Cooking With Richard

I so want this game …

I made this last Sunday, because the oven is the only thing I can use in the kitchen at the moment. I stuffed the chicken under the skin with butter and herbs from the garden. With a cream gravy, roast potatoes and carrots.

Snails:

.. and pants:

I think this is a brilliant concept. This artist called “SLINKACHU” paints snails and then photographs them in urban environments. Previously he was famous for doing these little people on ordinary city streets.

I really hope that the artist lets the snails “go free”, perhaps to be discovered by a bemused commuter, or a snail connoisseur…

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While I was looking at this snail art, I saw that the artist had painted a sadly familiar “tag” on a snail, “TOX.08“. If you regularly travel through London, you will be familiar with the depressing vandalism of this teenager. I found this 10 minute documentary on the internet about the culprit of this eyesore, it’s worth watching because it shows the people who have to clear this spam off tubes, and where tube trains go in the night …

Cooking With Richard blog is two years old today.

As is customary, I have updated the “best of” list, so click here to read my picks from the last year.

Although this is a happy anniversary for the blog, it’s not such a happy time for us. Our house is like a building site at the moment — we barely have a working toilet, no shower, the kitchen has a big hole in the ceiling, and the builders are a bunch of cowboys. We are powerless to do anything about this — any thought at a Labour government might, you know, strengthen laws for tenants have turned out to be laughable (in fact, who will pass these necessary laws? certainly not the Tories).

… but great food. This was a pasta / tomato / mozzarella dish from Jamie’s Italy book, which was fab:

Buta-no-kakuni:

I used a slightly different recipe this time, from here.

Beer - The cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems.

- Homer J. Simpson

The iPM programme put up the full, unedited version of my interview:

(IPM blog, Previously …)

Oriental City has been under threat for so long, but it is finally to close at the end of May, to make way for soulless flats and a DIY superstore. (There aren’t enough DIY superstores in London apparently, so a one-of-its-kind shopping centre has to be leveled to make way for one).

I’ve been going there regularly for at least ten years, but today was the last time.

There aren’t really any alternatives. Chinese Wing Yip, down the road, is expanding, but they don’t have the other shops or non-Chinese food. Japanese TK Trading is miles away.

More discussion of the closure …

Thanks to ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone for valiantly defending the store — oh no, in fact he approved the planning application. Well, he’s been thrown out of office now, but his stupid planning decisions like this and others will linger on.

This is what I got from Utsuwa no Yakata Japanese pottery shop:

New Scientist commemorates 30 years of spam and links to the spam archive.

So does the Grauniad.

This morning I was called out of the blue by “George” a researcher at BBC Radio 4 iPM programme, interactive little brother of the PM programme (Radio 4’s 5 o’clock daily news).

George wanted to talk to me about the Great Spam Archive, all the spam I’ve collected in my inbox since August 1997 (archive by date), and I was happy to oblige. I ended up going to Broadcasting House this afternoon, and being interviewed by Eddie Mair about my “favorite” spam, and why on earth I started to collect it (answer: I simply never delete any old email).

The process is a bit strange — they sit you in a sound-proof booth and you talk to the presenter over a microphone. (Eddie was sitting in another BBC studio). The whole interview lasted perhaps 10 minutes after which Eddie politely thanked me and I left. Now I guess they cut the ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ out and cut it down to a 1 or 2 minute slot. I’ll find out soon — the broadcast is due on-air at 5.30pm (in about an hour).

Update

Well, it’s over. They edited it a lot to make me sound intelligent .. I’ll have an MP3 clip from the show up shortly in case people want to listen.

Update #2

No sound file posted by the BBC yet, but they’ve put some background information up on the iPM blog here.

Update - audio

Here it is –> Edited MP3 file with my interview <–

If you want to hear the full program, it’s available for the next week on the iPM podcast site.