Cooking With Richard

The unhealthy way to start the day, a plate of fried plantains. Not sure what the parsley is all about.

I was down in the Big City this evening, in scary Finsbury Park, but one good thing (perhaps the only good thing) about the Park is the presence of excellent West Indian food shops.
Scotch Bonnet is a very very hot chilli which is the original taste behind jerk chicken. I’m going to use these to try to make a really authentic jerk chicken.

Plantains are a form of banana where the starch doesn’t turn to sugar, so you can’t eat them raw too easily. Simply frying turns the starches and sugars into a fantastic caramel taste, and the texture is similar to potatoes.

Aubergine and okra curry. I made this with sieved grilled tomatoes instead of tomato puree, and to be honest it didn’t taste too good. However I’m not sure if this was because I changed the ingredients, or because I’m having to cook on an electric hob, the worst way to cook.

N-sama made this absolutely fabulous salmon-don this week. Organically farmed salmon, with our home-grown shiso:

I picked these wild mushrooms in … Waitrose.
This is my kind of speciality risotto. It’s definitely not to everyone’s taste. In fact M’s step-father thought it tasted like cement — I like to make it heavy, starchy, and creamy. It’s piled up vertically in the photograph because it actually supports its own weight. If in doubt with dubious food, present it well.

In late summer the trees are laden with edible fruits and nuts. Very common in England are the “English grape”, the elderberry, and the prickly bramble (blackberry).
Life at Merjis must be quite gentle! Today my boss and I spent a good half hour outside picking elderberries and brambles while talking about a client’s web problem:

The elderberries can be picked off with a fork:

A bramble, earlier today:

Elderberries (left) and brambles. I’m going to freeze these until I need them for a crumble.

Our broadband is still being screwed up by the great British telephone monopoly, but I haven’t cooked very much in the last couple of weeks anyhow. Too busy!

I did catch a few snails from the new garden, just as an experiment. Turns out, as you can see in the picture below, that we have two types of snail. There’s a plentiful supply of the small brown lipped snail [the two smaller ones on top in this photo], but rather fewer of the common garden snail which I like eating.

Here’s a resource for keen snail hunters to use to identify English snails. Apparently Roman snails are now a protected species in England, so I can’t go and eat them. It wasn’t a good idea anyway since they are so rare.

Now here’s a Jamie Oliver recipe, modified greatly by me. You heat the chillis directly in the flames of a gas hob until they blacken, then cover them and peel them. The chillis are chopped and mixed with mozzarella, rocket, pepper, olive oil and anything else you like in a salad, to make this great mozzarella salad:

What do you do when you have half the quantity of ingredients for two pizzas? Make a “two seasons”, of course …

Bread, made with leftover pizza dough:

This weekend we went to the Bengal Lancer, an “Indian” (actually, Pakistani) restaurant in Kentish Town. Good food, and at a reasonable price, but I fear their lamb shank wasn’t quite as tasty as the one I had there two years ago.