A Chorizo and Prawn Risotto Recipe.

Ingredients (for one hungry person or two small portions):

• 70g Arborio (risotto) rice.
• 8cm piece of cooking Chorizo sausage.
• 12 prawns.
• 500ml vegetable stock.
• 1 small onion.
• 1 chilli.
• Tomato puree.
• Frozen peas.
• Quarter green pepper.
• Sea salt.
• Butter.
• Olive Oil.
• Glass of red wine (optional.)
• Parmesan cheese (optional.)

Method:

Add the stock to a saucepan and heat until hot but not boiling. Keep it hot on a low heat.

Add butter and olive oil to a medium sized frying pan. Heat until the butter melts. Add the chopped onion, chopped chilli and the thinly sliced Chorizo. Fry gently for 8 minutes and add the rice. Toast the rice for 2 minutes and then add a couple of ladles of stock until it covers the ingredients. Add the red wine (optional) and a good squeeze of tomato puree. Stir well and simmer gently for 5 minutes. As the rice absorbs the stock, add more to keep the mixture wet so it doesn’t burn. Add the chopped pepper and continue cooking for another 5 minutes, adding stock as necessary. Add a handful of frozen peas and cook for another 3 minutes. Finally, add the prawns and cook until the prawns are pink. The final consistency of the risotto should be thick and runny. Check the seasoning; add a knob of butter and some grated Parmesan (optional.)

A Thai Green Chicken Curry Recipe.

This is rapidly becoming a real favourite. It's a rich, creamy dish without being too hot. Try substituting the chicken for seafood, or make a vegetarian version with tofu pieces.

Ingredients (for two people, or one greedy b*****d):

• 1 large organic chicken breast.
• 1 small red onion.
• 2-4 tsp Thai green curry paste.
• Half a fresh chilli.
• 2 stalks of lemon grass or 1 tsp of lemon grass paste.
• 300 ml coconut milk.
• 1 tsp lime juice.
• Half a fresh green pepper.
• 1 garlic clove.
• Quarter tsp ground coriander.
• 1 small piece of fresh ginger.
• Good bunch of fresh coriander leaves.
• Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil.
• For the garnish - a few coriander leaves.
  

Method:

Finely chop the onion, garlic and ginger. Pre-heat 2 tbs of olive oil in a saucepan and gently fry the onion, garlic, ginger and curry paste over a low heat for 5 minutes. Cut the chicken into strips and add it along with the ground coriander. Fry gently for another 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk, chopped chilli and the lemon grass. Simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the roughly chopped pepper and simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Season and add the lime juice. The curry sauce should be the consistency of single cream - add water if it looks too thick or reduce it over high heat if too thin. Finally, add the fresh, roughly chopped coriander leaves and give it all one last stir.

Serve with boiled organic basmati brown rice and a few whole coriander leaves sprinkled over the top.

A Chicken Jalfreze Curry Recipe.

I like to cook, and one of my signature dishes is a jalfreze-style chicken curry. I've fed this to a few friends in the past and they seem to like it. On a couple of occasions, I've written out the recipe for people so it seemed like a good idea to post it on the Web. Here it is:

Ingredients (for two people, or one greedy b*****d):

• 2 organic chicken breasts.


• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes.


• 1 garlic clove.


• 1 small piece of fresh ginger.


• 1 red onion.


• Half a fresh green pepper.


• Half a fresh chilli.


• Quarter tsp ground cumin.


• Quarter tsp ground coriander.


• Half tsp medium curry powder.


• Bunch of fresh coriander leaves.


• Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil.


• For the garnish - a few coriander leaves and a fresh tomato.

Method:

Finely chop half the onion. Pre-heat 2 tbs of olive oil in a saucepan and gently fry the onion over a low heat with a lid for 15 minutes until the onion caramelizes and goes brown. Add the finely chopped garlic and ginger and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the ground cumin, ground coriander and the curry powder and fry for 1 minute (don't worry if it looks a bit dry.) Add the tin of tomatoes and a cup of water. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Check the seasoning and add salt or pepper as required. That's the sauce complete.

Cut the chicken into rough chunks. Cut the pepper into thick strips and finely chop the fresh chilli. Cut the rest of the onion into chunky quarters and add everything to the sauce. Cook gently, stirring occasionally until the meat is cooked. Just before the end, add a good bunch of chopped fresh coriander leaves. Check the seasoning once again, adding a little water if the sauce is too thick or reducing it over a high heat if too thin.

Serve with boiled organic basmati brown rice and a fresh tomato chopped into quarters. Sprinkle a few whole coriander leaves over the top and serve.

You can vary the curry powder and chilli quantities to taste. The above amounts produce a hot, but not overpowering curry. It freezes well and can be converted into a vegetarian version by substituting the chicken for any diced hard vegetables (Bev likes carrots and potatoes.) You can add a handful of lentils or cashew nuts, too.

A Postcard from Blakeney

After the terrible winter (1963 was worse,) the year that gas ran out (no it didn’t, but the media tried to convince us that it would) and all the road salt was stolen by OAPs gritting their drives despite not actually going anywhere because of the snow, we decided it was time for a holiday. Going away is problematic for a number of reasons. It has to be dog friendly, isolated and close enough for our clown car to get there without disintegrating. Honk, honk! Scarborough dog rescue isn’t much fun at this time of year so we settled for a cottage in Blakeney on the Norfolk coast instead.

In my experience, booking so-called “dog friendly” cottages is an excuse for the owner to charge extra for slightly tatty accommodation. They assume that your pooch will defecate, urinate and puke over every square inch of floor covering. That you will allow Fido to sleep on anything that is soft and designed for human comfort and will leave all manner of parasites, hair and strange and unpleasant odours for the next guests (although I can manage the latter on my own, dog or not.) This time we decided to spend a little extra and get something a bit more up-market through the highly recommended Blakeney Bolt-Holes website. We weren’t disappointed.

Our cottage, The Washhouse, was magnificent. Clearly designed by the art director of the film Minority Report rather than Slum-Dog Millionaire, you needed a degree in Mechanical Engineering to figure out how to make stuff work. For example, the tap in the kitchen looked like an Antony Gormley public art installation. The huge stainless steel contraption had levers, coiled hoses and unmarked tilt-and-turn knobs that made it look like the user interface to the TARDIS. It took me ten minutes to extract a thimble full of hot water and, to this day, I have no idea how I managed it. We lived in constant fear of jet washing the immaculately finished walls by pulling the wrong lever. And then there was the control system for the under floor heating. We sussed that out after a quick call to Stephen Hawking. “The new inflationary model of the universe is a good attempt to explain the thermostat settings, but repulsive gravitational effects keep the temperature in the bedroom at 21 degrees.” Thanks, Steve. Bye.

Joking aside, The Washhouse was the best equipped cottage we’ve ever stayed in, bar none. It had an induction hob, telephone, flat screen TV with Dolby surround sound, built-in microwave and those unslammable drawers that close slowly by anti-repulsive gravitational magic. It was like a lock-in at John Lewis, the UK's favourite retailer for the best in furniture, home wares, electrical, fashion and gifts. My favourite gizmos were the electrically retractable skylight covers. By throwing a switch on the wall you could open and close the covers on a pair of 2 metre square skylights in the roof. We dubbed this “doing a Tracy Island” and accompanied the act by humming the “Thunderbirds March.” You could lie in bed at night and watch the stars. Well, not exactly. When you opened the covers the bedroom was flooded with freezing cold air and that spoiled the effect somewhat.

Blakeney in March is a peaceful place. At the weekends the pub and seafood restaurants are busy with well behaved, well-to-do southerners that vanish during the week, leaving a few die-hard nature lovers. The weather was dry, bright but cold with a biting easterly that has been the feature of this year’s winter. We spent a lot of time walking the marshes and birding until our extremities froze, forcing us back inside to consume lots of the things that you only eat on holiday. I’m talking chocolate, crisps, Eccles Cakes, bags of liquorice, heaps of complimentary Quality Street, etc. I was particularly fascinated by the designer cappuccino maker in the kitchen. After a quick call to Gino D’Acampo, I managed to make a refreshing cup of tepid, frothy milk from the machine that sounded like a cat coughing up a fur ball. Thanks, but I’ll stick to my fairly traded, freeze-dried Clipper from Tesco.


Half way through the week we risked driving the Model T (honk, honk,) a few miles west along the coast road to Wells-next-the-Sea. When I was eleven years old, I stayed in Wells on a family holiday with my parents, auntie, uncle and cousins in a large static caravan. I haven’t been back since so it was a bit of a nostalgic trip. I was surprised to discover that the caravan park is still there and so is the pub, The Ark Royal that we used to sit outside and consume fizzy Vimto and cheese and onion crisps. When I burp, I can still taste them. The town has hardly changed in almost forty years, apart from a large disused warehouse by the harbour that’s been converted, naturally, into swish apartments. We spent the day birding, taking photos and walking on the Peddars Way coastal path before various useful body parts froze and fell off and we drove back to Blakeney.

By the end of the week we’d managed to spot several new species of bird including Snipe, Fieldfare, Pochard, Merganser and Mandarin. There were a few “mystery” ducks that we failed to identify. After a quick call to grumpy Bill Oddie, who told me to f**k off, I concluded that they were ornamental Wood Ducks bred for eye candy and orange sauce so they don’t count. The journey home was uneventful apart from the new high-pitched squealing feature that the car’s engine developed somewhere near King’s Lynn. Honk, honk.

Blakeney, Norfolk 2010

We've just got back from a very peaceful birding holiday to Norfolk. I went slightly mad with the camera and I've only just found time to start processing the images. I've created a set on Flickr with a few of the latest offerings. It may be found here.

More "As Seen on TV"

I had another image chosen as the "Viewer's Picture" on the BBC's "Look North" programme. It was shown on the 4th March 2010 and the video is posted here if anyone is interested.

Light, Universe and Everything

I was out on a photo shoot last week when the sun decided to make a rare appearance. I captured the above image on Bridlington north beach as the tide was receding. The picture was taken with a polarizing filter and rendered into black and white with Photoshop. It looks a bit like an Ikea poster but there's something appealing about it?