Speaking as a former cook…
July 10, 2008
…I know that a lot of the guys I worked with in restaurant kitchens would make a point of frying every last bit of this guy’s food in bacon grease.
A Pakistani man accused of killing his daughter five days after she filed for divorce to end her arranged marriage wept in court Tuesday, telling a Clayton County magistrate he is innocent.
“I have done nothing wrong,” Chaudhry Rashid told Chief Magistrate Daphne Walker through interpreter Younis Farhat. Farhat said Rashid speaks primarily Urdu and Punjabi.
But police say Rashid, 54, used a bungee cord to strangle Sandeela Kanwal, 25, early Sunday morning in the family’s Utah Drive home in Jonesboro.
Rashid, who is being held without bond, told the judge he wanted to observe his Muslim beliefs in the Clayton jail. He wants to follow a diet that forbids the consumption of pork in any form and requires other meats are prepared according to Islamic rules.
Sorry, Mr. Rashid, but you just brutally murdered your own daughter because she didn’t want to stay married to whatever man you sold her off to. About the last thing you get to do is dictate the menu that is served to you; indeed, what food you do receive is a courtesy.
Pic of the Day #641
June 21, 2008
Meet soft jihad with soft crusades
February 25, 2008
Traditional jihad is waged with scimitars and their contemporary equivalents, e.g., stolen Boeing 767s, which make handy instruments of mass homicide. Soft jihad is a quieter affair: it uses and abuses the language and the principles of democratic liberalism not to secure the institutions and attitudes that make freedom possible but, on the contrary, to undermine that freedom and pave the way for self-righteous, theocratic intolerance. Soft jihad is patient. It can add and multiply as well as Mark Steyn can (and here). It, too, sees the demographic writing on the wall and is content to wait a few years to occupy the West’s real estate — it’s so much easier, when you come right down to it, than blowing the stuff up and then finding yourself with a massive clean-up and rebuilding bill. Just sit tight and watch the infidels tie themselves into knots making excuses for you while, elsewhere in their lives, they embrace barrenness as an “environmentally friendly” alternative to Genesis 1:28.
Speaking as a right-wing, knuckle-dragging Eurocentric infidel, however, I feel it incumbent on me to point out that where traditional jihad is probably best dealt with by talented chaps like General Petraeus, soft jihad might often be more effectively countered by quieter crusades. Clever readers will doubtless have many fertile ideas to contribute to the fulfillment of what I hope will become the West’s new Quiet Crusade to make the World Safe for Christendom (remember that?). Here’s a modest proposal to get the ball rolling. It was suggested to me by another story from the London Times today. Under a headline shouting “Muslims shocked to learn that crisps contain alcohol” is the illuminating news that that Walkers snacks “contain traces of alcohol” and that eating them is therefore prohibited by Islam.
Shuja Shafi, who chairs the food standards committee of the , said that he intended to investigate. “Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol.”
Is that so? Well, here’s my modest proposal, which I offer to British Food and Beverage industry free and for nothing: start putting a bit of alcohol in everything edible or potable. There are, of course, other reasons for wishing to increase one’s usual consumption of alcohol, but here is a patriotic imperative to guide you: what if you went into food hall or your local grocery shop and every item had at least some trace amount of alcohol (or, alternatively, pork residue)? I understand that there might be certain logistical difficulties, but if the EU can effectively police the system of mensuration used in its jurisdiction, if it can prohibit certain types of bananas because they deviate too markedly from the perpendicular, then surely they can employ the vast apparatus of their bureaucracy to assure that a drop of alcohol or a dollop of bacon fat is added to any food stuff sold in Britain.
I think the alcohol suggestion is the better one — Jews have no problem with alcohol, and both Jews and Muslims are supposed to avoid bacon (and all pork-related things). We wouldn’t want to unduly penalize Jews, after all.
My agreement with the above is mostly facetious, but I think the point one can derive from it is this: there has emerged in the West a tension between two ideals. One one side, we see arrayed the laws and traditions that have formed, and informed, the various nations of Europe and North America and made them, to one degree or another, free. On the other side, we see arrayed the tenets of Sharia law (a barbaric and misogynistic system dating back to 7th century Araby) and the violence and noise of those who demand that sharia be made into the law of the land in places like Britain. Increasingly, the West — its thinking mired down in the cowardice and confusion of multiculturalism — caves in to the demands of the barbarians.
We don’t give away piggy banks (to say nothing of other “pig related items”) “for fear of offending Muslims.” We don’t draw cartoons of Mohammad “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t publish articles pointing out the demographic disparity between the Muslims of Canada and Europe and other parts of the population “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t even publish books saying critical things about “Saudis and terrorists” “for fear of offending Muslims.”
And so we come to the point of all the above — that it is not the place of those who immigrate to a new country to demand that the new country become more like the old one. But to effectively communicate that truth, the culture of the country to which these immigrants have come must have the courage to hold itself up as (let us be honest) superior to the one that these immigrants have left behind. It must be willing to exert and assert itself in cases where some demand that it be thrown down. And it must be willing to say “to heck with your backwards traditions; this is how we do things here.”
There’s a certain…attractiveness to the idea that every demand for, say, sharia banking be met with, say, an increased prevalence of something considered haram in run-of-the-mill foodstuffs. There’s a certain poetry to the idea that every demand for sharia courts be met with, say, increased restrictions on the production and sale of halal meats.
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
Spaghetti with Pork Cutlet sauce
October 4, 2005
As part of my contribution to the “Free Piglet” campaign, here is the first in a series of pork-based recipes that I’ve either come across or come up with in the last little while.
This one is a little recipe that I came up with a few years back after I first moved to Rocky Mountain House for a summer workterm. It was just a variation on the same-ol’ same-ol’ pasta-sauce-with-ground-beef recipe that I was getting bored with, and for a student diet it worked rather well. It’s become a personal “comfort dish”.
Ingredients
* keep in mind that these are approximate measures. I almost never use any sort of measuring utensil or container if I am not making something that involves the use of flour.
Meat & Marinade:
- 1 or 2 pork cutlets
- 1/4 cup wine (cooking wine will do, real stuff is better)
- 1/8 cup olive oil
Sauce:
- 1 cup capelli di angelo or vermicelli
Cooking:
1. Thaw pork cutlets overnight. In the morning, slice thinly and place in a bowl. Pour wine and oil over pork and quickly mix the liquid into the meat with your hands. It takes only a few minutes, and lets the meat marinate all day. Refrigerate.
2. That evening, half-fill a medium-sized pot with water and set to boil. Add a touch of salt.
3. Finely chop onions and garlic and simmer in olive oil in a pan. Add marinated meat (including liquid). Continue to simmer on medium heat.
4. Chop or semi-liquify tomatoes and add to pan once the pork slices have started to cook through. Dice mushrooms and add to mixture a minute or so later.
5. If you’ve timed it right, the water should have reached a rolling boil right about now, so quickly add noodles to the water and reduce heat. Cover the meat and tomatoes and let simmer.
6. Once noodles begin to soften, chop green pepper and add to meat and tomatoes (which should be taking on sauce-like qualities now. Add water if sauce begins to reduce. Reduce heat on sauce and add basil (generously), greek seasoning, and sugar (sparingly — just enough to take the edge off the acid of the tomatoes). Cover and reduce heat to low.
7. Drain noodles when ready. Serve noodles onto plate(s) and cover with sauce.
