Blog & White

Quite flowery, otherwise just another ale. Contains malted barley, wheat.

Lancaster Brewery, Lancaster, England. 4.1% alcohol.

Ingrédients

• 6 oeufs
• 90g sucre
• 20g sucre vanillé
• 30g glucose
• 5 dL lait
• 2 dL crème fluide

Préparation

Séparer les oeufs, conserver les blancs au réfrigérateur. Fouetter les jaunes d'œufs avec le sucre, le sucre vanillé et le glucose. Faire chauffer le lait et le verser sur le mélange. Laisser épaissir pour en faire une crème anglaise. Laisser refroidir une nuit au réfrigérateur. Fouetter la crème, l'incorporer au mélange, puis incorporer les blancs battus en neige. Passer à la sorbetière.

Commentaires

• La glace n'est pas trop dûre au sortir du congélateur, on peut facilement la servir.

“Crisp with a full bouquet of spices, fruit and floral aromas. Smell: coffee, roasted malt, smoky. Taste: dark chocolate, molasses.”

Quite bitter, too roasted, almost burnt. Contains malted barley, wheat.

Lancaster Brewery, Lancaster, England. 4.6% alcohol.

Ingrédients

• 4 oeufs
• 80g sucre
• 20g glucose
• 5 dL lait
• 2 bananes mûres
• 30g beurre doux
• 2 dL crème fluide

Préparation

Séparer les oeufs, conserver les blancs au réfrigérateur. Fouetter les jaunes d'œufs avec le sucre et le glucose. Faire chauffer le lait et le verser sur le mélange. Laisser épaissir pour en faire une crème anglaise. Faire frire les bananes au beurre. Les passer au mixer, puis mélanger la crème anglaise peu à peu dans les bananes. Laisser refroidir une nuit au réfrigérateur. Battre les blancs d'œufs en neige, et en mélanger un tiers à la crème à la banane. Fouetter la crème, l'incorporer au mélange, puis incorporer le reste des blancs. Passer à la sorbetière.

Commentaires

• Très bon goût de banane, au contraire de la plupart des glaces industrielles.
• Trop de blancs d'œufs, on a l'impression de manger des cristaux. Trois blancs auraient probablement suffit.

© Amazon.fr

Second volume of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, following Quicksilver. Divided into two books, Bonanza and Juncto, the volume alternate between one and the other to place the narration in chronological order.

Bonanza

1689. Jack has lost his memory due to syphillitis, but slowly wakes up in Algiers as a galley slave. With some companions they form a Cabal, and plan to rob silver from a spanish ship with the help of their owner who would get a share of it. The theft succeeds, but instead of silver they find gold. They are chased by the Duke of Arcachon who expected to steal this gold for himself (through his privateers). In Cairo, Jack and his companions finally confront the Duke and Jack, knowing the the same man had enslaved Eliza years before, cuts his head off and sents it back to France. The Cabal then flees to India, where Jack stays for some years and meets Enoch Root again. The Cabal uses part of the gold to build a ship, with which they carry wootz steel, silk and spices to Japan, where they exchange it against quicksilver. They then cross the Pacific Ocean toward New Spain where they sell the quicksilver to various silver mines. While a part of the Cabal remains on the ship, sell more quicksilver to silver mines in Peru and cross the Cape Horn, Jack and other members of the Cabal walk through Mexico (and are inbetween arrested by the Inquisition, but manage to get released). They rejoin the crew of the ship, and, since Jack received a letter from Eliza asking him to join her in Qwghlm. The letter was however a forgery, and Jack is made prisoner by the son of the late Duke of Arcachon who wants revenge for his father's death and also wants to recover the gold stolen thirteen years earlier from the spanish ship. Jack also learns he was betrayed by one of his companion, who was himself let to believe that his family suffered a lot because of Jack. The gold is said to come from the mines of King Solomon and have special alchemical properties. Jack claims it was all used for building the ship. D'Arcachon lets the remaining members of the Cabal (several died or quit over the past years) leave with their ship, only to notice that the hull of the ship, under the waterline, is plated with gold. Jack is eventually taken back to France.

Juncto

1689. Eliza's wealth has been stolen by Jean Bart the privateer in the name of the King of France Louis XIV. Eliza knows she has to accept this if she wants to stay away from prison, and she soon starts doing business as usual. She is also invited by the Duke of Arcachon, and eventually recognizes him, from the smell of rotten fish, that he is the one who made her a slave when she was young. She wants to poison him at his birthday party, but on that day, she learns that the Duke had been killed in Cairo by Jack. She is then forced to marry the Duke's son to protect herself. When von Hackelheber learns that the Solomon gold has been stolen by Jack, he believes that Eliza is also behind it, and he kidnaps her son. For revenge, Eliza organizes a transfer of fund from Lyon to Hackelheber's offices in London. Thanks to the help of her friend Jean Bart, Hackelheber's silver is stolen, and the banker is ruined. Eliza also helps Bob Shaftoe, Jack's brother and soldier in the English army, to save the love of his life who is a slave owned by an English lord. Bob kills the lord during a battle, and later goes and frees her, marrying her on the spot. Meanwhile, Daniel Waterhouse manages to convince Newton to become the new head of the Royal Mint. In the end. Jack has arrived in France and meets with Louis XIV who orders him to go back to England and sabotage the Royal Mint to prevent England to become a strong power again. In the same meeting, Jack also meets Eliza, who quickly tells hime they must not see each other again if they want to stay alive. Jack then goes back to London. Also, on her way back from the Rhine in the previous book, Eliza had taken under her protection a German heiress and her daughter Caroline. After the death of the mother, Eliza placed the daughter in the care of Leibniz. Caroline is pressented to become the next queen of England.

© Amazon.fr

First volume of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, divided into three books.

Quicksilver

1713. Daniel Waterhouse is convinced by Enoch Root to leave Massachussets and return to England to defuse a conflict between supporters of Leibnitz and those of Newton as who invented calculus. While his ship is under attack by pirates, trying to leave the coasts of Massachusets, Daniel remembers his youth from 1661 to 1673. Daniel has met Isaac Newton at Cambridge and, while Newton was completely absorbed by his research, prevented him from dying by forcing him to eat and sleep. During the Plague, he fled to the countryside where he met members of the Royal Society and studied with them on various topics. Later he returned to Cambridge, became a Doctor and a fellow of the Royal Society. Daniel witnessed or was involeved in several political plots during this period: he was delivering mail from Huygens to Henri Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society for foreign correspondonance and prisoner at the Tower of London under suspicion of exchanging by means of these letters secret messages with foreign states; the Comstock family was supplying the English Navy with cannons and powder, and was discredited and ruined after cannons exploded because they were loaded with pre-packed powder that was ground too fine (the bad powder was planted by a political rival); the creation of the Bank of England, independent from the King, after the latter ruined several goldmiths by taking the gold entrusted to them by their customers. In the background, there were wars between England and the Dutch who were allied to France during the first war, but since King Charles II is suspected to be a catholic pretending to be anglican, England was allied to France in the second one.

King of the Vagabonds

1683. Jack Shaftoe is a Vagabond, occupying himself by being a footman in the army of Poland-Lithuania, going to attack the Turks who are assieging Vienna. While all the fighting is done by the cavalry, Jack saves Eliza, a yound Qwghlmian woman who is a slave in the the harem of the Grand Turk. Together they travel through Europe to Leipzig where they meet Leibniz, and eventually arrive in Amsterdam where Eliza shows great skill at investing the stock market. This sedentary life doesn't suit Jack who travels to Paris to deliver a letter from Eliza to a banker. Jack then tries to make money for himself by selling ostrich feathers and his horse, both stolen from the Turks at the siege of Vienna, but is instead taken prisoner by the Duc d'Arcachon. John Churchill, for whom Jack and his brother Bob had been couriers earlier in their life, helps him escape to prevent Jack from inadvertantly telling things about Churchill when being tortured. Jack thus escapes and accidentally discovers that d'Arcachon is the eater of rotten fish who had taken Eliza and her mother as slaves many years ago. Meanwhile, Eliza is introduced to the the court of the King William of Orange by d'Avaux, the French ambassador. With another Englishman, they plot to influence the market and make a lot of money. On his way back to Amsterdam, Jack becomes partner in a business operation, which was promised to make him rich. But when he sees Eliza again and tells her about it, she understands that the operation is a slave trade. Since Jack wants to continue with the operation because he invested all he had in it and doesn't want to depend on Eliza's money, she tells him she doesn't want to see him ever again. Jack's ship leaves Amsterdam, but Jack is made prisoner by pirates near Africa and becomes a slave himself. Eliza leaves for Versailles to become a spy for d'Avaux at the court of King Louis XIV, but on the boat she is convinced by William of Orange, an ennemy of Louis XIV, to become his spy in exchange for the title of Duchess of Qwghlm when he becomes king of England.

Odalisque

1685. Eliza is working as a governess for some noble at Versailles, and reporting to d'Avaux, d'Orange and Leibniz. In London, Daniel Waterhouse witnesses the death of Charles II. The next king is James II, openly a catholic. Since Eliza is handling the money of many French nobles, she becomes slowly more important at the court. She travels from time to time to Amsterdam, where she meets William of Orange and lives at Huygens's house. There she meets Bob Shaftoe who wants her to help him recover a protestant girl he fell in love with and who has been sold as a slave to an English noble, now Chief Justice of the King. In 1687, Daniel travels to Amsterdam to meet William of Orange, the so-called Defender of the Protestants, and prepare what will be later called the Glorious Revolution i.e., William of Orange becoming King of England without bloodshed. Daniel also meets Eliza during a dinner at Huygens's house. The next morning they prevent the abduction of William by French dragoons, a plot that was rumored about in various circles. Back to Versailles, Eliza is made Countess de la Zeur by the King. Daniel on the other hand is threatened by catholic nobles (including the Chief Justice) and eventually made prisoner at the Tower of London and awaiting to be assassinated (since he cannot officially be tried). But Daniel is protected by Bob Shaftoe, who happens to replace the guard at the Tower. Meanwhile, Eliza is fleeing Versailles with the help of Liselotte von der Pfalz, sister in law to Louis XIV, motivated by the fact that the king is invading her country. After being arrested by French troops in Lorraine, Eliza sleeps with the son of d'Arcachon who is leading those troops and eventually reaches Amsterdam and Hyugens's house. The story of her journey is known to Louis XIV because Eliza kept an enciphered diary which was stolen a Huygens's house and decrypted by Bonaventure Rossignol, cryptanalyst of the king. In 1688, James II flees London and William of Orange becomes the new King of England. Daniel and Bob get the Chief Justice, who also fled from London, to get lynched by a crowd for the exactions he had commited on the people many years earlier. Finally, Eliza gives birth to a son in Amsterdam. D'Arcachon believes the baby is his (and since d'Arcachon carries a genetic defect, he is eager to get his hands on a son that hasn't got this defect) and tries to steal it but fails. But in a letter to Leibniz, Eliza tells that the father is really Rossignol, whom she had met in Versailles and happened to be in Lorraine while she was there.

Wikipedia

In the desert in Qatar, US troops are attacked by a helicopter that transformed into a robot. Later, they are attacked again by a scorpion-shaped robot. Meanwhile Sam, a teenager, gets a used car from his father. But the car is stolen one night and he follows it on a bicycle. He sees the car transform into a robot. The police of course doesn't believe him. Later, he is chased by a police car that transforms as well, and he is saved by his car. He soon meets the five Autobots who explain they are looking for glasses that had belonged to his great-grandfather and that he was trying to sell on EBay. The man had discovered a frozen robot in the arctic (Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons) and information about the location of the Spark, an energy cube, got engraved in the lenses of the glasses. If the Decepticons manage to find the cube first, they will use it to turn the machines to robots (that's the power of the cube) and wipe out life from Earth. The Autobots are here to prevent that from happening. Sam later gets arrested by a secret government organization and taken to a facility where Megatron has been kept frozen for the past eighty years; the cube had been discovered as well, and the facility built around it. But the other Decepticons cut the power to let their leader thaw, and the people have to flee. They hope to hide the cube (which has been conveniently reduced in size and mass by Sam's Autobot) in the nearest city. A large battle takes place. The cube is eventually destroyed, provoking the death of Megatron. The Autobots have no hope of using it to revive their planet, and decide to stay on Earth, hiding.

Wikipedia

Frank transports things and people in his car, no questions asked. One day, he discovers that the bag he is transporting contains a bound and gagged woman. He delivers her, but his client tries to kill him. He returns to the house of his client to take his revenge but the main villain is absent from the house. Frank then escapes with the the woman and takes her to his place. She manipulates him into helping her save asiatic people soon to arrive in a container in Marseille, to be sold as slaves. After the client tried to kill them again, Frank decides to help the woman and they go the client's office, but Frank eventually gets arrested. But the policeman is quite friendly and recognizes the fact that Frank could save those people much faster than the police could. After a long car chase, he eventually saves the prisoners.

“When Nelson was killed at Trafalgar, his body was preserved in a cask of brandy during the long trip back to England. Legend has it that thirsty sailors snuck drinks from the brandy cask carrying Nelson's corpse. This gave rise to the phrase fo illicit drinking: Tapping the Admiral. Smell: toffee, spicy, roast; Taste: brandy, sweet, rich”

Strong hoppy smell, quite bitter, but less than other beers from the same brewery. Contains barley malt.

Shepherd Neame, Faversham, Kent, England. 4.0% alcohol.

Ingrédients

• 200g chocolat noir 70%
• 40g glucose
• 50g sucre en poudre
• 5 jaunes d'œufs
• 5 dL lait
• 2g gomme xanthane
• 2g gomme de guar
• 1 c. à soupe de sirop à l'anis
• 2 dL crème fluide
• 5 blancs d'œufs

Préparation

Fouetter les jaune avec le sucre jusqu'à ce qu'ils blanchissent. Faire bouillir le lait. Mélanger le glucose avec la gomme xanthane et la gomme de guar. Verser dans le lait et mixer. Verser le lait chaud sur les œufs. Remuer, faire épaissir sur le feu comme une crème anglaise. Faire fondre le chocolat. Y ajouter la crème peu à peu, puis y ajouter le sirop à l'anis. Laisser une nuit au réfirgérateur. Fouetter les blancs en neige. Fouetter la crème fluide. Mélanger un tiers des blancs dans la crème au chocolat. Y incorporer la crème fouttée, puis incorporer le reste des blancs. puisse passer à la sorbetière.

Remarques

• La crème devient très épaisse, comme une crème patissière. La moitié de chaque gomme aurait probablement suffit. Après l'ajout de la crème et de blancs, la préparation est cependant assez fluide pour être versée dans la sorbetière.
• Le double de sirop à l'anis aurait probablement donné un goût plus prononcé d'anis (qui est vraiment subitl dans cette recette).
• Les blancs en neige donnent une belle consistance à la glace.

Wikipedia

After the death of their parents in the fire of their mansion, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are given to the care of their remote cousin Count Olaf. The latter is an actor who only hopes to get his hands on their money as soon as he is declared their legal guardian. When Olaf tries to kill them (by being run over by a train), they are given to the care of their uncle Montgomery Montgomery, a very nice herpetologist. But Olaf appears as a replacement for Montgomery's assistant, and the scientist refuses to belive the children's experience about Olaf. The next morning, he is found dead, and Olaf's plot is eventually exposed. The children are then given to the care of their aunt Josephine, who is afraid of very many things. They meet Olaf, disguised as an old sailor, and again she refuses to listen to the children. She is forced to write a suicide note, but manages to hide a secret message in it, telling she is hiding in a cave on the shore of the lake. The children meet her there, but they meet again Olaf on the lake, and he kills aunt Josephine while pretending to save Klause from drowning. He is then given again the custody of the three children. Olaf then organizes a theatre play where he is marrying Violet in order to legally access her inheritance, threatening to kill Sunny if she refuses to play along. Since he cast a real Justice of the Peace as the one presiding over the ceremony, Violet and him are legally married. But Klaus, while rescuing Sunny, discovers the apparatus, made of lenses, that Olaf had used to set fire to the Baudelaire mansion, and uses it to burn the wedding contract. Olaf is tried, but freed on appeal and disappears. The children are sent to new guardians.

Wikipedia

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Dr. John Watson to allow him to solve crimes incognito. Holmes, actually actor Reginald Kincaid, is fired by Watson who is jealous by the character's success with the public. But when printing plates for 5 £ notes are stolen, Watson recalls Holmes and starts investigating. A printing engineer, Peter Giles, disappeared at the same time as the plates. A series of planted clues leads the police to believe that he drowned in a lake while presumably fleeing from the police, but Watson notices traces of a kidnapping and soon follows the trail of Moriarty, accompanied by Giles' daughter Leslie. Watson however drowns in the river Thames while trying to board Moriary's boat. Holmes tries to solve the puzzle himself, since he promised to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but fails. Then, a banknote printed only on one side is found by one of the Baker Streets Irregulars. The note's serial number is 234 (instead of the usual six digits), which Holmes, knowing Giles' favourite book is the Book of Psalms, deduces the printer is hold prisoner in the Orpheus theater, where “The Valley of the Shadow” was last played before it closed. They find the lair, and also Watson who had actually faked his death. They also discover that Leslie Giles is an accomplice of Moriarty, and not actually Giles' daughter (whose child, Leslie, is a transvestite boy). The old theatre eventually explodes, destroying the fake banknotes and presumably Moriarty as well. Watson is eventulally reconciled with Holmes.