Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

Gourmet bangers and mash

written on Saturday 7 May 2011 and filed under [bangers and mash] [cooking] [election night] [smoked food]

Img_0331

The ball-and-chain began a tradition back in the 1970s of having friends round on General Election night. Since I arrived on the scene, I've taken this further and made it grander, as one might expect.

For 2001 and 2005, I prepared a great buffet - no mean feat when there wasn't a kitchen to speak of in this house. For 2010, not only was there a kitchen but it was my kitchen, so the food went from 'buffet' to 'hot buffet' - quite a step forward. Whilst 2011 isn't a General Election year, for shame, the AV referendum and the other elections around the UK were enough of an excuse to have friends over and flex my culinary skills.

For the night before, I needed a simple but high-quality dinner for an elastic number of people. I settled on bangers and mash. I made bangers and mash as a main course for Kate and Jonathan last Christmas, so I know it's a popular dish. But I wanted to take it even further up-market this time.

Fortunately, there had been a "Local Food Fayre" in Hoylake last month. Whilst their definition of "local" needed some work (Anglesey: well, perhaps; Birmingham: no) there were some lovely things to be had including a whole stand devoted to taking ordinary food and smoking it. I love smoked food. Virtually all meals can be improved by smoking them, or adding something smoked to them, or just slopping on some Smoked Hickory-Style Bar-Be-Q Sauce concoction.

In this case, the smokers were Derimon of Anglesey. Yeah - it's local as the crow flies, but if you don't want to fly, it's quite a round-trip to get across all of north Wales to Chester, then up the Wirral to here; as I say, the definition of "local" needed work. Derimon had a stall where anything that couldn't run away had been smoked: chicken fillets, herring, mackerel, ham, cheese, butter... yes, smoked butter. I was intrigued. Imagine smoked butter!

Sold vacuum-packed, it would last until I thought of a good recipe for it. As it turned out, that was the mash for Wednesday night. Everybody loves mashed potato. Even crappy mashed potato is good. But good mashed potato... oh, dreamy, smooth clouds of buttery goodness. And smoked buttery goodness too. Lots of smoked butter, a good grate of nutmeg and served steaming for people to help themselves. Fab.

The bangers were high quality too. My favoured local butcher (we have three, within 5 minutes walk of each other, plus Morrisons), Graham Clarke's, has now gone. Or, they went, then they came back, then 24 hours later the landlord changed the locks and they went again. Now it has reopened as Brian Clarke's, although the signage gives nothing away as to what the relationship might be. It's a bit less posh than the old Clarke's, but still very high quality and still with staff who know what they're doing behind a counter - something they've got over Morrisons, where the "qualified butchers" could use also being taught to do more than grunt at you.

I pitched up on Tuesday afternoon and asked for sausages, of which they had a fair few. When I explained the gourmet bangers and mash idea, they sent me away. "Oh, don't have these, they're ordinary! Can you come back tomorrow afternoon? We're making a batch of sausages tonight and they'll be perfect for you!". How could I refuse? I went away and came back the next day, buying 4 different types of sausage (pure pork, Cumberland, pork and leak and 'ordinary' breakfast bangers that I used on Thursday morning for guests' breakfast). I slow-cooked the sausages under the grill at quite a low temperature to bring out the flavour and get the casing crispy but the middle cooked through. People often cook sausages too quickly on too high a temperature, leading to a black outside and a pink (and potentially poisonous) middle; or else leading to the bangers living up to their name and a lot of oven cleaning being required later.

For those wondering - and thank you for your concern - I went to Holland and Barrett on Monday and bought a selection of Redwood veggie sausages for me to have. They were fantastic.

One more thing was needed to make the gourmet bangers and mash very gourmet: a good gravy. I'm sure I could've done something with reduced red wine and herbs and all of that, but I don't think such subtlety is needed, even for a gourmet night. I fried off a sliced onion, then made what was in effect a roux by putting onion gravy granules into the pan (to soak up and bind the fat so it doesn't float on top) and slowly adding hot water. It looks very special, tastes wonderful and takes 2 minutes to do, all a sauce really deserves.

There were no leftovers.

Imagine if this was a left-wing country

written on Monday 2 May 2011 and filed under [alternative vote] [elections] [politics] [voting]

Margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-laughing
The other day, David Cameron made one of his lie-filled speeches about AV, and inadvertently blurted out a truth.

No, not the truth that he thinks that you and I are too stupid to understand numbering candidates rather than dabbing a big X next to their name, although that particular vote of confidence in the intelligence of the British population is duly noted. This accidental truth was when he said "First Past The Post has served us well over the years". He's right: First Past The Post has served the Conservatives really, really well over the past 60 years. In fact, it has given us plenty of Conservative governments we didn't want and couldn't throw out.

There have been 18 general elections since the Second World War. In the majority of those elections, the Conservatives came out on top, never once with more than half of the people supporting them. In 1951, Labour won 48.8% of the vote to the Tories' 48%. But Labour got 295 seats, the Tories 321. Labour would be out of power for 13 years and the Tories would be seen - and see themselves - as the "natural party of government" for the rest of the 20th century.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, history records that Mrs Thatcher won a landslide in 1979. She didn't. If Jim Callaghan had gone to the polls six months earlier, Labour would probably have been returned; Labour was not as unpopular in the late 1970s as the media now recalls. Mrs Thatcher won 43.9% of the vote in 1979 and this gave her a working majority. In the next four years, she blundered through the economy, basically destroying it. Unemployment hit 5 million - a plan her economic advisers had decided upon, not an accidental consequence of her callousness.

She went to the polls in 1983 buoyed by the Falklands War but still unpopular generally. Her share of the vote fell to 42.4% and she got a landslide majority. This landslide was the one that sold off our electricity and water to foreign buyers. She got an unstoppable majority, which gave her dictatorial powers, when 57.6% of the country voted for other parties. She would be in power until 1990, the Tories would be in government until 1997, all from what 42.4% of the vote could do. The post-war settlement, the agreement that the state would work to care for its citizens in return for their hard work, was torn up on the say-so of 42.4% of the population.

First Past The Post really served the Tories well there; but it destroyed my country and ill-served the British people. The next time someone tries to tell you that Mrs Thatcher's reforms had the support of the vast majority of us, remind them that 42.4% is a minority.

Recently, senior Liberal Democrats seem to be regaining their sense of decency. They have publicly opposed some of the more terribly right-wing things the government is trying to do. And good on them: in other countries with a coalition system, minority partners often go on television to complain about what the other half of the government is doing; this includes cabinet ministers. Here, the LibDems have been silent for too long.

Those senior LibDems have made a very good point: this country is actually a left-of-centre country. It doesn't feel like it, but it truly is. Put it this way: since the Second World War, the Conservatives have polled more votes than Labour and the Liberal Democrats just once - in 1955 they got 49.7% of the votes to the Left's 49.1%. Imagine that. Imagine the second half of the 20th century effectively without the Conservatives. Imagine no Stop-Go in the 1950s. Imagine no Three Day Week in the 1970s. Imagine no Thatcherism in the 1980s. Imagine no selling off of British Rail in the 1990s.

Imagine a 20th century where the only Tory Prime Ministers were Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, both briefly.

AV wouldn't quite give us that, and it's wrong to choose a voting system based on the likely outcomes being more to your liking, but still: imagine a 21st century without the Conservatives. We could get nearer to it, if we vote Yes on Thursday.

Ukgepercentvotes

How not to run your marketing department

written on Sunday 1 May 2011 and filed under [bad marketing] [bt] [social networking] [twitter]

When I joined Twitter, some 7,000 tweets ago, I thought it might be a fun way to dip my toe into this whole "social networking" gubbins that the media had been obsessing about for ages.

I loved it immediately. If nothing else, star-fucker that I am, I've had micro-conversations with Doctor Who good guys Steven Moffat, Clayton Hickman and Gary Gillatt. I've chatted with one of my favourite actor/comedians Chris Neill. And I've corresponded with lots of people from BBC Radio 4, as most of the continuity team and many of the news people hang out on Twitter.

More personally, I've kept in daily touch with friends I would never normally see like Kate, Jonathan and Tanya. And, best of all, I can chit-chat with my mum. What isn't there to like about it?

Because Twitter is public, when you say stuff on there it can be seen by everyone and anyone. Mostly, it isn't seen - people need to have a mind to look for you or the subject you're pontificating about before they're likely to see what you've said. Hashtags help you do this - they're the way of saying something witty or controversial and appending a current subject #doctorwho or #newsnight or #thearchers or something on the end so you get seen by others looking for the same stuff. Otherwise, you're basically only speaking to the people who "follow" you.

Also, of course, you're speaking to internet marketing people - and their automated bots - who are looking for people talking about their company or their products and are seeking to sell you more of them. Oh, and notionally provide customer service.

Sometimes this works well. Last year I mentioned a problem with some wallpaper I'd bought. Minutes later, the company involved was replying, seeking to help me out. Wallpaper Direct: +1 to you. I'll not be buying wallpaper from anyone else - shame you seem to have gone from Twitter.

Other companies have failed badly at this. At one end of the scale there are the bot-driven automated repliers, who pick out a keyword in your tweet and send a reply accordingly. This should be useful, but in practice it isn't, because the bots don't care where you are and are generally in the United States. So a tweet asking for a good online wine shop recently was answered by a couple of bots - all of which offered websites which delivered only to the lower 48 states. Fat lot of good that is.

This turns something useful into something annoying, but then online marketing nearly always turns something useful into something annoying. A useful email newsletter becomes annoying when, no matter what the fuck you do, you can't unsubscribe. Why is it my job to set up a filter to delete your emails? Yes, unsubscribing means you've lost me as an immediate customer, but not letting me unsubscribe means you've lost my goodwill. It's really really gonna cost you to win that back.

Google Adwords are a really useful thing turned annoying. Small, relevant ads for stuff I'm already searching for: Good. Small, irrelevant generic ads that are not for stuff I'm searching for: Bad. If I search for "curtains", I like getting ads for stores that make or sell curtains. I don't want adverts that read "Big Sales On Selected Curtains! Let Us Find The Curtains For You!" that lead to a site with nothing about curtains to be found. Also, I don't want those generic adverts for sites that take you to a page of links to shops selling curtains (hint: I've already got a page of those in front of me, because I'm already searching for curtains on Google).

The prize for useful-turned-annoying goes to Twitter though, as I said before. In particular it goes to BT, who have a particular knack for taking useful things and making them annoying.

A few months ago, my internet connection went down. The reasons why were obvious: there were several BT Openreach vans parked outside, with men looking down a big hole they'd dug. It wasn't rocket science to work out that BT Openreach digging + no internet = internet cut off by BT.

With no work possible and nothing better to do, I made coffee and opened Twitter on my phone. I told my followers what had happened. Because I mentioned BT, someone at BT doing a search saw I'd mentioned them. Quick as a flash, they tweeted to me in friendly, chatty terms. "Internet problems are a pain, aren't they?" they said. "Click here for some solutions to common problems".

Exactly what, I'd like to know, could I possibly, in any realm of the imagination, solve by clicking that link? There was a great big hole in the road that BT people were looking down. No solutions page - especially one that started with advice on how to restart my router (what would that achieve? There was still going to be that great big hole in the road that BT people were looking down) - could possibly help.

-1 to BT. I replied, somewhat intemperately, to ask them what they thought they were achieving by suggesting I reboot my router when there was a big hole in the road with BT engineers looking down it. They ignored me. Somehow, that was better than offering pointless non-advice. Also, it was much more like the BT we're all used to.