Meatballs in Tomata sauce a la Anna L (and Markus Aujalay)

On one of our many very long drives to work Anna L told me this recipe, well, more of a concept than a recipe. She had a hard time of frying meat, so Håkan and she would cook meatballs in a diced tomato sauce. It's fantastic, but don't be tempted to cook for too long. Only give them 10 minutes maximum in the boiling tomato stew.

Markus Aujalay provides a recipe similar to the one below in his book rigtig mat för familjen, [real food for the family], but there is really a lot of leeway when it comes to ingredients. I've put an asterisk beside the essentials.

meatballs:
500 grams minced meat*
2 eggs*
beef/mutton stock*
pressed garlic
thyme (half a teaspoon)
curry (same again)
saffran (same again)
salt and peppar

mix together and roll into balls to drop into the boiling tomato stew.

Tomato stew:
Garlic*
olive oil*
two cans of diced tomatos*
2 bay leaves
thyme
a glass of apple juice or white wine
sugar, salt and peppar
diced parsley*

Fry the garlic in a large casserole dish for a few minutes. Then add everything else. And great for lunches the day after as well!

Liam Viney: a Lion pianist

If anyone needs some inspirational music go to Liam Viney's homepage and check out the musical offerings available. This celebrated pianist is worth listening to and you can check him out playing classical, North American and Australian repertoire (yes you Scando/Europhile motherfucka's; Australians do have their own music!). Liam has studied with Boris Berman and won the inaugural Lev Vlassenko piano competition.

I remember Liam at about 13 or 14 years of age. He was a few years younger than I was and already precociously talented. As younger boys are want to do, we often ended up punching each other, always harmlessly in the shoulder. Liam had an eminently punchable shoulder, and he was always cheeky enough to land a few of his own on the bigger blokes. In those days he talked really fast, the words exploding out of him.

Some of us were part of a composition circle that met at Stephen Leake's place on Saturday afternoons. Liam's musical ideas were fresh and he picked up on subtleties that most of us didn't.

Enough nostalgia - nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For any of you that might have doubted the power of instrumental music listen to the first part of Hallelujah Junction - a joyous and monumental truckstop.

Play it again Liam!

Ein Mann ohne Bauch ist ein Krüppel

[A man without a stomach is a cripple]. Classic, thank you Ulrike!

Flaggermusmannen

This is the (I repeat THE) best book about Australia written by a foreigner. I first got to know the central character Harry Hole through 'Panserhjerte' and 'Frelseren'. These are wonderfully dark detective thrillers.

Although reading in the original Norwegian I am perpetually pole-axed by the depth of Nesbø's understanding of Australiana. He has obviously spent time in Sydney, Brisbane and Nimbin, and rubbed a wet towel all over these places and then wrung that towel out into Flaggermusmannen. For instance, when Harry meets the boxer Toowoomba just after he knocked out a hustler in a provincial boxing bout.

-absolutely magnificent, cobber - how are you yourself.

Ocker stride and even the syntax is Australian! There is even more poetry in the character of Andrew Kensington - Sydney cop, aboriginal, junkie, story-teller. My favourite passage is when Kensington tells the legend of Walla and Bubbur to Harry and the doey eyed, pale Birgitta at the Albury. Birgitta asks,

-and the moral is?

Kensington replies

-That love is a greater mystery than death, and be careful of snakes.

Another other good thing is that Nesbø doesn't compromise on the big picture to accomodate the details. This is fine (but Jo, p. 92 we drink 'flat whites' not 'white flats'; p. 117, it's the Bourbon and Beefsteak; p, 57, should be either Sydsvenskan or Skånska Dagbladet as there is no such paper as Sydsvenska Dagbladet; Robertson probably wouldn't have been keeping a Tasmanian devil in suburban Australia, though we can let this go under poetic licence)

If there is any downside to Flaggermusmannen, it is that those of us that have read further into Nesbø's opus know that Hole becomes more one-dimensional in later books. His relationships become more dysfunctional, the dialogue that is attributed to him becomes even more terse and the settings ever more bleak. In the cold dark Oslo winter it is heartening that Hole first emerged out of Sydney airport from a marmalade sky.

Night after Bertil's funeral 14/11/09

It's the night after Bertil's funeral,
we eat fish,
the bones make one of us choke,
but it's flounder and good fish.

Last night we drove through the snow,
and saw a fox on the road.
I almost couldn't brake in time,

the difference between life and death is just a fishbone away

Conversation with my daughter

I took my daughter to the sea where I grew up
It was dusk and shades of grey rolled in to us
She screamed

I explained to her that Deus ins nobis est
and because of that she shouldn't be scared
She still screamed


Hob.XVI:37,1

Doppler

I have been mildly surprised by the statistic that there are 283 other bloggers that list 'Doppler' by Erlend Loe in their favourite book list. This is not surprising in itself. Doppler is a fantastic book and deserves more appreciation.

For those of you that don't know, Doppler follows the life of an overly competent chap in Oslo who gets fed up with modern life. He has a breakdown of sorts and goes out and lives in the woods. He's sick of life and the interminable childrens television that his young son watches. He also has a large male member. In the woods he kills an elk and the calf follows him around. He strikes up a friendship with a neighbour who is absorbed in a model reconstruction of the last minute of his Nazi father's life. He also builds a totem to his own dead father.

That's a very paltry synopsis, but as a skeleton it shows that this book is, amongst other things, concerned with modern masculinity and paternity. The surprising thing is most of the bloggers who list this as one of their favourite books seem to be female and in their mid 20s. I'm glad that this book has a wide readership and that the young women of today appreciate the tanins that are woven together in this indomitable masterpiece.

There's a lot more Danes drinking around town. I was out with my daughters at around 10:30 and ran into two families on Stor torget who were drinking and sightseeing.

That's fine by me. But it is somewhat ironic. There used to be a much used Danish aphorism, something along the lines of, 'Do your country a favour and escort a Swede to the ferry [back home to Sweden].' The ball is now in the other court.