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Managed to rescue Rob’s beef wellington from the depths of my harddrive and additionally made a nice creamy salmon pasta this afternoon

It has been a long time in coming but I have finally bothered to do a new photorecipe! Roast tomato tart with asparagus.

When I came to try and move the old recipes into the current incarnation of the blog I was sad to find that a couple of them have been lost to the ages. Oh well. I can’t even remember what they were now.

I have also put the google ads back on the site, but you’ll only see them if you visit the individual post pages, not if you’re a regular visitor who looks at the frontpage!

When I got back from work today Gemma was busy in the kitchen. When she was finally persuaded to let me know what she was making it was revealed that she was working on a ‘gooey chocolate stack’ (from this book). Here are the highlights of the ingredients list:

almost half a kilogram of sugar
an entire tub of double cream
an entire large chocolate bar

The final result is (literally?) heart-stoppingly glorious. Three layers of chocolate merangue, each of which is covered by a massive helping of thick, sugary, creamy chocolate sauce.

Sometimes Wikipedia really freaks me out. Earlier today I was looking for information on bananas for the ’science’ experiment I have discussed with a few of you. I came across this page. Now, I can fully understand obsessive people on the internet writing massive, well researched pages about the Klingon language, Polka dancing or Trains; they are all hobbies (or escapist fantasies to avoid dealing with the real world), but bananas? Who gets fanatical about bananas? I really struggle to imagine the sort of guy that comes home from a long day at the office (I bet he is an accountant, and I hope I never meet him at a party) and settles down for a hard night of writing about has favourite fruits and/or vegetables. This guy exists, and by the look of Wikipedia there are hundreds of him!

Each article on Wikipedia has an associated ‘discussion’ page, where the people writing the article argue about what should and should not be in there. The banana page is no different (Talk:Banana), here are a few snippets from the plantain based bickering contained therein.

I’m not sure about eating rotting bananas:

what about saying that bananas take a really long time to go bad? they are closest to honey in that you can eat them long after they seem to have rotten.

Standing up for your country in the fruit and vegetable arena:

I request that the reference to Panama as a country whose economy was/is dominated by the banana trade be struck off.

This guy is the Forest Gump of the encyclopedia editing world:

Having just eaten a banana and biting at the skin to open it, is it worth mentioning that the skin has a disgusting taste? -- Chris

I love the thought that hidden behind every single page there is an army of overexcited nerds quibbling over the most asinine details. It’s not just banana either, I typed in a few more common household objects and learnt that at least the Wikipedia pages for soap, box, apple, folder and egg (food) are astoundingly complete. As an example of utter insanity just look at the category page for different types of container!

The internet baffles me. It really does.

After hosting a dinner party for a few friends I was left with the remains of three chickens. Jim2 suggested that I make them into a ‘hearty chicken soup’. I have no idea how to make a soup so as per usual turned to the internet and managed to piece something together.

Photorecipe #5: Chicken and Winter Vegetable Soup

If I do say so myself the soup was bloody fantastic! I have enough for five meals.

Labels: photorecipe

Rob has been generous enough to allow me to rehost his recent photorecipe on geometricrate.com (click here for mouth watering goodness).

This beef wellington is seriously one of the most greatest looking things I’ve ever seen.

The last one was fun to do so here we go again! As per usual all photos can be clicked for large versions.

Ingredients

• Large mango
• Can of red kidney beans
• Sweet potatoes
• Cloves of garlic
• A big handful of coriander (cilantro for the Americans)
• one big onion
• A couple of chillis
• One green pepper
• One can of chopped tomatoes

Preparation

The first two steps are going to look very familiar to anybody that read the last photorecipe. Start off by dicing the onion, chilli and garlic:

Fry gently for five minutes.

Whilst they are frying chop the sweet potato and green pepper into chunks:

After about five minutes have passed, add the sweet potato,

pepper,

and chopped tomatoes to the mix. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes (or until the sweet potatoes are soft)

Whilst you’re waiting, chop the mango into big chunks,

and chop the coriander.

When 15 minutes are up, add the beans and warm for a couple more minutes,

then add the mango and warm for another minute or so,

finish up by adding a bit of salt, and mixing in the coriander. Serve with freshly heated tortillas.

I can’t help but think there is something missing from most cookery sites on the internet. They all seem to take one of two forms: Professionally produced cookery sites usually feature a single beautifully lit, well composed, slightly photoshopped photograph of the end product along with text instructions on how to make it. Websites full of amateur cookery instructions usually have brief text instructions and nothing else.

I’d like to see some sort of happy middle ground; I’d like to see real food being prepared by real people without the help of an expensive photography rig. Basically, How do normal people cook things?

The “Goons with Spoons” subforum of the somethingawful.com forums has a really nice take on this problem. They have set up a wiki, which contains lots and lots of recipes all made by forum residents in their own kitchens and each recipe is well documented, both photographically and with really simple instructions. To top it off, a lot of them have a very amusing writing style. Here is a link to all of their dinner recipes.

I thought that I’d have a go at joining in.

Celeriac and Spicy Tomato Bake

The celeriac isn’t the most well known vegetable in the world, I hadn’t heard of it until Rob cooked some very nice celeriac chips at a recent dalsim meeting.

Celeriac, also called turnip rooted celery or knob celery (teehee), is grown for its globular root which has a celery-like flavor. It is usually about 4 inches in diameter at maturity. Meet the celeriac:

It looks incredibly ugly, has the consistency of potato and tastes a bit like celery. I really like it!

Ingredients

From left to right:

• Tomato Puree
• 400g tomatoes
• Ground cinammon (1tsp)
• Parsley (4tsp)
• 1 celeriac
• 1 bay leaf
• one spash of red wine (or red wine vinegar)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• a couple of chillis
• one large onion
• 50g breadcrumbs
• 50g grated cheese
• White rice, to use as a side dish. Put whatever you want with the bake

Preparation

This dish is very quick to prepare, but takes upwards of an hour to cook. Begin by finely slicing the garlic, chilli and onion:

Add to a large frying pan and fry gently for ten minutes:

Turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, using a wooden spoon to help break down the tomatoes:

Whilst waiting for the spicy tomato sauce to finish cooking, peel the celeriac (make sure that none of the skin remains, it tastes pretty unpleasant) and dice it. Boil up some water.

Don’t forget to give the sauce an occasional stir, the tomatoes should break down almost completely in the sauce:

When ten minutes remain on the sauce timer, plunge your celeriac cubes into the boiling water and sit back for ten minutes.

Drain the celeriac well and cover the bottom of an oven proof dish with the celeriac cubes:

After discarding the bay leaf pour the spicy tomato sauce over the celeraiac, then on top of that, your grated cheese and breadcrumbs:

Bake in the oven (190 degrees celsius) for a further 30 minutes. Serve immediately. A very hearty and filling vegetable bake:

I forgot to take photos of the finished dish, so here is a quarter of the bake, reheated for lunch the next day: