Mystery

How the Irish police tracked down Prawo Jazdy, a serial offender who had evaded justice with a cunning ploy.

The story is here.

Mango Lassi

Another bit of our family language was Dr Turner's Health Drink. Dad was known for his culinary skills, having lured mum with his steak and kidney pie. He made her initials out of pastry. I recall mum keeping those for some time. Mum had a super-duper Kenwood mixer. One of the attachments was a mincer, and I remember being fascinated watching the worms spiral out the end. Dad found a use for the blender. He regularly mixed up his so-called health drink. Perhaps dad can give us the recipe. I remember bananas being one essential ingredient, and there was probably a few scoops of ice-cream. I guess the ice-cream was the healthy part!
There is a blender here. Ugyen won in it in a raffle. She used it once to mix up suja, the local blend of tea, butter and salt. Another health drink. However, she did not put the lid on securely and ended up plastering the kitchen and her face with hot suja. She put the blender away and never used it again. I found it covered in dust, and resurrected it to whizz up a rather nice spinach-paneer curry.
I found a recipe for mango lassi recently. It could be made with a blender, but I just use a whisk. It is damn easy to make. Ludup never says no to a glass of Mark's Mango. I love the Bhutanese respect for the aged and infirm.

To make the mango lassi mix yogurt and mango juice in equal quantities. Add a pinch of cardamom, a squeeze of lime juice and whisk away.
Serve in a tall glass with the blue Himalayan sky in the background.

Things I Miss 5

The bottom element in my oven.
Just a few days ago, I was trying out a nice looking recipe from Dan Lepard (he writes for the Guardian) for semolina BBQ buns. The recipe is here. Read the forum for some details from Dan on scoring the tops of the buns. The buns are not separated after cutting and the scoring is done by pushing a butter knife right down to the base.
I let my buns rise for over an hour, but it was quite a cold day. Apparently breads rise faster at altitude. The explanation requires an advanced degree in physics and biology.
After 20 minutes in the oven, the buns looked great. On top. Then I noticed that the underside (the ass ... arse?) was still very moist and not nicely browned like the tops. Had I made the dough too hydrated? After flipping the buns over and baking them longer, they came out quite well. Perhaps not as well-risen as expected.
Then I realised that the bottom rod was not hot. No cozy glow. A cold black. That would explain things. The next problem was the two loaves well and truly risen, and needing a good baking in a hot oven. I used all my mechanical skill to repair the oven. That meant turning it off, waiting a few minutes, then turning it on again. That often works with the computer. Not with the oven. Twiddling the dial to Grill, Toast, Warm and then back to bake had no effect either. I waited more. Patience. That is the solution.
The oven temperature did not get above 150. There were plans to make a visit to Letho at the Ambient Cafe. They have installed a new oven there. Ideal for baking bread. No. In the end, I stuck with my disabled oven. The bread was cooked and edible, but rather flat and insipid.
Yesterday, I took the oven to the appliance store. He was a nice man. Very helpful. The diagnosis was very fast, no need to even plug the thing in. But the news was not good. They did not have any "rods". The last customer that had this problem is still waiting for the part to come.
"How long?"
"We cannot say. It comes from India."
"What .... months, years?"
"Yes."
He took my phone number and wrote some details in his diary. Then he phoned up the supplier. Or was it his mother?
Now, I have a very large toaster that looks like an oven. And I am exploring recipes like Grilled Lebanese Flatbread. See the recipe here.
But I do miss my oven.

Photos

For the lard lads

This cannot really go as one of the things that I miss. I cannot even remember if I ever ate it much. Lard comes up in conversation with Matthew. It comes as an adjective for the arses of several Kiwi cricket players. Matthew prefers "arse", but others use "ass". Matthew uses ass for hoofed animal of the horse family. He is not alone.

Anyway, I just came across an article defending lard. Here it is.

That lard is both "healthier" than butter and yet so despised shows the empty logic of the standard position. The fat amply qualifies as "real food", that definition popularised by Michael Pollan as "the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognise as food".

Things I Miss 4

While I do miss my sister, today's thing is Fish and Chips. And I will include wine too. There is a beer in the photos too, but I was never a big drinker of beer. Besides, we get some decent beers here.
F 'n' C ("Feeshers" in the Turner dialect) is something that I pine for when I get home on Friday and do not feel like cooking. The ability to jump on the bike and ride a few minutes to a supply of something hot and greasy. Not necessarily healthy, and not always that great tasting. But fast, relatively cheap, and filling. There are no fish and chips shops here. You can get fish and chips at some of the restaurants. But who eats fish and chips at a restaurant?
Wine is available too, but it costs the earth. And tastes like it.
The other night I attempted to make my own fish and chips. The chips came out quite well. The fish came from a packet. Frozen. Thin. Lots of crumbs. Not much fish. Two thin rectangles masquerading as two chunks of meaty fish covered in batter. They were pathetic.
Something else is missing here. It is the culture. The shared understanding.
"Two fish, one scoop?" would be met with a blank stare here.
Back home, Matthew would be heading to get his bike to join me.
Note: I stand corrected. The word was "Feeshies" or "Feeshees". Turner Talk was a spoken language, never a written one.

Stephen Wolfram and tedious mathematics

There is an article at the Guardian about Stephen Wolfram, the person behind Wolfram|Alpha. Here.

Below is what he says about people losing the ability to perform (tedious) mathematics by hand because now computers do it for them:

 "There was a time when we had to cut feathers to make our own pens. Gradually more levels of civilisation and automation happen, and this is another such layer," he says. "What should happen is that you can build on to what is now automated and do the next level of stuff, where you need to add the human touch." It also cuts both ways since, if calculus is mechanised, this opens up new worlds for students for whom solving problems by hand was too difficult.

And I agree. For the last few days I have been going through the new maths text for class 12 here in Bhutan. The chapter was on something called determinants of matrices. There are 12 rules to learn, and then puzzle how to apply them. It is rather like a game of chess, where you have to see several moves ahead. The problems are made harder by using variables instead of numbers. Why? I waded through twenty worked examples trying to see some pattern in the methods. Trying to see some way to explain to the students how they could work out what to do. Their method is to learn them all by heart.

I shared my thoughts with Don, my Canadian friend. He is a real mathematician. This is what he said:

 "If you are serious about needing the value of a determinant it will be numbers and you do it on a computer. What you are learning is a lost art and it should be! It is a little silly to require people to learn all those rules.

I hope someone from the curriculum division is taking notes!