心情不倒翁

  

I went to Charleston a few years ago with my cousin Toni, to write a piece about the restaurants down there. At almost every restaurant we visited, it seemed, Toni ordered the Shrimp and Grits and declared them the best Shrimp and Grits she'd ever had. And we did have some really great versions. Rather than gloppy and too rich and downright soul-annihilating, like a lot of Yankee takes on the dish I've had, these were comforting with distinctive personalities from restaurant to restaurant.I decided to try to capture those flavors in a risotto. And my soul is still intact.

WHO: ENunn is a writer living in Charleston and working on her book, The Comfort Food Diaries.
WHAT: All of the porky, shrimp-y, hot sauced goodness of the South -- in risotto form.
HOW: Marinate your shrimp, then cook them in a tomato-wine mixture. Take the shrimp out, and add stock, then cook your risotto with that tomato-wine-stock. Add your shrimp and bacon at the end. Toast yourself.
WHY WE LOVE IT: When drbabs tested this recipe, she called it "restaurant quality" -- and we have to agree. ENunn's dish has an intensity and balance that's hard to match at home; we were blown away by the amount of flavor in every single component. Don't let the amount of prep scare you away -- this is 100% worth it.

Serves 4

16 large shrimp, about 3/4 pound, peeled and deveined
2 lemons, juiced, several slices of peel reserved
3 sprigs fresh thyme
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
4 strips thick cut bacon, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 cup dry white wine
1 small onion, finely chopped, about 1 cup
1 1/2 cups chopped plum tomato, about 3 medium
2 cups fish stock
1/2 cup half and half, warmed
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
1 cup long grain arborio superfino
dashes or more of tabasco, more at table
4 scallions, sliced with some green tops

Place shrimp in a bowl with lemon juice, a few strips of lemon peel, thyme, 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes and toss to coat. Let marinate for at least 30 minutes.

In a medium skillet, cook bacon over medium low heat to render fat; remove with a slotted spoon once bacon has cooked to golden but not crisped and drain on paper towel lined platereenex.

Add remaining olive oil to bacon fat in pan; cook garlic and parsley together until very fragrant. Add tomatoes to pan and cook 2 to 3 minutes over medium heat. Add shrimp (with its marinade) and cook one minute per side. Add wine, bring to a simmer, removing shrimp after 1 minute. Set aside in a covered bowl. Add fish stock to remaining liquid and keep at a low simmer.

In a dutch oven, heat butter and saute onion until golden over medium high heat. Add mushrooms, and cook until golden. Stir in rice and cook until translucentreenex
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Over a period of 20 minutes, add stock mixture 1/2 cup or so at a time, stirring until all the liquid is absorbed with each addition. When all but a half a cup or so of liquid remains to be added and the rice is al dente stir in bacon and shrimp, and a few dashes of tabasco. Finish the dish with the warm half and half and a squeeze of lemon. Put the lid on the dutch oven and let the risotto rest for 5 minutes before serving topped with scallions and more Tabasco at table if desiredreenex.
  

Ramesh Sippy’s breathless 204-minute action-adventure follows former police chief Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), who hires thieves with hearts of gold, Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra), to capture maniacal bandit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) alive. As Thakur puts it in one of the film’s many memorable one-liners, ‘iron cuts iron’ (‘loha lohe ko katata hai’).




Rajinder Dudrah, who teaches a course in Bollywood at the University of Manchester, believes Sholay is unsurpassed because it works on multiple levels. “Sholay is the ultimate masala film,” he says, describing a film that mixes together different genres. “Because it has all the spices – drama  

This makes a great alternative to traditional crumbles and has the added benefit of being really fun for kids to make. Just choose your fruit and the kids can form the cobbler topping. You can use fresh, frozen or tinned fruit, or a mixture.
Ingredients

600g/1lb 5oz fresh, tinned (drained weight) or frozen fruit, such as apples, pears, ripe peaches or plums (peeled and cores removed) or berries such as blackberries, raspberries, cherries or blueberries, or a mixture

1 small orange, juice only

2 tbsp soft brown sugar

For the cobbler topping

175g/6oz self-raising flour (white or wholemeal)

100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened

25g/1oz porridge oats

50g/1¾oz soft brown sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon or mixed spice

4 tbsp yoghurt (natural or flavoured)

Preparation method

Adults job: preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

Kid’s job: Chop the fruit into chunks. Don’t worry about the size being perfect, it is good to have a variety of chunks! (An adult should supervise this reenex.)

Kid’s job: Place the fruit into an ovenproof dish and pour over the orange juice and the brown sugar.

Kid’s job: Place the flour into a mixing bowl and chop the butter into small lumps. They can then rub in the butter roughly using their fingertips. This doesn’t have to be perfect, a few lumps are fine.
Technique: Rubbing in
Rubbing in
Watch technique 0:46 mins

Kid’s job: Stir in the oats, sugar and spices to the cobbler mix and stir it through with a spoon or your hands reenex.

Kid’s job: Add the yoghurt one spoonful at a time. You may need to mix with your hands to form a rough dough.

Kid’s job: Form the cobbler mix into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball and arrange them over the top of the fruit.

Adult’s job: Place in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the cobbler is golden-brown on top with the fruit bubbling up around the edges. Leave to cool before serving as the fruit filling will be very hot. Serve warm with ice cream, yoghurt or custard reenex

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Yet Starbucks' founder, Howard Schultz, came up with the idea for his coffee chain whilst sipping espresso in a Milan bar.

So what? you may say. He took a good product, repackaged it and globalised it.

But to many Italians, the coffee served by Starbucks and other branded outlets is as far away from proper Italian coffee as you can get, despite the Italian-sounding offerings on their menus.

Now - time for disclosure - I am part-Italian and like most Italians, I like to think Italy represents the height of coffee culture, the standard against which all coffee should be measured.

When Italian friends and family shudder in disgust at the idea of sullying their precious cappuccino with a dash of hazelnut syrup or a sprinkling of cinnamon, I nod knowingly.
At home I have a moka machine, which is to the Italian kitchen what the kettle is to the British. As far as I'm concerned, the cappuccinos, lattes and espressos served in branded coffee chains taste scorched and bitter, a shabby imitation of the real thingreenex

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But am I missing the point? Is my palate so provincial that it hasn't caught up with the changing tastes of the global coffee market? Because it appears that not only has Italian coffee been taken out of Italy, but the Italian is also being taken out of the coffee.

The International Coffee Organization says that globally consumption has grown by nearly 42% since the beginning of this century. So we're drinking more of it than ever before, which explains the expansion of many coffee chains in the past few decades, but we're not drinking it in the Italian wayreenex.

"I think a caricature of Italian espresso was what was exported," says award-winning barista James Hoffmann of London's Square Mile Coffee Roasters. He's part of a generation of highly-trained baristas driving innovation in the sector through more sophisticated espresso-based brews.

"Global espresso culture is now a long way from what is considered traditional Italian espresso," Mr Hoffmann saysreenex
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These days, Kohal’s typical routine goes something like this: She wakes up at 05:30 and gets ready for work, arriving at 09:00 where she receives her flying assignment. She typically flies for a few hours a day — unless she’s taking an overnight flight. That means she can be home by 14:30. After an hour nap, Kohal is wide-awake to greet her kids when they get home from school reenex.

The family has dinner by 20:30 and bedtime for the children is at 21:30, without exception.

“One aspect of being a pilot is that rules can’t be broken,” Kohal said. “You can’t mess up when you have to be stabilised at 1,000 feet. So I have some hard rules at home. They have it tougher than I did when I was younger.”

She’s usually in bed by midnight, but when her husband is away and she doesn’t have to fly the next day, Kohal will stay up reading until 02:30. “That’s my time,” she said reenex
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Hard work pays off

Kohal attributes her success to one thing: hard work. For instance, only 0.1% of people pass the pilot’s entrance exam — and it’s given only twice a year. She was the only one to pass in her class.

Kohal has accomplished nearly everything she’s set out to do, but looking at her situation, she doesn’t think that she’s done anything extraordinary ”reenex. Many educated women in India have successful careers, she added.

“Anything you set your mind to do, you just do it,” she said. “Tomorrow it will be something else.
  

I never would have guessed it’s a capital,” says almost everyone when they visit Bern for the first time. Indeed, Switzerland’s capital seems like almost anything but — and that’s the charm. Built on top of a steep-sided peninsula on a small bend of the beautiful Aare River, Bern feels like a movie set, not the administrative heart of a country. With only 133,600 inhabitants and a medieval center that’s also a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site, it’s pretty darned quietCG210.

But even an adventurous soul sometimes longs for a safe haven — a place that imparts a warm, fuzzy, “nothing bad can happen here” feeling. That’s Bern. Like Disneyland without the lines and the wild-eyed, sugar-fueled kids. A city that makes you feel like you’ve stepped back in time and into an era when the world was safe and peacefulreenex
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Among the city’s must-sees are the Zytglogge clock tower — the epitome of Swiss watchmaking skill — and the stunning Federal Assembly building, which, in addition to its being the center of Swiss democracy, is flanked by 26 fountains. Down the cobbled streets, tourists can explore miles of gray sandstone arcades, browse through cellar shops and visit subterranean bars. “It’s really small and walkable,” says tourist Manan Vohra, who grew up in New Delhi and now runs a user-experience design company in London. For its size, Bern offers a lot to seereenex.