Friday, August 25, 2006
Locally-sourced food
Earlier this week Mrs. Dunce and I went for a birthday meal (hers) to Konstam at the Prince Albert, a London restaurant with an interesting gimmick: food served there is sourced from London (within the M25, and/or within the area covered by the Tube Map; I'm not exactly sure where the line is drawn). I'd have to say I thought this was quite a gimmick, overly gimmicky perhaps and surely the food would suffer (especially after seeing a number of uneven reviews). After all, most people don't think of London as an especially productive region for restaurant-quality food. Sure, years ago it was all fields, full of livestock and crops of various sorts. And plenty of eels; all you had to do was drop a horse's head in your local river/canal. Not to mention other river/canal dwellers not requiring decapitated bait. But these days, hmmm. Most people probably think of "London-sourced food" as food you get from London restaurants. Perhaps fried chicken from the popular London restaurant "KFC" or any of the numerous knock-offs (Dixie? Dixy? Hentucky? Kennedy? Kent's Tuck Inn? Kansas? Mississippi? Tennessee? All real chicken places documented HERE). Or perhaps from a more upscale restaurant (I don't know any of these as all my meals come from chicken places). Or maybe something made from rat or a cannibalistic treat of London-sourced human flesh, both of which are quite readily available London ingredients. OK, perhaps I'm being a bit excessive; after all we did see some episodes of the BBC2 documentary which followed the man behind Konstam as he traveled around London trying to source products that were truly produced in London (here's a BBC link). But it still seemed very gimmicky.

Nonetheless, Mrs. Dunce's particular interest in Konstam at the Prince Albert (higher than any other London restaurant, which is saying something) became quite clear as her birthday approached. So she was quite happy that it was our destination for the evening (I kept it secret until earlier in the evening, even resorting to telling an outright lie). The place doesn't look like anything special from the outside; it's a converted pub on a very busy street (I ride right past it when I cycle to work, and hadn't noticed it at all). The interior is a very aggressive green color, but the most noticeable aspect of the decoration is the light fixtures. I can't really do them justice with a verbal description, so check out this Flickr photo. The string-looking bits on the light fittings are tiny chains, of the sort that are most readily associated with dog tags. "But what about the food?" I can almost hear you asking. I was sort of dreading that part, because I didn't pay close enough attention to remember the exact details (and we did not take our menu along with us, as apparently you are meant to do if you're of the "foodie" persuasion [it's not stealing; it was that day's menu, with the date on it and everything]). We decided to go headlong into the "locally sourced" aspects of the menu, choosing an English red wine (not from London, but close). A bit on the "cheeky" side but unexpectedly tasty. To start I had some sort of very nice smoked fish with blinis and sour cream, Mrs. Dunce had a salad of some kind featuring a soft-boiled duck's egg (exact provenance of the main ingredients unknown). For the main courses we swapped sides of the non-meat menu: Mrs. Dunce had the fish (sea bass, presumably from the Sea of London, with some kind of sauce possibly including some rather unusual tarragon leaves), and I had the veggie choice, pierogis with chard, cheese and some other something-or other (see what I mean about not keeping track well enough?), with a green salad (mint, parsley, and a few other flavorful, small-leaf greens). Everything was prepared extremely well, and both the starters and main dishes were quite nicely designed to be eaten with their accompanying vegetables/etc. in the British manner: a little bit of everything on the plate stacked onto each forkful (I am usually a strong "separatist" in matters concerning the diverse contents of plates of food). And they left us with enough room for dessert: I chose a very tasty plum-and-something tart (which was quite tart indeed, but I'm a fan of tart tarts), while Mrs. Dunce went for the cheese (a blue cheese and a very fresh goat's cheese). It was a fantastic meal, right up there with the best meals either of us could remember.

consume
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:51:58 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Friday, August 18, 2006
Indignities suffered by the famous dead
Yesterday after work Mrs Dunce and I went to Brompton Cemetery (Here's a really nice site with loads of photos of the cemetery: LINK.) to see an interestingly-titled talk: "Indignities Suffered by the Famous Dead". The advert on the London Free List (link) made it irresistible: Attendees will be ushered in by black-robed figures bearing scythes. The talk will describe the sometimes bizarre and humorous happenings that have occurred to corpses of famous people in recent times and in the past...."

We arrived at the chapel (perhaps most famous as the outside of the "Russian church" in Goldeneye [link]) and sure enough, black-robed figured bearing scythes did indeed appear at the doorway. We checked out the choice of drinks and snacks (including some nice coffin-shaped cookies with icing skeletons), then took our seats right up front. It's a very small chapel, and by the time the lecture started it was completely full.

The lecture (accompanied by appropriate slides) was given by Robert Stephenson, and was quite entertaining. It featured corpse tales of all sorts of historical figures (particularly royalty). The main themes? Well, there was the old classic: disinterring of the recently-interred (and various related indignities). And uninterred corpses left gathering dust in various places. And any number of traveling heads: chopping of the head of the recently dead seemed to be extremely common, and what gentleman's collection is complete without a famous head as a conversation piece? It gradually moved toward the present, although clearly there were plenty more famous dead whose indignities had to be cut for lack of time. Highly, highly entertaining and very much worth the £3 (suggested donation).

There are a couple of audio snippets of Robert Stephenson talking about other death-related topics on this BBC article about Kensal Green Cemetery.

travel
Friday, August 18, 2006 4:44:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Thursday, August 17, 2006
Green and Red
Yesterday Mrs. Dunce and I took another step towards indoctrination into the cult of Circulus, following their charismatic leader into a "rather quaint old slaughterhouse at the top of Brick Lane" (his words, not ours) yet somehow escaping with our lives (although perhaps not our free will; the combination of Moog and sackbut is dangerously hypnotic). Our first stop on our way there was the revered Wenlock Arms where Mrs. Dunce made a beeline for the Mild (makes sense, as she'd spent a long, hard day at the factory and needed a combination of low-alcohol drink and sustenance). But this entry is really about the interval between our stop at the Wenlock and our arrival at the Cult Member Processing Centre. You see, it involved a visit to yet another well-regarded Mexican restaurant in London. And lest I be accused of being obsessive about this topic, erm, well, I suppose those accusations should stand.

This time it was a visit to Green & Red (just around the corner from aforementioned slaughterhouse), a place that's been receiving quite a few good reviews, both for its focus on drink (Time Out), and its food (london-eating). The food reviews in particular gave us some encouraging signs: frequent references to authenticity and regional focus (Jaliscan in particular), and contrast to the standard "London Tex-Mex" which has been so rightly scorned by so many for so long. We arrived and managed to get one of the few remaining tables (all had "reserved" cards, but we were seated anyway, thanks to some combination of charisma, persuasion, and maybe a sense that we would go berserk and run amok if denied a table) in the dining area (there was also a very nice-looking downstairs bar area). We started off with a selection of tasty cocktails mostly along the tequila dimension (Margarita, Diablo, and a pomegranate something-or-other). My Diablo was nice, although perhaps nothing to write home about (yet here I am doing exactly that). But we were really just biding our time until the food arrived.

After not very long at all, it happened. The highlight of the meal was one of the starters: excellent guacamole with totopos. Not a very large portion at all, but then again it was a starter. We also had a relatively spicy (and also not very large) chile relleno, and some fairly ordinary (perhaps a bit citrusy/spicy) corn-on-the-cob. Those all disappeared rapidly (think heads down, spray of saliva, blur of forks, etc. Or at least that's what my side of the table was like). And then it was time for the mains. I ought to mention that the menu is quite limited (it does seem more like a bar than a restaurant; the drinks menu is far more extensive than the food menu): six choices of mains: four meat, one fish, one vegetable. So it wasn't too difficult to decide what to order. I had the fish, a very nice sea bream cooked in a banana leaf + tomato/ancho salsa; we generally thought this was the best of our main dishes. Mrs. Dunce had a pumpkin thingy ("Roast ironbark pumpkin with lentils, sweet potato and chayote"); and the mysterious third party had the birra, a slow-cooked marinated lamb shank that's featured quite frequently in reviews of the place. Along with the mains came a somewhat paltry serving of refried beans (nice, but small), shredded cabbage, small (freshly made) corn tortillas, and a couple of salsas. We all had the same general reaction to the food: we enjoyed everything, and considered it far, far beyond "traditional London Mexican fare", but (except for the guacamole) we were not truly excited by any of it. Maybe we've become jaded by the sudden boom in good Mexican food in London, but there are still a couple of restaurants I think are better than Green & Red: El Panzon and Mercado (I'll start subtracting points if Mercado's website stays as it is. "Opening May 2006" indeed). As far as Mexican *restaurants* in London are concerned, anyway. Green & Red's strength seems to be as a cocktail bar, moreso than a restaurant. We paid our bill (just under £90 including 12.5% service charge) and made our way to be indoctrinated by the Circulus cultists.

consume
Thursday, August 17, 2006 1:00:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Recall and concentration
The following email was forwarded to me (and many of my colleagues), concerning a potential partnership between academia and big business. Somehow I don't see it happening, for any number of reasons. (The name of the well-known company and its main product have been obscured in the vain hope that hired goons won't show up at my door).


"In 2002 a research paper was released which indicated that [a junk food product] may help improve recall and concentration and [LargeCompany] are interested in revisiting this research to see if it's true.
 
I work for [LargeCompany] and we're in the process of organising a project and wondered if your department might like to be involved. The concept is a consumer-friendly short campaign that is built around 'Boosting Britain's Brain Power'. To underpin the campaign we'd like a refresh of the initial research which indicated that [aforementioned junk food] might help improve recall and concentration - is this something your department might be interested in getting involved with? We'd also be looking for someone to act as a professional spokesperson for a few media interviews to discuss the research which would help further raise the profile of your department.
 
Spinning out from this research, we will then look to further prove the findings by approaching failing pub quiz teams across the UK and equipping them with [junk food product] over a period of time to explore if it improves their performance. We're hoping for some guidance on a simple test that could be performed before testing begins and then after testing is completed.
 
The key though is a refresh of the initial research. I'd be happy to discuss this further with you, and would value an indication of your interest as soon as possible. We're hoping to go live with this campaign by the end of August so we need to move relatively quickly."

science
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 4:26:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [5]  | 
How confusing
There's a TV ad running currently for a company offering some sort of insurance advice through their website: "confused.com". Most of the ad consists of various satisfied customers (or actors portraying same) extolling the virtues of "confused.com". But this is one of those cases where the spoken-aloud URL sounds totally ambiguous to me: it could be either "confused-dot-com" or "confuse-dot-com". This isn't uncommon at all (think of other cases where a word ending with "d" is followed by a word starting with "d", e.g. "red rum" vs "red drum"), but in this case it's potentially damaging to business -- of course the owners of "confuse.com" have created their own "insurance information portal" which looks suspiciously like a link farm, spam blog, whatever you want to call it. I'm sure this is just a coincidence....

language
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 3:21:41 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, August 04, 2006
Great British Beer Festival 2006
Earlier this week Mrs. Dunce and I made our annual visit to the Great British Beer Festival. This year was a particularly good one, as we had booked advance tickets to a tutored tasting event, "Champion Beers of Britain". All the beers to be tasted were rated as top of their category by a panel of judges, and the champions had only been selected the day before the tasting (so we were tasting the same batches that had been judged). Our guide through these beers was Roger Protz, one of the best-known beer experts out there (I'd say that at least in English-speaking circles, only Michael Jackson [not that one] is a contender, and ). Protz has written all sorts of beer-related books, including 300 Beers To Try Before You Die, Complete Guide to World Beer, and a mess of others. The tasting included six beers, one from each of six categories. For each one we got to hear some interesting information about the category and the style of beer, an exact description of the ingredients, and then Protz's comments on the "cyclops" features of each one (appearance, aroma, flavor). Most importantly, those aspects that (in his opinion, as one of the panelists) led to each beer's selection as champion. Here are our own opinions of each one:

Mild: a traditional sort of dark beer, lower in alcohol (usually in the 3% range), intended for industrial workers (after work!). The winner of this category was Oscar Wilde Mild, by Mighty Oak brewery. This was the first one we drank, and got Mrs. Dunce's vote for her favorite beer of the festival: "smells like chocolate milk; growing chocolate taste". I noted that it had a very light starting flavor, and was an easy drinking mild. We both rated this one as a "full smile".*

Bitter: another traditional style, lighter in color than mild, and with an alcohol content of up to about 4%. The winner was Cambridge Bitter by Elgoods, which included roasted barley in its ingredients (unusual for a bitter). I found it very very bitter indeed, but a nice mix of malty and hoppy flavors (my favorite beers are usually quite hoppy). The finish was quite long; it had a very lingering flavor. Mrs. Dunce (who isn't hop-crazy like me) said "not too hoppy, very sweet finish. Complex malt balances it". Two more "full smile" ratings.

Best Bitter: Higher in alcohol than the Bitters (cut-off point seems to be 4%), the winner here was Sussex Best by Harvey's. This one was the runner-up in the overall championship, and Roger Protz's favorite (also voted as favorite by the tasting audience, but perhaps strongly biased after hearing Protz's effusive praise). "A hymn to the hop" is how he described it. I enjoy the hops, and no surprise I liked this one: very smooth drinking, hoppy but mellow. Not so much malt flavor, particularly in contrast to the previous bitter which had a notable malty taste. Mrs. Dunce thought "Definitely hoppier, but still well balanced. Bitter finish". Yet again we gave two "full smile" ratings to this one.

Strong Bitter: Here we go: this category is even higher in alcohol content. The winner, Centurion's Ghost by York was 5.4%, and had a very strong aroma. Mrs. Dunce said "beautiful aroma; chocolate, coffee, raisin flavors with a very dry finish." I thought there were all sorts of flavors going on, very roasted, maybe coffeeish. Long, long, long finish. This one was my favorite of the festival (by quite some margin), and Mrs. Dunce also gave it yet another full smile.

Specialty Beer: This category includes beers that don't fit into the other classifications. The winner, Tradewinds by Cairngorm, included a substantial amount of wheat (30%) but is considered "specialty" because of an additional ingredient: elderflower (added at the end of the copper boil, ie when secondary hopping is being done). I didn't notice anything elderflowery about it (but might not recognize elderflower if it bit me in the bum). At first I rated it only a half smile as it seemed more aromatic than flavorful. But it grew on me, as a nice light and tasty beer. Mrs. Dunce was not quite as impressed, considering it unsubtle and giving it only a half-smile rating: "hoppy and peppery aroma. Bitter in the mouth but growing sweetness. A little bit one-note".

Golden Ale and Overall Champion: The winner of this year's Golden Ale category was also deemed the overall champion: Brewer's Gold by Crouch Vale. This beer also won last year's overall championship, something that has never happened in the history of the award. It's made from identical ingredients to lagers, but is brewed in an ale style. There was some discussion from the audience about this, especially as golden ales have won more than their fair share of awards recently (according to some), and whether this is bad for "ale in general". And whether one year's champion should be ineligible the next year. Anyway, on to the tasting. Hmmmmmm. It was definitely not a double-champion in our eyes. It had a very, very lemony aroma ("smells like floor cleaner" said Mrs. Dunce); the flavor was very hoppy, and I thought it would be much better if only I could drink it without smelling it. Mrs. Dunce found it just too lemony, and very one-note all the way through with the palate and finish almost exactly the same. "Flat mouth" ratings from both of us.

And that was the end of the tasting. It was a really fun thing to do, and in addition to the details about tasting, there were plenty of interesting comments, discussions, Q&A and asides about brewing, beer history, international styles and so on. But then, the beer festival itself was still going on, so we made our way downstairs where all sorts of choices awaited us. As usual some of our intended targets were not available (or just overlooked), but we still managed to have several additional beverages before running out of energy. Comments on them are noted below (perhaps not in the order in which they were consumed):

Maypole Mild by Oakleaf. Mrs. Dunce gave this a half-smile: sharp start but a good finish.

Malvern Magic blended perry from Herefordshire. I thought this was ok, maybe a half-smile. It was rated as 10 on the 1-12 sweet-to-dry scale, but I thought it was somewhat sweeter than a 10 would warrant. Somewhat bland and not all that complex (this judgment may be affected a lot by following all the champion beers).

Black Gold by Cairngorm (same brewer as Tradewinds, the elderflower Specialty Beer noted above). Mrs. Dunce gave it a half-smile, noting its bitter/malt balance.

Double Hop by Robinson's. I gave this one a flat mouth. Very bland and uninteresting; nothing wrong with it but nothing particularly right, either.

Dunkels Weissbier by Andechs. The only beer from outside the UK either of us tried this time around. Mrs. Dunce gave it a full-smile rating, "Dark and refreshing, like it should be". The only full smile rating from either of us outside the "champion beer" tasting. Which set a high standard indeed.

IPA by Woodlands. I gave this one a rare full frown rating. It was sharp and nasty. Very dry and unpleasant to drink. I even poured it out instead of finishing it.

Midnight Stout by Woodlands: Flat mouth rating by Mrs. Dunce who called it "undignified"; nothing special.

Dragon Smoke Stout by Beowulf. Yes, for some reason we tried an awful lot of dark beers at this festival. I found this one ok, worth a half-smile rating. It had a nice roasted flavor you'd expect from a stout, a lot of bitterness, but not quite top of the heap.


*Our rating system is quite elementary in nature, as it's designed to withstand various potential issues related to beer festivals, particularly the possibility that many different products may be consumed and thus a complex system might fail disastrously. Hence, the smily face rating system:
full smile: liked this beverage unreservedly
half smile: enjoyed it, but it could be improved upon
flat mouth: fine, but nothing special
half frown: not so great, but not terrible
full frown: bad, nasty, maybe even worth pouring out instead of finishing it.

consume
Friday, August 04, 2006 12:46:40 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  | 
 Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Day in Whitstable
As a sort of escape from last week's heat wave, on Saturday Mrs. Dunce and I set off for a seaside adventure: a day trip to Whitstable (wikipedia link). Perhaps best known for its oyster festival which by a remarkable coincidence just happened to be going on at the time. We got an early start (leaving the house at 9:15, which is impressively early compared to ordinary Dunce Saturdays), and made it there by midday or so (somewhat pleased that most of the drunken, lairy individuals riding in the same carriage of our train were continuing on to Broadstairs or perhaps Ramsgate or Margate).

Most of the other people who did get off the train at Whitstable made a beeline towards the sea, while we took a more leisurely approach via Whitstable's shopping district/main drag. This gave us a chance to stop by the local history museum and perhaps build our anticipation of eating some seafood. Soon enough we had made it to the eafood market, where we couldn't stop ourselves from joining the queue for fresh oysters (cracked and cleaned on the spot, £3 for a half-dozen). Plenty of other tasty-looking seafood items were also on offer but we managed to resist... for the moment. It was nice and sunny but not too hot, so we found ourselves a bench at the top of the Tankerton Slopes and relaxed with the nice sea view:

(all photos by Mrs. Dunce). At the bottom of the photo you can see some ;traditional British beach huts, and off in the distance some sailboats massing for the start of a regatta. We hung out on the bench, relaxing, for two or three sailboat-circuits, before we finally wandered down the hill to the "beach". A close-up will reveal the truth:

The rocky beach was very uncomfortable for my poor, soft, coddled feet, but somehow I drew upon every ounce of strength to brave the crashing waves of the open sea.


Then we wandered along the path, past many more beach huts:


Three oysters apiece can hardly be considered a proper lunch, so then it was time for a real lunch at East Quay Shellfish Restaurant. We were hoping for fried oysters, or perhaps a bit of crab, but many items on the menu were no longer available (having been eaten by customers who ate their lunch at lunchtime). Instead we went with fish and chips, very tasty I should add (Mrs. Dunce's huss was especially good). And just around the corner from the restaurant... what could it be but a beer festival? We didn't go overboard, and we stuck strictly to the local offerings (Whitstable Brewery's Oyster Stout, Raspberry Wheat, East India Pale Ale; and Nelson's Powder Monkey). There weren't many shaded areas but we managed to find seats at a picnic table under a rather bedraggled tent, where we relaxed some more and watched the seaside action. As the afternoon went on, it started to get cloudy, and a pretty serious sea breeze kicked up. So of course we moved out to the edge of the (very unsheltered) pier, where we sat for a while longer until the bracing winds became a little bit too much for us:

(I do not ordinarily wear my hair slicked back, and you'll notice I am looking straight into the wind, just in case an unnaturally heavy gust of wind somehow catches my glasses from behind and whips them off my face, in which event they will no doubt be lost in the sea, and I'll have to be helped home by my longsuffering wife).

We wandered around town some more, building up a bit of an appetite for one more dose of seafood. Perhaps a bit apprehensively as we didn't have reservations anywhere. But we managed to get a table at Pearson's Crab and Oyster House (pub downstairs, restaurant upstairs), provided we finished before the customers who were actually organized about their dinner. A really nice table with a sea view, no less. The staff were a little overwhelmed (and I think I even saw one couple being delivered a second set of main courses after their table had been cleared of the first; some sort of serious miscommunication I suppose), but our food was really good (contrary to bad reviews I noticed elsewhere just now). I had a cold crab salad with heaps and heaps of crab, almost more than I could eat; Mrs. Dunce had a tuna steak with green chile pesto [sic]. We did have a dessert (summer fruits thingy) and coffee, but the service had slowed to a crawl and we (or at least I) became quite anxious about getting to the station in time for the train (only one per hour at this time of day). A brisk walk through town got us to the station at the very moment the 8:24 (or so) train arrived (see, I was justified in panicking, especially when people walking ahead of us broke into a run, or when we crossed a bridge and found ourselves on the other side of the station, with a locked gate between us and the platform).

The train was absolutely packed with seaside revellers who had been enjoying the sun at one or more of the aforementioned seaside locations. The fashion of the day seemed to be horribly painful looking sunburns of a traditional English variety. Such bad sunburns that you didn't want to get near them because they were radiating so much heat. Anyway, we stood among the many standing-room-only passengers until our loaded train joined up with an empty one and we could flop into a pleasantly empty carriage. And the trip home passed without incident (unless you consider small children playing, and playing, and replaying mobile phone ringtones to be an incident). All in all, a wonderful day out.

travel
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 3:42:25 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  |