Cooking With Richard

I made this ratatouille recipe, although I didn’t take a photo.

Normally I don’t like ratatouille. I think it has the “vegetarian problem” which is that after eating it, you think there’s something missing. ie. MEAT. Nevertheless, this one was quite good. The combination of vinegar and sugar gave it a “sweet and sour” base, and the aubergine is a tasty replacement for the missing part.

Starting with the roast beef from the weekend, this is a Mary Berry BBQ recipe for spare ribs:

Update

Recipe for Rachel. This is for ~1 kg of pork or beef ribs.

First roast the ribs. Then mix up the sauce ingredients below and spread them on the ribs. Then cook the ribs again for 25-30 mins.

• 2.5cm piece of ginger, grated
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Terrible photo, very nice soup. The recipe is roughly this one. The cheese on top is a hard goat’s cheese from Spain.

Potato and pea curry (recipe), onion bhajis and saffron rice (roughly from this recipe):

Owing to a mysterious stranger, I suddenly have a lot of saffron …

What can I make with all this saffron though?

I made saffron rice, and saffron chicken. The saffron chicken was a Mary Berry recipe (rather good in fact):

I quite like saffron. Maybe I’ll hate it after getting through 6 jars …

In our back garden.

Eat the slugs little harry-2.

Update

This is a picture of harry-1.

I bought these duck’s eggs from G.Gibson butchers in Watford Market:

Duck egg is the white one on the left, compared to a normal hen’s egg (note: from unhappy caged hen). As you can see, the duck’s eggs are slightly larger:

This is a duck omelette:

Conclusion on duck’s egg: Slightly larger than a hen’s egg, but broadly tastes the same. Judging by the condition of the yokes, these weren’t good quality eggs, old or from battery ducks (yes, ducks are kept in cruel conditions in this country, just like chickens). Next time I’ll try a wild duck instead.

His sausages were much better: