My Top Secret Job has sprung a leak.

It has become known that I sometimes work as a cook.

People have been telling me all about their favourite recipes.  *


This is a regular occurrence and I'm often astonished by the number of youngsters who speak wistfully of tinned fruit and semolina 

Yesterday a man in his twenties explained his favourite pudding:

rice pudding with a layer of tinned mandarins underneath and baked meringue  on top

and then his favourite sandwich

white buttered bread filled with sliced shiny green apples and sliced Mars Bar


*The TSJ has nothing to do with food

a yoik is a nordic song

 it can involve a strong vocal projection akin to a yodel, the sound is intended to travel long distances so it can irritate the really far away neighbours. On Saturday afternoon I cooked Karelian pies* with Tuuletar, a Finnish band who demonstrated the yoik

The Man is a little hard of hearing - I can't get him to hear me if he's more than a couple of metres away from me - unless I yoik

in other news...

I've been commissioned to make a coffin cover - it's not the traditional sort of coffin and has a very particular shape.  

Today I downloaded the dimensions and started building a dummy coffin so I can construct a well fitted garment

Best shot

KermesZ a l'Est on Taste the World stage making mitraillettes

shopping list

a big bag of big potatoes

20kg beef dripping

2 X deep fat dryers

a can of sunflower oil

lots of diced lamb

20 X eggs yolks

a lot of garlic

2 X jars of 'unsweeted' mustard

salt and pepper

many big baguettes


method

make audience chop potatoes

double fry in sizzling dripping

band prepare lamb kebabs shake maraccas and hoot horns

horn player uses electric wand to make mayonnaise while playing mouth organ

loud noise must be produced for duration of project

to serve

Wipe a cooked kebab through a 10cm slice of  baguette that has been
liberally spread with garlic mayonnaise - you now have a lubricated meat
sandwich

cram sandwich with chips and more mayonnaise

you can be a little quieter now while you share the eating with a friend



KermesZ a l'Est also do this sort of thing

It's WOMAD time again

I will be operating the Taste The World stage*

a band of Balkan-music-playing-Belgians wish to make frites - the correct way 

Taste the World starts with a series of quests, today I must venture into the a part of the city devoid of homes, beard trimming workshops, and artisan bread shops. I drive my trusty steed deep into the land of wholesale fruit markets, timber yards, metal welders and ... the edible oil depot to collect 20kg of beef dripping   

I park alongside a fleet of lorries, buzz a wonky doorbell and am let into the sort of reception area that shouts at you that the entire workforce is male    

Scraps of discarded bits of paper  decorate the carpet, I wait for a man in wellington boots to process my order, I pay, he disappears then returns with my box of dripping

are you using it to make casts?


today I learn that sculptural casting is a common use for beef dripping


*Taste The World is a kitchen on a stage,  musicians come here cook (or direct me to cook) and talk about what they eat back home - click tags beneath this post for previous on this event

The Haitians got lost backstage

at the other end of the arena -  a man with a buggy got them rounded up and driven over to our stage, they spilled off the buggy and ran around laughing and kissing us all, there were at least fifty ten people if you counted all the seeing double that was going on.

Meanwhile in front of the stage the audience had been sampling the wine provided by our sponsor and were already pretty happy but they  roared with approval to see a cascade of stoned people arriving on and around the stage giggling and dancing. Their music was fantastic but they weren't up to slicing vegetables - several audience members were pulled onto the stage to help including a girl called Trixie wearing a very short white fairy outfit and crimson hair .

Trixie was able to chop cabbage, twist open bottles of vinegar and fry plantain while band members fell at her feet and grinned at her.

The woman in the Haitian band was the danciest and had many many silk patterned scarves  tied around her waist which she dispensed liberally along with perfume and many kisses - my scarf is blue stripey with flowers and a rude fruity smell, apparently it contains a lot of voodoo so I have put it in a nice box for safety

Vine leaves were the biggest challenge

I live near Turkish supermarkets and various sorts of hippy shops and imagined these to be the least of my problems but it appears that Bristol is experiencing a World Leaf Shortage (and I needneedneed them for WOMAD see my post from two days ago)

I returned home leafless to meet the new electrician who arrived before I'd had time to clean the grease off the broken kitchen light that I hoped he could fix

at peak panic a chum appeared and we both busily phoned potential vine-leaf vendors while watching time running out on shop-opening hours

at the latest moment a leaf supplier was discovered and the person with a bike had to cycle to the other side of the city to buy pickled foliage while I washed my embarrassing light fitting and made tea for the electrician

to make Kale crisps

tear up dry raw pieces of kale leaf without any stem, rub them over LIGHTLY with nice oil and lay the pieces out on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and bake in a moderate oven for about 5 minutes.   When you remove them from the oven you must EAT THEM INSTANTLY they are delicious for precisely 30 seconds ... at 31 seconds they are foul

I'm all about food this week

WOMAD starts on Thursday - this is the 10th year that I will be shopping, chopping and hopping around for this musical food event * 

This year's big challenge has been to find a ewe's cheese like one used in Romania to make a rustic dish called Shut-up-and-swallow. I am also looking for live clams, garden eggs and several shades of yellow/green plantain

three years ago Babylon Circus made this film about their experience of Taste the World




*if you click the 'womad' tag below all previous posts on this annual extravaganza will appear

Two months ago I watched this great film

about how Cambodia in the '60s was the funkiest kingdom on the planet, how it was so groovy and loved pop music and sex and fun until the Khmer Rouge arrived and killed nearly everyone.

The country is damaged but recovering, 'Not Easy Rock n Roll' is the story of a roaring-woman who is becoming a star.








On Saturday this roaring-woman appeared on my kitchen-on-stage at WOMAD and showed me how to slice a box of ginger as-thin-as-eyelashes so that we could cook Angry Chicken together.

I haven't quite got over it yet.

the WOMAD festival is on

and once again I am working on the Taste the World stage*.

Yesterday it rained and rained but in our tent we visited India and Bhangra-danced the sun back, then to Columbia for sunny-day crab gratin. Finally to the bluesy desert-ty atmosphere of Tinariwen who I am in love with:

1: they are unbelievably handsome

2: they wear beautiful long robes and intense jewel-coloured scarves wrapped in the manner of Lawrence of Arabia.

3: they made an astonishingly good stew, this is how you make it

ask a Halal butcher to chop 10 lamb shoulders into big boney pieces

fry the meat hothothot till golden all over then add water to just cover the meat

add salt

after 3 hours of slow simmer take the meat from the lamb and shred, you will have one kilo (dry weight) of basmati rice just cooked, combine the lamb meat and some of the cooking liquid with the rice. It will be a mush - that's fine

Add pepper and either 500g of rancid goats butter or 250g of fresh butter plus 500g of grated strong mountain cheese like Comte.

everyone eat from the same pot and drink the remaining cooking liquid because it will make you strong.

* I explain my role in this here, if you click the WOMAD tag underneath here, all my previous posts to do with this event come up

Body Cakes

Yesterday I made  Body Cakes (Kroppkakor) with a Swedish musician called Linnea Olsen.

here is the recipe

cook and mash floury potatoes then grate in an almost  equal weight raw potatoes of a firmer character, add eggs and season then leave to sit while you sauté minced shallots in butter.  Add chanterelles to the soft but not coloured shallots in the pan then a glass of white wine, when the wet has simmered away add salt, pepper, finely chopped parsley and ground allspice.

get flour on your hands and make a tennis ball out of the potato dough, poke a hole in the middle and put in a spoonful of the chanterelle mixture, pinch the potato back over it.

Have a pot of simmering water handy and lower the body cakes into the water when they bounce to the surface they are cooked.

Serve the cake on a lake of thin cream with a 'click' of butter on top and a spoonful of sugared raw lingonberries