Chicken, Pistachio, Blue Cheese Vol au Vents

As we discussed, you knew you were at a very special 80's Perth party when the mini vol au vents came out. If you were lucky, you may have washed them down with now defunct Swan Premium. I've never made them before due to the difficulty of obtaining vole but decided to go with chicken instead.

To be frank, vol au vents are kind of a drag. I was going to just buy the shells but felt guilty so I compromised with bought puff pastry and then went from there. Cutting out the base and then the ring shape to go on top is dull, dull, dull. There's a brief moment of magic when they spring up in the oven, but that's about it. The filling was classic menu wank that I chose for no other reason than the combo of pistachio, chicken, and blue cheese sounded good. Quite tasty but the time taking fiddliness could have been put to better ends and the filling was an uncomfortable compromise between chunky and creamy.

Served at my sister and brother-in-law's decade of being together do. Good on 'em I say. Stopped in, pre-party, at the drive-through bottle shop at Steve's for a bottle of '95 something (bad year for France?). Wandered downstairs to have a look at their vintage-wine filled cellar. Very impressive and on a completely unrelated note, anybody out there with tunneling experience. POWs? Coal miners? Get in touch OK.

Listen up

Say it sister.

IMBB#12 Taboo - Descent into Madness

It's astounding,
time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll

IMBB#12 Taboo.

Madness is our taboo, not food. Food taboos are the remnants of village mentality and morality dictated by an invisible entity. We are rational people, especially cooks. We know that doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is folly. Our every dish is the application of the experimental method. We predate the Enlightenment and take it to our hearts. So madness, as Foucault put it, is the leprosy of our age. It is where we draw the boundaries of what we are. I also fear it is how we avoid the genuine madness that we should face - a kind of mental goretex. To be free I must transport myself to an externality. FX Holden put me onto the real juice. La sal loca. A jar of Jane's KraZy MiXed-Up Salt from somewhere in the Americas.

The ceremony began with the defrosting of the breast of a free-range chicken , once done, it was carefully rubbed over with the salt, and then left for 6 hours. Quickly fried in a pan in olive oil. I then sliced it into pieces, one breast is apparently enough for a man of my size. A quick checklist. Mahler - check. Oranges - check. Sugar - check. Toni would be my guide. I ate the chicken on a bed of gnocchi with a spinach and tomato sauce and waited...

2 minutes - a vague feeling of satiety.

5 minutes - slight thirst.

10 minutes - mild feeling of well being.

30 minutes - gnocchi may have slowed the reaction time

1 hour - a fierce vibration in my pocket with a ringing sound, mother.

4 hours - feeling of boredom and hunger.

5 hours - fall into a deep sleep.

Wow what a trip.

Thank you Carlo

Scones

Scones that Jo cooked and brought along on Sunday with Brad and young Rosie. Very good they were.

Scones have an interesting history, originating in the oooh Battlestar Galactica is on. Gotta go. Here, have some nice piccies of nice people.

Gyudon - beef rice bowl

Were a copy of our daily newspaper to blow eastwards over the nullarbor to people who only knew of Western Australia as the place where soapie characters go to never return, they might think that the state was filled with cranks and bigots who had to wait in line in darkened hospitals while their houses were being burgled and that poorly thought out acts of largesse to private companies for Stalinist style grand engineering projects were good ideas. We're it not for people like Manas and her koibito Robert writing sharp minded political joy, then I'd have to start my day with a nice hot cup of punch in the face. Could I give her a recipe for teriyaki non-chicken? Why of course, a campaign needs carbohydrates for energy and protein for strength. So an easy variation on the sauce combo - the beef rice bowl or gyudon.

Sauce
Teriyaki is usually reduced or brushed on to form a glaze and much of it's character comes from the use of sugar but a more general application of it is as a combination of soy sauce, mirin (sweet rice wine), and (depending on who you ask) sake. Start with equal parts and then adjust as needed for saltiness, sweetness, and tanginess respectively. A teaspoon of sugar does no harm. Taste and see.

Making
Take a nice piece of rump (woof!) steak and pound it out. You need pieces about 3mm thick. Good effect can also be made by slicing downwards and vertically for wider but skinnier cuts. Take an onion and slice it finely top to bottom. You can also use spring onions. Quickly brown and remove, then sautee the onions until just softening, return the steak to the pan and the sauce and let reduce until the steak is cooked. Pour on top of a bowl of freshly cook short grain rice and serve with a little cayenne pepper ( or Japanese sansho if you've got it). It's good.

Sensible people will of course vote for Geoff Gallop and Labor this weekend but Colin Barnett is offering me a 12ft ice-cream, just waiting for those costings.

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Update: Looking bad for my ice-cream

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Update 2: woot! Cheers all that worked hard to secure this most pleasing of wins.

Song of the Sausage Creature

On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."
Hunter S. Thompson Song of the Sausage Creature

This hurts. He neglected the petty moralities and saw the real outrages as too appalling for ordinary writing. He may well be the canary in the coalmine.

A waste, may he find peace in a life well lived.

Canard laqueé au miel - Duck glazed with Honey

The description "pure honey" is illegal in France, because honey must always be pure as a matter of course.

A quote from the Culinaria France where the idea for this Provence dish came from. Canard laqueé au miel is a return to the supposed to be monthly classic French dishes dinner parties. Last week's scallopini and mousse combo took up the 70's quotient so Duck a L'orange will have to wait.

Something very satisfying, even when done slowly and clumsily, about cutting up your own meat. Duck is a matter of removing the wings and the legs - a pop of dislocation then cut around. And then removing the breasts by following the backbone closely on either side. This leaves the carcass and a pile of peices of fat and skin that can be rendered down for later use.

The skin and the breast of the limbs was brushed with unprocessed jarrah and banksia (both natives) honey instead of the suggested lavender honey. The carcass becomes a stock. Joining: one carrot; an inch of leek; a stick of celery; and a bouquet garni of rosemary, thyme, 2 bay leaves wrapped and tied with the green part of a leek. Left to simmer for an hour and a half. Let me know if you know of anything that smells better than duck stock. The stock becomes the sauce for the duck, which I'll return to.

The duck breasts were cooked skin side down in a dry pan until golden, then moved to the oven at 190C for 10 minutes with the limbs, before being allowed to rest for another 10. The pan is deglazed with the duck stock, reduced and then a dab of butter added for gloss. The breasts are, having rested for 10 minutes sliced and the reduction poured over.



Expecting a rich taste, I balanced with stodge of potato cakes with a little bite of added chives and the acidity of tomatoes. The potato cakes were made from grating Royal Blue potatoes, squeezing the moisture out, and then mixing in finely chopped chives. The starch holds them together and they were nicely browned on a stoevtop griddle cooked in the fat of the excess skin. The tomatoes were cooked slowly in a saucepan with butter, leek, rosemary, and thyme. I skin my tomatoes by cutting a cross in the end and then holding them over the burner. I then cut the end off and squeeze out the seeds.



The Dinner
Dinner started well with Rob's dish [pictured] of home-grown eggplants with tomatoes, olive, ham and breadrumbs. For something so rustic is had a very sophisticated combination of salty, sweet, and acids with the creaminess of the eggplant offset by the breadcrumbs. The flavours of the main were good with the tomato and the potato being just right. The duck was a little too cooked for my liking, and as this was my first time, doneness could do with more practice. Veronique pays enviable attention to the presentation of her desserts and her passionfruit mousse with mango coulis was typically superb fare.

Joining us was a '98 Penfold's Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz and my wine writing can't do it justice, while I strain to pick the bouquet in most wines, this one overwhelmed. Very quality. Vodka in the freezer and a lime made for an impromptu palate cleanser between main and dessert.

A good week for food.

WBW#6 - Morgenhof Estate 2001 Chenin Blanc with Dhufish Fillets and Omlette Soufflée Sucrée

I know it may seem , having got past the initial step of being able to identify wine as wine, that I stumbled at the next stage of distinguishing between red and white. I could ask for pity as I suffer from the debilitating genetic illness of partial red-green colour blindness and subsequent humiliation at the hands of Ishihara test administrators. I'm also prone to the "hardware store effect" as well double-entedric distraction. As a result, I humbly submit to Wine Blogging Wednesday #6 heads down south - South African Reds, a chenin blanc.

The occasion was Greg Manthatcatchesgreatfish was bringing over some dhufish fillets from said great fish for cooking. Joining us was Anonymous of Floreat, glorying in topping the sales figures for Supermart and handily bringing an Australian chenin from a winery bought by a South African. How apropos.



First off was the Halina Brook Estate 2003 Chenin. Unusually north for a West Australian wine with a vineyard near Bindoon. I can only tell you what I wrote on my kitchen whiteboard and that was "densely packed citric bite in an oily enteric coating". Thinking back it was better than that sounds, a sharp hit that grabbed the tongue with a heavyweight refreshing linger.

Unusually further west was, from Stellenbosch South Africa, the Morgenhof Estate 2001 Chenin Blanc (or "Steen" as they say on the veldt). Immediately noticeable, even to me, was the richer gold colour of the wine. A shade over $20 a bottle, it's midplaced between equivalent budget bests and lower premiums in price which sets up certain expectations. It has a simple trick and I fell for it. Like any song with a cow-bell, any wine that can tranport its flavour across my tongue in a sherbety fashion will have my love. And it does. Nothing else interfered with it, not the stone fruitiness or the warm nose. If you like this effect I don't need to tell you any more, in fact I can't. Thank you South Africa.



As for the meal. The dhufish fillets were cooked on a stovetop griddle just in butter. They are not to be messed around with. I found "done" occurred just as the fillet looked like it was going to flake. For a simple match I had Pommes Veronique without the garlic and good dab of goose fat; oven roasted asparagus; and a bernaise without the sorrel tarragon sauce on the side. It's a magnificent piece of fish, sweet and unfishy without being bland. A West Australian must have.

Egg whites to be rid of led to the soufflé omlette. The combination of 4 egg yolks with 115gm of caster sugar, whisked until pale and creamy with 30ml of Cointreau added once done. Egg whites whisked until stiffly peaked with a little extra caster sugar added slowly for extra hold and gloss. A third mixed in with the yolks and then the rest folded in. Baked in a long baking dish in the oven at 150C for 10 minutes, some strawberries dropped in and then warmed brandy and Cointreau poured over. Light the match and ..... oh well, must have gone straight to the bottom. The dessert that wasn't there, sugar and booze mysteriously appears in the mouth.

Rest of the meal spent with readings of The Philosopher in the Kitchen. Hilarious. Best thing since the Scarlet Pimpernel.



Typically well written red round-up from Jeanne at A barrel of South African reds - WBW#6 round-up, Part I and Part II

Sausage Factory

I correspond:

Most are planned in some way and I'd be fibbing if I said there wasn't a fair amount of thought and work in each one , even the breezy ones, especially the breezy ones. There'll be a core idea and the rest will fall in place around it. The beer one was a return to the regular friday beer gig and I happened to see a beer ad by John Steinbeck in an old Spy magazine of mine so I thought I'd use that. Hot thirsty work made me think Emu Bitter. It also made me think of "dry as a lime-burner's boot", so the location was where I spilt concrete while rendering out the back and there are a few limes in the picture as a visual malapropism.By coincidence, the limes are the same colour as the label. The use of "courier"matched the original typewritten letter in the add and the strikethrough was a way of showing that it was taken from somewhere else without spoiling the obvious confection of the post. Thirsty work.

Look I'm not suggesting you go out and make cliff notes for blogs but I'd be gutted if I thought people spent hours making their food, and five minutes writing about it (though thrilled if the reverse were true - hence EoMEoTE). So if anyone else wants to pop the back off a post (foodie or no), be my guest.

I, being nosy, would love it.

Veal Scallopini with a Lemon Sauce and Chocolate Mousse

Avatar's saved me having to bag Valentine's day with a marvellously offensive spray. Yes Valentine's Day is crapalapdap but it did get me thinking about chocolate and then that I hardly ever make any desserts, and how all this time I've been cooking for me, my wants, my needs, my ambitions, and leaving Toni to fend for herself with some Neopolitan ice-cream and tinned fruit salad that I'd nick the cherry out of...

So a mousse recipe I found it was. Doing this I thought dinner should be a wee bit special but still light and Veal Scallopini came to mind. Veal Scallopini made me think of Ruffino Chianti and as I pull out a couple of old champagne(?) glasses for the mousse, I realised the unifying theme was - romantic evening out circa 1972 extraordanaire. All I needed was an excuse to slip into my silky thigh length kimono with the tiger on the back.



Veal Scallopini with a Lemon Sauce

Two veal scallopini steaks (ask your butcher) pounded thinly then lightly coated with flour. Fry on each side in a heavy pan in 2tbs of butter and oil. Quick and hot! Remove the scallopini, and the deglaze with 2tbs of lemon juice and 1tbs of butter. Add a little chopped parsely. Return the scallopini to the pan to quickly reheat (don't cook it) on both sides with the sauce.

Served on bought Cappelleti di Pollo with a simple white wine and cream sauce with a little of the lemon sauce and some lemon zest.



Chocolate Mousse with Strawberry Marinated in Port

Oddly more like creamy chocolate crunch as the chocolate turned into crunchy little bits. May have been my losing patience with incremental microwaving. Any idea people?

Melted 100gm of Cocolo Fairtrade milk chocolate with just under a tablespoon of butter until smooth (ideally). Allow to cool.

Whisk two eggs yolks and 2tbs of sugar whisked together over the improvised double boiler of a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. After four minutes it should be thick so remove and continue to whisk until pale and cool. Add to the chocolate and then mixed in with 100ml of lightly whisked King Island Pure Cream.

Added one strawberry marinated in port to each glass and then filled with mousse. I sliced the strawberries horizontally and the put it back together again so it didn't have to be eaten in one go as slicing with a spoon in a champagne glass invites danger, no? A splash of port to fill the slight indent around the strawberry.



Ruffino 2002 Chianti
Chianti so rarely disappoints me. Slightly chilled.

And?
The chianti had the filtered through a bag of socks taste that I love for some reason (repressed foot fetishism?). The mousse was not the saccharine fluff I'd had ages before but a solid amalgam of milk products and chocolate and a crunchy delight, an unwitting success. The veal and pasta was a little too lemony. I should have kept the pasta sauce just plain cream and wine to balance. Toni though, said that the lemon taste was just the thing to offset the humid weather. That and the 6-pack of Beck's, what a doll.

And in the spirit of things, Santos has valentine's music if you're quick.

[I don't think I've had the "post as a redemptive journey" yet, so there ya go genre buffs - collect the whole set]

Bacon, Tomato, and Avacado on Wholemeal Toast

QED

Friday Guest Beer & Review - John Steinbeck and Emu Bitter

Busy, gotta go look for this book which has gone missing here. John's taking up the slack for me. John?

The sun is straight overhead. There isn't enough shade to fit under a dog. The threshing machine clanks in a cloud of choking yellow chaff-dust... Then you let cold Ballantine Ale Emu Bitter rill into your parched throat like spring rain on the dessert. Smooth malt and hops...

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Hotty Hot Hot Hot Reader Matt Voerman kindly let me know that the annual Chilli Festival is on this weekend at the picturesque retreat of Araluen Botanic Park. Family foodie fun to be sure and more. boawwwwbaddowdowdowdydowdabowdowdiewdadow

uhhm chopped liver? ABC Radio and Chicken Liver and Mushroom Pate

Gah! On the radio yesterday and given my state beforehand, I was amazed it worked out to more than 6 minutes of

meep...Anthony are you OK?...meep.

Room, other person, yellow foamy thing in front of me, and the invisible audience. Settled after a minute or two, garnering reviews from family members of "polite!", "well spoken!". Bernadette Young, the presenter, was very kind. Had it been Liam Bartlett , I may have run off in tears as he probed further into the feasibility of my bold plan to pipe sunshine from Madagascar. The interview was: Sting fades out; what's a blog, what's on your blog, lamingtons, what are the bloggies, good luck see you if you win, fade out to Neil Young (which isn't bad, had the music been the other way round...).

Now there was probably a hundred other things I could have mentioned but given it's a local radio program what I regretted most was not mentioning the local blogging commmunity. They're all on the Perth Blogs Wiki and those involved in the marvellous initiative the Perth Blognite last year, and not forgetting my fellow WA nominees Karen Cheng and Nikita Kashner. This still leaves a wealth of talent sitting on the right column there, so go have a look. And if you haven't tried this blog thing before, give it a go.

Now, on to more familiar ground. Since the ABC continues to get the squeeze, I thought it'd be nice to take some food along in case they were hungry. I chose another slight variation of this Chicken Liver Paté recipe.



Paté is good. It uses the bits that other folks leave behind (too good for cats), it's usually just bought but home-made tastes so much better, and it's easy. If you can use a frypan and make a smoothy, you can make pate. It's also a good platform to test minor variations in flavours and there's something special in the way the onions collapes into golden softness, the way the livers dissolve in the blender, and the release of freshly ground spices. Three parts-

Onions
One white onion, the whites of two spring onions, and one garlic clove all thinly sliced and fride until soft with 40gm of butter. This time I also added a chopped field mushroom for a different flavour in stead of green peppercorns. Add it all to the blender but don't blend yet.

Liver
400gm of chicken livers, connective tissue cut off and marinated in brandy for an hour. Fry in another 40gm of butter, turining often until just pinkishly cooked in the middle. Add to the blender. Add a splash more brandy to the pan and deglaze the residue by scraping with a wooden spoon over heat. Add to the blender.

Spices
A scaled back quatre epicés of 2tsp parts peppercorns and 2tsp of cloves - ground and one tsp grated nutmeg. Put this in the blender and blend until smooth and refrigerate for at least two hours.

The taste is a little muted and those not enamoured with liver could, easily double the spices. Delicious with James Squire Pilsner, medicinally administered once safely home to sooth jangled post-interview nerves.

Big Day Out 2005

Western Australia, State of Childhood Musical Disappointment. My mum still hasn't gotten over the Beatles never making it across the Nullabor. Tour dates flashing across the screen in Countdown would stop at Adelaide, forever convincing me of a universe that was arbitrary and amoral. So thank you the Big Day Out , for fronting up every year since the early 90's.*

Bacon and eggs brekky with champagne (hoorah!) kept me happy until hot dog with cheese and then later chips and a corn-dog. The hot dog failed in a few respects. The onions were in small squares, the sausage was shorter than the bun implying stinginess, and the processed cheese wasn't given it's one possible saving grace of meltiness. Corn dog was agreeably disgusting. Tooheys Extra Dry joins the hall of low expectation fame by being tasty when it's cold, you're thirsty, and you've waited in line for twenty minutes for drink tickets. Pleased when replaced by sharp tasting local, Emu Bitter. Not for foodies but I'm a pragmatic eater and I believe better food is to be had at the demographic black hole rival of the Moonlight festival. One day they'll catch up with my aged b-boy in a bucket-hat ruse and say off you go grandad.

1. First Can of Beer, 2. Found Drink Tickets (well spotted Chook), 3. Hot Chips, 4. Corn Dog, 5. Hot Dog

The shows! Once again, Plumber bummed Collapsy man who Drank too much pre-mix Bourbon did not disappoint in a compelling performance. Stars were the Blues Explosion for reasons too simple to explain, except to say they shouldn't work but they do, the show was only flawed by not being long enough, and few leads can match John Spencer for the musicality of his voice and effortless knee drops. Yah boo sucks to Slipknot. What crap. Our nation's shirt making spotty angst ridden youth deserve better.



1. Blues Explosion, 2. Beastie Boys (ISFTWO lounge set), 3. Spiderbait, 4. The Flairz, 5. Regurgitator.

*Alright alright it wasn't just Buddy Williams. I should say pre-BDO came along I did get to see Skyhooks, Devo, The Long Tall Pitchforks, The Cramps, U2, The Beastie Boys, The Sugarcubes and the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra.

Bigger than Cheeses etc.

Hey I'm in The Age. [blush, cringe]



If you've come from there or the SMH or Stuff NZ, hello. Feel free to look around, the archives are down there on the right, perhaps October. What you should really do though, is have a good look at some of the other blogs listed here, they're there because they're good. Salut to fellow articlistas James and David and a heartfelt thanks to regular readers - the folks will be proud.

And from the mailbox... SMH Good Food guide is looking any recommendations of country restaurants and/or provedores with an emphasis on (and this is a very good thing) local produce in a non-"just passing through, my what an exceptionally well fried chiko roll" way. Pop your Country NSW tips/faves in comments for our commenty pleasure or you can mail James directly - jamesmayson[at]yahoo[dot]com.

ABC Radio! [runs out of shocked onomatopoeia] Looks like I'll be on local (huzzah!) government radio station 720 ABC tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon at 2:45. Bikkuri!

Greg and the Giant Dhufish

Because of his optimism, fishing with Greg has always been a pleasure. A few were always a feed, small fish always good eating, and an empty catch bucket always due to some resolvable variable. This makes this photo he took of his catch last week all the sweeter.

His dhufish is simply awesome. 20kg of Indian Ocean deliciousness caught in a runabout 11km of the South-west coast. It would be a pub talk contrariness to argue that this isn't the best tasting fish out there.

There are still fillets. A bottle of white and a dab of butter should do it.

A Menu for Hope - Second Dessert, Lamingtons

A Menu for Hope is a collaborative menu by food and wine bloggers. Our goal is to raise money for UNICEF for those areas tragically affected by the recent tsunami. Now before you run off to enjoy the virtual treats, two requests.

• be sure to look through the menu above. Clicking any of the 12 courses and wine selections will take you the blog responsible (there may be small delay in posting). And,
• when you're done, consider that the needs in the affected areas are still very real. Give your support by donating via the UNICEF button. Large or small, it all helps. Think of it as the bottle of wine you didn't have to bring.

Bests to you all and cheers especially to Pim for her inspiration and work. Now for my part in this, lamingtons...


Lamingtons are blocks of day-old sponge cake, dipped in chocolate sauce and coated with desiccated coconut. Named, allegedly, after the fleckled shoulders of Baron Lamington, Governor of Queensland (1896-1901). Their roots are the resourceful salvaged failure of a sponge cake and reluctance to waste. They are uniquely Australian and our version of the fundraising brownies. So apologies, not a dish from the most affected countries but in these times we must ask the question, who is my neighbour?

(makes 12)

The Cake
[Note] The cake is made a day in advance and put in the fridge. A fresh cake will crumble when cut.

- 3 free-range eggs
- 3/4 cup caster sugar
- 2 cups of self-raising flour – sifted and sifted
- 1 tablespoon of butter
- 1/2 cup of warm milk
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Place the butter, sugar, and vanilla together in a bowl and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, while beating well. Fold in the flour gradually, alternating with the milk.

Grease a rectangular cake tin (15x27cm) with butter and pour in the mixture. Bake in a 160C (325F) oven for 50 to 60 minutes, testing with a skewer. Allow the cake to stand for a few minutes before turning out. Refrigerate.

The Chocolate Sauce
-500gm of icing sugar
-1/3 cup of cocoa
-1 tablespoon of melted butter
-1/2 cup of warm milk

Beat together well, adjusting the volume of milk to get a smooth consistency.

Cut the lamingtons into 5cm cubes and then dip each cube into the chocolate sauce, allowing a little time to absorb. Now roll in a tray of desiccated coconut and then do the same with the lamingtons.

You may, if you wish, serve with the excess chocolate sauce.



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Woot! Cracked the double monkey! Keep it coming babies.

Tagged - A musical interlude

I was stitched up and roped into this by Nicole at Craftapalooza. Onetwothreefour...

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
Whittled down to top 1500 .
2. CD you last bought?
Frank Black Francis
Pixies obsession spurred this is a bit of odd completism. Disk two of remixes is interesting in a pavlova with a sea urchin glaze kind of way. Or maybe a glazed urchin with a sea pavlova.
3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
Can't remember. Let's just imagine it was the Scientist's Nitro.
4. 5 songs you often listen to, or which mean a lot to you?

• Hallelujah - John Cale
  Sublimating like it should. Nudges out Jerusalem


• Blackfella/ White Fella - Warumpi Band
  "message" song but mucho fun and leaves me happy rather than wanting to run out and tip a car over before setting it on fire. And so much better than INXS' dream on thingy,not to mention Ebony and Ivory and less said of MJ and PMcC the better. Similar fave Free Nelson Mandela by the Specials a tad redundant now, no?


• Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
  Bypasses all rational thought.
  Pangadangpangdangdang[shifts weight onto balls of feet]


• Bring the Noise - Public Enemy
  Don't think any song has left me quite so mentally knackered after listening to it for the first time. BASS!


• You Are Always On My Mind - Elvis [the 70s box-set live version]
  Had mea culpa to Priscilla all over it and a glimpse of the oxen sized heart beating beneath that would eventually finish him off. Hunka Hunka Cheeseburger mockers can bite me. No heresy in the Pet Shop Boys version at all though.

5. Who are you going to pass this on to and why?
Jeanne - because I suspect she'll catch a couple of notable omissions.
Andrew - because he'll fret about it, do a fantastic job, think it's rubbish, but secretly enjoy it all.
Saint - passing on the getting to know you aspect of this to a most enigmatic of South Australians.

Non obligatory of course, I don't think it's one of these and the ship they then sailed on, The Titanic, type chainy letter thing.