Bored of life at home? Well, here's the job for you!

Found on craigslist. Bloody mental! (Probs fake though)

Behold! Jonky Cat

Fear Jonky Cat. Love Jonky Cat. Bloody love retro pages.

Paxman's Newsnight Weather Reports

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.

Radish Kimchi- done!

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.

Flaming Sorbet

This week, I will be mostly making... flaming sorbet a la Heston! I spent ages hunting down a recipe which I eventually cribbed from this chappy. Then I remembered I had a copy of the Big Fat Duck Cookbook (which is beautiful, by the way) and I found the original. It seems remarkably simple- however, I do not own a PacoJet beaker and I can't hunt down any malic acid. Ultimately, I reckon it'd be nice to make a lime sorbet and flame it with gin, but for the time being I'm going to stick to Heston's apple one. This is his recipe with some alterations for the average student kitchen (oh, and I'm going to use calvados instead of whisky):

Ingredients-

• 100g pressed, unfiltered apple juice
• 500g water
• 6g citric acid (the original calls for malic acid but this is remarkably hard to track down. I had some citrate kicking around from my home brewing)
• 200g spray-dried apple granules (wtf? I'm going to use freeze dried apple pieces)
• 8g gellan (this one's the kicker- get it at the wonderful MSK)

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!)

Radish Kimchi

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!

Popping candy

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.