If you don’t know what an arancino is you must fill this gap of knowledge immediately. I won’t tell you the story of this traditional street food from Sicily because you can easily make a search by yourself and get lost into the neverending argument about its spelling with the –o or with the –a as in arancina. What really matters here is that you have to eat it. Because of the lockdown obviously I had nowhere to buy it ready-to-eat so I’ve decided to make it at home.
As you can see from the pictures -low quality sorry, not sorry- an arancino is basically a ball of rice -ideally arborio or carnaroli rice, but I used basmati and it was good anyway- (well seasoned, possibly not overcooked), with a filling of your choice -I made it with fried aubergines and tomato sauce, but you can make a different sauce for the rice and different fillings such as ham and cheese cubes or the traditional italian beef ragù with peas, or even butter and spinach or salmon, use your fantasy!-. Once you’ve made the rice ball, gently dip it into the batter -flour, water and an egg will do-, then coat it with some good breadcrumb -remember to season the breadcrumb with a pinch of salt or it’ll be tasteless- and just at that moment your arancino -which by the way means “little orange”, you get it now, don’t you?- will be ready to be deep fried into vegetable oil until golden brown and crispy. If you’ve got some batter leftover don’t be shy, give the same treatment of the arancino to any kind of veggies you’ve got in your fridge. I did it with courgettes and they were d e l i c i o u s !
It’s fun to make, it’s uplifting comfort home made food and you can make it smaller and have it as finger food as well.
The other day I picked this book just after I’ve eaten my lunch. I was tempted to go back to my laptop to start working again but I had to force myself to have my usual one-hour break as if I was at work in the library.
I sat on the sofa with my feet on the footstool, and I opened the book. It’s a second hand book I bought I can’t remember where nor when. It was sitting on my shelves since ages. One page was loose and I couldn’t figure out where exactly it fell from, since it didn’t make any difference in the story I folded it and left it inside the little pocket on the front (yes, there is a little pocket on the front cover).
The strange library it’s the slightly sinister story of a boy who goes to his local public library after school to return some books and borrow something else about an unusual subject for his age: tax collection in the Ottoman empire. He finds himself locked in the basement of the library, imprisoned by a mad librarian who wants him to learn by heart the volumes he fetched about the tax collection in the Ottoman empire so that he can then eat his brains and get that knowledge. During his captivity the boy meets two other weird characters: a strange guardian dressed with the skin of a sheep who brings him delicious homemade doughnuts, and a mute girl who brings him hot meals several times a day.
I enjoyed reading it just before getting back to my work, it took me to a timeless world where nobody can say if it’s morning or night, sunny or rainy, bright or dark. Well, you’ll assume it’s always dark because most of the story happens in a basement, but there isn’t a conscious perception of the time. What the reader can almost touch with fingers is the boy’s anxiety for his mom waiting for him to come back from school. He’s worried that she might think he was attacked again by a dog as it happened in the past.
This story left me with some questions that I turn to you: is it a book about the pleasure of reading or is it more about going to the library and get metaphorically lost into the depth of knowledge you can get? Can the girl symbolize the passage of the boy from childhood to puberty? So maybe the whole “adventure” has a rather deep meaning whit all its strange characters with their unusual habits and peculiarities… (they get transformed, they appear, they disappear, are they real or just the boy’s fantasies to get through his imprisonment and find a way to escape?)
I also wonder if it could be considered a book for YA, I wouldn’t say it’s a children book because maybe it’s a little too dark (I know some traditional tales are waaaay darker than this though!). Somebody wrote about this book here (surely better than me): https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/the-strange-library-haruki-murakami/
Also, it clicked something into my head (likely the doughnuts part, yummi) so when I finished my day of work, I wanted to make a cake or a pastry. My wish of baking came true last night.
I fancied something with apples, something nice to have for breakfast or as a snack in the afternoon.
I made this:
It’s a crumble apple pie. The dough is very similar to a short crust (flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, work everything with your fingers to make it crumble. Form the base in the tin and press it a little to make it compact, then add the chopped apples that you’ve cooked in a pan for about 5 minutes with some sugar and lemon juice, top up everything with the rest of the crumble and smash it in the oven for 30-35 minutes).
A rage quit is the act of stopping during gameplay in a fit of pique caused by something that occurred in the game. In the worlds created by the developers of ARPGs there is always something happening (otherwise they wouldn’t be called action role-playing games) and frequently it seems perfectly designed to frustrate the player. Rage quits can be expensive and are surely a manufacturer’s dream as the countless YouTube videos (link contains swearing) of gamers breaking their hardware off tables, chairs, other pieces of hardware, themselves, etc. will attest. I rage quit a lot. There is a simple reason for that: I decided to play some of the most notoriously difficult games available and I’m not a gamer. Quick reflexes? Nope. A fast eye? Nay nonny nay. Good observation? Don’t be silly. All these things are a rquirement for these fast-paced fights. Mobs will emerge, seemingly from nowhere, hacking and slashing, breaking my poise, and rendering me dead in seconds. Single enemies will wait for my stamina bar to drop to zero and bludgeon me into the ground. Rats will bite and poison me and my character drops to the floor yet again. That happens very frequently.
I calmly place the controller on the table and suppress the urge to fling it at the wall or better yet at the computer monitor. Maximum damage appears to be the primary urge. Really, the challenge should be met and the time spent looking for a solution to the problem in-game but I’m cheap so I use online guides. Really quite a significant amount of online guides. Sometimes, after a rage quit, I enter searches such as “high wall of lothric so hard”. Without them I would find it ever so difficult to get through this game. With them I find it ever so difficult to get through this game. I get killed by every single enemy, every single time. I don’t get better. Sometimes, (in fact, most times), I get worse. Worse and worse and worse and I seem to put less distance behind me than the last time I played the same level. Or the time before that. Or even the very first time I play the level. That first time is sometimes the best time. I move slower and more carefully. This game is fiendishly difficult. And I find Skyrim difficult. The corridors are too complicated. Please. I want to go back to work…
After months of issues with my back I’m finally feeling better so I decided I had to cook today. I haven’t been able to do it because it implies standing and my body refused to concede that pleasure to me.
I had some veggies in the fridge that needed to be used and some back bacon slices. Those ingredients matched perfectly with my pasta cravings!
Here is a list of what I used:
1 onion
1 courgette
3-4 leaves of radicchio
3 slices of back bacon
200 gr of fusilli pasta
grated Parmesan cheese
First of all I finely sliced the onion (I quite like thin slices rather than dices) and I chopped the courgette, then I kept them together into a small bowl. I rolled up the radicchio leaves together and then I chopped and put them aside into another bowl.
Done with the veggies I tackled the bacon. While I was chopping the bacon there were two tbsp of olive oil heating up in the pan waiting for me to bang those pieces of pork in. And so I did. I let them fry happily for a few minutes until crisp, I’m sure I heard an applause at some point so that was the time to remove them from the pan and keep them aside. In the same pan I smashed the onion slices and the courgette with a pinch of salt. I left them enjoy themselves at a high heat for several minutes stirring from time to time until the onion started to caramelize and the courgette softened. There was also a pot with boiling water shouting at me to do something so I pleased her with some salt and the 200 gr of fusilli pasta.
At this point the onion and the courgette were ready to welcome back the pieces of juicy bacon into the pan so I united them all together and after stirring everything well I let the radicchio fall into the foodporn scene that was going on into that pan. After about 8 minutes that the pasta was cooking I transferred it into the pan with some Tbsps of its cooking water so that the starch would create some sort of creamy environment. That was the moment when I grated some Parmesan cheese in and season with black pepper.
photo credits: Pola
This is it, my dear friends. I loved it. I very much enjoyed it. And I need it to cheer me up before going back to my work.
Librarians in quarantine 