Breaded trout

This is a very simple and tasty recipe. Take 2 trout and allow them to marinate in some olive oil, salt and parsley. In a baking tray cover the bottom with breadcrumbs and grind some black pepper. Put your trout in the tray and bread the other side, grinding some more pepper.

Bake for about 30 minutes. You will see that the breadcrumbs form a crust on the outside, keeping the fish nice and juicy. Serve with salad and a glass of white. Enjoy.

Leek and potato soup

This is very much an English recipe, slightly Mediterranean-ised for good measure.

Ingredients

2-3 leeks

2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced

1-2 cloves of garlic (depending on your taste), finely chopped

Olive oil

Wash the leek very well, removing one layer and making sure there is no earth trapped in the leaves. Chop it finely. In a saucepan heat some olive oil and sauté the garlic with the leek. After 3-4 minutes, add the potatoes and give them all a stir in the olive oil so that they’re nicely coated. Add salt. Pour some hot water in the saucepan and allow it to cook for about 20-30 minutes. I give it a whizz with a hand blender to make the soup nice and smooth (the potatoes come make it thicker). If you like cream, you can add some at this stage, or even milk-I didn’t.

Serve and eat with some black pepper and, if you’re like me, some lemon squeezed on top-it works a treat!

Note: you can add some herb/spice if you like. I think cumin would go really well, and some fresh coriander.

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Sourdough bread

I have been making bread in various shapes and sizes-and with varying success-for a while now. I’ve always wanted to experiment with sourdough, as I love the flavour and it reminds me of the typical Cypriot bread I love so much. The instructions on how to make sourdough came from Ιστομαγειρέματα, although I’m not entirely sure I followed them very closely.

Sourdough

To make sourdough, take a handful of flour and mix it with water and a bit of salt, until you have a ball of dough that’s fairly consistent and firm. I keep mine in a glass bowl, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. Cover it with a clean cloth and let it rest, preferably in room temperature. If it’s winter and cold, keep it near a radiator. After 2-3 days add a little water to the dough and some flour, not much, enough to give it a stir and ‘feed’ it. Again cover it and let it do its work for 2-3 days, then feed again. Do this 2-3 times. You will notice that the mix has started to develop some bubbles (easily visible if you have it in a glass bowl). It will also have developed a sour smell-the sign of success. Your sourdough is ready.

Bread

In 1 kg of flour add 2 tsp of salt and your sourdough. Add lukewarm water and knead really well until you have a nice dough that’s not sticky and has a consistent texture. Keep some of this dough in the glass bowl-that’s your next sourdough. Form your dough into 2-3 round loaves. As you see from the pictures, I made some diagonal cuts on mine, you can cut a cross shape, whatever you want. I also put the loaves straight onto the baking tray (metal), oiled and sprinkled with flour from before, to avoid moving them when it was time to bake.

Cover the loaves and allow them to prove overnight. Yes, overnight. So you need to be planning ahead. The result is well worth it. When it’s time to bake, preheat your oven to 200 degrees. I put a baking dish with some hot water at the bottom of the oven to avoid the crust getting too hard, as per the rye bread method. I baked my loaves for about 35 minutes, again this depends on your oven and the size of your loaves. Although the loaves didn’t rise very much overnight, they did so in the oven. When you think the bread is done, take a loaf and tap the bottom-it should give a hollow sound-then it’s ready. My loaves were quite substantial, not fluffy at all and very filling.

Enjoy. Repeat. Abandon sachets.

People I hate whilst driving

a car parked wisely in Cyprus (photo by my brother)

Right, a rant of epic proportions, and proof that I am the best driver in the universe (cough cough). For reasons that are plain to see, or for obscure ones hidden in the depths, I hate the following people I encounter whilst driving:

• People in MPVs (people carriers as they call them)
• People in SUVs (jeep-type monsters). Unless you are a farmer, you don’t need it
• People in flash cars (Mercs, BMWs etc)
• Estate agents (no real reason, I just do)
• People in small, modified cars that look sporty and make lots of noise
• People on bicycles who alternate between pedestrian and vehicle status
• People on bicycles/motorbikes who overtake from the left: death awaits
• People who park on double yellows because picking up their child from school is more important than anything else in the universe
• Taxi drivers with little regard for regulations
• People without courtesy or common sense
• School runners (really hate these)
• School runners outside really posh schools: they drive really flash cars, park illegally and more erratically than anyone else. Arrogance I think.
• Pedestrians crossing at that space right between two zebra crossings
• Pedestrians doing the above while texting
• Pedestrians crossing the road as if they are walking in a meadow full of flowers and butterflies
• Skate-boarders listening to headphones crossing the road just as you’re about to turn
• People whose speakers are so loud I can’t hear my own music
• People in cars with dark windows
• People who use the phone while driving
• People who insist on parking bang on the high street (disabled drivers excluded of course)
• People who overtake you only to turn left/right 50 meters later
• People who stop on box junctions
• People who don’t acknowledge/flash when you let them pass
• People who occupy 2-3 parking spaces because they can’t be bothered or are just useless
• People who park in disabled/family bays even though they’re perfectly fine and have no children
• People who jump out just in front of you, mistakenly thinking that they can do 0-30mph before you cover the 20 meters between you and them
• People who are heading in the same direction as I am
• People who are not heading in the same direction as I am
• Women
• Men
• Young people
• Old people
• Mothers
• Fathers
• Children
• People

In general, as you’ll understand, I’m deeply suspicious of everyone else on the road. I approach driving in a courteous manner, but always prepared that everybody else is on a mission to destroy me

Rye Bread

Ingredients (makes 5 small loaves)

For the yeast
1 sachet of yeast
1 tsp sugar
700-800ml lukewarm water

For the dough
1/2 strong white flour
1/2 rye flour
1-2 tbsp olive oil
a pinch of salt
You can also add sunflower seeds, poppy seeds or whatever you like.

Add the yeast, sugar and water in a jug and stir well. Allow it to rest and froth for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, run the flour through a sieve into a large bowl and add the salt and olive oil. Slowly add the yeast/water and knead, until you have a nice, workable dough. You might need to add more water or flour to bring it to the desired consistency. Give the dough a good kneading, as if you’re trying to make up your mind as to whether you love it or hate it . Do this for about 10 minutes, the longer the better. If you have the strength, that is, as rye dough is harder to work than white flour dough.

Your dough will have a funny grey colour rather than the white you get from wheat flour. Cover it with a damp cloth and allow it to rise for 1-2 hours until it doubles in size. Shape your loaves and cover them for another 15 minutes or so. In the meantime, preheat your oven to maximum degrees. On the bottom shelf, put a baking dish with lots of hot water (I’ll explain why later).  When the oven is hot, put in the bread and let it bake for 10 minutes. Turn the temperature down to 180 degrees and open the oven to check on the bread and help it cool down faster. Bake for another 20 minutes and your bread should be ready. You know your bread is ready when you tap the bottom and it sounds hollow.

Wrap your loaves in a couple of tea towels and let them cool down. The baking dish with water helps keep the crust soft. My oven is electric/fan and would probably make the crust too hard. You need to find the best method for your oven, as no two ovens give the same results.

Make a nice soup, enjoy!

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End game?

 

Kyaiyi-stamik (Bear Bull), a member of the Blackfoot Nation, Alberta, 1926

In the last couple of years I’ve been absorbed by travel & exploration literature. Not the Bill Bryson type, but the pioneering type. It fascinates me how for thousands of years there were whole continents with civilizations carving their own trajectories through space and time in complete ignorance of other continents. The Inca, the Maya and the Aztecs had elaborate systems of government, religion, warfare and economy. They had writing, ways of recording their past, architecture, astronomy. I find very exciting the impressions on the Europeans who saw these wonders for the first time. Bernal Diaz, one of Hernán Cortés‘ soldiers in the conquest of Tenochtitlan and the author of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, sang the praises of the Aztec capital, whose market was greater and richer than any he had seen in Europe, noting also its extreme cleanliness.

North American native nations had their own systems of belief, culture, craft. The Plains tribes of North America, spanning from what is today Canada to the area north of the Rio Grande had developed a fully functional sign language to overcome the barriers formed by their numerous linguistic groups. They subsisted on the buffalo hunt and moved with the herds. They bizarrely did not develop building with stone or mining of gold, copper and silver as was the case with those south of the Rio Grande, as if the river and the desert became a barrier to that.

Horses and iron mining were unknown to the native Americans, either side of the Rio Grande. When the Spanish conquistadores and then the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French descended on their shores, they were at first terrified, impressed and finally subjugated by this advantage. The Aztecs had darts and clubs. The Spaniards came with cannons, gunpowder and steel blades. Diseases such as measles, chickenpox and smallpox had been non-existent in America and had as devastating an effect on the natives as slavery and famine.

The Europeans were after one thing: precious metals. The promise of gold and silver drove exploration and brought with it the enslavement of all who stood in the way. Some were after the Fountain of Youth or the Northwest Passage. When the gold hopes were dashed, farming and carving the land into estates took over. In Bolivia and Peru the Spaniards’ drive to enslave the native populations and employ them in the the silver mines decimated the native tribes to the extent where African slaves had to be imported to do their work. The same happened in the islands of the Caribbean, with the native Caribs the first to meet this fate. If you like a spoonful of sugar in your tea, you’d better know where it came from.

In North America the Navajo, the Sioux and the Blackfoot, to mention but a few, were displaced and restricted in reservations where they starved, away from their cultural means of acquiring food, all in a European drive to acquire the land, the minerals, the buffalo hides and finally the fertile soil.

And then came the gold rush, the oil rush and whatever else the white man brought with him in addition to the smallpox. The natives were restricted, forced to starve and inevitably rebel, leading to a series of massacres. It all may sound like ancient history to you, but this process was still happening 100 years ago. The Wounded Knee massacre happened in 1890, 14 years after the Ottoman government was denounced in Europe for the Bulgarian atrocities.

Eventually in the once developed Europe, industry declined and moved to ‘developing’ areas where workers on slave wages (if any) continued to ensure maximum profit margins for the few. In the meantime, a shrinking European working class has found it difficult to keep up with the drive for consumption, especially since loans and credit cards are harder to come by as a result of the credit crunch. And it is beginning to agitate, as the class barriers are rigid but there is no employment in industry, the sector which had guaranteed them work ever since their forefathers moved from the countryside to the slums of the industrial revolution. Governments in debt are now scrapping the welfare system, while tuition fees go up, making the prospect of climbing is non-existent. The factories have closed, so there is no work. Rock and hard place.

Capitalism won, and those at the top of the pyramid exhausted the world’s natural resources. The oil is running out, the forests are shrinking, we have fished, hunted and skinned everything, and what survives is enclosed in safari parks and zoos so we can enjoy seeing it while eating ice cream on a Saturday afternoon. Now that the ice is melting, we are drilling for oil in the Arctic. Our governments are in debt to the banks, their puppet states are beginning to collapse. The myth of material prosperity for all and universal peace does not hold water any more. The wealth of the world is accumulated in a few hundred mansions, scattered from California to the Persian Gulf. The short-sightedness of the system is leading to its downfall with mathematical precision, as the prosperity which Europe and North America have enjoyed in the post-WWII era is proving to be unsustainable and will soon come to an end. There is no more Eldorado, however. The greedy, the poor and the desperate cannot move any more towards the west, there is no more planet left. China also happens to be there, and they’re no Aztecs…did capitalism eat itself? Is there hope?

Egypt clamps down on blogger

Sand Monkey is the most famous Egyptian blogger, and wrote this piece before his blog was blocked. Reblogged from Antonis’ blog.
This gripping account of despair and hope was written this morning by Egypt’s top blogger and activist Sandmonkey. Now their are unconfirmed reports doing round on Twitters and facebook that the authorities have arrested him this afternoon. The Guardian reported that he has indeed been arrested.
………………….
I don’t know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one’s friend house to another friend’s house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.

It didn’t start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.

That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn’t go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.

Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what’s right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn’t believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak’s departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime’s ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn’t nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today.

Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peaceful change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because “we got what we wanted” and “we need the country to start working again”. People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it’s time for Unity under Mubarak’s rule right now.

To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn’t caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren’t the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn’t enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it’s not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.

Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.

You watched on TV as “Pro-Mubarak Protesters” – thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID’s on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn’t give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.

In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it’s the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.

Now, just in case this isn’t clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won’t say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.

The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay “because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people”. This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.