jon edwards

More brilliance from xkcd.

Perfect accompaniment to new Hockney exhibition at the RA.

I watched a very odd little dance on the train home from work today.

The girl sitting opposite had a huge handbag that occasionally howled - it transpired the bag contained a very small (but quite loud) dog. The dog wasn’t happy about being in the bag, so the girl opened the bag so it could stick its head and front paws out.

Unfortunately the first thing the dog saw was an enormous pitbull-type dog sitting in the aisle next to it. After some petrified trembling, bag-dog buried itself back in the cosy confines of its mobile home.

Predictably its next move was to get fed up of the bag and start howling again… so girl lets it out, it sniffs around, spots pitbull-type dog, trembles and hides, rinse and repeat.

I don’t really judge the dog here, but the owner? A little. Bag-dog was alternating between annoyingly cramped and scared out of its wits. Perhaps that’s not a great way to carry a dog?

Lots of people linked to this on Twitter but I think the first I saw was @RalphBassfeld.

Science and cats - perfect internet fodder.

This is amazing. How to peel garlic in 10 seconds with just two bowls.

When I moved to south London I lost access to one of my favourite takeaways - Song Sushi of Blackstock Road (N5 1EB, 020 7226 4225). It wasn’t exactly cheap, but was pretty good value considering how tasty it was. There was plenty of great Japanese food including a wide range of sushi and, most importantly for us, vegetarian sushi.

We’ve tried a few places in the Battersea/Clapham area and nothing’s come up to scratch - especially low marks for vegetarian sushi availability. I’m all for the sashimi myself, so I was alright, but my girlfriend wasn’t impressed with the unimaginative veggie options available. I said not to worry: I’ll just make some myself.

So while buying some sushi for lunch one day in the brill Japan Centre on Regent St I wandered to the back of the shop, where I’d never ventured before. It turns from sushi counter to mini-market, with a variety of Japanese foods available. Having done the bare minimum research I grabbed wildly at the shelves, with not the faintest idea about distinguishing between the 20-odd brands of nori (dried seaweed).

First session: not bad, could try harder

Armed with nori, sushi rice, mirin (rice wine) and rice vinegar, and a few experimental vegetables, I made my first attempt. It wasn’t exactly a success. Rolling the maki (sushi rolls) was made slightly more difficult as I’d forgotten to get a bamboo rolling mat. Tin foil sufficed but was hardly perfect. I hadn’t cooked the rice for long enough, either, so the resulting rolls were actually a bit bland, a bit crunchy, and a bit disappointing.

That was 200g of rice (I’d bought a kilo) and I had used about a quarter of the small amount of vegetables I’d prepared. I gave it another try, this time giving the rice a bit more water and a bit longer to absorb it. This second batch was far superior - even verging on being ‘nice’.

The other difference was making uramaki, or inside-out rolls. This was where the tin foil really worked against me, as to make uramaki you have spread rice over the nori on a piece of cling film, then flip it over for fillings and rolling. The tin foil’s lightness made this a more complicated procedure than it needed to be, and I made quite a mess with the sesame seeds, too.

The uramaki make a welcome change from the regular maki, and make the dish a bit more interesting to look at.

You might notice the rice is ridiculously thick. This was the thing I took away from my first session: spread the rice quite thinly, more thinly than you might think. It’s a lot bulkier when rolled than it looks when flat.

This meant that I’d inadvertently made a lot more food than I’d intended! We had sushi for dinner, and both had sushi for lunch the next day.

This session was a partial success, then; I’d learned the basics of rolling, and had made a few mistakes and learned from them. The food itself was still a little bland, though. I decided to up my game for the second session.

Second session: way too much

With an ill-founded confidence I planned my next lot of sushi. Tempura vegetables sound fun! Why not try tamago (sweet omelette)? Let’s put some fish in for me this time! And chicken! The little voice of reason said “this sounds like a lot of effort”, but was shouted down by the voice of hunger. I even bought a rolling mat.

With a cute little square Japanese omelette pan from Muji, I prepared the sweet omelette the day before with a recipe I Googled. Not yet sure if it was beginner’s luck, but I managed to make a great-tasting, great-looking rolled tamago.

What I should have done next is make the tempura vegetables. They were going into the maki cold anyway. Silly, silly Jon.

The next day I was ready to rock. I put aside a couple of hours to really take my time making some nice new fillings a great batch of sushi. Ingredient prep didn’t take that long: lightly steamed a few carrots and some asparagus, chopped some cucumber, peppers and courgette, quickly cooked some chicken strips, mixed some tinned salmon with a spicy mayo.

Heating up a saucepan of oil took a bit longer than expected, but I spent the time pointlessly arranging the chopped vegetables on a plate. About 30 pieces of veg to tempura batter, the rest to go in raw/steamed. Easy!

A tempura batter recipe from Waitrose was really easy to follow and demanded last-minute prep. No problem, but I hadn’t read that things had to be fried in very small batches, lest you cool the oil too much and make the batter soggy. My saucepan allowed for three things at a time. I had 30-odd bits of veg and another 10 chicken strips. They needed about 4-5 mins each. Oops.

An hour, and much grumpy pacing, later I had a plateful of crunchy-looking tempura battered veg, and another small plate of tempura chicken, along with the rest of my ingredients.

Finally, I thought, I’ve gotten over the hard bit, even if I’m already running late. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to cook the rice and roll up a few maki. Turns out I’d once again overestimated how much we could actually eat.

The gigantic volume of rice I’d slightly overcooked was a sight to behold. I rolled enthusiastically with my new bamboo mat, rolling smaller maki with half-sheets of nori, uramaki with sesame seeds, made some nigiri for the tamago… it went on and on. Just rolling took over an hour. Exhausting. Three and a half hours of total dinner prep.

This provided dinner for two, then lunch for two, then dinner for two again. So I guess when you think of it like that, 3.5 hours wasn’t so bad for prep.

The sushi tasted better than last time, overall. The omelette went down well, and I was pleased with the spicy salmon and cucumber. But I still felt I was a long way off from Song Sushi-quality food. The fillings were a bit simplistic, there weren’t really any complex flavours. A residential training course for the vegetarian meant I was alone for my next session, so I decided to experiment carnivore-style.

Third session: now we’re talking

I admit I was looking forward to this one: sushi just for me, so I could really experiment with meat/fish. I settled on teriyaki chicken, spicy cooked tuna, and tuna sashimi.

The Japan Centre provided everything I needed, including some sashimi-grade tuna. I’ll be interested to shop around as it was pretty damn expensive (£4.50 for 100g). Better safe than sorry, I guess.

Prep for this one was a lot more organised - I’m getting into the swing of it now, and was able to prepare the fillings and rice at the same time. I marinated the chicken for 15 mins in teriyaki sauce (basically soy sauce, mirin, a little sugar) and gently fried it as the sauce thickened. I mixed some canned tuna with a small amount of spicy mayo.

Maki this time: teriyaki chicken with spring onion, spicy tuna with chilli powder, sesame seeds and celery, and raw tuna in little maki, along with a couple of tuna nigiri and some sashimi tuna.

This time I think I got it right - the maki were flavourful, the sashimi was great, I had a nice variety. I still made too much and will be eating it for lunch for the next couple of days, but there was no stress or excess time involved in this one.

It didn’t take me very long to make some really nice sushi, and overall it’s definitely working out cheaper than getting it takeaway. There are loads more fillings and combinations to try… I’m just getting started.

I like this a lot.

dderbyshire:

London

Photo-hosting on the web by proportion. Flickr-what now? Facebook is king.

stickersonthecentralline:

CHAPTER SIX: Riots in London

I was well buzzin’. We was on a riot. It was a hot ting! Everyone was mad like, chucking things, chucking bottles, breaking into stations. It was madness! We got bare oyster cards. It was good fun tho! People breaking into Waterstones (reading lolz). We’re just showing TFL we can do what we want, yeah. It’s the government’s fault, conservatives innit.

Mary-Margaret Scholtens, director of the Alternative Programs Providing Learning Experiences Group, Copyright ? 2005, Jonesboro Sun

— if this is true, it’s really interesting! Found on Twitter somewhere but I’ve lost the original, sorry…

Brilliant automation service on a kind of simple Boolean scheme. Connect up your web services, then set up ‘tasks’; for example, if [linked shared on Tumblr] then [save link to Delicious]. As I’m doing right now.

Funny cos it’s true.

Never seen an app badge there before - how exciting.

Story of my life.