Cooking With Richard

… but great food. This was a pasta / tomato / mozzarella dish from Jamie’s Italy book, which was fab:

Buta-no-kakuni:

I used a slightly different recipe this time, from here.

Beer - The cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems.

- Homer J. Simpson

The iPM programme put up the full, unedited version of my interview:

(IPM blog, Previously …)

Oriental City has been under threat for so long, but it is finally to close at the end of May, to make way for soulless flats and a DIY superstore. (There aren’t enough DIY superstores in London apparently, so a one-of-its-kind shopping centre has to be leveled to make way for one).

I’ve been going there regularly for at least ten years, but today was the last time.

There aren’t really any alternatives. Chinese Wing Yip, down the road, is expanding, but they don’t have the other shops or non-Chinese food. Japanese TK Trading is miles away.

More discussion of the closure …

Thanks to ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone for valiantly defending the store — oh no, in fact he approved the planning application. Well, he’s been thrown out of office now, but his stupid planning decisions like this and others will linger on.

This is what I got from Utsuwa no Yakata Japanese pottery shop:

New Scientist commemorates 30 years of spam and links to the spam archive.

So does the Grauniad.

This morning I was called out of the blue by “George” a researcher at BBC Radio 4 iPM programme, interactive little brother of the PM programme (Radio 4’s 5 o’clock daily news).

George wanted to talk to me about the Great Spam Archive, all the spam I’ve collected in my inbox since August 1997 (archive by date), and I was happy to oblige. I ended up going to Broadcasting House this afternoon, and being interviewed by Eddie Mair about my “favorite” spam, and why on earth I started to collect it (answer: I simply never delete any old email).

The process is a bit strange — they sit you in a sound-proof booth and you talk to the presenter over a microphone. (Eddie was sitting in another BBC studio). The whole interview lasted perhaps 10 minutes after which Eddie politely thanked me and I left. Now I guess they cut the ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ out and cut it down to a 1 or 2 minute slot. I’ll find out soon — the broadcast is due on-air at 5.30pm (in about an hour).

Update

Well, it’s over. They edited it a lot to make me sound intelligent .. I’ll have an MP3 clip from the show up shortly in case people want to listen.

Update #2

No sound file posted by the BBC yet, but they’ve put some background information up on the iPM blog here.

Update - audio

Here it is –> Edited MP3 file with my interview <–

If you want to hear the full program, it’s available for the next week on the iPM podcast site.

The garden is full of stinging nettles at the moment, vicious little bastards. What better way to show them who’s boss than to make nettle soup. I collected a large pot full of the shoots and heads, which turned out to be about enough for two people:

This is the soup, with a sprig of mint leaves (also from the garden). Very delicious — we should eat nettle soup more often.

This is the lemon from the lemon tree:

Same as this leek potato and bacon soup except that I didn’t have any leeks so I used cauliflower instead. Very tasty!

MEAT! Or more precisely, 11lbs (5kg) of pork shoulder down to the loin. This cost me under £20 and should feed about 15-20 people, so it’s actually very good value (if you have 20 people that need feeding).

If Justin gets his act together and calls me then I may well cook this for his party tomorrow afternoon.

Update

Not bad, a bit dry. Crackling was excellent.

I photographed a sparrowhawk catching, killing and eating a starling in the garden today. Well, the killing and the eating kind of overlapped. As you can imagine the starling was not too happy about this situation and made a lot of noise.

Click photos for larger versions.

I’m afraid that the ducks eggs and nest has gone. Something dug under the fence from the next door garden and swiped all the eggs. Only 2 days to go before they hatched as well :-(

Update

The neighbour thinks it was a fox, although maybe it was the neighbour’s dog. You can see the hole and the broken nest here:

and from the other side of the fence:

There was no sign of any eggs or even egg shells.

Mother was OK, but shaken. She sat in the garden for about half an hour like this, just doing nothing:

And that was that.

ガーコ is still sitting on her nest. We’re expecting ducklings towards the end of this week. Here’s the latest photo of (an) egg, she covers them up before she goes out each time.

While you’re waiting, here’s a photo of our lovely long-tailed tits:

Here is M-kun playing Mario Kart Wii, which is bloody good fun:

Dorchester:

Little Wittenham and the Wittenham Clumps, Northmoor Trust:

Bravery:

Lambs!

Push!

Toad in the hole made with delicious sausages from the butcher in St Albans:

Note to self: Look over these Roman recipes for food and wine from Cato and see if there’s anything worth doing.

Recipe for libum: Bray 2 pounds of cheese thoroughly in a mortar; when it is thoroughly macerated, add 1 pound of wheat flour, or, if you wish the cake to be more dainty, 1/2 pound of fine flour, and mix thoroughly with the cheese. Add 1 egg, and work the whole well. Pat out a loaf, place on leaves, and bake slowly on a warm hearth under a crock.

One of the best bands of the ’90s, live at the Bull and Gate, Saturday 10th May 2008:

Here’s another good video.

I was in the middle of making this recipe described as “Bubble and Squeak” when I came to the sudden realization that it is really コロッケ, so I quickly covered it in honey panko and shallow fried it. Success!

But in Japan, mere potato isn’t enough carbohydrate on its own, so they wrap it in bread (can you believe?) to make a kind of potato sandwich. Mmm carbs!