The View from the Spaghetti Factory

Continuing a train of thought from the previous Dinnerlog post, it occurs to me that I don’t really know all that much about cooking off by heart. All those groovy, glossy celebrity cookbooks provide instant gratification without any deeper understanding of why the ingredients fit together… your only investment of time is the trip to the supermarket and the actual preparation. Yep, and I’m guilty on that count.

But still, as I mentioned before, I like the idea of knowing recipes off by heart, and then, through familiarity, having the confidence to play around with them. I also quite like the idea of having at least one instant solution for each major ingredient… sometimes you happen to be wandering through Croydon market just before 4pm and a wily trader persuades you to take that entire *box* of something-or-other off his hands for a quid or two, and then you get it home and think “so what the hell do we make with this?”… that’s what I’m talking about.

We got some fennel bulbs last week. I really love fennel, but I was bored of stewing it in stock or vermouth or eating it raw in a salad. I tried a recipe in our Anna del Conte book where you slice it, sauté it in butter, stew it in milk and then stir in cream and parmesan… very nice, but the milk always curdled and burned slightly, affecting both taste and texture.

As an experiment, I tried a little variation. Quarter and thinly slice the fennel bulbs and sauté in butter for a few minutes. Add just enough stock to cover and simmer until soft. Mash partially, stir in a dollop of creme fraiche and bloody hell, it works! Far less sickly than the cream/parmesan version, although I could imagine parmesan working in this version, too.

Sometimes, things I like coincide with other things I like. A coincidence of pleasantness.

I like eating and I like summer weather, so it was nice to end Sunday with the first al fresco dinner of the year, and Tuscan-style broad beans and ham seemed an appropriately sunny choice for the fine weather. Everyone should know how to make this… it’s one of those “ultimate comfort foods” that seem to account for most of the recipes I’ve committed to memory.

All you do is chop an onion and fry it slowly in olive oil with a handful of chopped parsley and the ham, which would be about 400g of prosciutto crudo if you’re doing it properly. Fry that together until the onions are squidgy and then add about 150ml of white wine and a couple of kilos (pre-shelled weight) of broad beans. Salt and pepper, cover and cook 20 mins and you’re done.

Familiarity with an old favourite means you can easily make adjustments to suit your needs. I find parsley a bit too bland unless it’s in huge quantities, so we used a handful of sage from the garden… it seems to add a flavour that seems more typically “Tuscan” to me. And I didn’t fancy blowing quite so much money on Parma ham, so we got one of those mini gammon joints from M&S and pre-roasted it (which would be prosciutto cotto, presumably). Damn good, anyway… especially when accompanied with some Jersey Royals coated in buttery sorrel mush and the rest of the wine.

I’m coming to this a bit late (after a week in Derbyshire followed by a busy week of work) so I’m probably only going to be repeating what everyone else has said, but never mind.

Yep, it’s crap, isn’t it?

I’m usually sceptical when the Great British Public is said to be united for or against something. The media have a habit of craftily spinning the uninformed rantings of a large minority into the “view of the common people”. In this case, though, the response really does seem to be of almost unanimous derision and ridicule. I mean, what kind of graphic designer really thought that the style of 1986 kids’ TV idents was due for a revival? Even at the time, they never used that sort of style for Olympic logos!

Now, I’m no expert on graphic design, but it’s pretty clear to me that a number of qualities should be present in a good logo… it should be instantly and unambiguously recognisable, it should be easy to reproduce in a variety of media and it should contain something reminiscent of the product or concept it represents. This jagged mess certainly doesn’t say “London” to me. Fair enough, it does say “2012″ if you squint enough, while simultaneously trying not to think of what Lisa Simpson is doing, but it doesn’t even represent the Olympics properly… they’ve had to colour all the rings white to fit the design. Gah!

On the other hand, here’s the logo they used for the Olympic bid. It’s fairly conservative, but it does the job… the text tells you exactly what it represents, the Olympic rings are shown in their traditional colours, and those colours are repeated in the five-strand ribbon which outlines the shape of the river Thames. With some tweaking, that could be a perfectly good logo for the actual Games, and a worthy addition to a long line of classic emblems.

But of course, that wouldn’t happen, would it? We’re dealing with corporate brands here, and the bid was a different product altogether. As Chris Townsend, commercial director of the 2012 Olympics, said to the Guardian, “It is designed as a proper consumer brand rather than a corporate brand you’ve seen in other games and it will stand alongside all the other leading sports brands.” Riiiiight.

Ah well, that’s my rant over. I’m just sorry that we’re going to miss out on the best logo of all. Briefly shown as one of the alternative designs submitted by readers of the BBC website, it was then removed. In a just world, Sean Stayte’s design would be the official logo for the 2012 Olympics (more info here and there’s now a t-shirt! Everybody buy one!)