Cooking for one.

I'm in the habit of cooking something on the weekend that will last most of the week. That way, when I get home from work at seven or later, cooking is not a chore.

When I first arrived in Scotland, I bought the casserole dish pictured here (there was nothing like it in the house) since a pot like this is fundamental to much of my cooking. It's nothing special, I picked it up in the grocery store cooking isle, but it's perfect for my purposes.

Pictured is my imitation of cassoulet. Haricots, a hunk of pork and some left over roast chicken, wings and drumsticks. Sorry, no sausage or duck confit in this one -- maybe next time. Soak the beans overnight, drain them and leave them in the casserole dish. I had a wedge of pork rump, fat on, which I browned in a bit of olive oil and then added to the pot with the beans. Sauté four five or even six cloves of chopped garlic in olive oil and then add three medium sized onions, diced; chopped parsley, salt, coarse ground pepper, thyme and I threw in some rosemary too. A bay leaf or two would be good, but I didn't have one. Once the onions are soft add a couple of cups of dry white wine, and let that reduce for a bit before adding the chicken stock - about 8 cups. After it gets to a boil, pour this over the beans, just covering them with the liquid. I put it into the oven with the top on just at a simmer and left it for a few hours. When I came back I added the chicken legs and thighs and turned up the bringing it to a good boil and remove it from the over. The whole thing takes an hour in the kitchen and I'll be eating this all week - and loving it.

Last week I made a rather amazing recipe from Mark Bittman's column in the NY Times, Short Ribs with Coffee and Chilies. I never, in a million years, would have thought of braising beef in coffee and red wine, but it is wonderful. I recommend watching the video linked at the bottom of the article Coaxing Exotic Flavor From Familiar Elements. This recipe uses an idea I've been using for some time, using chilies - not for their hotness but for their flavor. A bit of chili can make food taste round in your mouth, without really being hot. I use them often in red wine based stews. In the kitchen here, there were some small dried chilies hanging on the wall which worked fine - I think that at one time they may have been a decoration, but I've eaten most of them. I did not find "short ribs" but used a very inexpensive "Scottish Boiling Beef" which seems to be much the same cut.

My first week here in Scotland I made a beef stew in red wine; also using the chilie trick. I follow the method I learned from Rick Bayless's classic Mexican cookbook Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From The Heart of Mexico for preparing dried chilies. Slit them open to remove the seeds, trying not to crumble them completely. Dry roast the chilies by putting them in a hot dry cast iron frying pan and pressing them flat with a fork or spatula. They'll bubble up and brown. Don't worry if they burn a bit but you don't want them black. I put them in a cup with a bit (say 1/2 cup) of water and microwave them (Bayless does not use the microwave) for a minute or so. Be careful when you remove them - a whiff of the steam will take your breath away. Drop them in a blender and you have a chili sauce to add as needed.

Bittman's philosophy of cooking largely matches my own. In general I know that, with a bit of care and minimal effort, it is possible to prepare food at home that is far better than that served in all but the finest restaurants. Probably everyone already knows this. If you don't think so, watch the Bittman video to see how easy it is to make this rib recipe.

Bookshops I know and love

After visiting the National Gallery I drove into the heart of Edinburgh and managed to find a couple of very nice used and rare bookshops. Armchair books is at 72-74 West Port and occupies two narrow shops that are adjacent to one another. The owner is somewhat cranky as evidenced by a sign on the door saying something to the effect of: "The government is trying to close me down and so, at any moment, this shop may revert to a private premises in which case you are my guest." The owner was there and I asked him about the sign, and was told about the governments efforts to close him down because he is deemed a fire hazard, among other things. In any case, I asked him if there were any other shops nearby and he said the only one he could compare to his own was in Paris, Shakespeare & Co.. I've been to Shakespeare & Co. and I think the comparison may be a bit of a stretch. But actually, I may like Armchair books better, it is dustier, has a broader selection and is a bit less "Literary". So I pressed him a bit more and then he did point me to McNaughtan's bookshop about a mile away. It was getting late and so I decided to visit McNaughtan's on another visit. As I walked towards the car park, and less than a block from his shop I hit another very good second hand and antiquarian bookstore, almost as good as his own I'd say. This one is Edinburgh Port Books. And there was another smaller one half a block further on. Now that I'm back in St Andrews and have access to the web I see that there was another shop (Andrew Pringle) less than a block downhill from Armchair that he neglected to mention as well. In any case, I bought two books at Armchair, one an inexpensive copy of Negly Farson's Going Fishing first published in 1942 and which is illustrated with woodcuts by C.F. Tunnicliffe.


This image alone is worth the cost of the book. I also purchased a copy of Salmon Fishing by "Tavener & others" first published in 1935 and which is volume X in The Lonsdale Library of Sports, Games & Pastimes published by Seeley Service & Co. Limited in London.

As for book shops ...There is another Shakespeare & Co. in Berkeley CA as well. It's not particularly noteworthy. Last time I was there, I asked if they were affiliated with the Paris store and was told that they were. This is contradicted by the information on the Paris store's website. With Moe's books and Black Oak Books also in Berkeley, it must be the best used book town in the world. I think, for scholarly titles Moe's and Black Oak would be hard to beat. Black Oak has the most extensive collection of math and logic books anywhere. (No, I haven't been to Powell's in Portland.) The Strand in NYC is wonderful as well although I seem to recall having left a bit disappointed the last time I was there. In 1988 or so I bought used technical books in London at Skoob books near Russell Square. I can still remember the name because "Skoob" is "books" spelled backwards and so the name is a palindrome. I just googled them to see if they're still around and in fact, they advertise themselves as The best secondhand bookshop in London. When I was last there, they had an very good collection of logic and theoretical computer science titles and I am looking forward to getting there again when Penelope comes in March and we visit London together to look at art.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Drove to Edinburgh for the second time today. I went to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery with is just across the road. Unfortunately, the Dean was between shows and so there was little to see. There was some surrealist work on the first floor that was nice to view in an intimate space There was a small collage by Kurt Schwitters that, as always, was beautiful.



On the lower floor of the National Gallery of Modrn Art there was a sparsely hung show by landscape painter Carol Rhodes. The paintings are oil on masonite, mostly aerial landscapes and showed a very nice sensibility for the quality of oil paint on masonite. Individually, many were very good, but overall the presentation was somewhat weak. There was an awkwardness of the drawing in a number of the paintings which, if intended, just wasn't quite wrong enough to be right. But I am being too harsh, the quality of paint reminded me of the early work of my friend Philip Rosenthal and I really enjoyed the show.

Upstairs they had two paintings by Gerhard Richter. One of the paintings is from his blurred photo realist series and the other was from the "Abstract Painting" series. It was nice to be able to see them together in the same room. I must admit that I never really have much appreciated the mechanistic results of his abstract painting series. This one looks pretty good in the small image I included here, but in person, the medium sized (5'x5') painting is lacking in the same way they always are for me.



There was a Richard Long installation of an "X" made of slate behind the building called "The Slate Cross". In size it is maybe 30'x30' and is made of 8 tons of slate. Looking for some more information on it, I see that a photo of it from above (scroll down a bit in page linked to his name), it has a nice effect, better than walking around it at ground level. In general, I like Long's work quite a bit more than Andy Goldsworthy whose work is quite similar but which is better known. The content in Goldsworthy's work seems to be its prettiness in the context of nature and it is contrived for just this effect. Long's work (going back to 1960's) is conceptual in content but concrete in implementation. The artifacts created from his explorations might be mistaken for those of Goldworthy. Still, this piece didn't do much for me in person, perhaps I'm not attuned to the aesthetic of Cornwall slate. I am sorry to have missed his recent show "Walking and Marking" of which this piece is remnant.

I did very much like a conceptual piece by a Scottish artist named Douglas Gordon called List of names random started in 1990 and ongoing. It is essentially the all the names he can recall of everyone he's ever met. The names are carefully stenciled on a wall in the stairwell that is three stories high. His account of the process, of forgetting and misremembering is important. And besides, how did they get all those names so straight and true.

There is a very nice Vuillard on the third floor
La causette [The Chat] painted in 1893. Vuillard's work is often small (this one is 12"x16") and precious and the use of black (real black) in this painting is stunning when seen in person. The image here does not do it justice.


So this brings up a rather interesting second order aspect of art works; some work seems to photograph well, looking better in photographs than perhaps it does in person, while other work does not photograph well but is good in person. It's possible that the image of the Vuillard could be better, but in my experience this is work that has to be seen up close to be appreciated to full effect. This failure of representation of representations was a theme in William Gaddis' dense novel The Recognitions.

The gallery does not permit photography, which is rather disappointing. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, you may take photographs, but you must not use a flash, which seems a reasonable rule to me. The images I included above fall under fair use (or since I am in the UK, fair dealing) of copyrighted material and all copyrights are held by the artists.

Nottingham -- DTP 2008.

Spent the first part of the week in Nottingham at the Workshop on Dependently Typed Programming. It was a very interesting workshop organized by Thorsen Altenkirch and his group at Nottingham. Programming with dependent types in Nuprl is what I've been doing in my research for some time. There seems to be a kind of moment right now when it has come into its own.

I didn't have time to take many photos, but here's another pub photo (an almost lost genre that I am working to reestablish) of some of the conference attendees.


Left to Right: James McKinna (now at Nijmegen), Noam Zeilberger(CMU), Xaveier Leroy [mostly hidden](INRIA), Connor McBride (Alta Systems), Sebastian Hanowksy, Ulf Norrell [blurred](Chalmers), Peter Morris(Nottingham), ???, Randy Pollack[blurred] (Edinburgh),???, Sean Wilson(Edinburgh).

Left to Right: James, Noam , Xavier[more visible here], Connor [blurred by duck], Sebastian [hidden], Ulf, Peter, ???, Randy [blurred],???, Sean.

These are low light hand held shots taken at F2.8 with an exposure of 8/10 of a second taken with a Canon G9. They've been stitched together with the Canon software which didn't do such a good job here (look at the picture on the back wall) but they weren't very carefully panned to match up either.

Television is serious business in Scotland.

I got this in the mail the other day.

>
I do not watch TV here but still the issue is rather complex. Is it illegal to have a television on the premises if I never turn it on? Seems to be the case. I have no desire to pay for something I don't use, but I have no desire to break the law either. It has been suggested that disabling the receivers by removing the cables from the house would be enough -- but others disagree.

This is apparently how the BBC is funded.

In and around the office.

Well, appearances to the contrary, its been a
busy week at work. Roy and I made good headway on the proof transformation project.

The photo shows Kevin Hammond and a few members of the functional programming research group out at the pub. They are, left to right, Steffan Jost, Vladimir Janic, my officemate Alexander Konovalov, Christoph Herman and Kevin.

Kevin leads the functional programming research group.




My officemate Alex is in the middle of the pub photo. Alex is an algebraist who works with the GAP system.

And here's a shot of the office, and of me in it.





I had two young visitors in my office for a while on Tuesday afternoon. I made a couple of videos of magic tricks they performed for me. Here's the floating stick magic trick. And here's the old coin through the elbow trick.

The weather on Tuesday was great and I wandered around St Andrews at lunch time and took some photos. You can see a few of them by clicking on the photo below.

Road Trip to the Western Highlands

Took a rather long drive with Roy Dyckhoff and his wife Cecilia to Tomdoun on the River Garry between Loch Quoich and Loch Garry yesterday. Roy and Cecilia are building a house on some land they own along the River Garry and the trip was ostensibly to go and have a look at how the construction was coming -- it was a great chance for me to have a driving tour of the highlands.

We left St Andrews at about 8AM, drove to Tomdoun, walked their land for a bit more than an hour, spent another hour eating at the Hotel and got back to St Andrews by 7 PM. The weather was mostly overcast throughout most of the day though it did partly clear a bit in the afternoon giving us some great views as we headed back east out of Glencoe.

On our way up to Tomdoun we passed the Laggan Dam, here's a video I got with the new camera of the overflow spewing. Roy says he hasn't seen this kind of display for more than five years. It has been the wettest January on record in Scotland.





A bit further along, just north of Dalwhinnie, I made this short video on the road declared to be the most dangerous road in the UK. Not that I could tell, in fact I thought the one lane road I captured in a later video was far more exciting, as far as roads go.




To get the Dyckhoff property on the river Garry, you must drive on one of the notorious single lane roads that are common in the Highlands.


We did encounter one other vehicle on our way out, the other driver backed up a short bit to a pull off and we were on our way in no time. Of course you need to keep a close eye for cars that might be coming down the road in the opposite direction.

We inspected the house which is under construction and walked the Dyckhoff's land which is quite beautifully situated above the River Garry.




If Cecilia ever sees this, she may be angry with me for putting it up (and should feel free to ask me to take it down), but here's a portrait of her, sitting on a rock on her land.


The house itself is near Tomdoun -- a place name on a map with a hotel where we had a tasty lunch. There seems to be good fishing at Tomdoun, the hotel has the fishing rights for twenty four miles of river and Loch shore. A day ticket to fish is 25 pounds and it seems that the fishing may be rather technical -- just up my alley.

Here's a portrait I took of Roy in the bar at Tomdoun.


We returned to St Andrews via a different route through Glencoe which offers spectacular scenery though our view was hampered by the broken low clouds. The photo at the top of the post is of the peaks as we headed out of Glencoe headed east. By following the links to any of the photos you'll get to a small album with a few other photos from the trip.

Thanks to Cecilia and Roy.