By Paul
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September 29, 2008
Here’s photos from our trip to Portugal to see Dan, Pilar, Alex and Marco in September this year.
This is another Lebanese-style dish that I’ve been making for a few years but not got around to posting. Even if you don’t like aubergines, you’ll like this as the cooking removes the chewy texture you tend to associate with aubergines.
I really like it cold the day after, as the flavours come out even more. Perfect with pitta, hummous, tabbouleh.
Ingredients:
- 2 large aubergines, firm skinned as you can get
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed or chopped
- 2in fresh root ginger, grated (I keep the ginger in the freezer; it’s easy to grate from frozen)
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- Chilli powder or half a red chilli, chopped
- 6 tbsp clear honey
- Juice of a lemon
- 1/4 pint hot water
- Olive oil, salt
Peel and then slice the aubergines into 1cm (ish) slices. Salt and grill (in batches if necessary) until very brown on both sides. Don’t worry if they char a bit – it adds to the flavour.
In a big frying pan, flash fry the garlic for 30seconds in olive oil. Add the aubergines (again, in batches if necessary), cumin, ginger, water, honey, lemon juice and chilli (if required). Tip: mix the honey, water, lemon, ginger and cumin whilst the aubergines are cooking. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 10mins. If you are doing batches, extract the first batch from the sauce to a serving dish, and then add the next batch. The sauce should end up being like a thin gravy in consistency – add more hot water if required.
This recipe was inspired by Claudia Roden’s Tamarind and Saffron cookbook (highly recommended).
I was so amazed by this BBC story about Seahorses in the Thames that I had to blog it.
Colonies of rare seahorses are living and breeding in the River Thames, conservationists have revealed.
Experts at London Zoo said the species had been found at Dagenham in east London and Tilbury and Southend in Essex, over the last 18 months.
Here’s photos from our trip to see Dan, Pilar, Alex and Marco in March this year. The photos are from around Nairobi, Aberdare National Park, Amboseli National Park and Maasai Mara National Reserve. I got quite into taking photos of birds, as you will see.
By Paul
|
February 8, 2008
Spring seems to have arrived very early this year. We’re getting into photography again in readiness for the trip to Kenya, so we’ve been out and about the house taking some pics of the early spring colours.
Here’s the first few on Flickr!
By Paul
|
November 9, 2007
We went to Hurghada at the end of October with Jon, Katia, Tom and Hannh for a week. We managed to get in 7 dives (including one night dive) – here’s some pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulandbecs/sets/72157602912393082/
I have some videos including octopus, a giant moray and some silly underwater antics that I’ll upload to Youtube soon.
Here’s some photos on Flickr from our camping trip to Cornwall:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulandbecs/sets/72157600937723721/
Of special mention is this little video of Peter limbering up for the water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sFbK6sCCM
Hilarious little video to go along with Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw
We bought a Wii on Sunday. I’m not into gaming but the ingenuity of the Wii Remote controller and “Nunchuk” got me curious and, as they are relatively cheap, decided to buy one.
They are great fun =) Only got some basic games (Wii Sports and Wii Play) to start with – however these include boxing and tennis, which you play standing up using the controller like a tennis raquet or holding in your fist during the boxing. It’s energetic and the game play is excellent.
Here’s a video of Katia knocking someone cold in the boxing. More vids coming up soon. Unfortunately the one of Jon seems to have been deleted, not sure how!
Paul.
