Jiao Zi (Beijing pork dumplings)

Some Jiao Zi pork dumplings, yesterday

The food of the gods! Easy, tasty, and you can freeze them if you make too many. Measurements quoted should produce 8-10 jiao zi dumplings. Preparation: 15 minutes. Cooking: 8 minutes. Satisfaction: guaranteed.

For the filling:

• 200g pork, minced
• Fresh coriander, chopped finely
• 4 or 5 spring onions, chopped finely (substitute for chives if preferred)
• A small piece of ginger, unpeeled and chopped finely
• Soy sauce
• Malt vinegar
• Soy sauce
• White pepper
• Sesame oil

For the casing:

• Plain white flour
• Cold water

Combine the pork, coriander, onions and ginger in a bowl. Add 5 teaspoonsful of vinegar, one teaspoonful of the soy sauce and a few drips of sesame oil. Add pepper if you like your dumplings on the spicy side!

Now put a pan of water on to boil.

Put about 250g of the flour in a separate bowl. Add a small amount of water and mix with your fingers. Keep adding water until you have a basic dough. Divide into pieces no larger than a 2p piece, and roll them into discs, taking care not to make the dough too thin; it should ideally be roughly a millimetre thick.

Now take a disc of dough, and place a teaspoonful of the pork mixture in the centre. Fold over to make a half moon shape, and press the edges together to seal the pork inside. Roll the pleated edges inwards to seal, so that the dumplings resemble tiny Cornish pasties.

When all the mixture is used up, place the jiao zi in the boiling water and cook for five minutes. Dry the cooked dumplings on a piece of kitchen towel or a clean cloth.

You can serve the jiao zi with any surplus chopped coriander, or with a sweet chilli sauce, or why not make your own dipping sauce by combining soy sauce, malt vinegar, chopped red chillies and chopped garlic. You may wish to fry them in a little vegetable oil until golden on one side (see illustration).

End of the line for National Express

So I see HM Government have finally seen sense and terminated National Express's franchise to run the train line from Southend to London Liverpool Street.

And not a moment too soon. National Express have failed on so many levels to deliver a service which could be deemed even vaguely satisfactory. I often can't get a seat on my evening train, while the first class carriages sit completely empty. The filthy carriages are littered with drinks cans and newspapers (most of which are discarded copies of the vile celeb-obsessed propaganda sheet Metro.) The toilets frequently overflow with sewage and toilet paper. The staff, already overworked as a result of staff cutbacks, were offered insultingly low pay rises this year, which led to strike action.

No money whatsoever appears to have been spent on development on the Liverpool Street line since its privatisation. Fare-dodgers walk through the station barriers with impunity. People travel with their feet on the seats, jabbering inanities into their mobile phones in spiteful disregard of the notices asking to respect fellow passengers, knowing that they will never see a ticket inspector. All the while, us regular commuters endure the daily grind by scrabbling for second-class seats with a third-rate provider.

And it's not like I haven't done anything about it. My letters of complaint to NX have been met with insultingly simplistic responses which were clearly cut-and-pasted from standard documents, while my suggestions about abolishing first class and freeing up the space for commuters were carefully sidestepped in their responses to me. Perhaps they thought I was joking.

I predicted that NX wouldn't last the course. There is, actually, a lesson to be learned here - the trains ought never to have been privatised in the first place.

The only real shame here is that National Express's other franchise, c2c, which has an exemplary track record, is also being stripped of its licence; a case of guilt by association, perhaps.

Look around you. Just look around you.

Just found this on my hard drive, and it still makes me laugh long and hard every time I look at it. Just realised I can blog straight from the so-good-it's-frightening Picasa, so forgive the repost but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Normal updates will resume soon, y'all.

Ajo blanco

Fear garlic? Give this one a miss - but if you love garlic, you and your guests are in for an unusual treat.
Serves 2-4. This is the easiest chilled soup recipe in the world. I discovered this Andalusian delight on holiday in Málaga, and it shook everything I thought I knew about soup right to the core. A second tasting, two years later, in a British pub in Gibraltar, was even more powerful, and prompted me to learn the recipe for myself.

TIP: Prepare the soup a day or three in advance because it improves with age.

• 100g almonds
• 4 cloves of garlic, halved
• Two to four slices of baker's crusty white bread, ideally a few days old
• Quarter pint of milk
• White wine vinegar
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Halved red grapes and croutons to serve

Preparation:

Soak the slices of bread in the milk. Forget about them for a moment - you want the bread to absorb as much of the milk as possible.

Now, if you bought unblanched almonds, then soak them in boiling water, fresh from the kettle, for five minutes. Drain and rub the almonds to remove the skin. They will literally pop out of their skins if you squeeze the fat end. If you bought blanched almonds, you're missing out on all that fun!

Once most of the milk has soaked into the bread, place the bread into a blender with the almonds, the garlic, a couple of tablespoons each of the vinegar and the olive oil, and add a pinch of salt. Pour in half a pint of cold water and blend until smooth. See, told you it was easy!

Add more water if you need to thin the soup out, and give it a final taste and season before transferring it into an airtight bottle. Place in the fridge. Leave for at least a couple of hours (I left mine for 18 hours before eating it.)

Serve the soup, ice cold, from small bowls, because nobody wants to be eating too much raw garlic... not before the last dance of the evening, anyway! It is traditional to halve some red grapes and place them in the serving bowls before pouring over the soup. Add croutons and stand well back!

Stuffed baby squid with lucky fish cakes

A tasty starter for two fish-lovers, although I have prepared a double helping here as a main course. Why “Lucky” fish cakes? Well, if you make too much stuffing, you can use it to make some delicious Thai fish cakes for a tasty bonus. Cooking time 10 mins (plus 20 mins preparation)

Ingredients:

• Six baby squid, cleaned
• A handful of raw tiger prawns (these should be grey – don't buy pre-cooked pink prawns if you can help it)
• Half a stem of lemongrass
• A small bunch of coriander
• Small piece of ginger
• Light soy sauce
• White pepper
• Vegetable oil

First, remove the tentacles from the squid tubes. These are perfectly safe to eat, but if you're afraid to touch them, then for heaven's sake stop right now and make a cheese sandwich instead, because this recipe is not for you!

Put the tubes aside – we'll stuff those in a moment – and mince, blend or finely chop the tentacles, along with the prawns, ginger, lemongrass and coriander. Add a small dash of soy sauce and plenty of white pepper. Be sure to chop that lemongrass well – you don't want any large woody bits in your meal.

Next, gently stuff the filling into the squid tubes. This can be a tedious job, but don't let the squid win! And don't fill the tubes completely – the filling will swell, so you need to leave a bit of space. Once you've prepared all the squid, seal the open ends using cocktail sticks.

Now, you may have noticed that I didn't supply any precise measurements earlier, for the amount of prawn to use. If you have made too much of the stuffing, like I just did, then don't panic – we'll make some Thai fishcakes! Just add a few breadcrumbs (Chinese 'Panko' breadcrumbs are probably the best to use) to mop up any excess moisture. Add a heaped teaspoon of tom yam paste, and mix well until the stuffing takes on all the red colour from the paste. Roll into small balls about the size of a 2p piece, then flatten them and fry in some hot vegetable oil until golden; drain on a piece of kitchen roll.

Back to our stuffed squid, which you will now need to steam, covered, over boiling water for exactly eight minutes - any longer and the squid will become chewy. While you're steaming the squid, you might want to make some other accompaniments for your meal, such as some stir-fried vegetables (spring onion, beansprouts, mushrooms and cucumber in my case, along with some boiled sticky rice.)

When the squid is cooked, remove it from the hob and, in a frying pan, heat a little vegetable oil until it just starts to give off smoke. Remove the cocktail sticks from the squid and fry it until golden and crispy – maybe 30 seconds at most – and watch out for splashing (caused by water hitting the hot oil) and jumping squid, because they will jump around your pan, which is quite entertaining if, like me, you're easily pleased.

Serve with a dip of oriental chilli sauce, or some rice wine vinegar with a pinch of sugar and some chopped red chilli in it.

Exploding Chocolate Pudding

Make your dinner party go with a bang, or rather a snap, crackle and pop...! Serves 4.

• 200g digestive biscuits, crushed
• 50g butter, melted
• 284ml/half pint double cream
• 200g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 medium eggs
• 75ml milk
• Strawberries for decoration
• 1 pack space dust or pop rocks*

Melt the butter and mix with the biscuit crumbs. Press lightly into four ramekin dishes, ensuring that the base is completely covered. Chill the ramekins in the freezer. It might be worth making a spare pudding or two if you have enough ingredients left over - one pudding is never enough for some people, and besides, if you have an accident in the kitchen and lose one of your puddings, it's worth keeping one spare!

Bring the cream gently to the boil, watching it and stirring it constantly. Pour it over the chocolate and stir patiently until all the chocolate is melted. Don't do things the other way round, adding the chocolate to the cream - the chocolate needs to melt gently!

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and milk. When the cream is cooled, add the egg mixture, bit by bit, stirring constantly to make a thick, velvety chocolate cream, hopefully with no bits of scrambled egg in it! Pour the chocolate mixture into the ramekins and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for around 15 minutes, or until the chocolate sets. Remove and cool.

Now, the fun bit. Entirely optional - you could just serve the puddings chilled with some fresh fruit, but if you really want to show off, make a deep but thin well in the centre of each pudding using a chopstick, and gently pour in a small amount - you won't need much - of space dust*, using a piece of folded paper as a makeshift funnel. Sealing the hole can be done using any spare cooked chocolate mixture and a piping bag (you did make that spare pudding, didn't you?) or perhaps a couple of strategically-placed strawberry pieces. If you do use the piping bag method, then remember that you've got about a two minute window to serve the pudding before the space dust loses its sparkle.

Serve, and, remember... always stand back from lit fireworks...

* Space dust, as legend would have it, was banned in the mid 1980s when people allegedly started feeding it to dogs and/or eating vast quantities washed down with fizzy pop, in the mistaken belief that the resultant explosion would indeed blast you into space. I was delighted to discover that, in fact, not only is it not banned, but available from my local confectioner, Sweet Memory from Westcliff (call 01702 213636 for details!) They even sell space dust at 1970s prices, but number one, do not feed it to your dog under any circumstances, and number two, be careful if you buy the "colour changing" space dust, because nothing will put your guests off like noticing that the bottom of their pudding has turned bright green!

Virgin on the ridiculous

For the last few years now, in fact since they switched from an analogue service to a digital one, it has been my considered opinion that the service provided by Virgin Media (formerly Telewest Broadband) has been going rapidly downhill. I don't watch a lot of television, anyway, but it's not much to ask that after a long day, I can have the opportunity to flop out in front of the idiot's lantern for a few minutes and chill my boots.

Of course, back in the day of analogue television, you could just switch on and watch merrily away until your brain turned to porridge, but the succession of digital set-top boxes supplied to me by Virgin have all had a habit of switching themselves off whenever they like, and of course, as Sod's Law dictates, this will tend to be at the exact moment you want to watch something. On average, my box has been breaking down twice a year, necessitating one of those irritating visits from a technician who will be booked to arrive between 8am and 1pm, then turn up at half past six, muttering under his breath about unpaid overtime.

Having not watched any television for a few days, I came in on Wednesday to try and set my PVR to record the excellent Charlie Brooker's Newswipe later that evening, but the box had gone and frozen, and that handy technical fix de nos jours, the reboot, wasn't working either.

My call to the technical support line was answered first by a computer with an irritatingly cheery voice (“Hellooo! And welcome to Virgin Media! You now have six options...”) then I was put on hold. You really would have thought that with dozens of radio stations to choose from, Virgin could play one of these when people are put on hold, instead of a repeated loop of the same three tracks. I gave up waiting after twenty minutes.

The following night, there was still no television service. I rang the number again and got through to someone this time (the call was answered in Mumbai, a far cry from the days when all the calls were answered in Basildon!) but amazingly, I was confronted with the prospect of having to wait several days for a technician to call. I reluctantly agreed to this, on the basis that I insisted on a call back from the technical support department some time in the next twenty-four hours, to confirm the appointment time. I added that because I was so fed-up of the way I was (and continue to be) treated by Virgin Media, that I would cancel my television service altogether if it wasn't repaired by the weekend. Needless to say, that phone call never came.

It actually took yet another of my phone calls to Bombay, on the Friday evening, for someone to be able to tell me that an engineer had been booked for the following Monday. I expressed my dissatisfaction that nobody had bothered to call me, and, feeling slightly defeated, steeled myself for a weekend without the luxury of television.

And then, on Saturday, I stumbled across an offer in my local branch of Maplin to buy a FreeSat decoder for £40. No contracts, no hassle – all I had to do was connect it up to the redundant satellite dish that's been sitting on my roof ever since I moved in. And within three seconds of powering it up, I had over 1200 television channels at my disposal, and about 400 more radio stations. (Not that there's suddenly anything worth watching, of course – I had deleted all but 75 of the channels within an hour, but that's not the point!)

I rang Virgin to cancel the engineer's visit, but this time I was put through to their retentions team in Sheffield, whose job it is to firefight the presumably ever-increasing torrent of dissatisfied customers by offering them hefty discounts. Amazingly, I have been given so many of these sweeteners ever since I went digital, that I am only paying 50% of their regular price.

The helpful and intelligent young lady I spoke to was really quite disappointed to hear my story, and sympathetically suggested that I write a letter to complain. What really rankled though, was her admission that had I gone through to the Sheffield team in the first place, they could have sent me an engineer within fifteen minutes. How nice to know, and what a wonderful way to treat a customer of fifteen years' standing.

1000 Great Albums: Message From The Country by The Move

By 1971, the Move had, quite literally, moved on. The halcyon days of classic records like 'Night Of Fear' and 'Blackberry Way' were well behind them and plans were already afoot to dissolve the band into a new Electric Light Orchestra, as soon as the time was right.

Financing an eight-piece touring band, however, was a real problem, and the band needed capital. A new album would have to be produced under the still-bankable Move brand, with a couple of catchy hit singles to put some icing on the cake and put the group's stars back in the limelight. With a demo already cut for ELO's debut single, 10538 Overture, the group were feeling experimental and, with the band's demise imminent, there is a definite end-of-term revelry present on Message From The Country (Harvest).

Despite some seriously progressive workouts and a couple of moderately duff novelty songs, the emphasis on this final album is firmly on having fun. Both Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood were studio-dwelling creatures, and it shows on this set, where their credentials as Birmingham's own Lennon and McCartney (that is, if you don't count Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea's partnership) are firmly cemented.

Message From The Country is the opening title track, and understandably the instrumentation is rather more sparse than on previous albums. This actually works in its favour; the chiming bassplaying makes it rock much harder, and is beautifully augmented by some Bee Gees-esque harmonies, the likes of which would become the backbone of the later ELO sound. As an opener, it couldn't be further from 'Flowers In The Rain'.

These same driving rhythms can be found on the Arabian-influenced It Wasn't My Idea To Dance, which probably goes on a tad too long despite some hilariously nonsensical lyrics. Ella James, another Roy Wood composition, is a corking rocker of a song with a bluesy flavour, which really thumps along, as does the fun Until Your Mother's Gone,a nifty twelve-bar blues played predominantly on bass guitars with a rasping woodwind coda hinting gently at Wizzard'a future glories.

There is more to Message From The Country than deafening Brummie wigouts, though. The poignant No Time is a gentle Lynne composition referencing, of all things, the 1969 collapse of the Emley Moor transmitter, perhaps the only song to ever do so! It's all gorgeous harmonies, lovely guitar picking and dual recorders straight out of The Fool On The Hill. The duo's clear love of the Beatles shines through on this and, perhaps more tellingly, on The Minister,which retreads the same path as Paperback Writer a bit too closely.

Something else which the Beatles did (and which wasn't necessarily right) was to let the drummer sing. Bev Bevan takes front stage on the C&W pastiche Ben Crawley Steel Company, which sounds exactly like one of Ringo's songs, except to say that Bevan's bizarrely cavernous tone makes it sound like it's been sung by Lee Marvin. Bevan redeems himself by letting Wood sing the lead vocal on his own composition Don't Mess Me Up, one of several 'comedy' moments on the album, where Wood reimagines Elvis with a detectable Midlands accent. An army of multi-tracked Jeff Lynnes makes a convincing appearance as the Jordanaires, and Bevan's deep voice does all the be-bop bits. Oh, and sensitive listeners may be startled at 1:43 when somebody appears to shout 'wank!' for no apparent reason.

More comedy closes the album, with the music-hall pastiche My Marge, which reminds me of the Goons for some reason. Probably a revelrous jam session rather than a serious track, it's an odd choice of album closer, but somehow not altogether unexpected. All in all, then: a bit of a jumble, punctated with some brilliant songsmanship.

If you like this album, you should also check out the Move's 1971 singles 'Tonight' and 'Chinatown'. Together these are to Lynne and Wood's songwriting partnership as 'Paperback Writer' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever' were to the Beatles, and far more commercial than anything on the album. Tonight is a raucous acoustic rocker, with folky roots and a sunny melody, one of my favourite 'summertime' records ever. Wood's occasionally-shrill vocal may sound at times like a magpie in the early throes of courtship, but Lynne takes the lead on the final verse which provides an excellent foil. Chinatown, meanwhile, is another vocal duet, and a solid toe-tapper with some beautifully recorded guitars and a nifty cowbell hook. It does, however, rely on some rather worn musical clichés (of which the old 'ching-chong-chinaman' melody is the worst offender.)

Finally, you may also enjoy the Move's actual swansong, the 1972 top ten single California Man, which caught the moment of the early 70s 1950s revival at eac the right time. It could even be considered as a prototype Wizzard single, with its energetic piano and parping sax. Its B-side, Down On The Bay, is equally retro, sounding like the Beach Boys shot through the prism of the Beatles' Revolution.

Hot Pork and Turkey Pies with a Red Wine Gravy

With a fraction of the saturated fat found in its buffet-dwelling cousin, these pork pies are guaranteed to please! A budget-friendly meal which is ideal accompanied by roast potatoes and fresh vegetables. Serves 2-3.

Ingredients:

• 250g diced turkey
• Two strips of pork belly
• Two large shallots, chopped (or one red onion)
• Red wine
• Worcester sauce
• Wholegrain mustard
• Two cups of stock
• Cornflour
• Pre-rolled puff pastry

Cut the pork belly strips into pieces, removing any small pieces of bone that you may find. Pork belly is quite fatty, but don't throw anything away just yet - the fatty bits will add a lot of taste during cooking and can be removed before you assemble the pie.

In a large casserole dish, brown the pork and turkey pieces. Add the shallots and return the lid to the casserole dish for a few more minutes, turning the mixture regularly.

Now add a good slug of red wine and about the same quantity again of stock, then bring to the boil. Add a dash of Worcester sauce and a teaspoonful of mustard. Season with salt and white pepper to taste and leave, covered, to cook on a low heat for 20-30 minutes.

Remove the pork from the heat and, while it cools, roll out the pastry and preheat an oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Spoon the meat mixture into ramekin dishes, first removing any large pieces of fat which remain. You can thicken the gravy if necessary by returning it to the heat and adding a small amount of cornflour mixed with cold water. Add a few spoonsful of gravy to each ramekin dish. As the pies cook, the steam from the gravy will help the pastry to rise. Save any leftover gravy to serve.

Cut some discs of pastry which are about twice as large as the ramekin dishes. Place one over each dish and, rather than cutting away any surplus pastry, tuck it all in to make generous folds. Brush the pie lids with egg or milk and bake until golden.

Come in Number Six, your time is up

Well, it was nice while it lasted!

After briefly threatening to knock the beleaguered Chelsea out of the FA Cup by leading 1-0 for the first half hour at Roots Hall last night, my local team Southend United finished the game in a crushing 4-1 defeat.

Now, everything I know about football could be written on the top half of a postage stamp. I've never been to a live game, and I don't intend to start now (I mean, that'd mean learning the rules, wouldn't it?) but the excitement generated by the tantalising prospect of a win against a top team like Chelsea - televised from our home ground on peak time ITV, by the way - was enough to make me actually feel excited about football, just for one evening. It's the first complete match I've watched from end to end since the "Gazza's Tears" 1990 World Cup semifinal, and only the second complete match I've ever watched in my life.

And I loved every minute of it.

I just wonder whether I can hold out another nineteen years until my next game?

My euphoria was overshadowed by a very sad event – the passing of actor Patrick McGoohan. I'm not going to write an obituary – I'll leave that to proper journalists – but I couldn't leave the event unmarked.

McGoohan's chief legacy will always be, of course, the 1967 television serial The Prisoner, which completely turned my life upside-down when I watched it twenty years ago. A fascinating and intelligent drama in its own right, it taught me that it's OK to be individual rather than led by the masses, and to hold onto that individuality, lest I allow my tiny voice to be suppressed by the shouting masses.

Forty years after it was made, the programme's message is truer today than ever. It should be compulsory viewing in every school.

RIP Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

Further reading:
More about The Prisoner's legacy from offthetelly.co.uk