Cooking With Richard » best

Birthday cake

rich — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:04:02 +0000

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

Cooking Issues blog

rich — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:19:54 +0000

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

Day in the garden

rich — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:26:11 +0000

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

Thinking about getting a duck island.

BBC4 Japan season: Japan in Colour

rich — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:00:42 +0000

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/

Radio 4 interview

rich — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:19:20 +0000

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.

Life and death in the garden

rich — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:30:50 +0000

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.

Duck update – clutch of 10 eggs

rich — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:13:02 +0000

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:

Onion soup

rich — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:30:56 +0000

Jamie’s onion and sage soup is very tasty:

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

Sunday lunch

rich — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:18:41 +0000

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.

New pizzas, new shape!

rich — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:22:57 +0000

Pizza-doctor M-kun to the rescue …!

8 minutes …

Previously …

Roast beef

rich — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:35:37 +0000

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

Evil invaders from Asia!

rich — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:54:24 +0000

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,

Shikatetsu

rich — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:00:47 +0000

In Miyajima:

Brambles and elderberries

rich — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:46:01 +0000

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)

Hungry monk Banoffi pie

rich — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:46:22 +0000

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):

Prayer

rich — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:53:28 +0000

Previously …

Food for Fumi

rich — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:48:16 +0000

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

Random pictures of baby birds

rich — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 12:57:23 +0000

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:

Te-maki zushi

rich — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:50:01 +0000

Squid:

I was trying to feed them nori:

Two blackbirds and a robin

rich — Sun, 06 May 2007 12:52:13 +0000

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: