Author: Nat

Jun 20, 2009 by

Foody Friday: Mushroom Ketchup

Heston Blumenthal was making mushroom ketchup on Saturday Kitchen this morning, which really is all the reminder I need.

Ketchups came in a wide variety of flavours back in the 18th Century. They were, essentially, sauces and gravies made from anything you had a glut of. Seasonal fruit and veg appear a lot, but you can also find slightly stranger ketchups, like lobster. They contained everything they knew had a preserving element – salt, sugar, vinegar and alcohol, proportions varying depending on what you were preserving – and were commonly used like stock is today, to add flavour to other soups and sauces. They were far runnier than what we’re used to, and the flavours much stronger.

It’s believed ketchups were inspired by the sauces of the Far East. Lacking anything even vaguely similar to soy beans, we turned to mushrooms first, and worked out from there. Tomato ketchup was a latecomer from America, and was considerd a chutney in the UK at first, since it was so much thicker than any ketchup we knew. I’ll try and dig out the recipe for it for next week; I find 19th Century ketchup makes a wonderful salsa for barbeques!

So, here’s a recipe for mushroom ketchup. It’s slow, but it’s simple!

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Jun 16, 2009 by

Inspiration

I have to admit, though I haven’t forgotten about Foody Fridays, the fact it’s now June somehow past me by. I owe you a good selection of Victorian ketchups!

In the meantime, I have been keeping busy. Ravenous Romance put out a call for subissions for a fairy-tale inspired LGBT anthology, and I submitted a short story inspired by the Swan Maiden myths. I only discovered the anthology (thank you to K V Taylor) a few weeks before the deadline, so I was polishing it desperately on Monday evening, banking on the difference in timezones to get away with it! Normally I’d like to put a story like that aside for a week, and then polish, but unlike Douglas Adams I don’t have the luxury of listening to the deadlines whoosh by. The first half was a fourth draft, but the second half was written over the weekend.

Fingers-crossed, anyway. It shouldn’t be too long a way, since the anthology is due to come out in July.

The bleedover from the pressure is a desire to keep writing, even though that story is out of my hands, so I’ve started a new ghost story. It’s inspired by this news story, which reminded me of the opening of The Exorcist, and just couldn’t be let go.

Working the other way, two of today’s reports reminded me of some of my favourite stories! The International Atomic Energy Agency are sterilising mosquitos, which is disturbingly reminiscent of the opening of Raccoona Sheldon’s The Screwfly Solution, while in South West England people have reported flashes of green light in the sky; an invasion from Mars, or the beginning of mass blindness before carniverous plants take over the world? And you thought global warming was on the only sci-fi predicted threat we were facing this year!

In Canon Fodder, Reading, Writing
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Jun 10, 2009 by

Spirits

York is , according to  the Ghost Research Foundation International (GRFI),  the most haunted city in the world, which is quite an accolade. Not only that, but we have the oldest ghosts in the world too*. It’s unsurprising considering there’s been activity on this site for 6000 years.  The ghosts range from Roman soliders marching through a cellar floor to a man in a polo shirt and shorts hanging around one of the gates.

It’s no wonder, as a lover of ghost stories, I feel at home here! I even work in a building well known for being haunted, though that probably applies to about 50% of York these days. The BBC covers a couple here.

York has multiple ghost walks, all enjoyable, but if you’re looking for something self-led (and a bit more grown up), the History of York website has a Ghost Pub Walk (pdf). Even if you can’t make it to York, it’s a nice summary of several little ghost stories. I’d take any claim by a pub to be the Oldest in York with a pinch of salt; they’re all telling the truth, but by different definitions (oldest building, oldest licence, oldest spot known to have sold alcohol, oldest inn…). But then, if you’re stalking ghoulies, salt might come in handy!

 

*We’ve got some 2000 year old spooks, but it’s very rare to find ghost sightings of spirits more than 400 years old. It’s one of those little quirks that actually makes me more inclined to believe in them, though there’s probably a more rational explanation.

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Jun 1, 2009 by

Poetry

I surprised myself by writing poetry today. I started with prose, but the cadence of the sentence distracted me for a moment.

She follows with unfocused eyes

the lazy paths of dragonflies;

the mazy walk beneath the trees;

the hazy winding bumblebees

Lack of capitalisation and use of semi-colons as only punctuation deliberate. I’m being avant-garde.

The most difficult thing about poetry for me is stopping; I could add another couple of lines to this off the top of my head, and probably write another verse, but I think it would be a worse poem for it. For example, the below is nice on its own. It took a long time for me to shake the conviction that it needed many more lines to be “a proper poem”, but I’ve learnt to leave well alone now.

In what world walk you?

I walk where sky is darkening blue.

Wait you for me, or I for you?

Anyway, the BBC’s had a couple of good articles on poetry recently, what with the whole Professor of Poetry scandal. My favourite, I think, is why democracy doesn’t work for such posts.

I’m not generally a poet. Occasionally something will sound nice and I’ll write it down, or I’ll have a visual moment and know that certain words should be laid out a certain way, but it’s not something I generally pursue. Derek Des Anges credits poetry for her awesome prose (she didn’t phrase it like that, but it’s true). The skills acquired writing poetry – word choice skills some prose writers overlook, like rhythm, sound, and syntax – make for very well-crafted prose.

So, if you’re finding your prose feels dull or pedestrian, try writing some poetr; try rewriting it as poetry. Because the choices you have to make are subtly different, you’ll start looking at the words differently, and hopefully hone them a little more finely.

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May 23, 2009 by

Book Launch

So, on Thursday I went to a book launch for the first time*. Fiona Shaw’s Tell It To The Bees. Fiona and I go to the same dance class, hence the invite.

It was held at the local Waterstones after hours. There was (slightly warm) wine, but no nibbles. It’s not a particularly large shop, and like most of York it’s been cobbled together out of multiple Victorian and Georgian units originally built on different levels. Shelves and stands had been scooted out of the way to make space for about 100 chairs and a small stand at the front. The chairs were filled and there were plenty of people standing.

The book was published by Tindal Street Press, who put out about six ‘regional’ (i.e. not set in London) books a year, a significant proportion of which get longlisted for various national prizes. As far as I gathered it was the head of the company who actually ran the formal part of the evening. He was obviously not a public speaker, but he seemed experienced with running Book Launches. Intro, a reading, Q&A, a reading, some thanks yous, a final reading, and then onto the signing.

So, overall thoughts? It’s a cash cow for Waterstones, especially since the book fell under their 3 for 2 promo; most people in the audience bought a copy, several bought three, and a lot of people bought it and two other books at random.  The whole evening is fairly straight forward (if you’re not confident reading aloud, get thee to a writer’s group); I was expecting it to be similar to an exhibition opening at a gallery, but apart from the wine it really wasn’t.

Most people there were friends of Fiona. That’s what threw me; I don’t think I could fill a room like that. I know more than a hundred people (facebook even tells me I’m friends with them!) but how many would come out after work for a glass of cheap wine and an obligation to buy at £10 paperback? Two rows of close friends, maybe four including people there for the wine. Another row of people I know from work, and I guess a row of family.  That still leaves at least four rows! I think it probably gets easier when most of your friends have their own families. One friend plus spouse plus children equals four seats, right?

I’m being glib. Even Fiona said she’d not had a turn out like this before. I think the fact it’s her third novel, and fourth book, that really helped. And, let’s make note, she was inviting people she sees for an hour a week at a dance class**; that’s how you do it, you invite every single person you have a passing acquaintance with and hope half of them turn up. Even a low key book launch isn’t something for the faint-hearted. As always, you’ve got to sell yourself!

As for the book; well I’m going to get started on it this evening. Lesbians in the 50s in rural Yorkshire? It’s right up my street, anyway 🙂

*My normal syntax would be “I went to my first book launch”, but of course that suggests it’s “my book launch” rather than “my first”. I only mention it because I find that interesting.

**About half of us came, and it was quickly obvious that out of context most of us can’t remember each other’s names!

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