Pumpkin Publog

Raisin Hell

Raisin Hell: only last weekend I found myself talking with an American friend about the differences in quality and style between curries bought in the UK and those from the US. One of the dishes she liked about her favourite Stateside curry emporium was a mild curry with raisins.

It occurred to me that raisins have become a symbol of curry inauthenticity in the UK (look at Pete’s piece below’), but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, I seem to think that quite the opposite was the case in the innocent days of the sixties and seventies. Now the poor dear curried raisin is somewhere above flock wallpaper* and chicken tikka masala on the serious curryophile’s list of things to be disdained.

But I haven’t the faintest whether any of the Subcontinent’s many and various cuisines feature raisins: there’s no culinary reason why they shouldn’t. And even if the raisin was introduced to the curry in the UK, I wonder why it, in particular, has been singled out as a shameful curry faux-pas?

*Has flock wallpaper become the focus of retro-fetishisation yet? If not, it’s surely due some love soon’

The same dish - elsewhere.

The same dish - elsewhere. I was at the cinema (quelle surprise) on Saturday and fancied a bite before I drifted off to the pub. A walk past Miso, on Haymarket, garnered the fact that they did a dish called Malaysian Chicken Curry and Rice. For a fiver (a whole fifty pence more than my usual, but Hey Big Spender as Dermot Murnaghan would say).

Miso is a vaguely Japanese noodle bar taking much of its lead from Wagamama with its stripped pine benches and shared seating area. Smaller, and the staff were skittish at best. I don’t blame them, because when my MCC&R was delivered I got a shock. There is no reason why one restaurant would serve the same dish in exactly the same way as another, but still I was shocked when it came on just one plate. At the Hare & Tortoise the very wet curry is in a seperate bowl to the rice. Here it was all lumped together. But then that is because the curry was not very wet. At a push if I had to describe Miso’s version of my favourite comfort food, the harsh answer would be Homepride Cook In Sauce Curry.

I have no idea which of the two dishes is more authentic. I don’t really care, I was not planning on a trip to Malaysia. I have my suspicions though that the simplicity shown in the Hare & Tortoise may lead to a more representative dish. Miso served very plain boiled rice with a thick curry sauce consisting of small chunks of rice, peas, peppers, odd tasting potato and onion. Same dish at Hare & Tortoise is chicken on the bone in a runny soup with tomato and the tastiest chunks of potato in the world.

I ate the Miso version. It took me back to childhood curries my Mum made; I was half expercting to find a raisin or two. But i won’t be going back to Miso again. I assume it stands for (warning potentially offensive language based joke coming up, Mi So Disappointed.

Pub Quiz Etiquette

Pub Quiz Etiquette: A team with several publog regulars won a pub quiz last night. A team with several more publog regulars came second. Total swag - ‘50 of drinks vouchers. But this morning it’s hard to feel too proud - the teams in question ended up with 11 and 8 contestants apiece. Hardly surprising or fair that we did so well, then.

But is that the case? The fault surely lies with the quizmaster for allowing unlimited team sizes, a fairly basic rule whose absence we didn’t intend to exploit - people just kept turning up. Also in this case there were 19 teams even including our two gargantuas and the quizmaster made the error of reading out the scores after each of 8 rounds - upshot: it took AGES and the winner wasn’t even announced until 10.30. Given that the drinks vouchers had to be spent on the night that left half an hour to deal with ‘50 - if we’d been two teams of four some seriously rushed drinking would have ensued. As it was it served 19 people quite handily.

Sweet Cred

Sweet Cred

Those wacky Middle Agers!!

Those wacky Middle Agers!!:

“WARNING: Do not attempt to recreate this recipe, as lime is highly caustic and potentially dangerous; it should never be used in cooking.”

(Ingredient availability permitting - haha peacock unlikely - I’m gunna try some of the non-wacky recipes out, maybe for my Grebt Spring/Book-Completion Feast, so watch this space)

(Or Proven By Science, for the more Frankensteiny experiments)

Further to sarah’s CAMRA piss-taking

Further to sarah’s CAMRA piss-taking, 10 reasons to drink cask ale, including the frankly ludicrous number 8, which confuses things containing fat with things that are “fattening”. If atkins has taught us anything (which it possibly hasn’t, but anyway), it’s THE CARBS that you have to run screaming from, just ask my belly…

I just ate the best banana ever grown!!

I just ate the best banana ever grown!! - so it is downhill from here on in I guess…

Camra want more chixx0r to drink Real Ale Bouze

Camra want more chixx0r to drink Real Ale Bouze, so I read once. YEAH THIS PICTURE MAKES ME WANT TO TRUST YOU PHOTOSHOP HAPPY FREAKZ0R, OH I MEAN, NOTT! Good job that elsewhere on the site they still have some nearly nudie ladies. Further tentative proddings reveal the true sick heart of Camra in Hale Ninkasi, the Goddess of Beer. Now, to me, it looks like Chairman Mick got carried away after a naughty dream about Lara Croft, but hey, if they want to claim mythical pagan heritage in cask ale then…

… yeah, yeah they’re wankers.

And is there a good reason why

And is there a good reason whywe don’tIsn’t it nice to have a have a sidebar link to A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down? Sort it out people with appropriate permissions! (I wonder if I have them, I dunno I am too busy wondering if I am going insane over the Tunnocks/mint taste hybrid that WILL NOT LEAVE MY MOUTH).

Dudes

Dudes! A warning to the easily frightened - always remember to store your Tunnocks Caramel Wafers in a safe place AWAY FROM YOUR MINT PRODUCTS. Are you listening Mr Man who sells Tunnocks Caramel Wafers for 35 pence outside Goodge Street tube?! Are you? For if you do not store them safely, your lovely Tunnocks Caramel Wafer will not only pong of but also slightly taste of SUGAR FREE POLOS. This will lead to bemusement and confuzzlement as you are jolted out of your lovely, womb-like environment of caramel-wafer-dom. You may be forced to have another Nice Cup of Tea in shock!!! BUT OH NO THE TEA WILL TASTE OF MINT TOO! Foiled.

Actually they have been marked down to 35pence from 40pence, I note. Good job blooming well too, but this has got me pondering just QUITE how long have the poor overpriced wafers been lurking there? Hrrrm.