Aight then

It's been a while, again, since I last updated. For all of you not into the happy news. As of November 1, I am a full time employee of SPI Lasers in Hampshire, which is in the south of England for all you non-geographers. So I'm gonna be settling for a while in this soggy nation.
About the only thing that means is more chances to roam around Europe and wherever else.

So lets see what's been happening lately. Ah yes Lilian and I hit the Natural History Museum in South Kensington this last weekend for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards. Some amazing pictures, particularly by youngsters. There was a category for 11-17 and under 10s. The winner for the under 10 was an amazing shot of a red fox on snow. The contrast was startling. My favourite pictures was one of a macaque (a type of ape) which had these clear brown eyes, but its expression was one of total confusion, imagine a big duh, but on a monkey. We had a good laugh about the monkey and I naturally pulled a few faces, which quickly brought "people don't need to take photos of animals, they can just take one of you!" from Lil... damn I got snapped =P

We also took a wander through the science museum next door, which turned out to be a giant disappointment. It's a big place filled with lots of dated junk from yesteryear. It feels more like an amusement park than a museum. We only took a turn through there to get out of the rain. The highlight of the evening was dinner (of course).We hit a creperie nearby. Behold our meals!

This was my Portuguese crepe. The filling being chicken, potatoes and cheese among a couple of other things I have since forgotten. It was yuuuuum

Here we have Lilian and her salmon and spinach crepe, which also had garlic (piles of it) and a powerful cheese sauce. I ended up having to finish it....it was FILLING!

Here's something else I made lately.


Looks like a pile dunnit. I'd picked up a bottle of Rendang curry sauce from the supermarket, made from all natural ingredients and get this it was imported... from Australia...the place that made this stuff is based in Botany, how random. Anyway this is my Rendang Curry Beef, which wasn't too bad despite the fact I used the wrong sort of beef.

This one is my special Drunken chicken fried rice noodle...it was a total mistake... there was so much of it i nearly swelled up and exploded. Looks good don't it =P

I need to find something new to make soon. I'm getting kinda bored with what I'm making. Thai curries, fried noodles, rice and what not. Sure I could refine them and all, but the ingredients over here are nowhere near as good as back home so....

I might make a fish pie next weekend. This weekend is gonna be rather busy.

What a monstrosity!

Ok, I made this tonight and it was so deadly it had to be unhealthy but it was oh so good.

This is Benny's own creation, Spaghetti Marinara a la Roquefort with smoked trout.
Here are the ingredients I used
2 x 150ml tubs of sour cream
250g of seafood marinara mix
1 smallish onion
2 good sized chestnut mushrooms
1 spring onion
1 bacon rasher
3 slices of smoked trout
1 x 150g block Roquefort

Pretty basic start, fry bacon and onion together until onion is soften and bacon is cooked through, toss in the mushrooms and soften them too, then throw on the cream. Keep the heat on high until the cream as collapsed into a puddle and thoroughly mix until the whole lot is a gravy-ish brown colour. Throw in the spring onions and seafood mix. My mix was still frozen but it's ok since you gotta reduce the sauce anyway. Bring the sauce to a boil and toss in the roquefort. Now I used 150g, but that was way way way too much. Probably a quarter of that is about right. And for those who don't like blue cheese it's all good, cos with a smaller amount in really enhances the flavour, but what I used changed the sauce into a blue cheese sauce basically, fine for me (and Ingrid) but overpowering for just about everyone else. When the spaghetti was done, I tossed a couple of slices of smoked trout over the spaghetti and ladled over the sauce. This was just an extravagance I was treating myself. The heat from the sauce and pasta made the trout really salty, but was a nice blend of flavours since it smoothed out some of the bite of the sauce.

So there you have it, some thing that started out healthy but probably jumped my cholesterol by 2 points at the end.

Even more food!

Well, then another day in the life of Benny, or rather many days. Most of my days are largely filled with work, eat and sleep, with some play here and there. But one can always have fun with food. Here's some random stuff I made, cos I was hungry

This one is kinda simple. Just took some lamb fillets, roughly diced and fried in some olive oil and cumin powder. The mushrooms were quartered and fried in more olive oil and garlic. The spaghetti was tossed with some sliced asparagus. And cos I was hungry enough I made up a bowl of peas :p
This is my rather basic seafood fried noodles. Nothing fancy, just fried the egg noodles after softening them in hot water. The mix was just some marinara stirredtogether with some fabl fungus.
This is my rather over the top random mix, more lamb fried in cumin again over more spaghetti

This was a favourite. Chicken, bamboo shoots, onions and a few other things stirred with chilli bean paste in egg noodles. mmmmm
It's been ages since I had any sort of Thai dishes and there aren't any take away shops here that serve it, sooo that means one thing. MAKE IT MYSELF. So this one is my green chicken curry, with bamboo shoots and snow peas (which are called mange tout, means "eat all" in french, over here). The concoction was then served over a steaming bed of jasmine rice. I didn't put enough curry paste in so it was just a bit light on flavour for me, but thats just me XD

And following on from my green curry chicken, I made red seafood curry, also thai style. It's cooked largely the same way as the green chicken curry but I used prawns and calamari instead of chicken.

Next time I make it, I'll need some stronger chillis. The "medium" chillis I bought were lame.

Feeling a bit nostalgic tonight, and also I didn't have much in the way of other ingredients available. This is dad's mince meat and peas in a gravy dish which is laid over a raw egg. Bev and Bink will know what I mean. I took a half kilo of mince beef and browned it over 3 finely chopped garlic to which I then added 1 diced onion and 3 sliced mushrooms as well as 1 sliced shallot. Then added some water and boiled it to reduce some of the liquid then added 3-4 tablespoons of cornflour dissolved in water as thickener. The whole thing was then simmered until it thoroughly thickened up. The rice was piled on and an egg cracked over it. I threw a handful of roughly chopped coriande over that then liberally spooned the meat over.... gaaaawwwd so filling.

Speaking of rice. I haven't got a rice cooker but I have perfected boiling rice in a saucepan. There is a little bit of the burnt rice at the bottom that is oooh soo fragrant. mmmmm.

Well thats it for this post. Maybe i'll post something thats NOT about food next time :p

Damn it's been a while

Indeed it has, over a month since I last wrote. Mainly because I've moved house and haven't had net for a while. I now live a half hour's bus ride from work, which is brilliant since I can sleep in a bit more.

Ok looking back. Most recently, I finally met my cousin-sister, Lilian, who lives in London. Had a good long talk with her on Sunday over yum cha. It was good to finally meet her.
As an added bonus I popped by the Empire Casino theatre in Leicester Square where Robert De Niro and Al Pacino showed up to the premiere of their new movie. Ooooh my brush with fame... -_-

Oh the new place. I now share a house with 5 other people. All pretty alright. My room is a little single room with a shower. I'll post up some pics later, once I've cleaned it up a little ;p And of course now that I live alone means that I get to experiment on my food in a not-like-a-mad-scientist sort of way.

There's a chinese grocer about a half hour-ish away where I can stock up on those necessities. Next on the list is a big ass cleaver.

I'll finish my half arsed blog there since I haven't seemed to be able to collect my thoughts yet <.<

More food

Well then shall we have an all new, "what's been on Benny's plate?"

First off is my own Chicken Pad Thai, first attempt didn't turn out too bad. I didn't have any chillis so I had to use sweet chilli sauce which was pretty good.

This here is my potato salad, with a lemon, dill and caper sauce. It was damned good, but a bit on the sour side. I probably should have put in all those capers, but the potatoes cut the sourness out quite well. I'll work on it a bit!

And here is lunch! Chicken, mushroom and onion stir fried vermicelli. Slight on the salty side, but eh XD

As promised

As promised here are some of the shots from the Farnborough Air Show

This here is the all new Eurofighter Typhoon, the newest plane to join the RAF. Apparently if you turn off its engine, it has the aerodynamics of a brick.

This is the new unmanned reconnaissance vehicle for Europe, the Euro Hawk. This thing is huge, just so you get an idea of how big, I am only as tall as that hump at the front.

This is obviously the classic F-16, still one of the finest fighters in the world. Due to be replaced in several years time by the F-22.

And here we have the F-15, due to be replaced by the F-35 in the coming years.

Here is a firm current favourite, the F/A 18D Super Hornet.


Here is a better shot of the Typhoon

These two are MiG-29 Fulcrums that are visiting from the Croatian Air Force.

It's hard to do justice to the Red Arrows skill so here is a brief video of them



This is the Eurofighter Typhoon

The Apache, enough said



I think that might be enough ;p

Farnborough Air Show 08

Well, I've done one of the things on my list of things to do before I die. Today I hit the Farnborough Air Show. That was a total blast. For those not in the know, this air show is for companies to come together to show off their new stuff. There were 3 exhibitions halls full of exhibitors showing off their wares. Naturally the USAF and NASA were present. There were heaps of planes to see, combat and civilian, a Eurofighter Typhoons, an F/A 18 Super Hornet, F-16 Falcon, F15 Eagle, a pair of Mig 29s and assorted others.

The main attraction of this show has to be of course the air displays. There was a very long list of them but I'll run through a few of my favourites. The absolute cap of the displays was by the legendary Red Arrows. These guys are one of the best aerobatics teams in the world. They fly these little planes call Hawks made by British Aerospace. I'll post some pics up of what they performed. Their formation flying was simply outstanding. Another thing was, this was my first full experience of being in the middle of a sonic boom. This is the monstrous air ripping sound you get when a plane breaches the sound barrier and when the entire flight of Hawks were going, all 9 of them, the sound was tremendous.

Next up, the demonstration by the Eurofighter Typhoon. This is the latest aircraft to join the Royal Air Force. It is a beautiful plane and somehow was even louder than all the Hawks combined. It rolled, weaved, climbed and banked with awesome power.

Then came the F16. This has been the USAF's main fighter for years, soon to be replaced by the F22s. This is put simply one of the most maneuvrable fighters in the world. It tore up the sky all the while it's engine was shredding my brain.

Following on was the Super Hornet. This plane now serves in the USAF and the US Navy. It's more powerful than the F16 but not as maneuvrable. I was wincing in pain when this thing flew past. It was LOUD. One of the more impressive tricks was to put itself at a relly steep angle to the direction of travel, the angle of attack. Most planes stall when this happens, but this baby just ripped from that back into full speed without breaking a sweat.

The Avro Vulcan. This is Britain's only big nuclear bomber it built during the early 80s. It is enormous. It looks like a giant triangle and it flies like a fighter pulling turns and banks like it was a quarter of the size it was. One these big birds took off from the UK and, making an inflight refuel, flew to the Falkland Islands during the war of the same name to do a massive bombing attack. It was mainly done to show that Britain's arm could reach a long way. It was a not so subtle threat telling the argentinians that their home land could easily come under attack as well. It was very impressive to watch this big fatass fly around.

The Rockwell B1-B. This is one of the prettier big bombers in the world. The Russians copied its shape when the Tupovlev company made their version. It's a sleak swing wing bomber that was the predecessor to the wedge shaped B2 that we all know of. This plane was only doing a fly by but it was incredible to watch. It did one pass with its wings open and another with its wings swung back. It was doing 800kph at that point.

The most impressive flight was by the A380. This thing is HUGE but the pilot flew it like it was a quarter of the size it was. Its turning circle was incredibly tight and its banking turns were fast. It's damned maneuvrable for a plane its size. There was rowsing applause when the pilot landed it.

There was a flight by an Apache chopper and a Boeing tilt rotor, kinda like the Ospreys and many others. All in all it was a lovely day although it started out by raining but then the sun came out and I've now got a mild sun burn to the face. Brian looks like a tomato, he's so burned. I'll put up some pics soon.