Cornflower

And one more thing....

    

I see Yarnstorm is talking about comments today, and that's a subject that's been bothering me for a while. I used to answer every single comment by a personal email as soon as I possibly could. I have got terribly behind with that because of other commitments, and I get frustrated, too, when a reply and is bounced back because the commenter has given a non-functioning email address. So what's the answer? I really do welcome the comments as they add so much to the site, and I try always to follow any links, etc. given, but as I feel proper acknowledgement is required where possible I may just start doing as other bloggers do and "commenting on the comments".

Miscellaneous

A few notes and queries from the (v. cluttered) "Desk of Power":

Are you receiving me?
A couple of people have got in touch to say they are having trouble getting Cornflower to load properly. They may only be able to read the latest post, sometimes not even that, they can't open the comments and their computers freeze. Has anyone else had these difficulties? I realise that if you have you may not even see this post, far less be able to respond to it, but it would be helpful to know and I'll seek advice on what to do about it.



Baking
Notwithstanding this article (and with respect, the writer sounds like a stranger to their own kitchen) I shall call upon Cornflower's culinary experts to answer Alex's request for a recipe for classic baked egg custard tarts. I'm going to search my books for this, but if you have a great one (or a link to same) at your fingertips, both Alex and I will be delighted to hear about it - please leave a comment.



Books
No review proper here, but for all those who've mentioned they've read Snobs, I'd say that Past Imperfect is much better. Julian Fellowes does what he does very well indeed and apart from his brilliant dissection of social situations, his sometimes waspish, sometimes sympathetic commentary on class, changing society and mores and his pleasantly discursive style, there are some extremely moving scenes in this book. I loved it.



And more books
Just a reminder that our next Book Group book is Sue Gee's The Mysteries of Glass and we shall be talking about it on Saturday, November 8th. Do join in if you'd like to. And which book will come after that one? I'll be drawing a title from the hat soon.

Irene Nemirovsky

    

Further to Sunday's post, my thanks to Hannah for alerting me to "Woman of Letters", an exhibition telling Irene Nemirovsky's story, currently on at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York. For details look here.

A note on comments

    

I've had a couple of queries about comments as there appears to be some confusion over the way they are displayed. This is something I have no control over, other than to decide whether the most recent ones come at the top or bottom of the page. What seems to be foxing people is that the comment appears with a line under it and the commenter's name, date of posting, etc. under that. Below the name then comes another comment, and it could look - unless you're aware of the convention or have checked the format at the top or bottom of the page - as though those words go with the name directly above them. They don't! I'll put a couple of 'test' comments on this post so you can see what I mean, and I hope that explanation makes things clearer. I would stress that no-one's words are ever tagged with someone else's name, we just have to remember in reading them to interpret the layout correctly.

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A note to Ed: I tried to answer your point directly but my email was bounced back.

Can you help?

     Susan, in her comment on last week's soda bread post, asks if I have a good recipe for Barm Brack. The answer is, unfortunately, no, but a quick search on the web has provided this version (on a site relating to Jane Austen !), while this one looks good, though it doesn't use tea to soak the dried fruit, and then there's this from an Irish blog.

     But can Cornflower readers come up with something even better? If you can provide a tried and tested recipe - or a link or reference to one - please let us know, then I'll have a go at making it too and post the results.

    (By the way, Susan, I tried to reply to your comment directly by email but my response was bounced back).

Notes and queries

     Thankyou to everyone who took the trouble to respond to yesterday's post, and in such detail, too. It's clearly a complex subject and may well stand further exploration, but for now, thanks for all the excellent comments!

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    Alexander asked about the significance of the bee in some of the pictures I use here. My reply to his question was bounced back for some reason, so for Alexander and anyone else who's curious, the bee is superimposed by Bridgeman Art Library on all their pictures and is there, as far as I know, in order to stop unauthorised commercial reproduction of the images.

A note on comments

     I learned yesterday that some kind of technical problem had occurred whereby a comment apparently vanished from an earlier post. The commenter was quite naturally concerned that their words had been edited, but in the end we discovered that it was gremlins who were at fault, not me!

     I feel, though, that a word on the subject is in order. Only twice have I deleted a comment. The first occasion was an example of blatant self-promotion on the part of the commenter and was completely irrelevant to the post in question. The second time - rather more serious - was when a commenter (who'd clearly arrived here by way of a name search) cited an article about someone I'd referred to in a post. This article was misleading, ill-informed and based on malicious gossip; it was at best a slight to its subject and at worst libellous. I happen to know the person who was being attacked and could not let a reference of that nature stand on my site.

     Minor editing has taken place on two other occasions: once - at the behest of the commenter - to correct a typing error, and once to delete a remark which had gone a little too far off topic and which - again - the commenter herself asked me to remove. Otherwise, everything appears exactly as it was written.

    However, as we saw yesterday, technical problems do occur. I know that some readers cannot comment at all and they contact me by direct email when they have something to say. At other times comments do not 'go through' successfully and may not appear on the post, or they are mysteriously duplicated, in which case I delete the superfluous ones. Until recently it was my policy to reply directly to every comment I received, but two things make that difficult now. One is time constraints, but more relevant is the fact that though I should get every comment as a direct email, in practice I do not. This means I don't always know a comment has arrived  - though I usually do discover it later - and replying to it is a cumbersome procedure.

    The comments I get here are overwhelmingly positive, pleasant and help make the site what it is, so they are very important to me. I hope that they will keep on coming, and that readers will understand that I exercise my editorial prerogative in that respect only if something is offensive or inappropriate. Gremlins, however, are beyond my control!

Recipe

     Several people asked about the recipe for Christmas pudding which I mentioned the other day. If you click on the link on the left hand sidebar (just above 'Current Reading') you should find it.

A note

     My email program is being contrary just now, suiting itself, apparently, as to which messages come in and which go out. What this means, apart from the obvious, is that I am not always notified when a comment arrives and may not know it is there, so if I haven't replied when you've got in touch, that is most likely the reason. I hear that sometimes people are unable to leave comments at all - again, I've no idea why that should be - and anyone who signs in with a 'typekey' rules themselves out of a direct reply as I won't get their email address. Apologies for these breakdowns in communication; wouldn't it be great if the system were reliable?

Whispers of Venice

The game of Chinese whispers involves the repetition of a whispered phrase or sentence by a group of people in turn, with the cumulative errors produced by mishearing altering what is said so that the end result bears little resemblance to the original words. So it is with recipes. The adaptations of successive cooks can turn a dish on its head, and a casual addition here or omission there can change its character until the next interpreter reverts  - perchance - to a more authentic interpretation or creates something unconnected to its roots.

The chicken dish we ate yesterday (and for which several people have requested the recipe) is evolving in this manner. My starting point was Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, and she credits Claudia Roden, but their "Tagliatelle from the Venetian Ghetto" has moved on a little in our hands, so it's our version I'll give today. Precise quantities and timings are unimportant here - just throw in as much or as little of the flavourings as you like, and leave it all to sit in a warm place if it's ready before you are.

First, roast your chicken. Again, no chapter and verse here, but my method is a slow one. I pierce the skin and flesh on the breast and legs in several places and rub it with garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, seasoning it well.

More garlic and the remains of the lemon went into the cavity and it was given a 20-minute blast in a very hot oven followed by several hours at a much lower temperature.

While the chicken is cooking, toast some pine nuts (say about 100g. for 6-8 people) until golden brown, and soak 50g. of sultanas in enough dry sherry to cover. By all means use more or less according to taste, but the rice shouldn't dominate, so I'd be generous rather than stingy.

Everyone has their own method for cooking basmati rice, and mine comes from Claudia Roden again. Get in touch if you would like it, otherwise just do as you usually do, aiming to have the rice ready shortly before you want to eat.

Shred the chicken (which should by now be falling off the bone) and add it to the finished rice along with all the juices from the roasting tin and a little more olive oil if you feel it's on the dry side. Mix in the pine nuts, the sultanas with any unabsorbed sherry, some finely chopped fresh rosemary and a good bunch of flat leaf parsley.

Eat, while imagining yourself amid the glories of Venice!

Expensive tastes

Following on from yesterday's Colourist/cupcakes post, I see from this morning's "Scotsman" that another of Cadell's black-hatted lady pictures is coming up for sale soon. Sadly, with an estimate of up to £500,000, I shan't be bidding.

I can, Kant I?

Pretentious? Moi? Well maybe just a bit. It is many years since I had to use my head for the purposes of paid employment but I hope the grey matter hasn't quite reached the mush stage and can deal with the abstract as well as the purely practical, and when I don't know something I do try to find out. One of the advantages of being married to someone with the nickname "Two Brains" is that his encyclopaedic knowledge is there to be consulted when I need to look anything up, and yesterday when I wondered about the 'frame' as philosophical construct, he naturally had the answer.

A browse in the "Very Dusty Books" section of our collection (see above) produced some impenetrable texts, but luckily The Doc. was on hand to clear the fog. "Kant," he said as he helped me make the bed this morning, "'The Critique of Pure Reason', the bit about the dove." So just to show that a so-called "Domestic Arts Blog" (a hint of pretension, there, perhaps?) can yet include a reference to matters cerebral, here comes the quote in question, and make of it what you will. As to illustrations, where do you find light doves when you need them? As there isn't even as much as a wood pigeon in the garden this morning,  I've photographed the flying creatures my daughters made in Design Technology lessons - I'm sure Kant could have made the leap from dove to horse to dog, couldn't he?

"The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels, might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space. Just in the same way did Plato...venture upon the wings of ideas..into the void space of pure intellect."

Up, up and away!

Children's corner

Yesterday's rain-soaked post reminded me of this picture by Henriette Willebeek Le Mair. The print is titled "Raining, still raining", and the little girl's back speaks eloquently of her longing to go out to play! A little bit of searching through the wonderful Bridgeman Art Library collection revealed that the picture is also known as "A Voyage to India" and was one of the illustrations for A Gallery of Children by A.A. Milne. Here is what the Amazon catalogue says about it: In 1923, Henriette Willebeek Le Mair was commissioned by the Colgate Soap Company to do 12 pictures for use in advertisements. A.A. Milne agreed to write a series of short stories, or what he described as "a fanciful elaboration of each picture", so that they could be published in book form. Intriguing. So is the little girl in the picture looking forward to her voyage to India to escape the miserable wet weather, or is she pining for her family who have perhaps gone without her? We shall have to read the story to find out.

Here are some more of her beautiful and delicate pictures, all illustrations to nursery rhymes and the like and taken from our well-thumbed copies of three of her books:

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A note on Carl Larsson:

When I used this Larsson picture to illustrate an earlier post, many people commented on how lovely his work was. I am indebted to a kind reader, Barbara, who has found a source for Larsson cards - have a look here.

Decca records

Just as I was on the point of shutting down the computer and heading to bed last night, in came a surprise email. I was delighted to see that Peter Y. Sussman, the editor of Jessica Mitford's letters, had got in touch. You can read his comment here, and visit his own website, but do read the book as well: it is wonderful, spirit-lifting stuff, and thanks to Peter's hard work its 700+ pages will keep me going for a good while.

Take a look

One of the great things about having a weblog is that people respond to posts with suggestions for further reading on a subject, or to draw my attention to something relevant to what I've been writing about.

I hadn't heard of the Australian painter John Coburn until Elizabeth mentioned him when I was talking about Matisse and directed me to look at his work here, and Helen pointed me towards the most marvellous still-life of vegetables I hadn't come across before but which I see is not far from home. Take a look here.

Thankyou for these links; I'm looking forward to many more.