Cooking With Richard

I just opened up another online trading account to buy a few ‘000 £ of shares tomorrow morning (or in a few weeks/months, depending on whether US taxpayers decide to fund me or not). Now (or in a few months) is a good time to invest, provided you are willing to hold your investments for minimum 5 years, or more likely 10 years.

On TV there is a person claiming that the fact he bought Bradford & Bingley shares last week which are now worthless is “soviet”. Welcome to the real world … idiot.

And then there’s another article about how buy to let mortgage owners are in trouble. My eyes weep … Oh no, wait: actually they don’t at all. Buy to let landlords have screwed over honest rent payers for decades, and if they all go bankrupt, that’s better for everyone.

I made falafels again last night. They are still falling apart a little bit during cooking so next time I’m going to try adding half an onion and frying at a higher heat.

Here is a videojug recipe for falafels. Notice that their falafels stick together. Be sure to read their comments before making this …

Go to the comments page for this video

Meanwhile here is a ridiculously hard recipe for making your own mozzarella. You will need: 1 cow, 1 digital thermometer, 1 pH meter, rennet, a good mozzarella starter, and hours and hours of spare time.

No updates recently because it’s been very busy this month. Here’s a photo of rosehips from KL station:

N-sama made this delicious strawberry cake for my birthday:

My attempt at making cha-han (egg fried rice) was not very successful:

Slow cooked lamb with tomatoes and couscous, which was really good:

Sweetbreads (lamb’s pancreas) at the Junction Tavern, pretty delicious:

Watercress soup, also from the Junction, was a curious combination. Reminiscent of nettle soup but with cold chunks of sour cream added for no reason:

On the way home …

See also
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/highburyhill/e/887dfeaf87934ca12add28cf43a747b0

You will need:

• One whole chicken. Happy chicken, please.
• Bacon or pancetta
• One bottle of red wine
• Chicken stock (or water)
• Onions and garlic
• Tomatoes skinned (or tinned tomatoes, drained)
• Herbs (eg. thyme, rosemary, parsley, oregano, bay leaves)
• Mushrooms
• Flour
• Butter

This makes enough for 3-6 people. Everything is variable, including the ingredients, amounts, and number of people who can eat it!

Take a whole chicken and chop into 6 or 8 pieces. Brown them off in some butter in a casserole dish:

Take the chicken out of the casserole and then brown off some bacon. Take the bacon out, and put in some onions (just chopped into half or quarters) and brown off the onions and garlic:

Now take all the ingredients out of the casserole, put them aside. In the casserole dish, put the bottle of wine and bring it close to boiling point, then remove the heat and stir in some flour (say, 1 or 2 tablespoons, enough to thicken the sauce). You can also add hot chicken stock or water at this point or later. Stir that for a few minutes:

Now place the chicken, bacon, onions, tomatoes back into the casserole with the wine and stock. Take a big bunch of herbs and add that too:

Bring everything up to the boil, then cook on a very low heat for 2-3 hours.

In the last 30 minutes, fry some mushrooms and add them.

(In the voice of Gordon Ramsey …) “Coq au vin in 3 hours … Done!”

Here’s a terrible photo of the result:

This is a better photo from when I made it earlier:

I finally got too jealous of Lady E and got an iPhone 3G 8GB:

I went to see Rachel’s friends’ flatmate in a play at the Red Lion in Angel called Painting By Numbers about prisoners doing a painting class. It was great! Lots of fun.

Here is Rachel’s friends’ flatmate, Matt: