Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Back to school
September 26th.
Malaga is a fine city, close to its airport, by the sea, a port and a large number of restaurants and tapas bars in a very picturesque old historic city. I always get the impression that they've never quite finished it - long stretches of new roadways in the centre and numerous empty but presumably temporary pavillions in the centre of town. There is a rather unlikely street called Strachan Street which is very smart. I wondered if Gordon knows. The cathedral clock was always stuck at four minutes to nine. They are ripping up the roads around the bullring, so the season is obviously at an end in Malaga. I noted that rabo(tail) of bull was on the menu in many places but the speciality of most of the restaurants was seafood (mariscos), cuttlefish, calamares,calimarettos, rosado , mussels, oysters etc.
Elmore Leonard's detectives don't eat anything except burgers and fries but they drink quite a lot of spirits.(Mr Paradise). Padura's Inspector Mario Conde eats a couple of fairly decent meals during the investigation he conducts in Havana Red but mostly drinks a lot of rum and smokes cigars. One of these meals sounds quite interesting - paisa mix - cook red beans until they begin to soften, add half a pound of minced meat to cook in the juice. Crackling from really big pigs with some of their meat, ripe plantains, eggs , beef steak, garlic and onion. Not sure how its all thrown together so probably have to visit Cuba to try it out. The only other meal described was a stuffed turkey. Stuffed with rice and black beans. Doesn't sound all that appealing to me but might be better than it sounds.
None of the meals described in Excursion to Tindari (Camilleri) disappoints in any way. Seven major meals in the course of an investigation including pasta with a meat sauce,(page 38),risotto in squid ink followed by sea bass(page 88), imperial mackerels in onion sauce (page 129), purpiteddri (baby octopi) followed by four bass,(page 169), Caponata (page 228) which is made from sauteed aubergine, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives vinegar, oil, and anchovies. Red mullet all'agrodolce (page 255) and seafood antipasto followed by a giant platter of grilled fish on page 278 complete the meals in the course of one invesigation. Bottles of whisky are also consumed. It must be all the fish that keeps Salvo Montalbano going.
He also gives a plug for his near namesake Montalban's detective, Pepe Carvalho. Why did his name suddenly appear in blue? Pepe has a rather more varied diet and eats much more meat. Several more meals in the Angst-Ridden Executive than in the Camilleri of which the duck ragout was probably the most interesting. After roasting the duck, the meat is removed including its delicate innards , mixed back with the duck's juices and a handful of stoned black olives, its is then all added to separately prepared diced bacon with mushrooms and truffles cooked in bacon fat and a couple of tablespoons of breadcrumbs and then presented as a casserole with the larger pieces of meat. Accompanied by a bottle of Montecillo and followed by dried fruits and natural honey and some pastries from Villores.
Humboldt's Gift is actually making me laugh out loud but it is still quite heavy going and requires an awful lot of concentration and a bit of skipping which I always regret and then find myself delayed as I go back to see if I really missed anything important. I don't know why he is described as a 'writer's writer' but it gives me hope; if I can read him, will I one day write The Book? Yes, the dying book. No meals but an awful lot of whisky. Perhaps if Humboldt and Citrine had drunk a bit less they wouldn't have spent so much time showing off with all their pseudo-intellectual tosh. Half way through and nobody has eaten a thing.
Tomorrow, or perhaps a bit later is weigh day. Will the fish diet have caused dramatic changes? I may go later to see the allotment. Will Woody have done anything much in my absence? Do sheet mulches really get rid of couch grass and docks? How long do they take? Who is/are b.anderic? What does 'coming from left field' mean? I like 'gulp fiction'.
Tuesday night.
Malaga is a fine city, close to its airport, by the sea, a port and a large number of restaurants and tapas bars in a very picturesque old historic city. I always get the impression that they've never quite finished it - long stretches of new roadways in the centre and numerous empty but presumably temporary pavillions in the centre of town. There is a rather unlikely street called Strachan Street which is very smart. I wondered if Gordon knows. The cathedral clock was always stuck at four minutes to nine. They are ripping up the roads around the bullring, so the season is obviously at an end in Malaga. I noted that rabo(tail) of bull was on the menu in many places but the speciality of most of the restaurants was seafood (mariscos), cuttlefish, calamares,calimarettos, rosado , mussels, oysters etc.
Elmore Leonard's detectives don't eat anything except burgers and fries but they drink quite a lot of spirits.(Mr Paradise). Padura's Inspector Mario Conde eats a couple of fairly decent meals during the investigation he conducts in Havana Red but mostly drinks a lot of rum and smokes cigars. One of these meals sounds quite interesting - paisa mix - cook red beans until they begin to soften, add half a pound of minced meat to cook in the juice. Crackling from really big pigs with some of their meat, ripe plantains, eggs , beef steak, garlic and onion. Not sure how its all thrown together so probably have to visit Cuba to try it out. The only other meal described was a stuffed turkey. Stuffed with rice and black beans. Doesn't sound all that appealing to me but might be better than it sounds.
None of the meals described in Excursion to Tindari (Camilleri) disappoints in any way. Seven major meals in the course of an investigation including pasta with a meat sauce,(page 38),risotto in squid ink followed by sea bass(page 88), imperial mackerels in onion sauce (page 129), purpiteddri (baby octopi) followed by four bass,(page 169), Caponata (page 228) which is made from sauteed aubergine, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives vinegar, oil, and anchovies. Red mullet all'agrodolce (page 255) and seafood antipasto followed by a giant platter of grilled fish on page 278 complete the meals in the course of one invesigation. Bottles of whisky are also consumed. It must be all the fish that keeps Salvo Montalbano going.
He also gives a plug for his near namesake Montalban's detective, Pepe Carvalho. Why did his name suddenly appear in blue? Pepe has a rather more varied diet and eats much more meat. Several more meals in the Angst-Ridden Executive than in the Camilleri of which the duck ragout was probably the most interesting. After roasting the duck, the meat is removed including its delicate innards , mixed back with the duck's juices and a handful of stoned black olives, its is then all added to separately prepared diced bacon with mushrooms and truffles cooked in bacon fat and a couple of tablespoons of breadcrumbs and then presented as a casserole with the larger pieces of meat. Accompanied by a bottle of Montecillo and followed by dried fruits and natural honey and some pastries from Villores.
Humboldt's Gift is actually making me laugh out loud but it is still quite heavy going and requires an awful lot of concentration and a bit of skipping which I always regret and then find myself delayed as I go back to see if I really missed anything important. I don't know why he is described as a 'writer's writer' but it gives me hope; if I can read him, will I one day write The Book? Yes, the dying book. No meals but an awful lot of whisky. Perhaps if Humboldt and Citrine had drunk a bit less they wouldn't have spent so much time showing off with all their pseudo-intellectual tosh. Half way through and nobody has eaten a thing.
Tomorrow, or perhaps a bit later is weigh day. Will the fish diet have caused dramatic changes? I may go later to see the allotment. Will Woody have done anything much in my absence? Do sheet mulches really get rid of couch grass and docks? How long do they take? Who is/are b.anderic? What does 'coming from left field' mean? I like 'gulp fiction'.
Tuesday night.
# posted by Bob @ 2:22 pm 
