Archive for April 2011
Lamb Chops with Capers and Garlic
Lamb Chops with Capers and Garlic
This is another Hugh Fairly-Longname recipe. My addition was to marinade the lamb chops in Pomegranate Molasses for about an hour before cooking which makes them sticky, sweet and shiny when cooked.
Firebomb a pan with as much garlic as you can find (well a whole bulb). Brown the lamb chops in the same pan. Put lamb and garlic in a dish that’s been heated up in a 200 degree c oven. Add two tablespoons of capers, large amounts of Rosemary and Thyme (preferably fresh from the allotment or stolen from a hedgerow). Add a glass of white wine to the pan that you browned the lamb in and reduce. Chuck on top of the lamb and cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
Totally delicious.
Crab Cakes with Horseradish Mayo
Crab Cakes with Horseradish Mayo
This recipe really belongs to Hugh Fairly-Longname but due to a slight over supply of some ingredients and under supply of others I think I can legitimately stake a claim to calling it my own. Over supply of allotment chives and parsley and under supply of crab meat means these should really be called Herby Crab and Potato cakes (and the addition of potato makes mine the recession version!).
So here’s my contribution to the ‘Big Society’, Thrifty British Crab Cakes – makes about 8:
Mix the following in a bowl and leave to chill in the fridge for an hour (to make them truly Big Society and Thrifty Britain, you should really try stealing most of the ingredients from Samantha Cameron’s shopping basket)
1 dressed crab – white and brown meat mixed
1 large potato, boiled and mashed
zest of 1 lemon
2 large tablespoons of creme fraiche
generous handfuls of flat leaf parsley and chives
salt and pepper
after chilling make them into smallish patties, cover first with flour, then with egg, then with breadcrumbs. Heat oil and butter in a pan then add the crab cakes. Cook for about 3 mins on each side.
Hugh recommended garlic crushed in mayo, but given that I was about to firebomb the main course with about 30 cloves of garlic, I thought it prudent to omit it from the starter. So I mixed horseradish sauce to the mayo instead and served the crab cakes with a dollop of that, a couple of lemon wedges and some rocket for accompaniment.
Scrap Merchant
Pat
I did a brave thing today. I asked a total stranger if I could take his picture because I thought he had an interesting face.
Here was the deal. I could take his photo in return for a plug for his business which seemed like a fair swap to me.
So.
May I introduce you to Pat Stewart – if you need any scrap metal collected or to buy, then call him on 07707 935 118.
Deal done!
I also dropped my camera today and smashed the filter. I’m still hopeful that only the filter got damaged and not the lens nor the internal workings of the camera itself – but only time will tell. Specks from the glass shards have appeared all over the images though… boo hoo.
Burger abstract
It may not be so easy to tell what this is, but it was taken through railings, through the window of a caravan to a burger van parked on the far side.
I like abstracts and if I had the ability to describe why (which I don’t) it might be something to do with layers. And perhaps interlacing textures. And perhaps hints of things appearing through other things.
Crane
Crane
Hot off the press, this one. Taken this afternoon on a little jaunt to Leith. Waved off from photographing a pile of scrap metal by a man in a high-vis vest and an elevated sense of his own importance (and that of the pile of scrap metal I was trying to photograph). Came home, developed the film and scanned it. This picture feels like it was taken years ago, I’m not sure what has given it this quality, it could be the fact that the film I used is about 3 years out of date but I like it anyway.
