Time for Coffee; A St Valentine’s Day Menu

The writing of this post was interrupted by the fight at Fat Hippo's OK Corral so is a fraction out of date and too late now for Big Don 'Mad' Kev Alviti's Valentine's Day Dinner.  Still, I promised to give him the recipe for German Red Cabbage and then, as usual, I went overboard a bit.



A little while back Big Don ‘Mad’ Kev Alviti posted an excellent recipe for pheasant having landed a brace or two demonstrating that at heart he was more a family man than the ruthless underboss of a powerful family.  He also asked if any of his readers had other recipes for pheasant so I posted a comment detailing the way I cook Guinea Fowl which are, I suppose, Africa’s pheasants.  I suggested he served the dish with German style red cabbage, spaetzle and cucumber dill salad.

This is Sauerbraten (a marinaded roast beef) with Spaetzle and Red Cabbage.
The dish will look something like this but, delete the beef
and exchange it for the Guinea Fowl/Pheasant in the picture below:

 

He seemed pleased but wanted to know how to make German style red cabbage.  I think German cuisine is much maligned and definitely hovers in the shadow of its culinary powerful neighbor France in much the same way as good, honest English food does.  I would be hard pushed to state categorically which my favorite dish was but I can say categorically that it would not be French.  I have no desire to upset any of my French readers.  You are the world’s epicures.  Most of the lexicon of culinary terminology is derived from your language, a language also highly regarded for its power to seduce women, so I think the French cottoned on to the idea ages ago that most living creatures on Earth are motivated by instincts to survive and procreate so why not do it stylishly.  And so the French fashion industry was born, Citroen and Facel Vega made barking mad cars, Brigitte Bardot proved that God was having a really good day when he made Woman and every Chef the world over strives for a Michelin star.

If I had to choose one English dish, honey glazed roast pork with roast potatoes and parsnips, boiled cabbage and parsley sauce would be right up there.  The German dish would be any Wild Gericht, (wild boar, venison) in a creamy mushroom sauce served with red cabbage and spaetzle, the German pasta and it was the latter I suggested to Big Don Alviti since we were dealing with pheasant.

Naturally I wanted to reply and explain how one prepares red cabbage German style but then I realized that we are so close to Valentine’s Day, a significant anniversary for families like the Alvitis so, I thought, why not go the whole hog and do a St Valentine’s Day Massacre Menu?

As a result, this is a long post and since I have never photographed the dishes I describe in the past, all the photos you see have been culled from the interweb thingy but I will correct that when I prepare all this for Marcia in a few days time.

First, the recipe I suggested to Big Don Kev for pheasant a few days ago:

This is how I prepare Guinea Fowl so it will work well with pheasant. It works with chicken and duck too.

Portion the birds and place in a glass bowl. Add a couple of bay leaves, roughly chopped onion, carrots, pepper corns, juniper berries, a few whole cloves and cover with red wine. Cover and leave overnight in a cool place (we have to stick it in the fridge in Angola).

Next day, brown the portions of bird off on high heat in a bit of olive oil in a cast iron casserole. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour to the sizzling birds, give it a good stir around and then add the strained liquid from the marinade. Best to do it gradually while stirring gently so that the wine combines with the flour and juices.

Strain a jar of pickled pearl onions (the really small ones) and place them in another heavy based pan, add brown sugar, a tablespoon, and caramelize. Don’t burn it, keep it all moving, and then add that to the birds.

Add wild mushrooms, can be dry but the heavier the flavor the better (button mushrooms are a bit bland), and a chopped up big chunk of smoked bacon (not the water injected sliced stuff you get in vacuum sealed packets) and also a pinch of black pepper.

Let this simmer gently for an hour or two. Check every now and then to see it isn’t burning on the bottom of the pan but be careful not to knock the flesh apart. Add chicken stock to prevent the sauce over thickening and burning and, towards the end, check seasoning. They like lots of salt here but you may get enough out of the bacon for your taste. If not, add a pinch or so to taste. Then take it off the heat and let it settle. Before serving, add cream to the sauce which by now should be thick as gravy.

I have never used a ‘Crock Pot’ but I imagine such a device would be ideal once you have assembled all the ingredients into one pot. As I have already said, this works with chicken as well but you get the best flavor if you use the genuine free range ones that are tougher than the farmed varieties.

This dish is best served with red cabbage (cooked German style), German Spaetzle (to soak up the sauce) and a cucumber dill cream side salad.

That was the end of my original comment.  So now, just for Big Don Kev, here is the rest…

Red Cabbage, German style (well, my style anyway!)

Chop up one large onion, place in a big heavy pan with a bit of goose fat or beef or pork dripping (or olive oil) and fry them off until they are clear and slither about the pan.  You can caramelize them slightly but don’t let them burn!  Burning ingredients brings many forms of bitterness;  in your heart when you look inside the pan and say, ‘Shit! I’ve burnt them, now I have to start again’; for the flavor of the dish and finally, for your family who eat it and think to themselves, ‘I wish Mum had cooked tonight’.  So don’t burn anything!

Peel and thinly slice a couple of tart apples (coring them first obviously) and chuck them in.

Slice a red cabbage up into thin ribbons discarding the heavy white core and chuck them in.  Give it all a stir and then add a bloody good slosh of wine vinegar, about half a whisky glass full, give it another stir and bang the lid on the pan to let the lot steam for a couple of minutes.

Add a bay leaf, a few whole cloves, a few pinches of salt, a heaped teaspoon full of brown sugar and a loaded tablespoon full of thick plum or damson jam, the stuff that looks brown rather than artificially purple.  The Germans call that jam Pflaumenmus and instead of being gelatinous like ordinary jams, it resembles the slurry oozing out of a Russian industrial estate but believe me, it is fantastic.  I am sure you must be able to get it in UK by now.  If not, go for any fruit rich plum or damson jam.  If it is homemade, even if it is runny, so much the better.

Beef stock or wine?

Now you have a choice and I know my dear old Granny (yes, I am in my mid-fifties and my German Granny is, thankfully, still alive) would argue with me on this but, bear with me while I explain.  This stuff has to simmer for at least a couple of hours so the liquid we have added so far will not be enough.  There are those, curiously putting their health before culinary happiness, who say you should now add plain water.  What a load of tosh.  There are those, my dear Granny included, who say we should add white wine.  Granny, my darling Granny, matriarch of the Von Borken family, we have wine vinegar in there, why do we need to add only wine?  Naturally, when I am in Baden-Baden and in her kitchen, I do it her way but when I am beyond her stern gaze, I add beef stock and only a dash of wine.  This red cabbage is served as an accompaniment to rich game so we need to give it some legs so it can punch the diner’s tonsils on the way down.  So I would suggest keeping the mixture simmering in beef stock, adding maybe another dash of wine vinegar an hour into the process.    For the beef stock, the real stuff is of course best but an OXO cube dissolved into a litre of water is fine, you’ll probably only need half the stock anyway so you are not going to over flavor it.  Knorr is rubbish, by the way.

For the last half hour, you want the liquid to reduce so you need to keep an eye on the pan stirring it occasionally because IT MUST NOT BURN!

Once it is no longer sloppy and with a wooden spoon you can extract a real heaped spoonful , turn off the heat, bang the lid on again so it can rest and finish off the other dishes.

I realize that if you want to do your Pheasant/Guinea Fowl/Wild Chicken with Rotkohl and Spaetzle you will need to be around to rattle the pans for a couple of hours but believe me, with practice, you can do all that and in the meantime mow the lawn, install a new loft hatch and service the truck. Oh and wash the pans, of course.  All before the wife gets home.

It is nearly Valentine’s day so if you are up for the Pheasant dish and the red cabbage, just buy the Spaetzle, I am certain it’s available in any decent delicatessen and all you have to do is cook it like pasta.  It is, though, incredibly easy to make but you really need one of these, a spaetzle press:

A lot of people hate doing things manually, they want to see an On Off button but this is so easy

It is also good for ricing potatoes and squeezing the water out of soaked socks so they dry quicker on the radiator.  The socks, not the potatoes.

 

With one of these, all you have to do is follow the step-by-step instructions for making Spaetzle in less time than it has taken you to read this far on this excellent site:  http://step-by-step-cook.co.uk/sidedishes/spaetzle/

Dominic has been making himself spaetzle with my press since he was nine.  He has it for breakfast frying up chopped bacon and mushrooms in a pan with loads of butter and then adding the spaetzle.

Now you need an entrée.  Buy a bag of frozen King Prawns (like if you want to go crazy Big Don, buy lobster tails), let them thaw out and peel them.  Buy some really crispy lettuce, a few cherry tomatoes, some celery and some ripe Avocados.  Now you need some Heinz Salad Cream, Tomato Ketchup and some Tabasco Sauce.  Beat up in a bowl (sorry about all the washing up) a 50:50 mix of salad cream and tomato sauce.  Add a few drops of Tabasco (we don’t want ‘Burning Bum By Morning’ but we do need a little piquancy), salt and pepper, give it all a stir and place to one side.  I am surrounded by ravenous dogs so ‘placing to one side’ for me means higher than they can jump.  Shred the lettuce and make a bed of it on a large flat plate.  Don’t go mad, Mad Big Don, this is just a garnish, we’re not disguising a grave with vegetation here.  If the prawns/lobster tails are from a reputable source, such as Findus, then place them in a colander, boil up a kettle of water and blanche them to remove any trace of equine DNA before sticking them in the fridge to chill.  If they are from your local EU unlicensed fishmonger then they are likely to be raw and unlikely to be anything else other than prawns or lobster tails so just steam them in a colander over a pan of hot water with a bit of chopped garlic, onion and wine for a few minutes and then chill them in the fridge.

Don’t be tempted to slice into the avocados until moments before you assemble the dish unless you really hate your guests.  There are many ways of testing the quality of an avocado (poking the end, squeezing it) but I subscribe to the John Gray method.  I realize Scotch Eggs do not grow on trees but they are more or less the same shape and scoffing a couple on the way home is a sure fire guarantee of quality so remember to buy a couple extra.  I can go through Avocados at the rate of about one every ten miles, if I am driving, more if I am the passenger.

Slice a couple of the cherry tomatoes into as thin strips as you can.  Slice four inch sticks of celery into as thin strips as you can.

Shit, I forgot the Mangos.  Peel a ripe Mango and slice the flesh off.  It is always easier to peel just a bit of the skin off, slice the exposed flesh and then peel it a bit more and so on.  Peeling the whole thing and then trying to slice it makes the flesh mushy.

Bollocks, I forgot the fresh coriander leaves as well.  Seriously, I am rubbish at writing about cooking but stick me in front of the pans…

So nip back to the supermarket and buy a bunch of fresh coriander leaves.

When you get back, give everything a stir to make sure it isn’t BURNING and then chop some of the coriander up finely.

Peel the avocado.  This is dead easy.  Just attack it with a knife.  I usually kill them cleanly by quickly slicing them in half and giving them a twist so the big brain in the middle falls out.  Peel the skin off and then slice them lengthways but not quite to the end.  This way, pressing a hand down on top of them causes their earthly remains to spread out in a wonderful fan.  Slide a Chef’s knife or spatula underneath and lift this onto the restrained bed of crunchy lettuce.  Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over the avocado.   On top of this lay a few slices, we are talking no more than two or three wafer thin segments here, of mango.  Now assemble the prawn/lobster tail on top.  Over this sprinkle just the tiniest hint of the chopped fresh coriander leaves.  Then as artistically as clumsy fingers allow, spread some of the salad cream/tomato sauce mixture over the pile.  A good dollup.  Don’t be shy but bear in mind, your guests are interested in what they are about to eat so while they are thanking God for what they are about to receive, they may also be grateful for a glimpse of steamed crustacean so they recognize what they are about to receive.

Toss the celery and tomato in a bowl to mix them up but not beat them into submission and then add a small multi-coloured bird’s nest of finely sliced celery with a hint, a mere smidgin of  the finely sliced tomato on top.  Crown this with the tiniest, thinnest slice of Mango and a few larger coriander leaves.

So we have sorted the Entrée out.  You know how to prepare your pheasant/chicken/Guinea Fowl, the German style red cabbage and you are going to buy ready-made Spaetzle (like most Germans do) so now we are just missing the side salad and a dessert.

I have maids which makes it easy for me.  I honestly hope you have a dishwasher because we need more bowls.

Peel and thinly slice a couple of cucumbers.  Lay the slices out in a bowl and finely sprinkle a bit of salt over each layer.  Do not go overboard Big Don Mad Alviti, just the very lightest dusting.  Think where the Boss says, ‘Give him a good kicking but don’t kill him’.  I know once you have a loaded packet of salt in your hand it is hard, but this time we need subtle. 

Stick the bowl in the fridge and forget about it for an hour or so. 

Where I live, Big Don A, I can only buy UHT cream which tends to come out of the packet as a stream of water followed by disgusting lumps which needs a good hiding with a whisk to get it looking half normal.  I am sure where you are, you can buy really nice fresh cream.  Buy some of that, give 250 mls or so a little stir in yet another bowl (you run out of bowls yet?) and mix in some finely chopped fresh dill, at least two tablespoons full.  If you have left the cucumber for a couple of hours you will find it is swamped in salty water.  Drain the salty water off and add the cream and dill, stir it up and stick it back in the fridge.  This will be your palate cleansing side salad.

Apart from the pheasants which you had to go out and shoot, everything I have mentioned in this Valentine’s menu is available in a supermarket so let’s keep up the momentum and talk about dessert.

Buy a big tin of peach halves in syrup and a normal sized can of pitted black cherries.  If you can't get tinned pitted black cherries, no matter, just warn everyone and provide a small plate for the spits, I mean pits.

Open the tins but only pour out the syrup into a heavy based pan (more washing and scrubbing I know).  If you have one, chuck in a sliced vanilla pod.  Also add a small piece of cinnamon bark and a clove and reduce the liquid to about a quarter of the volume.  Then remove the whole spices.  The juice should be quite syrupy. Add the peach halves and black cherries and fry them up.  You will need to gently flip the peach halves over a few times.  DON’T BURN THEM!

You could, and I urge you to try, flambé them at the table in front of a startled audience but I have found that while my sons are delighted by my theatrical extravagance, my wife is more concerned about our thatched roof.  If your wife feels the same way as mine, call the kids through to the kitchen on the pretext of collecting the plates and eating irons to lay the table, slosh in the Cointreau or Cognac and let rip.  It is a bonding experience when the kids rush back into the lounge shouting gleefully, ‘Mummy, Mummy! Dad’s just burnt his eyebrows off and had to put his head in the washing up bowl!  It was EVER so funny!’

Covered in Vanilla ice cream and the rest of the whipped fresh cream, this makes an excellent dessert.

Bon Appetit Monsieur Big Don 'Mad' Kev Alviti!

Go on, admit it.  How many of you having read my last post saw the title of this one and thought, shit, it's turned into a shoot out at Fat Hippo's?

 

Time for coffee. I’ve been fighting again.

In a fight, for a natural Southpaw, a left hand as useless, broken and swollen as this one is rather a nuisance.
It's also jolly painful but very good for giving the bird.
The right hand is there just for comparative purposes for those too idle to glance at their own hands to check what a real one looks like.

From now on I will precede all the titles to my posts with, ‘Time for Coffee’ if they are longer than a couple of thousand words.  I really wish, and am still looking for some function linked to blogger which would allow me to place a button on my post saying, ‘Would you like Hippo to read this to you?’  One click and you could be settling into your wingback, favourite beverage to hand and listen to yet another long letter from Angola.

Last night I was writing out a recipe for preparing German style red cabbage when I heard Marcia scream.  She came running into the jango closely followed by three blokes, one of whom was shouting obscenities at Marcia.

‘Oi!’ I shouted, ‘What the f*** is going on!’

It took a while to calm everyone down by which time there was a bigger audience.  Actually no-one was really calm, the simmering anger was palpable but at least I got the story.  It appeared that this likely lad had tried to make a payment in Marcia’s shop using a swipe card.  We are the only place around here that has a machine like this and sometimes we act as an unofficial cash point which helps keep the quantities of cash in the shop down.  Too much cash and you are likely to be rolled.

For the last week, the Movicell network has been pathetic.  I use Movinet for my internet access and I have been unable to access emails or post on my blog.  To do so I have had to nip over to Rico’s place and log onto his Vsat system.  I have seen this sort of situation before.  It is usually caused by Angola being late to pay for its communications satellite bandwidth.

The poor communications meant that the link to the bank is down more than it is up and all too often, payments don’t go through, as was the case with this guy last Saturday.  On Sunday he came round saying that the 5,000 Kwanzas he had tried to get authorized in our shop had come off his account after all so he wanted his money.  Marcia wasn’t there but I was present on that Saturday when Marcia had tried, by walking to high ground in the hope of a better signal, to process the transaction.  I thought it unusual that Marcia would draw my attention to the fact that the transaction had failed (success is evidenced by the machine spitting out a printed receipt, it hadn’t) but never really thought about it.  Now I realized that this guy must have been behaving like an arsehole on Saturday already.  Furthermore, I was intrigued.  He lives in the village.  I was very confident he didn’t own a computer let alone enjoy on-line banking so how the hell, over a weekend, did he know the money was off his account?

I told him that Marcia was in town so he should come back later.  I also advised him to bring a statement from his bank showing the deduction.  When communications are erratic all sorts of things can happen so if he could prove the money had come off his account, then it was up to us to honor the transaction and argue with our bank why the amount had not been credited to our account, which I was confident it hadn’t.  That was about as reasonable as I could be.  I was certainly not going to hand him 5 grand of Marcia’s money on his say so.  We are talking US$50 here, hardly bloody earth shaking.

Now here they all were, Monday evening, trying to force Marcia to hand over the money.

‘Do you have the statement?’ I asked him.

He thrust three sheets over to me.  I asked him to point out the debit on his account.  It was for 2000 Kwanzas.  Naturally I was confused and pointed out to him the obvious discrepancy between 2000 and the 5000 he was claiming.  Then Marcia dived in and told me to look at the date of the transaction.  I realized the statement he had given me was from December 2012.  This guy wasn’t just stupid, he was certifiable and he proved it by leaping off his chair (I had invited him to sit down next to me so we could sort everything out), taking a swing at Marcia and then grabbing her with both hands around her throat.

 

Back in the old days I boxed.  I never lost a fight.  I boxed light middleweight but at Sandhurst, I boxed a class higher because I could beat all the genuine middleweights on our boxing team.  I fought southpaw but could comfortably switch, much to the irritation of my opponents. 

I don’t know how other boxers felt, it wasn’t the sort of question you asked them but for my part, before I got into the ring, while the seconds were taping up my hands and fitting my gloves, I was always shit scared.  I was a lanky skinny freak and it was the fact I was so lightweight for my height that gave me the reach. I was also a skier (I won a silver medal in a Downhill Open in Austria back in ’82) so while the rest of my body didn’t necessarily have extraordinary stamina, my legs did and they never let me down.  I took plenty of standing counts but was never knocked to the canvas.   As my coach explained to me, I didn’t have to kill them, just avoid getting damaged and keep banging out the point scoring hits.  It was a tactic that worked because although I never knocked anyone out, I won every fight on points and always by a unanimous decision. 

My last fight was memorable because it was the most painful.  I was up against an Oxford Blue.  We are always told not to look at our opponent as we get into the ring.  Just get in and sit in your corner and look your second in the eyes.  The first time you look at your opponent is when the referee calls the boxers to the middle of the ring to give us the, ‘Let’s have a clean fight’ and ‘Break when I tell you and move to a neutral corner if there is a count’ pep talk.

This time, however, inexplicably as I climbed into the ring I looked over to my opponent’s corner.  He had his back to me resting his gloves on the top rope either side of the corner.  He looked like an inverted pyramid.  He was taller than me and his muscles rippled.  He had a tight bum surmounting Tour de France winning biker’s thighs.

Once again, I was boxing over my weight.

‘If he’s fucking middleweight, I’m a fucking flyweight!’ I said to my coach.

‘Bollocks, he’s a wuss!’ he said as he smeared my eyebrows with grease and stuffed my gumshield in.

I am the guy in the red. 
I am Light Middleweight but I am boxing Middleweight.
Are you telling me the guy in the blue strip and all the muscles is Middleweight?
The guy in the white kit is the referee, by the way.  He tells us when we can officially stop bleeding.

 

They tell you to come out fighting but this guy came out with all the indications of a homicidal maniac.  Within seconds I was taking a standing count trying desperately to hold my gloves up and look at least half conscious.

 

‘Box On!’ came the instruction.

Again he launched himself at me throwing a combination that had him over my guard, then under it and then a beauty straight into the middle of my face that snapped my head to the limit of its hinge.  Fortunately by then my back was on the ropes so I didn’t fall over and could take another standing count.  I felt the blood pouring out of my nose. 

‘How many fingers?’ said the referee waving a hand in my face.

‘Phough!’ I replied.  With a gum shield in my gob ‘phough’ could be interpreted as anything from two to five.  I would have been stuffed if he was holding only one finger up.

‘Box On!’

By the time the bell went for the end of the first of three rounds, he had broken my nose and cracked two ribs.  He knew I was hurt because he saw I was dropping my right arm to protect my ribs and that’s how he’d managed to get the nose breaker in.

‘You’re doing great!’ said my second as he swabbed my face.  My left eye had opened up and was splashing a bit of port as well.

‘He’s going to kill me’, I sniffled.  Having a cotton bud stuffed up the nostrils of a broken nose is eye watering I can tell you. With cracked ribs I didn’t even have breath left enough to scream.

Whoever trained this guy knew what he was doing.  It was all I could do in the second round to stay on my feet.  For such a big bloke he was dainty with the footwork and I wasted a lot of energy punching thin air.  I took another standing count and the ref inspected my eye which had opened up again. 

‘Do you want to box on?’ he asked me quietly, ‘I can call it if you want’.  No I did not want to box on. I wanted to be tucked up in bed with Nanny sitting beside me passing a cool hand over my brow saying, ‘There, there, it will all be gone soon and I will speak to Mater and Pater and you'll never, ever have to go back to that nasty place where they make my poor little bunnykins do all that horribly brutal military stuff.  Do you want me to kiss anything better?’

I was surrounded by my colleagues.  Cadets and staff of the Royal Military Academy all in mess dress.  It was a magnificent sight.  I was boxing for the honor of the College and my company, Normandy.

‘I’ll box on, thank you Sir’, I replied.

He ordered my second to give me a quick wipe down with a towel as by then I was looking pretty gruesome.

Points, just go for points.  For the last two minutes of that round I just went for it.  I was exhausted and I was in agony but I landed more points scoring punches than he did so by the end of the second, we were even.

I was in bad shape and I was worried that my second might throw in the towel.  I glanced to the side of him and took a look at my opponent.  He was knackered.  I was pleased.  This guy really wanted to hurt me and hurt me bad.  He didn’t want to box, he wanted to smash me.  I saw it in his eyes the first round.  This guy was basically mean.  Boxing for him was more than just sport, it was a blood sport.  Fine, I thought.

I like amateur boxing.  There are limited rounds which means actual fighting time is only nine minutes (but believe me they feel a lot longer) and if in the spirit of the sport you go for scoring punches rather than a knock out, it is fun.  Sure, a bit of blood might be spilt but blood gets spilt on any playing field.  Nowadays they give them nice soft head gaurds. This bout, for the last round, was no longer sport, it was a fight.

The guy was so tired he could barely keep his gloves up.  He’d burned himself out going for a knock out.  Bugger the points, now I wanted to hurt him.  It was his turn to take the standing counts while I champed at the bit in a neutral corner.  It was me that came flying at him as soon as I heard, ‘Box On’.  I wanted to smash this guy’s face in.  He started clinching me, giving my bleeding eye a knock and a rub with his head which made me even angrier.  Both of us were now drenched in sweat diluted blood.  I dummied with a right to the left side of his head and he ducked away straight onto a left uppercut which I followed with a right to the back of his exposed neck as he staggered and he crashed to the canvas.  He may accidentally have bashed his face against my knee as he went down.  The gloves weren't really off but they were if you know what I mean.

I stood in a neutral corner and watched the count.  He was on his knee by Three and sensibly used the rest of the count to get his breath back and clear his head a bit.

Nothing personal me old son, but take that.
It's a classic left hook and the gentle tap with the right, now his gaurd is down, is on the way.

 

After that it was child’s play.  He was dead on his feet and I hammered him.  Not for a second did I feel sorry for him.  I wanted to cause as much hurt as I could.  I hoped the round would never end.  Seriously, I wanted to kill him.

Afterwards, both of us were taken to hospital in the same ambulance.  I had broken a bone in my right hand hitting him, suffered two cracked ribs and a broken nose.  He was suffering from concussion so they kept him in overnight for observation. 

 

The next day I did two things.   I visited the first person I had ever wanted to kill in my life and discovered he was a really nice guy and studying Theology.  What the fuck is a priest doing in a boxing ring?.  My hands, especially the right one, were the size of boxing gloves they were so swollen.  I could hardly breathe.  His face was a mess.  Second, I gave up boxing.  Once you start getting to the higher levels I decided, it isn’t a sport anymore. 

That was 25 years ago.   Nearly three years ago I had the second of my two heart attacks and since then have had what can best be described as a sedentary existence.  I smoke too much and drink far too much.  Whereas in those days I could run three miles in fifteen minutes, it now take me fifteen minutes to walk a mile, if I push myself.

But seeing some bloke take a swing at my wife and then plant his hands around her throat meant that there was little else I could do but lead a right followed by a very hard left. 

They say bones get brittle with age but I never realized that at such a relatively young age my bones had turned to chalk.  The bones in my left hand shattered.  Still the guy didn’t go down and went for Marcia again.  Throwing only right handers would be a waste of time, clearly the guy’s head was a hard as granite so I swiped my ashtray off the table, made from a cut down 105mm cartridge case fired in the Falklands weighing about two kilos, and glanced that off his skull.  He went straight down, British engineering having left a severe impression on his mind.

The guy bled like a pig.  There was a deal of confusion.  Joaquim pitched up and took the guy to hospital in my truck.  I had to cough up 20,000 kwanzas to pay for his treatment (he only needed four stitches the wimp).  But now I am in the shit.

A few hours later the Soba came round.  He is basically the head honcho maximum elder.   I was in no mood to be polite.  He said that there was no need for the Police, this could all be resolved amongst the ‘Family’.  No need for the Police?  This guy basically came into my albeit open plan home and assaulted my wife and you are saying there is no need for the fucking Police? 

‘But you weren’t trying to kill him’ said the Soba.

‘Yes I was’

He seemed a little taken aback so I told him that if anyone lays a hand on any member of my family, of course I would kill them if that’s what it would take to stop them.  I then went on to say I only used the ashtray because I realized I had broken my hand, my LEFT hand which, for a south paw is the main one, and I needed to take the guy down quickly because he was younger and fitter than me.

‘But you could have killed him’, the Soba pointed out.

‘Exactly’, I said.

‘Let me put it this way’, I continued.  ‘If someone had come into your house, with two fucking Gatunos backing him up and attacked your wife and you did nothing, would you have any respect anymore?  Would you be able to walk through the village without hanging your head in shame?’  Would the women of the village not spit on your shadow?

He didn’t have an answer for that.

‘Right then.  So I admit I hit the guy with an ashtray and bust his skull and if I have to go to court for it, so be it.  The guy assaulted my wife so let’s allow twelve good men and true to decide.’

 

I showered and changed into clean clothes.

I lay on the sofa so that Alex wouldn’t wake up and see the police arresting me.  I could not sleep a wink because my hand hurt like bloody hell.  No-one came for me.  The next day a Policeman came and handed me a handwritten scrawl saying I had to appear in front of a Community Council at 15.30 hours.  I told the policeman I wanted to press charges against the guy for assaulting my wife and that it would be dealt with in a proper court, not some community council.  He went away again.

Some of the villagers started to gather in the Jango, mainly to see how Marcia was and give me advice how to treat my hand.  ‘He is a maniac’, they said.  ‘He beats his wife’, they said.  All the way through my sleepless night I had felt appalled at my unforgiveable loss of control.  Not that I had hit the guy, but because I had used a weapon.  At the time I just wanted to get the bastard off my wife.  If you decide to fight, then it is no longer a game, it is war and the loser is the one unconscious on the ground, the winner, and the one who can write history, standing over him.  There can be no half measures.  During the inky blackness of a tropical night, its silence only broken by the weird shrieks and calls emanating from untamed jungle, the full implications of a white man trashing a black man invaded my consciousness.  Listening to the villagers now, most of them women, I felt a little better.  I may yet go down for this but by bashing his skull, in the minds of these ladies, I had settled a lot of the debts he owed.  Other villagers passed by the jango on their way to the shop, all of them wishing me a Good Morning and giving me the thumbs up.  The Soba pitched up again.  The guy I had brained was his youngest brother.  ‘Oh shit’ I thought.  The women dived in.  ‘You remember when Sr. Tomas stopped Toto from beating his wife?’ they chorused.  I had forgotten about that incident.  ‘Do you remember when Sr. Tomas was delivering water and he saw Carlos beating his boy with a mangueira (rubber hose) and he stopped him?’  I remembered that one but that was easy to deal with.  I just took the hose off him and told Carlos that if I ever heard of him beating his kids or wife again, I wouldn’t deliver water to his house anymore.

The 15.30 meeting, apparently, was a gathering of the Soba’s family.  I wasn’t going to face them alone (Marcia would have been with me but it was me they were after) so I told the Soba that the meeting would not be at his place of choosing.  It would not be at the time of his choosing.  His brother had criminally assaulted my wife in her own home.  The offence took place in my jango.  I told the Soba that the meeting will take place in my Jango on Saturday and my lawyer and a senior police officer would be present.  Everything they said would be recorded and, if an equable solution were not agreed, used as evidence in the criminal proceedings I would initiate.

I am fucking tired of these racist women and children beating bastards thinking they can intimidate me with the threat of incarceration just because I am a foreigner.  The Rumble in the Jungle is on Saturday so bring it on.

Flamingos Over Namibe

Most of you will know that my neighbor and I have had a pretty rocky relationship.  Both of us are exactly the same age but Rico seems to have played the cards he was dealt better. To be fair, business is a Dog Eat Dog environment and we all strive to do the best for ourselves so we can look after our families and any altruism thereafter is the balance of the excess.

Rico has other fishing lodges apart from the one bordering my property at the Barro de Kwanza and he put his eldest son in charge of the Flamingo Lodge down south in Namibe.  I can think of nothing nicer for a father than setting up a business and then slowly handing the reins over to his son, after all, that's what keeps me motivated.  Fat Hippo's isn't for me, it's for my boys.

I met Raimundo a couple of months ago along with his very charming German speaking wife (I guessed she was from Namibia).  They were discussing menus (the food in Rico's place here is, well, basic) and I looked at this young, strapping lad and his attractive wife and thought, 'I'm in for some real competition here',  Still, food is food.  I love eating it and I love cooking it even more so, like a moth drawn to flame, I had to sit down with them, listen to their menu ideas and venture a few of my own.  Naturally I knew the best places around here to get supplies.  So I shared those with them.  Yes I have a truck and would happily let them use it to do a joint supply run.  I had the temerity to point out that some of the ingredients necessary to perfect that particular dish on their menu might be hard to come by so suggested alternatives.  Yes they were competition, serious competition but I liked them.

A couple of days ago Nice Paul left here to take over at Flamingo so that Raimundo could come up here and sort out Rico's Kwanza Lodge.  Marcia, who is so disconcertingly fond of Nice Paul I might get round to mentioning it to them one day, merely as a matter of form, extracted a promise from him before departure that he should call or send a message confirming his safe arrival. 

Paul's message this morning was brief and to the point informing us that Raimundo had just died of a heart attack.

Bloody hell.  Everything that Rico had fought for, all his success.  Like me, Rico doesn't waste his mony on designer suits, watches or trinkets, it was all for his son. 

God preserve any parent from the agony of having to bury their own child.  And God give Rico the strength not to bury his ambition and raison d'etre alongside his boy.

HOW MUCH?!!!

Dare I say that we are looking close to the completion of the build?  Well, there it is, I've said it and mention it only because I realise I need to chase up the bits that will transform it from a building into a restaurant.

Many of you epicures will have noticed that one of the many things distinguishing a restaurant from a street side hot dog stand is furniture.  Restaurants do need a lot of furniture.  I need 24 tables and 96 chairs just to get going.  You can imagine my horror, therefore, when a cursory search of all the usual suspects revealed that a 60x60 cm table and four chairs all made of the flimsiest stained matchwood was all I could find for under a grand.  Yes, a thousand of your United States green backs.  I did a quick mental calculation, then a longer one before my brain overheated but I knew that I would have to serve a hell of a lot of meals just to cover the costs of the chairs my clients bums were parked on, always assuming the chairs on offer hadn't collapsed before they had paid for themselves..

I know what I want for the furniture,  I want simple, but sturdy ladderback chairs and tables 100x100cms to give my clients some elbow room and space for all their plates, glasses and tureens full of delicious food.  The tables need to be tough enough so that even the most hamfisted client can bang his beerstein on the table with gusto.  In keeping with the rustic style of the building, they should be of solid wood (I always think a decent table setting looks far nicer arranged on a polished wood surface than a table cloth) and heavy enough not to be shaken or even stirred by the clumsy. I don't want anything fancy, I am a leg-at-each-corner man so I want it simple-stupid, robust but elegant in its simplicity.    Having explained all that to the salesman, he wished me Good Luck before moving off to push his trying to sell overpriced tat to another prospective client.

I have to confess, I was jolly irritated.  Seasoned African hardwoods used to be one of this country's finest agricultural exports so where has it all gone?  I suppose a few trees did get knocked down or blown up during the war but with a timber industry stopped dead in its tracks, the rest of the trees must have done what they were supposed to and carried on growing.  The war has been over for ten years so why can I only buy flimsy rubbish imported from Asia?

Then I remembered I had a few secret weapons in my arsenal.  I have a bunch of hand tools.  I have a planer/thicknesser.  I have a router.  I have a Mitre Saw.  I also have a good man to put on the end of them.  So why not buy the rough timber on the local market and start from scratch?

Marcia tends to get worried if she sees me suddenly enthusiastic as it usually ends up costing us a lot of money, if only to get me out of jail, but I was sure we could do this.

I am still trying to decide how I want to do the seats (I rather like the idea of a solid wood seat rather than upholstered) but see what you think about the ladder back chairs so far...

Bit of space needed to plane all the wood
 

Quite a pile of shavings but they will be good mixed into the sandy soil along with a load of goat poo. 
I think Charlie, the dog, has just deposited his contribution.

A covered area for the finer work.  Note the high quality benches...

...and the latest in wood working tools...

Lots of repetitive cutting, sanding and gluing

Followed by component assembly

And the (almost) finished product starts to roll off the assembly line.
With solid wood seats, the clients will sit uncomfortably on their full wallets and will seek to empty them...
(their wallets, not their seats, God forbid).

We also do doors.  Both panelled...

...and with glass.  Except we haven't put the glass in yet.

Personally, I am quite pleased.  We are fabricating everything on site now and with a bit of sanding and finishing, it will look great.  Cost per chair?  About ten dollars.

I was feeling a bit crook this morning so only made it to the site around midday having fed Alex (he is way improved from the recent shock he gave us and scoffed his omlette AND mine so I went hungry rather than eat Marcia's as she had been on the site since morning and would have chiselled my eyeballs out if I failed to bring her lunch on site).  As we were sitting there, Marcia sharing her food (not only the omlette I had brought her but fresh bread and sardines in olive oil she had scored from the Comuna) with a still ravenous Alex while I sucked sulkily on a beer, a guy pulled up and asked for permission to come onto the site.  'No problems', I said, 'I can do with any kind of company that doesn't require me to watch people eating.  You wouldn't happen to have a Mars Bar on you?  No? Never mind.'.  He didn't get the joke but most Angolans think I am a bit weird anyway.  If I was in England, I'd be sectioned.

He was politely enthusiastic as I showed him the house.  He executed a very credible impression of someone awed by my well full of fresh water and agreed it was better than bottled mineral water but when he saw the chairs he became suddenly very businesslike.

'Where do you get these from?' He asked.  To be honest, it was more of a demand and, given that I was both liverish and hungry, I was glad I had not been pinned to the wall and beaten with a rubber hose.  After all, he had arrived in a brand new Landcruiser with a police escort so was clearly a man of means.  Just how mean he could be was not something I was keen to test.

'I make them', I volunteered.  Given that almost anything you do in Angola could be considered a crime, such a confession could be suicidal.  So where did you get the wood from?  A tree.  Would this be the sacred tree of the Kimbundas?

'How much for a chair?' he said.

I cast my eyes (they almost focused) over to Marcia for help but saw her stuffing sardines on toast down Alex's throat saying, 'Coochy Coo litttle boy, just one more little aeroplane', so I knew I was on my own.

'For a bulk order with hardwood seats, a hundred bucks each', I said.  C'mon, I was really hungry by then.

'How quickly can you deliver two hundred?'

'Two hundred?!!!'  Think Steve McQueen in the Great Escape.

Looks like I am in the furniture business,

48 Hours

48 hours ago Alex, who had spent a few days in town with his grandmother and all his cousins and nieces, arrived back home at the Barra de Kwanza.  He loves his Grannie and his Aunt (who spoils him rotten) and, of course, adores playing with all his young relatives.  I have long since ceased to feel uncomfortable about the amount of kit they buy him, everything from toys to shoes and clothes.  He has a wardrobe fit for Royalty, assuming that all Their Highnesses want do to is run around in a variety of multi-colored shorts and T-shirts on the beach, play football and build sandcastles with all their plastic buckets and spades.

But like experienced travellers he was as pleased to be home as I was to see him.  This called for lunch at Rico's place and a dip in the pool.

Even Dad was tempted to jump in and fool around...



I am the fat white guy in the middle clutching an apparently healthy Alex
who is giving us all the thumb's up

And the nieces misbehaved with my camera as usual.



Next time they take photographs of themselves like this I shall just have to spank their bottoms

The next day Dr. Abel, Marcia's uncle, and Gina, his wife came for lunch.  Alex attacked his food, jumped off his chair and went back to playing.  No-one paid any attention until Marcia, like all mothers who realise their baby has dropped off the radar suddenly said, 'Where's Alex?'.  We all called out.  We all looked around.  We found him lying in a pile of vomit inside one of the tents.  He was burning with fever, not really with it at all and was struggling to breathe.  His lips were blue and he was twitching.  I hoiked him over my shoulder, gave him a couple of good pats on the back and then placed my mouth over his and sucked all the shit out of his throat and into mine.  He coughed and vomited again.  Dr Abel took over.  'He has to go to hospital, now!' he declared.  The nearest hospital is seventy kilometres distant.

Dr Abel's car is one half of a pair of roller skates.  It is tiny.  Dr Abel's wife is a very big, very friendly girl who would gladly have stayed behind to allow father and mother to travel with their son but she is also a trained nurse.  Clearly Dr Abel and his wife were going in the car with little Alex.  That left just space enough for a child prone on the back seat and one other.  You try separating a mother and child under such circumstances.  The last glimpse I had of my son as they sped off was Marcia cradling him in the recovery position while Gina leant over the front seat tending to him.  I quickly threw on a shirt, dug out my wallet containing my driving licence, tore the drawers of my desk apart to retrieve my passport, locked the shop and leapt for my truck.

That same morning I had lent my truck to Rico so that his lads could go to town and collect a few tonnes of cement building blocks.  The needle on the guage as it coughed into life registered empty.  I drove the four kilometres to the petrol station, dived out and told them to fill the tank.  'I am sorry, Sr, Tomas', said the attendant, 'but we have no diesel.'

'C'mon guys', I begged, 'You know me, there's always a little bit that you can squeeze out, I just need five litres to get to Camiro!'  Camiro is about thirty clicks away and I could fill up there.  He proved they had nothing but air in the tanks by switching everything on and letting me try all the pumps.  Nothing.  It is unusual for a petrol pump attendant to allow a member of public to have such free rein but he knew me and could sense that I was prepared to commit murder for a few litres of urgently needed motion lotion.  I doubted that I had enough fuel to get back home.  I rang Nice Paul.  'I'll drain diesel from our generator,' he said, 'I'll be there as fast as I can'.

He arrived in a V8 Landcruiser.  'Leave the truck and get in,' he said, 'I'll drive you'.  Nice Paul splits his time between Rico's place and the Flamingo Lodge which is on the Angolan coast close to the Namibian border.  Every time he gets back here, he pulls into our place knocking road dust off himself with his hat and Alex shouts out to him, 'Paul!  You are back!'.  I could see Nice Paul was upset.  He likes Alex and Alex likes him.

Just then Marcia phoned.  They were in the Endiama Clinic in Talatona and Alex was OK.  He was on oxygen and Dr. Abel was tending to him personally.  No, there was no need for Paul and I to dash to the city, Alex was stable. 

At seven this morning, Nice Paul came over.  I had just made a pot of tea.  'You heard from Marcia yet?' he asked me.

'I don't want to ring in case I wake her, she can't have had much sleep.  She'll ring when she's ready'. I replied. 

'I never slept a wink', he said, pouring all my tea into the cup of mine he had just commandeered. 'I went to bed at ten and by midnight I was awake again.'  I sloped off and put the kettle on again.

I had not slept at all.  Marcia had rung me twice.  Once at midnight to say that Alex had asked for food and eaten a bowl of soup and then, a few hours later, to say he was off the oxygen and sleeping quietly so she was going to try and get her head down for a bit.  By that stage, staring blankly at the TV I had decided that Richard Hammond was an oily little shit I would have loved to abuse had we been at school together.

'Fuck it, I am going to ring Marcia, I'm dying a thousand deaths here' I said.

'He's fine,' Marcia assured me, 'We'll be on our way home shortly'.

'What was wrong?'  I asked her.  Naturally I wanted to know what could cause a kid to go from leaping off his father's shoulders in a swimming pool to comatose in a matter of hours.

'They think he was bitten by a spider'

'A SPIDER?!!'

This thing is six inches across and very common. 
It is sitting on a twelve inch thick Eucalyptus post supporting the new house.
I am now doing my very best to make it an endangered species.

Still, he is back home, thankfully very alive and really happy.  'I was sick Daddy', he informed me with no little pride.  Then he showed me the present a concerned Aunt had bought him.  It was a Spiderman case full of spidery goodies.

Little shit, he scared the life out of us

Not to be outdone, I nipped out and bought him an electric tennis raquet.  It is basically a Tazer for insects but adapts perfectly as a toaster for Arachnids...

Crackling good fun. 
Go on Son, get yer own back.
Alex is modelling the latest in  fishermen's canvas trousers,
a market bought T-shirt and a weapon of mass revenge.
The tent behind him is where I sleep when I piss Marcia off.

48 hours? I am bloody knackered.