After spending the summer in Sweden, Norway, Germany, England and Wales, I’m now finally settled in Shepton Mallet, a small town in the outstanding county of Somerset, UK. It’s an 18th century house with recording studio, plenty of space to freak out. Bristol, the cradle of trip-hop (represented by groundbreaking bands/artists such as Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack) and buzzing drum’n'bass/dubstep hub is around the corner, so is the majestic city of Bath – where I’m taking a course in Music Production – and Peter Gabriel’s world class Realword Studios. To sum up, a thriving area for all interested in music. Can’t wait to dive in.
A new, big kitchen, a veg box full of local, organic produce and general euphoria are the outer factors, the soft ingredients so the say, of a new dish I just created and certainly repeat at some point. It’s an elegant, gentle curry, fully vegan, which I christen as “Cauliflower tahini curry.”
Cube half of an onion and chop the cauliflower into small florets. Fry both simultaneously in olive oil and 2-3 pinches of cayenne pepper. Use a low temperature to make sure you don’t burn the cauliflower. Stir in the broth. Than add tahini, curry and creme. Serve with rice and a salad to your liking.
On Thursday, 27th May, I’ll give my debut as an solo artists, performing own songs and compositions as well as a live electronic performance. Besides a fantastic band (Maria Finkelmeier, Venla Hinnemo, Leyli Afsahi, Jonathan Börlin, Johan Petterson, Patrick Anderson, Davod Basri, Vanessa Martinez, Johan Bertilsson), the concert will feature Lindie Boström doing lights and visuals and a dance performance by Tore Alsegård.
spring-cleaning on www.johann-strube.org. So what’s new?
new design: new, clear design. I dumped some unnecessary information such as the tag cloud and everything is now laid out in two instead of three columns.
soundcloud player: I finally got rid of the ugly myspace player. Instead, you can listen to my portfolio on the smart soundcloud player. Looks much better and offers some features as sharing and commenting music.
tumblr and twitter feed: In the right column you will now find my latest posts on tumblr and flickr. So you find everything I’m posting aggregated at one place.
wordpress 2.9.: I also updated wordpress to it’s latest version.
improved commenting: The comments are now powered by DisqUs, enabling cross-platform discussions.
sharing: Under each post you’ll now find a button to share the post on your social media.
Since I moved to Sweden, I engaged in composition a lot. Therefore, I like to share one piece of mine with you. “bakom brus” (swedish, “behind noise”) is a piece for noise generator and friends, which I wrote for my composition class with Johan Samskog (Stockholm). Tack för kritiken och synpunkter. Hope you enjoy it.
der mensch muss essen. klare sache. klare brühe oder aus der mülltonne. hauptsache gesund. wenn die tonne aber verschlossen ist? scheiß faschisten. sollen die sich doch selbst wegschmeißen. idioten sind nicht gesund.
Bebbe Bigazzi, italian tv-chef recommends his audience to eat cats. House cats. Soak them 3 days in spring water and then stew them in there own juice. Buon appetito!
That statement caused a lot of protest and Bigazzi got fired at the end. I wonder why. Most people don’t care to eat for instance cows, chicken, pigs. Their keeping emits more greenhouse gases as the worldwide traffic and causes hunger and thirst in many areas on the earth. Not to speak of the brutality of factory farming. I haven’t heard from large scale cat keeping for meat production and the most cats are living a life, pigs and co. just can dream of. So where is the problem in eating cats? Because they are more intelligent than other animals? Cuter? That means, we evaluate the value of life on the basis of intelligence and cuteness. That’s cynical.
Some of Bigazzi’s opponents said, that eating cats has no tradition in Italy. That’s the worst argument ever. Is there a tradition of treating animals as machines? Is there a tradition of a kilogram mince meat under 2 €? A tradition of fast food?
I certainly don’t want to encourage people to eat cats. But I want that everybody applies the same moral standards to animals, of what ever species.
Some french chef once stated: “There’s no german cuisine. There’s just the german art of using up what’s left.” I agree. I’ve no cue what german cuisine might be (what is “german” anyway?), but I know, how to squeeze out my fridge and turn its often minimal content not into gold, but into some delicious, quick meal. As lent will turn me into a vegan, I was furthermore forced to use up my last animal products. In this case it were just three eggs; not too much of a problem. Than I had some old heel of a bread and fortunately a couple of these boxes with grains such as rice, bulgur, couscous and wheat. I went for the latter which I simmered until ready. In the meantime, I beat the eggs into a bowl and mixed them with some salt and freshly grounded pepper. I chopped the bread into small bits and soaked them in the eggs. Then I chopped two tomatoes, gave everything (egg with bread, tomatoes) into a pan and fried it from both sides to an omelette.
That gave a delicious and fast (about 15 min) dinner. I just seasoned the wheat with a dash of soy sauce.
Quick and dirty. Maybe it’s that what german means?
What are you doing with your old, hard bread, that feels like a stone when you bite on it?
I’m happy to announce a new series of articles on www.johann-strube.org; “the kitchen.” As this place become more and more a central part of my life in the last year – territorially as well as mentally – it seemed logical to write about it.
Actually I planned to set up a subblog for that. But since that appears to be technically impossible with wordpress, I’ll just weave this new series into my general stream of consciousness, that is blog. Just click on “the kitchen” among the categories on the right, and you’ll find all the corresponding entries. All right, then.
So why writing about “the kitchen.” The kitchen for me is more than just a room. It’s the space where raw food is being processed into something edible, hopefully enjoyable and sometimes inspiring. As even the richest among us have to eat and as the quality of what we ingest to a great extent determines the quality of our lives, we better treat the kitchen and its activities with fair respect. Moreover, it’s also often the place, where people come together to eat, sit and have a good time. Therefore, it serves an important social function and satisfies another vital need.
It’s rather interesting, that my enthusiasm to cook was mostly lifted during my time in Iceland; in a country with a very limited range of fresh, organic, inspiring groceries. However, it was part of my job for the fantastic record label bedroom community, to meet the high culinary demands of amazing musicians, engineers etc. almost everyday with just these limited options. So I was forced to creativity.On the other hand, I was part of a unique community of international students, couchsurfers and hosts, activists and artist, where mostly vegan, sometimes skipped dinners served for the main social venue.
Whereas “cooking in Iceland” is worth an own series of articles, I will also cover other culinary treats and habits I discover along my journeys, handy tips and recipes for the everyday-cuisine, thoughts about where our food actually comes from and more semi-intellectual meta-musing about the sense of the kitchen like this very first entry.
I hope you’ll enjoy it and your meal. Verði þér að góðu!
I'm a sound artist as well as a landscape architecture and spacial planning student.
Before moving to Vienna, Austria, I was studying music in Germany and Sweden and working in the music industry in the UK and Iceland for producers such as Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost and Greg Haver.
As a planning student, my main focus lies in integrated design of sustainable, livable communities within an biodiverse, ecological intact natural environment.
