Cooking With Richard

Tomato, mozzarella, garlic and prosciutto:

and sausage meat, chilli, thyme (from the garden) and mozzarella:

but what’s this? Has someone eaten too much?? Or addicted to mixi??? Or chatting to メル友????

An update on the egg box of old potatoes which users of our shower have no doubt become familiar with:

Compare to the previous photo from about a month ago:

Recently I’ve been very entertained by Waz and Lenny on Crash Test Kitchen which I caught through Democracy Player.

My thoughts turn to tarte tatin and Ramsey’s caramelised apples and pears … combined. Ramsey’s using cinnamon, cloves and star anise to put the edge on the basic caramel.

The weather was miserable all over the bank holiday weekend. Today was hardly better but there were at least a few brief sunny spells. A bloke came over to fix the boiler and he grumbled about the state of our back lawn, which is looking more jungle than bowling green at the moment. It’s not exactly my fault if there haven’t been any days in May when we’ve had the happy coincidence of no rain and no work.

Anyhow, after one rainy spell, a double rainbow:

Previously the lovely ふみねこ said “Oh lord” …

Squid:

I was trying to feed them nori:

This is a very simple, quick and effective recipe for bean salad. Start with some beans. Here I’ve got about half a lb of each of red kidney beans, french beans and broad beans, the latter cooked for 3 or 4 minutes and then rinsed in cold water:

The dressing is

• 4 tbsp of greek yogurt
• 3 tbsp of olive oil
• 2 tbsp of wine vinegar (I used sherry vinegar for this one)
• 2 tsp of Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper

Just mix the ingredients together to make the dressing:

Crisp up a little bit of streaky bacon in a dry frying pan:

Mix the beans and dressing, and top with the bacon:

The recipe for this kara-age:

• 12 chicken thighs, boned and cut into bite-sized chunks
• Grated ginger
• Grated garlic
• Half an apple, grated
• 5 tbsp soya sauce
• 5 tbsp sake
• 5 tbsp mirin

Mix the above and marinade for at least 30 minutes.

Then coat in potato starch or cornflour and deep fry until cooked.

We had a romantic dinner to celebrate the first anniversary of this boggie:

This is shepherds pie made from the lamb:

In celebration of the first anniversary of this blog:

For tonight only, a Golden Half sampler:

Or check out the best of CookingWithRichard:

I love rhubarb and custard. Nigel Slater’s rhubarb and custard fool recipe from the Grauniad last week looks delicious:

We had a late lunch today at Sofra in Exmouth Market. The lamb kebabs and falafels were great.

We had milk pudding too, but unfortunately the photo didn’t come out well. It turns out that milk pudding is quite easy to make.

Skip to the second part of this video (or watch all of it — it’s quite fun) to see Lee Krasnow demonstrate an amazing puzzle box.

More here

Also these appeal to my mathematical nature:

Shame that they cost $400. Actually with the state of the dollar these days, that’s not really very much money.

I used two chicken legs, the coriander is from the garden, and some brown bread from the local shop to soak up all the chilli and sauce.

Watch out, he’s looking at you.

Correction: キムチ　チャーハン
Made by N-sama:

Habitual birophagists will be familiar with the unwelcome crunch of plastic and the taste of ink which comes from poorly designed promotional pens. Google’s free pens (of which I got a big handful at their last bash in Belgrave House) suffer in particular from a weak plastic screw joint, and they break apart after even relatively short hacking sessions:

Here’s hoping that the smart folks at Google can rectify this problem (metal pens, anyone?) and send me some. I don’t need to tell them — they’ll find me.

More birophagy:

I was particularly proud of the pastry base.

She’s beautiful, and bold.

Her male friend here.