dimanche 27 avril 2008
Great Expectations...

So, I'm not the only one who loves eggs! When I lamented, a couple of weeks or so ago, that Indian cooks were unfairly neglecting one of nature's great treasures, I portrayed the egg as a humble object, passed over by mighty chefs as they reached for the lobster, the lamb or even, the chicken. Not true, some of you have since told me.

You like eggs as much as I do and wish more cooks would learn to cook with them. Moreover, most of you regret that the breakfast egg has now become a cheap and nasty dish, usually made by the junior-most chef in the kitchen, using the most inexpensive ingredients available.

What interested me about the response to the piece was that (a) most of you still like your eggs done western style (in my column I had argued for more Indian recipes) and (b) you still think of them as breakfast items. Okay, fair enough, but I've got to warn you: prepare to be disappointed.

The simplest egg dishes of Continental breakfast cuisine are the hardest to make. Most Indian restaurant kitchens do not know how to cook them properly.

And the ingredients used are often so sub-standard that the chefs should be ashamed of themselves. Here's my own guide (based on stealing other people's recipes, mainly - I am the world's worst cook or so they regularly tell me at home) to getting a decent egg breakfast.

The eggs: I am sorry if I've become a bore on the subject of free range eggs and sometimes sound like a flack for Keggs eggs, but you cannot make a decent egg dish with the nasty industrial eggs available in the market. You must use eggs that come from hens that have been allowed to run around, enjoy the fresh air, and have been fed a proper diet.

A few weeks ago, my friend Tapas Bhattacharya, served me fried eggs with hash browns at Machan, the restaurant where he is chef/manager. There was nothing wrong with the cooking but the eggs were anaemic with yolks that were pale gray.

Tapas took one look at the eggs, worked out what was wrong, disappeared into the kitchen and returned with another plate of two fried eggs, their whites gleaming and their yolks the colour of bright sunlight. The eggs had been cooked in exactly the same way - Tapas had just used free range eggs instead of the industrial ones that most hotels use for their breakfast service.

So with eggs, the quality of the ingredient is paramount. Even a great chef will fail if he uses an industrial egg.

As important is freshness. Some cooks believe that if you rub eggs in oil or butter (as the Irish do), you'll keep them fresher for longer.

Perhaps. But food scientists say that an egg loses 4mg of water each day of its life (even if it is oiled or buttered).

As the egg's insides shrink, the air within the shell expands till ultimately you get rotten eggs. So eggs must be fresh.

Anyone can check this. Put your egg in a bowl of water.

If it sinks to the bottom, it is fresh. If it floats, it is old and full of air.

Cook only with eggs that sink. Some hotels use reconstituted egg, that is to say, an egg powder which goes into scrambled eggs.

Any chef who uses egg powder should first have his toque ceremonially confiscated. Then, he should be shot.

The fried egg: You only understand the principle of a fried egg if you realise that your purpose is not just to fry an egg but to babysit a yolk. A fried egg cooked over easy or one with a coagulated yolk is a failed egg, a disgrace to the culinary arts.

A proper fried egg should have a golden, runny yolk in the centre. The white should be solid but still shimmering and evanescent, fresh enough to pop in your mouth but soft enough to melt once it is inside, leaving behind a buttery explosion.

This is not easy to do so chefs cheat. One trick is not to fry at all.

Simmer some water in a pot. Place a serving plate over the pot.

When the plate is hot, crack an egg on it. Cover with another plate and leave for four minutes.

You'll get a fried egg - but one that's never been fried. A poncier and needlessly complicated method attributed to Bernard Loiseau, the celebrated French chef who committed suicide either because he thought he would lose his third Michelin star or because of the strain of inventing recipes like this one, is as follows: preheat an oven to 245 degree C.

Put a pan containing butter and a spoon of water (to prevent the butter from burning) over a flame. When the butter begins to foam, add just the white of the egg.

Now, put the pan in the oven for 90 seconds. Take it out.

Put a raw yolk at the centre. Put it back in the oven for two minutes.

And voila! You have a perfect fried egg. If you have no time for all this nonsense, remember that the basic dilemma with a fried egg is that the white is nearer the heat, but the yolk is further away.

This is why many chefs cover the pan so that the heat is reflected back to the yolk. There are variations to this.

You can put the eggs in a pan containing very hot fat and cover them. Then, turn the heat off.

That should give you perfect, delicate fried eggs. Scrambled: Unless you are making akuri, remember that scrambled eggs must be soft, creamy and runny.

If you can eat them easily with a fork, you've probably screwed up. Either you eat them with a spoon or you pour them over toast which serves as a sort of egg-plate.

How do you get them creamy? The usual trick is to use cream. But it is not so simple.

The trick to a scrambled egg is a minimum of heat. You can do this either by using a very low flame or - as Gordon Ramsay suggests - by periodically lifting the pan off the heat to keep the temperature low.

The broad principle being low temperature, all chefs have their own ruses. Some pour the egg mixture into a pan containing a little fat and then, just as the egg starts coagulating, add cream.

The cream will help with the consistency but because it is cold, it will also automatically lower the temperature of the pan and slow down the coagulation process. There is, in most recipes, a point when you decide that you have to start stirring before you end up with shards of omelette.

Quite when that point is reached depends on your egg mixture (has it been diluted with milk? Have you added cream? Etc.) But there are those who say that you should never stir.

Heston Blumenthal says that there should be no thickening for at least ten minutes if the flame is low enough. MFK Fisher puts in lots of cream, uses a low flame and says that it should take half an hour, without stirring.

No matter which method you end up using, here are some tips: try and use butter - it adds something to the taste; do not bother to whip the eggs too much before cooking - it's no help; remember that you while you can season with herbs, salt and pepper are usually enough; and if your eggs are solid, then you've done something wrong. Accompaniments: Different people like different things with eggs.

I believe that fried bread and the tomato, so beloved of the full English breakfast, are unnecessary. Nor am I keen on the blood sausage (black pudding, white pudding, boudin noir etc.

) that many Europeans prefer. A good eggy breakfast should include bread: good quality toast is enough, some pork, either in the form of a flavourful sausage or crisp good quality bacon; and ideally, potato.

Chips may seem excessive first thing in the morning but a hash brown (now available frozen and therefore, easy to cook) is perfect. A more adventurous cook may want to try potatoes sauteed with onion but it's not really necessary.

A perfect breakfast forkful should mix fried egg white with a little bacon and some potato dipped in the runny yolk. Opinions are divided on baked beans.

If your yolks are moist, you don't need them. Otherwise, they go well with fried egg, I reckon, but they are a waste with good scrambled eggs.

Some people say that coffee is the ideal breakfast beverage. I prefer Darjeeling tea but no doubt you will make up your own mind.

My general rule is that if you want to go all French you can have coffee, croissants and cigarettes for breakfast. For rest of us, tea and eggs should be good enough.

jeudi 24 avril 2008
Hercules ...

Hercules was the Roman name for the greatest hero of Greek mythology -- Heracles. Like most authentic heroes, Heracles had a god as one of his parents, being the son of the supreme deity Zeus and a mortal woman. Zeus's queen Hera was jealous of Heracles, and when he was still an infant she sent two snakes to kill him in his crib. Heracles was found prattling delighted baby talk, a strangled serpent in each hand.


When he had come of age and already proved himself an unerring marksman with a bow and arrow, a champion wrestler and the possessor of superhuman strength, Heracles was driven mad by Hera. In a frenzy, he killed his own children. To atone for this crime, he was sentenced to perform a series of tasks, or "Labors", for his cousin Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns and Mycenae. By rights, Hercules should have been king himself, but Hera had tricked her husband Zeus into crowning Eurystheus instead.


As his first Labor, Heracles was challenged to kill the Nemean lion. This was no easy feat, for the beast's parentage was supernatural and it was more of a monster than an ordinary lion. Its skin could not be penetrated by spears or arrows. Heracles blocked off the entrances to the lion's cave, crawled into the close confines where it would have to fight face to face and throttled it to death with his bare hands. Ever afterwards he wore the lion's skin as a cloak and its gaping jaws as a helmet.


King Eurystheus was so afraid of his heroic cousin that when he saw him coming with the Nemean lion on his shoulder, he hid in a storage jar. From this shelter he issued the order for the next Labor. Heracles was to seek out and destroy the monstrous and many-headed Hydra. The mythmakers agree that the Hydra lived in the swamps of Lerna, but they seem to have had trouble counting its heads. Some said that the Hydra had eight or nine, while others claimed as many as ten thousand. All agreed, however, that as soon as one head was beaten down or chopped off, two more grew in its place.


To make matters worse, the Hydra's very breath was lethal. Even smelling its footprints was enough to kill an ordinary mortal. Fortunately, Heracles was no ordinary mortal. He sought out the monster in its lair and brought it out into the open with flaming arrows. But now the fight went in the Hydra's favor. It twined its many heads around the hero and tried to trip him up. It called on an ally, a huge crab that also lived in the swamp. The crab bit Heracles in the heel and further impeded his attack. Heracles was on the verge of failure when he remembered his nephew, Iolaus, the son of his twin brother Iphicles.


Iolaus, who had driven Heracles to Lerna in a chariot, looked on in anxiety as his uncle became entangled in the Hydra's snaky heads. Finally he could bear it no longer. In response to his uncle's shouts, he grabbed a burning torch and dashed into the fray. Now, as soon as Heracles cut off one of the Hydra's heads, Iolaus was there to sear the wounded neck with flame. This kept further heads from sprouting. Heracles cut off the heads one by one, with Iolaus cauterizing the wounds. Finally Heracles lopped off the one head that was supposedly immortal and buried it deep beneath a rock.


The third Labor was the capture of the Cerynitian hind. Though a female deer, this fleet-footed beast had golden horns. It was sacred to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, so Heracles dared not wound it. He hunted it for an entire year before running it down on the banks of the River Ladon in Arcadia. Taking careful aim with his bow, he fired an arrow between the tendons and bones of the two forelegs, pinning it down without drawing blood. All the same, Artemis was displeased, but Heracles dodged her wrath by blaming his taskmaster Eurystheus.


The fourth Labor took Heracles back to Arcadia in quest of an enormous boar, which he was challenged to bring back alive. While tracking it down he stopped to visit the centaur Pholus. This creature -- half-horse, half-man -- was examining one of the hero's arrows when he accidentally dropped it on his foot. Because it had been soaked in poisonous Hydra venom, Pholus succumbed immediately. Heracles finally located the boar on Mount Erymanthus and managed to drive it into a snowbank, immobilizing it. Flinging it up onto his shoulder, he carried it back to Eurystheus, who cowered as usual in his storage jar.


Eurystheus was very pleased with himself for dreaming up the next Labor, which he was sure would humiliate his heroic cousin. Heracles was to clean out the stables of King Augeas in a single day. Augeas possessed vast herds of cattle which had deposited their manure in such quantity over the years that a thick aroma hung over the entire Peloponnesus. Instead of employing a shovel and a basket as Eurystheus imagined, Heracles diverted two rivers through the stableyard and got the job done without getting dirty. But because he had demanded payment of Augeas, Eurystheus refused to count this as a Labor.


The sixth Labor pitted Heracles against the Stymphalian birds, who inhabited a marsh near Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia. The sources differ as to whether these birds feasted on human flesh, killed men by shooting them with feathers of brass or merely constituted a nuisance because of their number. Heracles could not approach the birds to fight them - the ground was too swampy to bear his weight and too mucky to wade through. Finally he resorted to some castanets given to him by the goddess Athena. By making a racket with these, he caused the birds to take wing. And once they were in the air, he brought them down by the dozens with his arrows.


Queen Pasiphae of Crete had been inspired by a vengeful god to fall in love with a bull, with the result that the Minotaur was born -- a monster half-man and half-bull that haunted the Labyrinth of King Minos. Pasiphae's husband was understandably eager to be rid of the bull, which was also ravaging the Cretan countryside, so Hercules was assigned the task as his seventh Labor. Although the beast belched flames, the hero overpowered it and shipped it back to the mainland. It ended up near Athens, where it became the duty of another hero, Theseus, to deal with it once more.


Next Heracles was instructed to bring Eurystheus the mares of Diomedes. These horses dined on the flesh of travelers who made the mistake of accepting Diomedes' hospitality. In one version of the myth, Heracles pacified the beasts by feeding them their own master. In another, they satisfied their appetites on the hero's squire, a young man named Abderus. In any case, Heracles soon rounded them up and herded them down to sea, where he embarked them for Tiryns. Once he had shown them to Eurystheus, he released them. They were eventually eaten by wild animals on Mount Olympus.


The ninth Labor took Heracles to the land of the Amazons, to retrieve the belt of their queen for Eurystheus' daughter. The Amazons were a race of warrior women, great archers who had invented the art of fighting from horseback. Heracles recruited a number of heroes to accompany him on this expedition, among them Theseus. As it turned out, the Amazon queen, Hippolyte, willingly gave Hercules her belt, but Hera was not about to let the hero get off so easily. The goddess stirred up the Amazons with a rumor that the Greeks had captured their queen, and a great battle ensued. Heracles made off with the belt, and Theseus kidnapped an Amazon princess.


In creating monsters and formidable foes, the Greek mythmakers used a simple technique of multiplication. Thus Geryon, the owner of some famous cattle that Heracles was now instructed to steal, had three heads and/or three separate bodies from the waist down. His watchdog, Orthrus, had only two heads. This Labor took place somewhere in the country we know as Spain. The hound Orthrus rushed at Heracles as he was making off with the cattle, and the hero killed him with a single blow from the wooden club which he customarily carried. Geryon was dispatched as well, and Heracles drove the herd back to Greece, taking a wrong turn along the way and passing through Italy.


The Hesperides were nymphs entrusted by the goddess Hera with certain apples which she had received as a wedding present. These were kept in a grove surrounded by a high wall and guarded by Ladon, a many-headed dragon. The grove was located in the far-western mountains named for Atlas, one of the Titans or first generation of gods. Atlas had sided with one of his brothers in a war against Zeus. In punishment, he was compelled to support the weight of the heavens by means of a pillar on his shoulders. Heracles, in quest of the apples, had been told that he would never get the them without the aid of Atlas.


The Titan was only too happy to oblige. He told the hero to hold the pillar while he went to retrieve the fruit. But first Heracles had to kill the dragon by means of an arrow over the garden wall. Atlas soon returned with the apples but now realized how nice it was not to have to strain for eternity keeping heaven and earth apart. Heracles wondered if Atlas would mind taking back the pillar just long enough for him to fetch a cushion for his shoulder. The Titan obliged and Heracles strolled off, neglecting to return.


As his final Labor, Heracles was instructed to bring the hellhound Cerberus up from Hades, the kingdom of the dead. The first barrier to the soul's journey beyond the grave was the most famous river of the Underworld, the Styx. Here the newly dead congregated as insubstantial shades, mere wraiths of their former selves, awaiting passage in the ferryboat of Charon the Boatman. Charon wouldn't take anyone across unless they met two conditions. Firstly, they had to pay a bribe in the form of a coin under the corpse's tongue. And secondly, they had to be dead. Heracles met neither condition, a circumstance which aggravated Charon's natural grouchiness.


But Heracles simply glowered so fiercely that Charon meekly conveyed him across the Styx. The greater challenge was Cerberus, who had razor teeth, three (or maybe fifty) heads, a venomous snake for a tail and another swarm of snakes growing out of his back. These lashed at Heracles while Cerberus lunged for a purchase on his throat. Fortunately, the hero was wearing his trusty lion's skin, which was impenetrable by anything short of a thunderbolt from Zeus. Heracles eventually choked Cerberus into submission and dragged him to Tiryns, where he received due credit for this final Labor.


Heracles had a great many other adventures, in after years as well as in between his Labors. It was poisonous Hydra venom that eventually brought about his demise. He had allowed a centaur to ferry his wife Deianara across a river, and the centaur had attacked her on the other side. Heracles killed him with an arrow, but before he died he told Deinara to keep some of his blood for a love potion. Deinara used some on Heracles' tunic to keep him faithful, little realizing that it had been poisoned with Hydra venom from the arrow. Heracles donned the tunic and died in agony.


Heracles was the only hero to become a full-fledged god upon his demise, but even in his case there was his mortal aspect to be dealt with. By virtue of his spectacular achievements, even by heroic standards, he was given a home on Mount Olympus and a goddess for a wife. But part of him had come not from his father Zeus but from his mortal mother Alcmene, and that part was sent to the Underworld. As a phantasm it eternally roams the Elysian Fields in the company of other heroes.

mercredi 23 avril 2008
luv of mi hermana

love of mi hermana

mardi 22 avril 2008
whn i'm sad...

whn i m sad

lundi 14 avril 2008
Beware of rabbits....

One day Rabbit was taking a walk through the jungle and ran into Elephant, who was making a fine meal of the treetops. "Hello, brother," said Rabbit. "Fine day, isn't it?" Elephant paused to look down at the tiny little creature at his feet and snorted. "Leave me be, Rabbit. I don't have the time to waste on someone so small."

Rabbit was shocked to be talked to in such a manner. He wasn't sure what to do so he left quietly to go and think about what had happened. As he walked along, he spied mighty Whale far out to sea and decided to ask her what she thought about Elephant's rudeness. He cupped his tiny paws and yelled as loud as he could, "Whaaaaale!! Come heeeeere!!"

Whale swam over to see who was calling her and looked about. After a few minutes she spied tiny little Rabbit jumping up and down on a cliff. "Rabbit," Whale said impatiently, "Did you just call me over here?" "Of course," said Rabbit. "Just who do you think you are? You are far too small and weak to have anything to say to me." And at that she turned, flipped her huge tail, and set off back into the deep ocean. But just then Rabbit had an idea.

He called out to her one more time, "Whale! You think that I am weak, but in fact, I am stronger than you! You wouldn't be so quick to ignore me if I beat you at Tug-of-War." Whale looked at him for a moment before falling into a fit of laughter. "Very well little one," said Whale. "Go get a rope and we will see who is stronger."

Rabbit ran off to gather up the strongest and thickest vine he could. When he found it, he went to Elephant and said to the giant animal, "Elephant, you had no cause to treat me with such discourtesy this afternoon. I shall have to prove to you that we are equals. Elephant looked down between chews and chuckled. "And how will you do that, small one?" Rabbit stood up as high as he could, looked Elephant right in the eye and said, "By beating you at a game of Tug-of-War." Elephant laughed so hard he nearly choked on his leaves, but agreed to humor the tiny animal. He tied the vine around his huge, hefty waist, snickering the whole time.

Rabbit took the other end and started off into the jungle. He called back to Elephant, "Wait until I say 'pull' and then pull with all of your might." Rabbit took the other end of the rope to Whale and said, "Tie this to your tail and when I say `pull' you swim with all of your might." Whale tied the vine to her tail, all the while smirking at Rabbit's foolishness.

"I will now go and tie the other end to my own waist," said Rabbit, and hopped off into the jungle. Rabbit hid in the bushes and then called out, at the top of his lungs, "PULL!!" Elephant started to walk away with a smile on his face, but the smile soon turned to a look of surprise when the vine stopped following him. "My goodness," he said to himself, "Rabbit is much stronger than I expected!" The look of surprise soon became a frown as Elephant pulled harder and harder, unable to make the tough vine budge any further.

Meanwhile, Whale began to swim away from the shore, but almost lost her breath when the vine pulled tight and refused to come with her. She pulled harder and harder, but she could not pull it any further. "That little Rabbit could not possibly be stronger than me," she said in outrage. Soon the vine could take no more strain and, with an ear-splitting sound, snapped into two pieces.

When this happened, poor Elephant went sailing through the jungle and tumbled head over heels down a steep valley. The end that was tied to Whale caught up to her suddenly and she went sailing through the ocean and smashed into a very scratchy and very uncomfortable coral reef.

Rabbit left without a word and never mentioned the matter again. Elephant and Whale were completely confused and never did figure out how such a tiny creature as Rabbit could have beaten the largest of the animals. And to this day, they are very careful to greet little Rabbit with great respect whenever they meet.

Tatty Teddy...

jeudi 10 avril 2008
Wishes...

Mi Hermana

mercredi 9 avril 2008
te amo...

mi hermana

gifts

My fav cartoon

Dos Conejos

Dos Conejos

mercredi 2 avril 2008
Winnie The Pooh's Bio

Many Names of Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh - The name Christopher Robin
bestowed upon Edward Bear when he said "he would
like an exciting name all to himself"

Winnie-ther-Pooh - The name, corrected by Christopher
Robin so as to remove suspicion that Edward had been
given a girl's name. "ther" is not explained.

Winnie - A veterinarian bought a real bear cub from
the platform of the Railway Station in White River,
Ontario, Canada in the summer of 1914 while on a WWI
troop train travelling across Northern Ontario. He took
this bear named by him as Winnie ( after his home town
of Winnipeg, Manitoba ) overseas to England. When he was
posted to France, he left the bear with the London, England
Zoo where it was a favourite attraction of A.A. Milne &
Christopher Robin.

Pooh - Originally the name of a swan that lived on the
lake at Decoy, a thatched cottage near Angmering in Sussex,
a vacation spot of the Milnes when Christopher was small.
Also the sound Pooh allegedly makes in the aftermath of
the bees incident, when "his arms were so stiff...that they
stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and
whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow
it off" Also short for Winnie-the(r)-Pooh

Mr. Sanders - The name Pooh lives under. "What does
'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin.
"It means he had the name over the door in gold
letters and lived under it."

Sir Pooh de Bear - The name Christopher Robin bestows
upon Pooh at the end of the stories "Most Faithful of
all my Knights"

Henry Pootel - The name actually bestowed upon Piglet by Christopher Robin, when he and Kanga deliberately mistake Piglet for "some relation of Pooh's"