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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blog/blog/3684339/recipe-coconut-chana-saag">Recipe: Coconut Chana Saag</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><strong><span class="font_large"><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/a19f22f4c00e7569ac0035e9fe20037786184016/small/p1030517.jpg?1430425380" class="size_s justify_left border_" />Coconut chana saag</span></strong><br>I’m a big fan of garbanzos and I love this recipe. It’s easy to make and it’s hugely tasty and satisfying. I found the recipe on the Guardian website and played around with it a little bit — for preference rather than improvement. The original called for kale but for expedience I’ve substituted frozen chopped spinach. </p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(50, 51, 51); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The rest of recipe remains much the same.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br><b>2 Tbsp refined coconut oil or canola oil</b><br><b>1 medium yellow onion, diced</b><br><b>3 cloves garlic, minced</b><br><b>2 Tbsp minced fresh ginger</b><br><b>2 Tbsp mild curry powder</b><br><b>1 tsp salt</b><br><b>a Good grinding of black pepper</b><br><b>½ tsp anise seeds (or crushed fennel seeds)</b><br><b>¼ tsp garam masala</b><br><b>½ tsp ground cumin</b><br><b>¼ tsp cayenne (or more or less, depending on how spicy you like it)</b><br><b>1 24 oz can of whole tomatoes</b><br><b>2 15 oz cans garbanzos, rinsed and drained</b><br><b>8 oz (or more) frozen chopped spinach</b><br><b>1 13.5 oz can of coconut milk</b><br> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><b><i>For serving: cooked basmati rice and lime wedges</i></b></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Saute the onion in the oil for 5 minutes.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the garlic and ginger and saute briefly. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the curry powder, anise seeds, garam masala, cumin and cayenne, and stir in well. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the tomato juice from the tin and stir. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the salt and pepper. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Chop up the tomatoes in the can or whir them briefly in a food processor. Add to the pot. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the garbanzos and mix well.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Cook, covered for about 10 minutes and don’t let it burn. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the frozen spinach and make sure any lumps are broken up and cook for another 5 minutes. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add the coconut milk and heat through.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Check your seasoning. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 13px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Serve with basmati rice and a wedge of lime for squeezing over the curry. </p></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2015-04-30T14:24:14-06:00" title="April 30, 2015 14:24">04/30/2015</span></p>

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  <a href="/blog/blog/3566825/book-review-vivid-faces-the-revolutionary-generation-in-ireland-1890-1923">Book Review: Vivid Faces - The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/fc715ce86e7483772728f2dfea829079fd43de31/small/vivid-faces.jpg?1425245011" class="size_s justify_left border_" /><br><br><br><span class="font_regular">I</span>t doesn’t seem that long ago. April 1966. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 rebellion and ceremonies were being held at my school. The clergy were in attendance — no surprise there; the school was a Franciscan college. But as I recall there was at least one high-ranking bishop. And there was a troop of veterans from the conflict itself; men that looked very old to me at fifteen, but who were probably in their mid-70s. My honor was to play the salute to the flag as it was raised in ceremony. My trumpet was well-shone and the rendition note-perfect. About this time next year the celebrations for the one-hundredth anniversary will be winding up in earnest and I have no doubt that the whole endeavor will come under much more scrutiny than it did those fifty years ago. <br><span style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Just in time for the anniversary and the the ensuing debates is a fascinating book by R.F. Foster, whose book </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Modern Ireland</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> is regarded by many as the definitive history of Ireland since 1600. The  new book, </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Vivid Faces - The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">, gets its title from the iconic poem by Yeats, Easter 1916:</span>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><i>        </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>      <br><br>        I have met them at close of day</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Coming with vivid faces</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        From counter or desk among grey   </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Eighteenth-century houses.</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        I have passed with a nod of the head   </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Or polite meaningless words,   </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Or have lingered awhile and said</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Polite meaningless words,</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        And thought before I had done</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Of a mocking tale or a gibe</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        To please a companion</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Around the fire at the club,   </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        Being certain that they and I</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>        But lived where motley is worn: … </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">My first understanding of the Easter Uprising (as it’s most commonly known) was pretty much the standard hagiographies of the executed leaders (with somewhat scanter attention paid to Connolly) and a romantic story that these poets (which many were) sacrificed themselves in order to shake the Irish people out of their slumber and to instigate a rebellion that would eventually lead to Irish freedom. Over the years I’ve learned that it was much more complicated than that at a political level but Foster’s book explains how much more complicated it was on a human level. The cultural and social forces at work were many and sometimes contradictory. There were those who looked to an idealized past of heroes and noble thoughts and deeds. There were women struggling for suffrage who believed that a revolution would clear the decks of all the old hide-bound ways and that a new beginning would come about. There were Northern Unionists from well-to-do families who were in revolt against their history and their class. There were socialists who wanted to establish a new order and level social inequities. There were Catholic mystics with yearning for blood sacrifice … </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Though all this, however, was the fact the a bill of Home Rule, granting autonomy to Ireland but keeping it as part of the United Kingdom, had already been signed by the British Parliament but was suspended due to the First World War. Unionist factions in the North of Ireland — those who supported union with Great Britain and were thus against Home Rule — had started arming to stave off any implementation and the Irish Volunteers (a paramilitary group in the Southern part of the country) also started arming in response. All of this was done more or less openly in front of the English authorities. In fact, it’s quite astonishing how much rebellious oratory, writing, performing, drilling and training was done right under the noses of said authorities. They were either reluctant to deal with the issue — other than the fact that some of the rebels were intent on securing help from Germany — or they didn’t believe that what was being so openly threatened was anything more than bravado. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Based on diaries, personal letters and interviews in the Archives of Military History of Ireland, the book is at once an engrossing read and a thicket of information. It’s immaculately researched with reams of notes. many of the names were familiar to me but for someone coming to the story with only a passing knowledge it could be a bit impenetrable. Foster also takes various observation points, looking at the actors from different angles and, while this helps to build a more three-dimensional portrait of the subjects, it can also get confusing. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Still, this is a hugely worthwhile book and a great addition to the literature on the subject. </p>
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  <a href="/blog/blog/3566823/documentary-review-rocky-road-to-dublin">Documentary Review: Rocky Road to Dublin</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><strong><span class="font_large"><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/a4cc62e516985b7a9e6e6f49d4592935338cc5a4/small/rocky-road-to-dublin.jpg?1425244799" class="size_s justify_left border_" />Rocky Road to Dublin</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This documentary film has only recently come to light again after being missing in action for the last forty years. Made by Peter Lennon in 1967, it features cinematography by Raoul Coutard who was hugely influential in the Nouvelle Vague school of French cinema. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It’s a partly affectionate and partly scathing portrait of a country just beginning modernization but still struggling to look outward into a world that it had long held at arm’s length. On St. Patrick’s Day 1943 the then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, Eamonn DeValera, made a famous radio speech in which he said <i>“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.”</i>  In keeping with this vision Ireland had become a society uninvolved with the rest of the world. Even the Second World War was not acknowledged as such. In a neutral Ireland it was known as The Emergency. Strenuous attempts were made to resist contamination of the Irish psyche by jazz music, English novels and films, immoral dancing and the myriad possible temptations of the modern world. Attempts were made to codify and categorize native Irish culture and sports — attempts that in the case of Irish traditional music often drove the means of its survival into the industrial cities of England and the US.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The tone of the film is apparent very early on. The writer Seán O’Faoláin who had fought in the Irish Civil War and was author of the cultural history, ‘The Irish’, speaks of the post-1916 generation. He says:<i> “The kind of society that actually grew up was a society of what I call urbanized peasants. They were a society which was without moral courage, constantly observing a self-interested silence, never speaking in moments of crisis and in constant alliance with a completely obscurantist, repressive, regressive and uncultivated Church.”</i> A very different tone from that of DeValera. Or as Bulmer Hobson, one of the main actors of the 1916 said in 1956 — quoted in Roy Foster’s <i>Vivid Faces</i> — <i>“I cannot and will not write about the people and times when we were young, for reasons that are long and complicated. Briefly the phoenix of our youth has fluttered to earth such a miserable old hen I have no heart for it …”</i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The film was entered at the Cannes film festival in 1968 and was shown just before the the festival was abandoned in support of student protests of that year. It managed to have a brief run of two weeks in Dublin to sold-out audiences. It has never been shown on Irish television and despite the (not surprising) snub that it received in Ireland it became a huge success with those very students who brought the Cannes film festival to close. The film provided a cautionary answer to the old question of “What do you do with your revolution now that you have it?’ In Ireland that answer, sadly, was “Give it to the Church and the bourgeoisie.” <br><br>The full film is actually now available for viewing on Youtube. The quality of the file conversion was not terribly good so the resolution is poor compared to the DVD. It's still quite watchable though. <br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://youtu.be/V_1NCJwHYMY" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px;">http://youtu.be/V_1NCJwHYMY</a> <br> </p></div>
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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blog/blog/3498768/book-review-the-paying-guests-by-sarah-waters">Book Review: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><b><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/92da229b3e497cdac6cba3a1c9ff031bec32fee3/small/paying-guests-by-sarah-waters-on-bookdragon.jpg?1422831267" class="size_s justify_left border_" />The Paying Guests </b><br><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sarah Waters </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Riverhead Books </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">New York 2014 </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">564 pp. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 17px;"><b>A</b></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s I write this it dawns on me that I’ve never before reviewed a book that was currently in the bestsellers lists. This is a little ironic given that Sarah Waters has never set a book in today’s society. Past works have been set in Victorian times (</span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Tipping the Velvet</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Affinity</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> and </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Fingersmith</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">), in the 1940s (</span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Night Watch</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> and </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Little Stranger</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">) and now, this one, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Paying Guests,</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> set in 1922.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I have no great feelings, one way or the other, about historical fiction. I’ve encountered some egregiously bad examples and some splendid achievements. In the latter category, I’d put Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books. I do think, though, that it’s a very difficult genre to carry off well and Sarah Waters does a great job here.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The story is set in London in 1922. WWI has ended and London (where the story is set) is a place badly bruised from all that it has suffered. The old order will never be the same and privilege is giving way to a new middle-class and the emergence of a more independent and prouder working-class. Imagism and, more precisely, Modernism is at the heart of a new bohemian aesthetic and, though women have yet to get full voting rights, an independent and suffragist spirit is gaining strength.* </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Frances Wray and her mother live in a barely kept-up large house in a ‘respectable’ part of London. Frances’s father died some years before after squandering the family’s assets and both of her brothers were killed in the war. To make ends meet she and her mother decide to take in lodgers — the paying guests of the title — a young couple, Leonard and Lilian Barber. Leonard is a clerk at an insurance company; Lilian stays at home, bored and passing the time making their apartment more ‘artistic’. Initial shyness and the new oddity of the living arrangements for both parties, gives way to a friendship and then to a romance. Those who are familiar with Sarah Waters’ work will not be surprised to learn that the romance is between Frances and Lilian. And then things take a turn — a very bad turn — for the worse.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It was just before this turn that I nearly stopped reading. While the romance was passionate and engaging, I grew a bit tired of it. I was getting a feeling of being in some ‘chick lit’ novel. I actually dislike that term and have seen it applied unfairly to several writers that I admire. But the fact is that about a third of the way through a rather long book I was beginning to lose interest. But after putting the book aside for a day, I found myself thinking about it and finding the characters coming to life in my imagination. And this, I think, is Sarah Waters’ great strength as a writer. Her characters are at once recognizable and thoroughly original. Clearly and quickly limned, they nonetheless have nothing of the caricature about them. And the main characters are very deeply human, given to extraordinary strengths and shabby weaknesses. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I’m trying hard to avoid any spoilers here but I will say that there were times when I had to stop reading because the tension was starting to un-nerve me. An earlier Sarah Waters book, <i>The Little Stranger, </i> had a similar effect on me. It’s easily one of the most unsettling, creepy books I’ve ever read. <i>The Paying Guests</i>, in its own way is equally dread-filled but it does resolve and makes, in the end, for a very satisfying and worthwhile read. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;">    </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">* For more on the zeitgeist of the times, I’d recommend the book reviewed last month: <i>The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses</i>. <i>Ulysses</i> was  published in 1922, the same year in which the action in <i>The Paying Guests</i> is set.</p></div>
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  <a href="/blog/blog/3449442/book-review-the-most-dangerous-book-the-battle-for-james-joyce-s-ulysses">Book review: The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce&#39;s Ulysses</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><b><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/428569c5adb7a2737274e0ca9063ebfea3f736f9/small/mostdangerousbook.jpg?1420222426" class="size_s justify_left border_" />The Most Dangerous Book - The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. </b><br><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Kevin Birmingham</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Penguin Press 2014 </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">pp. 432 </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">James Joyce’s <i>Ulysses</i> is one of those books that is hard to separate from its reputation. At one time that reputation would declare the book obscene; today the reputation is of a book that is obscure and difficult. And yet, despite the fact that it remains largely unread, it is a book that is cited as the great literary achievement of the twentieth century. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Kevin Birmingham’s history of the great struggles Joyce went through to write it — grinding poverty and years of painful trouble with his eyes — and the protracted and courageous efforts of his supporters to get it published, is an exhilarating and deeply informative read. It puts <i>Ulysses</i> in its historical context, right at the heart of modernism, which was, at the time of the First World War, a motley and disconnected insurgency of suffragists, anarchists, socialists and various types of artists. The flag-bearers of all these movements were small magazines devoted to their own particular causes, be those causes literary, feminist or political, and it was in these small publications that Joyce’s work first appeared. <i>The Egoist</i>, edited by Ezra Pound and later by Harriet Shaw Weaver was the first magazine to print excerpts from <i>Ulysses</i> and were among the first to publish T.S. Eliot. Later, <i>The Little Review</i>, based in New York and edited by the redoubtable Margaret Anderson — and with Ezra Pound as foreign editor — took up the cause and continued publishing the book in serial form. But <i>Ulysses</i> was deemed obscene in the US under the Comstock Act and under the Obscene Publications Act in Britain. (The book, contrary to legend,  was never banned in Ireland but because the British publishing industry dominated the Irish market it meant that the book was only ever clandestinely available.) Eventually Morris Ernst, a lawyer and co-founder of the ACLU, forced the issue to trial in the US. He imported the book from France, with glowing reviews from intellectual authorities pasted into the cover. He alerted the US authorities of its arrival by steamship. He claimed it from customs when it wasn’t confiscated and forced the authorities to press charges against the book. Random House publishing group also managed to import a copy under the 1930 Tariff Act, citing a loophole and claiming the book as a modern classic. Thus the stage was set for the argument that, yes, <i>Ulysses</i> was obscene in some parts (a very small portion of the book) but that the book itself had such merit that it outweighed the importance of the objectionable material. The resulting ruling by Judge John Woolsey was that <i>Ulysses</i> should be allowed into the United States. He saw Joyce’s work as an honest attempt to portray the real thoughts of his characters and if some of those thoughts were sexual and discomfiting, well, Joyce was being loyal to his technique. (It’s interesting, too, that the first amendment was never even considered as an argument for the publication of <i>Ulysses.</i> Until the middle of the twentieth century it was considered that the first amendment was to do with political speech.) </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I’ve been a fan of <i>Ulysses</i> for many years and will admit that it’s not a book that gave up its pleasures very readily. I had a couple of false starts, flailing about trying to find a handrail by which I might find direction and feel reassured that I was understanding what was going on. Oddly enough, it was after I’d read <i>Finnegans Wake</i> that I went back to <i>Ulysses</i> and was able to navigate without running too far aground. <i>Finnegans Wake</i> taught me not to worry too much about sense and to immerse myself in the language and the impressions that it created. Thus was I able to approach <i>Ulysses</i> and let it wash over me without needing to be guided by some omniscient narrator. Sense started to become apparent in time and I just had to trust that Joyce was not being deliberately arcane or difficult. He was trying to say what he needed to say in the way he needed to say it. I would, however, suggest that if you decide to read it — there’s a New Year’s Resolution for you — that you might want to use Harry Blamires' book <i>The Bloomsday Book</i> or some other such guide. The Blamires is something of an icon in Joyceana and a fine introduction.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">This is not to say that one reading will give you all that there is to be gotten from the book. My father thought that it should be read every year and that every year new understandings of the book and of oneself would present themselves. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I have a little shelf in my library devoted to things Joycean. <i>The Most Dangerous Book</i> will take its place there and will probably be re-read soon. It’s a fine book. </p>
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  <a href="/blog/blog/3449439/recipe-sherry-trifle">Recipe: Sherry Trifle</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><b><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/fe285fbaedbbf344763c446e60316743a203c8c2/small/trifle.jpg?1420222253" class="size_s justify_left border_" />Sherry Trifle </b></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It’s the new year and, no doubt, there will be those who are not interested in a new recipe for a dessert. And there will be some, like me, who for one reason or another must leave alcohol alone. So, this recipe is going out into the world to be greeted by a third contingent, the one that likes trifle but is quite convinced that what I’m about to describe is ‘not a real trifle’. That, to me, is the sign of a classic dish. In any case, this was a special dessert in my youth and it still holds its own.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 16px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sponge cake or sponge fingers — 6 oz. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sherry — sweet is best — 1/4 cup or to taste </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Raspberry jello — about a pint </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Fruit — this can be fresh strawberries/raspberries or a can (10 oz.) of fruit cocktail </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Homemade custard: </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    6 egg yolks </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    1½ cups of heavy cream warmed</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    ½ cup sugar </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    1Tbsp vanilla extract </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    Mix the sugar, vanilla extract and the egg yolks in a bowl. Then add the         warmed cream nice and slowly. Pour through a sieve back into the             saucepan and cook gently for about 20 minutes. With custard it’s always     “low and slow”. You can make this while the jello is setting. See below. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Whipped cream (optional) </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sprinkles (obligatory) </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 16px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In a clear bowl, line the bottom with the sponge and drizzle the sherry over it. Give it a minute to soak in. Then add the fruit. Fresh fruit may be preferred but I have no objections to a drained can of fruit cocktail. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Next pour over the dissolved jello and let it set. You can put it in the fridge to help it along. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">When the jello has set, gently pour over the warm custard and, again, put in the fridge to set. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Now you may want to decorate with whipped cream and sprinkles or just with sprinkles on the set custard. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 16px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The idea is that this should look festive and a little decadent, so fruit cocktail is a nice colorful touch along with the red jello and the yellow custard and, of course, the sprinkles. There are special trifle bowls that you can use, and they are a nice touch, but any clear bowl that allows you to see the different layers will work.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A more sophisticated version can be made with fresh seasonal fruit, homemade sponge or sometimes a different liquor, such as kirschwasser. You’ll also see recipes that go the other direction and ask for a custard made from a powder such as Bird’s Custard. There are some that have a nostalgic longing for such things but you are really much better of with a homemade custard. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">You can omit the sherry if you wish but the sprinkles are mandatory.</p></div>
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  <a href="/blog/blog/3346817/book-review-the-spinning-heart">Book Review: The Spinning Heart</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><b><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/6496d1cd2de8253b673d96d474f9d3743dbe71fc/small/the-spinning-heart.jpg?1417464243" class="size_s justify_left border_" /><span class="font_large">The Spinning Heart </span></b><br><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Donal Ryan </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Steerforth 2014 </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">160 pp.     </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Bobby Mahon is well-liked and respected. His wife loves him and more than a few of the local women fancy him. He’s capable, honest and decent. He’s also saddled with a monster of a father who is cold, abusive and, by half-way through the book, dead. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Bobby and his story are the hub of the book, around which all the other stories and voices revolve and, by my count, there are twenty-one narrators and chapters. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    The book is set in post-boom rural Ireland. The great affluence of the Celtic Tiger has evaporated almost overnight. The international computer company has closed its doors and the local construction company — at which Bobby is a foreman — has gone broke and its crooked owner has left town. Bobby and his co-workers are left in the lurch, unable to draw unemployment insurance because Pokey Burke, their erstwhile employer, failed to pay into the insurance fund and seems to have paid no taxes either. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The book is not about a story though — not the dying economy or even the murder of Bobby’s father. Rather, it’s about a lot of stories. One event seen through multiple sets of eyes tells us about the speakers and how their places in the world change or remain the same. Characters are described by a narrator or several narrators, only to have their chance to tell their own story later. The book opens with Bobby’s voice: ”My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down.” All the other voices in the book concur with Booby’s low opinion of his father, Frank … and then, close to the end of the book, we get the voice of the dead Frank and it’s powerfully moving. We see for the first time the old man’s abject loneliness, the huge damage done him, in his time, by a brutal father and his inability to break a way of being that he knows is destroying love all around him. That theme of father son relationship occurs with many characters and apart from the very final scene of the book, all those relationships are bad or going bad. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    But there is much humour in this book and some wonderful characters. There’s the whore with a heart of gold, now aging badly and abandoned — yes, the hoariest of clichés — but she is a wonderful, generous soul and to be admired. There are a couple of totally incompetent Satanists manqués, a Siberian subbie i.e. day labourer, whose voice is one of the loveliest in the book. There’s the young guy who’s practically being seduced by a girl he fancies and still can’t summon the courage to meet her at a dance. “it’s there for me and I won’t take it” he observes. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    As I was reading I kept thinking of <em>Spoon River Anthology</em> or the Irish <em>Cré na Cille</em>. All those many voices, criss-crossing, confirming, contradicting, illuminating — and I wondered about how they manage to sound so individual. The secret, I think, is in the attitudes of the characters. Any attempt to make voices that were hugely different linguistically would have been a disaster. Indeed, the simple fact that all the people involved are from the same very close society would have made it impossible. So, character comes first and language comes second. And while the language is a vibrant, occasionally profane and always colourful symphony, the author Donal Ryan doesn’t overdo it. You will notice different patterns of speech from speaker to speaker but it’s often very subtle and, just in case it all starts to sound just a bit bit too vernacularly Irish, he resorts to a very plain, matter-of-fact prose. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">    This Donal Ryan’s first book and it’s fully formed and masterful. I recommend it highly. </p></div>
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  <div class="message"><b><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/db289502173fc10f9c55e7475d530f6a42350a3f/small/wake-cover-illustration.jpg?1414973650" class="size_s justify_left border_" /><br><span class="font_large">The Wake </span></b><br><i style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Paul Kingsnorth</i>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><b>Unbound 2014 </b></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>the night was clere though i slept i seen it. though i slept i seen the calm hierde naht only the still. when i gan down to sleep all was clere in the land and my dreams was full of stillness but my dreams did not keep me still. </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>    when i woc in the morgen all was blaec though the night had gan and wolde be blaec after and for all time. </i></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So begins this remarkable book. Written in ‘a shadow tongue’ that bears a passing resemblance to Old English, it’s the story of Buccmaster of Holland, a ‘socman of three oxgangs’ i.e. a freeholder of sixty acres, in the eastern part of Lincolnshire. The date is 1066 and Buccmaster has premonitions of impending doom. Soon England will be overrun by Norman horsemen and professional soldiers fighting against English peasants armed with farm tools. We all know the outcome and the fact that it would be three-hundred years before England would be ruled again by a monarch who spoke English. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The first thing you will notice about this book is the language and, at first, it can be confusing. There is, you’ll note, almost no punctuation other than the period and that seems to be a concession to ease of interpretation. There’s no capitalization. All is written as it might have been in the time that the action takes place and before the advent of printing when punctuation was added as an aid to reading aloud. There are no words (with few exceptions) that that did not originate in Old English and no letters that did not exist in the Old English alphabet — k, v, j and q are all absent. (The swearing, while quintessentially Anglo-Saxon, reads as quite modern, however.)</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But this use of language is not a gimmick. As the author, Paul Kingsnorth writes: “ … I simply didn’t get along with historical novels written in contemporary language. The way we speak is specific to our time and place. Our assumptions, our politics, our worldview, our attitudes — all are implicit in our words and what we do with them.” </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And it all works remarkably well. The intonation is rural England — sometimes reminiscent of the West Country, sometimes of East Anglia or even Yorkshire; but the ‘voice’ is Buccmaster. Arrogant, visionary, blind and self-pitying, the character is complex and rich. Unfortunately, perhaps, he’s not very likable, which in a book that takes a while to find its stride, might put readers off. But the language becomes second-nature after a little while and there’s a short glossary and a guide to pronunciation that are both very helpful. Then the book becomes riveting and the character of Buccmaster comes vividly and fiercely to life.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The sense of place and time are hugely powerful here. Buccmaster is suddenly and brutally wrenched from his world and angrily rejects the new order imposed on England by the shaven-faced foreigners. He longs for an even older pre-Christian England of ancient gods and old ways and, as the book progresses, his identity with this lost past starts to become unhinged as scenes from an anguished youth reveal themselves. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">This not so much a ‘ripping yarn’ as an immersion in an alien world made doubly strange by dislocation and mental derangement. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">‘Buccmaster’ is not an Old English name. It is, the author explains, a name that came to hime and wouldn’t let go. The ‘Holland’ mentioned is not the Netherlands but rather a low-lying, fictitious place near the fens of Lincoln. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">There is a powerful story here and strongly drawn characters. It’s a book rife with startlingly poetic language — some of the descriptions of the fen country are hugely moving — and it’s a book that still haunts me.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I discovered it while doing a search for a monograph dealing with <em>Finnegans Wake</em> — popularly referred to as ‘The Wake’ and probably the Grandaddy of all books written in a ‘shadow language’. It’s the kind of book I love, as alien and absorbing as another favorite, <em>Riddley Walker</em>, and I recommend it with the <i>caveat </i>that you may not find an initial easy trail through the language. If you persist, it’s worth it. </p></div>
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  <a href="/blog/blog/3263214/recipe-elderflower-cheesecake">Recipe: Elderflower Cheesecake</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><img src="//images.zoogletools.com/u/35514/408881d3d359c0890695672338a0f6fac077417d/medium/baker.jpg?1414973417" class="size_m justify_left border_" />This is a recipe for elderflower cheesecake. In keeping with the English theme and the historical flavor of the newsletter I decided to take a look in a recipe book that I bought some 30 years ago, called <em>To the King’s Taste</em>. It’s a collection of medieval recipes adapted for modern cooking by Lorna J. Sass.</p>
<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I was browsing through it and in the dessert section I saw this recipe. I was immediately transported back to a lunch Jean and I had with our old friends Geoff and Ros Peckham at a restaurant in Lewes, East Sussex a couple of years ago. Jean saw an elderflower cordial on the menu and decided to try it. It was very good and she became an immediate fan. When I saw this recipe I knew that this was what I’d been looking for. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">(Dried elderflowers are available online and at some wine and beer-making supply stores. I’d read that they are sometimes sold at Mexican grocery stores but when I went looking for them in my neighborhood I had no luck.)</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br><br><br>a nine-inch unbaked pie crust </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">3 Tbs of dried elderflowers</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">4 Tbs heavy cream </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">½ cup of sugar </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">½ lb farmers cheese </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">½ lb ricotta cheese </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">2 tsp dry bread crumbs </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">6 egg whites beaten until stiff but not dry </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Bake the pie crust at 425º F for 10 mins </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Soak the elderflowers in the cream for about 10 minutes </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add sugar and stir until dissolved</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Push the cheeses through a strainer with the back of a spoon </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Combine cheeses with elderflower-cream mixture. Add bread crumbs. Blend thoroughly </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Fold in stiff egg whites</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Pour mixture into pie crust</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Bake at 375º F for about 50 minutes until firm but not dry. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Turn off the heat and allow to cool in oven with door open for about 15 minutes </p></div>
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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blog/blog/3263213/song-profile-benjamin-bowmaneer">Song Profile: Benjamin Bowmaneer </a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“Have you heard how the wars began, Benjamin Bowmaneer?” — so begins this song, a song that continues in a surreal vein until the last verse, which declares: “’Twas thus that the wars began, Benjamin Bowmaneer”. In between is a story that could be a children’s nursery rhyme or an arcane (though still pointed) political satire. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Brian brought it to the band having found it in the <em>Penguin Book of English Folksongs</em> — the old, and now rare, edition edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.E. Lloyd. The notes in that text give little information and some small amount of conjecture as to the origins and meaning of the song. They also point out that “we have not found a set of this song complete with tune elsewhere”. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The phrase “Castors away!” that appears repeatedly in the song may be a reference to cheering by throwing one’s hat in the air — a ‘castor’ is a type of beaver felt hat. Or it might be a variation of “cast us away” implying a nautical connection. The main character in the song is not actually the Benjamin Bowmaneer of the title, but an unnamed tailor. Tailors seem to have been the butt of many a joke in the day — note Francis Feeble in Shakespeare’s <em>Henry IV, Part II</em> — and appear as weak, ineffectual characters in many songs e.g. The Bold Trooper on our first CD, <em>Some Foreign Land</em>. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">To us it seemed like it was a kind of pointed satire with a strong anti-war tone, and when we started playing it, the time was ripe for such a sentiment. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It wasn’t an easy song to to get to work musically. The repetition of lines and the fact that it didn’t have a story as such made it tend to plod and bog down. The cure came through a flash of brilliance from Mike, our bass player, who started riffing on a bass line in Stravinsky’s Histoire d’un Soldat, playing a three-against-two rhythm. Suddenly the whole piece held together and gained forward momentum. Brian then had the idea of adding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_Q0SBh1aE">Lull Me Beyond Thee</a>, a lovely old English dance tune, which was the perfect ending to the song. </p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It’s on our recording, <em>‘Trad.’</em> and you can listen <a contents="here" data-link-label="Listen" data-link-type="page" href="/listen">here</a>. </p></div>
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