Tuesday Tunes - Roisin Murphy

Probably the most impossibly cool Irishwoman in contemporary pop music - I just love that Roisin Murphy is so brilliant, comes from Wicklow, and continues to bring out such classy choons.

Apparently there's a new album coming at some point in 2011 - bring it on, I say - but this recent web leak is just great. I have no idea who Mason is, but who cares? I love the sound, love the theme. Fight the good fight!

Movie Monday: A Touch of Spice

I must confess that much of my interest in spices - and particularly their emotional and physiological effects - came about from a Greek film called 'A Touch of Spice'. It's not particularly new, but it might be new for some of you readers. And it's my Movie Monday choice for the week!

It's a story of a Greek family who were forced to leave their home in Constantinople when the Greeks were all deported from the city. The Greek-language title of the film is 'Politiki Kouzina' (πολίτικη κουζίνα), which is quite a nuanced play on words - it could simply mean 'political kitchen' or 'cookery', but in Greek the word 'politikos' or politiki' always implies THE city, Constantinople. Indeed, it still bugs many modern Greeks that the name of the city is now Istanbul.

Throughout the film, it is food, cooking, spices and shared broken bread that brings and keeps families and relationships together. It's very beautifully observed, with great acting, and a beautiful score by Evanthia Reboutsika.

Here's a trailer:

Hiroshige

This was a special treat - today Ellen and I trekked out to Pasadena to the Norton Simon Gallery to see the exhibition 'Hiroshige-Visions of Japan'. I'm a big fan of Japanese woodblock prints, and this was a particularly big exhibition - they had the full series of all 55 Stations of the Tokaido (both the landscapes and the second set featuring people!), the 36 Views of Mount Fuji, as well as a beautiful selection of the 100 Views of Edo, and - perhaps most intriguing - a variety of Hiroshige's rarest items. These included images for fans - r

are, since the majority of the prints were cut up and glued onto fans, as intended. There were also other cut-out pages with a variety of images, and then the final room had a selection of his delicate prints of birds and flowers.

I'm a sucker for a complete set, so it was amazing to see the full collections all in one place!

The Norton Simon has a very impressive collection of Eastern and Western Art - including an amazing room that has Picasso, Brancusi, Hepworth, Kandinsky, Klee and several others all in one very beautiful room!

Sunday Spices - Nutmeg

I've always wondered about poor nutmeg - not as exciting as cloves, not as popular as cinnamon. A little research online told me that it was believed during the Middle Ages that nutmeg could ward off plague - and given that just about everyone I know has a cold of some sort at the moment, I figured I should cook something with it this weekend.

Admittedly I got distracted today - I slept very late (hurrah!) and then went out to the Norton Simon Gallery in Pasadena to see the Hiroshige exhibit. (More on him in another post). So, I got home rather later than I thought, and was a bit too tired to be going TOO fancy in my quest for a nutmeg recipe. Instead, keeping in line perhaps with this delicate spice's humble position on the spice-rack totem pole, I made two gentle but very comforting dishes - a Quiche Lorraine and some honey & nutmeg cornbread muffins.

Nutmeg is the key ingredient in a good quiche - no more than a good pinch of it is enough to elevate your custard to a really warm, rich flavour. And a whole teaspoon added to my cornbread batter meant that they came out of the oven warm, golden and quite delicious.

Seasonal Saturday - What a Day!

This has been a pretty crazy week. The first week of any quarter invariably has been rather manic, but Winter Quarter Week 01 is also when a substantial number of UCLA productions hold their auditions. All at the same time. I saw a huge number of people, with great spirit and enormous talent, and it was rather brutal having to make the cull down to only seven people for Pains of Youth. (Those seven are a remarkable lot, and I'm very excited to get to work with them.) Erendira, Rent and all of the undergraduate one-acts are also fully cast at this point, and will doubtless be great shows, all.

This week - as well as my own New Year New Blog New Everything stuff, I also had a full load of reading for one class, another that began very first thing Monday morning, and then auditions every evening. On top, we have also started rehearsals for the opera I'm working on in the Music Dept, so there was time to be spent down there too. AND the Entertainment Design class I'm TA-ing kicked in again on Thursday....!

So you'd imagine that after all that I'd take Saturday off and chillax a bit, eh? Not so! I was in Westwood first thing (guess where I got my coffee...) and then up to UCLA at the crack of noon for the first of a series of classes with the enormously charming Alfred Molina, who is teaching Shakespeare. He is splendid. Thereafter it was back to Schoenberg Hall for a full sing-through of Dialogues des Carmelites. Despite how many times I've heard the music on cd, I wasn't really prepared for the incredible punch that it packs. I look forward to it being a very deep, very rich experience. After THAT it was back to the Theatre Dept, for the Thesis performance of the MFA actors in my year. It seems like only yesterday we were all performing our autodramas for each other, and already they have presented their final iterations of that process. Time flies!

After the performance I went to my new favourite Indian restaurant, Nizam, at Westwood & Pico, and tried Mulligatawny soup for the first time. It's delicious! Spicy Sunday began early ;)

Foodie Friday - Profeta Coffee

Ok so, this isn't strictly 'food', but it's the culinary establishment that I've been to more often, I think, than ANYWHERE ELSE in LA. (And that includes Jerry's Deli. Where I hadn't been for many months before the horrific Hepatitis scare before Christmas - and to which I certainly won't be rushing anytime ever again...)

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the wonder of Profeta in Westwood. I won't tell you where it is, because I don't want this amazing secret to become toooo well-known. But try it. Their coffee is a little bit of bliss in a cup. Every single time. (It helps that your beverage is prepared by two baristas, that their coffee is fresh ground, that they use whole milk, and that their small but fabulous selection of pastries and treats is uniformly delicious.)

So go! Try them out. And when you've had ten drinks, your eleventh is free.

(Oh, and the staff are impossibly cool, as is the music they play.)