The Blaze-ing truth....!

ET, move over; your day is done – pack away that eternally pointing finger and beating heart. Now is the time for aliens to get real. Those of you into little green men or grey men or whatever the skin tone, this is your week. Just tune into Blaze Channel Freeview at 9 pm, and you will turn bug-eyed with delight at this fest of lights in the sky, political intrigue, men in black and civilian accounts of alien abduction: egad, post-Roswell hubris doesn’t get better than this! And it’s on ALL this week (29 June to 3 July). Truly, it’s enough to make one want to rocket off to Mars and say “hi” to the universe. Remember, the truth is out there…...

The Very Tasty Cheese and Onion Pasty

The reason that I have never printed a recipe here before is because, like Grace Dent, I believe that food has one purpose: to be eaten – and my repertoire is very narrow. From that footing, I expound the virtues of my very tasty cheese and onion pasty. The following recipe is guaranteed to feed one, hungry human - a symphony of crumbly pastry, semi-sweet onion and tangy cheese. Take five fistfuls of Sainsbury’s bread flour (green bag) and three fistfuls of self-raising flour (blue bag) and mix in a bowl with enough fat (marg, butter or lard) rubbed in to create a breadcrumb-like texture. When done, mix with water until you have a firm mixture that pulls clean from the side of the bowl. The resulting pastry should roll out to an 8-inch diameter round (about the size of a side plate), on a floured surface. Meanwhile, fry a quarter of a diced onion lightly in oil. While the onion is frying, grate a hunk of cheese (Cheddar? Lancashire? ) into a bowl. Individual taste comes into play here. I like a good dollop of cheese, and two fistfuls supply sufficient filling - but you can grate more or less. Spread a layer of the cooked onion onto the pastry, but not to the edges. Place the grated cheese on top and close the margin of uncovered pastry over the mound of filling, to create an attractive pasty. Place the results on a floured baking tin and put into the oven. This size of pasty requires about 20 minutes at 200c to brown and crisp the pastry. At this stage, I find a volcanic lava of cheese bubbling and sizzling from the molten interior, onto the surface – and it renders the pasty all the tastier for that! Serve with a green salad or roast a mix of tomatoes and peppers alongside of it. Since my picture editing skills match my culinary experiese, it will take a little longer to “cook” the image of my very tasty cheese and onion pasty into an eyeful fit for human consumption. In the meantime, take on board the ingredients.

Telstar....the reason I didn't go into music.....

A few days ago, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Laura Snapes and Alexis Petridis of The Guardian saw fit to publish “The 100 Greatest UK No 1” hit songs. I thumbed through it eagerly, pleased to see that my favourite instrumental of all time appeared at no – 86? Well, what’s a few digits between friends, and just think of all of bazillion releases that didn’t make it to that top 100? Friend, I tell you now that Telstar (Tornadoes, 1962) is the reason that I ruled out forever, even the notion of becoming a musician. How I thrilled to listen to that opening buzz sounding off of the radio, followed by that yearning paragraph, heavy with the ambition of would-be space travellers, those layers upon layers of luscious chords building up to something magical happening elsewhere, out there, the music of the spheres, indeed! But as I grew up, I discovered the truth, that there was Telstar and all of the others, that, to use the words of the above writers, “nothing had sounded like it before or has since”. So, at the grand old age of – six, I renounced forever the idea of a career in music. But X number of years later, Telstar is as aspirational and heart-stirring as ever and to anyone planning to go explore the cosmos, it might yet become the anthem... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B7ypA1fSwU