Life following the return

So day 2, which I promised to wax eloquent about a couple of months ago, was as good if not better than day 1 at Singapore. It culminated in the most exquisite black pepper crab. Facebook has some rather gruesome pictures of me battling the crab with utmost relish.
Anyway life's back to it's monotony of cracked heads and all that, barring of course the possession of Angry Birds for PC. (No I don't have an iphone or an android and the #$!@#$ Nokia 5800 doesn't have the game)
It saps productivity in the cackle of victorious birds and the occasional plaintive oink of the pigs that are decimated one by one.
Play it at your own risk. It's free on the android and obviously paid on the mac. But well worth it.
In other news I found a grill pan. Neat bit of kitchen appliance-ry that is. And on it's maiden voyage this is what it created.

That's chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon, paprika, mace and allspice with a tomato salsa and mashed potatoes.

Hungry kya?

C&H

So, here goes today's funny of the day...

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

He has a point I think... though i'm not sure what to do with the layout.

In other things that move and shake and all that I'm back to my one flu over the cuckoo's nest state of mind. And the immortal words of Ace Ventura ring painfully in my head - It is the mucus that binds us.
But we'll have to do something about the frequent viral infections. Get out of the cesspit of infection you work in, you'd say. However that is not a consummation that will eventualize.
Yes that is MY word. Eventualize, verb, To become an eventuality.
Other options include cod liver oil (yuck), general green leafy vegetables (cysticercosis, here I come) and my top favorite immunity enhancing concoction - Waterbury's Compound. Which turns out has an I love Waterbury's compound page on Facebook.
I'm sure I've mentioned Waterbury's before, 40% alcohol and and eary morning buzz... It's there somewhere.
Anyway me off the get me some of that or brandy.
And for those of you who live in Bangalore, there's a nice little place tucked away behind Richmond Road called Under the Mango Tree. It's good. Go eat there.

Path, Pasta, Pod

So, some many unfinished prematurely done posts are beginning to clog up my thought process. The saved drafts section is slowly growing to near epic proportions. There are posts about music, movies, new year rants, resolution promises and even that magnum opus on the evolution of pornography that I've been planning for many a year now.
The last one of course is never ever going to get published. For many reasons. One my research (purely academic) is never going to get done. Every day I think I have enough material to go forth and wax eloquently but a cursory check reveals some new and often unimproved piece of absolute kink that warrants more investigation. Now if we'll avoid the innuendo and the puns and the general nonsense in the comments for that I'll be glad but then again one can never be sure. Anyway thankfully all is streaming and none is stored. So they can't find me.
Got me a bigger and better iPod recently and have spent the better part of one early morning filling it up and drooling over coverflow. It's not rocket science and seeing the album covers whizz by is never ever going to change music quality but I still choose to drool.
And speaking of drool since when we have very little to actually talk about outside of an absolutely terrible start to the year with respect to work , I decided that my month in Pathology (this one) is going to be spent in the pursuit of updating this place a tad more regularly. Maybe even the porn post.
Pathology is a strange subject. It deals with the dead. In a convoluted not-so-comforting way so does neurosurgery but that'll change in the next many years. I hope. The joy in having the absolute last word is omnipresent in jars of formalin and bits of paraffin. People stare rapturously into bifocal and confocal and fluorescence microscopes deriving pleasure from little bits and blue and pink and ultimately pronouncing life and death judgments. And as I found out today, destressing with Shakespeare. They didn't take too kindly when I picked a skull up and proclaimed in a baritone, "Alas, Yoric! He was a good friend." Or when some technician was heating a beaker full of some noxious looking fluid elicited a"fire burn and cauldron boil."
Tomorrow there promises to be a session on gross anatomy (yeah that's what it's called. with good reason.) of the brain. Where we slice and dice a real thinker to learn how the hippocampus curls in around the dentate gyrus and how the choroid fissure runs in the inside of the brain and how if time and circumstance permit, the perfumes of Arabia will never wash the smell of blood off my hands.
No such humor is not appreciated. Though strangely referring to a malignant brain tumor which would translate from slide to reality as a life expectancy of 6 months, as beautiful is considered standard behaviour.
And of course the jabs at neurosurgeons who never remove the right part, neurologists who never send enough tissue for diagnosis and radiologists who never supply enough clinical data are a part of the daily schedule.
But enough about pathos.
Dinner sometime ago was a tomato and pepperoni pasta.



Straight forward stuff really. Blanch tomatoes, peel and cut roughly. Saute some finely sliced onions in olive oil, toss a crushed clove or two of garlic. Once they're soft, in go the tomatoes and some tomato puree. Add salt and paprika and oregano/basil/mixed herbs. Let it all simmer away merrily till it looks, tastes and smells cooked. Feel free to throw in some pepperoni slices/cut up sausage along the way. Al dante some pasta in the mean time and drain out the water. Mix it all up. Top with grated parmesan.

Bon appetit.

Legal Eagle

So, a while ago, I solemnly swore that I would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on the matter in question yesterday. Was called in to give evidence for a sod who came in from the cold a tad too late for anybody to do anything about. It all began with a cop who walked up to me one morning and presented me with an arrest warrant in my name. Bailable with payment of Rs 500/-. Why? In order that yours truly doth show his countenance at the 2nd MM traffic court on such and such a date and time... "Where was the summons", I enquired. Oh we stopped issuing those. We find that a warrant makes responses quicker and you fellows also turn up only when threatened with arrest.Point.

So I landed up at this crowded courthouse and ambled around trying to locate my liason in the servers and protectors of society. Got accosted by three lawyers who wanted to represent me in whatever matter I was apparently caught up in before I made my way to the aforementioned 2nd MM Traffic Court and met the cop in question. About half an hour of roll call later I was asked to step up in the witness box. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, an actual witness box with a judge and a court reporter and evil eyed defence lawyers hanging on to my every word. So I told my story and was politely asked to exit stage right soon after. 

While I was pleasantly surprised about the speed of it all I was a tad disappointed that I wasn't cross examined and all that.

Anyway a good double lamb burger from ice and spice and all was laid to rest.

Brilliant how Ice and Spice has turned out be some really nice deli type place. Cheery interiors and a lamb patty and mayo to die for. 

I remember it being some bathroom tiled joint some many thousand of years ago with the same to die for lamb patty. 

Times and people have apparently changed so the place has a new look enveloping the old burger. 

Go try it. St Mark's Road, opposite the State Bank of India. Sandwiched between a wine shop and Noon Wines. 

Speaking of Noon Wines when one is feeling substantially brave and all that feel free to drop in and have that battery acid that he serves in the guise of "house wine". It's potent and honestly the fact that it doesn't taste like any wine you've ever had gets significantly blurred after 3 glasses. 

And then last week I decided that Ice and Spice is too far to get to for a burger and one happy day decided to try my hand at making them. 

Lamb mince, chopped onions, seasoning (whatever you want, I used salt and red chilli powder(yeah I toyed with saying paprika)), and egg and bread crumbs went in to a bowl and got shaped into patties and cooked on a skillet with just a little oil till both sides were wonderfully done. Buns sliced in half, lettuce, slices of tomato and onion, mustard and mayo and voila... 

Bon appetite.

Just like that...

Oh Joy to the world. Blogger now saves drafts automatically. But that apart this bit of blogger has been neglected by author and audience alike as the weekly updates from sitemeter inform me and the occasional sojourn into Google Analytics reaffirms. Now Google Analytics has a new and hitherto undiscovered version that I need to analyze once I have the time and bandwidth but as of now I know someone in East Anglia read my blog. I thank you, friend.

I wasn't going to post, the way things are going, but when I came to know that people's early morning bowel movements were loosely connected to what I wrote or rather whether I wrote, things change from hobby to moral and intestinal responsibility. At this point I'm tempted to say that those who can blog and those who can't photo blog, but I won't be mean and instead hopefully just generate drool and other such Pavlovian reflexes.
Will probably write when I have something funny to say, till then here's a taste of last week's bruschetta and a little more.

Drool.
Provoloni and Pepperoni on fresh Ciabatta Bread

The aforementioned bread with olives, fresh tomatoes and basil. And a hint of the 70% chocolate.


"All the better to eat them with..."

Adios amigos, till next time where hopefully I'll have a happy review of Pirates III and some news about where I'll be doing my Neurosurgery.

Green?

This was supposed to be a post filled with pictures of great food and a detailed description of each ingredient and the process that ultimately leads to fried mozzarella with salsa, fresh ciabatta bread with olive tapenade, fresh basil, provolone cheese and tomato and pepperoni slices. With the not very dry but still good Jacob's Creek Chardonnay. And the 70% cocoa chocolate.
Needless to say the food and drink got over before I realised that my initial intentions, albeit good were forgotten in the hedonism of atherogenic food.
Then I slept.
Now awake, all I can do is gloat with my cup of coffee and offer little tips.
Buy bread crumbs and frequently practice crumb-frying. It's a skill that can and will come of assistance when all else fails.
The keys to good salsa are coriander (or cilantro if you prefer) and believe it or not Cumin (jeera, you katpadi). But tomatoes being anemic at this time of the year throwing in some prepackaged puree is a good idea if one is mildly anal about the redness of it all.
Olives. Anytime, any place, anywhere. Beware the pre-pressed variety that has the oil and the life has been squeezed out of it. Those aren't worth the brine they're soaked in.
What else? Bread should be fresh and if consumption is contemplated with all the above flavours, stick to a single grain bread. Weird grains, as Calvin has said, sometimes adds a conflicting taste to the food.
I want to leave it all get paid by travel and living (which apparently has a show called Wife-Swap, and which unfortunately is not what I think it is) and do an Oliver's Twist like show for them.
Well, not really but it would be close behind NeuroSurgery in the Grand Scheme of things.

Foodie

I used to be a foodie. Reveling at the thought of a square meal, wondering what dinner would be during lunch and planning lunch during breakfast.
Then hostel happened. In the midst of unidentifiable fried objects and the occasional worm wriggling it's way out of the aforementioned UFOs I lost my appetite, love for sambar, and a distaste for garlic rasam. As I slowly regain my taste buds, oodles of weight and that happy contended look that only comes from eating food that can, in twenty years, give you a heart attack. So chronicled below are some of the gastronomic excesses that I've indulged in over the past couple of months.
The usual disclaimers apply as does a profound regret that I don't take pictures of my food.
In no temporal profile or order, first up - Punjabi by Nature. Gol guppas with Absolut peppar aside this place I think has the best local fare for the worst possible price. While as expensive, if not more than the urban dhabas at Pandara Road, PbN scores over them as it serves alcohol. The Galouti Kabab, which as rumour would have it was created for a Lucknowi Nawab who was either edentulous or had a full set of snappers that he was just to lazy to use, is understandably a dish of the rich and famous of an era gone by. Lamb meat that's been tenderized and then pounded to oblivion to create a kabab that melts in one's mouth. Like swiss chocolate, only richer. The kabab itself is delicately spiced with saffron. Explains the price but also the total satisfaction that follows it's consumption. The Dal Makhani is by far the best I've had. It's a tough call between Bukhara and here but since Bukhara was too long ago and the people who fed me then are too far away I think we'll give PbN an edge. And it's not just the fat that makes it taste good. The butter chicken should be had for the gravy and not the chicken, again wondering if the folks at the Habitat Centre's Dilli-o-Dilli do a better job. Overall, recommended if rich, if not then still recommended once in a lifetime. a
Karim's. If one has to take the metro across Delhi to get paperwork done at the University and the train passes below old Delhi, an urge almost magnetic causes one to hop off on the way back at Chawri Bazaar and follow the mass of humanity to Jama Masjid and thence to Karim's. For those of you who've read Wells' Time Machine, Chawri Bazaar is like the future only flipped. The wendols live above and occasionally saunter down 30 feet or more to the metro station and thankfully haven't yet started kidnapping young nubile things. But that apart a quick rickshaw ride from the station to Karim's and Mutton Biryani and Mutton Korma is the way to go. The prices are reasonable while the quantity appears lacking. But nay, never let the initial sight disappoint you since the end result is the usual sated expression. Any food there floats in a lake of fat. And makes life worth living. The rice itself is heavenly. No added colour, just plain rice and a chunk of meat. Unlike the biryanis down south (Hyderabad included) the major flavour is of the meat itself and something else they add that I haven't been able to identify. Again, worth your while and now that the metro goes close enough it shouldn't be too much of a problem to actually get there.
Finally there's this hole in the wall in RK Puram called Nazeer's delicacies. I haven't been there and till now all transactions have been over the telephone. But that is sufficient for him to send over tangri kababs and sheeks in half an hour. The tangri needs a special mention. A large leg of a bird, or the leg of a large bird miraculously stuffed with kheema and raisins and cashew nuts. And the meat is moist and tender and that special centre just makes the 25 bucks I spend on it worth while. The sheeks too are suspiciously beefy, which so far north is a surprise. Beef or not that too should be tried.
On a quick last one, the Habitat Centre had a bengali food festival the last time I went there and they gave me this steamed fish wrapped in a banana leaf. Don't know what it's called but sure liked it enough to believe that fish can be eaten.
So what's left? I still need to try the Chicken Lababdar at Moti Mahal in the M Block market, I need to try fish at Ploof, non Mughlai UP cuisine at Nand Lal Dhaba and maybe a couple more that I can't quite remember. Till then, bon appetit.

Lead me not into...

...Temptation Wines.

Church Street is probably the most hedonistic place in bangalore. Unapt (it can't be inapt, can it?) nomenclature aside, greed and gluttony are worshipped and I'm sure in the recesses of the dark night you could add maybe lust and a couple more. And they call it Church street.

There was a plan, maybe a year ago to make it the upmarket "food street" like Ibrahim Sahib or that unnamed road of joy in the middle of VV Puram. And perhaps it can still be that. Some twenty odd restaurants dotting the 20 foot-wide asphalt serving everything from insipid samosas to appam and pandi curry, throw in some good biryani and a smattering of sushi and there you have it.

So a bunch of us where there last night under the awning of the very aptly named Temptation Wines. Sitting on the steps 6 feet from the road belting Bacardi and beer and making the worst jokes possible. For the record the link to silly puns was a hit with at least one person. I'm happy. As a certain commenter so succinctly put it, the rest of you can sod off if you don't like it. After much consumption of legal alcohol and discussions on the more illicit paakits which depending on the ISI (indian standards institute) mark on them may or may not turn you blind, we proceeded to the high temple of non -vegetarianism, videlicet, Empire. Now the normal grilled chicken/chicken kabab, ghee rice is an all time favourite but the management at Empire (who apparently have up to 60 Lakhs worth of outstanding Chicken credit with various sources of poultry in and around Bangalore) have opened an Arabian joint on the roof top. And to save time the menu (sans the prices) is printed on the door of the lift so one can decide what one's poison is on the way up. There are of course signs imploring one to use the stairs since it is perhaps a healthier way to ascend.

Standard issue pita breads and humus and sheekhs exist but the thing to consume is the Kabsa mutton. Which is a huge chunk of meat served on a bed of rice. We've done meat before but this chunk was simply incredible. Tender to a fault and when held up, meat slides off the bone under the influence of gravity. Gravity! No fork, hand, pulling, biting. Just slides off. Incredible. The chicken version isn't such a big deal, in fact it pales in comparison to the red meat.

Satisfaction guaranteed.

Orkut has decided to become user friendly and there's a new thing on the line which is innovatively titled "Gazzag". Cool palindromes apart will review it when I can.

Microwaved rays

Ok this is, as embarrassing as it may be to admit, the third time I'm sitting down to write a post in 2 days. It's not just your average writer's block, apparently, which usually resolves in the second attempt to write a post, unless one is James Joyce. Or some pathologically deranged creature with suicidal intent every time a blog goes unwritten.
The problem is that this is to some extent therapeutic. If we could get the average agoraphobic sociopath to blog and of course throw in some fake comments to con them into believing someone was listening we'd manage to get old Sigmund into the Internet age. Of course these need to be access controlled since we don't want other agoraphobic, sociopathic, Internet junkies getting ideas to destroy civilian life and property from them.

So here goes attempt three.

The stingray menace is being actively tackled down under, apparently by dragging them onto land. What is wrong with people? Steve Irwin died. We're sorry about that but lopping tails off stingrays doesn't solve anything. I'm not even sure they taste good. But this might just explain things.

In other things that managed to mess my life up, albeit not significantly enough is the microwave. This device powered by electricity but more importantly radiation at 2450 MHz (that's a wavelength of 12 cm approx, which I thought was pretty large) was the brainchild of one Percy Spencer whose candy bar melted in front of a Radar. Stopping short of running down the streets naked and proving the Archimedes principle yet again, he patented it and for many generations ensured that his descendants could live off the interest from the royalties.
That's not the story. Of late the microwave oven has become an indispensable kitchen accessory. Of course it can't grill or roast but who wants the carcinogens anyway. We like boiled food nowadays - it's apparently healthier. And even more salubrious if we do away with salt and pepper. Garlic is still fine. But if you want to breakfast on it just make sure you stay out of the halitotic radius.
In a woman-less household the microwave is of prime importance. In many a bachelor pad, the day starts with paying obeisance to this mighty machine of easy cookery. And consuming it's offerings with relish. Mine is one such abode that resisted the temptation to get one for many a year till our fridge (which contains mostly cold stored pickle, beer and orange juice) died a sad demise. Some wheeling-dealing later we now have a new fridge and a microwave. Joy was that day. Food could be warmed in 2 minutes, pop corn was now do-it-yourself and aerosol cans were no longer kept in stock.
Things went along well. The bell was a joyous sound that meant food was ready and hot. The hazards of trying to heat plastic boxes of frozen food - most involving molten/melted plastic and a tendency for it to coat the digestive passage - were no longer present. The metal rimmed mugs were strategically broken beyond Araldite's reach and all was good. Till Dad decided to put a bowl (microwave safe) of rajma in without a cover despite there being a full roll of cling wrap in the immediate vicinity.
The third item to be tested in a microwave ever, was an egg. Apocryphal perhaps, but here it went in before the chicken and needless to say it burst. As do tomatoes. Boiling rajma also as a similar tendency. Dinner therefore, involved spooning it out from all 6 walls of the oven and spending the rest of my life dreading the bell.

Tomorrow, they say, is another day.

And it's all...

... for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog, all for me beer and tabaccy. I'm spent all me tin, with the lassies drinkin' gin...

Utopia aside I had to think of a nice way to introduce the term groggy. This seems to be as good as any. I'm in some quasi awake state after a most miserable night. Before ye shrinks amateur or otherwise decide that I'm losing it, let me say that I am. And the regulator of my fan is busted.

There's a strange sense of security in moving air. As long as it's under a certain speed limit. Anything beyond, say '3', and it's a sense of dread. Almost as if hell has area of doldrums interspersed with the roaring forties - much like earth. Now roaring forties is what page 3 of the local news paper seems to be advertising at least 4 days in a week. That isn't the point again. The security in moving air, as I was saying, is strange. The result of this is the miserable night I had. The regulator is busted and like Hobbes all I have is off and high. So I'm stuck with either suffocating or wondering when the tornado lands in Oz. If that ever happened I'd probably stuff the scarecrow into the tinman, and convince the lion to eat Dorothy, maybe get movie rights from the wizard. So after deciding that some air was better than none, here I am sleepy, frozen, with a head full of weird dreams that I only seem to remember when I've had a bad night.

But it didn't seem so bad when it started off. Made dinner for dad and me. As a friend said, cooking is therapeutic. That line got modified after other treatment options included, for instance, folding clothes. The current panacea is doing anything with no one around to bug the beejezus out of me. So I made pasta with tomato sauce, the recipe follows.

Ingredients

2 ripe tomatoes

1 tin of tomato puree

1 medium sized Onion, preferably the white ones

4-5 button mushrooms

olives, salt, chili flakes, pepper, garlic, oregano and other assorted spices

olive oil

about 150 gms of pasta in any shape you desire. The usual packaging is 200gms but that's a little too much for the sauce. you could throw in more tomato, in which case you'll have to make the required adjustments.

so blanch the tomatoes (that's drop them in boiling water for a couple of minutes) and peel them and chop them. Saute some crushed cloves of garlic and that onion (finely chopped) in olive oil and once 'golden brown' (how I love saying that) throw the tomato and puree in and let it simmer. Add salt, pepper, chili flakes (stolen from any pizza outlet) and oregano. Throw in the mushrooms and olives after you've chopped them and stir the thing around on a low flame till it smells, looks and tastes cooked. By then the more perceptive of you would have boiled the pasta, if you haven't yet, well it's another ten minutes to dinner. Toss the pasta in the sauce and serve topped with grated cheese, again preferably Parmesan. You could serve this with garlic bread if you're into that kind of thing. So this, along with a death by chocolate (about 75% of which is now lying in wait in the freezer) was dinner. So it was good.

Then the fan ruined the rest of the night.

Tomorrow's my big day and then I have big days till the week ends. So this weekend is going to be a good one. Come what may.

Music reviews will be on hold till the weekend hangover passes.

But this just might be a good week considering Schumi, Maria, Martina and Leander won.

Vegetarian Golfers

Some many things have happened in and around my world that require a mention here. We'll start with this relatively alien concept of vegetarianism. As would have been obvious by now I don't really believe in it. What I do believe in is the freedom to break free the shackles of genetic predisposition and familial condtioning and the maturity to choose to eat beef biryani anytime, anywhere. But this isn't about me is it?
Came to hear of the various reasons why people "turned" veg.
1 - Couldn't bear the thought of a chicken being prepared for a meal. Then again couldn't bear the thought of wading in some paddy field either but that didn't stop rice consumption.
2 - Forest conservation project greenpeacenik realised that some forest she was trying to conserve was being slowly deforested for grazing land for sheep which became mutton in Bangalore. Hence no more meat.
3 - Marxism. Before some quizzical expressions are raised, here's the rub - The amount of resources that goes into feeding a sheep/goat for one sinful dinner of extravagance can be used to feed ten people. And thus...
And here I am asking people to rise in the food chain, stop depriving animals of their food, eat more protein.
This person I know bought two rabbits a few months ago. Because it's apparently hard to determine the sexuality and sexual orientation of rabbits, he ended up getting a pair of opposite sexuality and compatible orientation. He now has twenty. And is vegetarian despite being Bong, like no fish (Mr. D are you listening?).
And in Sports, today's story is the current golfing incident-accident. Turns out that somebody whacked a long shot with a 3 wood and yelled the perquisite "Fore". The ball guided by forced both dark and mysterious managed to get above the 40ft fence and brain the HD's security man. Before a collective akkan, just miss pervades the world, there's more. Another golfer more intrepid managed to set of a bomb scare when his wannabe birdie landed on some asbestos roof in the aforementioned HD's residence. So the servers and protectors hurried across to the golf course and held the golfer under custody. For what I can't imagine. I haven't heard of anybody outside of maybe Tiger Woods who can aim a golf ball into somebody or something. And if it's gone out of bounds then that would've been a really bad shot. The cops think otherwise and now want the place shut down and turned into a park. Haven't they gotten enough land to play aroud with or has the BMIC project gotten back online?
To wrap up we have the tech-entertainment section which essentially revolves around my pod. My iPod you perverse creatures, it's not the time for me to spore yet. The pod's been fitted with a screen protector and displays album graphics with each song, if properly ripped and tagged.
How cool is that?