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Tonight's dinner-of-sorts (odd sleeping habits mess up mealtimes, sadly): roast red pepper stuffed with rice seasoned with fresh ginger, tarragon, and chopped apricots. Will have to remember this mixture for later, it works well.

Edited to add the actual recipe, in order to preempt requests from Certain Parties. )
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Noriko Takiguchi writes about what sushi is, how it is said that one should enjoy it, and why, in a seven-part (so far) series.

The history of sushi goes back as long as to B.C.400 in South East Asia, where people used uncooked rice to marinate raw fish for preservation purposes. Fish was sprinkled with salt and buried in rice. Rice’s fermentation helped fish last long, and provided a rare source of protein at that time. Only fish was served and rice was thrown away.

When this kind of preserved fish came north to Japan around 8th century, people started eating both the fish and the rice. The rice was soft and slightly sour due to the fermentation. This sourness was later replaced by just adding vinegar to cooked rice, when people in Edo era (17th century to mid 19th century) wanted to eat sushi quickly without waiting the fermentation time. But this was not yet the sushi as we know it. The vinegar rice was served not only with fish but also with some vegetables and cooked dried food. We still see developed versions of this kind in many parts of Japan.

http://bayosphere.com/node/973 is the last part, the only one from which all the others are linked.

(via http://xplane.com/xblog/index.php )
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Looks like [livejournal.com profile] nou has been a good influence on me, at least in departments other than the going-to-bed-early one.

This one's terribly simple, I got it straight out of "A Wolf in the Kitchen" by Lindsey Bareham. Quantities, as always with my cooking, are approximate.

Potatoes, some. I used eight medium-small ones, boiled (slightly too much, I thought, but it seems to have worked out).
Eggs. Half a dozen.
Onions, one and a half large red. Diced.
Salt & black pepper, some. Chervil, dried, lots. The recipe says tabasco, but I didn't have any, so I just grabbed the first thing from the cupboard that went with eggs.
Um. That's it.

Boil the potatoes. Start the onions frying, then when they're about half done tip in the potatoes.

While they're on, crack the eggs into a large bowl (I used a ceramic casserole dish for these quantities) and whip them up with the seasonings. Leave to stand, then when the other half is edibly done tip it into the bowl and mix them all up a bit.

The oven should be warmed up by this point, at 150 Celsius or whatever that is in Foreign, and the dish (naturally) goes in there for ten or fifteen minutes. It's largely comprised of egg, so you'll be able to tell when it's Done.
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I ended up making it by the standard soup methodology, ie. bung it all in the pan and don't let it boil. Works out pretty well, though I made far too much (and now have all the Nigerian pepper soup in the world ever) and it would've been better if I'd actually had a blender.
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(Edit: bad typing redacted.)

This was prompted by remembering the international food fair from my days at Cranfield - it was about 85% foreign students and at the beginning of every academic year they rounded up as many nationalities as possible and induced them to do ethnic food stalls. We had Russian borscht (with Hellman's Mayonnaise) which didn't impress me much, thin & watery, but thickened up a bit it would be lovely. Iraqi applish semolina, French apple pancakes, African stew (the gentleman apologised profusely for not having been able to get goat for it. Bit hard in the middle of nowhere, Home Counties). And a rather gorgeous Nigerian fish soup containing approximately three kilos of black pepper.

Googling around, it seems to go sort of like this - the lady who made it wasn't all that interested in explaining it at the time, she just liked having people eat it.

FISH. Lotsa fish.
Pepper. All the recipes I've found say chilli peppers or even ahbaneros, but I distinctly remember black pepper so I'll use that. All the black pepper in the world ever.
Tomatoes.
Onion.

I'm figuring on pan-frying small chunks of fish in large quantities, then just doing a long slow tomato sauce stew thing with the pepper and some previously fried onions, and then seeing whether it worked and what else I need to do with it.
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(Edit: bad spelling and typing removed at [livejournal.com profile] nou's request, because she says I have to get used to using an iBook keyboard with no functioning backspace key.)

Have had a very nice dinner, and (apparently as always) [livejournal.com profile] nou cooked a truly ridiculous amount of lovely food, though by some sort of heroic effort we were able to save -some- space for the main course after filling up on chilli-dusted melon chunks, prosciutto crudo & melon on little sticks, vegetable sushi, and the truly goooooooorgeous garlic & anchovy dip. Which proved to be wise, given just how good the squid in red wine & the courgettes were. (And the other things, the technical details of which I forget at this late stage.)

Met some very nice people, the LJ usernames of whom I promptly forgot (yes, gentle reader, it was that sort of party - it seems I'm fated to end up at parties wherein all the people present are introduced, or at least introduceable, by at least two names. Theatre people, roleplayers, mudders, LJers. Damn the lot of us) but will no doubt find out at some stage.

[livejournal.com profile] nou kindly let me try out a new paintbrush on her back, and pictures will be forthcoming. In retrospect, I should've chosen a different one, but I managed, and will be using it quite happily on other occasions.
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From [livejournal.com profile] reuss

Recommend to me:

1. a movie
2. a book
3. a musical artist, song, or album
4. a LiveJournal user not on my friends list
5. what I should have for dinner
6. a website
7. a quote

Then put this in your LiveJournal and I'll do the same for you.

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