Ask Sick Mouthy

I have particular expertise in: the Hungarian national football team 1950-1956; b-sides by the popular British rock quintet Embrace; cycle routes starting in Exeter; higher education marketing, web, and research communications; the films of Christopher Nolan; the music of the Canadian electronic aryist Caribou; one-pot rice dishes from around the world; the county of Devon.

All enquiries welcome.

How much of a challenge do the new UKBA Tier 4 regulations pose to attracting international students?

No one cares, because now home / EU students are potentially as fiscally valuable as international students.

Any ideas for some rice recipes a two-year-old might like? Likes rice, likes tomatoes, doesn't mind a bit of spice, can be put off by big lumps of meat.

Devonshire tea question - which tea blend do you roll with when smashing those scones?

No one cares

The EFL sector does

Yep, it's a huge deal to the EFL and college sector but it's interesting to hear that it's not necessarily a major issue for all universities.

Cream tea: clotted cream first, strawberry jam second? Or strawberry jam first, clotted cream second?

How about a simple risotto with tomato and lemon? Or maybe sundried tomato?

This is my basic mushroom risotto recipe which i typed out and emailed to my mum ages ago; you can easily sub out the mushrooms and add chopped tomatoes.

Nick’s mushroom risotto recipe
Serves 3-4 (or two very greedy people)

You will need:
2 large pans

1 medium onion (red or white), diced

150-300 grams of mushrooms (depending how much you like mushrooms; I
recommend mini portabella mushrooms from Sainsburys, by the way),
thinly sliced or chunkily quartered, depending which you prefer

1 litre of stock (I use 4 teaspoons of Marigold Bouillon powdered
stock added to 1lt boiling water)

1 lemon (juice of)

2-3 cloves of garlic (peeled and crushed)

250grams Arborio risotto rice

1 handful of grated cheese (preferably parmesan, if not cheddar or
double Gloucester will do, the former for flavour, the latter for
creaminess)

1 glass of white wine

Big glug of olive oil

Salt, pepper, and dried red chilli flakes (to season)

What to do:
In the larger of the 2 pans, heat the olive oil. Throw in the onions,
and when they’re translucent, throw in the garlic. A moment or two
later, throw in the mushrooms. Don’t let the garlic brown! You want
it soft and translucent, like the onions, so keep it on a medium-low
heat.

Put the stock in the other pan, and leave it simmering on a low heat.

Back to the main pan. Once the mushrooms have coloured and shrunk a
bit, add the lemon juice. Keep stirring all the time. After a
moment, add the rice, and stir so it gets covered by oil & lemon
juice. Then throw in the glass of wine, and turn the heat up to
medium. The rice should absorb the wine pretty quickly.

Now keep adding ladles of the hot stock periodically, stirring pretty
constantly. Add a new ladle of stock each time the previous one has
been absorbed / boiled away. You want to keep the rice hot and
moving, hence keeping the stock hot, so it cooks and absorbs quickly.
Start to finish it’ll probably take 30 minutes or more from putting
the onions in. After the last ladle of stock, add the cheese, and
stir it in so it melts and thickens everything. Season with (only a
little) salt and (plenty of) black pepper as you go; I add a sprinkle
of flaked dried red chilli in winter for a touch of warmth.

The risotto is ready when you want it to be ready; you might prefer it
drier and softer, or a little wet and still with some bite to the
rice; it’s your risotto, so it’s up to you.

Variations:
The basic principle of risotto is sticky rice cooked in wine and stock
with a little cheese added at the end; with this as a basis you can go
pretty nuts in terms of what else you use. I always use an onion and
garlic to start, and am very keen on lemon too.

You might like to substitute the mushrooms for chicken or prawns
(adding the prawns towards the end so they don’t go too tough – I use
raw king prawns rather than ready-cooked prawns to keep them tender
and juicy; they still only need a few minutes). If you use chicken,
fry raw chicken strips in with the onion, or add leftover chicken with
10-15 minutes of cooking to go.

A handful of fresh green beans added with 10 minutes to go is good, or
scallops added with 5 minutes to go. You could serve any
lemon-flavoured risotto with buttery griddled asparagus on top;
heavenly.

With a cream tea, I'd go for Earl Grey.

Cream first, jam second. Why not try blueberry jam for an interesting twist?

Good man! (Hmm, hadn't though of blueberry jam, though I've had damson)

How do you feel about your 'Ask' thread already going a lot better than mine ever did?

Yeah, it's a big deal for EFL and colleges, but our international strategy is definitely changing; whether it's because of or merely at the same time as Tier 4 is difficult to ascertain - student satisfaction for domestic students on courses with vv high proportions of international students (i.e. business) is more of a concern for my institution just now.

Yours was more surreal; mine is more practical. Which is better is a tricky question - it may be that people think I am more boring than you.

I'd go for Earl Grey.

Gonna have to say you're wrong, Assam has the right briskness to complement the sconey goodness.

Will have to try out the Blueberry Jam suggestion, through.

I've never had Assam I don't think; Earl, Lady and Sunshine Grey are favirites, as is a good spiced chai (Teapigs for preference).

Do you know where I can get any Caribou fan fiction?

I'm afraid I don't; why not write some yourself? You could illustrate it, too. I'd love to see you draw his whole Vibration Ensemble, as it were.

Hmmm. But who would I slash Caribou *with*? Don't say the Hungarian National Football Team.

Elton John

Four Tet, obviously.

(Stop it. I might have to write that. And I think the Flying Lotus slash actually broke the cheesecake archive.)

Imagine what would happen if they'd all shared a chalet together at the last ATP Nightmare Before Christmas?

Ha ha, I apologise for the turn I've made your thread take.

What is the highest point in Devon? And have you been there?

High Willhayes on Dartmoor, at 621 metres. I haven't, but I shall make it a mission. I cycled across part opf Dartmoor last Saturday and will again this Saturday, but nowhere near there (it's North Dartmoor; we did South East).

((Oh god James Holden was in the Vibration Ensemble, too, wasn't he? ::devilish thoughts::))

Did you ever tell me your opinion on Plaid's 'Scintilli' album from last year?

I haven't heard it, so probably not. I got off the Plaid bus with the multimedia album thingy about 5 years go.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6501515515_429962ed5b.jpg

I haven't heard it, so probably not. I got off the Plaid bus with the multimedia album thingy about 5 years go.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 10:43 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes that album (Greedy Baby) was very very bad, although I remember it being much better live.

I really like the sleeve art on The Good Will Out, so much so in fact that I once repackaged some tutorial software around that aesthetic, only using landscapes instead of urban band shots. As soon as I left that job the university reverted to clip art.

Have Embrace ever encroached on your professional life, either as help or hindrance?

Scintilli is excellent fwiw.

Embrace have encroached on my professional life, definitely, as both help and hindrance but probably mostly as help - I've done various bits of (paid and non-paid) work for them over the years, online marketing and sleevenote writing and stuff, which has definitely been useful. I also once had to take an afternoon off to show them round Exeter when they played at the university Great Hall.

Same question as was asked me: Do you still keep in contact with the 65DOS boys?

Ha yes I thought about bringing that one up but demurred.

Not actively, no; it was really just a one-off chance interview and then saying 'hi' to them at a couple of gigs afterwards.

What if Hungary had won in 1954?

Was One Big Family (Perfecto Mix) an imaginative updating of the classic Oakenfold/Weatherall Indie Dance remix formula of the early 90s,

or just screamadeli-bait for people who cant musically move on??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4O0vS8mC80

this question has been bothering me for some time.....

Sicko, I just put some slicks on my bike you'll be glad to hear, and I'm very much appreciating the benefit, however I've recently found my arms and hands aching after only a short time on the bike. It feels like my arms are hyperextending and that I'm putting an unnatural amount of weight on my wrists. Sometimes I feel pins and needles/a numbness in my hands after riding. What's going on here, and what can I do?

If Hungary had won in 1954 I think they'd be widely celebrated across popular football fan culture as the greatest team ever, rather than only talked about by football geek and historians; Puskas would certainly be revered as being better than Pele.

What the impact of their winning would have had upon the social make-up and politics of the Hungarian nation is difficult to ascertain; they were held up as a triumph of communism, so who knows, maybe we'd be living in a communist Europe with nationalised football teams and England would play amazing passing football?

Of course, they lost in 54, and the Hungarian government crumbled in 56, so all thisn conjecture is moot.

Well the Perfecto Mix of OBF was allegedly Oakenfold's most popular remix, and anecdotally a huge, huge floor-filler for his DJ sets. Whilst it does clearly owe a debt to Screamadelica, I don't think that debt is detrimental. It's actually one of my very favourite Embrace tracks, and I'm sad it's flavbour didn't influence the debut album more; circa their second album, they took to playing OBF live in the style of the remix, and it was wonderful, a direction I sorely wish they'd continued in.

Sounds to me, Dog Latin, as if your bike's geometry isn't optimally set-up for your physique; I'd recommend getting someone who knows about these things and lives nearby to help you adjust seat height, handlebar angle, etc etc, until this is no longer a problem. Also, cycling mitts.

cheers!

Just what is it that makes East Devon so obviously the best quarter of that County?

Rolling countryside as opposed to rugged moors. Gentrification. Slightly altered climate due to intervening hills - it seems to get less rain than the extreme west, as Dartmoor and the Exe and Teign valleys seem to catch it all, leaving Sidmouth and onwards a little dryer.

Did you always think you'd pass your days in Devon?

Not particularly, but I never particularly fantasised or imagined or expected that I'd live anywhere else, either; after coming back from finishing university I thought I'd move away, but then I met Emma, and she lived across town, and then we both kind of accidentally built careers at the university and then bought a house, so we're pretty settled now.

"...and then I accidentally bought a house and fell into a rewarding and high paying position while I was drunk, and then..."

;-p

that's how it happens, yes

The north coast is more ruggedly beautiful, with better surf. The south is more picturesque beautiful, with retired people. Take your pick.

We didn't give up the car, but we did sell it and get a lease car.

Ha I didn't even see your post about the Imperial. And Doom bar! Is probably my new favourite beer.
Jasmine thai restaurant in town is surprisingly good. Also Southernhay House bar is all nice and designy and does good posho cocktails.
Did the AAB policy affect your marketing?

Jasmine is awesome, aye. Ganges, up the hill, migh be the best Indian, wit Real India and the Ghandi coming close.

AAB has affected confirmation, clearing, and adjustment, but we've consistently got 80% AAB students anyway, so it's not really affected the marketing cos we were after that cohort anyway.

Have you ever looked at a frog and thought " It represents the male member symbolically"

Do you think companies like Kaplan, Pearson and INTO could pose a threat to traditional higher education providers in the long term?

Re: frogs, no.

We deal with INTO, I don't kow the others very well.

Not a threat, so much, but a danger, in terms of the way they've helped realign the understanding of wha universities are for, which is the expansion and spreading of our knowledge base through research and teaching. They've helped commercialise that and introduce the concept of students as customers, which isn't necessarily all bad, but can and does certainly have detrimental effects. I think making profit a driver of education and/or research is potentially very dangerous unless it's exceptionally well managed.

I'd agree with a lot of that.

NO mor epay for school!

i like Ilfracombe better than Torbay tbh

Not been to Ilfracombe in ages. South east Devon coastline might be my favourite.

About to go an do some more transcription. Any more for any more?

i went to ilfracombe. it's a strange old place.

Are there good restaurants in Exeter? Think I'm going to watch Leinster play there in January.

Can you swim in the Hartland peninsula in Devon? When I went it was storming, it sort of looked like the end of the world when the sea finally takes it all back from us. I wasn't up for it and it looked like it would be pretty dangerous even in fine weather.

Loads of good restaurants in Exeter, here are my favourites:

The Conservatory - friendly, fine dining, good for special occasions
Harry's - good family restaurant, pasta, burgers, Mexican type fare but all home made and very good. Great atmosphere.
Rusty Bike / Fat Pig- gastropubs owned by same people. Very good, not cheap.
Odd fellows - another gastropub, a step,down from the other two but v nice.
Ganges - really good, high-end Indian cuisine.
Real India - really good big standard Indian cuisine.
Jasmine - really very good Thai.
Al Farid's - Lebanese, going there tonight I hope.
Abode - owned by local celeb chef Michael Caines, not been there but v posh.
Jack in the Green - a few miles out of town, not been myself but fearsome reputation.
Gidley Park - as Jack in the Green, but on Dartmoor. So miles away.
Exeter College catering students cafe thing - get 17 year olds to practice high end nosh on you for very reasonable prices.
Ode Cafe - about 16 miles away in Shaldon, but this little cafe in a car park is fucking awesome. Pulled pork baps and amazing estuary views.

I don't know Hartland, but it's North Devon, isn't it? Probably good for surfing.

Change of plan. Real India takeaway rather than a trip out as we're both exhausted.

Ah thanks nick, I'll give a shout again closer to the time in case anything has changed...

We should hook up for a beer.

They've helped . . . introduce the concept of students as customers, which isn't necessarily all bad, but can and does certainly have detrimental effects.

Could you expand on the detrimental effects you've seen?

As a dropout, I didn't feel like the old system was very good for undergraduates, as lecturers regarded undergrad teaching as an irritating waste of time before getting back to their research, and with no incentive to change that as research brought in more money and university rankings were based on research ratings.

On the other hand, as a database monkey in a university library, now domestic students are paying 9k a year for their education there's a whole lot more pressure to provide customer service: talk of being sued if a system glitch or staff mistake stops a student ordering the book they want in time for a deadline, etc. Which is understandable but terrifying given the sheer number of levels human error can and do happen on...

Thread is reminding me I haven't been to Devon in years even though both sides of family are "from" there (but mostly moved before my time). Must go back some time.

anyone ever told you you look a little like robin ince?

Whilst I thoroughly agree that the focus on student satisfaction / customer service is predominantly a good thing, I'm concerned that a; HE becomes nothing more than a KPMG-etc conveyor belt, geared towards preparing people for employment rather than educating them (in the way that FE trains people to pass A Levels and get into university, arguably, rather than expanding their minds / knowledge), and that b; focus on whether students are happy or not can really mask intellectual standards, and we end up with a generation of happy, innovatively educated but not that intellectually rigorous graduates. I believe in education for education's sake, that people knowing mre about the world and themselves makes for a more tolerant, happy society and a richer culture, and I worry that if students become customers then education becomes a product. The (HE) customer isn't always right and doesn't always know best, that's the point of HE - to find people who know more than you and learn from them.

No one has ever said I look like Robin Ince. I'm not sure I do, much, besides brown hair and glasses.

Why do/did you keep welling up over the Olympics - and not just the sport - the opening ceremony?

I'm not sure; it's something that's been 'growing' on me for some time - seeing people achieve long strived-for goals is a very magical, powerful thing that I think I appreciate much more and more as I get older. It's not a sadness-crying, as I've outlined, but more of a... pride-by-proxy, or empathy, crying. Plus the fact that there were very genuine displays of human emotion going on, which I think were a massive, massive antidote to the very mediated displays of 'real' human emotion that have been so popular on TV this decade - Big Brother, X Factor, etc etc. The Olympics smashed them and made them seem very trite and false (whether they are or not is difficult to call).

I think, as well, there's something very beautiful in a; watching human beings do things very, very well indeed, and b; in understanding that people are doing things not for fame or money but purely for achievement. And I think beautiful things make me want to cry, because they're fragile and valuable and, often by their nature, quite fleeting.

So, essentially, because I'm becoming a soppy bastard in my 30s.

seeing people achieve long strived-for goals is a very magical, powerful thing that I think I appreciate much more and more as I get older

Yes! It's the sense of resolution, a perfect finality to an arc, that breaks me open more & more. Not even mere narratives either - a band completely nailing it or a beautiful chord sequence reaching its tonic (thankfully these are rare) can leave me in floods. I think this must be a universal, otherwise why would people make such things? I wish I could identify when and why it started happening though, life never used to be like this.

Uh, that's not a question, sorry.

I'm very happy that that wasn't a question.

No apology needed.

Ismael IMO as you get older you'll have fewer and fewer binary win-lose scenarios, your brain misses them and wants them back in your life.

Sick Mouthy what's the best meal you've ever eaten? If you can't narrow it down to one, do it by price range (i.e. fancy restaurant vs. my aunt's lasagna)

Sick Mouthy, why isn't Mark Hollis's album on your pitchfork 100 list? did you forget?

it was number 1 on mine fyi

you are cuter than robin ince but i think he looks like he could be like, your dorky brother. it's a small resemblance.

Best meal I've ever eaten? Really difficult to pick just one, especially as sense memory fades and you can't 'repeat' a meal the way you can 'repeat' an album, film, book, etc etc etc, because you've digested it. If pushed for one, the meal I'd most like to repeat, and have spent most effort trying to recreate myself, is the Shackburger I had on honeymoon in NYC in May 2010. Simple, but amazing.

Other notables... a paella mixta at Can Manel in Barcelona in 2005. Braised blade of beef on celeriac and potato mash at the Conservatory the Saturday before Valentine's day this year (pistachio ice cream and chocolate tart for dessert). The first time I had lasagne, amusingly made by my sort-of aunt (think it was my mum's aunt's daughter, who ran a bistro type place, but memory is failing me), when I was about 8 years old, somewhere up north visiting relatives; it was made with lasagne verdi and I'd never eaten anything like it before (my parents are really conservative, meat&2veg Yorkshire pensioners, and pasta was an alien to me), and I think it pretty much opened up my mind (and mouth) to food from around the world. A lamb balti in the Indian restaurant in Dawlish that was just spectacular, better than any lamb balti before or since.

One of my favourite things to eat ever is the chocolate brownie from Bon Gout, the deli round the corner. I'm pretty damn good at making brownies myself after many many recipes and attempts and tweaks (I do a mean one with ground pistachios in it now), but I've never managed to get it quite the same gooey consistency as they do.

Why no Mark Hollis? That weird late-90s memory hole that also cost Is This Desire by PJ Harvey a place, and meant I forgot about In Sides by Orbital originally, and probably forgot a whole load of other things, too.

Transcribing again.

I'm doing my accounts this afternoon. What's *your* worst nightmare?

Wife and cats dying in front of me.

Hm, maybe I should rephrase that - what mundane tasks cause you anguish out of all proportion to any violence or difficulty?

Pretty much anything involving a spreadsheet.

what's exeter like?

bloody train station is too far away from the bloody bus station

(I was running all over the place yesterday with a heavy bag so perhaps I'm not the most objective. Or the most Sick Mouthy)

I'm biased, because I love it here, but I think it's great. Exeter's managed to be pretty recession-proof (touch wood) and is incredibly well-managed as a city; there's been an influx of new, major businesses down here, and development of local ones, over the last 7 years or so which has really benefited the whole area; the Met Office, the University, John Lewis just opened six months ago, Waitrose a year before that, Urban Outfitters about a year ago, IKEA's coming in two years. We've just (last autumn) sold our flat and bought a house, so we're bedded in and staying for the foreseeable. Even Em, who's from Manchester originally and hated it down here cos she moved as an unhappy teenager and resented being uprooted, admits that it's turning into a great city; good restaurants, good pubs, good shops, a couple of decent gig venues... There's a lot going for it.

Bristol's only a smidgeon over an hour away on the motorway or train, and there are plenty of great places to live in and around the city (in the city itself St Leonards is the most desirable area, and Mount Pleasant, bits of St Davids, Pennsylvania and Heavitree are good, too; there are lots of villages just outside the city - Topsham, Lympstone, Ide, Broadclyst, Clyst St Mary, Woodbury, plus plenty more - which are very nice indeed, and a bit further out bigger towns like Sidmouth, Teignmouth, Crediton, Honiton; I know people who live in all of them and commute into Exeter easily) but it's not cheap. However, it's like the 4th happiest place to live in the country, or something.

And the cycling's good; nice riverside paths for easy Sunday afternoon rides to pubs, and Dartmoor or east Devon for some serious hills and exertion and exploring...

The (main) train station IS quite far from the bus station, granted, but Central Station is only round the corner from John Lewis, which is near the bus station.

#localknowledge

One bad thing, is no decent independent record shops. But a 35-minute drive to Totnes fixes that spectacularly.

Yes, but no trains I ever get go to Central!
I lived around here during my formative years and it is a lovely city. A little sad to see the new revamp of the city centre produce the exact same chain restaurants etc as everywhere else but that’s probably the same of every city. I do feel like I step back in time every time I visit but that’s probably 90% due to nostalgia – I do see some of the same faces in the same bars as 10 years ago, though.

I think I would find it a little small to move back to, and its position means it’s kind of a long way to travel from most places, but I can see its charms. 

http://sickmouthy.com/ is no more eh?