Music meme

Who doesn't love a music meme? And thanks to astro I'm doing one! Also view cat's version.

1. Presidents of the united states - Peaches

Last weekend this song got stuck in my head out of nowhere, now I sing it all over the place. I was never really a fan of these guys, but man they had some stupid catchy lyrics.

2. Nine Inch Nails - Lights in the sky

From the new album 'The Slip', Deliciously sad and depressing, simple piano and vocals, what's not to like?

3. Carly Commando - Every Day

Speaking of piano, I still listen to this song regularly, it is a beautiful piano piece in my mind. Warning though, the youtube clip above is a bit raw sounding.

4. Harry Gregson-WIlliams - Humvee Chase (Hybrid Remix)

Now it is time to move onto serps favourite genre ORCHESTRAL BREAKS! Lets kick it off with this rare Hybrid remix which I only got my hands on this afternoon (shameful I know). The youtube version is a live version and sounds terrible, but it is all you get! boo! FYI - Humvee is my favourite of the HGW Hybrid remixes.

5. Chance Jumpers - Vendetta (Ilya Malyuev pres Baltic Sound Remix)

More ORCHESTRAL BREAKS (yes it has to be said in caps) now this track has it going on, every time I listen to it I feel like it would be a perfect soundtrack to some sort of epic space battle/exploration or something. I am also a sucker for stutter guitars in long ambient breakdowns. I am also dumbfounded how they fit some much sound into the frequencies they do, god damn you talented producers :( .

6. His Boy Elroy - Step Into The Light (The Emissary & Starfire Remix)

This is also another off tap ORCHESTRAL BREAKS track (it's in bold this time for effect, do your biggest im-doing-a-hard-poo face strain when you say ORCHESTRAL BREAKS). Did I mention I am also a fan of piano breakdowns? I think you know I am, plus this track has this whole battlestar, african drums sound going on to it, obviously sounds like it should be part of a big budget soundtrack. These guys deserve every good thing they get out of this track, it is an absolute gem.

Be warned, the above video link is only the original mix, doesn't nearly give you the energy and precision you get out of hearing the remix, but all the elements in the original are used to perfection in the remix.

7. Brainchild Symmetry C (Lange Breakbeat Remix)

And just to finish it off, here is another big breakeat track, probably one of my favourite all time breakbeat tracks, not nearly as tight programming wise as the rest listed here, but damn close, and when do you expect for something made in 1999 anyway? I love this track for nostalgic reasons, it was an end of an era for trance when it hit the year 2000 I tell you and it was already on its way down by then, shame it has been 8+ years and things never recovered!

Pizza experiment success

Last two weekends I've been making pizzas from the ground up again. It is quite satisfying doing it, and now that we have a Kenwood chef, I don't have to spend 20 to 30 minutes making the dough the old fashioned way by doing the old cirle-wall-with-flour-and-add-yeast/water/sugar-mixture-to-the-middle-and-stirr, I just just chuck it all in the mixer and 10 minutes later, BAM, pizza dough that old needs 15 minutes to rise and be ready for consumption.

So anyway, here is a new success i've made, it is a roasted sweet potato with fetta, pine nuts and basil.

Astro and I have been getting this fruit/vegetable box delivered most weeks since what seems forever now and a few months ago we started getting sweet potato in the box (the box is mostly full of seasonal stuff, so it can be a little random in what you get sometimes). Being the complete food idiot I am, I had no idea what you could use sweet potato for, astro found a few uses for it (Irish stew being one of them) but we'd say we would think of something to make with them, but end up getting lazy/sidetracked and produce nothing.

One day near a place I go to get my eat on for lunch, I noticed someone using sweet potato slices on a pizza, it was the first time I had ever noticed seeing that (sidenote: I think once you start consuming a lot of raw ingedients with cooking, you start noticing what is put in your food from take away places) so basically I thought "I'm gonna give this sucker a whirl.

So here is the reciepe:

roasted sweet potato with fetta, pine nuts and basil

pizza base

1. 400gm of plain flour (I'm gonna give wholemeal flour a go next I reckon)
2. 100gm of semolina flour, if you don't have this, just sift (sp?) a 100gm of plain flour a few times to get to fine. Although semolina gives it a great texture.
3. teaspoon of salt

4. Combine above ingredients.

5. half a tablespoon of yeast
6. 400mls of warm water
7. half a tablespoon of caster sugar (if you don't have that I've used, brown sugar and that was fine, it just needs to combine with the yeast for all that important bread chemistry to happen.)

Combine 5, 6 and 7. stir well until all the yeast is not clumpy and combined into the water.

8. Shove in kenwood chef and mix for 10 minutes on setting one (pretty much the second lowest setting on any other mixer)

After 10 minutes, put cling wrap over the bowl and let it sit for about 15 minutes, maybe a few more.

meanwhile....

9. grab your sweet potato, don't bother peeling the skin, just chop into fine cubes, as much as you want n your pizza, then chuck those babies into the oven at about 220ish degrees, for about 15 minutes (10 if you don't want them well cooked) I try to do this while I'm waiting for the dough to do its mixing/rising.

10. grab your other ingredients up (fetta, basil, pine nuts, tomato base sauce), open your packet of pine nuts and try a few. chop up as much of your ingredients you feel like eating (don't chop the pinenuts), there is no rules here, I don't try to put stacks of fetta everywhere though, I try to be pretty liberal with the basil, although my basil plant(s) are starting to run a bit dry!

11. once you've waited 15 minutes for the dough, grab a chunk off, flour your bench and rolling pin (if you got one) and start rolling that sucker really fine. I like to make my bases as thin as possible, but still be able to pick it up and move it somewhere, I also like to make this pizza in squares, go figure.

12. grab your sauce and whack it on (instead of the bottled tomato pizza base styled sauce you get at the supermarket, you could always make your own with 2 cans of tomatoes, some basil and garlic/olive oil heated up and reduced in a saucepan, its awesome in pizzas), grab all your other stuff, liberly spread everywhere (make sure that the roasted sweet potatoes are the main ingredient though!

13. Transfer to a foil sheet that has olive oil and a bit of flour/semolina on it (So it doesn't stick) than put that on a tray, put in the 220 degree oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how well you want to pizza base to be cooked.

14. EAT IT, YUUUUMMMMMMMMMM!