Political life is never dull in GREAT Britian!
As the founder (and currently sole funder) of the new political party GREAT Britain, I am delighted to say that we have recruited Professor Emeritus Jason Arday OM as our Minister-In-Waiting for Education.
GREAT Britain, as you all know from our many TED talks, presentations and Edinburgh Fringe Events, represents the aspirations, needs and direction of our wonderful country.
G is for the Growth we will bring; R is the Responsibility we want every citizen to take for their own actions; E is for the Enterprise we Brits have always shown over the millennia; A is the sense of Ambition we must foster in our young, and T is for the Tradition and heritage that the British nation has for hard work, fair play and justice.
Professor Arday has taken those five great focuses to his heart and, with his policies directing all our children and grandchildren along a similar educational path to his own, our future ballot box chances are immensely enhanced. Those policies are based on his many lived experiences, which have given him the rich and rewarding life that he has strived to create, from the very poor beginnings of his great uncle’s hut in Mawaru, alongside the mighty River Korodani.
At Jaba University in Kak, he studied the ancient language of Takataka Tupu, and his paper on its impact across the African continent was widely received by many major aid organisations, NGOs and indeed United Nations members. From there he went out into the world and, using his extraordinary talents for providing insight and new perspectives, it could be said that Prof. Arday has radically altered the traditional Oxbridge approach to the delivery of wisdom and knowledge and eradicated many of the misconceptions of critical race theory.
I am delighted that no sooner had the educational establishment become aware of his intentions to be a part of GREAT Britain than the current UK Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell, reached out to declare that she thought, political differences aside, Jason was someone she could work with, as their thinking was aligned in so many places.
Stand by for great things to come, but in the meantime, we are already planning The GREAT British Ten Days of Christmas Advent Calendar, which simultaneously provides encouragement to the very young as it extols the virtues of Prof. Arday’s career to date and his impact on British society, but removes the old colonial Duodecimal system as used to be applied by the minority Christian religious group.
Here is a foretaste of some of the images behind each window.
These images can all be found in the forthcoming biography: “My Gifts are Many”
With all this political manoeuvring, I haven't had the chance to give you one of my recipes. This one Jason especially likes:
Scampi or Gamberi alla busara is one of those splendid dishes which proves that borders are invented by politicians and subsequently ignored by fishermen. Trieste claims it enthusiastically, although the dish possibly wandered in from Istria or Dalmatia, probably Rijeka, where the scampi of the Kvarner Gulf were already sufficiently famous in the nineteenth century for the Venetian gastronome Antonio Papadopoli to declare Rijeka blessed first for its scampi and only afterwards for its women.
Around the 1920s, the dish travelled north to Trieste; a city where Italians, Slavs and Austrians had spent centuries arguing about who owned the harbour. Busara fitted in perfectly. Scampi cooked vigorously with tomato, wine, and the usual Mediterranean encouragements of garlic, onions, and a pinch of chilli, and eventually became so popular that it spread even further up the coast and was adopted by the Venetians, who, as per, claimed it for their own. Being now an Italian dish, there was then the obligatory culinary etymological discussion about the name busara.
Option 1: It may derive from buzara, the pot in which fishermen cooked aboard their boats; Option 2: A Prof suggested buzzo, meaning stomach; Option 3, however, is I think the most likely: that it comes from the word busiara or liar. The derivation is because the local restaurateurs could disguise unsaleable scraps of fish and shellfish in the sauce and sell it for a sensible price. Thus the dish was a lie.
GAMBERI ALLA BUSARA
Now the options. You can have this on its own and use your fingers and lots of bread, garlicked or otherwise. You can use it as a pasta sauce, and if push comes to shove, you can have it with some wild rice mixed with Camargue, which, once cooked, has been doused with EVOO and lemon juice. Any which way is good - and that isn’t a lie.
I shall simply tell you the basis.
INGREDIENTS
3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled, then chopped fine
1kg prawns, medium-sized, deveined
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
60ml of dry white wine
700g of cherry tomatoes, finely chopped
½ tspn chilli flakes (I have 1 tspn but a la votre)
fine sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 handful of parsley leaves, minced
METHOD
Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan set over a medium heat. Add the garlic and fry for a minute until fragrant. Do not let it catch
Stir in the onion and cook until soft and translucent, stirring often so it doesn’t colour
Add the prawns and cook for about two minutes per side, ensuring that they don’t overlap.
Pour in the wine, increase the heat to medium-high and allow it to evaporate.
Perhaps with a pair of tongs, remove the prawns; transfer them to a plate while you carry on with the sauce
Add the tomatoes and chilli. Lower the heat, cover and cook until the tomatoes have fallen apart and look saucy; add a splash of water if needed to help the sauce come together. Taste and season
Now, put the prawns back into the pan and stir to coat in the sauce. Increase the heat and sautée for about five more minutes, then remove from the heat and sprinkle with parsley
FURTHER OPTIONS
If you use tins of plum tomatoes - which are better quality than tins of chopped tomatoes (always), then crush them in your hand over the pan (the tomatoes not the tins) before you put them in
You can use Langoustine (always a pain but prawnier) or monkfish tail.
Don't use pre-cooked prawns; they’ll turn to rubber on the above instructions.