Text 32548, 109 rader
Skriven 2009-12-23 16:45:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: humbuggy christmas 568
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Someone gave my hostess an odd little gift - a wine stopper
with a tapered cork in it. There are notable oddities about
such a gift. 1. The bottle's original cork does just as good
a job as this one. 2. Vacuvin does better. 3. The bottle's
original cork does just as good a job as this one. Anyhow,
out of politeness, she used it to stopper up a bottle of
perfectly good wine, and when I opened it up, the wine was
peculiar. A couple experimental sniffs indicated that ...
the cork was corked. Someone had taken defective cork and
made wine stoppers out of it, with fancy heavy wood carved
heads and stuff. I took the thing and buried it overnight
in baking soda; this seems to have done the trick, and it
is now somewhat usable, though the question remains, why.

=

The state of the news. Afghanistan. Iraq. Health care reform.
A plane breaks up on landing and injures 80 people. So what's
dominating the coverage? Tiger Woods. Oh, we all knew about
him. Oh, how incredible for him to do that to his loving
family. And, my favorite, what an idiot to step out on a fox
like Elin (which misses the point of everything up and down
the line, such as how irrelevant it is that his wife is or
is not a fox).

=

After Courtney and Doug left, yesterday I discovered a
couple interesting left-behinds, including a beef shinbone
(6" length thereof), labeled "soup bone 2.49/lb." I reflected
on the gall of charging more than bottom round for a soup
bone and the silliness of paying same (using MY money,
which they also used to buy milk), but then I thought,
marrow bone. In the oven for half an hour at 350, and I had
6 oz of the finest, richest marrow, which I proceeded to
devour on thin thin slices of baguette, topped with a
sprinkle of sea salt. If you read this, I will not have
died from this meal.

=

Report on natural diuretics. Uva ursi, corn silk, grapefruit,
buchu, horsetail, green tea. They don't work. I'm looking for
dandelion extract to experiment with. Report on prescription
diuretic hydrochlorothiazide. It doesn't work. What does work?
Beer, and lots of it.

Speaking of which, there are these fake Luminarc glasses in
the cabinet with a big 500 on the bottom. Guess what? A beer
(354 mL) just barely fits, so I figure they're 360 or so.

=

Guess what I have to make for Christmas dinner? Paella.

Here's Gordon Ramsay's take, which I'm going to take into
consideration, but mine will be cooked with the lid off,
omit the squid (6.99/lb for the stuff today), and have
chicken for the monkfish. Mine was planned before I saw
this recipe. Oh, chicken and shrimp stock for the
vegetable stock.

Christmas paella
cat: celebrity, holiday, main
Serves: 4

1 red pepper, finely diced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
400 g paella rice
125 ml dry white wine
1 ts smoked paprika
Generous pinch of saffron threads
1 L hot vegetable stock
12 lg fresh mussels, well scrubbed, beards removed
4 lg prawns
4 prepared squid, approx 170g in total, sliced into rings
280 g monkfish fillet, roughly chopped
Handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 lemon cut into wedges
Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large paella
pan or frying pan. Add the onion and cook out briefly.

Add the chopped pepper and crush in the garlic. Season with
a little salt and pepper and cook until softened.

Sprinkle the smoked paprika and saffron into the pan.
Follow with the rice and stir well so that each grain of
rice is well coated in oil.

Add the wine and allow to evaporate before pouring in the
hot stock. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer gently for
20 min. Stir occasionally to prevent the rice from sticking.

Five min before the end of cooking add the mussels, prawns,
squid and monkfish to the pan. Stir, and replace the lid
to finish cooking.

Just before serving, mix through the chopped parsley and
garnish with lemon wedges.

Gordon Ramsay

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