Cookbook: Egg Salad Chronos

Ingredients come in many kinds, dear reader. Some are so exotic and exclusive that they are barely ever used. Take truffles. Forsooth a most wonderful mushroom, but its taste is so dominant and particular that the recipes calling for truffles can be counted on one hand. Then there are staples that are frequently used, but just as often get replaced by their peers. Think lettuce, or white beans, or flour, and all kinds of meat. Finally there are those that you can barely ever do without, that occupy a place on pretty much every cookbook page ever printed, that you always keep stored in the cupboards, the fridge or the pantry, particularly if you don’t get along too well with your noisy nerdy neighbours. Salt, eggs, water and/or oil, onions and peppers for most of us, sugar for many, Mayonnaise for me.

There is, however, one ingredient which is essential to countless gourmet dishes, but rarely gets recognized as such. Time. And no, I’m not thinking here of the ‘flat’ time it takes to prepare the fare, but of the ‘irreplaceable’ time necessary to enrich and ripen a dish once produced, the period that must pass to bring out the deeper aromas, the dormant flavours, the soul of your culinary creation. Surely you all know what I mean. Think grand cru wine. Think old Dutch cheese.  

That this ‘maturing time’ is so rarely remembered is a little odd, since it does not allow for any short-cuts. Where ‘flat time’ may be reduced by the furious use of kitchen appliances that cut and mix and pressure-cook, by prefab cans and satchels, or supermarket bags of ‘mixed soup vegetables’ and the like, ripening time cannot be bought, cannot be replaced and cannot be done without if you want things to come out the right way. There is no choice here. We are its slaves, our wrists mercilessly shackled to its hands. The length of time must be heeded, accepted, humbly bowed to. The only saving grace is patience. Yes: old Chronos is an excellent chef and a famous glutton, but also a god deadly jealous of his prerogatives.

So, just as there are dishes that the passage of time will destroy – the famous green salad once tossed with the vinaigrette, or the open bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau foolishly left in the door of the fridge – there are others that only come into their own after a 24-hour maturing period. One of those is my favourite egg salad, whose secret I will share with you today. Of course, you may eat this fine mixture immediately after stirring it together. But that is like looking at black & white reproductions of Picasso’s Blue Period: an absurdity, a shame and an insult to your own intelligence. What you should do is make it a day in advance, and postpone your yearning for instant satisfaction. Both your egg salad and your life will be so much the richer!

But enough said! To work. Here is what you need to gather and need to do:

Essential ingredients

3 hard-boiled eggs for every two diners

¼ medium sized onion, chopped small or even pounded in a mortar

2 slices of luncheon meat or – preferably – mortadella 

Mayonnaise, as much as you like (but at least two hefty spoonfuls)

mortadella

Seasoning

Salt

Black pepper, freshly ground

Curry, a teaspoon

Mustard, a spoonful

Sesame oil, a dash

Chives, chopped

Parley, preferably fresh, chopped

Dill, preferably fresh, chopped

A teaspoonful of capers, chopped

Now, I am aware that this looks like a whole lengthy lot and therefore goes horridly against the grain of my cookblog’s ironclad motto: ‘Impress Through Simplicity and Please Through Ease’. The sin is, however, modest, dear reader, since I gladly grant all of you the privilege to leave out whatever you wish or do not have readily at hand. It speaks for itself that egg salad can not possibly do without egg or mayo. But whether or not you include the other ingredients – and in what proportion – is completely up to you.  In fact, as always, I summon you to experiment and find your own way to bliss, particularly when it comes to the amount of mustard, salt, curry etc that you appreciate.

Lastly, there are a few ingredients which you may wish to throw in - or not - according to your personal taste. These are:

Optional

Olive oil, a dash, for that vaunted ‘Mediterranean’ flavour and diet…

Lemon, a dash

Yoghurt, to replace the Mayo

A leaf of lettuce, chopped up, for a ‘green’ taste and look

Half a boiled potato, for volume

Once you have decided what to use, toss everything into a bowl. Mix with love. Put the ready mixture into any sort of jar and close the lid. Put the jar in the fridge for at least 22 hours. Take it out two hours before dinner, remove the egg salad to a more presentable bowl, and let it reach room temperature. Sprinkle with a little dill and some paprika powder, and serve with buttered bread or toast.  

NEWSREEL: Spanish Banking Chasm

The Sad Saga of Spanish banking is running towards its close. Under the influence of several benign coincidences – the news that Germany would accept direct bail-outs of Spanish banks, the Chinese unexpectedly lowering their Central Bank prime rate etc. – yesterday’s auction of Spanish 10-year bonds was no terrible disaster. But – at 6 % interest, only 0.3 % lower than last week’s all time high - you couldn’t really call it a triumph either. No country can pay that kind of interest on its government bonds for long. Least of all a country smack in the middle of recession and with a quickly widening banking chasm right ahead on the highway.

Today Reuters came out with the news that Spain would ask for a bail-out of the banks from the ESM this very weekend, i.e. even before the IMF report on the financial state of its banks will be made public next Monday. The game, in short, is up. Mrs Merkel blinked last. And who can blame her?

There is one more sting to the whole business, however. Since the (new) ESM has somewhat different rules from the (older) ESFS, Spain will not be put into receivership of the Greek, Portuguese and Irish kind, at least for now. Why is it I have the feeling this difference in treatment will not go down well with Greek voters, whose indignation may well tip the balance in favour of the anti-austerity Syriza party on the 17^th? And remember: under the odd electoral laws in Greece, the party that comes out the biggest – even if only 0,01 % of the vote - automatically gets 50 extra seats in parliament. The coming 10 days will make history…

The cookblog will have to wait till tomorrow. But then I will offer you one my absolute all-time favourites: egg salad.

Spanish Banking (3)

As I explained in my last little article on the subject, until the present year Spanish banks could still represent the value of their holdings by the prices that had originally been paid for them, i.e. before the crisis struck. Only now they need to show the real market value of their real estate assets on the balance sheet. And guess what: it turns out they are bankrupt. Bankia, the worst of the big ones as far as we presently know, is in the red for some 24 billion Euros. It has had an emergency government injection of some 5 billion. But there is still a huge hole of 19…

How do you solve such a thing? Well, by throwing money at it. Public money. This is hugely unjust (the famous ‘privatisation of profit and socialisation of losses’ which even Mr Barroso once fulminated against in an interview) but it is necessary, since banks these days are Too Big To Fail. That is to say: if one goes, they all go, and they pull down the rest of the economy with them as they sink. So unless you enjoy the prospect of a Great Depression, that is not what you want to allow to happen. When having to choose between Injustice and the Abyss, one accepts Injustice. So you sink tax money into the banks, as gifts, or loans, or in exchange for stocks, by which the state becomes the (partial, or main, or total) owner of the bank. Once the crisis is over, so goes the theory, you privatise the bank again by selling off the stocks you gained, and nobody is worse off.

Fine. What must be done must be done for the good of the future. Except that today, in Spain, there is this added little problem of WHERE to find the money to shore up those banks. In what little piggy bank is the Spanish government to dip its hand to pull out the necessary funds? Ready reserves there are none in this time of economic slump. And to borrow this little extra sum on the financial markets - which was the first proposal I heard - is absolute sheer and total nonsense.

You see: Spain’s main problem today is caused by the costs of its present borrowing! Due to the crisis and the nerves of the financial markets, it is unable to renew its government loans cheaply, and hence it faces massive problems of liquidity. Higher interests turn into ever more ballooning debt, which turns into more nerves of the financial markets, which turns into higher interests yet again! And so on and so forth. This is why, on top of it all, the country is in the process of reducing its budget deficit (and so its public debt in the long run) in obedience to Brussels instructions, from last year’s 8,5 % to this year’s 5,3 %, and next year’s 3 %, so as to reach a balanced budget by about 2016. To do so, the government is cutting education and health care with a ‘mere’ 10 billion, and that already puts such a strain on society in all sorts of ways that tempers are running high (to put it mildly), and that the economy is suffering heavily, aggravating the problem even more. The vicious escalation is alive and kicking!

And now, to save one (repeat: only ONE) of its banks, the country should borrow an extra 19 billion? How anybody can propose so with a straight face escapes me. To borrow such a huge extra sum would not only cause indignation in the street (‘they couldn’t borrow 10 billion for children and the sick but they can borrow twenty for their banker friends…!’) but would also make the interest rate skyrocket.

And then: we still do not know what the other big banks may need so as not to be the first domino of the lot to tumble… At present there is an independent audit of the banks in progress, whose results are expected at the end of the month. But, just to paint the picture, let me tell you that yesterday Emilio Botín, Spain’s foremost banker, in a message meant to calm the markets, mentioned that the Spanish banking system is in fine health, and that only a few banks will need a little help: to wit some 40 billion in total… Mere small change in the eyes of our present economic leadership. Never mind that such a sum would feed the whole of hungry Africa for a about century. And this then is the optimistic version of the tale…

In short: borrowing these sums is unthinkable. So we have to look for other ways of getting that money, from elsewhere, from others. All sorts of ingenious schemes have already been proposed. One tricky one had it that the government was simply going to give Bankia 19 billion in government bonds, which it could then use as collateral to secure loans from the ECB. However, since this is practically the same as printing phoney money out of nowhere, the ECB balked and refused. For once I cannot blame them.

Another option would be to ask the (temporary) EFSF or the (coming) ESM for a bail out, but that is far from ideal. You see: if Spain does so, she would – according to the treaty rules - immediately be placed into receivership of the Greek kind, which nobody wants, if only because it would lethally undermine the famous Confidence in the country, and in its wake the Confidence in the entire Eurozone, Euro and EU. This would pretty much be the end of it all.

Hence the present hectic attempts to bend the rules yet again, by somehow allowing some financial body (the ESM, the IMF, the EU itself, the ECB, whoever) to lend the bail out sum directly to the banks in question. That is to say: in such a way that the Spanish government is no party to the deal, and will not be faced with treaty consequences. The Spanish vice-president Soraya Sanz has already gone talking about the scheme with Femme de Fer Lagarde of the IMF, and the US Treasury Department; and there have been talks with Brussels and Berlin, and everybody is warming to the notion. And so we muddle on, inventing new billion-dollar mechanisms clad in rigorously strict rules to guarantee equity and good governance, which rules we then need to break as soon as reality catches up with us, which is another reason to invent a new European financial institution, clad in… ad infinitum!

The other day my dear goddaughter Ivana asked me why I got so worked up about the EU and the Euro. I sounded, she said, like a grumpy nostalgic old man with a bad digestion and an ugly mania. I’m sure I do. Sound like that, I mean. But deep down inside my ire is justified. For the Euro, dear reader, has turned out to be a toxic currency. It is not the powerhouse, but the venom of our economies. It did not CAUSE the crisis, but did nothing to avoid or alleviate it. And now that we suffer the slump, it stands squarely in the way of prescribed solutions and crisis management. Hence my loathing of the wicked coin.

It has been said many times before by people wiser than myself: the Euro was not so much an economic instrument as a political one. Its introduction was one step towards – obligatory - further European integration. Now prick up your ears if you please, for I am coming out with a Statement which surely will surprise you. Alfred B. Mittington is not an opponent of further European Integration. Yes, please read that sentence again. He is NOT an OPPONENT of the U.S.E.! But: he wants that integration realized through fully democratic processes, with a fully democratic political system at the end of the line. And he thinks that the means to reach that integration should never endanger the livelihood, economy or freedoms of the European people(s). Today’s Euro is clearly no part of that. Nor is the present European leadership, its arrogant and overpaid bureaucracy, or its 734 well-paid loafers in the European Parliament (I am not counting Nigel Farage here, or the late Miguel Portas from Portugal, both of them honourable men, in my opinion; and there may be a handful more of which I am unaware).

The late Miguel Portas, an honest Euro MP

Where will it all end? Well: somebody will have to pay for the bail-out of the Spanish banks (and probably the Italian ones as well, because anyone who believes that Italy is doing splendidly well with Mr Monti shaking miracles out of his high banker’s hat is a greater optimist than the fellow who designed the Titanic…). I guess we are looking at a fair 100 or 150 billion for Spain at least.

Who will pay for it is another matter. It may be the poor, the sick, and the children of the Mediterranean if we do what Olli Reign, Ali Babarroso, Haiku Herman, the BCE Draghon and the IMF’s Iron Lady in Vuitton shawls are concerned. It may be the German taxpayer if President François ‘Go Dutch’ Hollande gets his way. It may be yet somebody else whom we have not yet discovered. But in the end, believe me: we are all in this together and we will all pay for it one way or another, in money, unemployment, freedoms or future, unless we set up that Guillotine in front of the offices of the EU, the BCE, the IMF and the European Parliament, and tell our bungling leaders with a single voice: No, not to the throne, but to that scaffold, is where you will go unless you clean up your act, and soon!

Next Thursday is the crucial date for now. Then Spain, for the first time since the Bankia news broke, will try to secure 3-year, 4-year and 10-year loans for a fair interest rate. If that fails, if the interest rises even higher than the present 6.5 %, it is a Day of Truth. If it succeeds, we will have a Day of Truce until the 17^th, when the Greeks elect a new parliament, dear readers.

Ah, we are living in Interesting Times! (But just to be on the safe side: do stock up on petrol and dry beans, I say!)

NEWSREEL: Coup d'Etat

Finally! At last! The cards are on the table! The aces up the sleeves now show! The sharpened knives, ready to be stuck into the back of national sovereignty and under the seventh rib of the body politic, have been taken out of the drawer! The Moment of Truth, dear reader, has arrived.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s first chief of staff, once spoke a momentous line: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ With this he meant to say, that times of panic, fear and tension can be put to good use to pass controversial measures which the nation would not accept under normal circumstances. Mr Emanuel is nobody’s fool…

However, there are still people more brilliant than he… Masterminds who first cause a crisis, and then put it to excellent use to reach their own goals.

Yesterday Welt am Sontag leaked the news that the Brussels’ Gang of Four, to wit: Barroso, Van Rompuy, Draghi and Juncker, are working on a secret plan ‘to save the Eurozone’ which they will present to the European heads of state, to swallow or choke on, the coming 28^th of June.

The plan contains, among many other nifty things no doubt, the following benign proposals:

European institutions will get even more power over national budgets (which they can already veto at present…)

A new European supervisory body for the banking sector with fresh new powers will be installed (the ‘independent’ power of the ECB is far from sufficient…)

There will be ‘harmonised’ fiscal, tax, foreign and security policies (i.e. the European executive – which has not been elected and can not be sent packing by a parliament – will set the rules for tax-gathering, budgets & spending, foreign relations, policing & defence) 

There will be ‘reforms’ of social welfare programmes (read: they will take an axe to all that cry-baby spending on the poor that endangers the Divine Euro)

The audacity of this plan is only equalled by its brazenness. But I guess the gentlemen think their Finest Hour has come. The time is ripe, after all, a huge crisis is eating out the bowels of Europe, and they know that if they bring this one in, under the pretext of saving the Euro, the Banks and Employment, nothing and nobody can ever stop them again from complete supremacy. With tongue well in cheek, one might pronounce Olli Rehn as ‘All I Reign’! It is what they dream of.

The essential functions of government are ultimately two: the making of laws and the say over money. The first is already firmly in the hands of the Beurocracy, through a web of Treaty Obligations which force independent countries to write European laws into their legislation. The second is now being conquered; despite the fact that such wholesale transfers of sovereignty come down to a fundamental change in various national constitutions, and that there are rules for that. Very old and respectable rules, written in those same constitutions. Those rules will simply have to be ignored, our benign Brussels rulers tell us. In the name of Stability and Prosperity and Peace. Oh…and Democracy of course!

So Brumaire is on our doorstep - except that it is a Brumaire Light, since no Napoleon Bonaparte is anywhere in sight, only megalomaniac Pinocchios. And that leads us to the last question: will the European populations bite the venomous bait and swallow? The Gang of Four surely expects them to do so, for thus far the dumbos always have. And yet, it is perhaps not superfluous to remind them of a quote from another American fellow who was nobody’s fool, but knew a thing or two about fooling. To wit:

‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’

There may still be a spark of hope for this our poor continent. 

Open Letter to the Irish Electorate POSTSCRIPT

Oh you Harebrained Hibernian Harpos and Harpies!!! You ratified the Brussels Garrotte although you had a chance to show them their place? Do you think they will love you now? Do you really think they will respect you more? No, you fools! On the contrary: you have just voted yourself into insignificance and serfdom!

But Alfred B Mittington must be lenient. Yes, I know your choice was a hard one, for – as a commentator in an obscure newspaper wrote - you did get your referendum, but it was with a gun against your head…

The threats and the bullying of the Abominable Troika were constant and omnipresent. You want to return a No vote? Go right ahead, but then you’ll get no more money from Europe! We’ll gladly let you sink into Greek destitution, and kick you out of the Eurozone and the EU if we can! It is a strategy which the Brussels’ Eurogues are applying, ever so softly and silently, with ever more frequency. Hungary has already had a taste of it, and Greece of course is under heavy fire right now. Imagine that David Cameron were to suggest such a thing during a by-election, or George W. Bush! The scandal would run as high as the Tower of Babel! But some pigs are more equal than other pigs, are they not?

Be it so! The Euro needs no referendums to come tumbling down. It will do so by its own faulty design and internal contradictions. And not all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, will put that toxic currency together again!

Cookbook: Cinnamon Banana Side Dish

A blogpost a day keeps the boredom away, dear reader. But three posts in a row chases the audience off your page! Overtaken by emotion, and pressed onward by my indignation at the callous, heartless leadership of Europe, I posted two texts yesterday, and promised a third: this cookblog post. Now, I am a man of honour, and must keep my promises. But to compensate, I’ll make this a short one. Today I will merely tell you how to make the simplest, easiest, quickest and most marvellous little side dish that goes with just about any meal.

What is so special about a side dish? And why should you know how to prepare them? Well, if you have any sort of experience with hosting dinners, you may have noticed that guests are often most impressed with, and most pleased by, a great variety of different dishes on the table. Give them a marvellous roast, which took you three hours to prepare to perfection, and they will be grateful and satisfied. BUT: give them that same roast, PLUS three different sauces (each of which costs you 5 minutes at most to whip up) and they will applaud you, worship you and sing your praises socially as if you were Coco Carême himself! It is how the human diner works. Choice gratifies. And it takes surprisingly little to increase choice. This tenet is at the heart of Please through Ease, half my culinary motto.

So to work without more ado. Get one fairly ripe banana for each diner. Peel, and cut into ½ cm slices. Spread the slices randomly on a plate (no higher than two layers, I suggest). Sprinkle cinnamon on top. Now take a spoon and the jar of your favourite honey. Drip threads of honey all over the banana. Let this calmly sit for at least half an hour. Serve next to the main course. You’ll be surprised how pleasant it is to alternate the fork between the roast – for instance – and this cool, sweet, fruity mouthful.

Of course, you can decorate the cinnamon banana with all sorts of things (like the dry raisins in the picture above). Also, you can mix the banana with slices of apple for extra effect. Neither, however, is necessary in my view.

Finally: note that children LOVE this stuff. In fact: if you promise them one bite of the side dish for every bite of the spinach, you will never wage another spinach war on your dinner table!