Cooking With Richard

Six weeks ago I made these preserved lemons. They’ve been sitting in the fridge in the old house and now the new house for that time. I took them out today to see what had happened:

What does it taste like Uncle Richard? (←voice of the reader)

Well, just like salty old lemons.

Apparently there are better preserved lemon recipes that I should have used:
http://www.recipesource.com/ethnic/africa/morocco/preserved-lemons1.html and http://www.stuttercut.org/hungry/archives/recipes/000324.html both look very interesting.

Nevertheless I may well try the chicken, preserved lemons and olive recipe that I originally had in mind. Watch this space!

I took this photograph today in a forest near the attractively named Potters Crouch.

What is this strange English weed, growing at the back of our garden? It has an unearthly five-fold symmetry.

The easiest meal in the world …

People [unnamed, but you know who you are!] have been complaining about the CookingWithRichard blog that I don’t post the recipes for much of what I make. So here is the recipe for pasta pesto.

Ingredients:
* Buy some pesto from the local shop. For this one I used Sacla red pepper pesto.
* Pasta
* Mushrooms, courgettes, a red pepper, or any other large vegetables.

(1) Start cooking pasta.
(2) While the pasta is cooking, fry up the vegetables in olive oil.
(3) After the pasta is cooked (make sure it’s a bit early or al dente), drain the pasta and mix it with the vegetables and pesto.
(4) Season with salt and pepper, and stir in rocket leaves.
(5) Serve, drizzled with olive oil.

We served this with a “salad” made with mozzarella and parma ham.

In about 15 minutes you’ll have a simple, delicious meal.

Funny video about what happens in men’s toilets. A lot of this stuff is true …

Click here to watch the video …

What’s very interesting about this short film from my point of view is that it was made entirely in Sims 2 (a computer game). The technique is called Machinima. Most films will be made this way in 10-20 years time, assuming the copyright cartel don’t have their way and destroy the internet and copying.

We think this one is a female sparrow. Very coy, she was hiding for most of the time in the thick undergrowth, but popped out to collect some seeds from the ground:

Bluetits and (second below) greattits are regular visitors in the CookingWithRichard garden. The greattits tend to bully their smaller relatives:

Hanggliders:

See, where we’re living now is better than J&M’s flat in Aoyama!

They don’t have ducks[1]

or dinosaurs.

Update: [1] The one on the left is actually a Canada goose.

N-sama bought me one of those fancy French Le Creuset casserole dishes, so I celebrated by making the standard French casserole, coq au vin. Usually this would be made with a rather ancient old hen, I guess the phrase “no spring chicken” is appropriate. Britain is not a country where one can buy older animals, so instead I’m using some organic chicken from the supermarket. At least it was (possibly) happy.

Update:
I made this apple pudding again for dessert with fresh custard:

This is really the view from my office window.

A woman in Surrey has knitted an entire garden, including the snails! (from Boingboing)

Lamb tagine (from Rick Stein’s french book), somewhat improvised because I didn’t have many of the ingredients. Very very tasty - the sweet potatoes, honey and apricots sweetened it up nicely.

I fried the couscous in butter.

Update:
In case you’re wondering what is a tagine, a kind of conical Moroccan cooking pot.

Lovely Japanese curry, made by me! For the katsu I dusted it with flour, then egg, then panko:

Jerk chicken and plantains:

With the plantains I served some creme fraiche:

Elderberry and blackberry crumble again. This time I ground the almonds by hand, and although this is time-consuming, it adds a distinctive texture on the tongue which is worthwhile.

Clockwise from top: chips, salad, potato salad, lamb shoulder cooked for 4 and a half hours, worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, okra and aubergine curry, french and english mustard, salt and pepper:

Mito’s bits:

A good friend of ours made this tremendous strawberry sponge cake:

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
and Mark’s new house:

Plantains and scotch bonnet chillis for authentic jerk chicken, okra and aubergines.

Lemons and limes, apples for crumble and apple pudding, onions and sweet potatoes.

I’ve never had much luck with duck. The confit was made by a frenchman. When I have cooked duck it’s been too dry or too fatty. Asakai on the other hand seems to have the knack:

and see Asakai’s little cartoon recipe. She’s an artiste : - )

I’ve decided to go in for a little self-improvement …

On Sunday I’m having a joint 30th birthday party with the always lovely Yuka, so now it’s time to practice some recipes for the guests. First was jerk chicken:

I put 3 scotch bonnets into this and it was pretty damn hot.
Chips and some plantains (not shown):

Crumble made with the local elderberries and brambles that we picked last week. The crumble recipe is from Hugh’s first book.