Cooking With Richard

Slightly better photos of the pigeon pie:

I made the pheasant pie again, much better this time. Unfortunately I didn’t take any good photos :-(

The pheasants were from Gibson’s in Watford market.

I found three shot while I was making it, and N-sama found another two:

A brace of pheasants in a pheasant pie:

Tarte tatin, named after a French hotel:

A very tasty Sunday dinner!

The recipe for pheasant pie is very easy, although somewhat time-consuming. It is adapted from this one. First I simmered the pheasants, onions, carrots (etc) in water and some white wine for a few hours:

Then I separated the meat into some pie dishes and covered it with streaky bacon:

I returned the bones to the stock and boiled it further, then removed all the bones and vegetables from the stock and boiled it hard to reduce the stock and intensify the flavour:

I also added sage, thyme and pepper at this point to get the seasoning right.

Finally pour a little of the stock over the meat (not too much — you can save any stock you don’t use), cover with puff pastry, and cook in the oven 200C for about 20 minutes.

Hiyoko Sable site …

(Thanks Nobuko!)

Previously and previously and previously.

I ordered a goose from Clerkes Geese, but how best to cook my goose? (I’m going to call her “WAAKO”).

This site has illustrations on how to truss, cook and slice a goose.

Gordon Ramsey’s Christmas goose recipe looks a bit poor.

Delia’s suggesting goose, pork, sage and pears.

Goose, plum and sage, sounds nice.

Goose with cranberries, sage and a traditional stuffing. Another goose recipe with a traditional chestnut stuffing. I think I’m seeing a pattern here …

Goose with apple stuffing, and another goose and apple recipe, and yet another one.

I ordered a goose for Christmas from Clerkes Geese.

Something of a lost opportunity. The Two Brewers is a traditional pub in just about the perfect English village setting (yet close to London). With the right owner it could be a great pub, but instead it’s a moderate chain pub with restaurant-cum-hotel pretensions. The food was 5/10, certainly not bad, but nothing of note.

Previously …

A few weeks ago I bought by accident the Complete Encyclopedia of Chickens.

Wow, chickens are … amazing!

These are Japanese fighting cocks! called Japanese SHAMO:

But I also bought a book about goats …

Roast chicken:

From the chicken carcass I made stock (using the carcass, water, only a little sake, carrots, onions, garlic, and parsley):

I made a potato soup from this chicken stock which was decidedly better than any previous soup I’d made, the difference being down to the stock itself.

With home-made custard. The tart was approximately from this recipe.

It’s been one year since I bought an iPhone, and to celebrate that I bought the Bijin Tokei iPhone application.

It shows you a different lady every minute. As the website says: “In addition, it is likely to be able to meet the same woman every 24hours.” (Really? Is that how it works?!)

Here is an excited looking Miss 18:45:

4 out of 5 for effort but sorry Miss 18:50 is saucier.

They’re also different (sometimes) from the ladies on the website:

Was it £1.79 well spent? You decide …

Photos by N-sama …

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:

Yesterday I visited Beaufort Court a.k.a. the Kings Langley wind turbine, which is sited on the old Ovaltine chicken farm …

Solar powered train:

Chotto-chicken:

I went to Bletchley Park today (Wikipedia page), home of the code-breaking efforts during World War II.

On my own!

They are starting to preserve the original nissen huts and later brick buildings like this one …

The rebuilt Colossus, arguably the first digital computer:

Captured Japanese codebooks:

They have their own Harrier:

and at the end of the day there was a fly-past by a WWII Hurricane:

I’ll have to take N-sama next time!

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

Thinking about getting a duck island.

We went back to Bennington Lordship today …

Stop looking at me!

Finished now …