NEVER MAKE YOUR OWN PASTA.

August 1, 2011 8:58 AM

"Stews are, by nature, epic. So you need to be listening to something truly epic whilst you stew the fuck up. Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual' should cover it. On its original release 'Space Ritual' was advertised as '90 minutes of Brain Damage.' Luckily, you've got the re-release double CD which should have about '2 and a half hours of Brain Damage' on it. The perfect amount of time - measured in 'brain damage' - to stew a fucking rabbit. Christ's chopper! Let's cook."

Luke Haines has a cookery blog.
posted by ClanvidHorse (33 comments total)

Luke Haines has a cookery blog.

"2 or 3 rashers of bacon (optional - I don't really 'do' bacon, too salty, processed so therefore unhealthy. If you do want to add bacon just chop up and fry with the onion in the stewing pot.)"

Not in my eyes, he don't.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:12 AM on August 1, 2011

Along similar lines, a recipe for pork and side dishes from a Puerto Rican living in New York.
posted by exogenous at 9:15 AM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Christ's chopper?"
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 9:19 AM on August 1, 2011

1. First, take a simple recipe.
2. Add totally irrelevant music industry-related anecdotes.
3. Next, sprinkle liberally with random swearing.
4. Simmer and serve.

posted by demiurge at 9:22 AM on August 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Bacon is hipster food.
posted by koeselitz at 9:29 AM on August 1, 2011

Steve Albini also has a terrific cooking blog.
posted by Iridic at 9:32 AM on August 1, 2011 [5 favorites]

Thank. You.
posted by Lisitasan at 9:32 AM on August 1, 2011

a recipe for pork and side dishes from a Puerto Rican living in New York.

Whoa, black beans? No gandules? What the what? Instead of his black bean thingy, make his ghetto sofrito, fry up the rice in it, dump in your can of gandules, some chopped-up olives and capers if you have them, add water (a little more than one-to-one with the rice if you like dry, separate grains like I do), and cook it like rice.

You can thank me by sending me all the crispy skin from your pernil.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:33 AM on August 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Never accept cooking advice from a Brit.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:37 AM on August 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Iridic: Steve Albini also has a terrific cooking blog.

This is hilarious. Though the idea of Steve Albini doing a Mario Batali impression seems perfectly constructed to annoy 1995 me and 2011 me in a very unique way.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:40 AM on August 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Bacon is hipster food.

Nonsense. I was into bacon before those silly hip... - damn it!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:46 AM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Bacon is hipster food.

Only Canadian bacon.
posted by jonmc at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2011

Next, sprinkle liberally with random swearing.

You know why fucking rabbit's fucking underrated? Because these days it tastes like fucking chicken.

I'm talking about those fucking farmed rabbits that they feed on pellets and crap and sell in fucking butchers. Now if you take a good fucking wild rabbit that's done nothing except hop around in the fucking seaside scrub eating the fuck out of it and getting itself all juniper and fucking rosemary flavoured (one might also allow that such a fucking rabbit has done a little fucking with the other fucking rabbits) then that fucking rabbit will taste fucking divine. No fucking underrating possible.

But fucking farmed rabbits.. fucking underrated for a fucking reason.
posted by Ahab at 9:50 AM on August 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Excellent, he makes puttanesca almost exactly the same way I do, right down to the two bottles of wine. Therefore he is a good cook.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:59 AM on August 1, 2011

Man, I was all set for a Space Ritual post. Because that album is the balls.
posted by Bookhouse at 10:09 AM on August 1, 2011

Zappa's Gumbo Variations turns out to be about exactly the right length for making a right proper roux.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:10 AM on August 1, 2011

Bacon is hipster food.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:21 AM on August 1, 2011

Yesterday, I made stew for dinner, because it was 62 degrees and rainy here in Seattle and it seemed like a good day for stew. My stews have been a bit lackluster lately, so I decided "what the hell" and pulled out Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Doing it Julia's way was incredibly time consuming, involved a zillion steps, and made the best fucking stew I've ever made (or possibly even eaten) in my whole fucking life.

Julia, btw, says to use bacon. So this guy can suck it.
posted by KathrynT at 10:25 AM on August 1, 2011

Steve Albini also has a terrific cooking blog.

And it case it's too implicit for some, that's not the only thing unites Luke and Steve.
posted by robself at 10:59 AM on August 1, 2011

Steve Albini also has a terrific cooking blog.

Steve Albini has now gone from "fucking awesome" in my mind, to "godlike".
posted by fake at 11:09 AM on August 1, 2011

+10 Internets for Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual'. Now to read the FPP.
posted by Splunge at 12:28 PM on August 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual' should cover it.

Random anecdote: In 1973, when the Space Ritual album apparently came out, I lived across the hallway from where the band, Hawkwind, rented a flat, on Gloucester Rd, about where The Light of India Restaurant is now. Saw them all the time staggering in and out of their place, up and won the stairs with their manes flowing.

That el cheapo bedsit flat where I lived had the most awful, textured walls, painted babyshit green and burnt orange. Seriously pukeworthy. When Wikipedia says " Hawkwind being the nickname of Turner derived from his unappealing habit of clearing his throat (hawking) and excessive flatulence (wind).", that about sums up my sadly biased memories of Hawkwind then. *gag They were actually pretty amazing in concert.

So, Hawkwind is not a selling point for me when it comes to looking at a cooking blog. If I can cleanse my mental palate of that toxic memory, will have a look.

Oh nooooo. One look at that rabbit stew! ouch! Almost all his stuff is gory looking. Nooo. Clutches onto the Spaghetti Alla Putanesca & 2 Bottles of Red Wine, while trying not to think about the texture of anchovies (which I usually love). Yes, that sounds delicious.
posted by nickyskye at 1:47 PM on August 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Stews are, by nature, epic.

THANK you.
posted by Stewriffic at 2:38 PM on August 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

My Hawkwind story: Loved Micheal Moorcock. Got into Hawkwind. Saw them at Golden Plains this year. Wasn't on acid. Was underwhelmed.


Yep.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:27 PM on August 1, 2011

*up and down the stairs
posted by nickyskye at 4:46 PM on August 1, 2011

First, take a simple recipe.
Add totally irrelevant music industry-related anecdotes.
Next, sprinkle liberally with random swearing.
Simmer and serve.

posted by demiurge at 9:22 AM on August 1 [1 favorite +] [!]
First, take an awesome link.
Reduce to pedestrian components over a low flame of snark.
Garnish with sneer to taste.
Chuck it in the rubbish because it tastes revolting.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:58 PM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

*up and down the stairs
Actually, I prefer the original, if it means 'to ascend'. As I get older and my knees cooperate less, 'winning the stairs' becomes a more appropriate phrase, and at their ages, the members of Hawkwind would probably agree.
posted by eclectist at 5:07 PM on August 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

First: I fucking love Luke Haines, possibly the best and most incisive musician to have staggered through that grinning hellhole called Britpop with integrity not just intact but positively burnished by his refusal to engage with the crass British music press*

Second: I'm kind of taken by his rabbit stew recipe but he misses a major trick, to wit:

RABBIT STEW:

[feeds 4. Or 3. Or, 2, if you're both really fucking hungry]

8 legs of rabbit
two pounds of new potatoes
half pound of lardons
third of a pound of french-style black pudding
two large onions
big shitload of garlic
bouquet garni
bottle of white wine
pint of ham stock
salt and pepper to taste

Take onions (roughly chopped) and rabbit legs and brown, quickly, in a hot frying pan. Remove, and place into casserole dish; add pint of ham stock, freshly brought to boil. Add bouquet garni, bottle of wine, and big shitload of garlic. Meanwhile, fry up the lardons, before adding them to the mix. Slice the French-style – ie long and thin, rather than the hockey-puck diameter and thickness of the British variety – black pudding into inch-thick chunks, before placing in casserole dish along with the potatoes. Place in oven at about 150C and leave to not-quite-simmer for, oh, about two hours.

Retire to the garden, crack open a few beers or a bottle of wine, remembering to periodically check on your rabbit casserole in between smoking fags and listening to some tunes. Stir occasionally, but not too much; you don't want the black pudding to completely disintegrate.

Head back to the kitchen; dish it up for everyone there, twinning it with a nice bottle of white (I find a Pouilly-Fumé goes well).

Job done.

Third: Haines has written two absolutely great books about British culture of the past twenty years: Bad Vibes: Britppop and my part in its downfall, which is about the funniest dissection of the 1990s there is – so long as you love misanthropic ex-lead-singers pontificating on how much the rest of the British music scene were a bunch of cunts, which is most of them – and Post Everything, in which Haines tries to, and almost manages, to make a case for the idea of a society-wide art strike, like some sort of weird, reverse-John Galt in which he argues that art should be a thing of the people.

*I say possibly because Jarvis Cocker is the other possibility, though doubtless Haines would argue that good old Jarv's credibility has been hampered by his kowtowing to the nostalgia set by reforming Pulp, not to mention his activities as a soi-disant disc jockey. Though god, what I wouldn't give for Haines to get given a couple of hours on the BBC each week a la Cocker's BBC 6 Music Sunday Service. Also, I remember when the Stone Roses' Second Coming came out, and Select Magazine asked various bands & hacks what they thought. Haines' response? He took the CD and grilled it until it was wrinkled like your grandad's bawsac, before declaring "that's the best it's ever going to sound".
posted by Len at 7:05 PM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Never accept cooking advice from a Brit.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:37 AM on August 1 [1 favorite +] [!]

Or a fucking Yank.
posted by kcds at 1:28 AM on August 2, 2011

Though god, what I wouldn't give for Haines to get given a couple of hours on the BBC each week a la Cocker's BBC 6 Music Sunday Service.
I agree. When I read Bad Vibes, I found his favourites and influences always interesting, and, more often than not, brilliant. I've still to read Post Everything, but if it's even a tenth as good as Bad Vibes, it'll be a book of the year.

Haines is certainly the most interesting artist to emerge from the horror of Britpop but he's never been loved by the masses. I went to see him about 5 years ago in a horrible wee dive place, Barfly, in Glasgow. There must have been about 30 people there. A darkly mischievous set was spliced by hilarious stories (mainly about Gary Glitter, Peter Sutcliffe and Kendo Nagasaki). It should have been selling out the Barrowlands.

I suppose that a man who released a concept album about the Baader Meinhof gang was always going to struggle for public attention when 'musical bricklayers', such as Oasis, were providing musical junk food to the masses.

The tension between his fascination with the past (particularly 1970s Britain) and his refusal to get on the nostalgia bandwagon is perfectly encapsulated in The Rubettes.

He's supposedly writing a musical about Nicolas Van Hoogstraten too.



It's strange how many people haven't got this post. I've had a few FPPs that weren't liked for whatever reason but that's a bit different from missing the point. My fault as I probably assumed most people would know more about Haines than appears to be the case. It's slightly disappointing that the now dull-as-ditch-water bacon meme is a fair chunk of the comments. Oh well...
posted by ClanvidHorse at 3:01 AM on August 2, 2011

~Not just the bacon meme, but the 'Brits can't cook' meme - irregardless of the fact that nobody from Britain would refer to themselves as 'a Brit', least of all Luke Haines.

Bad Vibes is something of a speculative history but it's still great.
posted by mippy at 7:50 AM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Good post, good blog. Coincidentally, I dug out my old Black Box Recorder albums last week to see if they still stood up, and they just about did.

I should read Bad Vibes. The main problem is that I guess the BritPop scene was so intertwined with my youth - I suspect there is still a big stack of Select magazines somewhere at my parents' house - that even with Haines as a guide, I'd probably feel too afflicted by nostalgia and regret.

I may cook that Refried Beans for Paul Weller though.
posted by Hartster at 2:54 AM on August 4, 2011

Words to live your life by...

"If Hawkwind are saying 'You Shouldn't Do That.' I'd listen to them, cos whatever you're doing must be pretty bad if Hawkwind are telling you to stop doing it."
posted by Gratishades at 11:16 AM on August 8, 2011