#i watched the second half on 2x speed waiting for there to be another Point

[queerholmcs]

hbomberguy's thesis is Flawed. also i don't remember him ever mentioning gatiss

LITERALLY!!! he spends an hour and fifty minutes complaining about how he hates moffat like he's the only person responsible for the show and his entire beef with the show comes down to "i have only engaged with the material on a very surface-level reading and i think they're clever little detective stories and i want any adaptation of the material to be a detective procedural done as a serial with isolated episodes. how dare you call the show SHERLOCK (in all caps) and then spend the majority of the runtime showing us the characters and not the crimes. also john watson literally serves no purpose and sherlock himself is just an absolute asshole all the time, we know this because he says he's a sociopath and also here are three clips of him being a pedantic dick, i am very good at engaging with media. tsot was a stupid episode because it opens with an insanely overproduced and high-effort scene for the sake of one stupid joke about how sherlock is thoughtless about other people's lives and then most of the episode is just sherlock standing in a room talking, he's not even solving crimes." and i'm like. literally What Are You Talking About shdkshdkdhdk. did we watch the same show. i have never watched someone be so wrong about so many things with such conviction.

[mrgan]

Neven’s Pizza Dough

Sour cream, mozzarella, Sulguni cheese, pepperoni. Home oven, baking steel.

I like pizza, and I make it often. You also like pizza. Perhaps you’d like to make it as well? Here’s the recipe for my sourdough pizza, ideal for Neapolitan or NYC-style pies, baked in a home oven with a baking steel or stone, or in an outdoor oven. Scroll past the recipe if you’d like to learn more!

Neven’s Sourdough Pizza

Servings: two 12” pizzas. Time: 3.5 hours (mix and proof) + 1 to 14 days (fridge-ferment) + 6 hours (final proof) + 10 to 20 minutes (shape, top, and bake)

INGREDIENTS:

260 g high-gluten or bread flour (or all-purpose flour)

40 g (15%) whole wheat or rye flour (or any flour, really)

9 g (3%) salt

15 g (5%) ripe sourdough starter

200 g (66%) water

DIRECTIONS:

Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer (”a KitchenAid”) outfitted with the dough hook and stir with a spatula to combine. Add the starter and about 2/3 of the water. Start the mixer on low speed and mix for 1 minute; add the rest of the water, and mix for 4 more minutes. Switch to medium speed and mix for another 5 minutes. If at any point the dough threatens to crawl out of the bowl, stop the mixer and scrape the mess back down into the bowl.

Once mixed, move the dough to a new bowl. (I prefer a shallower, wider, non-metal one myself.) Cover the bowl and let the dough rest in a warm spot (70–74°F?) for 3 hours. Every 30 minutes or so, perform a stretch-and-fold.

Scoop the dough with a flexible dough scraper onto a lightly oiled work surface and cut into two 262 g portions. Shape each portion into a ball, tucking the ends in toward the middle to form a taut, balloon-like surface on one side. Pop into a lightly oiled 16 oz deli container (do you have some from food deliveries?), messy side down. Cover and pop in the back of the fridge for 1-14 days. (I find the flavor is best around 7 days.)

6 hours before baking, remove the containers from the fridge and leave them on the counter. 2 hours before baking, uncover them. This will dry out the top somewhat, which is great; that will become the not-so-sticky bottom of your crust.

Portioned dough balls after being uncovered.

If using a home oven: 1 hour before baking, pop a baking stone or baking steel or upside-down pan on a rack 6-8" from the top broiler. Crank it up to 550ºF and leave it there.

To stretch the dough: hold the container upside down and wiggle the dough out of it gently; dont worry about whether it stays a perfect ball. Place it into a shallow, wide bowl of flour and make sure the wet end and the sides get some flour (not too much) on them. Place it on your wooden peel with the dry (previously the top) side down and press gently around the inside of the rim to make a little ringed pizza-prototype.

Then pick it up and stretch with your knuckles (don’t use your fingers). It should be very friendly, stretchy without any pullback or tearing. Stretch to 10" in size. Shimmy the peel a bit to make sure no part of the dough has stuck; repeat this shimmying every minute or so if it takes you that long to top it.

Stretching the dough using knuckles only.

My topping strategy for a standard cheese pizza: layer the dough with sliced mozzarella cheese, then add dabs of sauce, and your toppings. Now gently tug under the rim all around to stretch to 12″; the weight of the toppings will help prevent pullback.

Redistribute the toppings if needed. Shimmy again. Expertly slide onto the steel/stone/pan.

If using a home oven: set a timer for 4 minutes. Then, open the oven door and check the underside of your pizza. Almost done, while the top is still a bit pale? If so, slide a metal pizza pan (or a cookie sheet or something else thin, metal, and as large as the pie) under it. This prevents the bottom from getting overbaked. Rotate the arrangement 180º to get even baking. Set a timer for 3 minutes.

When the pizza is gorgeous, slide it out with a metal pizza peel or a large flat spatula or whatever. (Don’t use your wooden peel—that’s for shaping and launching only.) Rest it on a cooling rack for 1-2 minutes to dry out the bottom. Then move to a cutting board or plate and slice. (Don’t use your wooden peel for this either, please!)

If using an outdoor pizza oven: if you own one of these, you probably know what to do. Have at it, sport!

Sour cream, mozzarella, provolone, chives and garlic chives. Ooni Koda oven.

33% whole wheat in this dough. Aged for 9 days in the fridge.

- - - END OF RECIPE - - - - - - NOTES AND MUSINGS FOLLOW - - -

A note on baker’s percentages 

When a dough is “66% hydrated,” that doesn’t mean the final ball of dough is two-thirds water. Rather, what bakers mean is, water is equal to 66% of the flour weight. Got it? That way, you can measure out your flour and scale all the other ingredients to it. I no longer refer to a recipe when I mix the dough, because I’ve memorized the percentages: 66% water, 3% salt, 5% starter. I also know that I need 150 g of flour per pizza; from these figures I can easily arrive at the weight of the other ingredients. Can you do the math in your head for, say, four pizzas? It’s easy! (Or maybe I’m just a math genius. (I am not a math genius.))

Just TWO pizzas? So what’s my boyfriend going to eat?

You can easily double the recipe. I wouldn’t go beyond 2x; you can’t mix much more than a kilo of dough in a typical stand mixer. If you’re doing a big pizza party and you want to make eight pies, first of all, congratulations! second, do it in two batches.

Do you think I’m the sort of person who has sourdough starter just sitting around?

“What does it matter what you say about people?”

I get it. I wasn’t always a Sourdough Guy. So, let me give you a recipe using commercial yeast. Bonus: it’s faster!

Normal-Person Pizza

Servings: two 12” pizzas. Time: 3 hours (mix and proof) + 10 to 20 minutes (shape, top, and bake)

INGREDIENTS:

260 g high-gluten or bread flour (or all-purpose flour)

40 g (15%) whole wheat or rye flour (or any flour, really)

9 g (3%) salt

3 g instant yeast (~1 tsp, about half a little package thingy, 1%)

200 g (66%) water

DIRECTIONS:

Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer (”a KitchenAid”) outfitted with the dough hook and stir with a spatula to combine. Add about 2/3 of the water. Start the mixer on low speed and mix for 1 minute; add the rest of the water, and mix for 4 more minutes. Switch to medium speed and mix for another 5 minutes. If at any point the dough threatens to crawl out of the bowl, stop the mixer and scrape it back down into the bowl.

Once mixed, move the dough to a new bowl. (I prefer a shallower, wider, non-metal one myself.) Cover the bowl and let the dough rest in a warm spot (70–74°C?) for 2 hours. Every 30 minutes or so, perform a stretch-and-fold.

Scoop the dough with a flexible dough scraper onto a lightly oiled work surface and cut into two 262 g portions. Shape each portion into a ball, tucking the ends in toward the middle to form a taut, balloon-like surface on one side. Place on a well floured board; flour the top some more; and cover with a clean, non-terry (non-”fuzzy”; you want “smooth”) kitchen towel. Rest for another 1-2 hours, watching for the dough to grow some more and start looking really taut and ready.

Proceed with the tossing, topping, and baking.

Carmelina brand tomatoes, sauced; garlic, fresh oregano. Ooni Koda oven.

Wait, but I don't have a stand mixer either 😐

“It’s always gonna be something with you, isn’t it, Joe?”

No, that’s cool, that’s cool. Just mix by hand. Or by spatula, really. Mash it and fold it and fold it and mash it. Make sure you do frequent and thorough stretch-and-folds in this case. You really want to distribute everything uniformly in there.

And now, a word from our sponsors

(Note: none of the following products or brands are my sponsors. This is merely an idiom, come on.)

Juuuust in case you’re looking to add to your kitchen setup, here are the products I use for pizza making. Some of the links below include my referral code, which means I’ll get a tiny cut of the sale; the price is the same to you, though, so like, what does it matter? (I still feel a little uneasy. Sorry.)

Ooni Koda outdoor pizza oven. Simple, portable, hot as heck. Makes pizza you simply can’t get out of a home oven. These links give you 10% off! (UK link, EU link. These links all give you 10% off. BAM!)

Carmelina canned tomatoes in puree. Sweet, rich, flavorful. Buy them by the case.

Tillamook sour cream. Yes, sour cream makes a perfect sauce for a white pizza—which is generally an easier base to put creative toppings on! Make sure to buy the stuff where the ingredients are just cream and cultures, none of this cornstarch/carrageenan nonsense.

For flour, look for a local mill, if possible. Shop at restaurant-supply stores!

16 oz deli containers. Washable, sturdy, endlessly reusable. Love ‘em.

CoverMate bowl covers. Reusable, washable, transparent, secure.

Gram-precision kitchen scale. You know you need one. My favorite feature: extra long timeout (before it turns off) so I can forget to get the flour and run downstairs and hunt for it and when I come back, my measurement is still up on the screen.

I also like Ooni’s bamboo and metal peels a lot. You can get very cheap ones on Amazon, but understand that they’re… cheap.

Saf-Instant yeast. It’s got the cutest box. You can keep it in the freezer for years and use it right out of the freezer.

Oxo pizza cutter wheel. Whatever wheel you buy, just make sure it’s large and heavy—that’s what helps you cut neatly.

In conclusion

Pizza is good. Thank you.

Sliced mozzarella, parmesan, Carmelina brand tomatoes. Home oven, baking steel.

[mirandagoing4baroque]

Field of Streams: Ariodante, in Concert, While Making Lasagna

The English Concert was supposed to perform Rodelinda in concert at Carnegie Hall on May 3rd 2020. Obviously they did not. In some ways I am lucky--if the Met hadn’t done Agrippina I might have made plans come to New York to see Rodelinda instead. It wouldn’t be unprecedented. In fact, in 2014, I finally got to call in an IOU over a decade old. As I mentioned on this blog, when I was in kindergarten and first heard Alcina, I managed to get my father to promise to take me to see Alcina live whenever it came to the east coast. And more than twenty years later we finally got to see the English Concert perform it in concert in Carnegie Hall. In the intervening years there was a debate about whether Toronto counted as the east coast, but my father insisted that he had only meant the east coast of the United States. And when the English Concert brought Ariodante on tour in 2017 they were kind enough to take the show to the Kennedy Center which was considerably more convenient.

As a replacement for the aforementioned cancelled Rodelinda concert, they streamed a recording of the Ariodante in Concert recorded at and live streamed from Carnegie Hall in 2017. As I mentioned above, I was lucky enough to see this concert at the Kennedy Center when it was touring, and I also watched the stream at the time, and then I rewatched it when it was streamed again this past weekend (twice, I regret nothing). So I am, shall we say, intimately familiar with this production.

Opera in concert is an interesting phenomena. I’ve seen three operas in concert (Alcina, Ariodante, Zelmira) and a few others that were only ‘semi-staged’ (Don Giovanni 2x, Radamisto, Giulio Cesare at Boston Baroque). Well, Miranda, you say, “the monkey paw has curled, and you got what you wished for in the Acis and Galatea review, an opera stripped of any ‘razzle dazzle’ or distractions. So, can the emotional drama stand alone?” On this subject I cannot speak for anyone other than myself but I believe it can and it does. I am sure that there are those for whom the grand sets and costumes are an integral part of the experience, and that is a legitimate position to take, but not one to which I ascribe.

However, especially in these times, watching operas in concert (stay tuned for my review of the Boston Baroque Agrippina stream) makes me think about what the bare essentials of opera are. The sets and costumes are fun, sure, and all other things being equal, I would rather have sets and costumes and the full spectacle. And they can cover a multitude of sins. It is far more difficult to create an entertaining production when it is just the orchestra, the singers, and an empty stage. But this production is, to me, as moving as some fully staged productions I’ve seen. So what is the immutable core of these operas? What is it that I am searching for when I am “Going for Baroque?”

The value I find in opera is as an emotional touchstone. This is not a novel concept, and I am not the first, or even the thousandth to think it. Why it is Baroque Opera for me and Jazz or R&B for you, I cannot say,* but when I hear this music performed well my heart (or my soul, or my grey matter, or whatever the thing is that is that feels the feels) stirs in response. So what I am looking for when I am going to an opera is not a spectacle. I am looking for a conflict that put the characters through a variety of feelings, music that is performed with care in a baroque style, and singers and musicians who will sing or play with pathos, so I can have the transcendental experience of sharing an emotional response with a room of strangers, and most importantly, with my father. We have been watching many of the same streams, and sharing our thoughts over the telephone but it’s not the same as sitting next to him in a hushed auditorium and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, a small small creep across his face as the horns come in because he knows they are my favorite. I am counting down the days until we can share this again.

But enough philosophizing. Let’s review the stream. So we know the standard, how did this production measure up? Well, I watched it four times, so that’s a hint. In fact as to music performed in the Baroque style, this performance could be considered a gold standard (of course along with the Glyndebourne Giulio Cesare). I am such a sucker for period instruments. To my ear the difference between Baroque Opera performed with and without period instruments is the difference between your average red wine vinegar, and an expensive aged balsamic. The red wine vinegar is fine, but the aged balsamic has a far more interesting, layered, intense flavor. This is especially true with respect to brass, where the natural horn is basically a completely different instrument from the french horn. The English Concert has never once disappointed me. Harry Bicket is always a master of the correct tempo, but in this concert, the flowing dance rhythms that undergird the arias really shone.

So next up we have a drama that puts the characters through a variety of feelings. If you need a refresher on the plot of Ariodante, I covered it earlier here (and if you’re too lazy to click the link, think the Hero/Claudius plot from Much Ado About Nothing), but there is no debating that it certainly takes the characters on a roller coaster of emotional situations. The stellar cast dug deeply into the libretto and squeezed every drop of feeling from Handel’s brilliant arias. Ariodante was composed when Handel was at the peak of his operatic abilities and it contains some of his most sublime music. 

Mirroring the tasteful stylings of the orchestra the cast had subtle but effective ornamentations in the da capo sections that elevated the theme but did not obscure it (no mean feat in such arias as “Dopo Notte”).  The King of Scotland was played by Matthew Brook, who I do not believe I had seen before and nor have I seen him since. I really enjoyed his performance and he was an especially capable actor. He leaned into the paternal aspects of the role, and I found his emotional arc quite moving. David Portillo was a wonderful Lurcanio, and I still hope to see him again in something (hint, hint, DC directors). I particularly enjoyed his “Tu Vivi.”  In this aria Lurcanio tries to dissuade his brother Ariodante from choosing suicide after seeing a woman they believe (incorrectly) to be Ginevra let a man into her rooms. It is often sung in a rage, which allows for blistering speed and impressive displays of vocal prowess, but in David Portillo’s interpretation, it was a desperate plea to save his brother's life. By toning the aria down a notch, he accessed some very interesting interpersonal and emotional drama that added novel layers to a familiar aria.

This was my first time hearing Sonia Prina live, but I had fallen in love with her voice on many Baroque recordings. She has a wonderful vibrancy and fluidity  in her lower register, which is particularly critical for women playing Polinesso, in my opinion. Sometimes they can sound a little stilted in the low runs, but she had full power and flexibility. I also appreciated her aesthetic. The punk rock bad guy Polinesso she portrayed was believable as a love interest for Dalinda, and as a villain. It is not her fault that Polinesso’s arias are all a little one note (think Iago’s extensive monologues in Othello).

I absolutely adored Mary Bevan’s Dalinda. I hadn’t heard her prior to this concert, and I eagerly await my next opportunity (still waiting......). She was believable as a young woman who fell in love with the wrong manipulative man and made a mistake. I loved her portrayal of the rising horror throughout the second half as she realized what was going on. I always love "Neghittosi, or voi che fate?", the aria where she calls on the heavens to strike down the man who wronged her, but I found her interpretation to be a particularly affecting vision of female empowerment and rejecting the notion that she was culpable, and laying the blame squarely at the feet of Polinesso, where it belongs.

This was also my introduction to Christiane Karg, who was a vocal standout as Ginevra. I would have liked a little more emotion from her, but, as I’ve acknowledged above, I like my Handel drama cranked to eleven, so that may just be personal preference. Regardless of the acting, her singing was note-perfect and I have no real complaints.

Which brings us at last to Joyce DiDonato. Her performance in this production is one of my most treasured concert memories, and the kind of magic you are just grateful to bear witness to. Any performance of “Scherza Infida” is a miracle of acting and vocal stamina. As I said in my last review of Ariodante, the song is 12 minutes long, and contains four lines of distinct lyrics. To hold the audience’s attention with no prancing dancers in nude bodysuits, with only your voice and the music--that is a gift. But you can google reviews of this production and read critics who know far more about this than I do raving about her “Scherza Infida” and her “Dopo Notte.” I want to talk about the redheaded stepchild of Ariodante’s third act arias “"Cieca notte." This is the moment when Ariodante learns that he was fooled--that he was betrayed by his beloved, that in fact he has betrayed her. (Apparently I have a thing for arias in which Handelian heros realize they have been fooled, see also, “Mi Lusinga” from Alcina) To watch her sing this aria, and to see the distinct waves of realization rolling across Ariodante’s soul as the aria progresses is to watch a master at work. I will at some point write up my magnum opus on how, when properly performed, da capo arias should replicate the structure of the Hegelian Dialectic, but that is a problem for another day.

So there it is, how you can strip away all but the absolute essential bits from an opera and still have a dynamic, dramatic, engrossing evening (even when you’ve seen the thing three times already). Because for me, I got what I needed out of it. I felt that resonance in my soul. I found a little comfort in these times. It’s no replacement for live opera, but it soothed a bit my parched throat. Okay, I lied, I do have a few things to say about “Dopo Notte.” Ever since I watched this stream, I’ve been listening to “Dopo Notte,” the bravura aria Ariodante sings at the end of the show, rejoicing in his reunion with Genevra, almost every day, because it is the tonic I need during these times (you can listen here if you think it might be the tonic your soul needs too). It is a promise I make to myself; permission to let myself hope. A promise that the sun will shine again, that these dark and stormy waters will not drag us under, and that someday I will sit next to my father in a dark opera house, and we will once again share in the experience of Handel’s glorious music.

“After a dark night, the sun shines in the heavens and fills the world with joy...”

*It was definitely the brainwashing.