From Leftovers To.....Restaurant-Quality Fried Noodles!

Oftentimes, I have plenty of leftovers in my fridge just because, well, I cook too much! :) So here's a tip on how you can turn leftovers into a delicious fried noodle dish fit for a restaurant. OK, here's what I had in my fridge:

• Shrimp stir-fry with broccoli and carrots
• 5-Spice roasted pork belly (sliced into thin pieces)
  

What I added are rice noodle sticks (the same ones used for Pad Thai), mushrooms, onions and garlic. That's all, very simple. To add a little bulk to the dish, I also cut up a piece of chicken breast cutlet that was sitting in the freezer.

OK, let's get to it. First, soak the noodles in hot water for about 30 minutes. You don't want to boil the noodles and make too soft as you'll be frying it in a little while. Get a wok or pan hot with vegetable oil in it. Start by sauteing the onions first, sweating them before adding the garlic. Now add the raw protein, in this case, it is only the chicken meat as the shrimp and pork belly are already cooked. Add some seasonings like fish sauce and pepper. Make sure that the chicken is cooked before adding the noodles. I would normally cook the vegetables at this point but as they are already cooked, there is no need to. Use a pair of tongs to stir up the ingredients together with the noodles. Add soy sauce and sweet soy sauce (or Kicap Manis) to get the darker color that you see on the noodles and keep stirring. Now, add the leftovers and the mushrooms and stir it up some more. Taste and add more soy sauce if needed. I also like to add a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of sesame oil to my noodles. So, keep mixing and frying until the noodles become soft.

And there you have it. Delicious fried noodles made from leftovers. Yummy!

12-Minute Pizza From Start To Finish

How many times have you wished that you had something in your kitchen that is not only fresh and delicious but quick to prepare as well? Well, I'm here to tell you about how you can whip out a delicious pepperoni pizza in 12 minutes flat from scratch, start to finish. Nope, I'm not kidding. And it's not the frozen kind either.

Here's what you need:

Naan flatbread
Pepperoni
Marinara sauce
Mozzarella cheese (shredded)

OK, let's start the clock. Tick-tock!
Turn on your oven and pre-heat it to 425F. This is when you start working on assembling your pizza. Spread marinara sauce onto the flatbread and sprinkle some mozzarella cheese, covering the entire flatbread. Tick-tock. Now, arrange pieces of pepperoni onto the cheese-covered flatbread. Cover that with more cheese. Tick-tock. It's only been less than 5 minutes and your pepperoni is already assembled and ready to start baking. At about this point, you'll probably hear your oven beeping, signaling that it is ready.

Well, what are you waiting for? The clock's ticking (literally)! Tick-tock......quickly shove the pizza into the oven, my friend! Phew....now it is just a waiting game. Tick-tock. 5-7 minutes is all you need in the oven for the cheese to melt into a gooey delicious mess. Tick-tock.

Ding! Pizza's ready!

Time to dig in, folks! It'll probably take you longer to eat the pizza than to assemble and bake this fresh pizza pie from scratch. Unbelievable!

NOTE: To jazz up your pizza just a little, try adding fresh basil (or dry basil flakes) together with garlic powder and fresh ground black pepper to the sauce. You can even think about different toppings. Enjoy!

Squanderland

University and employment suck a little, not unlike the only two new films I've had time to see since the last post. On the plus side, I now have the new computer sorted, pending a couple of minor technical bugbears, so can now blog a bit more regularly again. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion on here- others are available. So here goes with Couples Retreat and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is about an average teen called Darren Shan, whose life changes after he and his best friend Steve go to a freak show and run afoul of Crepsley, a performer who is also a vampire. Crepsley's spider bites Steve, forcing Darren to make a deal with Crepsley to save his friend's life. Thus Darren becomes a vampire and joins the Cirque du Freak, incurring the wrath of an opposing caste who are looking to end a hundred-year truce and start a war between vampires. Yep, it's yet another vampire film and that's where it falls down.

The film centres on Darren, Crepsley and their conflict with the Vampanese, the type of vampire that kills their prey rather than just taking whatever non-life-threatening amount of blood they need to survive. But elsewhere in the film, there's a creepy gangster with the power to resurrect dead people, a bloke with two stomachs, and a bearded lady played by Salma Hayek. All of these are more interesting ideas than the umpteenth reinvention of vampires, and it's lost in the pea soup that is Cirque du Freak. John C. Reilly plays Crepsley, and he's reliable enough as an actor that he carries every scene he's in. The trouble is that our intrepid hero is played by newcomer Chris Massoglia, an actor so leaden that he brings everything else down. It's not entirely his bad- the film's pretty terribly edited, and given the timing of its release, you have to wonder if it was rushed out in time for Halloween. It takes ages to get going, and then once it does, approximately not much happens. The last minute appendage of the Vampire's Assistant subtitle suggests they're planning sequels, but that most likely won't happen now that the film has bombed on its opening weekend at the American box office.

The film is being marketed and reviewed as "Twilight for teenage boys", and whatever my feelings on That Franchise, it's a shame that the potential for this has been squandered in order to appeal to an apparently ready-made audience. I didn't hate the film, it just massively disappointed me. Reilly makes a valiant effort and there is one really good joke in the middle of it, but the poor pacing and Disney-brand moral message at the end make the film thoroughly unremarkable. Cirque du Freak doesn't suck, but it lacks bite, and that's as much wordplay as I can be bothered to think up for a film so forgettable.

On the other hand, we have Couples Retreat, a comedy largely aimed at people who've ever wanted to watch Vince Vaughn present Wish You Were Here. Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell are considering divorce because of their seeming inability to conceive. They decide to book a couples' skill-building holiday at a tropical paradise called Eden. They drag three other couples along with them, promising that they can enjoy the sun and surf instead of the rigorous couples therapy. Instead, they're told by an officious Peter Serafinowicz that all eight of them have to partake in the whole programme as well as all the fun activities. Hilarious romantic hijinks ensue. And yes, Bateman and Bell's characters do have names, as do Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis, but that doesn't really matter, seeing as how plot is secondary to these actors going off and filming on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean.

See, the film I just described would seem to be about couples realising they have issues in their relationships and having to work hard to sort those out. The couples bicker and fight, contrary to their idyllic surroundings. And yet the only picture I could find to illustrate this was the above holiday snap of a publicity picture. That's what it is- Vince Vaughn decided to go on holiday with some other actors, and now you're paying for it in multiplexes. The script is utterly devoid of laughs, so I urge you not to go and finance their holiday. It's a real shame to see the likes of Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell and Jon Favreau in this though- all three are decent comedy actors, and should really have known better. All acquit themselves rather well, but I still don't like Vince Vaughn, I'm afraid. There's really little more to say except that the amount of product placement in this is distractingly huge. Everyone make sure they go to Appleby's after the film, and then write about it on Facebook on your Apple Mac before you go and play Guitar Hero. Powerpoint. Will anyone be watching this in just twenty years time? It's going to be hideously dated in about two years.

Couples Retreat has about as much entertainment value as a tourist brochure, and it's a shameful exercise for certain comedy actors who really should've put their artistic integrity before the temptation of being paid to spend time on an island paradise. I don't begrudge anyone who has the money to go and do that, just please don't give the world your holiday videos to sit through afterwards. Probably the worst thing any of the main cast (except Vince Vaughn) has ever been in.
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I'm off to see Fish Tank shortly, and I hear that's a really good film, so looking forward to that. Other than that, still need to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, 9 and Saw VI. Expect any one of those four in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you've seen either Couples Retreat or Cirque du Freak, please comment on this post and let me know what you thought- always like a bit of discussion and feedback.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Simple Sushi - Oxymoron? I Think Not!

The term "simple sushi" may sound like an oxymoron but is it really that hard to make? I mean, we can all agree that sushi chefs are masters of their art and it takes years of training to be good at making this Japanese dish. Can a home cook without any kind of training or experience bang out some nice sushi rolls? Well, let's find out.

First of all, let's lower our own expectations, shall we? We are never going to be able to produce sushi that looks like a work of art overnight. So let's not even think that. Just keep it simple. The key to making good sushi is a belief in yourself, know what you need and be organized. However, before we get to that, let's just review what is it that we are actually making. Sushi is very different from sashimi. The term sushi has become such commonplace that it has been used interchangeably with sashimi. A lot of times, sushi gets confused with sashimi, which is just slices of raw fish, served as-is. On the other hand, sushi refers to the Japanese snack food that comprises vinegared rice that is rolled with dried seaweed sheets (better known as nori) together with vegetables or cooked seafood ingredients.

Here are the things that you'll need to make sushi:

Sushi rice (any short grain variety will do)
Nori (seaweed sheets)
Sesame seeds
Rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt
Sushi-rolling mat made from bamboo (covered in plastic saran wrap)

For this application, we'll be making maki-sushi, which is rice and seaweed rolled with vegetables or seafood. This is the most common type of sushi. Let's do a vegetarian one, starting with basic ingredients like avocado, carrots and cucumber. Simple enough, right? Now, let's get ourselves organized by doing a mise en place of whatever ingredients and tools that we are going to need.

First off, let's make the sushi rice. Wash the rice until the water is clear, which eliminates most of the starch. Drain the water and let the rice sit for about 30 minutes. Cook the rice with a tad less water than you would normally add, to make sure that the rice will not get too mushy when the vinegar mix is added. While the rice is cooking, let's make the vinegar mix. Now, every sushi chef have their own secret recipe for this but let's just make do with a standard recipe:

2.5 - 3 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 - 3 tablespoon sugar
1.5 teaspoon salt

Heat up these ingredients in a small pot until the sugar dissolves. Do not let the mixture boil. Let it cool down. When the rice is done, transfer it out of the pot and start adding the vinegar mix, folding it thoroughly and gently into the rice with a wooden ladle. As you do this, you are supposed to fan the rice to cool it down but that's up to you. I personally don't think it is necessary. As you add the vinegar mix, taste the rice to make sure that you've not added too much. After you've made rice, you should use it immediately and not let it sit. At most, sushi should be consumed a couple of hours after it is made.

Before the rice is done, you should get the vegetable ingredients ready. Cut the carrots and cucumber (remove the seeds first) into thin matchstick-like portions. As for the avocado, cut them into thin slices as well. Now you are ready to roll your sushi. Before using the bamboo mat, wrap it in saran wrap to make sure that the rice doesn't stick to the mat.



Let's make sushi, shall we?

Lay down a nori sheet onto the mat. Now, spread the rice on 2/3 of the nori, starting from the bottom, covering it with rice all the way to the sides. Add your vegetables in the middle of the rice from one side end to the other. Make sure you don't add too much as it will be hard to roll. Now, lift the end of the mat closest to you and fold it over the filling, all the while making sure you are rolling instead of just folding. As you do this, tuck the end of your fold into the rice, closing the fold, applying even pressure throughout. Now, lift the end of the mat that you were rolling and continue rolling the rest of the nori, making sure you keep the roll tight.

Congratulations, you've just made maki-sushi! Serve the sushi with either soy sauce or ponzu (Japanese citrus soy sauce) and wasabi.

NOTE: For a more awesome-tasting sushi, I like to add a miso sauce together with the ingredients before you start rolling the sushi. It gives the sushi a sweeter taste that you'll never find anywhere else. Here's the recipe for the sauce:

3 tablespoon red/yellow miso
2 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoon sake
2 tablespoon mirin

Bring this mix to a simmer and keep stirring until you get a pasty consistency.

Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala is a classic Italian dish that, in its traditional form, consists of chicken breast cutlets, mushrooms and Marsala wine. Of course, my philosophy is, as always, you can make any dish your own by adding extra ingredients that you like to eat (as long as the ingredients do not clash with one another) but keeping the basic form of the dish intact. For instance, in my chicken marsala dish, I like to add asparagus spears and garnish with finely chopped scallions instead of parsley. The main ingredient, the Marsala wine originates from the Sicilan city of Marsala. It is a fortified wine similar to Port and is traditionally served as an aperitif. Now it is used more as a cooking wine.

Here are the ingredients that you'll need to make this version of chicken marsala:

Chicken breast (or dark meat if you prefer)
Mushroom (crimini, shiitake) cut into slices
Marsala wine
Chicken stock
Flour (seasoned with salt and pepper)
Asparagus (cut into an inch in length)
Spaghetti
Onions or shallots (chopped small)
Dried herbs (thyme/oregano)
Scallions

To prepare the chicken meat, I prefer to slice it into thin cutlets. You can also choose to pound the meat with a tenderizer but be careful cause over-beating the meat will turn it into mush. Season the chicken meat with salt and pepper. Heat up a pan while you coat the chicken cutlets with the seasoned flour. The flour provides a nice coating for the meat and also prevents it from sticking to the pan. If you slice the chicken thin enough, the cutlets will cook in no time, before the outer coating turns too brown or burnt. Remove the cutlets when they are done and move them to a paper towel-lined plate to drain the excess oil.


At this point, do not wash the pan yet. You'll need it to make the sauce. First, drain away the excess oil and melt 2 TBS of butter and start sweating the onions. Add the mushrooms and cook out the liquid. Deglaze the pan with the Marsala wine, chicken stock, add the herbs and let it reduce to an almost syrupy consistency. Taste and season the sauce with salt and pepper. For the asparagus, cut off the bottom ends (about 2 inches) and discard. Cut the remaining asparagus into one-inch sticks and saute with salt and pepper until they are slightly soft. As for the pasta, cook the spaghetti until al dente and add some melted butter so that the pasta doesn't stick together.

Now you are ready to serve. Plate the pasta first, arrange the chicken cutlets around the plate, sprinkle the asparagus spears around the plate and finally, spoon the sauce over the everything and garnish with the scallions.

Lobster Vindaloo with Basmati Coconut Rice

Vindaloo is a traditional Goan dish originating from Portugal. Usually paired with pork and red wine, this Portuguese dish was transformed into an Indian curry dish when various spices were added and cooked with chicken or lamb. Vindaloo has become pretty popular overseas (UK, Europe, U.S.), with many Indian restaurants in those countries offering a variant of the dish. Rather than having a hard time deciphering recipes and hunting for the various spices that go into a vindaloo, you can actually buy a bottle of vindaloo paste from your local Indian grocery store or any other supermarkets that has an international food aisle. Cooking it is as easy as just adding onions, tomato and othe vegetables to the vindaloo paste together with some water. As for me, I like to amp it up with a few extra spices of my own like star anise, a bay leaf, cumin, coriander and cinnamon.

For this dish I picked lobster because it so happened that the day that I wanted to make vindaloo with shrimp, I stopped by my local supermarket and they had fresh live lobsters going for $3.49/lb. Yes, you read that right: $3.49/lb! Lobsters have never been this cheap before. Isn't it great living in New England? So I went home with 2 lobsters for less than $9. Anyway, I started off by sauteing some yellow onions and garlic. I cut the lobsters into half right down the middle. Pan frying them like this ensures that the flavorful parts of the lobster that reside in the head is not wasted. Also, you should crack the claws with the back of your knife to make sure that it cooks properly. So now, go ahead and pan fry the lobsters flesh side down together with the onions and garlic that was cooking earlier. Cover the pan to simmer the lobster, making sure they cook all the way through. Now, add a tablespoon of the vndaloo paste together with half a cup of water. Add all the extra spices that I mentioned earlier and mix well. Simmer again to let all the nice flavors develop.

I decided to add carrots and sweet potatoes to this vindaloo dish. To make sure that everything cooks properly, I boiled these root vegetables first as they would take a much longer time to cook than the other ingredients in the pot. Now, add the cooked root vegetables to the pot and simmer some more. Just before finishing, I cut up some fresh spinach and add it into the pot, making sure that it wilts slightly just before turning off the heat and serving. To accompany this vindaloo, I cooked some basmati rice together with coconut milk and a pinch or two of salt. When the rice is cooked, I fold in a cup of raisins. Now the dish is ready to be served.

What Price Dreams

Technical issues persist here, but hopefully my readers will be pleased to know that my rant head is still in full working order. As for the new computer, it's been sent off for repairs and should be sorted soon, with any luck. Fortunately, I've seen some good films lately, including Zombieland and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Zombieland appears to be another in a long line of knock-offs of Shaun of the Dead, which have been coming in a steady stream since Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright found great success on both sides of the pond with that film in 2004. Appearances aside, Ruben Fleischer's first major feature film is actually the only worthy contender to Shaun. In the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, the handful of survivors remaining in the United States roam the roads and generally try to avoid emotional ties, going so far as to name themselves only after their next destination. Our hero, headed for Columbus, has survived thus far by fastidiously following a rigid set of rules- rules that are compromised by the arrival of the gun-toting zombie-hating Tallahassee and a conniving pair of sisters called Wichita and Little Rock.

You really can't expect me to say this is better than Shaun of the Dead, because that's one of my favourite films of all time. But like that film, Zombieland is a film about people surviving the zombie apocalypse as opposed to the event itself. Large amounts of time go by, including most of the second half, without any zombies making an appearance whatsoever, and the film is the better for it. By ditching shock-horror tactics and the traditional social allegories attached to George A. Romero's zombie outings, Fleischer can better focus on characters, making this a very enjoyable horror comedy indeed. A great deal of the film's energy and charm can be attributed to the way the relatively small cast bring it to life- Jesse Eisenberg concerned me a little because as I said in my review of Adventureland, he reminded me a little of Michael Cera there, and the same is true of this film. As I've mentioned, I like Michael Cera, but he always plays the same kind of character, and I'm hoping Eisenberg will fulfil his potential and branch out a little.

With the rest of the cast, no complaints whatsoever- Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin both make an impression, but the real highlights are Woody Harrelson, who just has a whale of a time giving it every ounce of machismo and bad-assery he can muster, and the surprise cameo halfway through. If you still don't know who makes an appearance, please try to avoid finding out, because it's so much better when you don't know it's coming. It's a surreal and brilliant segment of the film and pretty much elevates cameo to high art- I can't see how any successor will cap it for hilarity and general... well, dementia. There's plenty for all to enjoy in Zombieland, gorehounds and comedy fans alike. While Pegg and Wright showed ordinary people surviving "Z-Day", Fleischer gives us an entertaining and fitting show of what might happen once you accept that zombies have taken over. Witty, occasionally demented and just laugh-out-loud brilliant.


A more divisive film currently playing in cinemas is Terry Gilliam's eagerly-anticipated and tongue-twistingly titled fantasy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The majority of the film's marketing and appraisal has focused on the late Heath Ledger, given how he died halfway through principal photography. However, the film as a whole centres around the titular Doctor Parnassus, played by Christopher Plummer. He runs a carnival sideshow that allows customers to step through a magic mirror into his own imagination, which puts him into an ongoing game of one-upmanship with Mr. Nick, his devillish counterpart. The doctor's daughter, Valentina, is soon to turn 16, but little does she realise that when that day comes, a lost bet with Mr. Nick means her soul will be damned. The only hope is for Parnassus to enlist the help of a charming stranger to entice five souls to rejuvenation within his show, before Mr. Nick can entice the same number to eternal damnation.

Ledger plays the charming stranger of course, and because so much attention has been lavished upon him already, I'll get my appraisal of him out of the way first. As with his role in The Dark Knight, his performance as Tony is utterly magnetic- Ledger has a natural charm, and so in the short term, audiences might see the film as a sad reminder of how great he would have been if he'd survived long enough to fulfil his potential. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is naturally dedicated to him by Gilliam, who used the film's fantasy concept to work around the character's unfinished scenes with remarkable effect. This comes in the form of a device that employs three of Ledger's friends- Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law- to alternately complete filming without disrupting the film's continuity. For me, that was the most important thing, because this is a film that will be appraised as a whole rather than based on Heath Ledger- if you didn't know the circumstances, you might have felt that it was always the intention for Tony to be played by multiple actors.

I felt the standout performance of the film came from Christopher Plummer, one of those great older actors who really isn't in enough films these days. Additionally, Andrew Garfield and Lily Cole make themselves noticed rather well in a film that also has the aforementioned performance by Ledger, scene-stealing turns from Verne Troyer and Tom Waits, and of course Gilliam's own very distinct visual language. It's a morality tale, but the visuals look like one of Roald Dahl's cheese dreams. Gilliam's aesthetic sensibilities and flair for storytelling make this a film that may divide audiences somewhat, but that's surely par for the course from the director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This is one of a rare breed since Harry Potter set that recurring trend for big-budget fantasy adaptations aimed at the broadest audience possible- it's an original fantasy film made for an older audience, and if you can enjoy fantasy without switching your brain off entirely, you'll probably love it. Everyone else will feel the film is a little flabby at its two hour running time, but hopefully you'll engage enough with the story that it flies by.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus had a troubled production, but the end result is something truly special. In my opinion, the credits' proclamation that it's "a film by Heath Ledger and friends" doesn't entirely do justice to everything that's on show here, but I realise that's something they felt necessary. What's important is that in time, the film will be reassessed on all of its merits and enjoyed as a thinking man's fantasy- it's almost certain to become a cult classic in the future.

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I'll be sure to visit the cinema again this week, most likely before my PC is repaired, but when I can access a PC I'll be bringing you reviews of Couples' Retreat, Triangle and Fantastic Mr. Fox. In the meantime, please comment below if you've seen either The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Zombieland and let me know what you thought of the film and of my review- I always like a bit of discussion and feedback.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Deep-Fried Spring Rolls

In an earlier blog, I demonstrated how to make a delicious and refreshing Vietnamese spring roll. Now I would like to show you how to make a version that is deep fried and just as yummy! With the previous spring roll, I utilized a translucent rice paper wrapper made from what else, rice flour. For this fried version, I am using a spring roll pastry wrapper made from wheat flour instead. It can be found in the frozen section of most oriental grocery stores.

One of the most important ingredient found in this spring roll is the root vegetable, jicama (pronounced hee-kha-ma), also known as Mexican turnip. Here's a picture of a jicama (on left). As you can see, the exterior is papery brown while the inside is white and has the texture almost like a cross between a daikon and an apple. Like daikon, it tastes refreshing but just not as bitter. While the jicama can be eaten raw (like in salads), it can also be cooked them and it is an integral part of this deep-fried spring roll's filling.

For the filling, I julienned jicama, carrots, Chinese chives, garlic and onions. If you are making a vegetarian version, you can also add tofu and broccoli. I made this one with the addition of chicken and broccoli because I had some leftover chicken stir fry from the day before. The best thing about these types of spring roll fillings is you can add most anything you like. You can make a seafood version with shrimp and scallops or a vegetarian version that I just mentioned earlier. Cook the filling like you would a stir fry with a little bit of soy sauce and oyster sauce. Just make sure that the final product does not contain too much gravy. Too soupy and the filling has a bad habit of leaking out from the wrapper and you'll have a hard time when deep-frying. In the following sequence of photos, I'll show you how to wrap the spring roll.

Pretty easy, huh? When you are wrapping these puppies, make sure that the rest of the wrappers are not fully exposed to the air as they would dry out pretty quickly. Make sure you keep them inside the bag that they came in and covered on the outside with a damp cloth. Also, after wrapping a bunch of these spring rolls, make sure that you do not stack them together or make contact with one another as the wrappers will stick together and tear when you try to pry them apart. When you deep-fry, make sure that the oil is really hot (at least 350F) before dropping them in. My favorite dipping sauce for this deep-fried spring roll is Worcestershire sauce, spiced up with some Thai bird chillies. Totally yummy!

Beets & Goat Cheese Spinach Salad

Here's a simple and seasonal salad idea. Beets are a root vegetable that are available all year round but is most prominent in the Fall season. You see it on most dinner tables during Thanksgiving. To cook it, some people will tell you to boil it but I usually roast it in the oven. Remember to oil the beets first before roasting it covered with tin foil. It usually takes about 90 minutes to 2 hours at 400F. Use a fork to poke the flesh to see if it has soften enough. If you meet resistance, continue roasting. When it is done cooking, let it cool for a few minutes and start peeling the skin off while it is still hot. It is easier to get the skin off when you peel it in a pot of water. When done, just cut it into half inch cubes.

The next ingredient is goat cheese, which is made from......drumroll.....goat's milk! It is slightly tart and very creamy, easily spreadable. Goat's milk is also an ingredient used in Greek feta cheese. Goat's cheese is very popular in Europe and also the Mediterranean. For this salad, just use your fingers and crumble the cheese or pinch them into pea-sized balls.

For the rest of this salad, I used spinach as the base but a more appropriate vegetable would be using the spring mix of frisée or arugula. Also in this salad are dried cranberries, which I reconstituted by boiling them briefly in sugared water. In fact you can use any other kinds of dried fruit for this application, like apricots or figs. The addition of candied walnuts or pecans should also add some texture and crunch to this salad (which, sadly I don't have on hand for this salad). As for the dressing, you can go with a basic balsamic vinegraitte or a sweet/tart combination like honey ginger or honey lemon.

The More Things Change...

The year is 1996, and I'm experiencing the first of many absolute obsessions in my life, and it's with a film I haven't even seen yet. The (almost) six years of my life so far have largely centred around watching Winnie the Pooh, Mr Bean and repeats of the 1960s Batman series on Channel 4. Nothing before or since captivated me like the marketing for Toy Story, the first ever completely computer animated feature film. It was colourful, interesting and quite frankly, it looked like the most amazing thing ever to me. This was the start of mine and everyone else's dalliances with Pixar.

Of course, the year now is 2009, and I've gained about three feet in height, a few GCSEs and A-Levels a cynical outlook on life, the universe and everything. But Toy Story is still brilliant, as are the vast majority of Pixar's other nine films. Even their only misfire thus far, 2006's Cars wasn't awful- the world just probably wasn't ready for a "toyetic" animated remake of Doc Hollywood. Their latest effort, Up, is the story of a retired balloon salesman called Carl Frederickson being evicted from his house by distinctly Agent Smith-like property developers. So because it's a Pixar film, his natural response is to lash up a quarter of a million balloons to his house and fly it to South America. Accidentally picking up a naive boy scout called Russell, Carl discovers a lost world and ends up embroiled in a feud with his childhood hero. It can never be said that Pixar is anything but original in its storytelling, and I toddled along to see Up on Saturday in much the way I go to see any other films they make, and here's what I thought, with the usual considerate lack of spoilers.


That said, I'll try to warn people in advance not only that Up crosses that threshold that few other Disney films cross, but that it does it in the first ten minutes. Yes, you know what I mean. Mufasa, Bambi's mam, and now... well, you'll see. It's utterly galling and more mature in places than anything in any family film I can think of. But nevertheless, those first ten minutes are just absolutely perfect. Literally, probably the best scenes in any film released this year. Beautifully animated and acting as a preface to the lighter antics to come. It's not jarring that the tone shifts back once the film crosses that threshold, because the balancing act that director Pete Docter creates means that the sad bits are absolutely heart-wrenching, but not so much that you can't laugh at the really funny bits that follow once the narrative really gets going.

It's not a mark against the film that it never quite lives up to that perfect opening, because it is still very good and very enjoyable, which goes without saying when it comes to this company. You know you're in safe hands, but ten films in, it takes something really exceptional for people to sit up and take notice. Up is being critically acclaimed by all and sundry, but I'm wondering if a day will come when Pixar is constantly expected to up the ante and make films better and better than what has gone before, purely because they're so good at this. This is an outstanding film, but it's not their best. The trouble is that besides the physics-related implications of the central premise, the film is more rooted in the real world than Docter's directorial debut, Monsters Inc. And now his sophomore effort loses steam a little once the house arrives in South America, giving way to a slight mish-mash of ideas. I had similar issues with WALL·E last year, but I loved that too. And the last paragraph comprises everything that detracted from Up as far as I'm concerned- the rest of the film is marvellous.

More than anything else, you have to applaud any film where the protagonist is a good 70 years older than the target audience, especially when that film makes the audience care about the character so quickly. But on top of that, the supporting characters are rather terrific- Jordan Nagai is funny and charming in his film debut, voicing Carl's de facto sidekick Russell, and Pixar voice-regular Bob Peterson as a talking dog called Dug is arguably one of the best part of a film where there are lots of things to praise. Up is one of those films that's just delightful. It's certainly not lacking in substance, by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same you're going to leave the cinema with a great big smile on your face. I saw the film in 2D by the way, and it's just as good, so it's safe to avoid shelling out extra to see it in 3D. It's pointless to go on any further when most people are already persuaded of Pixar's general genius, not to mention the fact that I've already given my epitaph for this review- just delightful.


Apologies for going all over the place again, but let's take another look at 1996. You've probably all seen Toy Story by now, but for the uninitiated, it's the story of a group of toys who come to life when their owner leaves them unwatched in his bedroom. The first film begins with hand-me-down cowboy doll Woody ruling the roost, a role which is usurped in the wake of their owner's birthday. His favourite gift is a brand-new spaceman action figure, Buzz Lightyear, who quickly becomes more popular than Woody. The pair's bickering sends them hurtling into the big bad world outside the bedroom, as Woody struggles to get home and Buzz, who believes he really is a spaceman rather than a child's action figure, trying to launch into outer space to fight for Star Command.

Similarly to Up, it's a buddy movie. You might say not much has changed, and in some respects you'd be right, because Toy Story was recently released again on the big screen, with the sequel to follow in January, and I absolutely adored it. Just as I was 13 years ago, I was absolutely transfixed. The jokes are still funny, the story is still brilliant and literally every time I see it, I notice something new- who noticed that the fireworks company supplying young boys with massive explosives was called Ill Eagle (illegal), with a sniffy bald eagle as its logo? And it's in things like this that the film's enduring appeal is guaranteed- the friends I saw it with all said they noticed more of the adult oriented jokes they didn't pick up on when they were younger. This is a film with cross-generational appeal that goes beyond nostalgia value- it continues to appeal because it is so damn good.

Everything is just pitch perfect. To try and get a bit of coherence to my gushing, I could point out that this is the only Pixar effort where studio interference from Disney could be inferred. It's the only one that fits that Disney musical sort of template, with numbers by Randy "Sings What He Sees" Newman appearing throughout, and maybe it's only me who thinks about these things enough to wonder whether or not it's a matter of Disney values that Woody seems to have lost the gun that should go in his holster. Sorry, this doesn't have any coherence does it? No, it sounds like a film nut rambling about studio politics because he watched the DVD and found out Disney were going to pull the plug on the film at one point. You can always tell I like it when I can't articulate how good it is. What I'm getting at is the fact that this is one of my all-time favourite films for a reason- it never, ever gets old.

At the film's climax, the rocket blasts into the sky and Woody and Buzz are carried what seems like miles into the air, above the moving van. This is the part where they blow up, Woody tells us, but Buzz has other ideas, and suddenly I'm six years old again, getting goosebumps as that music comes on and they fly after the car. I'm now 19, and should really be gushing about more mature fare, but screw that. Toy Story is one of the few completely perfect films ever made, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.

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Ahem, after that almost embarrassing gushfest, I still have a few other films to look into. Already seen Zombieland, and I promise a review of that will be coming up, and this week sees the release of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Couples' Retreat and Fantastic Mr. Fox too, so you can expect those to be incoming as and when I see them. In the meantime, if anyone else fancies sharing the Pixar love, feel free to comment. :)

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, watch Toy Story over and over again, on loop, forever. You've got to love it.

Fig, Blue Cheese and Prosciutto Appetizer idea

Now, here's a simple appetizer idea that should wow your friends at dinner parties. It not only looks sophisticated and upscale but it tastes great as well. The key to this appetizer is the delicate balance between the natural sweetness of the fig and the saltiness of the blue cheese and prosciutto.

The common fig is a popular fruit grown in parts of the Middle-East like Iran, the Mediterranean and also northern India. Here in the United States, figs are grown in California, Texas, Oregon and Washington state. I love fresh figs because they impart a natural sweetness that is unique in both taste and texture.

To prep this appetizer, start off by buying thinly sliced prosciutto, fresh figs and a small block of blue cheese. You don't need to use much of the cheese because it is pungent and can easily overwhelm the other two ingredients. Cut the figs into slices, making sure they are not too thin or the slice will easily fall apart on you. Also, you want more of the sweetness of the figs to come through to counter the pungency of the blue cheese and the saltiness of the prosciutto. Break off a small piece of blue cheese, place it on top of the fig and roll a small slice of prosciutto around the cheese and sliced fig.

Voila! Very easy and no cooking required! Have fun!

Miso & Wasabi-Crusted Filet Mignon

Filet mignon is usually prepared with just simple seasoning of salt and pepper and seared to a medium rare temperature. Very simple yet delicious. For this dish, I decided to put an Asian twist on the filet mignon by adding traditional Japanese flavors to it. Here we have 2 petite 5oz. filets crusted with miso and wasabi paste and topped with black and white sesame seeds. Let me take you through the steps on how to prepare this dish.

Start off by preparing the paste. Mix a tablespoon of miso paste (red or yellow are both acceptable) with half a teaspoon of wasabi powder (or paste) and a teaspoon each of mirin and sake and a dash of sugar. The amount of wasabi depends on how "up-you-nose-spicy" you want to get with the filets. Mix thoroughly and set aside for the moment. Make sure that the mixture is not too liquidy. It must have a pasty consistency in order to stick onto the filet's surface.


Next, season the filets ever so slightly with just a little salt and pepper. Remember that the miso is already salty. Heat up a skillet and sear the top and bottom surfaces of the filets just enough to lightly brown them. At this point, the temp of the filets are probably more to the rare than medium rare side. Remove the filets from the skillet and generously lather both surfaces of the filets with the miso mixture paste. Set your oven to 350F and start cooking the filets for about 5 minutes or so, checking the doneness of the meat every 2 minutes or so. Remember, you don't want to overcook your filets. As soon as they get to a medium rare temp, put the filets under a broiler to brown the miso paste and create a crust. At this point, you can also sprinkle the sesame seeds onto the top surface of the filets. As soon a the miso start to brown, remove the filets immediately. Let the meat rest for 5 minutes or so.

For the sauce, I pureed roasted red peppers, shallots, ginger and garlic and cook the puree with a couple of tablespoons of worcestershire sauce. Season with salt and pepper and you are ready to go. Simple. For the rest of the dish, I grilled some asparagus spears, cooked some sliced mushrooms with garlic and shallots and made some sushi rice. You can garnish the plate with chopped scallions.

As you can see, it's not that hard to cook this dish even though it may look and sound pretty intimidating. You just need the right ingredients and some organization and planning. Good luck!

Creative Difference

Given how I believe a large portion of my readership on this blog are in higher education, the following sentence will probably be nothing you haven't already noticed. However, I can reliably report that the Daily Mail and its ilk aren't entirely accurate in telling us that the student population is made up of Gruffalos- I have no moss under my armpits and I still retain my vocabulary, and I've been at university for a whole week or two. On the other hand, it has put something of a crimp on the amount of blog posts I've been able to do lately.

For this, you can also blame the influx of classic films at my local multiplex and my general technical problems at home- it's factors like these that have prevented me from seeing enough new releases since my last post to rush off a quick review. Since the last post though, I've been to see Creation, The Invention of Lying and Surrogates, all of which should generally still be playing in cinemas wherever you are. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Slightly mis-named, Jon Amiel's Creation studies Charles Darwin's life at the time he was writing his seminal work, "On The Origin of Species". This premise alone has immediately attracted controversy with Christian activists in America, where there's something of a struggle to get the thing distributed. The long history of such baseless controversy in the form of films like The Last Temptation of Christ and Dogma assures me that this will only attract attention to the film, and well deserved it is too. The film is not so much about Darwin's book as it is about his grief following the death of his daughter, and the consequences that has for his marriage and family life. When Charles is cajoled and pressured to develop his revolutionary theories to bolster the scientific community, he takes ill and struggles to make peace with his own beliefs and those of his devoutly Christian wife, Emma.

Real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly play the two lead roles, but as usual with actor-actress couples playing spouses on film, that's nothing to write home about, especially it's Bettany that really deserves top billing. His Darwin is tortured, world-weary and utterly compelling to watch, and he effectively carries the film by himself. Connelly isn't performing badly, and nor are co-stars Jeremy Northam and Benedict Cumberbatch, but the strength of Bettany's performance makes everything else seem unremarkable. This is crucial to make John Collee's script work, and it works beautifully. It's a film that isn't trying to score points for either side of the debate about our universe's origins- the smug variety of Richard Dawkins lover won't find much to quote without citation amongst friends, and the Christian groups who are up in arms in America won't be nearly as offended as they have presumed. Instead, it's an objective look at the most troubled time in Charles Darwin's life, and it's engaging and sympathetic from the off.

I did think that Amiel really should've been a little more restrained at times, as Darwin's coping mechanism of hallucinatory conversations with his deceased daughter brings the film dangerously close to melodrama sometimes. Besides which, it's slightly incongruous with Darwin's apparent atheism- how can there be ghosts if there is no afterlife? This dramatic device does give the film a slightly stagey feel, but as I've said before, that's not a deal-breaker. It does also deepen the personal connection the audience has to Darwin, and that definitely works in the film's favour. A well-written script and a powerhouse performance from Paul Bettany makes Creation one of the more enjoyable biopics of the last few years, and I hope it does eventually get past the Christians in America to reach a wider audience.


If you're after something a little lighter and funnier, Ricky Gervais has followed up last year's rather marvellous Ghost Town with another Hollywood comedy, The Invention of Lying. Gervais plays Mark Bellison, an underachieving screenwriter in a world where fiction doesn't exist in any iteration. No one has ever told a lie, and subsequently Mark's employers distribute blockbusters that consist of history lessons- "The Invention of the Automobile" being the highlight of the upcoming summer season. Mark is frequently the victim of brutal honesty and general snootiness until he happens upon a lie for the first time. Naturally, he exploits this for personal gain to achieve the fame and fortune he's always wanted. High concept? Yes, and a rather good one at that, but it's in the comedy stakes that the film loses out somewhat.

Without spoiling too much, there's a pivotal moment halfway through The Invention of Lying that marks a considerable shift in tone. The first half gets a lot of laughs from the perfunctory offensiveness that comes with a world where no one knows how to lie. There is no flattery, no modesty and no ability to sugar-coat things, and thus a retirement home is marketed to clients as "A Sad Place For Hopeless Old People". And it's here that the pivotal moment comes about. It's not a funny scene by any stretch of the imagination and would have a lot of emotional weight, except it seems like an opportunity for Gervais to do some Serious Acting. Because it's not the only way the subsequent narrative could develop, it feels somewhat shoe-horned in, and it affects the rest of the film- the stakes are lowered when the tone flips back to comedic and Gervais is put back in his element.

That's not to say it's not an enjoyable film- I did laugh a lot, but once we get past that midway point, the film hares off in a different direction that never quite matches the promise of the original concept. There's some stuff that's very reminiscent of The Life of Brian and an allusion to Jesus that any audience members who aren't really fans of Ricky Gervais will balk at, and the rest sort of settles into a generic romantic comedy. Gervais really doesn't share any romantic chemistry, no matter how much he'd probably like to. Besides which, her character is continually said to be sweet and very caring, as if she's only so hideously blunt because she doesn't know how to lie. If some of the stuff she's coming out with is her honest opinion, how does that excuse her? That aside, Garner copes well enough, and I don't have many complaints with the rest of the cast either.

However, let's have a look at the rest of the cast, which boasts cameos from Jason Bateman, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor, Jonah Hill, Tina Fey, Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And this brings about the return of the Bit. You may remember the Bit from Night at the Museum 2, and it's always about the length of any given comedy star's cameo in a film that could otherwise be good without their appearance. That at least is how I measure a metric Bit, and this is full of them. A cameo-palooza is always distracting, and this film really didn't need it. Allow me to be honest though. The film's discrepancies in tone don't bring it down at all, and if you liked Ghost Town, you'll probably like this. Then again, it's more cynical than that film. Hey, you might be better off just watching Ghost Town again. Fans of Gervais won't be disappointed, but the film just falls short of the promise its central concept holds. Even though the tone of this review generally seems to be negative, The Invention of Lying is a sweet and highly original film.


Unfortunately it now falls to me to review a film as far removed from that originality and ingenuity as possible, and turn to Jonathan Mostow's Surrogates. Stop me if you've heard this one before- in a future where people live their lives via robotic surrogates, Bruce Willis plays Tom Greer, a detective with serious issues about robots, and is investigating the first homicide in years following the emergence of a weapon that can kill people while they are connected to their surrogates. Yes, I can hear you all screaming stop. This is a film so creatively bankrupt and pedestrian that it could well have been made by The Asylum. The most identifiable rip off in the film's synopsis would be I, Robot, so because it's five years since that film was released, it's actually sub-Asylum.

In many ways, I think Surrogates was some form of karmic retribution for my assertion that District 9's ostensible lack of originality didn't necessarily make it a bad film. While I stand by my opinion that Neill Blomkamp used homage and innovation in equal measure in that film, Jonathan Mostow has crafted a largely brainless blockbuster that plods along for 104 minutes with little to enjoy at all. As versatile an actor as Bruce Willis can be, Hollywood will eventually learn that his best cop character was John McClane. Thusly if he's playing a cop who isn't John McClane, even if it's some future cop who pilots a bewigged robot version of himself from his couch, it's not going to leave much of an impression. This is why casting him against type in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable was such a good idea, and he clearly engages much better with scripts like that than with dross like this.

The script was written by serial offenders Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, who also penned Terminator Salvation and Catwoman, so you know it's not going to be very good right off the bat. No matter how good the performers are, you can't elevate a bad script, and it really seems like the rest of the usually capable cast have the same lack of vigour that Willis contributes- Ving Rhames also dons a bad wig, Rosamund Pike is utterly unremarkable and even James Cromwell, one of my favourite actors, is looking bored. Admittedly, he's only in it briefly, and that's probably due to the fact he's playing the inventor of the robots, just like he did in I, Robot. Surrogates is a film that should really get Will Smith on the phone to his lawyer, along with most members of any paying audience who see it. Devoid of originality and entertainment value- worse than that, it's one of those films where the entire crux of the story is shown in the trailer. If you've seen the trailer, definitely give the film a miss. If you haven't seen the trailer... definitely give it a miss. Just utterly dull.

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I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the next post will involve much gushing about Pixar, because if I don't talk about the thrill of seeing Toy Story on the big screen again soon, I may do a little bit of wee. More to the point, tomorrow sees the long-awaited UK release of Up, which I'm sure to give a look over the weekend. Thereafter, expect reviews of The Soloist and Zombieland. If you've seen Creation, The Invention of Lying or Surrogates, comment below and let me know what you thought of the film and of my review- I always like a bit of discussion and feedback.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, make sure you don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.