Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I'm going to record Countdown on monday and so I'm practising like crazy. The guest in dictionary corner when I'm on is Amanda Lamb. Yeah, rings a bell, doesn't it? A Place in the Sun. I know, a crappy property show. Oh well.
"This is er... something that's spectacular I believe, I think you'll enjoy it. As soon as we lean down here and light this fuse we're gonna make a run for it so hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we do."- Gay Wilkinson, world champion anvil shooter.
Probably not as good as the dogs in Star Wars costumes. Still, they must freaking hate us. My favvy is below.
I love the cover on this week's Time Out! How many landmarks can you identify?
Everything you need to know about beaver cheese. Quite an amusing distraction!
I winged an original recipe last night that was uber easy and uber tasty, and, hence, I'm writing it down for y'all to enjoy.
Ingredients:
Recipe: Prepare your pork belly by removing any skin then chopping it into inch by inch chunks. Leave as much fat as possible on. Chop the onions and then lob into a pot with some olive oil/butter to soften. Add the pork, then add a teaspoon-and-a-half-ful of each of the spices, along with some salt and pepper. Lob in the garlic (just crush it first). Then add your black beans having rinsed them first (in the future I'd go with more black beans) and tomatoey stuff. Chuck in your stock, then top up the pan with water until about couple of inches from full. Get it boiling, then whack a lid on and put in an oven at 150°C for as long as you can take. I left mine for a good 3 hours.
Go to rugby training.
Come back dead exhausted and hungry. Remove the pot from the oven and see what you've got. Taste. Add the juice from your limes and then add more spices to taste. It should be deliciously warming and rich. I was aiming for a thick texture, so I reduced it down quite a lot whilst I had a shower. Finally, I was so hungry I couldn't wait any longer and added some flour to thicken it (the trick is to dissolve the flour in cold water first, then to ensure there are no lumps to pour it through a tea strainer when adding). Mix. Boil down. Consume and enter food nirvana.
I ate mine as burritos with some sour cream, cheese, guacamole and salad in a wrap, but you could pretty much do anything with it- with rice would be quite nice, or maybe with pasta. It'd be awesome however you ate it.
Pork belly rocks my world.
Found on craigslist. Bloody mental! (Probs fake though)
Sorry, I've been neglecting Cult Potato. Shocking, I know. Sorry to my 2 regular readers! Anywho, to cheer you up, here are Paxman's newsnight weather reports. Hilarious!
In other news, flaming sorbet met with mixed results. It didn't quite melt; however, it wasn't really a sorbet. In a nutshell, it worked but tasted crap- hence, the recipe was a disaster. I'm going to try again sometime next week, but will probably wing it. Cue more disaster? I'm thinking lime sorbet with some sort of gin to flame it with. Mmmm... imagine if that worked. It'd be like eating a gimlet.
So the radish kimchi had finished fermenting by sunday night. Weirdly, it seems to have collected an odd layer of watery stuff in the bottom of the container- maybe from the cucumber I added. Anywho, it tastes yummy! Oh, but bloody spicy. Sadly, I didn't have the Korean red pepper powder or red pepper flakes that the original recipe called for, so I substitued with cayenne chilli powder and I flaked in 5 dried bird's eye chillis. My sister also thought it had too strong an aftertaste of fermented fish, so maybe next time just 1 teaspoon of shrimp paste. Other than that, it's pretty good! The radish is a whole lot better than the cucumber though as it has retained a crunch. Definitely one to repeat! Recipes for using kimchi, as suggested by chowhound- kimchi soup, kimchi buchim (pancake), kimchi burgers, kimchi fried rice and... brie and kimchi sandwiches. Er... yeah.
Put all the ingredients in a pan and bring to 95°C. Add the gellan and mix with a handheld blender. Bring the mixture to the boil, then remove from the heat. Cool over an ice bath whilst blitzing continuously.
Then Heston says to "pour the chilled base into a PacoJet bleaker and freeze until solid. process the sorbet in the PacoJet, releasing the air valve continously. Cover and store in the freezer."
A quick google later reveals that the PacoJet is basically the opposite of a thermomix- it mixes and purees foodstuffs straight into a frozen state. I obviously don't own a PacoJet, so I'm going to copy that Youtube chappy and blend it when frozen with some calvados and then freeze it again. Apparently, due to the alcohol, this won't fully freeze and so should stay nice and sorbet-y.
I'll let you know how it goes. (P.S. Ur ma boi Heston!)
I discovered Berwick street vegetable market on Tuesday. (Incidentally, I found it hilarious that literally on yauatcha's doorstep there was a little van selling dim sum for next to nothing.) As a result, I had a crazy sum of radishes. What does one do with radishes? I mean, they're quite nice to eat with salt, and maybe you can chop them into salads, but does anyone in all honesty know any good radish recipes? I didn't, so I had a google and then it hit me. Kimchi! I've done kimchi before with cucumber- it was ok, if a little salty. This time round, I followed the advice of Coconut and Lime, and I'm eagerly awaiting the results. Sadly, I didn't have any anchovy sauce and so had to substitute with shrimp paste, but it's looking good so far. Will let you know how it tastes. I'm hopeful, but if that shrimp paste is too strong I'll probably have to wash my mouth out with soap. That stuff is na-sty!
So this week, I set myself the task of making popping candy. You know, they're the sweets that fizz and bubble when you put them on your tongue. Well, I found out how- apparently I need to make a sugar syrup, get it really, really hot, them pump carbon dioxide through it at 600psi. Yeah, not going to happen. What I now propose to do instead is order some online- MSK ingredients is an awesome site! They've got 2 types of popping candy, Fizz Wizz Strawberry and Majic Candy. Then, I think I'll tackle Heston's Popping Candy Chocolate Cake. Just look at it. Mmmmm.
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