Cook Book: Recipe 6 – Raspberry Mojitos

These are a delicious summer treat and the raspberry adds a nice zing to the already delicious mojito combination!

The first step is to make the Raspberry compote which will be used in the recipe later.

Ingredients for Raspberry Compote

1 punnet of rasberries (about 200 grams)

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

1/4 cup sugar

Directions

Combine all in a small saucepan and simmer until the raspberries break down and release their juice. Then place a sieve over a bowl and strain out the seeds from the compote so that the mojitos stay nice and smooth. Set aside to cool.

Ingredients for Raspberry Mojitos (makes enough for 6 long glasses)

300 ml White Rum (Bacardi or similar)

Juice of 4 limes

50 ml of sugar cane syrup (this can be adjusted to your taste and how sweet you make the compote)

1 large bunch of mint leaves

Ice cubes

Raspberry compote

Soda Water to top up

Directions

Fill a pitcher half way with ice and mint leaves (slightly bruised by clapping in your hands beforehand). Pour the rum, lime juice and sugar cane syrup into the pitcher. Mix by pulling through with a long spoon. Top up almost all the way with soda water. While stirring, add in the raspberry compote until it becomes a bright pink colour. Leave some compote aside and top up individual glasses to taste.

Prepare glasses by filling them 1/2 way with crushed ice and add in the mojito mixture. Top up with raspberry compote to taste and garnish with a lime wedge and sprig of mint.

 

 

Cook Book: Recipe 5 – Zesty Pasta Salad

This is a great dish for the summer months, perfect for a BBQ side dish or just as a light lunch on its own. You can customise it however you like, but here is our basic recipe.

Ingredients

1 bag of pasta (preferably one with twists, such as fusili, so it holds the dressing)

1 pack of fresh olives, any that you like

1 block of feta

Juice of one lemon

1 finely chopped red onion

1 pack of pancetta cooked or salami (optional if you want to keep it a vegetarian option)

1 bottle of your favourite vinegar based dressing (we usually use an Italian dressing)

Directions

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. Put in a bowl with some of the dressing and olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking together.

Cook the pancetta, if using, and add to the pasta. Chop olives and red onion and add to the bowl of pasta and crumble in the feta.

Add in the juice of the lemon and dressing to taste and season with salt and pepper.

Mix well and chill until ready to eat!

Cook Book: Recipe 4 – Spicy Southern Chicken

This recipe is delicious and simple to make to boot! It’s a healthier version of fried chicken- it’s pretty removed from it but gets a lot of flavour from the seasonings you use. We decided to serve it with some grilled corn on the cob and some of our homemade guacamole (see previous recipe) and nachos! Scrummy!

Here are the ingredients you will need to make this recipe:

• 4 chicken breasts
• Polenta or corn meal
• Cajun or piri piri spice mix, or your favourite spice rub (we used a combination of Sainsburys Piri Piri spice mix and ‘Rodeo Rub’ mix from Galena Garlic Co. in the US, which was a present from Kate’s folks to my parents this Christmas).
• Olive oil

You will also need some parchment paper and a rolling pin or heavy object.

The first thing you will need to do is get two large sheets of parchment paper. Lay one of them on the counter top and cover surface with polenta/cornmeal and whichever spice mix you are going to use. Take the 4 chicken breasts and cover with this mixture on both sides. Place second piece of parchment on top and pound with a rolling pin or heavy object. This helps to tenderise the chicken and work in the seasoning while reducing the cooking time!

Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat. Place chicken breasts in the pan and sear on both sides. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 10-12 minutes depending on the size of the chicken.

At the same time you can grill your corn in a griddle pan. You don’t need any oil, just a really hot pan and keep turning them. They will take the same amount of time to cook as the chicken.

Once the chicken is cooked through and corn nicely grilled you are ready to eat!

Cook Book: Recipe 3 – Spicy Guacamole

This version of guacamole is absolutely delicious! So fresh and the hint of spiciness in it makes it irresistible. It’s easy to make and tastes miles better than any guacamole you can buy.

Here are all the ingredients you will need:

• 2 medium spiced chillies, 1 hot chilli
• 1 bunch of Coriander chopped
• 2 tomatoes, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 lime, juice only
• 4 ripe avocados
• Salt to taste

The first thing you will need to do is finely chop the chillies, onions, garlic, and tomatoes and coriander. Place all of these ingredients in a pestle and mortar with a bit of salt.

Now pound all of this down until it forms a fine paste.

Now, for the avocados. Peel them and place them in a blender or food processor and blend. Don’t blend too much as you still want them a bit chunky to add some texture to the guacamole.

Add this to the pestle and mortar and mix with the other ingredients. Squeeze half a lime over the mixture and mix thoroughly. Done!

Serve with some tortilla chips, nachos or as a cooling side dish with chilli con carne.

Cook Book: Recipe 2 – Chorizo & Butter Bean Stew

Here is the second recipe in our cook book series (introduced in the previous post). This one was found via Jamie Oliver and is a simple and delicious way to use up a tin of butter beans sitting in the cupboard.

Here are all the ingredients you will need to make this one

• 200 grams chorizo, sliced
• 2 red onions, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 x 400 gram tinned tomatoes
• 1 x 400 gram tinned butter beans

First, slice the red onions, garlic and chorizo. You can make the slices as thick or thin as you like depending on how chunky you want the stew to be.

Next, add the chorizo, garlic, and red onion to a medium sized saucepan with some olive oil. Cook, stirring, over medium heat for 5 minutes until the oil comes out of the chorizo and onions are nicely softened.

Now add the drained beans and tomatoes to the pan.

Finally, add in the paprika and a pinch of salt and pepper and give it a final stir.

Reduce the heat and cover the stew to simmer for 20 minutes.

Serve the stew as a snack, side dish, or light lunch with some rustic bread and butter and enjoy!

Cook Book: Recipe 1 – Tasty humus

Kate and I have decided to make a cookbook of our favourite recipes, borrowed, adapted and our own originals. Below is a half borrowed/half adapted recipe for homemade hummus which is absolutely delicious and the easiest thing to make! There will hopefully be many more posts as we make progress with our cookbook! It should be a great deal of fun as we both love cooking together and eating the result!

Here are the ingredients you will need to make this one!

• 200 grams/7 oz. canned chickpeas
• Juice of one lemon
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100 ml/ 3 1/2 oz. tahini (sesame seed paste)
• 4 tbsp water (use water from chickpeas if packaged in water)
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander or a small bunch of fresh
• Drizzle of chilli oil

And here are the ridiculously simple directions!

Drain the chickpeas, reserving some of the water for the hummus.

Combine all the remaining ingredients in a food processor and pulse until it makes a relatively smooth paste. Have a taste and add a bit more salt, chilli oil, lemon juice to taste.

Pour into a dish or onto a plate and serve with warm pita bread or some fresh vegetables.

Hope you enjoy this post and all the others we post in this series!

Paradise Wildlife Park January 2013. Part 2: Primates

This post follows on from my previous post from a trip to Paradise Wildlife Park, in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, which featured some pictures of big cats. Here I will only present a few pictures of primates. I might do another post(s) featuring meerkats and other animals.

I like taking pictures of monkeys and apes as they have such expressive faces, or maybe it is just that, being so similar to us, we can recognise their expressions more. They also tend to be playful, cheeky, rude, etc., which can make for great pictures. I have a dream to go to Japan to see the Japanese macaques bathing in the hot springs, surrounded by snow.

Here are a few pictures then, all taken in very low light in the inside ‘tropical rainforest’ area of the zoo, which houses the small primates. The primates outside were much harder to get an unrestricted view of, though were probably more interesting. I particularly like the gibbons, because of their agility.

Cottontop Tamarin

A small New World monkey, found mainly in northern Columbia rainforests.

Love these guy’s mohawks, they remind me a lot of the punk on the Diesel logo! I think they are cool.

Emperor Tamarin

Another type of tamarin, this one with an awesome moustache. In fact, it is believed that it was names the Emperor tamarin as it resembled the German emperor Wilhelm II. It does have one of those WW1 general’s moustaches. This species comes from the Amazon rainforest.

Black-tailed Marmoset

Another species from the Amazon around Brazil.

This primate clearly didn’t know how to eat with his mouth closed, and actually seemed keen to show me what it was eating.

The park also has pygmy marmosets, which are small, fluffy and cute, and silvery marmosets in an outside enclosure.

Golden-headed Lion Tamarin

Back to the tamarins. These guys all seem to have cool hair styles! You should look up a colour picture of these, they are awesome.

That’s it. I haven’t had time for many pictures really. If you are visiting Paradise Wildlife Park, they also have gibbons, a couple of types of lemur and some other interesting primates.

Thanks for looking.

 

Paradise Wildlife Park January 2013. Part 1: Big Cats

Recently Kate and I went to a very local little zoo, Paradise Wildlife Park. It was extremely cold, though great fun. I thought I would share some pictures from the day.

Although not as extensive as other zoos, they have some great animals, particularly big cats. As well as the cheetahs, tigers, snow leopard and lion shown here, they have a standard leopard, which has the most beautiful markings, and white lions and lionesses (one of which is soon to have cubs, which will necessitate another visit!). With the wire round the enclosures and relatively small viewing areas, it is difficult to get good pictures of all of these, particularly when many were hiding from the cold. However, I will show you what I got.

Tigers

The tigers are not my favourite big cat, but I certainly feel they are the most beautiful (followed by the leopard). Their markings and colours are so amazing and slightly mesmerising to me. They are also a huge cat, really intimidating, which is feeling not lessened by the fact that I immediately think of Shere Khan when I see one.

I love the intensity of the tiger, it looks so strong and hardy, yet beautiful.

Even in black and white, the bold contrast in the markings on the face are stunning.

In addition to two standard/orange tigers, Paradise Wildlife Park have 2 white tigers. I couldn’t get a clear view of these, but we did get to see a interesting interaction between the keepers and one of them. Not sure what they were doing (maybe weighing it), but they got the tiger to stand vertical against its cage; I estimate from toe to tip of its claw at full reach it would be over 7 foot tall. It was an amazing site.

Cheetahs

Whilst at the park, we learnt that cheetahs are not actually a big cat, but the biggest of the small cats. However, I class them as my favourite cat, big or small. They are not the most beautiful, but are so sure-footed and lithe. I am fascinated by how well they are built for speed; even their feet seem narrow, slightly elongated and put me in mind of light-weight, close-fitting running spikes. For some reason, the cheetahs also strike me as friendlier than other big cats, maybe this is a reflection on them being the underdogs, smaller cats that are frequently attacked by larger predators. I don’t know, but I love them. I wish their pen was bigger so they that could have a real run and stretch those legs. Particularly after seeing their intensity and hunting instinct when they heard/smelled a horse walking along the road running along the edge of the park and their pen. I will dream of seeing one in the wild someday, and of seeing one sprint.

As you can get quite a good view through one of the glass panels at the cheetah enclosure and as I love them, I spent a lot of time there, much to the annoyance of a very cold Kate!

Snow Leopard

The snow leopard is another graceful and beautiful cat. They remind me more of a big house cat for some reason. I think it is their body shape. They also have a really thick tail. I got a lot of picture of the snow leopard, but I didn’t like the cage in the background or the restricted view. So I only really felt this close portrait of the beast right next to the viewing glass was worthy of editing.

This animal was acting really interestingly as it is the breeding season. It was very restless and was making a really strange screech, which would would have thought came from a bird, not a cat. It seemed quite eager to find a mate, so it is a shame that it was alone.

Lions

I only really got this one relatively unobstructed picture of the lions as the spent a lot of time lazying in their inside areas. This male was roaring, which was a great sight in the cold, as you could see its breath streaming. I think it was competing with the male white lion in a separate pen, as they seemed to take it in turns. You could hear it all over the park. Later on, we were in the inside region of the white lion’s pen when the male went up close into the corner of the room and roared intensely. The sound was amazing; it was so loud you could feel it reverberating and vibrating in your chest. It truly gave a unforgettable sense of the sheer power of the lion. I certainly would not like to hear that sound again in the wild, at least at such a close distance!

I hope you enjoy these pictures. I wish I could have got more unobstructed ones, but zoos are always a bit of a let down in that sense. In my next blog post I will show a small number of pictures of primates from Paradise Wildlife Park.

If you live close enough to the Park I urge you to visit. Its a lovely little place with some great animals and over entertainment. For example, we didn’t make it to the bird shows and falconry, which have been a highlight for me before.

Thanks for visiting.

Borough Market

Firstly, Happy New Year to anybody reading this. I hope you had a great time over the holiday period. It was pretty busy for me and, as a result, I have not taken the time to get any blog posts done, but I will try to be more active from now on.

New Year Resolutions

I have resolved to take, edit and post more pictures, to help me learn, develop and practice the art I love. I also hope to try to make more of a move into the photography business, to get more wedding bookings, portrait sessions and whatever else I can. I have a christening/family shoot lined up in a couple of weeks time, and hopefully more will follow, particular once the dismal UK weather starts to improve.

I will try to share my progress with these resolutions, so watch out for our (me and my fiance’s) new website, which is coming soon. I will also share shots from any sessions I get here, as well as sets of pictures from my casual shooting. As always, you can catch some of the shots I take on Flickr, and I will try to be more active on there too. However, I will try to document my life in pictures, in a way, on here. So please follow me or check back if you want to see more of my pictures as well as some rumors, news and reviews relating to camera equipment.

In fact, I received a Black Rapid camera strap from my fiance for Christmas, which I had been looking at getting for a while, so I may share my thoughts on that soon.

Resolution 1

Take and share picture. Right, well I managed to take quite a few pictures over the holidays. Kate’s family visited us from the States, so we went around London for a few days, during which time I took a few portraits of Kate’s sister, for her Senior pictures. I will post some of these when I have finished editing them, but first off I will share some pretty average pictures from Borough Market, because I love the place. They are pretty limited and average though, as we were entertaining Kate’s family, the place was so busy, and the weather also didn’t help. However, I want to share something to get into the habit.

The Market

Borough Markert is located in the London Bridge/Borough area and is a Mecca for food lovers. Not only does it have great stalls selling snacks, from oysters to falafels, but there are also fantastic retailers selling all sorts of fresh produce: meat, fruits and vegetables, cheese, bread, you name it. I am a food lover and I love going there.

I also love going there because it has my favourite coffee shop, Monmouth coffee. You have to queue round the corner to get into it, and then there is no seating, but the coffee is so worth it. Its so smooth and rich, just delicious.

Fresh Monmouth filter coffee…delicious!

The place has quite a reputation and is always a hive of activity. The vendors work hard!

Monmouth coffee makers

You can also buy the beans they use, and I love the store front, with the rich golden metal weighting boats, etc.

Love the scales in the store front of Monmonth

Weighting out those delicious smelling, roasted beans!

I’m a meat eater, thus I love this market. They sell so many types of fresh and cook/preserved meats, as well as pies and other related products.

I’m game…a pheasant at a butcher’s stall in Borough Market.

There’s an awesome fresh fish stall too. Most of the shellfish is moving, including the huge lobsters!

Don’t worry you can get your ‘2 veg’ too, or even your entire 5-a-day.

This fruit and veg stall was amazing, they had everything. The fruit looks so colourful though under the lights in the otherwise dark surroundings.

Fungi

These final pictures were from a stall specializing in fungi. I was fascinated by the types they had, but also by the amazing price that truffles sell for!

Around £100 for a white truffle, more for a black truffle…craziness! How much do the pigs that find them get out of that?

The place is full of cool details like this, live fungi growing on the counter.

The final fungi.

If you have the chance to visit Borough Market, I highly recommend that you go, and also that you go with an empty belly so you can savour some of the food at the stalls. If you are a foody, make sure you take some cash, as it is inevitable that you will leave with some fresh bread, pasta, brownies or some condiments! We always do.

Stay tuned for more

I hope you at least partially enjoyed these shots. I know there aren’t many and they aren’t fantastic, but I will try to get more and try harder to make them more interesting in the future. So please watch out for further posts.

Thanks for visiting…

New Canon 24-70mm f/4L IS USM, 35mm f/2 IS USM and lens caps!

So, today is a big news day. No, not because of the US presidential elections. The really big news today is that Canon have released a new lens cap design! Well, both Canon and Nikon actually announced new products which I will discuss, but I find the new lens caps the most interesting as they are the only new product that I personally would want.

Centre-pinch lenses caps

I have a number of Canon lenses, but I also have Sigma lenses, which use a design similar to the one shown above. I have always struggled to get Canon caps on and get them to stay on, because of their side-pinch release mechanism. If you knock the clip on one side, which you inevitably do when putting a camera into a bag or even down on a hard surface, then the thing pops off, exposing the front element or causing potential loss of the cap. The Sigma centre-pinch caps I have seem much more secure and also enable putting them on or taking them off with a lens hood in place, which to me is the most important benefit. I believe Nikon and others, like Tamron, have also seen the logic of this method, so I don’t know why it took so long for Canon to come around.

The new design will be rolled out with all new Canon lenses in the EF range from January 2013. You will also be able to buy them for your old lenses, probably at around $10 (or £/€, take your pick) as you can already for the EF-M 52mm diameter EOS-M lenses. They will be available in 58, 67, 72, 77 and 82mm diameters.

What else is new: 

Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM

Having pissed a lot of people off by releasing a mark II version of the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L without IS but with a huge price ($2,300/£2000) earlier in the year, Canon have now decided to rub salt in the wounds by announcing a lens in this focal length range with image stabilisation, in the form of a new EF 24-70mm f/4L IS. Not only that, but the new lens has a fancy version of IS, called hybrid IS (H-IS), previously only found on the 100mm f/2.8L Macro, which corrects for motion caused by angular and shift movement (i.e corrects for forward and backward movement), rather than just angular shake. However, as has become Canon’s mantra, these improvements demand an high price, $1500 in fact. This seems an excessive price to pay for quite a slow zoom, especially when the existing EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM is longer, cheaper, has IS and is a very solid performer.

The new Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM. Image from Canon USA

However, the new lens could be interesting in some respects. The new IS, for example, will help compensate for the slow aperture when taking non-action shots. Furthermore, the lens has a very close minimum focusing distance of 0.2m, giving a maximum magnification of 0.7x; that’s near 1:1 macro capability! Add that to the H-IS and you have a high quality, light, compact ‘walk around’ lens that can also essentially save you from having buying a dedicated macro lens.

The 24-70mm zoom range is also commonly used by wedding photographers, and the macro capabilities of this new lens could allow them to get great detail shots (rings etc.) without having to carry and change to a dedicated lens.  Although I think most wedding photographers would chose the f/2.8 to freeze motion, this may not necessarily be required with the 4-stop benefit of H-IS and the high iso capabilities of the current generation of DSLRs. It does raise the question though, why didn’t they add IS to the f/2.8? The new lens appears to neatly fill a void left in the price range by the discontinuation of the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM I.

MTF for wide end of the 24-70mm f/4L.

MTF for the tele end of the 24-70mm f/4L.

The MTF charts suggest the 24-70mm f/4L will have decent performance, particularly at the tele end, but will it beat the 24-105mm f/4L and, if so, by enough to justify its price.

The lens is due for release in mid-December, just in time for you to spend you Christmas dollars on it!

Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM specs:

• 15 elements in 12 groups, with two aspherical lens and 2 UD lens for correction of aberrations
• 9-blade circular aperture for smooth bokeh and round OoF highlights
• Weatherproof (not sure what this means, is it full sealed or just drizzle-resistant? I would guess the latter)
• Quiet and fast ultrasonic autofocus motor with full-time manual focus and inner focusing system (lens only extends when zooming)
• Macro mode at 70mm giving 0.2m min. focusing distance (stated as 0.38m on the canon USA page), 0.7x the max. magnification
• Hybrid IS (complementing macro capabilities)
• 77mm filter size
• Around 600g with relatively compact dimensions (93mm x 83.4mm)

Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM

Canon also announced a soon to be available (December 2012 if all goes well) replacement for the ancient 35mm f/2 prime lens. The new lens, the EF 35mm f/2 IS USM will feature IS (not of the hybrid variety) and has an ultrasonic motor.  

EF 35mm f/2 IS USM specs:  

• 10 elements in 8 groups, with a glass-molded aspherical lens
• 8-blade circular aperture
• 4 stop IS
• AF motor ring USM, with full-time manual focus
• 67mm filter size
• 335g  , 62.6mm x 77.9mm
• MFD of 0.24m

The new lens looks much nicer then the old one, which was cheap and plastic looking. Nevertheless, people liked the old version, though it has a poor autofocus system and terrible bokeh due to its 5-blade non-circular aperture. The latter issue should hopefully be address by the inclusion of an 8-blade circular aperture on the new version, and the former will definitely be fixed with the USM.

I personally don’t see the benefit of IS on this focal length, which is easy to handhold, particular when you can bump up the iso nowadays. However, IS is supposed to be of benefit for video, and Canon seems keen on video at the moment.

MTF chart for the old EF 35mm f/2.

MTF for the new EF 35mm f/2 IS USM.

Looking at the MTF charts for both the 35mm f/2 lenses, the new lens does seem perform better, as should be expected.

The biggest problem with this lens for me, is again the price! Canon want $850, and probably close to £750 in the UK, for a f/2 non-L lens, which replaces a lens that you can get for under $310 or £210. To further put that into context, I picked up a 35mm f/1.4L, which has to be a better lens, for £1000 new a long while ago now. I know the new lens has IS and USM and is better built than the previous 35 mm f/2 and that the retail price might come down quickly (though Canon has implemented a minimum advertised price policy, which might prevent this); however, this is progress that should be expected at little extra cost upon release, in my opinion. My new TV is razor-thin, has free digital channels, and many other features, but was priced cheaper than my old cathode-ray beast. Whether such a price increase is justified will depend on your needs and the results the lens gives. If it gives the f/1.4L version a run for its money at shared apertures then it might be justified, particularly if you like IS and video, but I for one am not interested.

The 35mm f/2 was one of those old lenses, like the 50mm f/1.8 II, which has flaws, but offered excellent bang for your buck and offered a low cost entry into the world of fast primes. As far as I can tell, Canon is shutting the door on relatively inexperience enthusiasts or those on a budget by removing fast primes from the 100-300 dollar/pound price range. Hell, even the new 24mm and 28mm IS primes are only f/2.8 and cost well over double this amount. Nikon, on the otherhand, seems to be expanding their range of low cost fast primes for full frame and crop sensor cameras. Nikon are also releasing very strong amateur/budget bodies, like the D5200 announced today and the D600 (and which I will blog about tomorrow) that appear to kill the Canon 650D/60D and 6D, respectively. I hope this approach causes a shift in allegiance of new photographers to Nikon, so that pressure is placed on Canon to start being more competitive and innovative. But we shall see….