• Victoria Sponge Pasta Cake
    Victoria Sponge Pasta Cake

    Pasta Cake Cut Open
    Pasta Cake Cut Open
    Wanting to surprise my wife for her birthday recently, I followed a link sent to me by stumbleupon. TheCiao Chow Linda blog gave me a brilliant recipe for a cake that looks like a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese! The only trouble was that it was in American measurements and terms so I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.

    So I made it up as I went along. The original cake required chocolate meatballs with chopped nuts. The recipe seemed a bit complicated for me, so I made the meatballs out of Rice Krispies and chocolate. I could have made them a little smaller or the cake a little bigger to get the proportions right.

    The cake is a basic Delia Smith Victoria Sponge Cake and the icing is a softish butter icing that I forced out of an icing bag. The biggest hole I had in the piping set was vermicelli sized, so it was quite hard work. Try to get a spaghetti sized hole if you can, it will be much easier. The sauce is Mrs Beetons strawberry and gooseberry jam. I warmed it up so that it would pour more easily, but this did kind of melt the icing in a couple of places. It also made it very sweet.

    Anyway, she was suitably surprised – as was everyone else. You get a lot of impact for relatively little work. It is a little odd having something that looks savoury being so sweet, though!

  • Tzitzikias or Greek Cicada
    Tzitzikias or Greek Cicada
    I found one eventually. I only had to follow the sound to one of the noisy little blighters that sounded as if it was at head height.

    The cicadas in Greece are very loud. Locally they are called Tzitzikias, which is a very good name for them because that is the sound they make. I was amazed at how loud they could be. Midday in an olive grove was almost deafening.

    My wife and children said, “what noise?” They only heard it when I pointed it out to them. Mind you it’s the same with many other visual details that I take for granted that everyone else has seen. I guess some people just aren’t interested in stuff and pass it by.

    I suppose their bodies are about 40mm long. As you can see from the photo, they are very well camoulaged and you have to get right up close to them to see them. The noise appears to come from the tip of the tail which vibrates. I’m not sure I could live with that all year round. At midday they are at their loudest. You don’t want to be in the middle of Tzitzikias love festival – trust me!

  • So, I was on the plane to Greece… I had the learn greek podcast on the headphones while I skimmed through the phrasebook. I’d better try and learn the numbers, I thought.

    Deka is ten… Of course it is. And twelve is dodeka – mI remembered making models of Dodecahedrons at school. It all makes sense. and Eight is okto – as in octopus!

    I didn’t eat any, but they did follow me around.

    octopus fishing from the shore
    octopus fishing from the shore
    I saw our wonderful landlord, Vasilis, hurling a lure out to sea. It was a double hooked thing with a bright red rubber crab attached to it.

    The reel was open on one side so that by swing the hook around a few times and letting go, you could get the lure out a good 40 to 50 metres. leave it for a while and then drag it back in. Vasilis didn’t have any luck. He was just having a bit of Sunday morning fun with his mates. But the image of him on the shore stuck and I had to draw this little picture of him. He reckons the octopus don’t really come until September. I think he was encouraging me too book another holiday! He was, if not a sucessfull octopus fisherman, a good businessman.
    greece-flowerI then began to notice a low-growing wild flower. It seemed to be happiest growing in cracks in the concrete. The flowers reminded me of octopus legs. They uncurled in a fern-like way with two rows of flowers on the top of the stem. They reminded me of suckers and the way octopus tentacles curl up in the same way. I’ve tride to find out what they are called, but no luck so far.

    octopotWe visited the site of Ancient Mycenae, which is truly spectacular. The museum was filled with pots that were painted in my favourite style of Ancient Greek decoration. The octopus featured on quite a few pots but this one was the most impressive. About 60 cm high, it is covered with this beautifully intricate and perfectly designed and proportioned octopus pattern.

    Many of the patterns remind me of a style that comes naturally to designers using Adobe Illustrator. Has Ancient Greece inspired the modern designers or is it the digital tool that makes them work in a similar way?

    I didn’t get to eat any. I did in Japan and wasn’t very impressed. I think you have to be brought up to it, and the Greeks certainly certainly seem to have been brought up to enjoy their octopi.