In a New Orleans State of Mind

I have prepared two articles suitable for a food blog (http://www.seriouseats.com, http://www.orangette.blogspot.com, http://thewednesdaychef.com).

   

   Eggs Sardou

I am, without a doubt, one hundred percent, a breakfast person. You know you’re a breakfast person when you enjoy eating pancakes of an evening – not for dessert, and not the type of savory pancake that is wrapped around meat and cheese and ultimately resembles a burrito – pancakes with eggs, banana, bacon and syrup.

I’m definitely not a “toast for breakfast” girl, although sometimes I, unfortunately, have to be, and I don’t like eating cereal, either. I like a cooked breakfast, partially because it’s the best tasting breakfast, but mostly, because the cooked breakfast is a meal that refuses to sing of convenience. In fact, I think that my ability to fit a casual, cooked breakfast into my morning routine will serve as the barometer for my happiness from now on.

It’s the siesta of the Western world. It’s like digging your heels in, and refusing to let the day hurry you along. It’s pausing and enjoying your morning, with comforting food, and equally comforting company – we hope, there is something quite lonely about eggs for one – and, for a while, disregarding all of the things life is bound to throw your way once you’ve finished eating.

Regardless, I’m now a vegetarian and the number of alluring breakfasts on offer to me has irrefutably diminished. I don’t like sweet breakfasts, I like salty savory breakfasts, and there are only so many packets of Facon any dedicated pork-loving vegetarian can eat their way through. Suffice to say, I keep a keen eye out for interesting, if not gluttonous, breakfast recipes, and I think I have found my favorite.

Eggs Sardou

There a quite a few necessary steps in this recipe. It helps to keep an oven heated on low, say 80° Celsius, to keep the artichokes and spinach warm before serving.

Ingredients (serves 2)

3 cups creamed spinach (see recipe below)

6 large, artichoke bottoms (use marinated artichoke hearts if you’re feeling really lazy)

4 large poached eggs

1 cup of Hollandaise sauce (recipe below) 

Creamed Spinach

3 cups fresh baby spinach

1 cups of New Orleans-style Béchamel sauce (recipe follows)

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon of salt

1. Prepare the Béchamel sauce: In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over a low heat. Gradually, add 1 ½ tablespoons of plain flour to the melted butter, stirring constantly to ensure the mixture is smooth. Once the flour is integrated, gradually pour in ¾ cups of milk, stirring with a wire whisk to keep the sauce smooth. Once all of the milk has been incorporated, add a bay leaf and cook the sauce over a low heat until it thickens. Take off the heat, remove the bay leaf, and stir in 4-6 drops of Tabasco sauce and ½ a teaspoon of salt.

2. Cook the spinach to wilting point and remove from heat. Drain thoroughly – I find it is best to squeeze the water out of the spinach by hand – and chop finely. Add the chopped spinach to the béchamel sauce, and warm for a few minutes over low heat, stirring constantly. Place the sauce in a heat-safe container, and keep in the warm oven.

Artichokes

If you’re using artichoke bottoms, warm them in the oven before final assembly. In the United States you can, apparently, purchase frozen or tinned artichoke bottoms, but I’ve never seen them here. Alas, this means you’re forced to clean and prepare the artichoke yourself, then boil them until they’re tender. If this sounds too intimidating, or you’re on the lazy side, I’d recommend frying up oil marinated artichoke hearts in some butter, with finely grated garlic. Again, put them in the oven to keep warm until final assembly. 

If you do want prepare raw artichokes yourself, this video is quite handy. 

Poaching the Eggs

Poaching eggs can be a delicate practice, but there are a few surefire ways to ensure it runs smoothly.

1. Always use a non stick saucepan, or lightly oil the base before filling it with water.
2. Heat the water to boiling point and add some white vinegar (about 2 tablespoons), then turn the heat right down just before you add the eggs. Rapidly boiling water runs the risk of pushing the eggs around the saucepan, in which case, they may become separated or lose their shape.
3.  Break an egg into a small bowl before you add it to the water. When you drop the egg into the water, do it gently, submerging the lip of the bowl into the water slowly, letting the water flood in and collect the egg.
4. Once the eggs are in the saucepan, turn the heat off, cover and let them cook until they are firm, and to your liking.
5. Remove them carefully with a slotted spoon, and let them rest on a small plate. Make sure you drain them properly before you serve them (watery, creamed spinach is not so good), placing the slotted spoon above them, and tipping the plate so that the water runs off.                                

Hollandaise

Hollandaise is one of my favorite breakfast accompaniments, it’s also, generally, a nightmare to prepare. Not any more! I’ve found the ultimate cheats version: no more double boiler, no more wasted yolks. New Orleans Hollandaise sees the inclusion of 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Add it at your own discretion. Another thing, if the placement of this instruction right at the very end of the recipe wasn’t enough of a clue, make the hollandaise sauce last, even after the eggs! If you’re concerned about the eggs getting cold, place them back in the warm water while you make the sauce. Or, better yet, make the sauce in the last few minutes while the eggs are still poaching. Keep the bowl of hollandaise in a slightly larger bowl, filled with warm water, while you plate the breakfast. Hollandaise is kind of like Cinderella at the ball, except with a shorter shelf life.

      

Assembly

Spoon two circles of the creamed spinach onto a warmed plate, and place some artichokes on top. Gently rest a poached egg on each of the piles, and cover with a generous amount of Hollandaise. Voila!

   Gumbo 

I’m a big fan of Gumbo, but the more I consider it, my reasons for liking are quite strange. I’m sure a lot of people love it because it is a diverse, rich, wonderful tasting dish, full of fresh seafood and quality ingredients. I like it because I find it strange. It’s the most foreign thing I’ve ever eaten. Besides, there is not one Creole restaurant in the greater Melbourne area, so, the fact that I have to make it myself, deems it somewhat elusive and wonderful. I’ve put the Gumbo up on a pedestal. I’ve spent hours trying to find a restaurant in the state that serves it, to no avail, and so it’s become the Holy Grail for me. I suppose it’s not that different from a Bouillabaisse, but it all seems very romantic, even more so than the best French restaurants in the city.

I make it without meat, but include vegetarian sausages and mock chicken or lamb to make it seem more substantial and authentic. Here is the recipe without those inclusions. If you are vegetarian and want to add mock meats, add them close to the end, somewhere between the last 10 and 5 minutes of simmering.

Gumbo

Ingredients

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup plain flour

3 celery stalks, diced

1 large green capsicum, chopped

½ sweet onion (if none are available, use salad onion)

½ brown onion, finely diced

5 cloves of minced garlic

6 cups of chicken broth (I’d recommend a consommé for richness, and perhaps substitute one cup for bacon stock)

1 tablespoon chopped red chili

½ bunch fresh parsley

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

1. The first step is to make the roux. It’s a similar concept to béchamel sauce, minus the milk, and supplementing butter for oil. Don’t use butter, oil has a higher heat resistance and won’t burn. Add the vegetable oil and flour to heavy pot (you will be cooking the entire gumbo in this pot, so make sure it’s big enough) and begin warming it over a medium heat. Do not add the flour after the oil is already hot! Add them at the same time and combine them. Stir constantly – it can take up to 35 minutes for the roux to reach the stage you like –If the roux starts to show black specks, its burnt and you’ll need to start again. There’s an article here on the different variations of roux and their flavors. 
2. Once the roux is ready, turn the heat off and add the celery, capsicum, sweet onion, brown onion and garlic. Stir until the vegetables are coated, then add the stock. Start the gumbo simmering over a medium heat.
3. Add the remaining ingredients. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 40 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Serve in a deep bowl, over a portion of steamed white rice, whatever is to your liking.         

The Online Places To Avoid When Saving

1.   Ebay 
 Okay, this may seem obvious, but when you’re trying to save/generate dollars, it’s easy to be drawn to ebay to sell those things you’ve got hanging around that you never wear or use (you probably bought them on ebay to begin with). The trap is that as long as you’re spending time on the ebay site, checking your listings and answering questions, you’ve pretty much got to be made of stone not to have a little browse for something you ‘really really need.’  The worst part is, you can so easily justify buying things because you’re selling stuff – the amount of times I’ve caught myself thinking ‘I’ll buy this and sell something else in its place’ – and it seems to level out. But that’s the thing with Ebay, you never make as much money selling as you do buying. I know this rule seems absurd because, for it to work universally, somebody has to be making money selling you all the things you can’t afford, but it’s true, at least in my case it is. I recommend, either staying away completely, or keeping a guardian in the way of a friend, parent, partner around when you’re at you’re most vulnerable.

HitRECord

While contemplating the role Creative Commons plays in making media content available to the public and in the creation of new content through the process of collaboration, I began searching for other organisations that emphasise a communal approach to artistic output. Enter, hitrecord.org. 

hitRECord is an online, ever evolving collaborative process, where subscribers create content purely with the intention to share it and to witness it be remixed by other members.  The utilitarian website is kind of like a beacon of hope, with its complete absence of advertising, membership fees, or revenue driven strategies of any kind, emphasising only the artistic process and joy in collaboration.

Is The Personal Political?

 I was a little shocked when I noticed that a few of my friends on Facebook had filled out and submitted polls concerned with the renaming of the new Kraft product, iSnack 2.0 . As if that wasn’t bad enough, the  response options offered by the poll gave me the chills – two of which were, ‘I don’t give a toss!’ and ‘No, shithouse.’ The whole thing left me really confused. Did the people filling it out realise it was a funded market research study, or did the informal language used in the questionnaire feign the appearance of a user created survey, not unlike the thousands of quizzes that already populate the Facebook site?

Vouyuerism 2.0

© Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock

 'And when we fast-forward to today we see an almost cruel irony in that people can and often do develop on-line relationships with folks on the other side of the globe, without leaving their homes. But at the expense of the time that would have otherwise been available for involvement in other activities,which might foster a sense of community in their villages, towns and cities.' Will Baker  

Thinking further on the notion of the ‘blogger’ and the way that they are said to be ‘exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society,’ I can’t help but muse over another of the potential social repercussions of new media. 

Feature Portfolio: Part One

These articles are intended for the internet literature blog HTMLGIANT, which deals with a broad variety of literary topics and debate, in a semi-casual manner.

Why Raymond Carver Is My Elvis

Raymond Carver left his first dent on my heart while I was in my early teens. After reading So Much Water So Close To Home I spent the following couple of days burdened by an intangible, unshakeable, sense of uneasiness.
It took me a while to identify the source because I’d never felt this way before – I was a kid and any anxiety I had known was easily identifiable, and just as easily resolved – but eventually it happened upon me, quietly, slowly, in the very same manner as the story itself had built that almost unbearable sense of suspicion. I had, for the first time, been deeply affected by a writer, by another world, someone else’s story.

Don't Follow My Lead: Be Consistent!

In light of how erratically I have been blogging, I thought maybe I’d poke a bit of fun at myself and take a look at the role of consistency in the formation of a successful blog. Apparently it’s important – really important – like in the top three of the key factors to blogging success.

Evidently,‘people depend upon your regularly scheduled blog posts. If you set a schedule, keep it. If you start an article series, finish it. If you have regularly scheduled posts like weekly reports, links, challenges, memes, or other repeated content, keep it on schedule as people have come to expect it. Just as you expect others to show up for their appointments, you better show up for your blog appointments.’
This doesn’t bode so well for me, but it does make sense. The internet is overflowing with content and who wants to waste their time navigating to dead blogs? As they say, attention is the true currency of the internet, and there is no faster way to kill peoples interest than to become stagnant and boring. There are a couple of other articles on this topic, here and here.

Online Community Arts: Independent Artistic Organs and New Media

  

© Company of People 2009 

Even though I’m not an artist myself, I can’t help but revel in the wonder that is the Internet’s ability to encourage artistic collaboration. It’s pretty amazing. That people are now able to share their work with the world and gain feedback, sell their artwork through websites such as Etsy , and all-in-all be part of something bigger than just working alone in their studios or bedrooms, testifies to the strength of virtual communities and their tangible impact on our ‘real lives’. Websites such as Deviant Art , EBSQ Art and Flickr are obvious examples, but the American based Company of People, founded this year and already offering an enormous catalogue of artists, is a salient example of young, up-and-coming artists making use of new media possibilities to transform the realm of community arts.

It almost makes you wonder how artists communicated and collaborated before the Internet.

Is The Internet Making Me Lazy & Intolerant?

Although it seems somewhat counterintuitive given the great digital age of efficiency and progress we find ourselves right in the middle of, I have, at times, heard the accusation that technology is making us lazy . Often, it’s from the mouth of older generations and is phrased in the way of, ‘back then, before there were cars, we had to walk 10 miles to work’, or something of the like, as though I should be thankful to be born in the age of asphalt covered meadows and smoggy skies. It’s not like I had any choice in the matter, and if I had of I probably would have chosen to grow up in a time where the world was a bit quieter, cleaner and in less of a hurry. Nevertheless, that choice was not my own and I find myself here, in the digital age, and just because I don’t find that ideal doesn’t mean I haven’t all but completely succumbed to its charms. New technology has dug its nail in deep. As far as it making me lazy goes? I don’t know, maybe I was lazy to begin with, destined for a life of indolence? It’s not like I order my groceries online, although it would probably be quite convenient, but there are a couple of dirty little habits I have that I don’t doubt are due to the Internet and it’s ability to make things so much ‘easier’.   

Digital Media Comparative Study

To assess the ways in which Internet websites effectively utilise digital publishing techniques to successfully communicate with their target audience, I have selected three quite different websites belonging to the area of digital media publishing best described as 'women's interest'. The sites of Jezebel, Missbehave and SheSaid utilise varying techniques to optimise their message and connect with their readership, and while some are more effective than others, the most notable finding of this report is that while there is no universal winning formula, the website that best understands and caters to its audience will ultimately be triumphant.

Guilty Pleasures

 My most favorite way to waste time on the internet? That would be scanning recipe websites, restaurant review pages and food blogs like a fiend. There’s not much I like to do more than eat or cook, and there are an abundance of sites and thriving communities on the Internet that succeed in exacerbating those desires. 

 What I love most about this genre of blogging is that is seems to hark back to old values; that even in the fast-paced, somewhat transitory world of the internet, people are still expressing, for their own amusement and for the appreciation of others, those very simple, traditional acts of being human, which unify us all. I especially like blogs that are dedicated to breakfasts because they seem to celebrate a time that I  believed was long behind us or, at least, would be in the not too distant future. I mean, what kind of dreamy, idealistic lives are these people living that they can prepare such breakfast delights every morning and find the time to photograph them?!

Restaurant review pages are also a source of endless distraction for me, as I’m always on the lookout for new places to eat and nothing angers me more than an overpriced and poorly cooked meal. There’s nothing quite like an anonymous review to really get an idea of what you’re in for, and although I appreciate the recommendations of a ‘professional’ food critic, there does seem to be something more authentic about reviews from regular patrons who are unafraid on stepping on the toes of restaurant owners. Sometimes, it seems like one of the only ways to navigate my way through the abundance of restaurants in Melbourne, although it proves troublesome at times, as my ‘to-eat’ list isn’t getting any shorter and I spend what could be perceived as an atrocious amount of time simply thinking about where I plan on eating next.  

Independent Publishing Houses & New Media

After reading this article I got to thinking about the ways in which digital media, especially the Internet, has and will most likely continue to change and shape the publishing industry. There are a few independent publishers around the world that I keep a keen eye on, McSweeney’s , Heartworm and Fugue State Press being some, and upon reflection I wonder if I would even be aware of them in the first place, had it not been for the Internet. Obviously, these publishers all utilise and, at times, rely upon the web for exposure and the promotion and distribution of their products, but it is also the nature of the Internet, in all of its hyper linking glory, that allowed me to wander upon them in the first place.

Shelfari

To be perfectly honest, I am nothing short of perturbed by the attempt to translate everything to an Internet compatible medium. Perhaps this is not such an ideal mentality for somebody studying a subject such as this. I haven’t pinpointed the root of my aversion, and have concluded at times that, perhaps, I’m just plain old regressive? That would be a convenient answer and not something I’m necessarily opposed to, except it just doesn’t cut it. I’m no Luddite.

Technology?

 ‘The “it” is a kind of force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman, mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster, a death force. Something hideous they are running from but know they can never escape. I’m putting it way too heavily here but in a less emphatic and less defined way this is what it is. Somewhere there are people who understand it and run it but those are technologists, and they speak in an inhuman language when describing what they do. It’s all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any sense no matter how often you hear about them. And their things, their monster keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to strike back at it, and hardly any way to escape it. 

just bare bones at the minute. will post something asap.