Duck garnish with long pig

Here is what I set out to make:
(Follow in my greasy footsteps!)



Here is my mis en place en progresso:
(Note the sunflower oil - this becomes important later)




Here is what happens when you have neither a deep fryer basket nor sufficiently long tongs with which to fry your duck portions:




Please let all take note that I did not flinch
when yon arc of oil did splash 'cross my wrist.

Doesn't even taste like soap

Dear everyone,

You know how you love Thai food and then you decide to try cooking it and it doesn't turn out too bad so you reckon you could get down with nature and grow some of that coriander in a pot and so you buy some and it immediately dies and so you buy some more and plant it in the dirt and it goes to seed more quickly than the stuff you bought in pots carked it and you swear off trying to grow it ever again and go back to paying two bucks a bunch from the supermarket and it's always slimy and you end up associating Thai cooking with slight failure even before you start?

I used to be like that.

Used to.

But it turns out nature works.

That bit where it goes to seed? Apparently those seeds contain some of free-love, hippie-huggin' magic because now I ain't growing bunches of coriander, I'm growing trees.

Check out my forest.


Yeah.
King Coriander swingin' through tha treez
(of coriander).

Then there was the time I decided to spice up the beef stir fry with some cumin and discovered just how poorly the edge of your vision is able to distinguish between the words 'cumin' and 'cinnamon' when you are rifling through the spice cupboard with one eye on an ex-non-stick fry pan.

I would be so proud if I turned out like my dad.

Franzy's Continuing Advice for The Ill-Advised

In my previous attempts at advice for dudes about women I've covered sucking up and buttering up. Now we're going for the kill; via an old, tedious joke that tends to appear on quaint fridge magnets given to women by other, more jaded women as a hopefully-ironic gag. But we're going to twist it and turn it to your advantage.

It starts when you sink into his arms and ends with your arms in his sink.

Ho ho. I know. I know. I know. Huh! Honestly! Men. Can't live with them, can't shoot 'em! Ho ho ho! Oh, I know.

So - had enough matronising yet? Well let me demonstrate what you're going to do. Forget the phrase's Sybilic overtones and instead make this your lady-wooing maxim:

It starts with your arms in her sink and ends ... ahem, well, you get the picture. Seriously though - this is Franzy's Piece of Wisdom About Women #3: Do the washing up. Do it quickly and don't smash anything. Brush aside all offers of help. Just stack up the plates, chuck them in the sink with hot water and soap, swoosh swoosh with the water, stack them on the rack and you will be Captain Dynamite.

Reason? Chicks always do all the cleaning. We're talking averages here, mind you. By and large, it's always the girls doing the wiping, spraying, scrubbing and sucking (of dust) while the dudes get all the fun jobs like Chopping Up The Firewood, Replacing The Light Globes and Moving The Furniture. If you suddenly jump up start being all manly and efficient with the dishes, trust me, your lady-friend's estimations of you will rise like the hundreds of thank-you cakes she will bake you* in the future.

And if you're living with a girl, or at least letting one use your dunny, then clean it. Every day. Even if you can't actually see the shitstains, she can. And if you clean it, she shall whisper to her girlfriends: 'And he even cleans the toilet! Every day!'
'Gasp!' they will all gasp. 'He noticed your hair, cooked you that gourmet pasta, did the dishes and cleaned the toilet?!?'
'Yes!'
'Then we shall pillow fight for this Man of Men! Game on, Moll!'

And there, the fantasy ends.

* Metaphor.

***

Oh, here's something fun you can all try at home:

1. Go for a jog (about half an hour should do it).
2. Drink a glass of water afterwards. Just one though, or it'll spoil the fun!
3. Drink a beer.
4. Order a large pizza.
5. Eat lots and lots of it while lounging on the couch.
6. Drink two glasses of red wine with your pizza.
7. Don't get up!
8. Watch a show about a bunch of army dudes doing a survival course in the Northern Territory in which they spend the whole time talking and thinking about water and how the fuck they're going to get a hold of it using only a fire (which they have to make themselves), a jerry can, a tube, a plastic bag and a river full of salt-water crocodiles.
9. Go to bed in a cool room with a runny nose so that you have to mouth-breathe in your sleep.

Dehydration? You bet! Even though I got up and drank the water jug dry at about 3 a.m. You know how you get up in the morning and have a piss? And if you're dehydrated it's kind of ... pungent? Well I was pretty much pushing out pencil leads on the lemon tree this morning. I had so little moisture to give I was actually extruding graphite. Ouch.

***
GTH - I'm awarding the point to myninjacockle for the Tommy Buttfucker story. The header was a photo I took in Derry in 1999 during the Orange Marches where the teeny tiny little Protestant population march up and down the wall of the largely-Catholic fortified old town in celebration of how wonderful their religion is. The cops have to turn up and basically barricade the whole show to stop the two religions meeting up and smashing the shit out of each other. Thus does the connection with my dad's t-shirt occur.

Franzy's Further Advice for The Ill-Advised

Cook. Seriously. Chicks love food. We all know that, I hear you scoff, what sort of bullshit advice is this? True, but here's a little piece of extra ammunition for all the dudes out there, looking to cook their way towards the ladies.
Franzy's Piece of Advice About Women #2: Cook something with crunchy green vegetables in it. Forget the oysters, the Rohypnol and the Tiger's Dick Stew. Serve up something full of fresh-looking vegies that are green and you will be King of Ladyopolis.
Why? Women love to be healthy, even if they say they don't want to, they really mean that they do (where have I heard that before?). Anyway, they also catch a whole lot of shit about what they eat and so it's quite difficult to be both healthy and to eat properly. So when you come along and serve up your dish of sweet tasty tasty munchy greens, the healthy factor kicks in, the eating kicks in: you're a hero.
What should I serve, O Dealer Of Patronising Rambles? I hear you moan.
Stir fry - good. Make sure it's tasty. Put the greens in towards the end or they won't be crunchy.
But here's a couple of better tummy-fillers to get you going:

Franzy's Incredible Green Pastas for Women:

Pasta 1 - Zucchini Love

1. Oil in saucepan. Medium heat. Throw in crushed garlic. Let it cook a little.
2. Chopped onion, bacon and diced zucchini - into the pan! Heat up! Cook cook! Fry! Let the women smell this happening.
3. Can of tomatoes, splash of white wine and a big squirt of balsamic glaze.
4. Stir it up, little darlin', 'til it bubbles. Turn it down a bit - keep it bubblin'.
5. Give it twenty minutes of bubblin' and a'stirin', then put the pasta on.*
6. Whack the sauce on top. Serve.
7. Soak it up: "Wow! I love the zucchini! So sweet!"

Zing.

Pasta 2 - Green is the Reason for the Season

1. Big pot. Boil water. Throw in a Massel Chicken Stock Cube.
2. In goes the pasta.*
3. When the pasta is almost done, throw in chopped up broccolini (little, sweet broccoli or just plain broccoli)
4. When the pasta is ready, throw a handful of frozen peas into the water! Throw 'em right in! Yay!
5. Pasta's done, pour it into a strainer, save some of the chicken stock water.
6. Same pot. Back on the heat. Big lug of olive oil. Crushed garlic, 2 tablespoons of basil pesto, chopped up avocado, pepper, splash of white wine (or verjuice, if you're a toss-bag) and fry fry stir stir fry! Hot!
7. Strained pasta back into the pot, along with that half a tea cup of the stock you saved from being poured down the sink earlier (or not, if you went a bit crazy with the white wine).
8. Mix it up! Mix it until everything is touching everything else! Green-eyed and groovy!
9. Put in bowls, chuck a few fresh chopped basil leaves on top.
10. Serve it up, cowboy.

Make sure you've got lots of fresh-grated parmesan cheese. That way, if somehow you've managed to fuck either of these up, she can politely smother the taste of burnt tomatoes or white wine with plenty of Milanese Marching Powder.

* This is all based on the assumption that you know how to cook pasta. They say that to assume makes an ass out of u and me, but in this case, if you're still struggling with boiling water and telling the time, then the ass is all u.

***
GTH - 2 points to The Other, other Sam for the Bacon Bling gag and a point each to Kath and River for their stories about high school. And one to Lion for being a sport, unless he can provide a crunchy green Japanese recipe to use on the girl of and in his dreams. Then he will score 2 more points.

Franzy's Law #3

If your cookbooks don't have food stains in them, then you probably aren't doing it right.

***

I was in a book shop yesterday and saw Maggie Beer's foray into the cooking bible market Maggie's Food. It looks delightful and has an embroided cover and the recipes are divided into the seasons and there are whole sections on loquats and rabbit. It costs $125 and is around three inches thick. It looks as though it would be more at home on a lectern than bench top. Heck, it is a bench top. Only you wouldn't cook on a padded, porous bench top because it would soak up whatever you spilled into it. Same with Maggie's Food. It is such a beautiful object that you would hesitate before getting anywhere near anything sticky or decomposable. It is truly a tome to be treasured ... but not cooked with. If you were cooking your artichokes with waxy potatoes from the thing it would be a true pain in the arse to keep running out to the seminary to check how much verjuice to use.

So, get your cookbooks dirty, I say! Stand them up with the cutting board and let the sweet stains of chopped herbs and fragrant fresh blood splash the pages! Make the food your bookmarks! 'Have I cooked this before? Aha! The transparency of peanut oil! I remember now! It was delicious!'
And so forth.

Cookbooks should be designed like bathtime books, made of bendable durable plastic. But then they'd be too easy to wipe clean again ... hmm ...