blog, but for now, just the funniest 5 second clip I’ve seen in a long while – a dramatic chipmunk:

No surprises there, then

My Political Views
I am a far-left social moderate
Left: 8.04, Libertarian: 0.79

Political Spectrum Quiz

I will start blogging more substantive posts soon, I promise.

More later, but…oh the relief

Sellers does the Beatles

Very busy with work, so here is a quick set of Beatles tracks, as covered by a certain Mr. Peter Sellers.

She Loves You (Irish version):

She Loves You (German version):

Help (Evensong version):

Lancashire Siffon..Sinfom..Smiffon…Band

I was intending to make this make this blog relentlessy positive and optimistic, but every now and then, I hear about yet another anti-intellectual measure being taken to protect the hard-of-thinking from having to engage in any form of thought process that veers outside the daily norm, and my blood pressure starts to rise.

According to BBC Music Magazine, the Lancashire Sinfonietta is considering a name change, because they are worried that its name could be responsible for poor ticket sales.

We want to know if the embarassment of tripping over those awkward vowels and consonants supports the out-of-date argument that classical music is elitist.

“Sinfonietta” is pronounced exactly as it is written. Five syllables. It’s not difficult.  My own company name is six syllables long, and is also pronounced exactly as it is written. A fair number of people appear to be incapable of reading an unfamiliar word and enunciating its syllables. This boggles my mind.

And I’m going to go out on a limb and hazard a guess that the kind of person that shrinks away from engaging their brain and common sense to formulate the word Sinfonietta does indeed believe that “classical” music is elitist. And it is, but not with the negative connotations insinuated by the word “elitist”. It represents an elite form of music composition and music-making, and should be absolutely unapologetic about it.

This is a collection of supremely talented people who have studied how to play their respective instruments for the majority of their lives, giving any one of an infinite number of interpretations of enormously complex pieces of music.  Damn right it’s elite. It flies in the face of the prevailing television-led idea that anyone can achieve instant fame, wealth and recognition with absolutely no training, genuine ability or, indeed, effort. The X-Factor and its ilk are in no way elite because their rewards are undeserved.

Sorry about that – I just read the news and it really got my goat.

Blue suede?

Oh so close.