Magnum Carta

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop but it's giving me a full-on frisson, a Looking at Naked Smiling Tom Selleck in 1983 frisson.

I don't want to speak too soon, but it totally looks like a British politician has actually done something that wasn't the political equivalent of a Stupid Pet Trick. Is it possible? That someone from their right-wing party is uncorrupted enough to make a big, career-destroying stink to defend habeas corpus because he believes it's worth defending? He has certainly forced the issue of 42-day detentions without charge in Britain to the national and international consciousness in a big way, which, if I assume his motives are good, is what his motives were - and if his motives weren't good I can't imagine what they were.

Really? Has an actual political ideologue managed to sprout his way out of the soulless mechanistic dehumanizing political latrine that has been British national politics ever since I can remember (1997 - before that I only cared about ponies and The Cure)? And he's rightwing? And why did the Labour Party time this vote so close to the anniversary of the Magna Carta anyways? That was so fucking stupid or cynical that it's reason enough in itself to vote for any other party. And how long can that country's media keep printing Labour press releases instead of doing some actual political coverage?

Well. If a British politician has actually taken a principled stand on civil liberties, no matter what party he's from, it makes my week, which so far has been good. And I can share some of the reasons it has been good on a public forum:

1. Mistress La Spliffe 1, Belgacom -46. After threats and public mockery and yelling and carrying on over a month, they've struck our fraudulent charges and knocked €46 off our normal bill to make up for being the biggest assholes in the world. Of course, while I won the battle I won't feel I've won the war until either I leave the country or Belgacom does, which as the national provider, 53% owned by the state, it will only do by going bankrupt, or by seeing the state disintegrate. But guess what! Both will probably happen soon.

2. Speaking of the fragile Belgian state, as of this week I am an official resident of it. This is a process which has taken, as you may have noticed, well over a year. Three trips to the commune, one to the police station, a kazillion forms filled out - and all this for someone who is an official citizen of the European Union, giving me under law the right to establish my residency here with a minimum of bother. Funny more than anything, because neither employers nor landlords give a good goddamn once they saw my passport. I only needed it to open a high-interest savings account.

3. I saw a German dentist this week. She spent one of our appointments gouging at a tooth that my last dentist had fucked up. That made me very, very nervous for the next appointment, at which she told me that my teeth are in terrific shape. Dentists have said that to me before, but never a German dentist, so I'd never taken it to heart. But now I'm as flattered as the only girl with cocaine at a male model party.

Why I love the Independent

Though I still look at the Guardian when I'm trying to figure out how many massive piles of money I should be paid for taking my stunning professional self to Australia someday (their job site is the best around), I'm pleased to have switched to the Independent. The news is timely enough, and while the op-ed pieces are still pretty annoying, at least they're written above a third grade level and don't all have something to do with American actresses and celebutantes.

But what really pleased me about the Independent yesterday was an op-ed piece masquerading as an album review, or vice-versa: this vicious, delicious condemnation of Coldplay. Okay - not the hardest target in the world. But this is a message that needs to be put out there again and again until children stop getting hooked on that shit. And then reading the comments section - an activity I try to avoid, and one I chide the F-word for as he has a propensity to do it in the right-wing Australian press and then get upset about what the world is coming to - was hilarious. I know music critics must get a lot of hate for hating on what millions of people love, and I know half the comments were probably written by 12 year olds or people with the sort of hormonal disorders that will let them be:

A) Coldplay fans
B) masochistic enough to read an article entitled 'Why I Hate Coldplay'

but I could not stop giggling at them, imagining upset grown men furtively hunkered over their work computer in some grey British cubicle, writing that a professional music critic hated Coldplay because he was jealous of their success and insisting that 30 million people can't be wrong. (They can.)

So, as you can perhaps tell I hate Coldplay too. And I can't simply ignore that hate, as I ignore most of my hates, because years and years ago a guy put on their first album while I was being intimate with him and I was too polite in those days to ask him to turn that shit off. Talk about a fucking moodkiller. I felt like we were being voyeured by a mentally defective pervert who was moaning even louder than the guy I was intimatizing. A mentally defective moaning pervert who couldn't change key. It was awful. If dementia ever comes it will be bloody horrible, but with any luck at all that will be one of the first memories to go.

What would Jesus stew?

It's difficult for me to share a sauce recipe as sauce is more of a process than a recipe. So I'll give you the process, with one of my favourite ways of doing it, and then it'll be like Jesus teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish. Was that Jesus? It sounds like something Jesus would do.

1. Skin, core, and quarter the fresh tomatoes. Easiest way to do this sans machinery is to rinse them, pop them into a pot of vigorously boiling water for 30 seconds, and then drop them into a large bowl of cold, clean water. Work in sets of ten.

Put each tomato on the chopping board and cut it in half, off-centre a bit so that the core (the hard green-ish white-ish bit) is all on one of the halves. As you do, you should see the skin start to slide off; finish the job with your fingers. Put the skin in a separate bowl, cut the tomato into four - again off-centre so that the core is all on one piece - and then chop the core out of that piece. Throw out the core, and put the quartered tomato into a large bowl.

Now, 30 seconds is a bit long to boil the tomatoes to get the skin off - some people only do it for 5 seconds or little more. The consequence of the 30 second boil is that the skin comes off very, very easily, but that it takes the thin outer layer of the fruit with it, and that thin outer layer is where lots of the flavour is concentrated. So once you've finished skinning, coring, and quartering all your tomatoes, take the skins you've collected in a seperate bowl, put them into a fine-mesh sieve or colander - a netty one rather than a hole-y one - hold that above the bowl with all your tomatoes in it, and rub the skins into the mesh. This will push through lots of thick, strongly flavoured juice.

(Hilts, at this point you've rinsed the tomatoes twice and boiled them for half a minute once, and now you're about to cook the fuckers for three or four hours, so you won't get salmonella).

2. Now that you've got all your tomatoes skinned, cored, and quartered in a big bowl - clean up your area. Just do it now. You'll thank yourself later.

3. Now that you've cleaned up your area, prepare your pre-fry. This is where you introduce your basic, tough, non-tomato flavours to the sauce, by frying a bunch of aromatic ingredients with a good deal of olive oil before introducing the tomatoes. There's a world of things you can include here: sliced onion (sweet), diced garlic (essentially obligatory), diced celery (if you're a caker), leek (but then absolutely no onions), cracked peppercorns (bold), dried red peppers (bolder), rosemary (fresh or dried, without the stalk) - remember, though, anything you put in at this stage has to be tough. You will have to play around with the proportions by yourself - I personally like lots of garlic, little-to-no onion, and very spicy.

Heat up the olive oil by itself, highly, and then drop in your pre-fry ingredients. Stir them around the pan until they brown up, or until the onions, if you're using them, get translucent. For a recent batch made with 3 kg of tomatoes, I just used two garlic cloves and a tablespoon and half of cracked peppercorns.

Notes:

-At this stage, and at all others, remember to KEEP IT SIMPLE. The simpler you keep your base sauce, the fancier you can get without crossing the line into muddiness at dinnertime. Limit yourself to three pre-fry ingredients.
-Remember that scene in Goodfellas when Paul Sorvino was slicing garlic in prison with a razor blade, so it was so thin that it 'melted' into the sauce? Remember that was a movie about wankers. Don't stress yourself over the thickness of your dice - just do what you can.

4. Once you've browned the pre-fry, put in the sliced, quartered, cored tomatoes by handfuls, stirring all the while, without lowering the heat. Get them all in there as you stir, and then add some salt, or (my preference) a shake of fish sauce - you know, that weird oily anchovy liquid that they sell in the 'international' section of grocery markets. On its own it smells like a dead leper, but introduced into a sauce at this point in the cooking, it will only add a bit of sodium and, in the long run, a good background flavour that will add richness without muddying the taste. Once the salty thing is added, cover them.

Note:
-When it comes to saltiness, BE SPARING. Saltiness is a very easy flavour to add later, either as you're preparing a meal or as you're at the dinner table, and a very hard one to take away if you overdo it. (If you do overdo it, add a whole, peeled potato to the sauce, and leave it there until it's cooked through; that should soak some of it up.) At this point, you're really just adding the salt to help the tomatoes release their juices so they can stew themselves, rather than adding another really important flavour.
-Also at this point, you have a judgement call to make. Are your tomatoes, like me, juicy enough to get themselves wet? (Sorry.) Does it seem like they are liquid enough to stew themselves? They almost always are, and in any case you will be able to tell about 5 minutes after getting them on the heat and adding some salt or fish sauce. If they look like the risk burning, add some white wine or some clear stock. I advise you to try to get the tomatoes to stew themselves. Stock or wine is best added when you're preparing the meal and can make informed decisions about the taste combinations you want. Again, you're running the risk of muddying the taste.

5. Once the tomatoes have reached a boil, turn them down to a low, low simmer. They're going to stay like that now for three or four hours, and you're going to give them a good stir every ten minutes, so make sure you have a good book. For the first hour, leave the lid on; from that point onward, leave the lid on but askew, so there is a small space from which the water vapour can escape.

If you must add cinnamon to combat the acidity, add it at the end of hour two. Be sparing, especially at first; a pinch should do it. Also at hour two, start tasting. This will give you an idea where the flavour is going and help you make an informed decision about which herbs you're going to add at the end of the process.

6. At the end of hour three, if you don't want a chunky sauce (which I never do), get an immersion blender, or as the Portuguese call it, 'magic wand', and blend. At this point, it's time for to decide if the sauce is about finished; it depends on the thickness you want. Remember that you may use this sauce to prepare a meal, and in any case you will certainly be reheating it, which means thickening it again, unless you use it on a pizza. Your call.

7. When you decide you have the right thickness, it is time to add the herbs and turn the heat off, not necessarily in that order. Remember yesterday's tips: the more delicate the herb, the less heat it needs. Rosemary aside there is no herb that should be on the hob for more than ten minutes, and lots that shouldn't go in until after the heat is off. And remember to keep it simple. For the sauce I made with the garlic and peppercorn pre-fry, I used half a handful of sage.

8. And, you're done. Clean up the kitchen NOW. There are few things worse in terms of householding than trying to clean up from making tomato sauce after all the little splashes have dried and hardened. Do it NOW.

Getting saucy

Hilts has asked for a tomato sauce recipe, and tomorrow I'll oblige, with instructions on how to transform the fresh fruit into a basic sauce en masse - a comparatively thin sauce that can either be used without further preparation, or used to quickly prepare meat, fish, and vegetable sauces shortly before mealtimes. I'll give you one large theme on which you can make variations, depending on your preferences. But in your experimentation, there are a few rules of thumb to bear in mind:

1. Onion will make a sauce sweet; particularly a sauce from fresh tomatoes, which already tends to be sweeter than sauce from canned tomatoes. My father never makes his sauces with onion for this reason, and I only do sometimes, as I find overly-sweet tomato sauces a bit gross. When I do, I use maybe one small onion for every three kilos of fresh fruit. Don't feel any obligation to include onion if you don't like sweeter sauces. However, if you plan to use the sauce to prepare salt cod, for example, or shellfish, or some other fish with a bit of texture, then consider it seriously; the sweetness brings out the best of the flesh.

2. Spare your herbs. The more delicate they are, the later they should go in; leafy, tender basil, for example, shouldn't go in until after you turn the heat off. Neither should coriander. More papery oregano doesn't need more than two minutes. Tougher sage can go in ten minutes before you turn the heat off. Herbs simply don't need to and shouldn't stew, except rosemary, which either needs to be muslin-bagged so you can take it out and spare your diners rosemary tongue splinters, or else it needs to be pre-fried and then viciously blended in after spending the whole three hours or so cooking with the sauce. Personally, I find rosemary more trouble than it's worth if I'm not making a meat sauce, and even then I'm not a fan. Save it for soups and roasts.

NB, I don't know what the fuck to do with dried herbs because I haven't used them in forevah and they weren't much used for sauce in my family while I was growing up. I'd guess they need a bit of stewing but I'm not sure.

3. Don't over complicate your flavours. In this vein, I advise against using more than one herb in each batch. Two reasons for this: first, when you can or freeze your basic sauce, you don't know exactly what you're going to serve it with, and there is a good chance that you'll need to work on the flavours again at the mealtime. For example, you probably need a stronger sauce for a bland ricotta-stuffed pasta than for a meat-stuffed pasta. Give yourself some leeway here. And second, over-complicated sauces come out with a muddy ditch taste.

4. Fresh-fruit tomato sauce is very acidic, which is the reason the crap you buy off the shelf is half 'stabilizer' or some such. There are a couple of ways to deal with this, most of them applicable when you're preparing the meal and not when you're making the basic sauce. A drop of cream when it comes off the heat for the meal will do. Using the sauce to prepare meat, a fatty whitefish, or the classy-but-broke student's dear friend, canned albacore tuna in olive oil, will also usually cancel out the acidity at the taste level.

In terms of the actual preparation of the sauce, unless it's meat-based (which I will not be telling you how to make, as that might involve blowing some of my daddy's secrets) there isn't much you can do besides ensuring you use enough oil in your pre-fry, ensuring you cook the sauce for the full three or four hours, and using the Famous Italian Secret That Isn't Italian or a Secret: a pinch of cinnamon halfway through the cooking process. Please note, however, that young wives' tales to the contrary, you will taste the cinnamon, unless you're preparing a sweeter sauce, in which case the cinnamon hides behind the onion. Of course, if you plan to use your basic sauce to wet down curried dishes or for eastern Mediterranean/North African dishes, a detectable pinch of cinnamon in the basic sauce is a good idea.

Also please note that in all these cases (long cooking aside), you're simply masking the sauce's acidity. Some of you, or your diners, will get heartburn if you eat too much of it. This is one of the simple inequities of existence and must be tolerated.

Monstrous vermin

Belgacom. It's not finished. We have a name for the person who made the ripoff order now, we have a receipt for all the unsolicited crap we brought back, and the incompetent, fraudulent fuckknuckles still haven't sorted out the €200 they're trying to charge us. But at this point, I mind a little less, or rather I'm a little less furious, as the situation has been illuminating. As the F-word pointed out, it's been the very definition of kafkaesque, and I'd always thought 'kafkaesque' was just an adjective pretentious jerks use to describe things they don't understand. But now I can reflect on The Trial and The Metamorphosis and see them as realistic allegories of dealing with European bureaucracies, rather than as the paranoid ramblings of a tubercular depressive living in an increasingly violently anti-semitic environment. On Saturday morning, for example, before going to the Belgacom shop, the F-word warned me I was breathing like an attack dog. That never happens.

Anyways, I've calmed down and refreshed myself over the weekend, thanks to Frisbee - pardon me, 'flying disc'- sleep, marijuana, three Mel Brooks movies from the 1970's that I'd never seen before because my parents never let me watch movies that had the word 'fuck' in them and after that it just never occurred to me they might possibly be good because Men in Tights and The Producers were so bloody stupid, the eventual appearance of the Belgian sun, a range of not-fit-to-print activities, and the conversion of a bushel of tomatoes from Sunday's fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck market into tomato sauce.

What really helped calm me down, from both my Belgacom fury and the range of other little annoyances cluttering up my life, was the tomato sauce. I can't wrap my head around childless people of liesure like me who think cooking is a waste of time, and making tomato-sauce is something that makes me extra baffled about them. Forget the fact that homemade sauce is a zillion times better than anything that comes pre-made, which I've been subject to at friends' and relatives' houses, and forget the fact that cooking it from the fresh fruit instead of the canned fruit yields such a cleaner flavour. The process of cooking it from the fresh fruit is lovely. Popping the tomatoes into boiling and then cold water and skinning them is fun in a slimy, Halloween sort of way. Getting two batches on the go at once and thinking of the subtle base flavours to give each lets you speculate on the delicious shape of meals to come. The knowledge that now your household is going to have something really delicious to eat because of your efforts - the prettiness of the smells - the sizzle of the pre-frying - the sight of all those full jars lined up afterwards - there's something deeply satisfying and calming about it, and I don't understand people who don't understand that satisfaction and calm.