Gordon Ramsay's perfect scrambled eggs:



I've test driven this method, and it really does taste the business.

There are two things I really like about this way of making scrambled eggs. Firstly, most celebrity chef versions of regular dishes are more fiddly - not having to beat the eggs in advance make this version quicker and easier. Secondly, the addition of creme fraiche at the end means that you can cook the eggs thoroughly but not overcook them, and be sure that the finished article has a nice creamy texture.

Not so keen on his toast though!

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, Time magazine has published a very curious list of the 20 greatest perks of a united Europe :-

1. Peace - can't argue with this one
2. The (French) countryside - I can't buy that the lack of a Common Agricultural Policy would consign pastoral France to the waste bin, although there is undoubtedly a small grain of truth in this. However it is undoubtedly true that subsidies to European farmers have effectively closed the European market to millions of struggling farmers in the Third World. A fair deal for farmers in the developing world or picturesque holidays in Provence for the Middle Classes? Tricky one...
3. Easier travel - deregulation of flights has been an undoubted success, although the effects on the environment of the subsequent increase in air travel have been an unexpected side-effect.
4. Ireland's revival - anyone who has visited Ireland in the last few years and seen how many redevelopment projects are underwritten by EU funds (look for the blue flag with yellow stars everywhere) will recognise the truth of this.
5. The Schengen Agreement (common border control among most countries, although not the UK and Ireland)- not having to go through passport control is a great convenience, although I'm sure illegal immigrants and terrorists are its most ardent fans.
6. GSM - developed in Europe to the benefit of all.
7. Work where you want - freedom to move and work throughout the EU is a brave and important step forward by the EU, particularly in light of the entry of the East European nations. All those who criticise anti-free market policies followed by the EU should take careful note (ironically in my experience these "free marketeers" are the same people who rail at the Poles taking our jobs).
8. Support for regional minorities - while powerful nations worry about Europe diluting their national identity, it should be noted how much the EU does for minorities. In my experience, cultures under threat express themselves much more strongly than those which are not. Ask someone what it means to be Scottish, Welsh or Irish and they're likely to give you a much clearer answer than if you ask what it means to be English.
9. CERN - not just for contributions to particle physics, but also the invention of the World Wide Web - individual European nations would never have swallowed the costs involved in this project.
10. The Euro - a subject too vast to cover here, but undoubtedly a great achievement.
11. Airbus - struggling, but for the consumer a very welcome barrier to the dominance of Boeing.
12. Better football - I disagree with this one. Football at its best is not a business. The Bosman ruling, while a logical extension of the freedom of movement legislation, has only assisted the dominance of the richest clubs and taken away the idea of football clubs as representing their local area in any meaningful sense forever.
13. The ERASMUS programme - a very worthy programme providing international study opportunities for millions of students.
14. Tabloid heaven - What? You've got to be kidding with this one. The fact that anti-European propaganda has provided revenue opportunities for these lying, xenophobic and sexist rags is a tragedy.
15. Beethoven's Ninth - the writer was obviously running out of ideas at this point. Nice tune, that's all.
16. Clean beaches - Europe's beaches have without doubt improved immeasurably in the last twenty years across Europe, helped by the imposition and enforcing of EU standards.
17. Safer food - not so sure about this. Statistics have suggested that Mad Cow Disease almost certainly would have had cases elsewhere in Europe due to export from the UK but strangely none were found. Britain has got its act together due to necessity. I'm not sure how much has been tightened up across the Channel and how much is covered up.
18. Climate change - yes, Europe has been at the forefront of environmental policy, and still is. A political stance to be proud of.
19. Go to Brussels - I went, and it seemed to be closed. Take my advice and stay in Bruges instead.
20. Eastward expansion - perhaps the most important achievement behind no. 1.

There may be much disagreement over the relative merits of the above, but to my mind the first point on its own provides more than sufficient justification for European integration. The continent had been a battlefield for all of recorded time up to 1945. The fact that it is now almost impossible to conceive of war within EU nations is a remarkable achievement. We can still argue over how to proceed with this project but we argue as family members not as potential assailants. Happy Birthday EU.

Evidently CD sales have fallen by 20% in the past year, with the increase in digital downloads (measuring 10 song downloads as 1 CD) only compensating for about half of this. This brings to mind one important question: who cares?

Consumers certainly don't. Forgetting about illegal downloads for one minute, a clear reason for the decline is that large numbers of people are now just legally downloading the one or two songs they want from an album rather than having to pay for unwanted filler. Buyers are no longer over a barrel. It wouldn't surprise me if this effect accounts for most, if not all, of the missing 10%.

How about the artists? Well, no-one is going to volunteer not to become a multi-millionaire, but I'm pretty sure that most musicians do not get into the business for the money. They do it for the love of it. Anything they get back is a bonus, and the chance to make a living doing what they love is enough for most. They all dream of the millionaire lifestyle, but only brand-growing celebrities and manufactured boy/girl bands go in to the business with any realistic thoughts of such outcomes. In short, the thought of Justin Timberlake losing 10% of his royalties does not make me lose sleep at night.

That leaves the record companies. They most certainly care, and they know that the good times are over. I don't think music fans should shed many tears about this. These companies have a pernicious record of selling their artists down the river and squeezed as much money out of their customers as possible.

The big problem raised concerning this scenario is that bands struggling to break through, and the smaller labels who promote them, will be washed away with the bath-water. While this is clearly a concern, I think there are grounds for optimism, as long as artists have realistic expectations about their earnings potential.

Let's imagine a scenario where record companies are wiped off the face of the earth. Musicians now need to promote their music themselves. They can tout their music to the media and/or play live. The first option is now greatly democratised through new media opportunities on the internet. In parallel, the traditional development of a reputation through live performances can complement this online presence. Bands such as the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen have built their fan-base online through word of mouth. The Arctic Monkeys backed this up by builing a name for themselves on the live circuit in Sheffield. By the time they came to play their first London gigs they found they were already a legend.

In reality there will always be a place for the labels. People will always buy CDs, but the market is changing and will continue to change beyond all recognition. Those of us who frequent the blogosphere are having a sneak preview of some of the future developments. We can expect a good proportion of the top bands of tomorrow to follow the same kind of route to the top as followed by Boing Boing, Daily Kos and Instapundit. The decline of the traditional peddlars of popular music is not necessarily bad news, but insteads paves the way for a brave new world of direct music promotion.

Evolutionary biologists normally have to stress to us the mind-boggling time spans required to cause significant changes in human beings, but recent research has revealed a crucial genetic mutation only a few thousand years ago in the European population which could have given them a crucial head-start in the development of civilisation.

In the Japanese company I work for we pool together to buy milk for our teas and coffees, but none of the Japanese are part of this pool. This is because they, along with virtually all East Asians, are lactose intolerant. This means that after early childhood they lose the ability to digest milk. The same goes for the indigenous populations of Africa, Australia and the Americas. DNA testing of Neolithic European skeletons from around 5000BC shows that these people also did not possess the lactase gene necessary for lifelong digestion of milk.

Early Europeans already had some advantages over the populations of other continents. Luck had provided them with the most suitable crops and the most domesticable animals, and a geography which enable their populations to spread easily and grow their food and farm their animals wherever they went (I recommend Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel for more detail on why native Europeans were able to gain advantages over other civilisations and ultimately colonise other continents rather than the other way round).

This new study shows that when Europeans started to farm cows they were still lactose intolerant, so they domesticated them purely for meat and as beasts of burden. At some point after 5000BC it seems that a genetic mutation in one individual led to such a significant genetic advantage that the gene spread rapidly to virtually the entire European population. This ability to drink milk provided early Europeans with a year-round supply of nutrients, protecting them to some extent from failing crops. This additional source of nutrition provided another step forward in the move away from subsistence farming and towards sedentary populations, and from there to organised societies and advanced civilisation.

Ravel's Bolero performed by a string quartet...on one cello.



The quartet come from the UK and go by the name of String Fever. I was surprised to find that rather than touring prestigious concert venues they are touting on their website to play weddings and corporate events. Surely not for long.

If you're bored with simply coating white fish in breadcrumbs, the recipe below provides a great and much tastier alternative. I really recommend using fresh rosemary and thyme - they make all the difference. Just the aroma you get when chopping them makes using them worthwhile, but the difference in taste is the real payback. I found the basic recipe on deliaonline.com and adapted it as below based on what I had in the house, and my experience in making the dish.

Plaice fillets with a Herb and Polenta Crust (Serves 2)

2 plaice fillets, approx 6oz each (or use lemon/dover sole as an alternative)
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
70g polenta
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 large egg
2 tablespoons olive oil
freshly milled black pepper

1. Mix together the rosemary, thyme, polenta, garlic and pepper on a flat plate.
2. Dry the fish thoroughly with kitchen towel (this is important, or the mixture will not stick properly)
3. Beat the egg well in a shallow dish.
4. Dip the fish in the egg, and then press the fillets into the polenta mixture, ensuring they are well covered.
5. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a relatively high heat.
6. Add the fish and turn down the heat to medium. Cook on each side for about 3 mins.

Delia adds lemon zest to the coating, and squeezes lemon juice over the fish before serving. Sound great but we didn't have lemons in the house. The taste was still fantastic without. I served it with cauliflower and wild rice. Delicious!

Even when Hatto favors slower than common tempos...every note sings, speaks, and breathes, every texture radiates color and nuance, while the two hands imaginatively yet subtly interact with, complement, and support each other...Hatto's addictively beautiful sonority, cultured musicianship, and total instrumental mastery yield new insights with each subsequent hearing. Keep the excellent space-saving budget box cycles by Schiff , Uchida and Würtz on hand for drop-in guests, but save Hatto's Mozart for connoisseurs, and ultimately for the desert island.

This passage comes from the Classics Today review of Joyce Hatto's recording of Mozart's complete piano sonatas. The review is preceded by the following recently posted statement:-

In the wake of the late-breaking scandal concerning the provenance of Joyce Hatto's recordings, we had the option of removing all Hatto reviews, or leaving them intact and identifying the correct artists, to the extent possible, as we learn them. We have elected the latter, both as a caution and as a way to do some justice to the real artists as we learn their identities. This set is believed to have been taken, at least in part, from Ingrid Haebler's Mozart cycle on Denon.

Hatto was a little-known pianist who, following withdrawal from the concert circuit, garnered a reputation as an exceptional soloist based on a series of exceptional recordings of works from the classical piano canon, this in spite of suffering from a debilitating and painful cancer, which finally took her life last year.

While critics eulogised and praised her as one of greatest British pianists of all time, technology was poised to bring her reputation crashing down. An American fan was surprised to find his iPod's music recognition feature attributing Hatto’s rendition of Liszt’s Transcendental Studies to Hungarian pianist Laszlo Simon. Subsequent re-evaluation of Hatto's works has revealed that many, if not all, of her later recordings have been lifted from other pianists.

Her husband William Barrington-Coupe has now admitted to doctoring her recordings, although it seems that in many cases that outright misappropriation would be a more accurate description of his activities.

This revelation brings embarrassment to many. Classical music buffs have been hoodwinked. To give them some credit, they have praised Hatto-attributed recordings which turn out to have been played by Vladimir Ashkenazy, but the fact that no-one was able to identify the maestro's playing shatters some illusions about the ears classical cognoscenti. More inexplicably, they have given equal praise to the recordings now found to have been stolen from the far more obscure Mr Simon. However, it does occur to me that this reveals as much about the nature of the piano as it does about the discrimination of the critics. I sincerely doubt that the same deception could have been perpetrated by a violinist.

String instruments give a great deal of room for expression. Every vibrato, glissando and even bow technique gives the player a chance to express themselves within the framework of the piece. The piano is an astonishingly evocative instrument in the hands of a master , but this deception shows that the ability of these masters to carve their individual character onto the music is limited. Great players are revealed by their dexterity rather than their ability to express their personality. Great composers make great piano music - great pianists reveal themselves largely through their ability to bring the composer's music to life. This may be scornfully denied by classical snobs, but the Hatto case reveals that the Emperor (and perhaps his concerto too) has fewer clothes than previously believed.

Momus writes in Wired of the robomediation of society:

...the process by which bank tellers are being replaced by ATMs, telephone operators by automated touch-tone and voice-recognition systems, soldiers by gun-toting Talons, financial journalists by report-writing programs and the taciturn guy at the video rental store by the wall-mounted DVD automat. If it's bad for humans to be reduced to robotic inauthenticity, isn't it preferable that real robots should step in to execute our mindless tasks for us?

He compares the "disintermediation" provided by certain web services, for example buying your car insurance or flights direct without the need for a broker or agent, with this alternative means of cutting out the middle men - in this instance replacing them with a middle robot.

I hadn't thought before of ATMs, automatic phone machines and their ilk as robots, but in a general sense I guess these are the heralds of the robot age. Momus goes on to point out that 4 million household "robots" are expected to be sold this year, increasing to an estimated 39 million by 2010. He argues the potential importance of such devices in a country with a rapidly greying and shrinking population like Japan. He also takes a more tongue-in-cheek view of the potential advantages of the robotisation of service sector jobs in the UK:

...British people are spectacularly bad at services -- shining examples of Sartrean sincerity and authenticity, they're unlikely to wish you a great day if they aren't having one themselves. The sooner these grumpy, reluctant, inefficient people are replaced by robots, some might say, the better. (Unemployed, the British can go off and do something usefully authentic and human, like inventing some new kind of punk rock.)

Anyone who has come from a more service-oriented country (ie anywhere outside Europe and many countries within), and been confronted with the horrors of the modern British high street will know the unfortunate truth of the above, but he's right about the by-products. Punk at least should make us proud to be British.

Neal Gabler in the LA Times has some theories why the movie magic has gone:

Eighty-three percent of the respondents [to a recent survey for the Motion Picture Association of America] said they were satisfied with the content of the films they saw, but 60% nevertheless expected to spend less of their income on moviegoing in the future, citing dissatisfaction with the moviegoing experience and the emergence of better alternatives for their time and money.

Gabler sees the lives of celebrities taking over from the movie plots of yesteryear as the cultural icebreakers in the national conversation, and movies increasingly as a machine for manufacturing celebrity. Movies have, of course, always powered the star machine, but are now being overshadowed by the celebrity manufacturing sweatshops of reality TV, which are proving cheaper, dirtier and much more productive in this sordid industry. Jennifer Hudson's Oscar win makes her the first to cross the divide from reality celeb to movie star. Who would suggest she will be the last?

However, I disagree with Gabler's hypothesis that first the cult of celebrity, and ultimately the internet-powered cult of the indidividual are doing away with the movies as the centrepiece of popular culture. A far less intellectually seductive culprit suggests itself - the good old TV.

Shows such as 24 and Lost now typically cost more that $1 million dollars an episode to make, and have all the glitz of the movie blockbuster. There has been a brain drain from Hollywood as the best scriptwriters in town follow the money to the TV studios - these are the Paramounts and MGMs of our era. An hour a week in front of the television in exchange for having to watch a fistful of commercials has usurped the increasingly expensive trip to the cinema. DVD sales of films may be falling, but watch the box sets huddle together at the top of the bestsellers lists and you'll see where the modern viewers loyalties are really shifting to.