All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
food+drink

Recipe: Rusticated Veggie Tart

So following on from yesterday’s recipe for Rusticated Fruit Tart, here’s how I did a veggie version. It’s quite like the fruit tart, but obviously not sweetened.

Serves: 4 as a main course or 6-8 as a starter
Preparation Time: 15-20 minutes
Cooking Time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients

  • 500g packet of puff pastry
  • A good quantity of “summer” vegetables (see below)
  • 2-3 handfuls of grated hard cheese (cheddar or a cheddar/parmesan mix)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • Fresh ground black pepper
  • 1 egg, beaten (or some milk)

For the veg I used 2 yellow peppers, 8-10 cherry tomatoes, a fennel, 3 large mushrooms, small red onion, 2 cloves of garlic. You could also use chopped fresh herbs (thyme would be good), aubergine, courgette, celery, leeks. Of course, if you want a non-veggie version you could always add some chopped bacon.

Go easy with the cheese but don’t be mean. While you want enough for good flavour, too much cheese will make the tart too greasy.

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 220℃/200℃ fan/gas mark 7.
  2. Prepare a baking sheet and cover with baking parchment.
  3. Prepare the veg much as you would for doing roast vegetables (just cut a bit smaller). Cut into pieces to roughly match the cherry tomatoes or 2cm pieces. Roughly chop the garlic (and any herbs). Put in a food bag with black pepper to taste and the olive oil. Shake up to get the veg coated in oil.
  4. Roll out the pastry to form a rough circle the size of the baking sheet (or slightly bigger; it doesn’t have to be precise) and transfer to the baking sheet.
  5. If the pastry has come out square-ish, snip off the corners to make something rounder, otherwise you end up with too many thick folds of pastry. Keep the pastry offcuts!
  6. Paint the pastry liberally with the egg.
  7. Sprinkle about 2/3 of the grated cheese in the centre of the pastry leaving a 3-4cm border around the edge.
  8. Pile the veg on the cheese. If you think you have too much veg, you haven’t as it will cook down.
  9. Fold the edges of the pastry up and over the veg to form a tart. Try to get some veg inside the fold so it isn’t just pastry!
  10. Brush the edge of the tart with the egg. And if there’s any egg left over sprinkle it over the veg.
  11. Top with the remaining cheese.
  12. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is crisp & golden, the veg cooked and the cheese browning.
  13. Serve either hot or cold with a good white wine.

Here’s one I made earlier, fresh from the oven.

Veggie Tart

Tomorrow, what to do with those pastry offcuts.

food+drink

Recipe: Rusticated Fruit Tart

2 Comments

An easy to make free-form fruit tart. The advantage here is that you don’t need a flan/quiche tin nor does the fruit have to be arranged in pretty patterns (though you could if you wish).

You can use almost any fruit. Gooseberries work well, as should any other berries. Rhubarb is also good; cut it into 1-2cm pieces. Stone fruit work well too, as would apples or pears. Citrus probably not so good, although YMMV.

I use puff pastry (and I can’t be bothered to make it) but you could use shortcrust or even filo pastry.

Serves: 6-8 as a sweet course
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

  • 500g packet of puff pastry
  • 600-750g fruit (more is better as it cooks down)
  • 2-3 tbsp ground almonds
  • 6 tbsp caster sugar (or a bit more depending how sweet you want the fruit)
  • 1 egg, beaten (or an equivalent amount of milk)

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 220℃/200℃ fan/gas mark 7.
  2. Prepare a baking sheet and cover with baking parchment.
  3. Mix the ground almonds with an equal amount of sugar and set aside.
  4. Mix the beaten egg (or milk) with 2 tbsp sugar and set aside.
  5. Prepare the fruit. Top and tail any berries. Remove stones. Cut fruit into pieces (they don’t have to be pretty).
  6. Roll out the pastry to form a rough circle the size of the baking sheet (or slightly bigger; it doesn’t have to be precise) and transfer to the baking sheet.
  7. If the pastry has come out square-ish, snip off the corners to make something rounder, otherwise you end up with too many thick folds of pastry. Keep the pastry offcuts!
  8. Paint the pastry liberally with the egg/sugar mix.
  9. Sprinkle the ground almond mix in the centre of the pastry leaving a 3-4cm border around the edge.
  10. Pile the fruit on the almond mix – again it doesn’t have to look pretty – and sprinkle with another 1-2 tbsp sugar (to taste).
  11. Fold the edges of the pastry up and over the fruit to form a tart.
  12. Brush the edge of the tart with the egg mix and sprinkle over a little extra sugar.
  13. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is crisp & golden and the fruit softened.
  14. Serve either hot or cold with cream or ice-cream.

Here’s a (red) gooseberry tart I made earlier, still on the baking sheet and guarded by four mini rustic apple turnovers (more about that later!).

Gooseberry Tart

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how I made a yummy veggie version of this tart. And the day after that what to do with those pastry offcuts.

amusements, memes

Ten Things: July

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with July …

Ten Pieces of Weather Lore

  1. Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight,
    red sky in a morning, shepherds’ warning.
  2. Onion skins very thin,
    mild winter coming in.
    Onion skins thick and tough,
    coming winter cold and rough.
  3. Oak before ash, we’re in for a splash;
    Ash before oak, we’re in for a soak.
  4. If there’s ice in November that will bear a duck,
    There’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck. (right)
  5. If there is a halo round the sun or moon,
    then we can all expect rain quite soon.
  6. A piece of seaweed hung up will become damp before it rains.
  7. When the dew is on the grass,
    Rain will never come to pass.
    When grass is dry at morning light,
    Look for rain before the night.
  8. Spiders leave their webs when it is going to rain.
  9. St Swithun’s day [15/07], if thou dost rain,
    For forty days it will remain;
    St Swithun’s day, if thou be fair,
    For forty days ’twill rain no more.
  10. If in October leaves still hold,
    The coming winter will be cold.
amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Final Summary

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s the final summary.

Day 26. A word that you’d name your memoir: bumf
Day 27. A word from an inside joke: batteries
Day 28. A word that is a palindrome: rotavator
Day 29. A word with several meanings: maroon
Day 30. A word you have always liked: crenelate

So just to recapitulate, here’s my whole list.

As always, click the image for a larger view

Day 1. A word that makes you happy: picatrix
Day 2. A word that describes your best friend: callipygian
Day 3. A word you always spell wrong on the first try: occasionally
Day 4. A word that reminds you of family: dysfunctional
Day 5. A word for your favourite colour: variable
Day 6. A word you learned from a song: abaft
Day 7. A word that makes you laugh: merkin
Day 8. A word that rhymes with your name: teeth
Day 9. A word that makes you feel smart when you use it: flocculate
Day 10. A word from your favourite sport: wicket
Day 11. A word that annoys you: decimate
Day 12. A word you associate with your birth month: winter
Day 13. A word you learned recently: yellowplush
Day 14. A word with lots of syllables:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Day 15. A word found in your favourite book: rookery
Day 16. A word that describes your pet: varmint
Day 17. A word you have to look up constantly: mondegreen
Day 18. A word you love to say: cunt
Day 19. A word with four vowels in it: constabulary
Day 20. A word you wish more people used: boscage
Day 21. A word you just made up: jamwot
Day 22. A word that is an oxymoron: childproof
Day 23. A word that would be a funny dog name: puss
Day 24. A word from a movie quote: restaurant
Day 25. A word that describes you: fat
Day 26. A word that you’d name your memoir: bumf
Day 27. A word from an inside joke: batteries
Day 28. A word that is a palindrome: rotavator
Day 29. A word with several meanings: maroon
Day 30. A word you have always liked: crenelate

I hope you enjoyed this; I certainly did!

environment, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

Here are our links to items you may have missed in the last month. There’s a lot this month, so let’s dive in.

Incidentally [£££] indicates the article may be behind a paywall, although most of these sites do offer a limited number of free articles so don’t ignore them.

Science, Technology, Natural World

First off, here’s an old article from New Scientist in which Roger Penrose asks What is Reality? [£££]

However there’s a warning that we should beware of Theories of Everything. [£££]

Meanwhile scientists have calculated the most likely number of alien civilisations we could contact. [Spoiler: it isn’t 42.]

Maybe the search for extraterrestrial life is why the Americans are embarking on another round of major upgrades to their U-2 spy plane. [£££]

But back to Earth … Researchers have used camera traps to complete a thorough survey of the inhabitants of African rainforest.

Surprisingly in this day and age we still don’t fully understand where eels come from. [£££]

Ecologists have tracked the astonishing migration of one particular European Cuckoo.

Equally astonishing, scientists have managed to record and translate the sounds made by honeybee queens.

After which we shouldn’t really be surprised that crows are aware of different human languages.

Health, Medicine

So out of the crow’s nest and into the fire … What you always thought you knew about why males are the taller sex is probably wrong.

It seems there is growing evidence that we should be taking seriously the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. Well I’d certainly be up for trying it.

Tick-borne Lyme Disease can develop into a debilitating chronic condition. [£££] [LONG READ]

Have you ever wondered how medical students are trained to do those intimate examinations?

Environment

There’s a movement to establish fast-growing mini-forests to help fight the climate crisis.

Barn Owls are one of our most iconic species, and the good news is that they’re growing in numbers thnks to human help.

Here’s just one example of the huge amount of rarer elements in old computers which we need to recycle.

We’re used to places like Iceland using geothermal energy, but now there’s a plan to heat some UK homes using warm water from flooded mines.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Archaeologists have found clues to the earliest known bow-and-arrow hunting outside Africa.

DNA from the 5,200-year-old Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland hints at ancient royal incest.

And DNA is also being used to provide clues about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On health and safety in the ancient world – or maybe the lack of it!

Religious iconography always was about marketing and PR.

The Medievals had notions about the ideal shape of women which curiously don’t coincide with our modern ideals. [LONG READ]

But then the Medievals lived in a world without police, and it wasn’t quite a brutal as one might think.

Archaeologists think they’ve found London’s earliest theatre, the Red Lion.

If we thought Medievals had odd ideas, then Enlightened Man (in 17th and 18th centuries) was in many ways stranger; shaving and periwigs were the least of it. [LONG READ]

London

On the first few hundred years of Westminster Abbey. [LONG READ]

From Tudor times Protestants have been intermittently persecuted in mainland Europe, and escaped to Britain. Here’s a piece on the history of the Huguenots in London. [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Is it OK for your kids to see you naked? Here’s an uptight American article which nonetheless concludes it is OK, as we all know.

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 21 to 25

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary #5.

Day 21. A word you just made up: jamwot**
Day 22. A word that is an oxymoron: childproof
Day 23. A word that would be a funny dog name: puss
Day 24. A word from a movie quote: restaurant
Day 25. A word that describes you: fat

As always, click the image for a larger view

** Actually I cheat slightly: I made up this word some while back. In case you’re wondering a jamwot is an endangered South American arboreal capybara.

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 16 to 20

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary .

Day 16. A word that describes your pet: varmint
Day 17. A word you have to look up constantly: mondegreen
Day 18. A word you love to say: cunt
Day 19. A word with four vowels in it: constabulary
Day 20. A word you wish more people used: boscage

As always, click the image for a larger view

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.

quotes

Monthly Quotes

Here’s this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes.

Humans construct stories to wrangle meaning from uncertainty and purpose from chaos. We crave simple narratives.
[Ed Yong; “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing”; The Atlantic; 29/04/2020; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/]

And the desire to name an antagonist … disregards the many aspects of 21st-century life that made the pandemic possible: humanity’s relentless expansion into wild spaces; soaring levels of air travel; chronic underfunding of public health; a just-in-time economy that runs on fragile supply chains; health-care systems that yoke medical care to employment; social networks that rapidly spread misinformation; the devaluation of expertise; the marginalization of the elderly; and centuries of structural racism that impoverished the health of minorities and indigenous groups.
[Ed Yong; “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing”; The Atlantic; 29/04/2020; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/]

The relationship between sound and time is one woven deep in our culture.  Andrew Marvell, in To His Coy Mistress, hears “time’s winged chariot”. Justice Shallow has heard “the chimes at midnight”.  Anthony Powell writes of A Dance to the  Music of Time.  Nineteen Eighty-Four opens with the brilliantly unheimlich detail of the clocks “striking thirteen”.  And TS Eliot, in The Waste Land describes London commuters flowing “up the hill and down King William Street,/To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours/With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”.  Time is, as scientists know, a very strange thing indeed.
[Sam Leith; TLS; 6 June 2020]

Technological advances in the detection of radiation, from X-rays to optical light to radio waves, and great improvements in computing power and storage [allowed scientists] to deal with the vast amount of data they produced. The technology was by and large developed for other purposes – it is what gave us people walking about looking at their smartphones instead of where they are going – and was adapted by inventive astronomers for cosmological tests.
[Prof. Jim Peebles; New Scientist; 6 June 2020]

We haven’t been issued a guarantee that we can make sense of the physical world around us … But lest there be doubt about how well physics has been doing so far, consider how successfully scientists and engineers can command the behaviour of electrons, atoms and molecules, as well as electric and magnetic fields, in cellphones. All of this has been done based on incomplete approximations.
… … …
My point is that all of physics is incomplete. I certainly don’t mean wrong, I mean that it can all be improved. Maybe there is a final theory of physics, or maybe it is approximations all the way down.
[Prof. Jim Peebles; New Scientist; 6 June 2020]

She drew the epigraph from Proust: “Les gens du monde se représentent volontiers les livres comme une espèce de cube dont une face est enlevée, si bien que l’auteur se dépêche de ‘faire entrer’ dedans les personnes qu’il rencontre”.  (“Society people think that books are a sort of cube, one side of which the author opens the better to insert into it the people he meets”.)
[Angela Thirkell]

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God through the manhole covers,
but we want magic, to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant,
embrace the suffering.) The voice never
panders, offers no five-year plan,
no long-term solution, no edicts from a cloudy
white beard hooked over ears.
It is small and fond and local. Don’t look for
your initials in the geese honking
overhead or to see through the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious shit,
ie. Put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
[Mary Karr; VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God]

Some believed eels were born of sea-foam, or created when the rays of the sun fell on a certain kind of dew that covered lakeshores and riverbanks in the spring. In the English countryside, where eel fishing was popular, most people adhered to the theory that eels were born when hairs from horses’ tails fell into the water.
[Patrik Svensson; The Book of Eels]

More next month. Be good!