What Every Woman Wants

Browsing through the weekend papers online, I came across a story in the FT which featured this tagline:

“Forget the lingerie, what every woman wants is a classic accessory and this year’s essential item is the Fendi B bag.”

Now, last time I checked, I am a woman, and I have have no idea what a Fendi B bag is, still less do I want one. It made me think, though, about the use of the phrase ‘every woman wants’. I am generally opposed to lumping together 51% of the world’s population as if we automatically had some secret bond and secret password. But I was curious as to what else ‘every woman’ was supposed to be after. I little Google New search turned up these gems:

Every woman wants to feel sexy

Every woman wants to feel special

Every woman wants to look great

Every woman wants to go on vacation and know that they can swim and sun without having to worry about the mascara running



I particularly like that last one.
It depresses me to think that, while generalisations will always be around, the generalisation for women always seems to tend towards material acquisitions and insecurity. Is this the reality? Let’s have a look at a Google News search for ‘every man wants’. Well firstly, in contrast to 13 results for women, we get only 4 for men:

…every man wants a whole lot of themselves in Carmen

Every man wants to be … a complete Don Juan

Every man wants to date a teenage pin-up

Coble told a woman who ran a stop sign that he wanted “what every man wants” in exchange for tearing up the citation

So that’s fairly clear – sex, sex, sex and sex. Certainly just as stereotypical, but (in this extremely unscientific sample) fewer results. But maybe the sample is really skewed because of the pool that Google News draws from. Let’s have a look at just The Guardian for now:

This season, every woman wants to be a bag lady.

Yet no one likes to mention this for fear of offending feminists who would have us believe that every woman wants to do a job rather than stay at home.

Every woman wants to look good in her Jimmy Choos, but is foot surgery really the way to do it?

Long hair is what every woman wants.

Well, I think it’s just the thing that every man wants – to have a son and heir.

Every man wants to chase a pretty girl if he sees one.

Every man wants to be a superman, to make love to anything.

… every man wants to be in his missus.

So what have we learned? Maybe not that much. Maybe that women are stereotyped as fashion-obsessed shopaholics, whilst men are stereotyped as sex obsessed – which is perhaps confirmed by looking at the magazines aimed at Men’s and Women’s issues. Or maybe that those who write (or are quoted as saying) such lazy phrases as ‘every man/woman wants’ aren’t to be relied on for their lightning insights. Whatever. It troubles me.

It also troubles me that all Motorola has to do to get a runaway success phone is make it pink. And that all a girl wants for Valentine’s day is a pink laptop. Ah well. At least we can vote.

Farmers Market

I like going to Farmer’s Markets but I don’t always have the get-up-and-go required to get there. Which is one reason why I like Marylebone Farmer’s Market. It is held on Sunday mornings, when I am much more likely to have the time to potter around, and only starts at 10am, meaning it doesn’t finish until 2pm and I have plenty of time to drag myself out of bed and get there.
This morning I went in search of nothing in particular but didn’t want to buy a ton of food as I had done a big shop on Friday.

I came away with two nice looking pheasants, a big bag of kale to eat with them, and a loaf of Pugliese bread from Exeter Street Bakery. Then I got some Kirkham’s Lancashire and some Tomme de Savoie from La Fromagerie, which has it’s Marylebone outpost opposite the car park where the market is held.

I had a vague idea that I might follow Matthew Fort’s excellent ideas from yesterday’s paper and braise the pheasant with chestnuts, but I got home and looked again at the recipe and realised that I was short many of the ingredients. So I turned to Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, where he pot-roasts pheasant with vermouth and celery. In the end I compromised by pot-roasting using Nigel’s method, but with Matthew’s flavourings of a little Marsala, allspice, juniper berries and bay. I roasted some potatoes in the duck fat leftover from last week, and braised some kale. An excellent meal – all moistened with the unthickened marsala-ey juices from the pot-roast.
And to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, we finished it all off with Jamaica Ginger Cake (bought), Bird’s custard and bananas!

The Kitchen Diaries


kitchen_diary
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

One of the wonderful things I got for Christmas (thank-you Jenny!) was Nigel Slater’s new book, The Kitchen Diaries. I am a big fan of Mr Slater’s, and have several of his books. I look out for his columns each week in the Observer and I particularly like the way he writes with greed and hunger about the food he cooks.
In case you have not seen this book yet, it is a record of a year of Mr Slater’s cooking and eating, arranged chronologically, so you always have a recipe to hand that is appropriate for the season. What could be better for re-adjusting to English seasons than this?
So far I have made two of January’s recipes: Dal and Pumpkin Soup and Marmalade Cake – both were wonderful (and both orange – I do have a bias for orange foods: pumpkin, carrot soup, mangoes, orange juice – you get the idea) .

Partly as a result of this inspiration, and partly as a result of the good advice of my cooking teacher at Tante Marie’s, I have bought myself a thick notebook to keep my own cooking diary. In it I am recording where I make a recipe from a book, and when I make something up, as well as changes and adjustments I made as I went along and tasting notes on how it turned out. I let you know how it goes…

Sometimes only pasta will do


Re: Pasta photo
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

Today I went to Ikea for about the 6th time in a month. This time was a trek on foot – which isn’t too bad, as it’s only about 10 minutes by tube, but there is still 20 minutes or so of walking in there. I struggled back with an upright and two shelves for our storage in the study, two wastepaper bins, a mason jar and 6 storage boxes. After all that, despite my good intentions to eat up the soup in the fridge, I felt I needed something more. Browsing through my food blogs RSS feed I came across Amateur Gourmet’s brilliant description of the complexities of making pasta with butter, nutmeg and parmesan. Spurred on by this, I went to the kitchen and followed said directions to create a big bowlful, and proceeded to stuff my face. I compensated for the heart-attack-inducing richness by accompanying it with an Innocent Detox smoothie … mmm.

Back.. and back

Once again, my inconsistency in posting has been revealed – apologies to those of you who check this page in the vain hope I’ll get around to posting again 🙂

So, quick summary of the story so far to fill you in:
We packed up the house and put it all in a van to go onto a boat that will go across the Atlantic.
We went on holiday for a week (see separate post).
We are now back in the UK and looking for a new place.

I have spent the day instructing young and eager estate agents in our requirements for a flat – how good they are at sticking to them remains to be seen.

Bread to be proud of

Sourdough

A paste of ground wheat and water. Yeasts from the air land on the surface and start to grow and multiply. The yeast consumes the sugars from the wheat, and produces carbon dioxide. Bubbles appear. Bacteria also start to colonise the paste, feeding on other sugars that the yeast does not consume.

This dual colony grows, produces lactic acid, produces carbon dioxide. More flour is added, more water, a dough is made. The proteins in the flour join to make a long protein, which is developed by working the dough. it is stretched away, pulled back, turned. The surface becomes smooth, stretchy, soft. The yeast trapped within the proteins keeps growing, producing carbon dioxide. The bacteria keep growing, keep producing lactic acid. The dough swells, becomes puffy, pillowy. It is moulded, shaped, the surface tightens, dries. The dough is put into the warm oven. The yeast grows faster, the gases expand, the dough stretches. And then, the heat is higher, the yeast dies, the protein sets and stiffens. Moisture in the oven gelatinises the starch, creates a stiff shiny exterior. The starch caramelizes, browns, darkens.

And you have a loaf of bread. Just as the Egyptians would have made, just as the goldminers made in California, just as the French have been making for centuries. And it tastes good too.

The Wisdom of Stephen Fry

I used to love the Observer magazine’s column titled “This much I know” (it was one of the only things worth reading in there – along with Nigel Slater). I haven’t read it in a while, California not having very many places where you can buy the Observer, but I’m very glad that Green Fairy pointed me to this one by Stephen Fry:

“…coriander is a giant hoax perpetrated by a perverted society”

Philadephia Story

The cinema in the centre of Palo Alto, The Stanford, has recently reopened after a 3 month refurbishment. It’s a great little cinema, with original features now restored, and has a working Wurlitzer organ which is used before and after performances, and is also used to provide music when they screen silent films.

I am looking forward to many films in the programme for the next couple of months, but one of my favourites came up in the first week – The Philadelphia Story. In case you don’t already know (and check the link for more details), this comedy stars Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant – you could not wish for a more wonderful cast.

I won’t rehash the story here – you’ll just have to go and watch it yourselves – but a few things struck me about it when I was re-watching it in the cinema. The first was that the dialogue was so sharp and fast – it was the sort of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it repartee that you very seldom see now. The best current parallel I can think of is The Simpsons at it’s best: so filled with jokes and current affairs references that you’re lucky if you can catch them all in one viewing.

The other thing that struck me about the film was how ambiguous the plot was. You have 3 people vying for the heroine’s affection, and while one is obviously unsuitable, the remaining two (Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, of course) both have their wonderful moments as well as their faults. Every time I watch, I wait to see who she’ll pick. I can think of very few modern romantic comedies that you can say that about.

And my favourite part? Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn getting drunk and more drunk…

Chocolates close-up

Chocolates

We have done a few classes in chocolate in recent weeks, and so I spent some time this weekend experimenting with some of the things we’ve tried.

Chocolate is very odd stuff. Good dark chocolate consists only of cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar and probably a little vanilla and lecithin (an emulsifier) to help it all stay together. It is particularly the cocoa butter which gives chocolate such unique properties. It is solid at room temperature, but melts quickly at around body temperature, giving it those melt-in-the-mouth properties.

The fats in cocoa butter tend to form large crystals, which can be of 4 different types. Only one of these types, the beta crystals, is a stable form. When you buy chocolate, it is tempered, meaning that the fat is mostly in beta crystals. This means that the chocolate is shiny, will snap when you break it, and will melt at a slightly higher temperature (95F/ 35C). Once you melt the chocolate, other crystal types will prevail, and the cocoa butter might separate from the cocoa, forming white blotches or streaks (you sometimes see this when you leave a chocolate bar in the sun and then cool it down again).

So the trick is to melt the chocolate, so that you can make shapes, or truffles whilst maintaining that shiny glossy look of tempered chocolate. And let me tell you, it’s quite tricky! The idea is to melt the chocolate enough to disrupt all the crystals, then to cool it to just the temperature where the beta crystals will readily form, and then raise the temperature enough to melt any unstable crystals, but not so far as to melt the beta crystals.

As you can see from the photo, I was successful at least a couple of times. The particularly shiny finish is due to moulding the tempered chocolate in plastic moulds.

Sonoma

We spent last weekend in Sonoma with my parents. Sonoma is the neighbouring valley to Napa, with just as many vineyards but slightly nicer views and fewer tourists. We stayed just outside Healdsburg, a small town with a little plaza in the center which I’m sure triples or quadruples in population on weekends. Arriving Friday night, we spent Saturday wine tasting and driving around the various vineyards, and then meandered back to the Peninsula on Sunday (where it was foggy).

The countryside around there is really beautiful – a lot like the wine growing regions in the south of France or in Italy, but greener. There is a winery about every 20 yards and most of them do tastings, so you can just drop in and taste their wines (although some charge a tasting fee which is refunded if you buy a bottle).

We decided to take a tour of one of the larger wineries in the Dry Creek area, Ferrari-Carano. It is owned by a couple from Reno who made their money in property and casinos, and created a winery in Sonoma. They have built a beautiful house and enormous winery with gardens (although it all betrays Bellagio-esque touches – fountains, faux-italian villas). The tour was very good, though – the tour guide really knew her stuff. After that, we had to taste some of their wines. They were good, but none were remarkable. One unusual wine was their Black Muscat, which I’d never tasted before. It’s a dessert wine that tastes of cherries and chocolate – a bit like a cross between a red wine and muscat. They served it at the winery with chocolate-coated, wine-soaked dried cherries – mmmmm. So we bought a couple of bottles of that 🙂

That evening we ate at Dry Creek Kitchen, a restaurant in Healdsburg. Very unusual dishes, included a soft-boiled egg with asparagus puree injected into it. All very good though.