There’s a lovely line in the letter that accompanies the first case of beers from BeerBods: “I’ve been trying to drink better beer for a few years now. It’s been great, but a bit lonely”. It’s an unassuming start to the head-slappingly obvious-once-you-hear-it idea of taking the shared experience of a book club and applying it to beer, but it rings very true for me. I made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to to re-evaluate the quality/quantity balance of things I buy, to buy better (which might mean more expensive) but fewer, and booze is one of the things where I’ve really tried to make a point of this.
The deal’s pretty simple. You pay £3 a week, and every 12 weeks you get a case of 12 beers. An email tells you which one to drink each week, and you are encouraged to share your thoughts on the Beerbods website and on Twitter. This week was the first week, and the selected beer is Yellowhammer, from the Black Isle Brewery near Inverness.
It’s a perfect first beer for me, because I’ve been drinking a lot of these summery, citrusy beers over the last few months, maybe partly to try and convince myself that it is summer really rain what rain? The pub round the corner has Purity’s Pure Gold, the Pub a bit further around the corner has Everard’s Sunchaser, and my beer discovery of the summer was Purple Moose Brewery’s Snowdonia Ale, which tastes every bit as good in my garden in the Midlands as it does at the end of an 8-mile wade through Welsh countryside.
So yes, it’s straw-coloured and citrusy; hoppy but not overly, mouth-dryingly, so. It’s refreshing while actually tasting of something, a proper alternative to expensive but not-that-good-really premium lagers on those days when the sun does actually deign to pay us a visit. I wish I had another bottle…
Jambalaya was my signature student dish; a spicy, ricey mixture of prawns and chicken and chorizo and bacon, easy to make by the giant panful to feed Flat 94 and whichever extended family happened to be over for tea. I still roll it out occasionally, usually on a hungover weekend afternoon when the mixture of heat and salt and comforting gooey rice feels like it would hit the spot.
Serves 4 300g long grain rice 1 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp mild chili powder 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper 2 cloves of garlic, crushed 1 large onion, chopped 2 sticks of celery, chopped 1 red pepper, chopped 4 rashers of streaky bacon, finely sliced 4 chicken thighs, boned and chopped 250g king prawns 6 slices of finely-sliced chorizo, shredded Chicken stock
Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and add the rice, gently heating it until the rice goes a bit transparent. Add the spices, fry gently for a couple of minutes, then add enough chicken stock to cook the rice as directed on the packet.
Meanwhile, add some more olive oil in a wok or large frying pan, add the garlic, and put it on the heat. Add the onions, celery and pepper and let them sweat down for a few minutes before adding the chicken and bacon.
By the time the chicken is cooked through, the rice should be cooked. Add the rice, prawns and chorizo to the large pan and fold everything together.
Serve in bowls, making sure each portion has a bit of everything. I like this with something like a Riesling.
Tags: Photos, Food
Quail’s Eggs are so pretty, I knew I wanted to make them my Q photo (plus, what’s the alternative? Quiche?). But they ain’t cheap, so what to do with them once I’ve photographed them?
A quick Google led me to this recipe, which I may very well be rolling out on Christmas morning.
- Finely chop some smoked salmon or crispy bacon, and some chives.
- On a plate, make a small mound of sea salt for each egg you are cooking
- Get some water boiling in a large pan, and carefully lower in the quail eggs. Boil vigorously for at least 20, no more than 30, seconds.
- Remove and immediately plunge into cold water.
- Nestle each egg into its mound of sea salt, and chop the top off the egg with scissors or a sharp knife.
- Top with the salmon-or-bacon and chives, and serve.
To eat, knock them back in one. You might need to give the shells a little squeeze to get all the egg out. These probably aren’t suitable for pregnant ladies or the other people who need their eggs hard and their steaks well-done.
My Combined Christmas & Birthday Present last year was a Tokina 11-16 Ultra Wide Angle lens. At the time, my lens choices consisted of my beloved 50mm f1.4, and a rubbish Tamron 18-200 zoom (side note - I would not recommend this lens to anyone for any purpose. I genuinely think it stunted my growth as a photographer). I only ever seemed to use the zoom at its widest end, so my thinking was that I should get a proper, fast lens designed to do ‘wide’ properly. And I got that. But I got more; a lot more. So here are a few observations from a year of living the wide life.
Ultra Wide really does mean Ultra Wide
I genuinely did not appreciate how much difference a couple of millimetres makes at this focal length. In my head, 16mm was close enough to the 18mm I was shooting with the Tamron to be interchangeable. In fact, 16mm is a good bit wider than 18mm, and 11mm is a huge difference. There is a reason that these lenses are marketed as a different category; they do perform differently, and require a different set of considerations when composing.
__Too Much F**king Perspective__
As it turned out, the WIDTH of the scene available to be captured isn’t the most interesting attribute of the Ultrawide lens. The (initially) most problematic and (eventually) most exciting effect of these crazy optics is the DEPTH of the scene. Where long lenses squish the perspective of a shot, wide-angles stretch it out. More specifically, these lenses make the foreground really long.
The Long, Long Foreground
So, that tree/boat/animal in the middle distance which in your mind’s shutter is going to look so awesome in the context of the spectacular panorama? You’re barely going to be able to tell it’s there (I ended up cropping a lot in the first few months to bring my intended subject more into the shot).
At 11mm, a frame centred on the horizon will include the floor from about 2 metres in front. Consequently, I found that the most effective scenes are those where the subject is in the immediate foreground, or where there is no immediate foreground. This usually means getting much closer to the subject than would usually feel natural, or composing with loads of sky. Or, as in the case of this one, getting a bit closer to the edge of a sheer drop than is perhaps desirable.
Q is for Quiraing
Distortion
Once I’d figured this out, I started to compose shots in my head which took advantage. This shot of The Titanics v3 seemed like a good way of getting 9 people in a picture, while managing to keep the focus on Ruth, our singer. Unfortunately, I’d neglected to take into account the distortion on the edges of the frame, which ended up not being at all flattering for Jase and Alison.
F Is For Funk
While this distortion is pretty undesirable for people, it adds drama and interest to verticals, especially buildings, which look like they’re leaning into shot.
[C is for Clouds] (
)
May I be candid?
While in the crowded Ben Thanh market in Ho Chi Minh City, it occurred to me that the combination of a fast lens with a wide coverage was perfect for shooting unobtrusively from the hip. I managed to capture a number of lovely moments that would have no doubt disappeared if I’d had to raise the camera to my eye. It’s a technique I intend to use more often in the future.
When I was struggling to get to grips with it initially, I feared this might be a specialist lens with a niche application. As it turns out it stays on my camera for weeks at a time, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for something a little bit different to do with their SLR.
Back in 2007 I found a recipe for Chocolate Chip and Bacon Cookies on a website called Never Bashful With Butter. I’m glad I took the recipe down, rather than relying on links, because the blog isn’t there any more.
I’ve made the cookies a few times now, refining the recipe as I go along, and am now at a point where I think it’s ready for sharing. So, in memory of Never Bashful With Butter, here it is:
###Chocolate Chip and Bacon cookies (makes a batch of 24 large or 48 small cookies)
225g butter
150g soft brown sugar
150g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg (you can add an extra egg if the dough comes out a bit dry and crumbly)
300g flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g dark chocolate chips
One bottle of beer, chilled. What kind doesn’t really matter, just one you like.
24 rashers thinly-sliced dry-cure streaky bacon
First, heat a grill to its highest heat and spread the bacon rashers on your grill pan so theyíre not touching or overlapping. Grill the bacon rashers until theyíre really crispy, turning once. You might need to do this in batches depending on the size of your grill. Remove each batch onto kitchen paper to soak up excess grease.
Set aside two rashers. You will be tempted to eat them, but resist. Once the rest have cooled sufficiently, put on some loud music and chop them into very fine pieces with a big knife. Youíre aiming to get about 200g of tiny cooked bacon bits. If you are unsure of your ability to not eat the tasty tasty bacon, maybe cook a couple of extra rashers.
Preheat oven to 175 C
Beat together the butter, sugars, vanilla extract and eggs until creamy.
In another bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.
Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir together into a soft dough.
Add in chocolate chips and bacon bits and stir until itís all mixed together properly.
Place dough on a sheet of greaseproof paper and refrigerate. While the fridge is open, remove the beer.
Open the beer, and have a sit down for an hour or so, enjoying the cool refreshment and sense of kitcheny accomplishment. Do not eat the two spare rashers of bacon.
Remove dough from fridge, divide into three equal pieces, then divide each piece in half, then in half again and so on until you have 24 or 48 dough blobs. Roll the dough blobs into balls, then arrange them about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Squash your balls slightly in the middle with your fingers.
Bake cookies for about 10 minutes, or until the dough starts to turn golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack.
Maple cinnamon icing
225g icing sugar
2 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Take the two crispy bacon rashers left over from earlier that you havenít eaten (you havenít, have you?) and chop each one into 12 small pieces with a pair of scissors. This will give you 24 pieces, one for each cookie, so try not to eat any. If you’ve made the smaller cookies, just cut smaller pieces.
Mix all other icing ingredients together until smooth and creamy.
Spread a small amount of the glaze on the top of each cookie and top with your crispy bacon square.
Serve to amazed and delighted friends and colleagues.