Quote of the Day: A Lifetime After Fleeing the Nazis, They Tell Their Stories
HELEN WEIL, 103, who fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. Her younger brother also fled; her parents and sister were killed.
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The Secret Step Chefs Add For Fluffy, Crispy Potato Wedges
Don't get me wrong, I love a home-cooked potato wedge. But, like my DIY scrambled and poached eggs and even my air fryer chips, I always feel they're missing a little... something. They're always a little too rubbery, their skins tough and almost chewy rather than delicate and crisp. So I was glad to read that Jessica Segal, a chef-turned-blogger, had the crispy, fluffy secrets I've been looking for over on her site, Once Upon A Chef. And it turns out other experts – like ex-chef and former deputy food editor for Good Food, Esther Clark – agree with her technique. Cooking legends like Gordon Ramsay and Mary Berry recommend parboiling your potatoes before roasting them. The logic, Raymond Blanc explains, is that 'by boiling the potatoes prior to roasting, you ensure that you only cook the outside surface, allowing them to be fluffed up'. This also ensures a crispier skin, as does 'chuffing' the potatoes (shaking them in a colander until the outer layer forms 'hundreds of little ridges that will crisp up when placed in the hot fat'). Segal does both when making her potato wedges. She boils the cut, skin-on potatoes in salted water for about six to seven minutes before shaking them in a colander or sieve as they drain. This 'helps the wedges crisp up beautifully in the oven,' she wrote – the results should be fluffy, 'golden' perfection. BBC Good Food recommends waiting for at least five minutes for the potatoes to cool after boiling, draining, and 'chuffing' them. Per Marc Williams, cookery school director at The Grand in York, failing to wait for the steam to evaporate can result in soggy, soft potato skins. That's because after you parboil your roast potatoes, the steam puffs out from the exterior of your potatoes for a while after removing them from the water. This can interfere with the potatoes' interaction with the hot oil, which provides the crispy skin. And if they're seriously steamy, or even wet, you can get some dangerous splash-back. You should 'strain them and wait until the steam stops,' William said. 'You'll never get a crisp result if they are full of water.' The more you know... Scrambled Eggs Come Out Fluffier If You Add 1 Simple Ingredient Chefs Swear By This Storage Trick Can Keep Potatoes Fresh For 6 Months So THAT's Why Restaurant Sweet Potato Fries Are So Much Better
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What did ancient Rome smell like? BO, rotting corpses and raw sewage for starters ...
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The roar of the arena crowd, the bustle of the Roman forum, the grand temples, the Roman army in red with glistening shields and armor — when people imagine ancient Rome, they often think of its sights and sounds. We know less, however, about the scents of ancient Rome. We cannot, of course, go back and sniff to find out. But the literary texts, physical remains of structures, objects, and environmental evidence (such as plants and animals) can offer clues. So what might ancient Rome have smelled like? In describing the smells of plants, author and naturalist Pliny the Elder uses words such as iucundus (agreeable), acutus (pungent), vis (strong), or dilutus (weak). None of that language is particularly evocative in its power to transport us back in time, unfortunately. But we can probably safely assume that, in many areas, Rome was likely pretty dirty and rank-smelling. Property owners did not commonly connect their toilets to the sewers in large Roman towns and cities — perhaps fearing rodent incursions or odors. Roman sewers were more like storm drains, and served to take standing water away from public areas. Professionals collected feces for fertilizer and urine for cloth processing from domestic and public latrines and cesspits. Chamber pots were also used, which could later be dumped in cesspits. This waste disposal process was just for those who could afford to live in houses; many lived in small, non-domestic spaces, barely furnished apartments, or on the streets. A common whiff in the Roman city would have come from the animals and the waste they created. Roman bakeries frequently used large lava stone mills (or "querns") turned by mules or donkeys. Then there was the smell of pack animals and livestock being brought into town for slaughter or sale. The large "stepping-stones" still seen in the streets of Pompeii were likely so people could cross streets and avoid the assorted feculence that covered the paving stones. Disposal of corpses (animals and human) was not formulaic. Depending on the class of the person who had died, people might well have been left out in the open without cremation or burial. Bodies, potentially decaying, were a more common sight in ancient Rome than now. Suetonius, writing in the first century CE, famously wrote of a dog carrying a severed human hand to the dining table of the Emperor Vespasian. In a world devoid of today's modern scented products — and daily bathing by most of the population — ancient Roman settlements would have smelt of body odor. Classical literature has some recipes for toothpaste and even deodorants. However, many of the deodorants were to be used orally (chewed or swallowed) to stop one's armpits smelling. Related: How did people clean themselves before soap was invented? One was made by boiling golden thistle root in fine wine to induce urination (which was thought to flush out odor). The Roman baths would likely not have been as hygienic as they may appear to tourists visiting today. A small tub in a public bath could hold between eight and 12 bathers. The Romans had soap, but it wasn't commonly used for personal hygiene. Olive oil (including scented oil) was preferred. It was scraped off the skin with a strigil (a bronze curved tool). This oil and skin combination was then discarded (maybe even slung at a wall). Baths had drains — but as oil and water don't mix, it was likely pretty grimy. The Romans did have perfumes and incense. The invention of glassblowing in the late first century BCE (likely in Roman-controlled Jerusalem) made glass readily available, and glass perfume bottles are a common archaeological find. Animal and plant fats were infused with scents — such as rose, cinnamon, iris, frankincense and saffron — and were mixed with medicinal ingredients and pigments. The roses of Paestum in Campania (southern Italy) were particularly prized, and a perfume shop has even been excavated in the city's Roman forum. The trading power of the vast Roman empire meant spices could be sourced from India and the surrounding regions. There were warehouses for storing spices such as pepper, cinnamon and myrrh in the centre of Rome. In a recent Oxford Journal of Archaeology article, researcher Cecilie Brøns writes that even ancient statues could be perfumed with scented oils. Sources frequently do not describe the smell of perfumes used to anoint the statues, but a predominantly rose-based perfume is specifically mentioned for this purpose in inscriptions from the Greek city of Delos (at which archaeologists have also identified perfume workshops). Beeswax was likely added to perfumes as a stabiliser. Enhancing the scent of statues (particularly those of gods and goddesses) with perfumes and garlands was important in their veneration and worship. RELATED STORIES —Roman-era 'fast food' discovered in ancient trash heap on Mallorca —How is Roman concrete still standing after 2,000 years? —Does charcoal toothpaste really whiten teeth? The ancient city would have smelt like human waste, wood smoke, rotting and decay, cremating flesh, cooking food, perfumes and incense, and many other things. It sounds awful to a modern person, but it seems the Romans did not complain about the smell of the ancient city that much. Perhaps, as historian Neville Morley has suggested, to them these were the smells of home or even of the height of civilization. This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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12 hours ago
- News24
Public hospitals are dehumanising. It has nothing to do with foreigners
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