Cooking With Richard

Avocado sashimi:

Avocado goes really well with just soya sauce and wasabi.

I didn’t get a good photograph of this, unfortunately:

Lovely Ō-Yuka is coming here at New Year. What can I make to impress!?!

Macarons Maïs Violette - I love almondy Macaroons.

Crumble with amaretto cream - Amaretto is made with almonds, and so is crumble, and the two go together surprisingly well.

Perhaps too many almonds? I’ll have to ask if she’s allergic to them.

Update

This is one of the things that we actually had.

Cooking Gadgets is a crazy blog about, well, about cooking gadgets. Like the fruit candle carver (pictured below) or this sandwich cutter.

Architectures of control is a brilliant set of essays on code as law. Code as law is of course an interesting subject for programmers, because we are sometimes called upon to deliberately make products defective in order to satisfy outmoded business models (luckily the companies I work for have not asked me to do this). But as code and technology infects the physical world, we are now seeing code as law affecting every day activities, sometimes where it is definitely not wanted, and other times when it most certainly is.

Gordon’s salmon en croute (”croute” is a French word meaning crust).

This is an unusual recipe and I have mixed feelings about it. Sandwiched between the two pieces of salmon is a Christmassy filling which is almost like mincemeat — ginger, cloves, currants and nutmeg. The sweetness of the filling does go well with the salmon and contrasts with the savoury crust, but in the end I think this is both too rich and just a bit too much like eating a fishy mince pie for my taste.

On the side we have brocoli sprouts and an ordinary mashed potato.

ネコパンチ!!!

Soda syphons, it seems, are rather unusual appliances in the kitchen. N-sama bought me this one … the man in the shop actually asked her what it was for. I’m glad that she bought it, because it’ll be bloody useful for whisky and soda perfect batter.

Using a tilt-shift lens like this monster (more about that here) you can trick the brain into thinking that an ordinary photograph is actually an intricate model.

If you don’t want to bother with the expensive lens, you can fake this in Photoshop, or even better in the GIMP. Here was my best shot:

(Schoolchildren crossing the road near the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Click for big).

It’s tricky to get the right image and the right technique for this. The source image is crucial. Ideally it would be a shot taken from a height showing a relatively flat, open scene stretching off into the distance. The shot should contain lots of detail — cars, people, buildings, etc., but ’shopping is complicated if there are any raised structures/poles/etc. poking up from the scene, so avoid those. The process using the GIMP is relatively straightforward, but it relies on proper use of the Quick Mask feature (don’t make the mistake I did and do a google search for “gimp mask”!). The final step of adjusting the colour curves is also important.

See this flickr pool for some much better examples.

Update

Eh-to-ne?

Who’s-it?

Grrraaarrrr:

I love peanut butter, especially when in this case I have a small hangover, but in particular when I have no milk or Alpen.

This was Hard Work, and the first and last time that I cook in someone else’s kitchen. Updates later, pictures first.

Herb chicken, roast potatoes, celeriac mash, carrots, sprouts and stuffing:

Steamed hot marmalade cake and mince pies:

Another toad in the hole, this time made using balls of sausagemeat. Delicious comfort food.

Apologies for the terrible photo, but I’ve been cooking all day, preparing for a Christmas treat tomorrow. Photos of that tomorrow, if I remember to take my camera.

If ever I feel down, I look at this gorgeous photo by Wikipedian Luc Viatour. And I’m reminded that we have bluetits aplenty in our garden. Just a few days ago I spotted six together, eating the nuts and fat that N-sama has put out. Bluetits are definitely my favourite avian (or should that be theropod?)

(Click to embiggen)

This is pad thai, number 3:

I used excellent Thai rice noodles, 3mm wide, and they tasted pretty good this time.

Not mine, N-sama’s!

Bloody delicious! Especially with the “Tak Kee Trading” vegetable chilli oil which おサル-san and I are addicted to.

Opie’s Opie’s Pickled walnuts are a great accompaniment to all sorts of fried English foods.

Battered haddock with vegetables, cooked in a beer batter like this:

Batter tenkasu:

But what’s this?! Doesn’t like my tenkasu?

Organic chicken, perfect roast potatoes, carrots (see below) and sprouts. To round it out, I made a celeriac and potato mash as an alternative to the usual roast parsnips.

Below, home-made mince pie, with orange brandy butter and brandy clotted cream. I was going to get a better photo this morning, but unfortunately someone had eaten all the pies:

Carrots, cooked without water to preserve the sweetness. There’s a little garlic and butter in there:

This is Hugh’s herb chicken recipe, with parsley from our garden and dried herbs. The chicken itself is a happy one from here:

This is not code:

This is code:

Remember in Independence Day when whatshisface-math-guy writes a virus that works on both his apple laptop AND an alien mothership? Bullshit! If real life were like film I’d be able to port wordpress to my toaster using a cat5 cable and a bag of glitter.