Cooking With Richard » science

Space food

rich — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:00:27 +0000

Here’s the raw avocado soup, a rawfood recipe:

It looks, and probably tastes, like the green gunk they have in science fiction films. Well, it’s not too bad, but I felt quite hungry afterwards.

Update: I realized that I forgot the olive oil …

rich — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:40:54 +0000

We went to the Dacorum Steam Rally again on Sunday.

rich — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:00:57 +0000

A Breville hand blender, to replace the one which I stole from Erin many years ago. Essential for soups.

rich — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:00:39 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever owned a toaster before.

rich — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:49:20 +0000

We are growing the cayenne variety of chilli peppers. Here is my scientific test of the first pepper from this season.

rich — Sun, 30 May 2010 19:52:51 +0000

I think these photos show cirrus clouds being pulled along in a jet stream, a very unusual and beautiful cloud formation.

rich — Sat, 29 May 2010 07:56:40 +0000

versus

rich — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:31:33 +0000

rich — Sat, 22 May 2010 10:29:27 +0000

rich — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:10:29 +0000

rich — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:00:08 +0000

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:

rich — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:50:24 +0000

rich — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:56:20 +0000

Soap is simpler to make than you might have thought. You’ll need olive oil, organic palm or coconut oil, and beeswax pellets.
Heat the ingredients together on the stove to about 54 degrees centigrade stirring regularly.
Now for the tricky bit. Soap is produced when the oils which are acidic are mixed with lye.
Lye is sodium hydroxide or caustic soda, a powerful alkali. When powdered lye is added to water it heats up, add the hot lye water to the melted oils, taking great care to avoid splashes as these will burn, and stir until the mixture thickens.
After this is done, you can add any colourings, fragrance and softening oils – for example, honey and sweet almond oil.
Pour the raw soap into a mould for setting and curing which is a maturing process needed before the soap is ready and safe to use.
Finally turn the soap out of the mould and cut to the desired shape.