So the weekend saw me making some soup in my Tefal soup maker, an activity which I hope to occupy each Saturday or Sunday afternoon. My latest venture was some curried parsnip and I am delighted to be able to say that I was very pleased with the result. I had, though, taken some pains to sauté first some onions and then some celery sticks cut into small pieces of pieces. The parsnips themselves were parboiled and then subjected to a few minutes of oven roasting as my recipe book indicated that this would enhance the flavour and then I proceeded to make two batches of soup some of which constituted my weekend meal. To ensure that the ingredients were not spoiled, I added coconut milk and the curry powder dissolved in some boiling water after the main preparation stage had been completed and in the Tefal ‘blend’ programme which I believe is best done after the main programme has been completed. Two glass litre storage containers which I had purchased during the week proved to be excellent and they just fitted in my fridge as another bonus. Being so pleased with my result, I decided to do some research after the event and discovered by happy accident that adding the sautéed onion and celery were completely perfect in adding the ‘base notes’ to the soup. What I found so amazing was that the end product had a delightful creamy texture and the onion and celery did not come through as their ‘own’ flavours’ As a result of my research, I have just discovered that adding celery, onion, and carrot as a soup base creates a classic French flavour foundation known as a ‘mirepoix’. It is true that I did not know about the addition of the carrot but this combination is apparently well-known amongst the cognoscenti of soup makers so I will certainly do it regularly from now on. I agree that doing this initial sauté may add to the total preparation time but I believe that the end result justifies it. My soup book gives details of a ‘beetroot and apple’ soup so I am contemplating whether I can be bold enough to try this out next weekend. During the course of the evening, nothing grabbed me on the TV so I did some Sudoku and played a YouTube rendition of Mozart’s piano concerto N. 21. What followed then was a series of happy coincidences. First, the YouTube algorithm selected for me the Fauré piece ‘Cantiques de Jean Racine’ which I played almost daily to Meg in her declining year as both she (and I) found it incredibly soothing. This was followed by the Ravel ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’ which I had chosen to play for Meg at the committal ceremony at the crematorium. And then to complete the evening’s musical entertainment, there was a Mozart Horn concerto beautifully played by a young French horn player and I recall these horn concertos well because I had the four that Mozart composed on a cassette which we regularly played when we were transporting our son to his boarding school in York. Now the selection of these pieces was not entirely random as YouTube deploys an algorithm to tailor its selection to the user’s preferences but nonetheless it made a very apposite and relaxing concert for me at the weekend.
After attending church this morning, I abandoned my usual car washing routine and instead made for Hanbury Hall which is a classic William and Mary stately home some six miles distant. This is part of my new routine to fill weekends with some interesting little excursions and the weather happened to be a beautiful fine day. I decided to refuel with a toasted teacake and a cup of tea before I tackled the house itself. Many people just come with their dogs and/or grandchildren to enjoy the magnificent parks and gardens and I might do this on another occasion as admission is ‘free’ for National Trust members but instead I thought I would just make the house itself the object of my peregrinations on this occasion. In some of the downstairs rooms I was intrigued as is often the case by the books that adorned the bookcases of the past. I engaged the conservators in a discussion of the oldest book in their collection and looked at some of the titles that were in everybody’s must have list such as Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queen’ which is a long epic poem. Spenser creates a lush, dreamlike world of knights, monsters, magic, and romance that heavily influenced modern fantasy but tt is a very long and probably, to modern eyes, quite a tedious read. In one of the upstairs rooms I chatted with one of the guides who had previously worked at Coughton Court, the ancestral home of Guy Fawkes but now reclaimed by the ancestral family who had previously just leased it to the National Trust. This seems to me like a massive scam whereby the original owners get the National Trust to pick up the maintenance costs. The National Trust owns the building and is responsible for its long-term care and maintenance but the Throckmorton family took over the operational running of the site, returning to an independent family-run house and charging visitors accordingly but with no concessions to National Trust members. After I had returned home, I was not particularly hungry but made myself a ‘quickie’ lunch of some tuna enhanced with sauce, mayonnaise and yogurt before my son and daughter-in-law paid me a visit from the mid-afternoon onwards. My daughter-in-law showed me how you could take a photograph of a picture and then rely upon the AI capabilities within Google to have some intelligent guesses as to its provenance and history. We decided that we would book up to see the filmed version of Carmen which is going to be a live transmission and shown in our local Arts Centre in about six weeks time. Although my son is busy in a fortnight’s time, my daughter-in-law has the time free to accompany me to see my two Leicestershire friends with whom I am going to share a meal on the occasion of what would have been Meg’s 80th birthday, had she lived. In the forthcoming week. my social activities are going to be concentrated upon Friday when we have a letting of the UA Philosophy group to which meeting I am looking forward (the subject of which is to be ‘How far does a tolerant society tolerate intolerance?’) followed by a Ukrainian lunch in the Methodist centre. Once a month, members of the local Ukrainian community are given access to the kitchens in the Methodist Centre, and they bring along the ingredients and then cook some traditional Ukrainian food. The lunches that are prepared are then sold and all of the proceeds and profits go to fund Ukrainian relief activities – what a brilliant idea!