And this sort of quality is, often, a texture thing; an appealingly fuzzy or prickly surface, a lived-in feel. Built-in obsolescence and the frictionlessness of digital interfaces have only enhanced our appreciation of the distinction that blemishes and irregularities can lend an object. The result, perversely, is that we end up buying new, ready fucked-up denims or overpriced thrift cherrypicked from Oxfam, or else downloading pristine FLAC files of songs retrospectively supplemented by synthetic tape hiss or vinyl crackle over high-speed fibre optic connections.

Critics have been quick to point out some of the forces at work here – how the old/cheap is used to connote authenticity, how the redemption of the naff often amounts to little more than the flaunting of cultural capital. Angela McRobbie notes that ‘the apparent democracy of the [second-hand clothing] market, from which no-one is excluded on grounds of cost, is tempered by the very precise tastes and desires of the second hand searchers ‘, while Simon Reynolds, in a response to his Wire colleague David Keenan’s recent, sort of contentious attempt to corral a bunch of bands making ham-fistedly lo-fi, ambivalently nostalgic music into a genre, insists ‘there’s a literally economic aspect to this subliming of kitsch’, whereby hipsters mandate that ‘whatever can be found cheaply in yard sales and thrift stores’ is cool, a claim essentially underwritten by their ample trust funds, good cheekbones and investment of countless idle hours in combing the subcultural canon for cute but(/because) defunct stylistic tics.

This is all true, but I think there’s more to be said about the role of feel (in both senses of the word) in all this. Touch remains an intimate sense, one that is both essentially unbroadcastable (at least at present – researchers in Tokyo have already developed tactile holograms that synthesise the feel of a raindrop or ping pong ball using ultrasound) and weirdly resistant to language. The warping and decay on the records Keenan is trying to lump together isn’t just a matter of making stuff sound old; insofar as crackle used to index the record’s decay (how near it was to being ‘played to death’) its addition to these records does that, but – like the birdsong, wave sounds, ambient conversation or TV dialogue also buried in these tracks’ mixes – it also suggests someone sitting concretely somewhere and listening to this stuff, a specific time/space/situation.

The more I try and get a handle on this stuff the more I find myself defaulting to one particular reference point: my collection of cardigans. I love these because they’re really richly textured – patterns and reliefs, bobbles, plastic or wooden buttons and toggles, holes – and really noisy – shot through with flecks or skeins of other colours, segmented into various clashing patterns – and because they’re big and all-encompassing and overtly subject to gravity. Synthetic and referential high street cardigans can’t compare, seeming, relatively, to embody our culture’s cynicism, wastefulness and morbid hatred of accidents and particularities, somehow. Seeing music laid out visually in a program like Audacity it also seems notable that older songs are more sticklebacked – modern compression and production mean contemporary stuff often looks nearer to a solid oblong; more compact, blunter teeth, smoother.

Given this, Reynold’s use of ‘sublime’ seems kind of apt; back in the proto-Romantic day, Burke opposed sublimity to the pristine symmetry of beauty, characterising it as rougher, vaguer, immense and enveloping – which, if you stretch it right out or turn it right up, the weft of a cardigan or a cassette tape’s veils of static can be. I’ve talked before on Murdofleur about our apparent desire, culturally, to find sustained pleasure and comfort in basically exhausted media by scaling them up, looking for capillary micro-seams in them that have yet to be fully strip-mined. In one sense it seems more than a little regressive (back then I called it autistic – and that was without having known about Temple Grandin’s hug Machine!) but, given our resource-strapped state maybe maximizing our quality per quantity yield is just best practice.

]]> http://www.murdofleur.org/notice-board/smooth-criminal/feed 1 http://www.murdofleur.org/post-its/post-it-notes/5321 http://www.murdofleur.org/post-its/post-it-notes/5321#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:38:56 +0000 Dorothy http://www.murdofleur.org/?p=5321

We should not forget that every single plant available to us in the grossly over-stocked supermarkets once grew as a wild plant. Trimmed, washed and polished to the consumer’s request, any chard, spud or radish is now so far removed from its muddy origins that it may as well be completely artificial.

The long-lost cousins of these genetically mutant plants which fill our shops are still available to us however.  All you have to do is look for them amongst the woods, hedgerows and coastline of England, also known as foraging: taking as much as you need from the wild and revelling in the quality of the small handful of rude flavour which you have just uncovered.

Foraging is a simple process; identify, collect, prepare, eat. Many of you will have already foraged at it’s most basic, picking berries from hedgerows or apples and plumbs from August gardens.

However the incentives for foraging are more potent; a snub to domesticity, a challenge to the absolute ease of life and a reconnection with England’s ancient rural heritage. These incentives are vital ingredients for making wild food some of the most delicious you will ever eat.

The best way to start is to buy a foraging book (Food For Free by Richard Mabey, for example), and then get into the countryside and hope you identify something that is edible/won’t cause death by vomiting. The wild food you add to a meal will be superior to any ingredient that you paid for.

Recipes

Wild Garlic: May/June

An easily found plant which when broken open smells unmistakably of peppery raw garlic. I’ve used this as a replacement to basil, adding a strong freshness to a salad by mixing a handful of wild garlic, chopped into ribbons, with sliced fresh tomatoes and dressed with olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper.

Nettle Soup

As with any wild plant, and especially the hardy nettle, make sure the surrounding soil isn’t contaminated; don’t pick nettles from the corner of an abandoned petrol station or public toilet, for example.

1. Fry a whole chopped onion until just brown.

2. Take 4 large handfuls of nettle tops, removing any stalky-woody bits of the nettle and wash them well in water. Add these to the onions with 2 large chopped raw potatoes and cook for a couple of minutes till everything is covered in oniony oil.

3. Add 2 pints of vegetable stock, salt, pepper and some ground nutmeg to taste and cook for 20 minutes, crushing the potatoes with a spoon. Blend the mixture to get a smoother soup.

4. Serve with a swerve of crème fraiche or cream.

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For all his green credentials, B.J. is taking part in a car-crazy charity initiative:

10,000 miles... 18 days...1 Fiat Punto… Check out the Mongol Rally in aid of the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation at http://www.gobi-gadabouts.com

Clara Drummond

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Eyes scrupulously fixed on the trough below, Geoff watched the loose arc of his last Pimm’s frothing away between the deodorizers. Like little citric ping-pong balls he thought, or peeled apples. Many were pissworn to mere coins or lozenges. You can’t take it with you!

Checking his fly as he blinked out from under the eaves’ shade, Geoff tried to imagine how much ice creams would cost now, thinking he’d pick up a couple of 99s for the girls on the way back. But patting and uselessly double-patting his pockets, he found no wallet. Had he brought it? Thinking, he squinted into the hash of half-shredded posters stapled on the toilet’s outer wall.

Rob Gallagher

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Life is too short, apparently, to clean out the boot of your car.  It’s not like Keith didn’t get the chance.  He’d been turning down the volume for a while.  His wife, Susan’s mother, had life in her yet but had stubbornly refused to learn to drive; instead of her wedding bands changing hands a car had to be sold.

Susan didn’t look at the dates as she peeled back the dank wads of newspaper that sealed in the spare tyre, just like Susan would have burnt his unwashed pants if they hadn’t already been dealt with – starched and pressed.  They would definitely get more for it if they sold her with it, Susan thought. Six months MOT and diamonds included.

Amy McLeod

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The Walls sign, to be fair, is misleading. Cyclists, pedalling against oncoming cloud, are unlikely to notice its spattering of rust, as if from a roadside accident, and occasionally one or two will dismount and approach the old post office, holding phones up for signal. The last postmaster had moved down from Glasgow, all blue sky thinking. Like a string of predecessors, he dreamt of a new life for himself and the place, this time transforming the shop as an online business. Few in the valley have broadband now; no-one did in the 90s.

Dorothy Feaver

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I shouldn’t grumble. I am, after all, living and working in Aix-en-Provence for the next two months. Nevertheless, when I arrived, eager, at the apartment where I’ll be staying for the weeks to come, my heart sank when I spotted the ‘kitchen’; two ancient electric hobs in the corner, next to what was listed in the inventory as an ‘oven’. I beg to differ, Monsieur Landlord. This excuse for an appliance is barely large enough to roast my own fist in, and looks like it has been there since 1970. To add insult to injury, it calls itself ‘Topchef’. The proprietor obviously assumes that no-one would be desperate enough to use it in any case, as there is not a roasting tin or baking tray in sight. Perhaps they don’t make them that small. Curiously enough, the cupboard is stuffed full of tupperware boxes of every conceivable shape, size and colour. I am slightly confused as to what M. Landlord expects me to do with this plastic colony. Aside from that, he has supplied me with just two tiny saucepans, a mini frying pan, and no cooking utensils. Perhaps he prefers take-out.

I’m not angry, just disappointed. All my hopes of hosting grand, gourmet dinner parties have evaporated into the hot, Provençale air. Yet, as I sit, glaring at Topchef, and willing it to mutate into a glorious gagenau, I sense a stubborn desire to rise to the culinary challenge. Why should I let this minor set-back get between me and a good meal? I will not be deterred by such material disadvantages!

A trip to the daily market provides ample inspiration: green, yellow, red and even purple tomatoes obscenely bulbous, and swollen into brain-like tumors; bundles of asparagus, not uniform in size as English supermarkets dictate, but ranging from thin and slender to sturdy trunks; cheese stalls where nothing is cellophane-wrapped, and the man is generous with his samples; and peas, IN THE POD. I doubt whether the majority of Birtish society would recognise their Birdseye favourite in its natural form.

I start small, and tentatively:

A simple, fresh, salad

Ingredients

Freshly podded peas

A bundle of asparagus

Sheep’s cheese – I am using brebis, a deliciously creamy, mild and unctuous cheese.

Lettuce leaves – again, the variety in the market is mind-boggling. I am going for Cos, having recently read a fad article promising that it will give me perfect skin.

A whole beetroot

A handful of fresh mint

Olive oil

A slice of lemon

First, scrape the beetroot clean, wrap it in foil and pop in a 200 degree oven for an hour, or until tender (Topchef can just about accommodate this, thankfully).

Next, put the podded peas and asparagus into a pan of boiling, salted water and cook for a few minutes. The vegetables should be al dente. Run them under cold water afterwards as this will stop them cooking any further.

Break up the lettuce leaves into a bowl, then scatter the torn mint leaves and slices of cheese over the top, along with the cooked vegetables.

Once the beetroot is cooked, slice it and add this too. It is great if the beetroot is still warm so it melts some of the cheese.

Finally, drizzle generously with olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon.

..

Fried courgette flowers with mascarpone and basil

There is no food-stuff more delicately beautiful than the courgette flower. Fragile and ephemeral, they adorn the market stalls for only a short time each year, so are well worth investing in whilst available. As soon as I spied their yellow and orange cacoons I couldn’t resist buying a bunch and inviting a CF virgin to sample them. This recipe would work well with a number of other soft cheeses too – mozzarella and fontina both make tasty substitutes.

Ingredients (serves two)

Six small or four large courgette flowers

6 tablespoons mascarpone

A handful of basil

Some grated parmesan

Soda water

Plain flour

Start by chopping the basil and mixing it with the mascarpone and parmesan, adding seasoning to the mixture.

Carefully open the top of each flower by peeling back the individual petals. This is a *delicate* job, and not to be bulldozed through. Then insert a tablespoon full of the mascarpone mixture down into the flower. The petals should naturally close again at the top.

To make the batter, fill a mug half full with soda water, then slowly add the flour, spoonful by spoonful, stirring all the while. Stop adding flour when the mixture is the thickness of double cream. Lightly season the batter.

Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan so it is very hot. Submerge each flower in the batter and place in the frying pan. Don’t be tempted to move them around in the pan, but let them cook on one side for a couple of minutes, and then turn them. Fry for a couple more minutes on the other side, or until lightly browned.

Place the cooked flowers on a paper towel for a few seconds before serving to soak up some of the extra oil.

.

Soft fruit and almond tarte

Topchef and I are now getting on rather well. Sure, there have been ups and downs: tinfoil stubbornly fused to the bottom of pies (good for the teeth??): woefully uneven cooking producing charred outsides and raw centres (the recipients of my first attempt needed a hammer and chisel to get through their pastry….valiantly attempted by all): an extremely wayward temperature dial (my hand is proving to be a reasonably accurate thermometer). Yet the challenge, each time I decide to make an oven-based dish, is delicious in itself. I am now a dab-hand at creating my own roasting dishes and cake tins out of aluminium foil (always remembering to GREASE it first), and have an ample supply of empty wine bottles available to moonlight as a rolling pin. The lack of weighing scales has also provided an interesting hurdle. One of the eclectic collection of drinking glasses seems to me to look around the same size as 1 measuring cup, who knows if it’s British or American (does anyone really care?), so I have been working with a handy online conversion site and filling said vessel to varying percentages. It may interest you to know, for example, that 1kilogramme of vanilla wafers amounts to 6.2 american cups, or that 1 pound of evaporated milk equals 98.95 teaspoons-full. Always handy to keep in mind.

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>> ESSENTIAL WEBSITE: www.convert-me.com/en/convert/cooking (I haven’t yet looked into what else this site can ‘convert’)

This is one of my very favourite provençale recipes. I have made four different versions in the last two weeks, taking full advantage of the fabulous market fruit selection, and have even given a lesson in making it, though I did insist on going to their kitchen, where they actually have an oven. And a cake tin.

Here I am using a mixture of peaches and nectarines. It is also delicious with apricots or figs, and a bit less sweet. Alternatively, you can use fresh berries – in this case, you would slightly adapt the recipe, pouring the filling into the pastry case and cooking it without the fruit, then arranging the fresh berries onto the cooked filling.

Ingredients for the crust:

125g butter

90g sugar (I have a sneaking suspicion that my first failure MAY have been due to poor mathematics on my part. 90g of sugar = HALF a cup. Oops)

1/8 tsp almond extract

1/8 tsp vanilla extract

180g plain flour

2 tbs ground almonds

Approx 750g fresh fruit, halved and stoned. If using peaches, I usually peel them.

Ingredients for the filling:

100ml cream (estimating two fifths of an opaque carton is not as easy as you might think)

1 egg, beaten

1 tbs honey

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 tsp almond essence

1 tbs flour

To make the crust, melt the butter in a saucepan, and then stir in the sugar. Add the vanilla and almond, then stir in the flour. The mixture will become thick and dough like.

Using the backs of your fingers and knuckles, press the mixture evenly into the bottom of a greased cake-tin (or home-made tinfoil origami extravaganza), making sure it reaches about an inch up the sides. The crust should be quite thin.

Bake in a preheated oven for 12-15minutes.

Next, scatter the ground almonds over the base – this stops it going soggy.

Arrange the fruit cut side up in snug concentric circles. It should be tightly packed, as it will shrink down during cooking.

Whisk together all the filling ingredients in a bowl, then pour evenly over the fruit.

Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, until the fruit is starting to brown at the edges.

In recompense for the culinary lesson, the lovely Gussie provided a wickedly good sweet red wine as an accompaniment. Much lighter than port, but with as much punch. Apparently it keeps for up to six months once opened,  but it would be a struggle to make it last that long.

]]> http://www.murdofleur.org/notice-board/quantity-i-should-be-so-lucky/feed 0 http://www.murdofleur.org/post-its/post-it-notes/5192 http://www.murdofleur.org/post-its/post-it-notes/5192#comments Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:04:06 +0000 Robert Gallagher http://www.murdofleur.org/?p=5192