Stop sniggering at the back. As the above video proves, being able to crack an egg single-handed is cool. It must be, because Michael Caine does it, and Michael Caine is cool. Ipso. Facto.
Russell posted the video today because he’s just got his hands on Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book, which rules. Go check out who’s really the one-handed genius in that film.
I’ve got a couple of very interesting-looking cookbooks on the way. Stay tuned.
I’d be lying if I said I’d actually been waiting until Shrove Tuesday to have another crack at these delicious pancakes, but if you’ve got to give up all those lovely things for 40 days and 40 nights, well… Yummy.
I didn’t think I’m come up with a way to distill my Cuban experience (well, some of it) into one dish so quickly, but then it hit me. Plantain is a staple of African and Latin American food - and available in most urban grocery stores these days - and what represents Cuba better than Rum? So let’s marry the two…
Fry a thumbnail of ginger in a little oil, and then add a couple of sliced plantains. While they’re frying gently, mix half a tbsp of brown sugar with 75ml of dark rum (I decided to use Cap’n Morgan’s in this case, as the stockpile of Havana Club 7yo seemed a little wasteful). Pour this mixture over the frying plantains, taking a lot of care as it may well ignite itself, as it did in this case (if not, set it alight yourself, and step back). When the fire dies down, boil the remaining juice hard to coat the plantain, flipping them over a couple of of times, then slide them off onto a plate and consume!
Lovely.
The music here is Cuban reggaeton, which is all you hear everywhere on the island outside the folk clubs. It rules.
Not actually connected with CWB in anything but spirit (geddit?), but I recently came across The Soho Project, a collaborative challenge game thing taking part across Soho - one of whose strands is ‘Soho Picnic’. This is Team Gintastic’s entry, and gets a mention for doing ‘Potato Vodka Surprise’ in the middle of the street.
Yes! Cooking With Booze is officially out today. Check out this page for more info.
I made some more videos over the weekend. They were all pretty quick and tasty, but fine eating. Flambéing the mushrooms was particularly fun. If you’ve never flambéed anything, I highly recommend it.
So, I made a video of me cooking one of the recipes (this one):
I used fresh tomatos because I’d just harvested a bunch from my roof, so the sauce turned out a bit more liquid than it should be, but it was super-tasty.
This is actually my third cooking video (more here), but the first from the book. I’m planning on doing a whole series of them - but I’m hoping that other people will help me out and make some of their own. It would be great to have one (or more!) for every recipe in the book.
How about it?
It’s pretty easy - I’m using a really crappy webcam, and a free OSX programme called Gawker, then I edited it a bit with iMovie, stuck on a tune (in this case, Four Friends And A Microphone by The Black Dog), and uploaded it to Vimeo, which is like YouTube, but nicer.
Go on, have a go, and tag anything you do, anywhere, ‘cookingwithbooze’ so I can find it.
