Posts by Nat Torkington
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I've got a lot of respect for Pita Sharples. I think this is probably very canny for them. They get to keep their enemies closer, where they can have power working against the policies that would hurt those they represent. Seems to make sense to me.
-
Geoff: He was mentioned in ComputerWorld and will be on the Kim Hill show this Saturday.
-
"Self-fulfilling". What's the point there, Russell? That we shouldn't hear bad economic news, only the good? There's a lot to talk about in the economy, but I'm struggling to imagine an interesting conversation coming out of that angle.
-
she forgot to ask for money
Word from my Twitter friends is that the Dems have largely stopped asking for money on the phone calls and are instead making sure you'll vote. Sample size small, of course, but that's the impression I got.
-
But but ... but ... Peters is a fucking cunt! I concur with the last paragraph of Hooton's blog entry that you point to:
Finally, I am very proud that I have looked Peters in the eye and called him a liar, a crook and a fucking cunt. He has been a most evil influence on New Zealand politics since he first began telling lies, scaremongering and attacking minorities in the 1980s. And I also feel a little guilty that I have been able to look him in the eye and tell him the truth when so many other New Zealanders don’t get the same opportunity.
That said, the real scandal isn't who called who a cunt (there seem plenty of worthy recipients of that approbation) but rather that as the world economic markets melt down, our fake wealth and bogus lifestyles begin to gently orbit the plug hole that they'll eventually go down, and we look set for the biggest and hardest market-induced lifestyle correction since the 1930s ... the best NZ television can think to do for current affairs is to trot out a venal politician and a vapid waste of biomass (sorry, "centre-right political commentator") and have them handbag it on air.
I've had bad mussels that caused liquid diarrhoea more compelling than that kind of bullshit "great tv". It's all connected: we indulged our individual greed, bankrolled ultimately by opaque hedge fund greed, and didn't want to hear anything that might deny that it was our innate and inalienable god-given right to get 110% loans with 0% down because we were just so fucking CLEVER to be riding this wave of 12% year on year property appreciation. So we demanded and got piss-weak newspapers and this kind of mindless televisual drivel that barely functions as entertainment and fails miserably to be any kind of informative.
In short, we got the media we deserve. Now can we realize the mistake and figure out how to get a good inquisitive feet-to-the-fire press back?
-
This thread appears to be "me too" to the max, so here goes.
Kim Hill FTW. I can't tell you how happy it made me to realize, when I came back from American and was confronted with the NZ Herald and the New Insipid Listener (MARRIAGE ADVICE FOR YOUR BRAIN TO REFI YOUR HOUSE MORTGAGE!), that there was someone with a brain left in New Zealand.
I used to be a regular Morning Report listener, and it was a great bootcamp to get back into the pace of NZ life, but when my shower radio ceased to pick up RNZ, Morning Report fell out of my life. And I haven't really missed it. What's going on in NZ? It's probably some ill-thought out exploitative media gang-bang (Veitch, Kahui, baby Pumpkin, Muliaga) or mindless political posturing. My life is all the richer for its absence.
I tried Jim Mora and Chris Laidlaw, but the best that can be said is that they do an adequate job of filling dead air. Kathryn Ryan also didn't make me care--I was unable to detect many signs of research, alas.
I loved NPR while I was in the US, though I haven't listened to it again on this trip. I think the NPR model of lots-of-shows rather than the RNZ model of few-big-hostdriven-shows-with-many-small-segments is preferable--we don't have a big enough pool of hosts up to that responsibility, it seems. I'd like to see more variety, for example quiz shows like "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" or "story" shows like "This American Life".
-
Lamb Saag
Ingredients
1 long green chilies
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 cm fresh ginger, grated
3 tablespools oil
1 kg boneless lamb, cubed
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods
2 onions, chopped
2 teaspoons, ground turmeric
1 teaspoon, ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 bay leaves
2 cups beef stock
1 bunch english spinach, de-stalked and finely shredded (I use food processor)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, chopped
1/3 cup plain yogurt1. Remove seeds and white membrane from the chili and chop finely.
2. Set aside with garlic and ginger.
3. Heat 2 Tbl oil in frying pan/wok and brown the lamb in batches, drain on paper towel.
4. In a dry frying pan/wok, combine fenugreek, cumin, mustard, cinnamon, and cardamom.
5. Cook for 1 minute or until seeds start to pop. (You have wee while between seeds popping and burning, which you don't want)
6. Set aside. Heat remaining oil and cook onion until softened, 3-4 minutes, then add roasted spices.
7. Add garlic, ginger, chilli, tumeric, cumin, chilli powder, coriander, and bay leaves to onion.
8. Cook for a minute, then add lamb and stock.
9. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for > 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
10. Add spinach and salt, cook for 5 more minutes, or until spinach is wilted.
11. Stir in coriander and yogurt, discard cinnamon stick and bay leaves, and serve.
My mods and notes:
* The chef at an Indian takeaway in Australia told me that "fenugreek and spinach is the heart of a saag". Consequently, I go hard on the spinach (two or three bunches) and slop in more fenugreek than the recipe calls for.
* He also said the longer and slower you can cook it, the better it tastes. So I drop the element down to 1 after bringing it to the boil, and leave it there for two hours at least.
* You can cook the spinach for more than 5 minutes. I try to have at least 15. The chef in Australia had it in there for hours.
* I dice the onions.
* I've used beef instead of lamb, with little suffering. I buy bags of diced meat from the butchers, so I don't know if any particular cut is preferable if you're doing it yourself.
* I love garlic, so I end up chopping in four or five cloves.
* Step 7 leaves you with a really dry powdery grot in the wok, which can easily form a coating on the bottom of the wok. It seems really weird, but it works out ok--when you add the water, the grot can be scraped off.
* I'm unsure what a cardamon pod is, but the seeds I have are about a cm long and very fibrous. Because they don't decompose in the cooking, they're bastards to find in your mouth, and they're really hard to identify before you've eaten them. My next innovation will be a wee muslin bag in which I can put the bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom pods during the cooking, so they'll be easy to fish out.
* I use green herb stock when I run out of beef stock, and there's no appreciable difference. Salty stock water is the important bit, I guess.
* The yogurt gives it the creamy green colour you're familiar with, the spinach gives it the texture. I've never been able to hand chop the spinach fine enough--the food processor is a blessing here.
* I add salt with the spinach, until it tastes a wee bit too salty. The yogurt nicely takes the salt edge off. Salting is the bit I find hardest to judge, to be honest--I always hope like hell it won't suck, and it hasn't yet.
* My chillies this time were somewhere between 1 and 1.5 jalapenos, without the whites removed, and it had a lovely glow. I didn't add any extra chilli powder. -
Goddamnit. Let's try that again:
-
Going through our house at the moment:
I know it's plebeian to enjoy Weezer, but they're So Damn Good. The lead singer, Rivers Cuomo, has YouTubers writing a song, showing them what he thinks and the order he works in. It's interesting, and he's definitely weird.
-
The answer's obvious: the government will have to build and maintain conference facilities to ensure that there are no untoward line items.