Rob Wickings's Blog, page 51

Spatchcock: A roast chicken for everyday dinners.

I’ve always maintained that the most useful thing for a carnivore to have in the fridge is a whole chicken.

Roasted, of course, it’s a generous provider, giving at least two meals plus bones for stock. You could skip a step and poach the whole thing, which brings you moist and delicately flavoured meat with a fragrant broth. And this is before I even talk about jointing the lovely thing for pot roasts and fricassees.But it’s never been the quickest of meals. A decent size chicken will take a good couple of hours to roast or simmer. Fine for the weekend, but what if you need something sharpish for a weekday supper, and your jointing skills are. like mine, underdeveloped? Readership, there is a solution. It takes five minutes and all you need is a sturdy pair of scissors. Let’s spatchcock that bad boy. Spatchcocking or butterflying a chicken basically removes the problem of the huge cavity at the centre of your chook, which slows down cooking time so much. You’re opening and flattening it out, giving a larger surface area which is much quicker to heat through. The best bit? It’s really simple to do. Here’s how. Take your chicken, and rest it breast-side down with the legs towards you. The idea is to remove the backbone, which is running down the centre of your beast. So, with your sturdy scissors, start cutting a couple of centimetres to each side of that centre line. There should be resistance (after all, you’re cutting through rib bones) but it shouldn’t be an impossible task. Cut all the way from front to back, then repeat on the other side, The backbone should then come away neatly in one strip. Throw it in a big pot for stock. Then flip the bird back over, and push down on the breast, as if you’re doing CPR. It will flatten out, taking on that butterfly shape. Congratulations. You’ve just spatchcocked a chicken. Here’s a vid from The Co-Op in case you need a little more guidance.

 

There are a ton of advantages to prepping a chicken like this. Apart from halving your cooking time, it means that it’s a lot easier to get flavour all the way through the chicken. You can evenly dry or wet-rub both sides with ease. Try a mix of lemon, garlic and oil, or a good barbecue sauce. Speaking of barbecue, spatchcocking means that you can slap the chicken on the grill and have it cook evenly without issue. It’s worth running a couple of skewers in an X shape through it to make sure it keeps its shape and to stop the legs from flopping around. One last tip. It’s a great idea with any lump of meat in the oven to blast it with high heat initially, then take the heat down to finish. I tend to go 250 degrees centigrade for the first ten minutes, then down to 170 for the remainder of the cooking time. Unless you’ve got a real monster, you’re looking at 45 mins cooking time. If you can, let the chicken rest out of the oven while you get the table laid. I think this method brings the roast chicken into the realm of the weekday dinner. Still something of a treat, but perfectly doable and, once you get the knack, trouble-free. Why not give it a go next time you have a chicken to hand?

 

The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For The Avengers (Fiennes/Thurman Version)

Ok, it’s just not funny any more. Yet more Avengers. This time the… let’s say below par adaptation of the classic 60s movie, starring two miscast main leads and Sean Connery in a role that contributed to his decision to retire from the world of films.

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-is-for-the-avengers-fiennes-thurman.m4a

Hoo boy. You can almost feel the air of underwhelmage in this one.

Here’s the trailer. Looks like fun, eh? Don’t be fooled!

 

 

Mad World

What do we do when the world ends?

(mild spoilers follow for Mad Max: Fury Road. But that's ok because you've all seen it by now, right? Right?)

It's the question at the heart of every post-apocalyptic movie. It's the motor that has driven movies as disparate as Threads and Zardoz, stories as different in approach as The Handmaid's Tale and The Hunger Games. The apocalypse is a powerful engine, with enough horsepower to pull along many different kinds of tale.

This is your future. Despair, humans.

Effectively, apocalypic stories offer the writer a blank slate. A world wiped clean, onto which a new society can be mapped, obliterating the old order. That new world is, it has to be said, usually an bleak vision. There's precious little utopian fiction out there. There's little conflict or drama in a world gone right. I can think of one writer that's presenting a wholly cheerful view of a post-collapse world: Robert Llewellen. That's right, readership. Kryten from Red Dwarf is the only writer out there who believes that when the levee breaks, it's all going to be ok.

The thing is, I'm not convinced he's got the wrong idea. We are, as a species, much kinder and more tolerant than commentators would have us believe. Yes, there's a lot of horror in the world. Atrocious things happen on a daily basis. There's oppression, exploitation, inequality, war, starvation, disease. But lest we forget, a careful look at the metrics shows that we're living in a world with less conflict and a better standard of living than at any point in history. This, believe it or not, is The Golden Age.

What's more, we are not the monsters that the prevailing commentary would like us to be. When faced with disaster, we do the right thing every single time. The voices honking about the amount we give in taxes to foreign aid (0.7% of GDP, in case you were wondering) are drowned out by the generosity of ordinary people digging in their pocket and giving to disaster relief. We are inherently decent and tolerant, ready to help out when we can. Flawed, yes. Prone to making gigantic, horrible mistakes, absolutely. But I have to wonder, if the slate were wiped clean, what would society look like?

Which brings me, finally, to Mad Max: Fury Road. A singular vision of a post-collapse world that gives us the bleakest possible future. Faced with a chance to start again, director George Miller shows us what happens if we choose to return to a medieval structure. A lord in his castle, holding power through means of force and the control of the one resource that matters: water. Oh, and the exploitation of the only other resource available: the human body. Women are pumped for milk. Prisoners like Max are used as blood bags, sources of reinvigorating shots of plasma for Immortan Joe's sickly, failing War Boys.

But the point is that the world of The Citadel is one on the brink of failure. Rule by fear is a zero-sum game that only lasts for as long as the main bogeyman is around. I'm reminded of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, where commerce gave society some kind of structure. Bartertown is well-named and Auntie Entity, for all her queenly airs, is at heart someone who believes in the unifying force of the market.

Immortan Joe doesn't even have that. He's a warlord, pure and simple. His trappings of power, his harem and high castle are not going to survive his fall. You're not seeing the birth of a dynasty in Fury Road. You're seeing the last gasp of the old ways, before humanity finally gets a grip on itself and finds a way to live together in the wasteland that those old ways left them with.

Mad Max: Fury Road is many different films in one: balls-out action movie, surreal art happening, feminist manifesto. But it's most successful to me as a sharp-eyed commentary on where we are now. Miller and his writers coolly recast the 1% as a mad-eyed monster in a skull-mask, with a version of trickle-down economics that's almost too on the nose. A situation that's built to fail.

Fury Road is a movie that rewards multiple viewings on different levels. The sheer amount of detail in the production design, the clever interweaving of schools of thought on society, religion, feminism, the nature of exploitation… it's a dense chunk of cinema to unpack, and greater minds than I are already on the case. I would simply note that any imaginary future is based on the writer's observations on the world he or she is living in. Beyond the car-flips and explosions, Mad Max: Fury Road is a resoundingly positive vision of a world where the grip of the old ways of thinking fails, and we can start afresh together, equal and unified.

 

 

The A To Z Of SFF:- A Is For The Avengers: The TV Series

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-is-for-the-avengers-tv-show.m4a

No, we’re not done yet.

Rob and Clive explore the slick, surreal and sexy world of The Avengers: the John Steed version, that is. Rob gets hot under the collar about a certain leather outfit, and Clive forgets who’s wearing the kinky boots.

Bowlers and brollies at the ready, Listeners!

The A To Z Of SFF respectfully dedicate this episode to the memory of Brian Clemens, whose creative stamp was all over The Avengers and so much great British genre TV.

The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Avengers: The Marvel Comics Universe

Ok, Cyclo Media is REALLY on an Avengers tip.

This week, Rob and Clive dip their toesies into the very deep water of Marvel’s Avengers comics. From Doctor Druid to The Secret Wars, we cover it all.

Brace yourself, listeners. It’s about to get cosmic.

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-is-for-avengers-the-comics.m4a

The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Avengers: Age Of Ultron

CycloMedia is clearly on an Avengers tip.

Rob and Clive pick apart Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron, rant about the character that should be in there, and find out that it’s not smart to laugh at the idea of AI rights.

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-is-for-avengers-age-of-ultron.m4a

And a quick peek at what we’re on about here:

X

Today’s the day. Now is the time. It’s been five years since we had the chance to elect a representative government, fighting hard for our right and privileges, and for the good of every single one of us.

We ballsed that one up good and proper, didn’t we? Time to give it another go.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I have the cliches here in my cliche bingo box. Voting never changed anything. Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in. If voting did anything, they’d ban it. Blah blah blah HOUSEYYY.

Of course voting changes things. The democratic process is the thing that gave us the forty day working week, paid holidays, the right to tribunal and a fair trial, an end to slavery and discrimination, the vote. In a dizzying period of change between the 1850s and 1970s, the society we know and take for granted was built by people on the streets and in the House of Parliament, who believed that we deserved better and were prepared to risk everything in the pursuit of that dream.

Now, of course, we think we know better. The system has broken, favouring the entitled few, open to abuse. Who’s in charge of changing that? They are. So what’s the point? We protest, and we’re ignored. So best to hide out, grumble a bit and give up.

Anyone that saw the recent BBC documentary series on the inner workings of the House Of Commons would, like me, have been slack-jawed at how out-of-date and out-of-touch the place seemed. Our system of government is filled with loopholes, stifled by tradition, unwilling to change. So what’s to be done?

Well, duh. We vote, and we vote for the party that best covers our needs. If we can’t find one that does, we vote tactically to kick out the people who don’t. If we don’t feel that anyone in government is on our side, we put a big black cross through the ballot paper. It’s called spoiling, and the great thing is that it’s still counted.

A third of the British electorate didn’t vote in 2010. That’s 15 million people who felt so disconnected and disenfranchised by the system that they decided not to be counted. That was the worst thing they could have done. If that 15 million had spoiled their papers (or as I choose to call it, choosing the “none of the above” option), it would have sent an incredibly clear message. We choose to vote for none of you. You don’t represent us. But deciding not to be counted meant that the 15 million chose to be ignored. And that’s a real shame, because 15 million no-votes would have beaten the votes gathered by Labour and The Conservatives. 15 million people rejecting the current system would have been the majority vote.

Imagine the shockwaves that would have sent through the Houses Of Parliament, and then tell me that voting is meaningless.

The thing is, career politicians are terrified of elections. It’s the one time when they have to justify themselves to the public, the one time when they actually have to do something to keep their jobs. The smug, over-stuffed bloater who keeps knocking at your door and shoving leaflets with his smug over-stuffed face through your letterbox? That’s your MP, who you haven’t seen in five years. Guess what? He needs you to vote for him. So don’t ignore him. Open the door. Have a chat. Ask him an uncomfortable question. Look at the fear in his eyes*. That’s the power of democracy.

Now tell me that voting is meaningless.

Today, we have a chance to change the political landscape. We can support the MP who works hard for his constituency, or help to bin the smug fuck who’s put through his second house on expenses. This time, the field is wide open. There’s a chance to get independent voices into Parliament, or to make safe seats less so. If you’re not sure who to vote for, there are a ton of online tools that’ll match your needs and values to a party. You might be surprised at who you support. Even if you just cross out every choice on the ballot paper, you’re making yourself known.

So get yourself to the polling station today. They opened at 7. They’ll be open till 10. You have no reason not to take the time. Today is the day. Now is the time.

You’re in charge. Enjoy the feeling.

*Notice I’m describing your MP as male. The gender skew in Parliament is still deeply biased towards men. Is that a bad thing? Well, it’s certainly unrepresentative to a population that’s pretty much half and half male to female.

The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Avengers Assemble

Of the spate of superheroing movies that cluttered up the early part of the 21st century, Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble was among the best.

With a little urging from Cyclomedia, Rob and Clive look back at this underappreciated gem.

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-is-for-avengers-assemble.m4a

Oh, and while we’re at it…

The Wight Stuff: The Food Of The Isle Of Wight

If you're a foodie, Britain has some amazing places to visit. Scotland is a cornucopia of bounty, from salmon to beef to whisky. Welsh lamb is the world's best, and the welcome and scenery are pretty tidy too. The seafood in Cornwall blows most other places out of the water.

And England, dear England. TLC and I have eaten our way around the country. From Northumberland, breakfasting on that morning's kippers, to rural Shropshire and Ludlow, the beating heart of English grub. We've seen it all, and loved it all.

But there's an English secret when it comes to amazing grub, and I'm here to reveal it. Hands up who thinks of the Isle Of Wight when you consider great British grub?

Well, you should.

OK, some of you may already have something to say on the matter. Yes, the Isle does have a rep when it comes to a certain pungent ingredient most kitchens would suffer without. But there's much more to enjoy. Especially as the island itself is only just waking up to the realisation that it has so much on its plate.

Let us consider the Isle Of Wight. A diamond-shaped island in the Solent, about 4 miles off the Hampshire coast, small enough to cycle from nose to tail in a day. It's drier and warmer than the mainland, with a microclimate centred around the southern town of Ventnor that's basically a Mediterranean suntrap. This means the island has a longer growing season and better weather than some parts of Northern Spain.

With fertile land and perfect growing conditions for a whole host of goodies, it should be no surprise that the Isle Of Wight is a bit of a food basket. It's lush and green, with sheep and cattle grazing on every hillside. The local asparagus is as fresh as you get (and disappears bloody quickly–find a good local deli and be prepared to snag every bunch you can lay your mitts on).

The food culture is pub-centric, which always pleases me as I get to try out local ales alongside my fresh-caught fish or local lamb. There are three breweries on the island, and it's rare that a hostelry won't have at least one of their beers on offer. If not, never fear: Goddard's and Island Brewery have a solid bottling operation, and you can pick up a little of what you fancy in most shops. Goddard's Ale Of Wight and Fuggle-De-Dum are personal favourites, but as between them the three breweries have fifteen ales on offer you have plenty of opportunities for research. They even have a mini-beer festival in May, in the grounds of the local steam railway museum. And let's not forget Quarr Abbey, whose Benedictine monks brew their own delicious take on Belgian Trappist ales.

Viniculture is also taking root on the Isle Of Wight. Adgestone and Rosemary Vineyards produce cracking whites and sparkling wines, unsurprising given the similarity of the terroir to the Champagne region. They're small but growing businesses, who offer a great range of juices and vinegars alongside the more traditional offerings.

And then, of course, there's garlic. Brought over by Free French troops stationed there during WW2, the stinking rose flourishes in the island's rich soil. Now The Garlic Farm is the success story of food on the Isle of Wight: 80% of garlic grown in the UK comes from the fields around Newchurch. It's a tourist destination in its own right, with a brilliant restaurant serving all sorts of garlicky goodies. I can heartily recommend the hot dog, as long as you don't have any heavy activity planned for the rest of the day. The gift shop is one I found difficult to leave. TLC and I are going to be vampire-free for a while.

The island has its own pace of life, slower and less keen to impress than many food destinations in the UK. Chatting to locals, we quickly came to realise that it's taken the Island a while to wake up to its true potential. Eateries like Salty's in Yarmouth, and the amazing Red Lion in Freshwater are only now offering the simple, locally-sourced grub that foodies like me crave. Delis are starting to pop up, but they're still comparitively rare. Wierdly, the best place to source locally caught meat and fish is The Co-Op. That, I'm sure, is in the process of changing. To be fair, I didn't get a chance to check out the one Waitrose on the island. I bet that's got some treats.

We knew, going into it, that there was going to be some good eating on the Isle Of Wight. We were not disappointed. It's a place that's coming into its own as a food destination, and with easy access via the ferry, not a pain to get to, either. We're already making plans for our next visit.

And I've not even mentioned the history and culture of the place yet. That's a whole other blog post…

The A To Z OF SFF: A Is For AKIRA

Akira. The word that for many fans of a certain age describes Japanese anime. Kinetic, violent and surreal, the film and book still has the power to shock, move and excite.

Rob and Clive explore the film and its continued relevence to anime culture.

Warning: contains excessive yelling of the names “Tetsuooooo!” and “Kanedaaaa!”

https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/a-is-for-akira.m4a

And if you need a gentle reminder of what we’re yabbering on about, the whole thing is on YouTube…