The huge reveal of Tanis Episode 209 was that The Navigator is…
Yeah right, as if I’m going to spoiler that!
No way! You have 21 fascinating episodes of murder, madness, conspiracy and stray right feet washing up on beaches before you can get to that reveal. Having said that, there’s no need to be daunted, the Tanis back catalogue is still small enough that you could binge listen to it all in a weekend.
So get onto it. It is actually one of those things that is also worth a second (or third ) listen.
You could have a Geoff Van Sant moment and grab a beer while you listen. Or, even better, make this super dry, super citrussy cocktail called The Navigator.
The Navigator & Clues to Tanis
The Navigator is to Eld Fen what the runner is to Tanis. Basically, to get there you need one. And you also need a map.
But maybe not a map like this.
Because even when you have a Navigator / Runner, you can only get to Eld Fen / Tanis when the stars don’t align.
As soon as I heard about the stars not aligning my first thought went to the line from Space Oddity, “And the stars look very different today”. I don’t think it’s at all relevant but except maybe for the writers tipping their hat and giving a little nod to the late, great Mr David Bowie. I hope it’s that and the twist about to come is not aliens.
The Navigator Cocktail
I found this on the ever reliable, always excellent Difford’s Guide.
Dry Gin, Limoncello and Pink Grapefruit Juice…three of my favorite things! I added some additional lemon juice to mine. I figured that if I was going to cut open a lemon from the garnish, I may as well use some of it in the drink too!
This is so good! The stars all align with The Navigator. It is:
Lipsmackingly dry from the gin
Sweet from the limoncello
Sour from the lemon juice
Bright with a hint of bitter from the grapefruit.
It’s like a flavour explosion in your mouth.
The Navigator could easily become one of my favorite cocktails!
I have no doubt Nic is about to go into the forest again but with whom? Per the first series, you need four. So, Nic, The Navigator and two others.
If I was Nic, I’d take Geoff Van Sant and MK. But then, given the choice, I’d probably take GVS and MK anywhere with me. They’re the best. I think GVS is my secret podcast crush. What can I say, I happen to have a thing for guys with messy hair and alert eyes who like a drink or two. And in my head he looks like Paul from Orphan Black. And that is never a bad thing!
And MK is just the best. She may also be my secret podcast crush!
I can’t wait…the series two final is fast approaching….I will try to align my fourth (and final) cocktail with that happening!
Breaking News!
Ladies of the PNW who need a thrilling secret conspiracy to liven up their lives? GVS is trying dating again. Why not have a beer with him?
I conjured up the Eld Fen Martini based on a Twitter suggestion by the Tanis Podcast. And here it is:
But first….
What Is Eld Fen?
Eld Fen also known as Old Fen or King Wurm is a….presence. And it’s seriously fucking creepy. Eld Fen sleeps in the darkest part of the deepest forest. But it’s waking up. And it’s coming…..
Ever walk alone in the woods and all of a sudden the hairs on the back of your neck prick up and you know something else is there? You can’t see it or hear it….yet…but it’s there? Just waiting? Now imagine doing that in the dark. And you walk into a circle of birch trees and the crisp smells of the forest fade into something that is sweet and swampy and rotten all at the same time.
You thought you would be safe in the circle but you’ve turned around a few times trying to find the thing that is out there and now you have no idea which direction is home. Which is scary because you’re out there in the dark all alone.
Now multiply that fear by a thousand. Because the truly frightening thing is that you’re not alone. Because you’ve woken it up. And it’s coming.
And when it does? There will be blood. And madness. And unspeakable horror.
That’s Eld Fen.
There are magical things….
Sweet hopscotching Jesus! I was trying to give you all the Tanis-y creepy chill and managed to scare myself!. Good thing I’ve got a lovely martini to calm me down!
What Is The Eld Fen Martini?
It’s an Eld(erflower) and Fen(nel) Martini with a splash of Chartreuse. So it’s sweet from the Elderflowers, anisey (Tanis – y?) from the fennel and herby from the Chartreuse. Delicious. The perfect pick me up after a hard day’s work searching for a place that may or may not exist. And may make people crazy when they find it.
The hardest thing about making the Eld Fen Martini was trying to walk the line between making something that conveyed the swampy, sickly aspects of Eld Fen without making it so disgusting that no one would ever want to drink it. I felt my first attempt, which did not have the Chartreuse, was too pretty, this did not at all convey swampy, hint of pus look I wanted.
Hmm….
I bet you never read that last sentence in a food blog before. And now you know why I chose Eld Fen over Hint Of Pus Martini.
What do you mean you don’t want to have a drink with me? It’s not real pus. It’s Chartreuse. Made by Monks. And not those spooky Order of Cenophus Monks from The Black Tapes. These are proper French Monks who are far too busy tending their garden of 130 herbs so they can make lovely, delicious Chartreuse to:
Kidnap an itinerant
Rip someone else’s face off.
Sew said face onto itinerant
Push itinerant off a monastery tower.
Oh FFS, as if I hadn’t already scared myself enough with Eld Fen. Now I’m freaking out about murderous monks!
There are dangerous things….
I wanted the garnish on the Eld Fen to maintain the dark edge. My favorite maraschino cherry was just a little bit too perky for this. So I went with a blueberry /blackberry garnish. And OMG, if you give these a teeny squish? They start to release little lines of juice which look like veins or splashes of blood! Perfect!
Give the fennel seeds a few good whacks with a pestle or heavy rolling pin.
Place the water, sugar, fennel seeds and chopped fennel in a small pan.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for around 10 minutes.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Strain to remove the fennel and fennel seeds.
Place in fridge until required.
For The Cocktail
Chill your martini glass.
Pour the vodka, St Germain, fennel simple syrup, lime juice and Chartreuse into a shaker filled with ice.
Shake, baby, shake.
Pour into your martini glass.
Garnish with blueberries and blackberry that have been slightly bruised to release some juice.
Enjoy!
Notes
You will have enough Fennel Simple Syrup to make plenty of these!
Nutrition
Serving Size:1
To find Eld Fen, you need a Navigator.
Why you would want to find Eld Fen is utterly beyond me. Is your tv broken? Play some Words With Friends, read a book, write a blog, take up yoga…there are so many things you could do with your life that do not entail pushing you to the brink of sanity and life itself. But if you must find Eld Fen…you’ll need a navigator. And that’s where we’ll go next time….
“Hey mambo, mambo Italiano hey, hey mambo mambo Italiano Go go go you mixed up Siciliano All you Calabrese do the mambo like-a crazy”
This week’s dishiest dish has us going to Abruzzo for a Pizza Rustica con Bietola. AKA a savoury tart with chard . But Pizza Rustican con Bietola sounds so much more Italian and glamorous doesn’t it? And it will have you dancing the mambo because it is super tasty!
The recipe comes from Made in Italy by Silvia Colloca which was my choice when we did Italian in the Tasty Reads book club a few months ago.
Before I looked inside this book I had my hater face on. As if some B grade actress was going to have any cooking chops – and bear in mind the Claudia Roden book was one of the other selections. This was going to have to be pretty damn impressive to rival that!
Then I started flicking through and ye-es there were several pictures of Silvia looking both incredibly beautiful and impossibly thin. But it was also filled with what looked like some fabulous recipes and things that were not run of the mill. And everything I have made to date has been delicious.
This has included:
Calimari with Tomatoes and Wine
Woodsman’s Chicken
Herb Frittata with Goat’s Curd
Noodles with Zucchini Blossoms and Saffron Sauce
No Knead Spelt Pizza with Soppressata and Potatoes
Pasta Strips with Slow Cooked Goat Sauce
So, this is proving a pretty solid choice. Yay me! Well, really yay Silvia! But you know, I write a blog and it doesn’t get much more totally self obsessed than that so I guess yay me is valid.
Six Week Challenges – Update
I am still on my 6 weeks of no alcohol although I did take last weekend off! Saturday night we were having lobster – OH. MY. WORD. So good!!!! And there was no way on God’s green earth that I was not having a glass of sparkling with that! And Sunday we went out for a Valentine’s Day dinner to our favourite local Greek restaurant. And again – it would have been churlish not to have a glass of vino! But on the whole it is going well . I haven’t really missed it. I also haven’t felt many of the supposed benefits – weight loss, sleeping better, greater productivity etc.
I have been struggling with the daily meditation. I don’t think I have found the perfect time to do it. In the mornings I am usually too rushed and if i try to do it at night I fall asleep. Two places it did feel “right” were one day I did it as soon as I got home from work so it was a bit of a chance to decompress. The other was one morning when I had parked m car at the station, i just stayed in it and did my ten minutes there.
My new one, started February 15th is a flexibility challenge. Every day I will do a short workout designed to improve my flexibility. I am using the program from Fitivity. I have only done a couple so far and they have been fine but a bit boring. I’m sure they will get more challenging as I progress!
I have been thinking of more that I can do over the next few weeks /months:
No processed food
No sugar
Yoga everyday
No Candy crush
Journalling everyday
Are all on the list.
Reading
Room – Emma Donoghue
I have had this book on my To Be Read shelf for YEARS. And finally now I have taken the plunge and have started it – simply because I want to have read it before I see the film. I am probably 2/3 of the way through and I think it is very well written. There are certain parts that I have found quite confronting and other parts that have annoyed me but once I start reading it I find it difficult to put down. I am still having some problems with starting picking it up and starting it each day though…..
The Apologist – Jay Rayner
This is my current audiobook. Marc Bassett is a merciless restaurant critic. One day a chef commits suicide by roasting himself in his bread oven, leaving Bassett’s review taped to the outside. And so begins his career as the apologist.
I am not very far along with this but I am enjoying it so far.
Watching
My Kitchen Rules
I can’t help myself. I am utterly addicted to this. And the commentary on Flawless Vision.
I have only listened to one episode of this but they hated Girl on The Train almost as much as I did so it’s definitely worth another listen.
Room 101
From time to time I’ve decided to list a few pet peeves on here. Things that I would like to see banished to Room 101. Starting with:
Gluten Free Everything
When you label your bread, cakes and cookies gluten free you are doing a good service for those people who cannot tolerate gluten. When you label products that would never have contained gluten in a pink fit “Gluten Free” you are indulging in a cynical marketing ploy. STOP IT. I swear I saw water labelled gluten free recently. It made me want to break things.
Quinoa
Has no one else noticed how bad this smells as it is cooking. I made some the other day and the smell of it made me gag. I”m never cooking it again.
Cooked.com
I took out an annual subscription for cooked.com. This, for those of you who may not have heard of it is kind of like a netflix for cookbooks. Does anyone else have one of these? Do you find it useful? how long have you had it. Does it help you to choose which cookbooks to buy or do you not buy them anymore? I have not actually cooked anything from the site yet. I guess I’d better start! Stay tuned!
Kitchen Nightmares
I had one kitchen nightmare this week. I was all set to make Vitello Tonnato for bookclub only it was a new style “healthy” VT. So, instead of that gorgeous tuna mayonnaise, my tonnato was made out of tofu, anchovies and parmesan cheese. And it was rank! I have never been one to complain about the smell of parmesan cheese. I remember even in primary school when people would say “Yuck, it smells like sick”, I always thought they were nuts. This abomination of a tonnato not only smelt like but tasted like vomit. It was so bad I couldn’t even give it to the dogs.
Now though, I am craving a proper old school Italiano Vitello Tonnato. It’s a shame Silvia’s book does not have a recipe. However, The A-Z of Cooking does. There will be 1970’s Vitello Tonnato on here very soon. I just have to allow the memory of the horror that was that tofu tonnato to subside a little!
What Silvia’s book does have is this recipe for Pizza Rustica con Bietola. I am obsessed by those words. I keep repeating them in an increasingly bad Italian accent! If you would also like to become obsessed with this lovely tart here is the recipe:
This week I am looking forward to cooking…nothing. Because I have been really busy and not done a single bit of menu planning. However, we have a new Tasty Reads book so I might crack this open and give something a whirl.
Oh and this is is my new favourite you-tube. I have watched it about a million times since I found it.
What was the best thing you’ve made this week? What are you looking forward to cooking? Have you read anything interesting? I would love to hear from you!
English is meant to be one of the most descriptive and eloquent languages in the world. Why then, do some phrases sound so blah when contrasted to their foreign counterparts? Take Green Sauce, this week’s dish o’ the week. How much better would it sound if it were called Salsa Verde or Sauce Verte or even Pesto?
All of these suggest a zing, a zippiness, a brightness that plain old Green Sauce totally fails to convey. However, out of everything I made from The Meatball cookbook, the green sauce was an absolute standout highlight which I will make over and over.
This stuff is like crack. Seriously, make it once and you will want to smear, drizzle, spread this over EVERYTHING. And here’s the thing – it’s good with everything. Here are some of the stuff I have eaten it with outside of the meatballs:
Steak
Roast chicken //Poached Chicken
Pasta
Bread
Fish or any white seafood – lobster, crayfish, prawns, scallops
Baked and boiled potatoes
And it’s not just me. Everyone in the book club who made this sauce agreed it was the bomb!
It’s also a good way to get rid of some of the herbs you have used in other recipes that might otherwise go to waste. I have added tarragon and mint into the mix and it was delicious both times.
Make it. Make it today. You will not be disappointed. I promise.
Oh yeah, the meatballs were good too! These are the chicken, cheese and corn balls.
No real recipe fails this week – just me failing to make some Banana Buttermilk Pancakes (which have been top of my list for weekend breakfasts) for maybe the tenth week in a row. I’ve given up, I’m making a saffron and pistachio kulfi with the buttermilk as we speak.
This week I am looking forward to cooking:
After the meatfest that was meatball week, I am looking forward to making some salads and this Cucumber, Pistachio, Grape and Feta salad from Australian Gourmet Traveller is hitting every button I have.
So is this Shaved Asparagus, Cured Beef and Manchego Salad but I’m not sure if I can be arsed curing my own beef. Does that make me lazy? Or is that asking too damn much? What is a good substitute? I was thinking I could use pastrami. Suggestions gratefully accepted!
Hmm…there’s buttermilk in that dressing. Maybe the banana pancakes are back on the menu.
In the oven at the moment is Vincent Price’s Champagne chicken for the #treasurycookalong over at Silver Screen Suppers, it is smelling delicious!
In Other News I Am
Listening To
I have downloaded but am yet to listen to The Message Podcast. I’ll let you know how that one works out.
Reading
Still on Orphan #8. Had a moment this week sitting in the doctor’s waiting room to get my foot x-rayed whilst reading about a woman who had her whole life destroyed by x-rays and briefly wondered if I should make a run for it. Sadly, the most I could have managed was a slow hobble.
Reading/Listening
For some reason my computer decided to wipe all the files for Life After Life. Which is a shame because I was really enjoying it.I’m not totally upset though because I think it is something I will like even more by actually reading it.
I have switched to audio reading Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and I am loving it. I think Jon Ronson is brilliant and have read (nearly) all of his books and never been disappointed. There is something about those smart witty British boys (Ronson, Alain De Botton, Louis Theroux) that does it for me BIG time. I am also totally loving that Jon Ronson is reading the audio himself. I would recommend this to anyone who has any online presence (this means you) in terms of how to behave on the old dub-dub-dub that we all share.
Niki Sengit’s The Flavour Thesaurus is a book I have dipped in and out of for years. I am now reading it cover to cover. And loving it too. I can’t tell you what I enjoy more, her scalding wit or the great recipe suggestions.
Watching
I watched Best in Show earlier today and it was as funny as ever. I had totally forgotten some of the mad random bits of hilarity such as Eugene Levy’s two left feet. Utterly watchable!
I have a real hankering to go back and watch some early XFiles. I have yet to scratch that particular itch but it’s there….
Here is the Green Sauce Recipe and if you are only ever going to act on one thing from this blog make this green sauce.
50g (a large bunch) flat leaf (Italian) parsley, leaves picked
50g (a large bunch) basil, leaves picked
1 clove of garlic
35g blanched almonds
10g anchovies
Juice of 1 lemon
120ml extra virgin olive oil
25 parmesan cheese, finely grated
Instructions
Blitz the herbs, garlic, almonds, anchovies, lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper in a food processor for around a minute or until a smooth sauce has formed.
Add the parmesan and blitz for another minute.
What’s going on in your life / kitchen? What was the best thing you made this week?
No retro food today just a random collection of what I’m doing and loving at the moment. I love it when other bloggers do this so I thought I might give it a go. The title for this is inspired by this gorgeous song by Missy Higgins, covering an old Split Enz song which I have just rediscovered on my ipod.
I joined a book club!!! Our book of the month is Us by David Nicholls. I am so excited to read this. I loved his last book, One Day. Also a bit scared about the whole book club thing. First meeting next Monday!
I have just finished reading this which I loved. This was one of those books where I just wished I had had the idea to do it. This was so funny although it did get a bit repetitive at times but this may have been because I read it in pretty much a day. And like most diets, it left me wanting more!
Blogs
I’m loving Flawless Visions take on MKR. Hilarious
I took a fairly ordinary baked vanilla cheesecake and fancied it up with the addition of some Chambord and a take on Sabrina Ghayour’s Strawberries with Basil Sugar. This was delicious!!!
Have a great week. And beware the hooded figures in the dog park!
The Navigator & Clues to Tanis
But maybe not a map like this.
As soon as I heard about the stars not aligning my first thought went to the line from Space Oddity, “And the stars look very different today”. I don’t think it’s at all relevant but except maybe for the writers tipping their hat and giving a little nod to the late, great Mr David Bowie. I hope it’s that and the twist about to come is not aliens.
This is so good! The stars all align with The Navigator. It is:
