Cooking With Richard

Thanks N-sama and H-san for making it!

My not-so-new but favourite blog is Cooking Issues, which is the French Culinary Institute‘s tech blog.

Some interesting articles to start with:

• pressure cooking
• liquid nitrogen (looks like I won’t be using this then)
• rotovap
• and finally .. drinking shots
  

Best thing, just sitting by the garden all day watching the tiny birds.

Thinking about getting a duck island.

BBC Four Japan season: Japan in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn.

A documentary about Japan in 1900-1920.

To those who know what comes after, looking at these photographs gives terrible premonition of what is to come.

And they are reshowing the Secret Wilderness show:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jhxhf/Secret_Wilderness_Japan_Episode_1/

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.

I photographed a sparrowhawk catching, killing and eating a starling in the garden today. Well, the killing and the eating kind of overlapped. As you can imagine the starling was not too happy about this situation and made a lot of noise.

Click photos for larger versions.

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:

Jamie’s onion and sage soup is very tasty:

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

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.

Pizza-doctor M-kun to the rescue …!

8 minutes …

Previously …

Crumble made with the brambles and elderberries that we collected in August:

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,

In Miyajima:

The elderberries were really disappointing this year, but we eventually found a single tree which had a small crop that we could pick:

Last year was much better …

Update

After cleaning them up, here are the totals:

• Elderberries: 2 lbs (about 1 kg)
• Brambles: 1 lb (about 500g)
• Tiny spiders: 4 (1 rescued, 3 will end up in a crumble)

A couple of weeks ago I was boiling tins of condensed milk for 5 hours and at the weekend I got to open one to find delicious toffee inside:

I made the Hungry Monk Banoffi pie recipe, which was quite easy (by far the most difficult part was making the pastry case):

Previously …

Fumineko is over here this weekend, enjoying the country air.

Friday night

Lemon chicken:

Saturday

Buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, bay leaves and some meats:

Lamb shoulder and a celeriac and sweet potato mash:

Sunday

Thyme flowers to top off the pizzas that I made:

This is what Fumineko looks like

Oink oink!
CENSORED!!

Update

Better?
CENSORED AGAIN

Baby bluetit in the tree:

Two baby bluetits eating:

This is probably their mum:

What you looking at?

Greattit mum and baby. Update – I think these are actually Coal tits:

Look at that sky …

Zoomed:

Squid:

I was trying to feed them nori:

In the garden today, a male blackbird:

and a robin:

and their lunch:

[Editor's note: The next two photos look quite similar, sorry if you can't tell the difference]

and another blackbird: