Homemade Curry Paste

Control the spice, control the universe.

I know that making your own curry paste might sound like a ginormous pain in the arse, and there will be a part of you that keeps whispering ‘Why the hell are we bothering with this?’ but trust me, it’s really good. And the big benefit of making your own curry paste is that you can tweak it to suit your taste, and it will be much more aromatic than commercially-produced curry paste without having to be a visit to chilli-town. If there’s a particular spice you don’t like, just substitute for something you do. I pretty much used a bit of everything, and invented this mix by combining and tweaking three or four different recipes. This will be a spiritual adventure, a commitment to experimentation and discovering what you like most in this world (or at least in the world of spices and aromatics).
Also, all measurements are really approximate, but don’t worry, this is really really really hard to screw up. Just zen it, baby.

 INGREDIENTS

• 10 cloves
• 2 tsp peppercorns
• 3 tbsp cumin
• 3 tbsp cardamom
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 1 onion
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 2 inch square of ginger
• 6 tbsp fresh coriander leaves (approx. half a bunch)
• juice of half a lemon
• 2 tbsp white vinegar

METHOD

Put cloves and peppercorns in mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind.

Optional: drop unsealed packet of whole peppercorns all over your kitchen floor and discover what a minefield that can be.

Add the rest of the dry spices and stir together.

Transfer spice mixture to spice harvester food processor.

Optional: make Dune jokes in your head because you live alone with no pets and this is the most entertaining thing you’ve done today.

Optional: walk without rhythm / it won’t attract the worm.

Roughly chop onion, garlic and ginger. Add to food processor.

Add coriander, lemon juice and vinegar.

Mix on high speed until thoroughly chopped and combined.

Optional: open food processor, discover just how much sulfenic acid* comes out when you blend a whole onion, cry like a baby.

At this stage, you can either slather the paste all over meat as a marinade, or scoop it into a jar and store in the refrigerator for, like, probably a while. This recipe makes about a jarful, which should be enough for two strong batches of curry or 3 weaker ones. So I guess it’s 8-12 servings of curry paste. It’s hard to say.

I like to cook this up with chicken, sweet potato, carrot and capsicum. When cooking, add a small tin of coconut cream or yoghurt, and as much water as you need to achieve appropriate curry texture. Serve with rice and extra coriander, if that’s your thing.

*actually onion tears are caused by a particular reaction with 1-propenesulfenic acid which creates syn-Propanethial-S-oxide, but that’s not nearly as catchy.

Pasta Salad with Salmon and Kale

Sounds classy, looks like a hot mess, tastes like delicious, provides many nutrients.

Makes 3 main meals or about 6 side servings or 1 big ol’ potful.

In case you can’t tell yet, take all my measurements with a grain of salt and use your judgement and don’t sue me. I’m not a food blogger.

INGREDIENTS:

salmon fillets: 500g skinned and boned

pasta: 400g dry I guess

red capsicum: like, half to three-quarters of a large capsicum

kale: 2 stalks (or substitute rocket or baby spinach)

olives: 3 tbsp pitted kalamata from a jar (or whatever olives you like and I don’t know how you measure olives? So 75g of olives or approximately two dozen olives or more or less depending on how much you like olives)

pesto: 2 tbsp at least

lime juice: juice of half a lime-ish

parmesan: at your discretion

(and, just to be totally clear, you’ll need basics like water and salt and pepper. And a saucepan and a frypan and a drainer and a big spoon and an optional steamer. And a knife. And a bowl and a fork.)

METHOD:

Set water to boil for the pasta. Put frypan on medium heat for the salmon. I mean, probably the water will take much longer than the frypan so use your judgement. Ideally, you want them ready to cook with at the same time, but the world won’t end if you do the pasta process and the salmon process separately/screw up the timing.

Take photos because no one has every used the internet for photos of food before.

While you’re waiting, sprinkle salt and pepper on one side of the salmon fillets. Chop capsicum, halve olives, strip leaves from kale stalks and tear into small pieces.

Make a mountain of kale that dwarfs the other ingredients.

When water is boiling, add a pinch of salt because that’s how you do it, and add pasta.

Add salmon to pan seasoned side down. Don’t bother with oil unless your pan’s very old and non-non-stick. After 4 minutes, flip fillets.

Around three minutes after that/after the pasta has cooked for 7 minutes/when your heroic multi-function kitchen timer tells you so, add kale in a steamer on top of the pasta. You just want it to wilt and go bright green, so it’s good if you can see it, but otherwise, this will only take 2 minutes.

He’s a maverick.

Place steamed kale in drainer, unless you’re like me and you use your drainer as a makeshift steamer, in which case you’ve already got your kale exactly where you want it to be. Drain pasta over the kale. Return both to the saucepan.

Add pesto and stir through. Add vegetables and stir through. Flake salmon, add to saucepan, squeeze over lime juice, stir through.

This is a great recipe for impressing someone who has already agreed to sleep with you and/or someone with very bad eyesight.

Serve in a bowl because sometimes we all just want our food in a big easy-to-eat pile. Add parmesan I guess if you’re eating it hot, and I recommend eating at least some of this hot. Store the rest in Tupperware.

Some Thoughts At The Beginning Of The Academic Year

There are a bunch of contradictory arguments about the value of living in the ‘now’, being grounded, being present for what one is experiencing, as opposed to dwelling in the past or fantasising about the future. Presence is valuable, but so too is recognising one’s past mistakes and learning from them, and having hope and ambition to move forward into a better future.

I have a dreadful memory, which I usually enhance by dwelling on past mistakes and slights, exaggerating them, pulling out each minute facet of a moment like a Cubist, searching relentlessly for clues to why I am the way I am, why other people act in certain ways, why things went down the way they did. I am notoriously (occasionally gloriously) past-oriented. I ignore the future as a place of unknown terror, and, from a certain viewpoint, I’d say I waste the present.

HADES GREY

HADES GREY, a blackout poetry project based on Fifty Shades of Grey.
To be performed at the Marvellous Scandal: Supermarket Noir on March 8th, 2013.

↖’Our strange arrangement’, p. 359.

↖’The best form of defense’, p. 351.

See How She Runs

TW: suicide; depression; anxiety; mental illness

I’ve never experienced suicidality. It’s always the running-away-ality that gets me. That feeling that I shouldn’t be here. That my existence in this particular place and time isn’t worthwhile. It’s never made me want to harm or kill myself, but it does make me want to run. To get away. To be unnoticed, unknown. To leave everything behind.

The Overflow

It’s been a while since I wrote anything for the blog–any time I’ve been able to step beyond the confines of minor depression, I’ve been caught up in an article I’m writing about tattooing, faciality, the limits of the self and processes of signification. It’s an ekphrastic piece for a compilation that may never see the light of day, and I’m drawing on Nazi imagery along with French poststructuralism and it’s been a bit of a mad project, so far. But one that’s also immensely exciting. It’s making the small steps back to ‘normalcy’ just a little easier.

It’s a sparkling constellation of ideas and tangents: Deleuze and Guattari, bodily faces and surfaces, bloodletting, BDSM, sadism and masochism, willingness and the will, Nietzsche (maybe), Derrida (definitely), the tympan, the overflow, the Vitruvian water clock, the swastika, the claws of the Reichsadler, the tattooing needle.

On ‘On Gratitude’

Today John Green wrote a post on Tumblr about how nerdfighteria has provided the kinds of support and interaction that he, and other nerdfighters, need to get past the challenges they face. As he put it, seeing the proof that people were “trying to focus outward, trying to imagine others complexly, doing the hard daily work of paying sustained attention to the big and small stories around them” helped him complete The Fault in our Stars and also helps him to be grateful, every day, for the people who have chosen to put themselves into the world in such a way.

I’ve been thinking about gratitude a lot*.

The Not-So-Exciting Adventures of Me–April 4th, 2012

I’m in the midst of doing some ‘freelance’ copywriting work–I’ve put freelance in scare quotes because I’m doing it for my faculty and they approached me, rather than the other way around. Regardless, I’m getting paid, and I’ll be able to put something like ‘freelance copywriter/consultant’ on my resumé.

And it’s very different to the kind of writing I’m used to. In comparison to creative writing, where you are more or less your own boss, copy writing has a specific purpose that’s determined by someone else–someone else’s priorities (usually commercial), someone else’s aims and vision for a final product. Might I also add: someone else’s deadlines, which are proving both a blessing and a curse. You’re not writing as yourself, but as a mouthpiece for a whole institution. Negotiating all that is tricky, and oddly dehumanising.  But for that reason, I’m also finding it remarkably freeing.

Whenever I feel like I’m being overzealous, overenthusiastic, or making outlandish promises, I remind myself of the other marketing material coming out of my university.

Whenever I think I’m too invested, I try to remember what it’s like to know nothing about this degree, nothing about where a tertiary qualification in creative arts might lead, not even knowing what the average day in the classroom will hold. I imagine how much better I would have felt, at Orientation Day, if I’d had someone tell me what the degree was actually like.

Whenever I question why I even agreed to do this job, which I’m both over- and underqualified for, I look at the drafts prepared by the communications staff and discipline heads in the faculty. And I realise: this needs a good writer.

This project needs me.

Not the same ‘me’ that teaches literary theory or writes poems or researches digital literature. But there’s a copywriter somewhere inside me, and she’s having a field day.

Femini-Series Part 2: Angry Feminist

In Part 1 I talked about my experience teaching feminism to my 2nd year creative writing theory class. As often happens, in preparing for the lecture I came across Clem Ford’s article ‘Why Women’s Still Can’t Enjoy Sex’ and immediately wanted to walk into the lecture room, read the article aloud to the class, and then walk straight back out. Although technically that wouldn’t cover the material on the weekly reading list, I felt and still feel that Ford said everything I wanted to say, better, more clearly, and publicly, without a hint of apology or shame.

I posted a link to Ford’s article on the online site for this class, and the class tutor used it during discussions in both of the tutorials. I’ll use it again when I teach literary feminism to a different class later this semester. I linked it on Tumblr. I linked it on FaceBook. So did a lot of other Australian women. Now, a week later, I’m still angry. I’m also angry that a transgender Canadian woman has been disqualified from the Miss Canada pageant. I’m angry that there are people out there who object to the casting of African-American actors to play Rue and Thresh in the Hunger Games movie. I have a lot of anger to direct towards the many and varied examples of contemporary Western society perpetuating the same mistakes about gender and race that we’ve been fighting for so long, towards the ignorance of large numbers of people within this society, and particularly towards the carelessness of people who actually claim to give a damn about these issues.

Future Paths For Early-Career Academics

Or: Having A Meeting On Short Notice In Which I Have To Work Out My Future

Today I met with one of the senior staff in my Faculty to discuss what I want to do next year after I submit my PhD thesis. I uttered phrases such as “I think I’m more on the academic track” and “I’d like the security of a full-time position”, and assessed my weaknesses and made considered statements about whether I want to stay in Wollongong or go somewhere else. In short, I was An Adult talking to A More Experienced Adult about what my future might look like.