Dumplings ... Ah! Dumplings

You cannot beat a good dumpling.

Now, the Chinese cook dumplings as part of some of their excellent cuisine; but what does anyone but someone from th North of England know about the fineries of a suet dumpling? That was a rhetorical question. Here's my recipe for simple and straightforward recipe for a few dumplings:

100 grammes of self raising flour 50 grammes of vegetarian suet Cold water to mix to a stiff dough (I always find that the exact amount needed varies according to the water content of the flour) Salt and any other flavourings you like (eg pepper, chopped parsley)

Mix the lot together and if it is dry, add a bit more water; if it's too sloppy, add some more flour and suet in the 2: 1 proportion. You don't need to beat this mixture and I use a fork to turn it over for a couple of minutes. Use your hands if you like instead.

Let the mix stand for 10 - 20 minutes before using it. Then shape the dough into golf ball sized pieces and place them on top of a stew that you will be cooking in a covered pan or pot for a further 15 - 20 minutes. These dumplings should swell quite a bit and will be lovely and moist and open textured.

Please note, suet dumplings are BEST if cooked in the oven and if you cook them in the oven, do so on the top of a stew in a covered dish for around 45 - 60 minutes to ensure the dumplings are fantastically swollen, moist, open textured, golden brown and crispy.

Note the vegetarian suet in the recipe: that's because I'm a veggie. There is beef suet, too, if you are an animal muscle eater.

Now, I am using a new method to post this message and am trying to attach some photographs of my latest batch: as it came out of the oven and then shortly after I'd eaten some of them. It should be obvious which is which.

DW

Clowns arrive at the circus

Don't you just know when a clown arrives in the circus ring? Welcome George Osborne!

Osborne is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK: a member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet.

Last weekend this clown went to Uganda and spent the weekend in a village outside Kampala. He came back and went straight from the airport to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme studio to be interviewed by an unsuspecting John Humphrys. I can't think why he bothered.

He blustered into the studio and said that if he became Chancellor after the next election he would spend £500 miilion of our money eradicating Malaria. Yes, Malaria is a sub Saharan Africa curse and yes it needs to be eradicated.

This clown's logic was to provide nets for everyone to sleep under and to provide medicines to cure anyone who catches the dread disease. His further logic was that since everyone would then be well all of the time, productivity would rise and infant mortality would fall. Laudable, Coco, laudable.

What this clown failed to do was to follow this logic:

Where does Malaria come from? Oh, from a certain kind of female Mosquito (the Anopheles) How are the Mosquito allowed to flourish as they do? Oh, it's because of the vast amounts of still and stagnant water that lies all over Africa in the rainy season where the insects breed without let or hindrance So if you control the breeding grounds you control the disease? Yes

If you control the mosquito, you control the disease and then you don't need to cure anyone. Does that mean by controlling the insect and the disease you control things for ever; but if you buy nets and medicines to cure people you need to keep doing that for ever because the Mosquito will continue to thrive, nets will rip, tablets need to be replaced once consumed? Yes, yes, yes ...

By the way, Coco, there is as yet no cure for Malaria other than prevention. This is well known by anyone who has spent more than a weekend in an African village. Moreover, these insects don't just bite at night so nets might help a bit but not all of the time.

Another question sprang to my mind: why did the Shadow Chancellor take this jolly, sorry fact finding trip? After all, shouldn't it at least have been the Shadow Foreign Secretary? Ah, I see, the Shadow Foreign Secretary is the Clown in Chief, William "Billy the Beer" Hague. Good point: no point sending him as he would start by trying to forge a political alliance between warring factions in South America or Europe or somewhere before starting on the African Malaria problem. That alliance would be scheduled to come into effect in, say, 2012 or so ... forget Coco in Chief then. So that should have left the Shadow International Development: erm, who's that? Who knows? Oh!

More misery scheduled for Africa then.

Finally, Coco, take a look at a bit of African history and you will see that THEY USED TO control the Malaria by controlling the Mosquito by controlling the lying water.

These stupid people get on my nerves but there will be countless jollies as these clowns set up yet more circus rings in a trusting and unsuspecting Africa.

DW