Bill's Word's of Wisdom: Spices

Have a load of spices and get a book about spice mixes as you may wanna make them yourself (50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi is highly recommended, also Choosing and using spices by Morris and Mackley is another good spice book) You may save money this way and by having a whole range of spice you'll always have what you need and preferably always buy whole spices.

Whole spices: heat them before you grind them in your stone pestle and mortar, this adds to the flavour. It's good to have two different sizes of pestle and mortar depending on the amount of spice you are crushing, add rock salt as an abrasive. Allspice is actually one berry it was called Allspice by the english in 1621 who thought it tasted of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves but is actually pimento dioica- Jamaican Pepper.

You can always grow your own herbs and spices too.

Bug Box

I like bugs and I love the idea of bug boxes, so this seemed like the greatest oppurtunity for me and Bruv to combine our genius and make one ourselves.

Bruv is a renowned crafter of big objects from benches to gates to giant wooden fish tanks, he has his own chainsaw and is not afraid to use it, even if everyone else is.

I am a great crafter of small things, I think we both get this drive from our Dad who was a great crafter of both large and small things, including us. 

Working together was surprisingly smooth considering we have fought like mad siblings for decades (though we secretly wuv each other and would rather we got sent to the children's home than the other one)

It was a real collaboration where we discussed what would work best and how the aesthetic would work out, and when he needed a fag break I got the giant drill duty-awesome- and then I would make him a cup of weak tea which I would remake stronger.

The bug box now lives suitably at our mum's house in the garden.

A bug box is a made to replicate natural habitats of insects such as Ladybirds and Lacewing. For more info google it! or follow this link

Day 2: Blackened Mackerel and Teriyaki Salmon

Fish doesn't take long too cook so we began to prepare the other elements of the meal.

First Salsa. This had Cherry tomatoes, spring onions, sweet red pepper cut into small chunks into a bowl with coriander, chilli and lime juice.
Tomato can be swapped out with papaya/melon/orange/mango/anything sweet.
Put salsa in freezer for an hour or put crushed ice in it. Refreshing!




We had sticky Japanese rice to go with the fish too.
Bill's words of wisdom here, are to bring the pan to the boil and don't touch it, just turn it down gently to a lower setting to simmer with a lid on.

We had a frying pan for each fish dish and an extra small saucepan for reheating the marinade to go back on the salmon once cooked.

The fish mongers had prepared the mackerel for us, a beautiful dark oily fish. We used Mexican spice and butter to fry the fish with it's skin on, butter causes the fish to blacken. This also makes the skin lovely and crispy.

We marinaded our salmon all day (see Teriyaki preparation blogpost) Marinade overnight if possible, the longer the better.

We fried both fish in no time, this is a matter of watching, smelling, seeing, listening but it didn't take longer than 10mins.


We set them out with our rice and salsa, chopsticks and bowls. It was absolutely divine and I gobbled down the lot!

Day 3: Buffalo Wings

Day 3 and We're gonna make Buffalo wings with Cola Sauce

First you gotta prep the chicken.
Bill gets me to do this cause I am so squeamish about touching meat.
So you wanna break the chicken wings into 3 pieces throwing the end bit away.
You feel for the knuckle and using a very good sharp heavy knife/kitchen cooks knife
I chopped through the wing, only wincing slightly.

Next for the sauce
Pour coke into pan  on a HOT GAS HOB
Add a splash of chilli dip/nandos marinade/chilli tomato ketchup etc
Set the oven to 210 degrees.

Place chicken in pan with sauce to get first coating (keep marinade going on hob)
Scoop out into a oven tray with foil
Pop onto oven for 15mins

If you don't want it too sticky then
once the sauce is half way reduced dip chicken then 15min oven
Then once sauce is a paste texture 2nd dip with another 15mins on the oven
If however you want them nice and sticky
Then add a third dip when the sauce is thick and stick in the oven for another 15mins.



These are unbelievably good, nom nom nom.

Bill's Words of Wisdom: Knives and sharpening

Some insight into kitchen knives:

You need a Pairing knife.
A decent Chefs Kitchen Knife- costs around £15-20
Sharpening steel, is a long metal stick for sharpening and takes a bit of practise
Standard knife sharpens are good too.

Sharpen regularly, every couple of time you cook something
If you have a good quality set it is worth taking it to a professional Knife sharpening service.

Filleting knives are very sharpe and you don't really need them for anything other than filleting, i.e. a more advance knife for more advance cooking.

A good heavy pair of scissors is quite useful.

Other Kitchen Tool Tips
A good heavy saucepan and a heavy frying pan is good.

A wok, uncoated, Bill got his from a local Indian store.

Metal spatchlers are useful and shouldn't cause any problem unless you have a teflon coated base.

"Put foil down when you grill, put foil down for most oven work, otherwise it's a mess" says Bill

Day 3: Pork Gyoza

PORK POTSTICKERS

We cheated a bit here and brought the Gyoza skins, though making them is not to tricky.
Using pork mince, onion, 5 spice and garlic for filling
and this recipe

We finely chopped the onion and cabbage and
Added spices and soya sauce and garlic to the meat.

Powdering our work surface suitably we placed our gyoza skin down and
wetted the edge of the disc.
Popping the meat in the middle and folding over doing a fold and pinch along the edge
You really don't want any gaps because you don't want the water getting into your parcel.
Before adding to the water to cook we browned one side in the frying pan.

We kinda made loads too many but they were ridiculously tasty, I tried hard to eat them all.

Dipping Sauce
cider vinegar
soy sauce
sweet chilli
Accompanied by a nice bottle Chateau du Pape

and we ate Scallops too

We brought some scallops for fun snack time.
We cleaned them up and cooked in a pan till the translucnet look disappears (like egg or uncooked chicken)
Then added Lemon, SUPER YUM!

We ate them so quick I never got time to take any pictures!

Chorizo thoughts:
Generally..
Mexican Chorizo is for cooking
Spainish Chorizo is for eating dried and sliced.