Wake The Bracken

NO!  That Is Not A Typo

You may remember that bafune Sydney Powell whanging on about how she was going to 'release the Kraken', which turned out to be a species of shrimp.  Krill, even.

     Not to be confused with "Krell", who were the alien superculture from Altair IV.  Krill are teeny tiny shrimp.  Art!

Krill.  Delicious when cooked.

Krell.  Relicts of a dead civilisation.

     Where were we?

     O yes.  Art!

     This is Bibimbap - "Bap" being Korean for "Rice" - that I made using a different recipe.  Conrad strongly suspects there are an infinite number of Bibimbap recipes using different ingredients, with variations in the vegetables used and how to pr

     ANYWAY this particular recipe required 120 g of 'Bracken'.  "Bracken"? I asked myself.  "Ho ho, Korean's have a food ingredient that's spelled like the fern we find in the countryside of This Sceptred Isle."

     That'll teach me.  It really is a fern, known as 'Fernbrake', which is used in Sork cooking.  You can't get it in the UK, and I didn't fancy taking out a second mortgage to have it specially imported, so of course - obviously! - I looked for substitutes and found that watercress and asparagus were possibilities.  Being cheap, I made do with pea shoots, which seem to have the same consistency.  Art!

NO SMUTTY PUNS OR I'LL REMOTE NUCLEAR DETONATE YOU

     Here an aside.  Don't whinge, I'm doing you a favour.  Whilst looking up pea shoots in order to get an image, the word "Tocque" popped into my mind.  As ever, I had to check this up on teh Interwebz to see if it was a real word or if Steve is simply generating word salad.

     Surprise!  Art?

     It's a variety of headwear, being a small cap that may or may not have a rolled brim, and a bit of plumage sticking out of the top.

     Back to bracken.  You'd think that the sheer excitement of discovering what bracken is in Sork cookery would be enough for one day, but No!

     Last night I had a dream.  Not about Manderley, rather about going to a restaurant that also sold foodstuffs, and after dining, asking one of the chefs if they had bracken?

     O yes, he explained, and pointed to a chiller cabinet.  There, on the top shelf away to starboard, was a very small bundle of what looked like withered watercress (bracken is normally sold dried).  Dream Conrad was astonished and exhilarated.  

     "How much is it?" I asked, stunned at so easily finding a rare Sork cuisine requisite.

     "£15.50," he explained, at which point Dream Conrad's cheapness kicked in and he promptly lost interest.  A packet of pea shoots from Morrisons is only £1.20, after all.

     I think you can see where today's title comes from.

Gosari Namul - fried bracken as a side-dish

Continuing With Sork Culture

Let me explain that National Nickname.  If I refer to 'Nork' with a sneer, then we're talking about North Korea*.  "Sork" refers to South Korea.

     I have been making comments about Sork dramas on Netflix, and how rarely guns turn up in them.  For the record, I'm on my eleventh series, "Alice", and prior to this there had been exactly one scene where a detective used a gun.  Art!

     "Alice" has an honest-to-goodness gun battle.

     ANYWAY Your Humble Scribe did a little digging, and it turns out Sork gun laws and controls are EXTREMELY strict, even more so that the UK, which is saying something.  This is probably why the bad guys use clubs, axes, knives and bits of scaffold pole.

     You can, as a Sork civilian, own a shotgun or air-rifle, but you have to jump through hoops within hoops to get either, and yes, you need to perform the same athletic exertions to own an air-rifle as a shotgun.  Art!

     As you can see, the overall trend is downward.  Over the 10 years between 2009 and 2019 the total comes to 259, or say 26 per year.  We're not going to attract ire by comparing these figures with any other country; that's up to you and your imagination.

     HOWEVER the howling irony here is that every Sork male over the age of <checks> 18 will have done national service in the armed forces, meaning that millions of men (women don't have to join up but may volunteer) are familiar with firearms and know how to use them, especially since they have to do refresher training every year.  Art!

Bad eyesight no exemption

"The Sea Of Sand"

Our doomed yet gallant Italian soldiery are beginning to understand that there are far worse things in the universe than a British soldier.

Where were the other Sahariana’s?

          Sergente Cappriccio started to jog away from the depot, casting a backwards look over his shoulder every few seconds.  He deserved to make it, thought Dominione.  Where were the other cars?  Had they been stopped?

          The last car, driven by Caporale Britoli alone, lay under a camouflage netting stripped from the British truck park.  When the second black tank powered past, to move the static first tank by pushing it, Britoli fired the engine, revved it to a screech, jammed the accelerator with a stick and let the clutch in before jumping clear.  The car shot forward, bounced off a pile of crates and into the low rear end of the enemy vehicle, creating an enormous smashing explosion of glass.

          Britoli rolled to his feet, only looking back long enough to witness more monsters emerging from the black tank, which had been physically shoved into a mud hut.  They moved in an almost comical manner, bobbing as they ran, the monsters, but they carried weapons.

          A red flare soared into the rippling desert air, the signal from the Tenente for all vehicles to fall back.  Britoli saw it, and then nothing else as a great, thundering wave of blackness rolled over him.

Steel Yourself -

For a very big bang.  You ought to know by now how Conrad has never lost his childish delight in Things Exploding, and, much to his delight, he found a clip on the BBC News website of just the very thing.  Art!

     This is the Redcar steel plant, long derelict and about to be demolished.  How do you flatten a structure like this?  WITH EXPLOSIVES!  They actually only blew out one side of the plant, in order to have gravity come in and assist.  Art!

     Rather than using an extra 1,500 lbs of explosive to blow the whole thing apart, the demolition team undercut the furnace on one side, causing it to collapse neatly into it's own footprint.

"The War Illustrated"

Just to set the scene, we're ashore in Italy as the liberation/occupation of said country continues in late 1943, the Teutons now occupying the country outside of Allied control.  Art!

     A sterling reminder that the Battle Of The Atlantic was still taking place; whilst the Teuton U-boats were still a menace, they were definitely on the back foot.  This one is a victim to a South Canadian Avenger bomber operating off a carrier, and the crew are doomed as she is sinking by the stern.  Unless they open hatches and get out in the next couple of seconds, they face a verrrrry short future.  

Finally -

Gonna knock it on the head here, I've still got another four episodes of "Alice" to watch.

*  If I say it with a smile on my lips, then we're talking about Norwegians.  Skal!