South of the Border

Word on the street is that the best Mexican food in London is served at El Panzon a guerrilla operation currently hosted at the unlikely venue that is Brixton's Dogstar.

There must have been a Mexican aroma in the air last night. "Eat your way around the world in London" was headed South of the border, and herself - when she came to pick up our six year old - asked if she could borrow my copy of Tortilla Soup.

And so to the Dogstar where the profit burglar and I met up with Neil MacPherson - who lives around the corner.

As an adjunct to my jerk pork research (do I ever stop working?), I went for CHICHARRON CON SALSA VERDE: slow roast belly of pork served with a salsa of fried green tomatillo, fried ripe plantain, and rice & beans.

Great food; so much of our best eating has been at places that appear unpreposessing.

We also noticed an Eritrean place on our way back to the tube station. Sometimes I think there may be no better city in the world than London for real and imaginary destinations.

In Search of Perfection

There's an old joke that says, "pizza is a lot like sex; when it's good it's really good ...... and when it's bad it's still quite good."

Before it started playing at 8:30 on Tuesdays, I thought that Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection, in which our self taught, culinary expert hero turns his attention to the nation's staple dishes would drive me nuts, but - truth be told - I've been riveted. I've been guilty in the past of dismissing Blumenthal's uber-geek attention to detail as affected , but when you see his laser beam concentration applied to something as apparently prosaic as frying the perfect chip you realize that you should just shut up and pay attention.

Which brings me in turn to jerk pork, I've been working for some time - and with the odd combination of obsessive-compulsive disorder and procrastination that seems to be peculiarly my own - on a version of this that I can ask Garfield to taste with my head held high.

The joy of this project, of course, is that my failures are a far better chowdown than almost anything else I am likely to get to eat.

I think I'm getting close, but on my last effort I found the meat a little dry (crisp skin and moist flesh is tricky) and the jerk seasoning too intense.

The next iteration I try is going to look like this:

Place the single piece of pork belly in a saucepan and cover with fresh water.
Bring slowly to the boil and skim the scum from the surface.
Simmer gently for 40 minutes and then allow to cool.
Pat the pork dry and then score the rind with a sharp knife.
Boost Walkerswood traditional jerk seasoning with extra garlic, cut with honey and oil, and then massage into the meat.
Wrap the pork in foil, place in a baking tin, put another baking tin on top and weight it down, then leave overnight in the fridge.
Pre heat the oven to maximum.
Open the foil so the skin is exposed.
Give it a ten minute blast at maximum temperature and then turn the oven down to 140 for two hours.
Knock up a jerk table sauce by boosting more Walkerswood seasoning with grated ginger, heating through with a cup of water and thickening with cornflower.
Carve the pork into 1cm segments and serve with the sauce.

We'll see how it goes. Last time I cubed the pork before marinating it and didn't serve a dipping sauce.

For all that I am using store bought jerk seasoning I am on the brink of greatness, and also - now I come to think of it -moving further from Garfield whose marinade is much wetter than mine.

He is still better than me, though I am damn good.

Generation Gap

The brouhaha over the question of whether or not Britain should apologize over its role in the slave trade, and especially Tony Blair's vacuous expression of his 'sorrow', is all just so much grievance mongering, pandering, issue dodging hooey.

I would have thought that the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery was something to celebrate not beat your breast over. You can tell the extent to which debate in the country has been hijacked by serial loathers, fellow travelers, and sneerers from the fact that this is not acknowledged at all in the meejia.

Are we supposed to imagine that that Abolition was historically inevitable?

It doesn't seem impossible to me that if the Clapham Sect hadn't campaigned (based just up the road from here to my delight) and the Royal Navy's 'preventive squadron' hadn't (unilaterally without a UN mandate) enforced, there could still be a slave trade in the West today.

Oh, by the way even the jealous God who inspired William Wilberforce to take up cudgels against slavery only proposed "punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation".

Two hundred years is eight generations.

Scobleized

Robert Scoble is in Cardiff today.

Small world.

his jumble sale of parochial antipathies

The Spectator.co.uk, telling it like it is:

No civilised person knows who John Humphrys is. I’ve looked into it and I discover he’s rather a sad case — an insomniac who telephones politicians at dawn and interrupts them while they’re still half asleep. This strange career has won him celebrity among the restless multitude who, like him, insist on getting up in the middle of the night. It has also won him a book contract. His last work was about sloppy English. So is the new one, but as he unfurls his endless series of hastily written gibberish it becomes clear that he’s less interested in inarticulacy than he is in his jumble sale of parochial antipathies. He mouths off about all kinds of things: advertising, the lottery, Liz Hurley, train announcements, meetings at the Beeb, leaflets that slither out of your newspaper, Blair wanting to be called ‘Tony’. On it goes. Humphrys is like a taxi-driver; he’s only sure of himself when he’s telling you what he hates. Flash a bit of optimism at him and he’ll tell you it’s bound to end in tears.

Welsh-born son of Cardiff he may be, but I cannot abide John Humphrys. I find it impossible to listen to his vapid, self important hectoring without imagining setting the dogs on him.

I avoid the Today programme on Radio 4 just to minimise his chances of assaulting my eardrums, so I suppose that it was him who drove me into the arms of The World Today on the BBC World Service of a morning.

He's due thanks for that, but otherwise nada.

Creeping Featuritis

I see that the Merton Abbey Mills website has been relaunched, written in cold fusion with plenty of bangs and whistles, but also the odd error message and link that doesn't work.

I knocked up a website as a favour for ARTTES 4 KIDS simply by editing a blogger template. Simpler is better.

Answered Prayers

Earlier this week, I posted a rant complaining about a parking ticket that I got while picking my six year old up from school. The gist of my complaint was that whoever issued the spot fine must have been hiding around the corner in order to do the dirty deed and show a clean pair of heels before I reappeared.

Yesterday - exactly a week since I had been nobbled - I came out of the gate to see a handful of uniforms in the street. Much to my delight however I found that, rather than demanding money with menaces, they were engaged in a hearts and minds mission courteously explaining the regulations to cheekily parked mums and dads who promised - in turn - to try and do better in future.

Back in August when I published a post about coming back from holiday to find that my house had been turned into a fox den, I got a call from a local journalist, so I suppose that - unlikely as it appears - it is not impossible that moaning played some part in this change of modus operandi with regards to parking enforcement.

If it did and the person responsible is reading, thank you very much.

Cubana

Eat your way around the world in London.

Cuba: Cubana.

2 large Mojitos.

Starters

Camarones con gabardina y salsa de mango y chilli

Boniatos fritos con tostones y salsa

Mains

Pollo Criollo - a classic Cuban dish and a Cubana favourite: free-range chicken cooked in fresh orange, garlic, onions and sherry, served with fried plantain and black bean rice.

Congri Santiago - a spicy dish from Cuba's far south: Red beans casseroled with free-range pork, chorizo, tomatoes, chillies and vegetables.

(A busy day and no time to write, but recipes here.)

Thai Food

Given my new found enthusiasm for all things Thai, I have started looking at my copy of David Thomspon's magnum opus seriously for the first time. (I bought it as a souvenir after eating at Nahm when I stayed at the Halkin a few years ago but I never sat down and read it thoroughly.)

What a remarkable book it is. I'm already over a hundred pages into it and I am still on Thai history and culture. I haven't even got to a recipe yet. I've cheated and peeked at a few dishes and the accent seems to be on accuracy, authenticity and tradition, rather than convenience. All a far cry from the days not that long ago when I didn't even know what galangal was.

It looks like Ken Hom's Simple Thai Cookeryis still going to be the book I use to knock up a supper after a hard day's work, Thompson's book is still food for thought.

Casino Royale

I went to check out the new James Bond move last night. It really is very good despite its lame theme song and title credits and some longuers in the third act after the poker showdown.

Paul Haggis seemed to have punched the screenplay up a notch or two, and it was fun to see the movie having some fun with Bond's development of the vodka Martini and introduction to the 1964 Aston Martin. There was more than a hint of Basil Exposition (from Austin Powers) though in Giancarlo Giannini's Matthis character's running commentry on the card game, but I suppose that the intricacies of poker are difficult to dramatise.

It also ocurred to me that for the first time in my life, I am older than the actor playing James Bond; an unwelcome intimation of mortality over the popcorn.

---

A true story: Dave Bond's older brother Jim was born about as late as it was possible to be born and christened "James Bond" without irony. In the late Seventies he and his good friend Paul Newman (I kid you not) were stopped by the police while driving a car with a bust tail light or something equivalently trivial. You can imagine how the incident escalated though when the officer who had flagged them down asked for their names.

"Are you two taking the p.......?"

What's he like?

For some reason the other day, my six year old began comparing what he considered his catholic range of interests and hobbies with the dry sticks I use to pass my time. "I like riding my bike, pizza, Thai boxing lessons, popcorn, adventures, tuna with sweetcorn, and getting medals", he said. "You only like the boring news."

He should have added that I like films, because I was deeply tempted to reply a la Crash Davis in Bull Durham:

"Well, I believe in the soul, ................., the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."

But on reflection I think we need to wait a decade or so before embarking on the Ron Shelton back catalogue.

(Sorry 'bout the "...................." but I'll get the "weighted phrase limit exceeded" finger wagging from the Virgin Active internet cafe if I quote the actual dialogue directly.)

Meat Space

El Grupo Libros nursed their hangovers with Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on XBOX360 in my house this morning before I dropped them off at the station.

When you are in need of solace, PE6 provides a strangely comforting parallel world where David Beckham is still the captain of England and Michael Owen is still scoring for them (although I am pleased to announce that Ben and I powered Wales to a victory over England that was decided in a nail biting penalty shoot out earlier this week).

I've tried to sweat my own "gentleman's head" away in the gym and now I'm taking a brief pit stop at the Mills to clear away last night's debris and settle with Garfield who fed us, before I head off on the tube to do it all again with Paul and Hugh.

"If I had all the money I've spent on drink — I'd spend it on drink."

The Insolence of Office

I got a parking ticket when I was picking my six year old up from school one day this week - a £100 Penaty Charge Notice issued at precisely 15:15.

By a strange coincidence, my boy finishes school at a quarter past three, and it is true that I am guilty of stopping on the red line (because there was nowhere else to park) for the time that it took me to walk into the school, collect him and return.

I can't see however how the official could have got to my car, issued the ticket, and then disappeared into thin air in the couple of minutes that it took me to get in and out of the school unless he or she was, to all intents and puposes, hiding somewhere waiting to ambush a hapless parent or two.

It gets worse. When we pick our kids up from the primary school, we parents enter by the main gate and then turn around the corner of the building to collect the children from the individual classroom doors that open out into the playground. This system has only been reintroduced in the last couple of days however. For the last term and a half - because of building work and improvements - the class teachers have been bringing their charges round to the front of the school at the end of the day and we have been meeting them there at a vantage point from which the road where we park is visible.

I can't help but observe that the enforcement officers didn't have the brass neck to undertake a three fifteen raid at any time in months that that system was in place, and neither had they the decency to speak to us on any weekday afternoon over those fifteen weeks to see if there was not some compromise that could be worked out.

The only conclusion I can come to is that I have been the victim of institutionalised banditry by local government. I have been nobbled not in a attempt to keep the streets clear in the interests of all the body politic, but as milch cow to feed their coffers.

Would it spoil some vast eternal plan to suspend some of the more onerous parking restrictions for fifteen minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon?

Disgusted. Tunbridge Wells.

NanoWars

I know because I subscribe to the RSS feed from his teachblog (my journey from pupil to teacher in 18 months) that my friend Chris is very interested in teaching nanotechnology and I've learned today (via RSS again) from TechCrunch UK that:

PlayGen a London based game development studio with a strong and growing track record in developing serious games for training and learning purposes is developing their latest video “learning” game NanoWars.
The idea is that the game should be based on fact as it’s meant to be an educational tool to make learning about nanoscience interesting for 12 to 18 year olds.

A development that is bound to be right up his street.

Further, because I know that he is subscribed to my blog's RSS feed and even though he is coming up from Swansea to London to visit tomorrow, it is as easy and convenient for me to tip him the wink by posting to A Welsh Born Icon as it would be to email or call.

It also enables to to pass on to anyone else who alights here, Playgen's messages:

We are seeking sponsorship for the game in order to fulfil our vision of making it available at no/minimal cost to pupils and teachers. To find out more about sponsorship please contact us.

We've had an enormous response from schools and teachers so far, if you represent a school and would like to participate in the beta testing program, please fill in the school registration form.

Which I am pleased to do.

RSS is powerful voodoo for communication and collaboration. No wonder I have been banging on about it to our clients for so long.

P.S. Chris as a long time player of Rome Total War will also be delighted to learn that Playgen are the people behind the TV show Time Commanders.

Bo nhung Dam Cuon Banh Trang

"Eat your way around the world in London" took the Northern Line up to Waterloo with the intention of carving a notch for Cubana on its bedpost last night but it wasn't to be. The place was fully booked and packed to the gills so we wandered off into the twilight looking for fresh prey and concocting elaborate conspiracy theories in which everyone who had got to the "genuine Cuban-Latino place run by the people who own it" before us had been sent by Red Ken on expenses.

The Fates were smiling however because nearby we came across the Vietnamese Ha-Noi cafe. We tried ordering Bo nhung Dam Cuon Banh Trang from the specialities section of the menu (largely because I liked the name of it so much) but were told that it was unavailable, because they had run out of pancakes(?) so we didn't get to find out what Vietnamese beef fondue might be like, but we did fall into conversation with the waitress about our project. She told us that her father was the chef, that she had come to help him out "temporarily" five months ago, and that in the first couple of months she was there she had gained 9kg; weight that she had only managed to shift - she seemed svelte enough to me - by giving up eating after 6pm, and took us in hand with regards to the grub.

Garlic fried cubes of fillet steak was the kind of thing that her father would cook for family apparently, so we had some of that with a special Saigon prawn curry along with rice and noodles, after deep fried squid and Tom Yum Koong (a prawn soup.)

Thus entirely by chance we had come across a great place to eat run by a warm and friendly family. It struck me as we were walking back to the station that I don't think that I have ever had a conversation with a Vietnamese person before, and that these sort of encounters are one of joys of this mad scheme for Wednesday nights.

(Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.)

Power, Limitless Power

Traffic on our auction site is continuing to grow rapidly. Yesterday was its fourth busiest ever and there is only one day outside November 2006 in the top ten. This means that we are forever upgrading, tweaking and generally managing our infrastructure.

It is a chore that I could do without to be frank, and this is one of the reasons that I was so intrigued by Amazon's EC2, "a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud", when I blogged about its Beta launch back in August. You can get an idea of how attractive scaleable, pay as you go, access to effectively limitless capacity would be to Coraider by the fact that Bumblebee Auctions served up more than three times as many pages yesterday than it did on August 25, the day that I wrote my post.

For better or worse however we are effectively a Microsoft operation. I speculated that EC2 might provoke a competitive response from Redmond, but we haven't heard anything yet, which is why I was so intrigued to read on the Amazon Web Services blog that someone has succeeded in installing Windows Server 2003 on an Amazon EC2 instance.

There's a how-to document available here. The hack is based round an open source processor emulator called QEMU. I wonder what sort of performance you get. We may well have a little fiddle about with this. I would love to push our apps out into the cloud if I could be certain we could get reliability and performance. I think it is an idea whose time has come.

The Downfall

I finished Berlin: The Downfall 1945 last night; an epic and tragic account of the end game of World War II in Europe. I have to discuss it on the weekend so I am going to keep my powder dry for that but it has sparked some amorphous ideas about publishing that I want to try and begin to shape.

Antony Beevor published Annexes to the book, details of his cuts, plus Errata and Addenda on his website. This is great and useful, but I could have done with more.

It is difficult to see how a computer screen will ever compare to the printed page for ease of reading, espeically in my default mode; deep in an armchair or feet up on the couch with a glass of something fortifying to hand.

What I found with a book on a topic as complex as the last days of the Third Reich was that paper was best only for linear reading. Whenever I marked my place to look at a map, check a note, or backtrack to identify a proper name about which I had got confused; whenever I stepped out of the flow of the narrative, in other words, I felt that it would have been easier and better to go to the PC for elucidation.

I'd like to see comprehensive maps and glossaries online to support the book.

I wonder if - taking a leaf out of the DVD market - if there is not a place for an extended edition of a publication like Berlin: The Downfall 1945 which would include all of the above and, perhaps the audiobook version in one package?

I'd certainly be prepared to pay a couple of quid more for it.

Buddhapadipada Temple

When I was watching my little boy in Muay Thai last week, one of the other fathers told me that he had done a little Thai boxing when he was younger - "I remember the training simply as pain", he said - and told me that the classes that he took were held in the courtyard of the Thai temple in Wimbledon.

I googled it when we for home, and there - sure enough was the home page of the Buddhapadipada Thai Temple, SW19.

We went to take a look at it yesterday, and found the beautiful building on the left. I would have liked to go inside but I didn't know if that was appropriate.

The celebration of monastic boundary, held on October 30, 1982, enabled Wat Buddhapadipa to become a formal temple according to Thai tradition: in fact, the only Thai temple ever built in Europe.

How marvelous to find the complex incongruously located on a site in a Parkside residential road.

The website has a couple of RSS feeds including the Daily Dhamma ....... subscribed!

In a not unrelated development, I did manage to edit down a version of Warrior King that I was happy to watch with a six year old. What next? Emmanuelle repackaged as a Bangkok travelogue perhaps.

Remembrance

At his behest, I bought a poppy in the library yesterday and pinned it on my six year old.

Five minutes later as we were walking back along the High Street, he said, "I can't remember the people who died in the war yet."

"I don't understand," I said.

"They said in school that the poppy made you remember."

As we talked it over I found that he seemed to have got the impression that the little red flower would imprint visceral knowledge of the horrors of the Great War in his head by some sort voodoo.

Would for the world that it could.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Bargains and Sensible Menus

.......... there are stellar bargains to be had on the wine front - I can think of nowhere else where you can sit down in comfort and uncork a bottle of Krug Grand Cuvee for £105. The menu is a sensible one: smoked eel with brandade and a light horseradish cream; game pie with wild mushroom salad; a charcuterie combo that teams San Daniele ham and white truffle salami with olive tomato and parsley salad on toasted ciabatta; warm spinach and ricotta tart with Autumn salads and walnut dressing..........

Aspirational reading from Charles Campion's Evening Standard Blog on the opening of a new wine bar along with Fortnum and Mason's new food hall.

"A bargain at £105". I wish.