Venison Rendang breadballs

I bought some desiccated coconut in order to make the beef rendang meatballs recipe, with which I've had success in the past (I had a very little of the coconut milk powder left that I got as a bargain in the market). But when I came to defrost the bag of venison mince that I had separated out into several portions when I originally bought it, I discovered that it really was exceptionally tiny even by my standards; probably only a couple of ounces, as opposed to the "500g beef" expected by the recipe -- although I had definitely never used that much in the past! But I had already gone through all the labour of grinding up my own curry paste in the pestle and mortar from whole cloves and star anise and pounding chopped nuts, onion and garlic to a pulp, so switching recipes at this point wasn't really an option. I improvised by padding out the small quantity of meat with a couple of slices of rather crusty bread and a whole grated turnip, on the grounds that the meat was basically just a vehicle for the spices anyhow.

( Very successful )

Multiple Musketeers musicals (part 1)

I was interested to discover that Rudolf Friml ("Rose Marie", "The Vagabond King") had written a musical "Three Musketeers" in the 1920s, which apparently had great success on both Broadway and in the West End and featured Dennis King in the lead (and Webster Booth as Buckingham!) Intriguingly, it is also advertised as featuring lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse, whom it turns out had a second career in musical theatre in the early part of his life.

But from all I have been able to find out about it, sadly, I think the reason why the work remains practically unknown is that the music just wasn't that good. ( Read more... )