Categories
food

Bob Blumer’s Beetrot Salad Recipe

Bob Blumer (a.k.a The Surreal Gourmet) came into my cooking life thanks to my cousin Sophie who gave me his wonderful book “Off The Eaten Path“.

I’ve always enjoyed beetroots but I know that many don’t so when I saw a recipe called “Gee, your beet smells terrific” I had to give it a try. It all comes down to roasting the beets which is a brilliant idea. It makes complete sense given how beets are packed with natural sugars, yet I’ve never seen this suggested anywhere before. Everyone who has this salad is stunned when I say the beets were roasted – they taste good.

There are so many clever flavour combinations packed in here so I haven’t modified his recipe much, just tweaked a few quantities.

Ingredients

3 medium size beets (tops removed)

3 teaspoons walnut oil

2 teaspoons good balsamic vinegar

3 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice

2 teaspoons fresh tarragon (finely chopped, stems discarded)

50g strong, crumbly French goats cheese (diced into 1/8-inch cubes)

3 tablespoons toasted walnuts (to toast just pop nuts in the oven until starting to brown and get them out quick as they’ll burn in a blink)

1-2 Belgian endives

salt & black pepper to taste

  • Place the beetroots whole, unskinned on a rack to bake at 200 C for 1.5-2 hours. Use foil to catch the drippings below. (Increase time if beets are big)
  • Remove beetroots from the oven to cool. Don’t worry about the exterior blackening, the inside is wonderfully tender and sweet.
  • Once cool peel with your hands and then finely dice the beetroots.
  • Combine all the remaining ingredients in a bowl adding nuts and cheese last before gently mixing.
  • For fancy presentation or as an entree spoon the mixture into whole washed endive leaves. Alternatively use just 1 endive and chop the leaves into 2 inch lengths and mix into the salad.

Note: All Amazon links for books will pay a commission to me if you purchase the book.

Categories
notes from JK

Seth Godin’s “Linchpin” – go read it!

I’ve read it twice to make sure. There’s no doubt in my mind that Seth Godin’s “Linchpin” is a powerful and important book for anyone in the world of work. In fact anyone who wants to contribute in any way – whether entrepreneur, employee or volunteer.

A key theme in the book is fear (aka ‘the resistance’) and how it holds people back from doing what they know they are capable of achieving. This is a topic many motivational speakers and writers touch on. I had forgotten this until yesterday when attending a little send-off do for Keith Taylor who has just stepped down from being a councillor (after 11 years!) to become an MEP.

Without any thought I had worn a t-shirt I’d received a few years back when attending Anthony Robbins’ “Unleash the power within” event. I’d been given the ticket as a gift, and had gone deeply skeptical, but ended up totally into it. The t-shirt simply reads:

Anthony Robbins

the firewalk experience

fear into power

And so a few people had asked me if I’d seen or done the firewalk. Yes, I’d done the firewalk, I replied without any thought (because I had done it) and they all became very curious and interested about the details of how it’s achieved. I talked about the focus and preparation needed.

As I cycled home I realised that this was a reflection of the power of fear. I had overcome fear (and deep skepticism) to do the firewalk a few years ago and reflecting on it, I did still feel empowered by that memory. If I can do that, surely my goals are all worth a try!

Godin cleverly reminds us all of such moments in his book. He says we have all been geniuses at some point in our lives – we’ve solved a problem, got ourselves out of a fix, improvised, entertained and surprised ourselves. This, he argues, is what we need to enable ourselves to do more often. Rather than assuming one is either ‘a genius’ or just an ‘ordinary person’, we need to aspire to more moments of genius. This is a useful change in perspective when most of us just don’t feel like a genius, that’s a label for ‘special people’, which is a self-defeating narrative for the 99.99% of people not publicly declared a genius.

Godin’s book has also had me reflecting on my on aborted doctorate. I spent five years diving in and out of it, under intense psychological pressure (of my own making) to finish the darn thing. I’ve realised that the reason I was unable to stop sooner was my concern about other people’s views. In particularl my supervisor, and doctoral classmates. We had been in this together and they had given time to this endeavour too. I knew I could do the PhD, I just didn’t want to.

That might sound odd, but I realised that neither the process nor the result of doing the doctorate held any interest for me any longer, though I could quite clearly see what I had to do to complete them. Very clearly in fact, as my wife was nearing the end of her ten year doctoral voyage.

So a fear, of other people’s opinions, was holding me back from doing the right thing. I overcame it and felt marvellously liberated by withdrawing from the doctoral programme. Instead I was able to focus my energies on politics, where time and passion are now being poured!

I can’t recommend “Linchpin” strongly enough. The book, especially the sections on education and management, tie in strongly with Sir Ken Robinson and Tom Chapell’s themes which I recently blogged.

UPDATE: Seth Godin has, for the sheer hell of it, announced a ‘Linchpin Day’ so I’ve set up a meetup in Brighton & Hove for 7.30pm on June 14th, join us!

Note: All Amazon links for books will pay a commission to me if you purchase the book.

Categories
food

Grandmother’s Classic French Dressing

My father’s mother was a wonderful cook. She revelled in cooking delicious French and English foods. Sunday lunches tended to centre around divinely roasted joints with superb gravies. She also loved to set all sorts of pleasures in aspic, asparagus being a favourite since the days when she used to have them fresh from her own garden.

There’s no doubt she took a huge amount of pride in her cooking and so there was more than a hint of rivalry with my mother. Though I can’t be sure I think more than once she would note down recipes ever so slightly incomplete so that her version would always taste better. She wouldn’t have been the first cook to jealously guard her secrets!

One famous family story is of the first Christmas my mother took on cooking duties. Buried in the kitchen for two days my mother wanted to be absolutely certain that she impressed. Being French-Canadian she naturally decided to cook a giant turkey.  This was before turkey had become as popular in the UK as it is now. So after some research a beast was procured which had been selected with some considerable deliberation from a specialist farm.

On Christmas day my mother was exhausted but proud as she emerged from the kitchen with the huge, golden turkey and placed it on a table laden with stuffing and home-made cranberry sauce. It was at this point that my grandmother made it known that she only ate goose for Christmas.UN peacekeepers nearly had to be called in at this juncture.

Goose is still popular in France for Christmas but I’ve not yet had the opportunity to taste it and I certainly never had the courage to ask my mother to cook it.

Whatever my mother was cooking I wanted to be involved in the preparation. I don’t know if this began because my hunger drove me to be as close as possible to the food or out of genuine curiosity. One of the first things I was permitted to make was salad dressing as it involved no dangerous implements.

My father taught me the dressing his mother had taught him. I fairly sure my grandmother showed me herself a few times also. In fact it’s less of a recipe and more a rule of thumb which leaves great flexibility depending on what will be in the salad and your mood.

The only way to mix this sort of dressing is by vigourous shaking so keep an old jam jar for this purpose.

Ingredients

Extra virgin olive oil

Vinegar (balsamic, sherry, cider)

Dijon mustard

Brown sugar or honey

  • The basic dressing consists of a 3:1 ratio of olive oil to vinegar. This needs to be played with a bit if the vinegar is sharp. I tend to use balsamic or cider vinegar but sherry or red wine vinegars are good too.
  • For every unit of vinegar you want one teaspoon of Dijon mustard. I’ve noticed that some mustards are getting more vinegary so you may need to make adjustments.
  • For every unit of vinegar you also want 1.5-2 teaspoons of sugar or honey depending on your taste.
  • Season with salt and pepper, then shake well.
  • My grandmother often liked to add a dash of Worcester sauce. Freshly crushed garlic is also very welcome in this dressing.
Categories
notes from JK

The election that was

This is a post I’ve kept putting off because I thought my thoughts would get more clear with time. They haven’t, they’re still a jumble. So apologies, but this is how they’ve come out.

This election campaign was filled with exhausting hard work, lots of late nights, hours spent writing and designing leaflets and hundreds of conversations.

It included reading lots and lots of blog posts, probably thousands of tweets and lots of time on iPlayer trying to watch the good bits I’d missed.

Working on Caroline’s campaign management team wasn’t just exhilirating because of the prize in sight, it was because I got to spend time with some extraordinary people.

The TV debates were overall a hugely negative change – they narrowed the terms of the political discourse and they gave excessive focus to just three parties out of all those standing across the country.

Election night was nailbiting and… long, very long. But the result was worth it – the sense of elation was incredible. Nearly 40 years after our party was founded, we have finally broken into the long-closed Westminster club. I’m not sure who took it, but this video at the count declaration, captures some sense of the moment.

Gathering on the seafront outside the Brighton Centre with a couple hundred of green supporters at 7am to toast our victory was an unexpected addition to the morning.

Going out onto New Road to help with Caroline’s first ‘street meet’ a few hours later was remarkable. We saw incredible support from everyone we met, even as we were surrounded by a swarm of cameras and journalists.

Reading the hundreds of congratulatory emails to Caroline and the Green Party from right across the world has shown what this breakthrough has meant to people spread far beyond what I could have imagined.

And finally, seeing a fraction of the invitations and casework coming in to Caroline, has shown to me how much hope the people of Brighton have put in getting more from their MP than ever before. Caroline and the Green Party will do everything they can to deliver on those hopes.

Categories
notes from JK

People of Brighton, we can wake up on Friday to a Green MP

All the trends indicate that this Thursday, if you vote Green in Brighton Pavilion, you’ll wake up on Friday to a Green MP.

Vote Green because you believe in our policies, because you want to change politics and because you want to see more diverse voices in Parliament. Vote Green because you know Brighton can do better.

And if that doesn’t convince you, how about Queen’s Brian May!?

This has been an extraordinary election to take part in. Aside from partisanship, there have been some incredible grassroots projects including voteforpolicies.org.uk, The Straight Choice and Democracy Club. More power to their elbows – they’ll surely be plenty of post-match analysis from the data they’ve collected.

I shall try to update via Twitter over the next 48 hours, I doubt a blog will emerge before Sunday or Monday.

Categories
notes from JK

Making the case for electoral reform from scratch

Electoral reform is very much on people’s minds as they struggle on how to vote and reflect on the prospects of a hung parliament. David Cameron has defended the current ‘first past the post’ system by saying ” I want us to keep the current system that enables you to throw a government out of office.”

Which is a deeply untruthful answer, as Cameron must surely know. He faces a battle to swing enough seats to win a majority in the face of the voting system’s Labour bias. In 2005 the vast majority of voters didn’t vote for Labour, yet Labour were returned to power with a majority in parliament. Not exactly the ‘throwing out’ Cameron suggests.

But rather than getting bogged down in debates about strong governments, coalitions and the experiences of Germany, Italy or Spain; let’s go back to first principles.

As a developed society we have evolved public services, benefits, a legal system and taxation to fund these. How these are run, what they do and how they work are important decisions which affect us all.

So that we can spend most of time living our lives, doing our work and caring for our families, we have chosen to delegate the decision-making to representatives. We generally agree that the best way to choose people to represent us is by an election where every citizen has one vote. The principle is that our preferences can all be heard equally because we want our chosen representatives to be representative of us. But the electoral system we use  (how votes are translated into representatives) affects the results.

Surely if 15% of people vote for party X and 20% vote for party Y then the percentage of representatives from each of those parties must be as close as possible to those percentages. That’s the most fair and representative outcome. And we know countries like Sweden, Norway and Germany with fair electoral systems have good stable governments and a healthy diversity of views in a mature political culture.

That’s why we need electoral reform – for fairer election results, a more diverse parliament and a better politics.

Categories
voting

India’s e-voting machines cracked

Rop Gonggrijp is someone always worth keeping an eye on. He was instrumental in revealing the problems with the Nedap voting machines used in Ireland and the Netherlands.

How he’s part of a team who have publicly demonstrated serious security flaws with India’s electronic voting machines. Time and time again India has been cited as a good example – but the reality was their systems lacked independent scrutiny. Now that expert scrutiny has been brought to bear, problems have been found.

How many more countries have to make the expensive mistake of rolling out e-voting before we all learn that computers and voting are just not well suited for each other.

Read more, and watch the great video at http://www.indiaevm.org

Rop’s post explaining some of the back story

VeTA – a new group campaigning against India’s e-voting, welcome!

(via Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker)

Categories
technology voting

Upcoming events in Brighton & Cambridge

Two events coming up soon which will be of interest to digital rights type people:

  • Debating the Digital Economy Act Thur 29th April
    I’ll be one of the contributors at this debate, organised by Wired Sussex here in Brighton.
  • Internet Voting: Threat or Menace Tue 27th April
    Jeremy Epstein from SRI International is over in the UK and will be giving a talk at Cambridge Uni’s Computer Lab Security Seminar series. I did one of these a few years ago and it was highly enjoyable – the audience were engaged and very generous with their interest.
Categories
current affairs voting

Links 15-04-2010

  • Israeli e-voting system shown to be insecure
    Israeli ministers are ignoring the global trend against e-voting. Not only that but they want to implement a radio-based (RFID) system which researchers at Tel Aviv University have already broken. Just crazy. Avi Rubin picks up the story on his blog.
  • The single mother’s manifesto
    A powerful essay against the Tories by Harry Potter creator J.K Rowling. Of course once Murdoch’s pay wall comes down I won’t be able to link to such things.
  • Twitter grows up
    At their first corporate conference, a raft of announcements including ways to make money. I don’t envy their trying to shift people from the free lunch they’ve had this far.
  • Stephen Fry – The Intelligence Debate
    What a marvellous presentation, absolutely comprehensive demolition of the problems with organised church hierarchy. I would never want be up against someone so smart and so witty! He nails it, let’s not lose the lessons of “the Galilean carpenter” but rid ourselves of  the organised hierarchy.
Categories
technology

False choices

My wife’s cousin is an electrical engineer. In his spare time he noodles around with lots of kit. For example he buys broken TomTom satnavs off eBay and fixes them up.

He’s really good at it and in the process he’s discovered something very interesting. Despite the appearance of many different models in fact most of them have identical hardware features. Indeed much of the functionality that TomTom only provide in the more expensive models is there in all of them – they just turn it off in the software.

Think about that – they build it in the device. You hold the functionality (e.g. USB2.0 connectivity) in your hands. But TomTom force you to either pay more or it won’t work. Some will say that’s rife across many industries but I think it’s wasteful and disrespectful.

Imagine if the Apple iPhone 3GS (which has a built in GPS receiver) was sold in two models, with navigation and without. The only difference would be in software. I can’t see Apple doing that because: They like to keep their product line simple, and they (generally) treat customers well.

Something else he’s discovered is that many of the TomTom software updates work fine on old models, they just block them from running with hardware version number checks – forcing demand to buy newer models.

False choices (between the 13 models of TomTom car satnavs currently on sale) are bad for customers and ultimately bad for business: We don’t want to have to make difficult choices between all the versions; we don’t want to realise that we’re being extorted to use hardware features we’ve already bought or upgrade when our existing kit is good enough. Today’s smart consumers aren’t going to put up with this kind of behaviour.