Credit Crunch Supper No.1: Pork Osso Bucco with Risotto

This meal costs about 6 pounds for two people. And it's so fucking delicious. You'd pay at least twelve per portion for it at Carluccio's. Osso Bucco is a lovely cheap and flavoursome cut from the shin of the pig. It takes about two-hours fifteen minutes or so, but the majority of that can be spent watching a film. I watched Max Ophuls' 'La Ronde'. Chiefly so that I could use the pun; 'You are Ophuls, but I like you'. Remember, you can watch any film, up to 90minutes. It doesn't have to be pun-friendly, though this does help in the retelling...

Ingredients:

1 Onion
2 Fingers of Celery
Three prongs of garlic.
A good inch of Chorizo (Ideally Piccante)
4 Pork Osso Bucco (about 3 pounds at Waitrose, since you ask)
Two tins of tomatoes.
Some Parmesan
Some Butter
Some salt and pepper.
A lemon.
A ladle. (To taste)

In a thick pan, with a lid, ideally a Le Creuset bastard, fry, on a medium to high heat, in olive oil, some roughly chopped wadges of chorizo. Try to get them to stick to the pan, but not blacken.

Reduce the heat.

Add some more olive oil.
Add finely chopped onions, garlic and celery to the whole shebang. Stir around and let them brown off for about 5 minutes. Turn everything out onto a, I don't know, plate?

Increase heat. Place your Osso Bucco into the pan. Leave them be for about 4 minutes or so- you want them to colour up. Like Robert Downy Junior, only more tasteful. Turn the little Robert Downey Junior's over. Let them brown on the other side. After 5 minutes or so, turn them out onto another thing. Anything flat, really.

Turn the heat right down.

Here's the vaguely complicated bit; you want to deglaze your pan; pour a dribble of hot water in the son of a bitch and let it fizzle. Stir frantically. Add about half a pint or so of water to the pan and continue to stir. Then pour out the (hopefully) meat-brown liquid into a jug or anything, really.

Okay. You might want a cup of tea now. Or a piss. Do it, no one's watching.

Put some fresh olive oil into the pan; put it on a medium heat. Add the Osso Bucco, add the the mirrepois (that's what the french call finely chopped onions and celery). Add to this the two tins of tomatoes. Increase heat and bring pan to a kind, but not overbearing, bubble. Once done, reduce to lowest heat. Put on the lid.

Now is the ideal opportunity to watch a film. As this meal is pretty much Italian, I would suggest Umberto D. This film is 89 minutes, which is ideal.

After an hour. Pause the film. Isn't the dog cute?. Anyway. Remove the lid from the pan. Go on, fuck off back to your film.

Once it ends, run back into your kitchen. Put the pan of meat-water into a saucepan. Add another pint to it and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer. Put a couple of slices of lemon into the meat-pan.

In a totally different pan on a medium heat put a big dollop of butter. Scoop out, from the other pan, a ladle-full of onions (if some tomato and chorizo comes along for the ride, that's just fine by me) and put in pan with the butter. We're making risotto; Pour some risotto rice into the pan. You be the judge of how much. But 2 mugs full should be okay. Stir the risotto about in the pan to cover it in butter. Now you know the drill; Add a ladle of liquid from the pan and stir it about, ensuring rice doesn't burn against the bottom of the pan. Once the liquid has evaporated, add another ladle-full of meat-water. You will probably need to do this for between twenty and thirty minutes. It's fun, though. You know it's ready when it no longer tastes like uncooked rice but, instead, tastes like risotto.

Turn off the pan with the meat in it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove two of the Osso's and put them on a plate. Put a little of the onion mixture atop them.

Turn off the heat under the risotto pan. Add another dollop of butter and some Parmesan shavings and stir excitedly. Add salt to taste. Add a fork to taste.

Ladle some of the risotto onto the plate with the meat. Do a fucking dance.

Retire to your dining room and watch a comedy show whilst you eat. I watched an episode of Peep Show, but you could watch Seinfeld or Arrested Development. It's totally up to you really. But it should be one of those three.

If you have any questions please leave comment and I'll be onto you like a ton of bricks, as my old P.E teacher used to say, in a totally different context.

Okay, see you soon.

Your Obliging Blogger

Have You Seen..?

In my youth I would scour the shops for French Films (they are a genre all to themselves, hence the capitalisation). I used to look particularly for the Artificial Eye logo; This is not because they are a better distributor than any of the others: No, It was simply because to me, they were a sure chance of a naked willowy young lady.
Other boys had their page threes, I had Charlotte Gainsbourg (still an obsession of mine) in Merci La Vie, in An Impudent Girl, in The Cement Garden. Later I had Simone Signoret, I had Anna Karina, I had Catherine Deneuve. The others could keep their smut. I needed humanity. Bleak, sad, real; funny.

This was my introduction to film. For a while there I thought that Bertrand Blier (director of 'Merci La Vie', of 'Les Valseuses') was as ground breaking as they came. It took a long while for me to fully embrace film to the extent that I discovered him a pale rip off of Godard. Later still that film could be termed an obsession for me. I dallied for a long time at the periphery. Something (or someone) always stopped me from taking that dive into the seemingly pretentious waters.
It took, as it usually does, being enabled; a great video store, for me to be truly liberated. That, and later, the BFI, gave me pleasures, which compare and, in most cases, exceed those pleasures gained from any but the best novels.
Thus I devoured everything by Fritz Lang, by Louis Bunuel, by Murnau, by De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni. I watched anything vaguely Noirish. I explored silent cinema (Feuillade), MGM, New Hollywood, of course the Nouvelle Vague, Italian Realism, German Expressionism.
And last month I quit the video shop because I'd seen everything.

Not everything of course. Just everything that tickled me.

I joined Sofa Cinema and sat there attempting to work our how their boast of having over 60,000 films fitted in with their not having, for instance, Die Nibelungen (an apparent Fritz Lang masterpiece). Of course a great deal of what I really wanted to watch was still not available in the UK; a mixture of rights issues and quality of print- another blog, another time- but I needed films.

Then I heard about the new book from David Thomson. Have You Seen..? is, as it says on the front, 'A Personal Introduction to 1,000 films'. It is alphabetical, its first entry being Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, its first entry by date is 1898. Its a wonderful book.
It is wonderful for numerous reasons; No points system, a wandering eye which plucks from the ranks of the everyday films usually ignored in similar projects (Terminator, Dawn of The Dead) but, equally, a love of the absolutely obscure.
His obsessions, seemingly, mirror mine, which helps. Most of the works of Lang, of Bunuel and Hitchcock help make this tome the heaviest reference book in Christendom. But there are so many fresh, exciting, intriguing additions; I have never seen (am about to watch) anything by Max Ophuls, I am fuzzy on the MGM-ers; George Cukor etc. And this films lays them out on a plate ready for my (and your) devouring.

His writing is passionate but never ever blinkered; he is critical of virtually all of his darlings- raising lesser known works higher in the pantheon and lowering untouchable 'classics', yet he is sparing and never facetious. Each review is stuffed with details of the photographer, the supporting cast and anyone who excels in the film. It is an education.

And now, I'm afraid, my Sofa Cinema list is bustling. I am worried, however, that if this book sells as well as I expect, that there will be a long wait for the titles I most pressinlgly wish to see.

Now, where did I leave that video of Merci La Vie?

Why Blog? Why Me? Why Now?

I am in general disagreement with the currently held view that blogs are a threat to journalism. I appreciate that they effectively already are from an employment sense- especially in the American Press, but that is Market Forces and they are clearly a different sort of son of a bitch.

In terms of quality of criticism, however, blogs will remain like those tawdry bands who litter up venues such as London's 'Dublin Castle', most of them called things like 'Cock Sleeve' or 'Bunny Vinegar Dream', all of whom will fail and failingly so. Even their failure will be dismal.

And Bloggers? Well, occasionally, just like the very occasional band, one will stick his or her head above the metaphor and cause something other than annoyance at poorly formed sentences and will, at a pinch, be taken to heart. That person will be embraced by the mainstream, so far as serious journalism is mainstream, and, as it were, will have a gold record, 47 adoring young women gnawing at their knuckles in the manner not seen since The Beatles of '64 and a bucket of Schloer, for to stem the dryness.

Who am I to suddenly, and for no pissing reason, provide you with undesired information? I am Martin, and I will be Your Obliging Blogger. Why is what I choose to say worth listening to? Well, hopefully because I am a pretend expert on all manner of subjects but am able to use irony and humour to deflate my apparent ego and to let me get away with vague inaccuracies.

I do not intend to publish inaccuracies though. This will be an exclusive Salon in which I hope you will react to my views on such things as Films (never, my friends, The Movies) Literature (Books?) TV, Restaurants, Language, and many many things. I will attempt to be lucid and fluid but not too lucid; Memories of my Philosophy of Language exam which lasted 3hr on my 21st birthday, wherein I reached an impasse at 2 hours and 14 pages and changed my mind about the question we had been set, I then spent the final hour amusing myself by arguing against my conclusion, attempting to sound like I had been playing devils advocate...but I digress, the point is that rambling and digression are where humour and where the beauty of language take over. So I may just digress a lot.

Why now? Two of my friends have blogs; blessays, whatsoever you wish to call them. Many people I know have them and I have, sure, dabbled my toes in their frosty waters but, for the best part, I don't care for blogs; I don't really care enough about other people's opinions: It has taken me twenty or so years to find a -very short- list of journalists whom I actually enjoy reading; Jonathan Meades, Charlie Brooker, Will Self, Jay Rayner, Armando Ianucci, John Gray...I do not intend to spend my time reading those who may be misguidedly thinking they have the rights to join their ranks simply because the technology exists for them to appear to do so.
But I have to ignore the competition for moral reasons too. I don't want to believe someone I know might be better than me.
It has thus taken me this long to decide to ignore the possiblity that there may be calls of 'Turncoat' or 'Arriviste' and jeers for my hanging as a symbol of a society gone mad with opinions. Having a view is not expressing it; Heavens, expressing it is not journalism; Journalism isn't necessarily good journalism; One person's good is another's pretentious rubbish.
Please don't get me the fuck started on Stanley Kubrick. Not this early on.

These, my pretty young things, are the hurdles. Hopefully you will have fun watching me attempt to jump them, and have the good manners to laugh when I knock the buggers over- Show restraint and an almost (almost) Christian generosity of spirit when I return to pick the hurdles up and start practising within eyeshot of you.

Well, that's enough spouting from me. I will hopefully bring bigger, more substantial- possibly tougher- pies to the table soon so if, for you, this was a little light and needless, then please except my humble (Pie?) apologies; this was meant as an introduction and now that we know each other, we can dispense with the kindnesses that leave dying flowers standing; lets kick off our dancing shoes, remove our stove-pipe hats, pour ourselves a glass of old Tawny and stare dreamily, hopefully; wistfully at the fire as it reflects back at us the world and its refractions...

Your Obliging Blogger