Cooking With Richard

All the ladybirds except the one at the bottom are evil invaders from Asia, the Harlequin ladybird:

The first Harlequin was found in a pub car park in Essex in 2004 and since then the ladybird is spreading aggressively throughout the UK, even as far as Wales:

We reported these to the survey and got back a nice response:

Dear Richard

Thank you very much for your ladybird photo. You have correctly identified a harlequin, Harmonia axyridis. This is a valuable record for our survey.

At the moment ladybirds are forming aggregations in preparation for winter - which they spend in a dormant state. This is why they are so conspicuous at the moment. Harlequin ladybirds characteristically spend winter in buildings and are particularly attracted to light coloured stone at this time of year. We think this relates to their behaviour in their native range (Asia) where they head for rocky mountains to overwinter.

In the spring the ladybirds will start to emerge and again this is a time when we see lots but not as many as in the autumn because quite a few will die over the winter time.

It would be great if you could record all your future observations on-line - www.harlequin-survey.org

You may like to know that we now have confirmed records of the harlequin from many sites across southern England, East Anglia and the Midlands. Further north there are a large number of records from Derbyshire and Cheshire and a few from Staffordshire, Humberside, Lancashire, Yorkshire and county Durham. The Harlequin has now also reached Wales, with records from Glamorgan, Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

If you would like to download a colour ladybird identification sheet, please click on the link at this website page http://www.ladybird-survey.org/UKladybirds/UKladybirds.htm

Thanks again and best wishes,

with garlic and rosemary and all the trimmings.

Hawaiian macadamia nuts covered in chocolate from our friend Kimiko-chan … delicious:

Delicious mini-nabe that N-sama made for me:

Previously …

Conkers!

I’ve eaten polenta once or twice but this was the first time I made it properly. Wow, easy, it took about 5 minutes to cook this. In fact the hardest part was measuring out the water and maize:

This was a kind of southern US / Mexican “fusion” which I made basically from store-cupboard ingredients. It’s a creamy vegetarian kidney bean curry, and polenta fried in butter. Vegetarian food has never been so unhealthy.

A few days ago I made this parmigiana (aubergines and tomatoes, very tasty):

Found by the canal (it is shroom season now):

The real thing:

and steak tartare:

(The restaurant is called “Sam Chon Po” but I don’t seem to be able to find anything about it on the web).

Fried oysters from Hiyashi HAYASHI in Miyajima — おいしかった！

Lunchtime kaiseki from a really excellent restaurant in Hiroshima called An. The first dish was a western-style chilli-prawn:

N-sama had this seafood dish with rich sauce:

Icecream:

In Miyajima:

Edible crysanthemum flowers. We picked the petals and threw away the bitter centres:

but the resulting dish (petals boiled with daikon and various enoki) was rather bitter:

Home-grown sweetcorn, really sweet:

Basashi:

Usaji:

Special OKONOMIYAKI from Hiroshima, with soba noodles:

“Please do not feed pigeons, crows, &c.”
The crow is saying plaintively “If you feed me, I can’t live without your help.”