Cooking is great, but sometimes not cooking is just as good. So when your houseguest offers to make you dinner, you don't say no, especially not after a weekend of clambering around in the ceiling, mounting brackets in the laundry room for the dryer to go up onto, planting pumpkins, cooking roast pork and fixing the leak in the guttering over the back door.
So on Sunday evening Liz E Bear set about putting on the mince and boiling up some pasta. I'm pretty sure that I didn't set foot in the kitchen, so her secret family recipe will remain a mystery for now. I can say that I was awfully impressed; fettuccine smothered in tomatoey mince with onions and carrots and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, fresh grated parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.
It went down a treat, particularly as I didn't have to do the cooking. Woohoo. I did get lumbered with dishes duty thereafter, but it was a a breeze compared to the pile that emerges after I cook a roast.
So Liz E, you can cook for us anytime.
ZODIAC and AMERICAN GANGSTER - WARNING - May Contain Spoilers! (But nothing you wouldn't expect)In a strange string of coincidences, it appears that
Ridley Scott and
David Fincher have a bizarre cosmic link: 1, They both directed films in the Alien Franchise (
Alien and
Alien3 respectively); 2, they both directed overly long crime epics in 2007 (
American Gangster and
Zodiac); and 3, we watched both of those movies over the past 2 weekends. Spooky eh.
I've already vented my opinions on Zodiac
here, but I'll elaborate a little more on it now. Basically, I think that it was a personal story that Fincher wanted to tell, even though it really was a bit of a non-story. The Zodiac Killer, whom the film claims is a man that the police had all but caught but couldn't pin the crimes to, is a baby among serial killers now, only ever taking about 7 victims. At the time it was major news in San Francisco, but unfortunately Fincher's attempts to turn this unresolved situation into a thriller flopped into a non-event. There are no real twists or turns, as you could expect from a script based on true life. High point was Robert Downey Jr as sodden crime reporter Paul Avery. Aside from that,
Zodiac was interesting at best, tedious at worst.
What really ruined it for me, though, was what I saw in the "making of" doco included on the disc. In an attempt to achieve complete verisimilitude with the 1969 landscape, Fincher wanted a tree in the background of a lakeside shot. To do this, the Art Department chainsawed an existing tree to death, and helicoptered it into a large hole dug in the background of the shot. Did Hollywood not learn from the fiasco surrounding
The Beach? A tree died to create an illusion. Can this be right?
In contrast,
American Gangster was also long and drawn out, but more watchable than
Zodiac.
Harris Savides extrudes a gritty late 60's-early 70's New York/New Jersey from the pallet, and Denzel Washington was predictably stunning as druglord
Frank Lucas. Russel Crowe was typically underdone as the virtuous New Jersey cop
Richie Roberts who, unlike the Zodiac crowd, managed to actually crack the case and bring Lucas down.
The key issue I really had with
American Gangster was its marketing. The trailer suggests a gripping action movie, some escapist cops and robbers violence for a Saturday night. It's even labelled in the video store as Action. This is simply not true.
American Gangster is a true crime biopic, like
Zodiac, and it feels like it. The fact that it took two and a half hours to get to the point that no-one in the New York or New Jersey Police believed that Lucas could be a kingpin because he was black indicates just how slowly the story developed.
Overall, it was a satisfying watch, but it seems that Ridley Scott has fallen into the trap so many Hollywood directors have since the success of
LOTR, that longer is better at the expense of good storytelling (Look, even PJ didn't get that right. Who really sits through the last 20 minutes of
ROTK?). Like Zodiac, for the story that was being told,
American Gangster could've been shorter, probably by about 20 or 25 minutes. For anyone with a personal interest in US History, particularly its crime figures, both films are well-made interpretations of a time when killers and druglords held a sway over the population, before police technology began to eat away their anonymity and put them behind bars. But neither of them will be making their way onto my DVD shelf.
Heat oil in a pan, add the mince and brown. Season with salt and pepper, vinegar, worcester, nutmeg, and thyme. Cook these flavours into the meat, then add the tomato paste and reduce. Cook until the moisture is absorbed, then add the tinned tomatoes. 
Mix the bacon and garlic, then fry until crispy. Put your pasta in to cook at this point.
Add the mushrooms to the mince to heat through. 
Rinse a handful of cherry tomatoes. 
Add the cherry tomatoes to the bacon pan for just a couple of minutes at the end, enough time to soften and warm a little. Toss well in the garlicky salty goodness of the bacon.
Mix the bacon and tomatoes into the mince at the end, then dish over long pasta, dressed with freshly grated parmesan cheese, freshly ground black pepper, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. 
