Cooking With Richard

Previously: Uncanny valley of the dolls …

Our duck (N-sama is calling her “ガー子”) has now laid a full clutch of at least 10 eggs, see the photo below. N-sama bravely took this photo.

Here she is sitting on the fence and flying off:

Easter weekend was a wash-out because of the high winds, rain and snow:

We went to the Rose and Crown in Kings Langley for beer and greasy pub fish and chips and ale pie:

N-sama was very brave yesterday and today and went out and took photos of the eggs, while mama-Duck-san was off flying around and eating seaweed and whatever else they do:

Mother duck, taking off:

Sorry, terrible photo but I can’t get too close … There’s a duck nesting in our back garden!

Home-made rice pudding from a Jamie recipe with N-sama’s purple jam.

But just like at school I like to mix up my rice pudding and jam together:

Tasty!

This tandoori chicken comes from a Manju Malhi recipe. I took some inspiration from Turkish Izkender kebab and laid the chicken out on pitta bread, so the bread can soak up the lovely juices and marinade.

A special treat for the tinybirds:

This was a rather successful pasta arabiata that I made on Monday.

I wasn’t really expecting to make anything at all. I just threw together chopped tomatoes, olive oil, italian herbs, balsamic vinegar, sugar and a little red wine, and cooked cooked cooked for about an hour.

The real Watford Gap

Jamie’s onion and sage soup is very tasty:

… but it took me about 3 hours to make (no joke).

The mayonnaise is home made, and dead easy (faster than going to the shop to buy it):

• 2 egg yokes

• up to 1 cup of oil (half olive, half ordinary cooking)
• juice from half a lemon
• salt and pepper

Gently beat the egg yokes and very gradually add the oil, a few drops at a time. Combine the oil before adding any more. After this add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

The lemon tree was looking quite sad until recently. Since we managed to put it in the sun for the past few days, it has picked up and started showing new shoots and little flowers like this one:

So I think it’s going to be OK, come the summer.

Now M-kun is not allowed to post any comments on this one in case he compares his love to a dahlia or whatever.

N-sama made us a lovely three course Sunday lunch. Thanks N-sama!

Katsu-curry:

Cheesecake with raspberry sauce. The leaf is from our lemon tree — more about that tomorrow.

One of my favorite Middle-eastern foods has to be falafel. This is based very loosely on a BBC recipe but the recipe itself is wrong in several ways, most particularly you need to add a fair bit of flour to make it stick together. Also leaving out the baking powder is probably worthwhile.

Raw falafels:

Deep frying:

After deep frying:

With pitta bread, salad and a yogurt, olive oil and lemon juice sauce:

Pitta and falafel pocket:

Simple and delicious recipe from Jamie at Home:

In Japan:

In Britain:

Rather loosely based on this BBC recipe.

It does look a little bit like a bowl of sick, but it did taste absolutely fantastic. I was very pleased with this one.

We spent a pleasant Sunday with Aya. I made a 5-hour-cooked
lamb shoulder, with rosemary, garlic, capers and mint:

Aya’s friend made this chai tea and cinnamon cake for M-kun’s birthday. Oishii!