Jean Michel Jarre

Went to the Jean Michel Jarre gig at Wembley arena last Friday night. The gig was amazing, all the tunes you'd expect to hear plus some others that didn't ring a bell. Highlights for me was the final song, the laser harp and the build-up of the encores :)

I took a load of video clips on my camera and whilst I work out how best to present them online I offer you this, the last 3 minutes of the gig (before the encore).

Enjoy!

Photos, Food and Updates

Wow, almost 3 months since a blog post, where has the time gone?

Firstly, I've started to put all my recipes on NibbleDish (formerly Open Source Food), it is going to take a while though, mainly since they require you to have a picture and most of the time I just want to eat my food!

I've added a bunch more photos to my Picasa site from the past few months. If you want, you can try out the beta version of my photos site too, photos.hoddinott.org

Renata's Birthday Bash

Clippers v Bobcats

GettyCenter

England v Ukraine

on Twittering, Kitchen Gadgets and Going Home

Thought I'd post about something that isn't a recipe for the first time in ages, and talk about some bits & bobs I've been up to.

I'm a fan of Twitter, as you can see by my updates posted to the side. In fact, I use Ping.fm to post my status updates to bother Twitter and Facebook. What I really like about Twitter though, if finding some real life celebrities to follow, it provides a rather interesting insight into their lives. I thought I'd list the ones I'm currently following:

• Jonathan Ross: Wossy
• John Cleese: JohnCleese
• Lance Armstrong: lancearmstrong
• Andy Murray: andy_murray
• Stephen Fry: stephenfry

I'm particularly enjoying what Andy and Stephen have to say. If you've never Twittered before, maybe nows the time :)

Over the Christmas break, I bought myself a couple of additional items for my kitchen (what, you thought I'd post without anything food related?). The first one is a SimmerMat that I picked up from Lakeland. It basically helps simmer food with even heat distribution and without the risk of boiling dry. It has already proved most useful and worth the £11 it cost me.

The other gadget is a hand mixer, something that has been missing from my arsenal for a long time. It is some James Martin branded one but a decent manufacturer and Argos were selling it really cheap (it was something like £40 originally, reduced to £17, I think). So far I've only used it to make pancakes and mashed potato but given how much elbow grease I've used with my baking recently I'm sure it will come in handy.

And finally...I'm going home! \o/ I booked the tickets yesterday evening and am going home for 11 days at the end of February/beginning of March. I can't wait to see my Mom and Sister again.

Indian Chickpea & Vegetable Soup

The first post of 2009! The lack of posts in December was due to various experiments I was having in the baking field. Since the results were planned to be given as gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Those results will be posted in due course (the biscotti is something else!) but to get us going this year, here's a little something I whipped up from my Good Food magazine yesterday (and had 2 bowls worth it was that nice!).

Ingredients

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 cm ginger, finely grated
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 1.5pts vegetable stock
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 can chickpeas, drained
• 100g green beans, chopped (about a handful)
• Cooking oil (vegetable, groundnut, olive)
  

Method

1. Heat the oil then add the onion, ginger and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes
2. Add the garam masala, stir and fry for one more minute
3. Add the carrots, chickpeas and stock
4. Simmer for around 10 minutes
5. Use a blender to whizz up the soup a little (to suit your tastes)
6. Stir in the beans and simmer for 5 more minutes
7. Serve and enjoy!
   

Pecan Toffee Cake

This has got to be the best thing I've ever baked, really simple to make too. Lots of satisfied customers in the office and pub (I really should charge for this stuff!).

Anyway, on to the recipe, one again shamelessly plucked from the BBC Good Food website.

Ingredients

• 300g Pecans (this seems to be the standard size supermarket pack but I'd suggest that you only need 200g - 250g really)
• 140g stoned dates (you'll probably have to do the stoning yourself)
• 200g butter, at room temperature (plus a little extra for greasing)
• 200g light muscovado sugar
• 1 tsp allspice (or mixed spice)
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 140g self raising flour
• Pinch of salt

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4
   
2. Put the dates into a small pan with enough water to cover and boil for 5 minutes
3. Put 100g of the pecans into a food processor and blitz till fine then tip into a bowl
4. Drain the dates and blitz in the food processor until smooth and leave to cool
   
5. Butter and line the base of a 23cm cake tin
6. Beat the butter, sugar and spice together until smooth
7. Tip in the smooth dates, ground pecans, eggs and salt and beat briefly till smooth
8. Fold in the flour with a metal spoon and then spoon into the cake tin and level the top
9. Sprinkle the rest of the pecans over the top (don't press them in)
10. Bake for 40 minutes or till your trusty skewer comes out clean

If you've had a bad day or are just not feeling on top of the world, consume a slice and the world will be set right again, if only for a moment.