Cooking With Richard

Chilli con carne isn’t the most photogenic meal on earth - it’s mostly just a stew. But this one is made with organic beef that I bought off the beef farmer, and chillis from a market in Kentish Town, and it tastes very good.

We remember rhubarb and custard? This is the original, with real custard. Actually N-san doesn’t like this. But it’s one of my favourites.
To make the rhubarb, just break it down in a pan with a little water and sugar. For the custard start by mixing 3 eggs, a teaspoon of cornflour, and an ounce of sugar. Heat a pint of milk until it’s hot but not boiling, then stir the milk into the egg mixture, slowly and stirring all the time. Now comes the tricky part. Pour the mixture back into the pan and heat up, slowly, and without letting it get too hot (or boil!), and keep stirring. The eggs and cornflour will cause the custard to thicken. Have an ice cold bowl next to you, and once it starts to thicken, pour the custard into the bowl. (The coldness of the bowl stops the eggs from cooking further and turning the whole thing into scrambled eggs).

I made this asparagus & mushroom soup. It’s an odd recipe because you effectively have to dry fry the mushrooms. Also coming from the US, it isn’t healthy - it contains a lot of butter and cream. The result is a little salty for my taste (because of the bouillon) but despite that and the cream, the asparagus and mushroom just about come out. I’d probably make this again, but with about 1/3rd of the cream and I’d use a home made stock base instead of the salty bouillon.
Notice the newer, larger, better images! 450px wide seems to be ideal for this blog. It looks so much better.

We’ve got a huge box of empty wine and beer bottles for recycling after the BBQ! I think Yuka drank most of it :-)

These delicious snacks are so simple to make. Grill or dry fry some ciabatta slices (with a tiny bit of olive oil if you want). Then rub garlic into the base. Top with mozzarella, chilli, tomatoes, prosciuto, parma ham, or whatever you like. Pepper and olive oil and they’re ready!

In this house we don’t just tolerate nature, we welcome her with open arms^^^ I mean open windows. Here are our tiny little maggots, growing on the compost bin. One day they hope to become beautiful little bluebottles, to swarm around our bins and generally buzz about in an unhelpful way.

Update:
Maggots are actually worth quite a bit of money. Maybe we should start farming them?

Thank you for your kind attention.
カタカナhowever is OK.

Sometimes words are not necessary.

St Peter’s Golden ale is a light, easy to drink ale for the ladies. And you can turn the bottle into an attractive olive oil pourer.

The Urban Chef, Oliver Rowe came through again with this fantastic recipe for ostrich with a beetroot relish. I used beef instead of ostrich …

My camera phone doesn’t bring out the reds in the beetroot, but don’t worry photo lovers! I’ve just ordered a new Canon EOS 350D. The photos will be fantastic.
Update: I fiddled with the colours to try and get some of the reds from the beetroot. This was my best shot - doesn’t really compare to the “real thing”.

You can actually make basic pasta very simply, almost as easily as going out to the shops to buy the horrible dried stuff.
You need to start with 1 egg, 125g of flour (I’m using white flour and semolina mixed), a pinch of salt, and a drop or two of water.
The real trick is that you need a pasta machine, otherwise rolling and cutting is quite difficult.

Mixing and kneading the ingredients to make a dough:

Now we bring out the pasta machine and roll out the dough, running it through successively thinner settings to make a longer and longer sheet of pasta:

Then we use the cutting tool to make spaghetti:

And the finished pasta:

The quantities listed above make enough for about two people.
Come back later when I make an arrabiata (tomato and chilli) sauce!

Update: Starter - a mozzarella salad:

Update: Arrabiata! I used some of the parsley from our garden, and a few leftovers from past meals, so it’s not strictly like an arrabiata - it’s got sausage meatballs from the pizza for starters.

Guess who’s watching the footie. Japan are getting plenty of opportunities to practice their defence if you know what I mean :-)

After making pizza I’ve got enough dough left over the make a loaf of bread:

Apparently I’ll get my expenses paid next week, which means I’ll be shopping for a new camera. I’m looking at the Canon EOS 350D with a 300mm lens and 1GB memory card. Yay, no more crappy camera-phone shots.
Funny physics joke

I’ve started having just one cup of (ordinary) tea (warning: shit website) every day for medicinal purposes. Back when I drank tea, I used to go through 5-10 cups of it every day. Now that I’m only drinking one, I can actually taste it. It’s like my grandmother’s house which always smelled of freshly brewed pots of tea.

Notice also the very collectible Enron mug, which I stole from Enron’s offices, back in the day.

There’s quite a fun TV programme on at the moment, The Urban Chef about chef Oliver Rowe and his quest to set up a restaurant in Kings Cross which serves only London food.
Scarily today he managed to source London Pigeon. Yummy.
But anyhow one of the sources that caught my eye was this Ostrich farm in Chesham which I’m sure I’ll be visiting at some point.
If only to make this dish …

Tonight I made Enchiladas with Refried Beans.

Fuller’s London Porter is a lovely dark porter ale brewed in Chiswick, West London. It’s a creamy, chocolatey meal-in-a-bottle.
In the 18th and 19th centuries people would have drunk porter ales like this instead of water (the water being rather unsafe to drink at the time).

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara is Italian bacon and eggs. Fry the bacon (or pancetta), with onions and garlic if you like. Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti. Right at the end, after the spaghetti has been drained, but while it’s still hot, we mix in the bacon, raw beaten egg and cheese. The egg cooks lightly in the pasta (don’t heat it!), and it’s served immediately with some chopped parsley.

It’s an elegant and simple recipe which you can make in 15 minutes or so. But will it work with our Spanish cured jamon instead of bacon/pancetta, and even more daringly goat’s cheese? Find out later when I try it!

Update 1: Preparation

Update 2: Parsley from our garden

Update 3: The result!

Update 4: The conclusion

The Spanish ham is delicious, but the goat’s cheese doesn’t really work in this meal. Nevertheless it’s one I’d make again, probably substituting parmesan for goat’s cheese.