The other day, I went to Nottingham to chat with the guy who is the expert on what I was planning to do my Ph.D. on, and I was trying to be open-minded with regards the possibility of doing said Ph.D. in that very place. So, in the hour before our meeting, I took myself to his department's little cafe, purchased a coffee and a swirly danish pastry thing, and sat down with the only of his articles that I hadn't yet read. Now, I had intended to try out their croissant, as a pseudo-jocular-but-in-fact-very-serious method for evaluating the place's potential lurability. But there was no croissant. This left me in the awkward position of having to base a highly important evaluation procedure around a foodstuff in which I really do have no expertise. I was not particularly enamoured with the danish pastry - it was incredibly sweet, with outrageous amounts of icing and stickiness, and, unsurprisingly since it was not a croissant and was not aiming for this quality, had almost no fluffiness at all and could even have said to have been rather hard. I felt slightly unsettled.
There was, however, a sign in the cafe declaring the price of croissant.
So, I could make a judgement based upon the experience with the danish pastry, which is bound to produce a disproportionatley low score since such a thing is intrinsically inferiour to croissant.
Or I could make a withholding of judgement to some as-yet-undefined point in the future - on the grounds that the availability of croissant is usually dependable and I just happened to be there on a bad day - which future point may not even take place until the decision of the place of the Ph.D has been made, in which case the croissant really has been bypassed altogether leaving the decision entierely at the mercy of more conventional means.
I find this a most awkward and dissatisfying situation.
On a lighter note (oops, unintentional but harmless pun!), I have recently been surprised with a lovely croissant in B-Bar. On previous occasions, the B-Bar croissant has been quite dry and even a little tough, and has really presented no other option than to be submerged in coffee prior to consumption. Now, not one too make too hasty a judgement, and as one who works around the corner from B-Bar, I gave the place another chance. And the croissant was pretty much perfect. So B-Bar is unreliable but with great potential. I had not previously thought of factoring time into the croissant criteria.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The Croissant Diaries
Surely the most satisfying start to the day involves croissant. This is how it is for me at least. But some croissants are more conducive to a state of morning tranquility than others, and sometimes it seems important to keep a precise mental log of where success in this quest has been found.
Of course, above and beyond the intrinsic properties of the thing, context also matters.
For instance, my most formative and thus highly prized croissant experiences involve a cluster of siblings curled, sprawled and draped around my mother's bed on a Sunday morning, as Bach's cello suites or perhaps Vivaldi's Nula in Mundo Pax Sincera floats up the stairs, and the gentle light of the expansive East Yorkshire skies dances on the wide river Humber before curving in through the window. Here, the croissant in fact functions, on one level, simply as a medium for the imbibement of coffee, through the operation known as 'dipping'; or rather, the croissant is so intimately bound up with the drinking of coffee that to consider either one alone would be an injustice to the other. On another level, the croissant is merely a semi-arbitrarily chosen obligatory passage point for the occurance of a vitally important ritual gathering and bonding within the family. So the croissant's status is in fact both historically contingent and a partial sideline to another consumable. But nevermind all this. What I have said is, the croissant has a special place of importance for me because of two interrelated factors (family plus coffee), whereas what I meant to say in this section was, that the setting in which the croissant is consumed plays an important role in the level of enjoyment the same may bring.
But I wanted to talk about real croissant.
Now, you'd think that the Bread Man in the market would sell lovely fresh croissant. Indeed, that is what I thought too, but in fact they are a little dry and slightly doughy. In order to make up for this, in which the bread stand very nearly succeeds, the croissants come with all manner of distractions: apricot or apple and sultana filling, chocolate and almond and a swirly shape, chocolate and a twisty shape... but these frills seem to accentuate the lack of the rare treasure of the plain croissant.
Reluctance to go to one of the Nadia's (the reluctance being due to a long-held suspicion against this slightly-too prosperous local bakery - how are there quite so many of them?) was recently overcomeby the writer on the grounds of its ridiculously convenient proximity to last year's house, and in fact the results were surprisingly good. They microwave it for you if you like. A difficult decision; overall the warmth wins out, but the microwaving process does somewhat deflate the thing into a flat state of greasiness.
Of the supermarkets, it would appear that Marks and Spencer remain ahead, although the new Sainsbury's organic croissants are extremely close competitors. The freshly baked Sainsbury's croissant is pretty good also. The other packaged Sainsbury's efforts have much to be desired, and even the Waitrose croissant, though excitingly large, doesn't have the all-important degree of lightness.
I think we can safely say there are two important factors to croissant success: lightness and butteriness. And fluffiness. Fluffiness so as to prevent the flaking into coffee upon dippage. Three factors, then: lightness, butteriness and fluffiness. Although, having said that, it is highly likely that fluffiness is the product of both lightness and butteriness, and thus is the all important factor. So, one factor: fluffiness. (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!)
Very recently, I tried the Presto croissant. This is really very impressive indeed. I can find little to fault in this croissant.
Of course, above and beyond the intrinsic properties of the thing, context also matters.
For instance, my most formative and thus highly prized croissant experiences involve a cluster of siblings curled, sprawled and draped around my mother's bed on a Sunday morning, as Bach's cello suites or perhaps Vivaldi's Nula in Mundo Pax Sincera floats up the stairs, and the gentle light of the expansive East Yorkshire skies dances on the wide river Humber before curving in through the window. Here, the croissant in fact functions, on one level, simply as a medium for the imbibement of coffee, through the operation known as 'dipping'; or rather, the croissant is so intimately bound up with the drinking of coffee that to consider either one alone would be an injustice to the other. On another level, the croissant is merely a semi-arbitrarily chosen obligatory passage point for the occurance of a vitally important ritual gathering and bonding within the family. So the croissant's status is in fact both historically contingent and a partial sideline to another consumable. But nevermind all this. What I have said is, the croissant has a special place of importance for me because of two interrelated factors (family plus coffee), whereas what I meant to say in this section was, that the setting in which the croissant is consumed plays an important role in the level of enjoyment the same may bring.
But I wanted to talk about real croissant.
Now, you'd think that the Bread Man in the market would sell lovely fresh croissant. Indeed, that is what I thought too, but in fact they are a little dry and slightly doughy. In order to make up for this, in which the bread stand very nearly succeeds, the croissants come with all manner of distractions: apricot or apple and sultana filling, chocolate and almond and a swirly shape, chocolate and a twisty shape... but these frills seem to accentuate the lack of the rare treasure of the plain croissant.
Reluctance to go to one of the Nadia's (the reluctance being due to a long-held suspicion against this slightly-too prosperous local bakery - how are there quite so many of them?) was recently overcomeby the writer on the grounds of its ridiculously convenient proximity to last year's house, and in fact the results were surprisingly good. They microwave it for you if you like. A difficult decision; overall the warmth wins out, but the microwaving process does somewhat deflate the thing into a flat state of greasiness.
Of the supermarkets, it would appear that Marks and Spencer remain ahead, although the new Sainsbury's organic croissants are extremely close competitors. The freshly baked Sainsbury's croissant is pretty good also. The other packaged Sainsbury's efforts have much to be desired, and even the Waitrose croissant, though excitingly large, doesn't have the all-important degree of lightness.
I think we can safely say there are two important factors to croissant success: lightness and butteriness. And fluffiness. Fluffiness so as to prevent the flaking into coffee upon dippage. Three factors, then: lightness, butteriness and fluffiness. Although, having said that, it is highly likely that fluffiness is the product of both lightness and butteriness, and thus is the all important factor. So, one factor: fluffiness. (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!)
Very recently, I tried the Presto croissant. This is really very impressive indeed. I can find little to fault in this croissant.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Funny side
Small boy, aged 3, 4, 5, who knows, standing on the square stone steps that bottom an obelisk war memorial as Saturday-morning people busy past, small boy saying earnestly
Daddy, look, daddy, this is the funny side.
Boy almost hugging the stone wall of the sides of the step, moves around the corner to his left, boy has just realised that
Daddy, this is, daddy this side is also the funny side; both of these sides are funny sides.
I don't know what the other sides were, because slowing down as much as had enabled this sight so far was already taking me dangerously away from the Saturday-morning-person categories and there was no need to cause a scene.
But what a discovery. Now every time I go down that street I know that those two sides there are the funny sides.
Daddy, look, daddy, this is the funny side.
Boy almost hugging the stone wall of the sides of the step, moves around the corner to his left, boy has just realised that
Daddy, this is, daddy this side is also the funny side; both of these sides are funny sides.
I don't know what the other sides were, because slowing down as much as had enabled this sight so far was already taking me dangerously away from the Saturday-morning-person categories and there was no need to cause a scene.
But what a discovery. Now every time I go down that street I know that those two sides there are the funny sides.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Astro
Today has suddenly switched into an astrology day. Sudden switches seem perfectly justifiable given the weather. So this is my birth chart.
It used to freak me out with that one line sticking straight through the middle. But secretly I quite like it. It says to me, focussed but with spurts of completely alternative input that maybe work to keep things balanced, but not too balanced that they're dispersed.
Actually when I did my own chart there were one or two more aspects (an aspect is an angle between two planets that is denoted particular importance, like 60 or 90 degrees say, and which is represented on the graphical chart with a line), but I think that was probably because I wanted a more exciting-looking picture. And it was exciting! On mine, there are two other lines coming from the moon (the only planet on the right-hand side of this chart), which join up to both ends of the purple line thus making a lovely isoceles triangle that the red line then bisects. The whole thing appears as a sail, and so looked rather nice. It also ended up being part of a larger configuration of aspects which basically works as a pointer to the planet on its own, in this case the moon, making that planet, its sign, its house etc particularly important in the interpretation of the chart as a whol. Alas, however, the computer program that churned this drawing one out thinks that the planets just weren't quite exactly where I had had them. I suppose it's no big loss. I am rather attached to that configuration actually. I must learn to move on. Such a pretty sail.
It used to freak me out with that one line sticking straight through the middle. But secretly I quite like it. It says to me, focussed but with spurts of completely alternative input that maybe work to keep things balanced, but not too balanced that they're dispersed.
Actually when I did my own chart there were one or two more aspects (an aspect is an angle between two planets that is denoted particular importance, like 60 or 90 degrees say, and which is represented on the graphical chart with a line), but I think that was probably because I wanted a more exciting-looking picture. And it was exciting! On mine, there are two other lines coming from the moon (the only planet on the right-hand side of this chart), which join up to both ends of the purple line thus making a lovely isoceles triangle that the red line then bisects. The whole thing appears as a sail, and so looked rather nice. It also ended up being part of a larger configuration of aspects which basically works as a pointer to the planet on its own, in this case the moon, making that planet, its sign, its house etc particularly important in the interpretation of the chart as a whol. Alas, however, the computer program that churned this drawing one out thinks that the planets just weren't quite exactly where I had had them. I suppose it's no big loss. I am rather attached to that configuration actually. I must learn to move on. Such a pretty sail.
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