2007-02-25

varjohaltia: (Default)
2007-02-25 09:38 pm

Yum!

Two notable events from the weekend:

1) [livejournal.com profile] moonwolf made some General Tso's chicken. From scratch, from a recipe found on 4chan. I chopped the fresh ginger and garlic for the sauce. I thought I had tasted some pretty good General Tso's before, but this was really, really good. I think fresh ginger in particular is something no Chinese food should be without; it makes an amazing difference.

2) I finished Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk Trilogy, consisting of Pashazade, Effendi and Felaheen. It's an alternate history semi-cyberunk noir detective kind of trilogy. Mr. Grimwood apparently hangs out in a group with China MiƩville, and there are some similarities. The prose paints places that do not exist rather well, and the language is colorful and vocabulary-building. The aspects of North-African and Ottoman culture seem both well researched and intentionally fake at the same time. Regardless, unlike MiƩville, I rather enjoy Grimwood's books, and can recommend these ones as well.