Celebratory Food
Anyone who just conceivably might be feeling a trifle dry and sardonic about my poor neglected web site . . . we’re working on it. Blogmom–Sitemom?–only got the CHALICE cover art jpeg today because I only got it today so you see Blog/sitemom has been faster than a speeding dangerous laser ray getting the thumbnail changed here. And the site . . . well there have been various obstacles, not least trying to find a site design that is plain in the right way.* This too as of today has been accomplished. So keep watching this space.
Meanwhile, I think what we need is some Celebratory Food.
Vikkik has sent us:
White Choc and Apricot Brownies
2oz white choc (1)
2 eggs
3oz flour
2&1/2oz butter/margarine
8oz sugar
1/2 level tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
4oz dried apricots (chopped)
Heat oven to 350F/Gas Mark 4/ 180C.
Grease and flour an 8inch square cake tin
Melt choc and butter together
Whisk eggs and sugar together until light
Add the choc mixture
Sift in flour, baking powder and salt (2)and stir in
Add the apricots
Pour into cake tin and bake for around 30 mins (3)
(1) This is one case where I’d advise against using Green and Blacks - The only time I’ve ever had a disaster with this recipe (and this is my standard brownie recipe with white choc substituted for dark and apricots substituted for raisins) was earlier this year when I used C&B white choc, and it came out as a complete flat failure which I had to throw away…
(2) or just throw in without sifting, this works too ;-)
(3) my oven is fan assisted and they generally cook in about 20 mins
I do use Green and Blacks when I want white chocolate but I think white chocolate is tricky stuff anyway and maybe that day the weather was really heavy and humid and the chocolate was sulking and didn’t mix with the butter right, or maybe it took exception to your stirring, which in my experience needs to be very gentle and very thorough–far more of either than you need bother with with good old mellow black chocolate. I don’t know if anyone out there has more experience of white chocolate, or can recommend a reliably good-natured brand of the stuff.
Anyway this put me in mind of my white chocolate brownie . . . er . . . chocolate whiteys recipe. The original is from a cookbook you’ve heard from before: Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg. I am, however, shameless, and I wanted even more chocolate in mine, so that’s what I did. These aren’t even cake any more: they’re very squodgy.
8 T (1 stick) slightly salted butter
8 oz white chocolate
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla (maybe a scrap more. This does vary with your brand of chocolate, but you don’t know till you’ve tried. With Green and Blacks I use about 1 ¼ tsp)
1 c all-purpose white flour
Butter and flour a 9 inch square pan.
Melt butter in the top of a double boiler over simmering water. Break up the chocolate in small pieces and add gradually as the butter melts. Stir gently and thoroughly. It should be perfectly homogenous when you take it off the heat. If it shows signs of separating, stir it some more (gently).
Beat eggs vigorously. You can do it by hand but this is one of those cases where an electric mixer is probably better. Beat till frothy and then add sugar in a slow stream, beating like mad the whole time. Scrape down the sides of your bowl a lot too. Rosie says the whole process should take about two minutes. I never count, but it takes a while. But the result should ‘ribbon’ if you pour it off a spoon. Add the chocolate mixture in a very slow stream, with your electric mixer on low, if you’re using one. Once it’s all incorporated I take the mixer out and use a spoon for about ten seconds to sort of reassure myself it’s all gone together neatly.
Then mix in the flour. I stick to the spoon. You can use your electric mixer if you want.
Pour into the pan. 350° for about half an hour. The original recipe calls for 325°, which I find too low, but you certainly don’t want it more than 350°, so if you have an iffy oven, err on the low side. It’s not going to rise a lot, and it’ll probably be slightly hollow in the middle, but it will set and look done, and it shouldn’t be a solidified puddle in the bottom of the pan either. On the other hand, maybe I’m just strange, and I really like heavy dense things. Well, yes, I do, since you mention it. But feel free to experiment, and maybe raise the flour and lower the chocolate and make it a cake again.
And since I didn’t use it last time, and for any of the rest of you who saw the original, frowned in puzzlement, finally said ‘oops’ and passed on:
Melanie
I can’t believe it, but Jennie pointed out that my recipe for Pine nut rosemary shortbread that I posted under “Let them eat cake” didn’t include either pine nuts or rosemary. So fussy. ** So here’s the corrected ingredients list:
My Family Nearly Lynched Me For Making Something Fattening They Can’t Resist Pine Nut Rosemary Shortbread
1 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter (the good stuff)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
zest of one lemon
I was originally going to post my chocolate-layer shortbread too, as additionally celebratory, but I’ve decided I’m fat enough for one evening. I’ll post it some other day. . . .
* Who invented the virtual dog-eared page corner as a cute design feature?
** Gods help you if you misidentify a plant. They send out the army, these guys.
Ice Heroine
. . . Because ‘Sorbet Heroine’ somehow doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Or even ‘Granita Heroine.’ But all of those of you who don’t read comments, look at what arrived last night. And for those of you who do read comments, myself included, I want to read it again. Carefully.
Which I’m going to do right now, leaning back with my feet up, and a bowl of something chilly at hand. It’s been a heavy, sticky day–Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson, and the hellhounds permitted me to get on with work after only a token post-lunch riot*–and definitely a perfect moment for a dissertation on sorbet.
Anette, the Great Dane |
Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Note: Yes, thank you very much, I will.
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and - while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results - it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well - I just don’t like it very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).
MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.
SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 - 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.
COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 - 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste - you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved - then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar - you might want a lot more sugar - then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.
ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving
VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.
All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.
COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with - or without - a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.
TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.
LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.
FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:
Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.
Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.
Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.
Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.
Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.
PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.
CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.
My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both - though not normally at the same time - a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.
Anette, the Great Dane
* Involving plastic rings, tennis balls, tug of war ropes, etc
What’s a Little Sugar Syrup Among Friends
This is the sort of dessert optimistically described as ‘healthy’ because it has a lot of fruit juice in it. Uh huh. It also has a lot of sugar syrup in it. Everyone know how to make sugar syrup? Equal parts sugar and water. Boil. Stir it a few times till the sugar finishes dissolving, take it off the heat, cool. Sugar syrup. Now you’re ready to make sorbet. You can just cruise your kitchen or the nearest fruit stand for anything that takes your fancy. Knock yourself out. Roughly speaking you’ll want half and half sugar syrup and fruit juice but it varies VERY VERY WIDELY depending on the sweetness of the fruit and how tart you like your sorbet. I, being an extremist, like it both very sweet and very tart: some people add water to their mixtures to moderate them a little. Feh. Or possibly Fie. What the pre-frozen solution tastes like is your guide–if you like it melted, you’ll like it icy–but before you rush to the tap, or the nearest bottle of this month’s mineral water*, remember that freezing will make the taste of the finished product a lot less powerful. The other slightly mysterious aspect of creating the perfect sorbet** is that if you’re using a sweet fruit–peaches, say–you don’t just use less sugar syrup, you add something like lemon juice. But I’m out of practise. I used to still-freeze stuff pretty often back in Maine, and I also had an old-fashioned hand-crank machine which was very cute and atmospheric and so on but was also a lot of work. Peter and I had a brief spasm of trying to learn to make sorbet after the wine sorbet we used to buy at the local deli went bust.*** I’ll be trying wine sorbet here soon. But meanwhile, I give you:
Lime Cranberry Sorbet
¾ c lime juice. I also grated the zest off one lime. I think it took eight limes: mingy little things, limes
¾ c cranberry-apple juice. Which is to say cranberry with enough apple so you can drink it. So-called cranberry juice is up the wazoo with sugar syrup equivalents
1 ½ c sugar syrup
Slosh it all around together so it’s evenly mixed, and pitch it into your ice cream maker. Mine, you have to turn it on first so the paddle is going before the juice hits the floor. I’m sure you could still-freeze it too, which only involves pouring it into an ice cube tray or trays and finding space for them, flat and level, in your freezer, and then taking them out occasionally and giving them a stir so they freeze into sorbet and not pack ice. Note however if you’re using an ice-cream maker that your sorbet will come out of the brief freezing process not knowing what hit it, and you’re better off to get it into your proper freezer immediately and keep it there for a few hours till its world stops spinning and it gets used to being a chilly solid. Which is why I made mine last night. If you eat it straight from the churn it’ll melt again with astonishing swiftness. I remember that from my old hand-crank freezer. I guess the pioneers had to eat their sorbet fast.
* * *
* I drink mineral water. But the fashion-accessory aspect gets on my single remaining nerve.
** When did we stop calling the stuff sherbet? The British have some excuse, they have a disgusting fizzy sweet called sherbet, but even my American cookbooks call it sorbet these days which makes me feel like I should be drinking tea with my little finger curled while singing^ Noel Coward.^^
^ Not exactly while. You know what I mean.
^^Now there’s a thought. Singing Noel Coward, I mean. Furthermore, he sang his own stuff and had a fairly terrible voice. I’m now collecting examples of successful performers with awful voices: additional points for successful performers with awful voices singing their own stuff. Guess why.
I played and sang There Is A Tavern in the Town for poor abused Oisin today. Well, sort of. I kept losing my place–Tavern is one of the handful of pieces I have memorised, so breaking down is a bit spectacular–and at one point started to laugh, only a trifle hysterically, and had to stop for that. I did eventually stagger all the way through it. Oisin got that bland, soothing look and used his Understanding Teacher Voice which I know is always bad news, although I daresay it’s better than a clout up longside the head. He says I can carry a tune and that all I need is to be audible. Well, yes. (Or, possibly, no.) I never had much voice and it’s gone paralytic with disuse. I realised a few days ago that the real reason I tend to revert to chest voice at the piano is so I can hear myself over the piano, even my own kindly tactful upright. It’s much worse with Oisin’s baby grand, especially if you’re frenziedly whacking at it. Out walking the dogs I have no competition and I’m standing up. How do I get myself into these things?? However it’s too late now.
So, hands up anyone who knew that Benjamin Britten had done an arrangement of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard? I turned up several references to this and began trying to hunt it down. There follows at least three different editions of ‘The Complete Folk Song Arrangements of Benjamin Britten’, all three declaring sixty-one songs. Two of them offer complete playlists . . . the lists are different, and neither of them includes Little Musgrave. Clear days on the sheet music front. And the only Britten Little Musgrave I can find is scored for tenor, baritone and bass. Well, that’s helpful. I’ve sicced Oisin on the problem, but if TBB is all I can get, TBB I’ll take, and rearrange it, gorblimey it. Which I think is what I’m about to do with Gypsy Rover. I haven’t decided yet whether to order Best Gruesome+ Irish Songs of All Time and Beyond or not, to have something to arrange from, or whether just to sit down and pick it out with one finger and go from there. The former would be the better bet if I want the result recognisable, but I’m not sure recognisable is necessary.
Meanwhile . . . Song II is really beginning to look like something. It’s almost scary. I wrote the music for the extra verse this week–I’d thought I could repeat the music for the first verse for the third but it doesn’t work, so then I got all clever. Not that I meant to, but this music writing schtick is more and more like story writing: it ain’t up to you, honey, so don’t get any ideas above your station; you do what you’re told.++ There’s now a progression from the mildly minor of the beginning to the unmitigatedly bleak of the end. More notes too. And more Strange Chords. One of the things that does make me feel like I’m not entirely wasting my time (let alone Oisin’s) is that the comments Oisin makes are usually the rational, articulate versions of things I’ve been groping toward.+++ For example, this week he wanted to talk about the tonal centre. The . . . uh? I’ve mostly stuck to whatever it is that it is–Dorian mode, more or less–but it wasn’t till this week and the third verse that it began to feel a little unvarying. Oisin suggested I might try transposing a section, and what about a little introduction or interlude? Right. Yes. And for my next trick. . . .
And speaking of entries where most of the action is in the footnotes.
+ Did you know that There Is a Tavern counts as an Irish folk song? I kind of want to say, what’s that person been drinking, but what do I know?
++ Although the poor music muse must be having a heck of a time getting through to me. She’s saying to the story muse, you think you’ve got problems. . . .
+++ See: music muse’s problems
*** And then the deli went bust