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Indian style (Tika’ish) lamb kebabs with Tzatziki on Italian flat bread.

Paul — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:59:31 +0000

Oh LUSH !

Although this is a big mix of cultures, not quite conforming to the standard of any element of the dish, but coming out delish. The other night I was watching Jamie Oliver Does Greece, and at the same time, my flatmate was cooking a Tikka Masalar. This mix of flavours and tastes inspired me to create what I have done. I admit straight up that I had no clue what the result would end up like, I was hoping for something like a chicken Tandoori, what I ended up with was nothing like that, however, it was rather lush, and defiantly something I would make again. As a rare occurrence, all three of my flatmates were willing to try some, and they all give the thumb’s up.

I’m going to write this one a bit differently, in case you want to make each bit individually.

What you need: Indian Lamb Cubes

Some lamb cubes, however much you want.
Greek Yoghurt, about half a 360ml pot.
Grama masala, Tarmac, salt, pepper, Mild Curry Powder
Red Onion and Garlic,
Tomato Paste
Coriander
Juice of a lemon
Sandwich Bag

What you need: Tzatziki

The other half of the pot of Greek Yoghurt
A red onion
Fresh mint and coriander
A cucumber
Some sweet paprika, salt and pepper.

What you need: To bring it all together.

Some flatbread, I used Tesco’s “Tomato and Cheese Flatbread”, but you could use one of those pizza Garlic Bread things, or Nan bread. The idea was to fold it up, so a wrap would do too.
- or –
Some Rice, I like the rice from the local Turkish places.
- or -
Some couscous puffed in chicken stock with coriander and mint chopped through it, maybe some raisins and pistachios too?

What you need to do: Indian Lamb Cubes

Slice up the coriander, a red onion and crush/grate the garlic.
Get a bowl and mix in there the Greek yoghurt, and add the mixed stuff above, add 2tbs of Garam masala, 1tbs Turmeric, 2tbs of Mild Curry Powder, half a tube of tomato paste and the juice of a lemon.
Mix everything up until you get a thick pinkish paste, taste it to see if you want a bit of pepper or some salt.
When you’re happy, add the lamb cubes, cover the bowl (or put it in a sandwich bag), and leave it for a few hours.
– Intermission… this is where you should do the taziki.
Take the cubes out the bowl and put then on a hot pan. I started off doing this by putting them on a skewer, but to tell you the truth, that was a waste of time. You want the cubes to be nicely coated. You can tell when they’re right because they should be slightly blackened, not completely, but a little bit. Remember: Char’d not Burnt. Towards the end, when you think the lamb is ready, and you can always cut one in half, it should be a greyish pink colour, now you can add the rest of the sauce to heat it up a bit.

What you need to do: Tzatziki.

Plonk the other half of the yoghurt in a bowl, add to that loads of mint and coriander all chopped up.
Deseed the cucumber (as the seeds would make it too watery), slice that up, and add it to the yoghurt.
Thinly slice a red onion as thin as you can get it, add that to the yoghurt too.
Add some paprika and half the juice of a lemon, some salt and pepper to taste.
Mix everything up; lovely!

What you need to do: Bring it all together.

I put the flatbread in the oven for 10 minutes so it went all nice and soft, the put over that the tzatziki and on top of that the lamb with the sauce and enjoy =D

Get all your stuff out.

All the spices.

Mix up the yoghurt, lamb and spices'n'herbs.

The tatziki is nice and easy.

Griddle Pan up that Lamb.

Plate it up, there you go !

Whatever you’ve got Pasta Sauce and loads of things you can do with it.

Paul — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:28:08 +0000

Lovely pasta sauce !

This is a recipe handed down from generation to generation, from flatmate to flatmate (e.g., I got it off my flatmate who got it off her ma’). I was bored out my mind on Tuesday and fancied doing some cooking, on the cheap, nothing special. I was sitting there, pondering what to make, when I thought I’d do a tomatoes pasta sauce. Turns out, it was the right choice, well nice, and the left over sauce went towards a rather lush brushgetta type meal. This’ll take you 45 minutes, of which you’ll spend 5 of them chopping, and then a little stir every 10 mins, piss easy, well lush, better than anything you can get out of a bottle.

What you need

A large sauce pan
Two tins of chopped tomatoes
An onion
Some carrots
Some Garlic
Some Garlic paste
Some tomato paste
A nice glug of red wine… use your flatmates if you don’t have any or don’t want to open a big bottle.
Sugar, Salt, Pepper, Sweet Paprika, Bay Leaf and a chilli.

What you need to do

Chop up about 3 bulbs of garlic and a chilli, leave the seeds in, it’s not going to be hot.
Chop up an onion by cutting it in half, taking off the skin, making two cuts 90% of the way across horizontally, then chopping vertically.
Chop up the carrot too, I didn’t bother to peal it, but I nibbed off the ends.
Fry up the garlic and chilli in a drop of oil and let them soften up a little.
Add the tinned tomatoes, a bay leaf, I squidged out some garlic paste from a tube at this point, ‘cus I quite like garlic.
Add a nice glug of red wine.
Leave it to simmer gently, when the next ad break comes on the telly, in about 15 minutes, take another look.
If it’s a bit dry now, swoosh in some more red wine and let it reduce until you get the texture you want.
Now taste it, see what it needs. When I did it, it needed some Sugar, Salt and Pepper, remember: You can’t take it out, but you can always add a bit more. Add it, mix it about, taste it, when you’re happy, then I’m happy.

Nice Things you can do with the sauce.

Serve it over some rice or pasta; maybe add a bread crumbed chicken breast to it.
Cover some bread, like chiabbatta or a pizza base, or garlic bread; plonk some cheese and toppings (chorizo, sweet corn, cured meats, mushrooms… whatever you fancy).
Slice up some bread along the lines of a French loaf, top with sauce and some hallumni, and you’ve got a lovely burshgetta to serve your guests.
Put in a small ceramic dish some spinach, then on top of that the sauce, than crack and egg over and bake. I forgot what this is called, but it would work.
Put it into sandwich bags and freeze into portions.
Top a chicken breast with it, covered with cheese.
Plonk it over some chips (home made ones, prefably)
Stuff some mushrooms or red peppers with it; put some cheese on top and/or breadcrumbs.
Add some honey and more chilli cover with ribs (Waitrose do lush ones, they’re about a fiver and come in a long folded box, seriously good stuff) and bake.
Put it over a jacket potato
Use it as a salsa for Nachos, burritos, fajitas… that sort of thing.
Make a tart by putting it over some puff pastry, adding a bit of cheese.
Use it as a base for Mussaka or lasagne.

Chop up some garlic

Chop up some carrots and onions.

Cut like this in three places; then chop downwards.

Sweat the garlic, carrots and onions down 'till they soften and go sweet.

Plonk in the tomatoes and some red wine.

Cook out the wine.

There are the Chilis to give some heat, take them out afterwarsd. Here i've cooked it down to much, add some more wine if you do.

Lookin' good, Tastin' good !

Well lush, don't both with the poncy vine tomatoes.

Creamy Crabtastic Pasta

Paul — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:50:56 +0000

Every Monday morning I have to go to Cockfosters to see the docs, it’s a bit of an annoyance to tell you the truth, but it does give me a good chance to have a peek around the very lovely independent local butchers, fishmongers, green and Jewish shops. It always gives me a good inspiration, the fishmongers isn’t the cheapest, but they go down to the markets every day to get fresh produce, and have some very interesting stuff. The butchers is fantastic for inspiration, the guys there know their meat, and don’t think twice if you ask them for some off-cuts either “Because I fancy a bit of an experiment” or “To feed the dog”.
Last week, when I made this, I saw the Fishmongers had a special on Crab, £6 for a packet of white meat that’s frozen and has £18 on the label. I also saw a packet of crab legs, about the length of my arm in size, which was highly impressive, unfortunately when I went to pay for them, the ‘£’ was a ‘2’, and thus it was a bit out of my price range… at least, until one day when someone gives me a shedload of money for being an all-round-decent-stand-up-guy, which I don’t think they do anymore.

Anyway, back to the food, this was the first time I’ve tried real crab before, or at least, in recent memory. It tastes, oddly enough, of Crab Sticks, but the texture is slightly hairy. The dark meat has more flavour and more of a pate type texture. I wasn’t in love with it, texture wise, but the taste was right up there. I was expecting almost a prawn/lobster type taste, and although it wasn’t too far off, it wasn’t the same.
If you know someone who likes a bit of crab, this is a nice one to show off a crab’s crabbiness.

What You Need, enough to make for two.

White crab meat and/or a ‘dressed crab’.
Some pasta, I used Fusilli, but I think something like a linguini would work well too.
A glass of white wine.
Garlic, Chilli, Ginger and Parsley.
Some Single Cream
A drop of olive oil.

What you need to do.

First up, boil the kettle for the pasta
While that’s going, chop up the chilli, garlic, parsley and grate the ginger. Keep the seeds if you want a bit more heat; it’s the white coating on the seeds that are the ‘hot’ bit. I found the parsley very stalky, so chop this one up fine. I found the best way to do that, was to roll it up and do a rough-chop on it.
Heat up some oil in a frying pan and add the chilli and ginger, then a few minutes later, add the garlic.
By now, the kettle will be boiled, so boil up some pasta according to the packet, don’t forget to add salt and oil to the water, it stops it sticking and flavours it better.
Add a big glug of white wine and let it reduce down to basically nothing.
Add the crab, cream and parsley, let it simmer and reduce.
I found it needed more ‘oomph’ to it, so I added juice from ¼ of a lemon, some salt, and some more wine, so I added that and let it reduce.
Pasta should be done, taste a piece and if it’s the way you like it, drain it and add to the crabby creamy goodness.
Serve and enjoy =)

Frozen white crab meat and pasta.

A nice bottle of plonk.

Chop the chili and garlic, great the ginger.

'Dressed Crab' - The mix of white and brown meat works well.

Fry up the Garlic, Ginger and Chilli.

Pasta ! Tip Top Tip: Fill up about 2/3 of your bowl to get the right amount.

Add the crab: It looks rank, but won't end up like that =)

Add the cream and wine, let it reduce.

Plonk in the Parsley: chop it up finer than this though.

That's more like it, give it a taste, add some salt or whatever you think it needs.

Stir in the pasta to the sauce.

Look. At. That.... Lovely.

Crabtastic Creamy Pasta: DONE.

How to bung your own ringtones on the iPhone, with just iTunes… Works in iTunes 9 / 2010.

Paul — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:36:18 +0000

I’ve had a few people ask me this, so I thought I’d write it up. I was supposed to do this a few days ago, but I forgot all about it until watching the film “I love you, man” on the telly box. The main bloke has the default iPhone ringtone, which means when-ever his phone goes off, I turn to my phone and be all like “Oh man, someone loves me and wishes to contact me”, alas, no love for me yet. I can’t take the rollercoaster ride of emotion on this one, so instead I’m going to change my ringtone for different groups of people, such as “Hawt Chicks Who Dig Me”, “Clients who want to give me money”, “Do Not Ignore This Call*”, everyone else… oh’, yeah’, Ma’ gets her own one too.

I’m on an Apple computer, so things might look a bit different to those of you in Windowsvile, but the menus and stuff are more or less the same. One of the problems with these is a quick Google on “Custom Ringtones iPhone” shows up loads of apps, and I’m sure a lot of them are great, but I’ve seen a few flooded with spyware and crap like that. Don’t get me started on that.

Ok, let’s get on with it. Setting up the ringtone.

First up, each ringtone needs to be 40 seconds or less, any more and it won’t work. Find the first song you want to do, and find the start time and end time (a lot of time you’ll want the chorus, which means you don’t want to start from the beginning). Play the song and you’ll see the time on where to start and end at the top where it’s playing. For my first one, I’m going to do Dizzee Rascal’s song “Sirens”, for calls that I shouldn’t ignore. I want to start at 58 seconds into the song, and end at 1m17s.
Right click on the song, and go to ‘Get Info’, then the tab ‘Options’, and enter the start and end time, then click OK. Just to make sure you’ve done it right, try playing the song again by double clicking on it, if everything went right, you’ll have the ringtone you want.
Right click on the file and go to the ‘Create AAC’ option, this’ll make a copy of the song but only the timeframe that you set before. Right click on this, go to ‘Get info’ again, go to the ‘Summary’ tab, and you’ll see where the file is stored. Right click on this and you can go to “Show in finder” (or I think if you’re in windows, ‘show in explorer’).
Now you want to rename the file, make sure you can see the extensions (the bit after the ‘.’, so in this case, it says ’03 Sirens.m4a’), Change it from a ‘m4a’ to an ‘m4r’. You’ll get a warning about changing the file type, click ‘ok’ on that. Now you want to copy this into iTune’s default Ringtones directory (in windows it’s “c:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Ringtones”… in OSX it’s “Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Music/iTunes/itunes Media/Ringtones”). Once you’ve copied it there, you can import it into itunes by just dragging the file we’ve created into it; Wallah ! It’s in the Ringtone’s section now in your library. Just now while testing it out, iTunes, or OSX, kept on moving the file back into the other place, don’t know why or how, but I found if I copy rather than move the file, it doesn’t do that.
Now we want to bung this file back into iTunes, so click on File at the top, and ‘Add To Library’, and find the file.

Now let’s get that iPhone set up !.

Now it’s a simple case of going to your Ringtones section in your library in iTunes, plugging in your iPhone (if you haven’t already) and dragging the ringtone onto your iPhone.
You can assign each contact a different ringtone, go to your Contacts section on your iPhone, edit it, click on Ringtone and select the one you want =)
To edit the default one for everybody, go into ‘Settings’, ‘sounds’, ‘ringtone’, select the one you want =)

(1) Pick the song you want.

(2) Get the start and end time for your ringtone (less than 40 secs)

(3) Right click on the file and go 'Get Info', set the times in the 'options' tab.

(4) Create ACC version

(5) In the summery tab of Get Info, you can right-click on path and 'Show In Finder/Explorer'

(6) Change the extention to .m4r instead of .m4a

(7) Move it to your iTune's Ringtone folder

(8) Add the ringtone into your iTunes libery, it'll appear in the Ringtones section.

(9) Copy it over to your iPhone

On your iphone - Go to Contacts

Click on the + next to where it says 'ringtone' on the contact you want to edit.

Select the ringtone you want.

All done !

* Yes, Debs, you’re on this list =P

Thai Coconut Soup – With Prawns and Stuff.

Paul — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:54:53 +0000

I kind of made this one up based on various things I’ve seen on the telly, it took me three tries to perfect it, the first time was lush, the second time was a right mess (I got distracted by the internet and hollyoaks and the soup turned into a sauce) and the third time was fantastic. It’s a nice creamy soup, without being thick, packed with flavour and takes no longer than 15 minutes from opening up the packets of ingredients to taking your first bite. You can make it spicy-hotter by chopping up more of the chilli and adding that, or sprinkling more at the end, or you could make it weaker by leaving that bit out. What I made was just right for me. This is the first time I’ve used fresh herbs or limes before in cooking, and it really does add something to it.

What You Need For One Person (plus enough for lunch the next day)

Wok, Ladle, a good knife for chopping things up, serving plate. I can’t work out weather it’s a Spoon Soup or a Fork Soup, so I opted for both.
A packet of noodles, don’t get pre-cooked, as they don’t’ soak up the soup as well; the ones in nests are what I went for.
A packet of stir-fry veg, or some mixed veg that you like. I used baby sweetcorn, Mushrooms, Sugarsnap Peas, Spring Onion…cut up into bite-sized pieces.
Thai Curry Paste, but I suppose any kind of curry paste you like would work. I used Marks’n’Spark’s “Malaysian Rendang Paste”, it’s nice and peanutish, not to hot at all. I suppose this isn’t really ‘Thai’ thinking about it now, oh well.
Uncooked Prawns, ‘cus I like them, but would work with beef or chicken.
A touch of oil, whatever you got, it’s not important.
A lime, a bunch of coriander, a chilli, garlic (didn’t use, but would work) and fat man’s two-fingers-up of ginger.

What you need to do to make it work =)

Preparation first. Cut up the veg into bite-sized pieces if you’ve not used a packet of stir-fry mix.
Cut off the end of the chilli at about ¼ of the way from the tip and chop that up. If you like it hotter, cut ½ or more, or even the whole one and use another for this next bit. With the rest of the chilli, cut a line down it, that way when it comes to cooking, it’ll release some of it’s heat and flavour without making the dish too hot.
Chop the ginger into matchsticks, as thin as you can get. I found I used too much in these photos but use your own judgement.
Open the can of coconut milk.
Heat up a bit of oil in a DRY wok, doesn’t need a lot of heat at all as he wok gets hot easily. Put your hand over the wok and if you can hold it there for about 5 seconds before it starts to really feel hot, you’re about right.
Add the ginger, about 3 dollops of paste and the chopped bit of the chilli to the oil; give it a minute or two (it might spit at you a bit) for everything to do its business.
Add the veg and mix it up, about 4-5 minutes should do it, keep on sturing it around so it’s all coated.
Now add the can of coconut milk and then again about ¼ to ½ the can of water on top, mix it up a little. Plonk on a nest of noodles on top, it doesn’t matter if half the nest is covered by coconut goodness, and half of it is sticking out the top. Add the stabbed chilli thing here.
After about 5 minutes, the bottom of the noodles should all be the way they should be, so you can stir them around a bit and get the non-covered part under the coconutty goodness. It’ll still hold its nest shape though at this stage, so flip them ‘round.
After about 5 minutes, chop up the coriander, and add that. I got it from the shop across the road that’s by a busy road, so ran it under a tap before I chopped it to get any sort of car-crap out of it. Add that to the wok and stir it up. You don’t wanna do this to early ‘cus then it’s too coriandish. All the noodles should have separated by now.
After five minutes now, it’s all more or less done, give it another stir and add the prawns. About 5 minutes should do it depending on size. Give it a stir every minute to make sure all the prawns are covered. I’m gonna do a chicken version of this for Ma’ next week, where I’ll cut the chicken thinly and add it a bit earlier. My mate Nielly P says that if you dust them in cornflower first, the chicken will go slightly silky and tender, so I’ll give that a shot when I do that.
Roll the lime on a hard service with the palm of your hand to break it up a bit, cut it in half, add the juice and serve (remembering to take out the stabbed chilli thing). Sprinkle some more coriander on top and some chopped chilli if you want it hotter.

Sorry about the mess, photo was between Try 2 and Try 3 and I didn't clean up between them (it was only 5 minutes while i nipped to the shops to stock up again)

Lovely _Malaysian_ Curry Paste... Ok, not Thai.

ERmmm.... prawns. Quite small so only need a few minutes to cook. Bigger ones would take longer.

Veg: Use half a stir-fry pack or chop your own.

The stabbed chilli bomb.

Fry up the paste, chopped chilli and ginger.

Stir up the veg in the paste and bits.

Add the coconut milk, corriander and 1/4-1/2 cup of water.

Noodles ! (use one nest, not two as in here)

Add the prawns !

KAPLOWIE ! Serve and enjoy =).... I used to many noodles though, wasn't quite soupy enough.

Man Vs Southgate

Paul — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:46:29 +0000

I’ve been watching a lot of Man Vs Food recently, I love that show, and it gave me an idea. I’m going to take on the whole of Southgate, and review every restaurant in and around the main high street of Southgate. This includes everything, from the posh places to the Fake-KFC places. I plan to do this over the summer as something to do. I’m going to treat each restaurant from scratch, and try each one, there must be at least 50 of them.

My first post from OSX

Paul — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:07:03 +0000

I’ve finally made the transition to Apple’s operating system, OSX. I’ve not used it for more than 15 minutes in the past, and I’ve delved into it from a full understanding of Windows. Some things I find rather strange, but others I’m finding a lot better. I got a feeling that if I hadn’t been using Windows 7 for such a long time, with it’s “The icon is always there, even if the app isn’t on”, things would be far more confusing.

So far, the main differances that I’ve had to get used too are.

Multi-touch Trackpad; use two fingers up’n'down to scroll, four fingers to jump from open-apps, desktop and current window, three fingers to go ‘back’.
Trackpad is all one button, once you get your head around having two points at once, it’s better. For example, on a normal trackpad, you’ve got the two buttons and the pad itself, to drag something, you click the button down and use the pad to move it around. It’s identical on this, except you can click anywhere.
Installing programs is a lot easier, you just open up the DMG file (a bit like downloading a ZIP or EXE), then it acts like a CD Drive has been inserted, and you just drag one bit into the other (for example, you drag ‘OpenOffice’ into ‘Applications’… walla, done). Sometimes there are the usual menus, sometimes not.
The Dock is a bit weird-but-good, you’ve got your open programs, and a ‘Applications’ icon which acts like ‘Programs’ in the start-menu in windows, but you can drag them into the dock. This’ll make a shortcut to the program. If the program is running, there is a little white dot under it.
The red ‘close’ button, which indicates closing a program or menu in Windows, just closes the window rather than the program. To close the program, press CMD+Q, which is the equivalent to Alt+F4.
Maximise is a bit different, can’t work out how it calculates the right size, but it just does.

There is loads more, but this’ll do for now.

How to play downloaded Movies/Telly on your iPhone (and then onto your television)… including Ripping DVDs

Paul — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:22:13 +0000

I’m asked quite a bit on how to play downloaded movies and television (any sort of video, really) on your iPhone or iPod Touch… and then, move that onto your Television. It can take quite a bit of time to convert each file (unless the one you’ve downloaded is already formatted), but most of the job is a “Set up and leave it running in the background” job. There are, as with all things technical, many ways to skin the cat. This, however, is how I do it. I won’t include here exactly how to download the videos, but there are plenty of other tutorials out there that will teach you. This will also ‘rip’ DVDs, which means, turn them into a usable video file.

One important note though: Don’t ever pay for downloading videos, unless it’s a trusted source, such as iTunes. There are plenty of “Get every Movie ever made, just $5/month” run by people who you definitely don’t want to be giving your card details to. I remember my Dad once fell for one of these and it wasn’t much more a link to Pirate Bay and uTorrent with a tutorial set up.

So, let’s go ahead and get this puppy running. The file that I’m using is a rip of a video that I already legally have purchased, and as such, is a backup copy and I’m well within my rights to use it as I wish.

I’m presuming you already have iTunes installed.

How to get this running

Step 1 – Download Handbreak

Step 1 - Download the Handbreak Software

Download HandBreak (click to open), it’s a simple tool, get the “GUI” (Graphical User Interface) version, if you’re reading this, then you don’t want to be bogged down with writing codes. Make sure you get the right one for your operating system. You’ll then be prompted to download the file, click ‘yes’, if you get a choice (and for the sake of this guide), choose to save it to your desktop.
Step 2 – Install Handbreak

Stage 2 - Install and Run the Handbreak Software

Find the downloaded file (on your desktop if you’re followed this tutorial), double-click on it to open it up, and just keep on pressing ‘next’ and ‘i agree’ to the terms and conditions (You should read the terms and conditions*, and don’t accidentally ‘cancel’ when its installing), the default options are all fine.
Step 3 – Set Handbreak up

Stage 3 - Set everything up in Handbreak.
- (1) Select the Source file, this is your video file that you’ve downloaded or the folder with the DVD in
- (2) Select where you want your output file, if you’re going to do this a lot, then choose a new folder, if you’re just doing it every now-and-then, then pick somewhere like your Desktop.
- (3) Select the ‘iPhone & iPod Touch’ Preset
- (4) Making sure that the aspect ratio is fixed, if you’re only going to play this file on your iPhone/Touch, then you can leave this setting as it is. If you’re going to put it through to the telly, you’ll want to increase the Width to 720ish (or if the Source is smaller, select the source’s width). The bigger the size, the more room it’ll take up on your device. I find they normally take up around 700-800MB, at the ‘Size’ that looks good on the telly, so if you have a 32gb model, 2-3%. If you’re only playing them on your device, they’re around 400mb, which is a lot less.
- (5) Press ‘Start’, a black box will appear which will give you a percentage of how far along the file is. I think they take about 2-3 hours on my computer, but every computer is different. I normally do it the night before and just leave it going. Feel free to do other stuff while it’s running in the background, but if your computer crashes or you reboot it, you’ll have to start again.
Step 4 – Import into iTunes (and then onto your iPhone/iPod Touch)

Stage 4 - Import into iTunes and then your iPhone/iPod Touch
- (0) Open up iTunes
- (1) Click on ‘File’ then ‘Add File To Libary’, browse to the file we made in Handbreak (on your desktop if you were following above), and select ‘open’. This will them import it into your Library
- (3) Go to ‘Films’ section in iTunes
- (3) Right click on the video you just imported into iTunes, if it’s a TV Program, then go to ‘Options’, then at the ‘Media Kind’ drop down, change it to TV Program. This will move it from the Films section in iTunes to the TV Programs section.
- (4) To make things look pretty on your device, go to CDCovers.cc (click to open) and download the cover. You can then, once you’ve downloaded the right one, go to Artwork and add the cover to the file.
- (5) If your device isn’t plugged in to your computer, plug it in now. Once it’s finished sync’ing (if you’ve got auto-sync), drag the video file into iPhone/iPod Touch. It’ll then sync, and once that’s done, you’re more-or-less done !
Step 5 – You should now be able to watch it in the iPod application.

Only buy the OFFICIAL cable (about 30 squid)

Now to get this running on the telly, you need to buy an official iPod/iPhone AV Cable, I choose the APPLE MB129ZA/B Composite AV Cable, it’s important you buy the real thing, as with iPhone OS 3.0, they wiped out something that broke unofficial cables. I went through 3 different brands before I found out, luckily they were all from local shops so it wasn’t a big deal waiting for them. Everything plugs in as you would expect (the three wires are colour coded, the iPhone/iPod Touch end is a usual connector, there is even a USB cable to plug it into the wall so you don’t run out of juice).

When you plug it in, the telly won’t change until you’re actually playing the video. You can also watch YouTube on the big screen.

As a side note: You can also watch TV Catchup (Live Television feeds, click to open) and a lot of BBC iPlayer (click to open) on the big screen too. This is great if you’ve got bad Freeview reception.

* Well, that’s up to you, I never bother, but it’s always good advice to point out that they’re there for a reason.

Beef and Stout 3.14 ! (best thing I’ve made yet)

Paul — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:45:09 +0000

The finished product

Hello blog, long time, no post. I’ve been a right sicko recently, but have been racking up the recipes to write about, and I’m opening up with a great one.

I’ve never understood Britain’s passion with pies, at least, until now. Gingsters, Pukka, Supermarket-own-brand, it’s all weak flavoured filling in clangy pastry that holds no appeal to me what so ever. But I do see so many people enjoy them, and I want in on that. And now with this, I can see exactly why a good pie is just, gosh darn it, one of the nicest things I’ve ever made. I admit, the pastry part of the pie is irrelevant to me, it’s just as good as a stew with a bit of mash, but it does make it look pretty.

Ingredients…

900g of braising steak in bite sized chunks
25g Plain Flour
5tbsp sunflower oil
25g unsalted butter
A punit of button mushrooms
2 onions thinly sliced (I used a packet of shallots, not realising what a bitch they are to slice)
Some sugar
300ml Beef Stock (get the real stuff rather than stock cubes… you’re going through all this effort, not point skimping on this one)
A bottle of stout, like Guinness
Thyme, Bay Leaves and whatever herbs you think would go, tied up together.
Worcester Sauce
Salt’n'Pepper
Egg and Puff Pastry (egg is just to egg-wash it)

What to do.

Toss the beef in flour, season with salt’n'pepper, add some oil to a very large saucepan/casserole dish, brown the meat in two batches and put on the side.
Put a big dollop of butter into the pan, add the mushrooms and fry for a little while, and then put it on the side with the beef.
Put in a spoon of sugar in the pan and over a medium heat, sweat and brown the onions, it should take about 20 minutes.
Add the flour (that you tossed the meat in), herbs, stout, Worcester sauce, some salt’n'pepper and stock. While stirring, bring it to the boil, that way the flour dissolves properly. Then add the mushrooms and meat, put the lid on and simmer for about two hours. Warning, don’t taste it now, it taste rank, but by the time it’s finished simmering, it’ll be amazing.
Spoon out the meat, mushrooms and whats left of the onions (they’ve basically dissolved), and put it in your pie dish.
Remove the tied up herbs/bay leaf, turn up the heat and reduce down to about a pint or soo. Pour over the mushrooms’n'meat in the pie dish and leave to cool. This is basically what it’s going to taste like now, so here is your chance to add a bit of seasoning, or maybe a bit of sugar if it’s to bitter.
Roll out the pastry, put it over the top, make a little hole in the middle for the steam, egg wash it (and maybe do a few pretty bits with the excess pastry), and bung it in the oven at 190ish for about 30 minutes, until the top looks done and the pie-guts are all bubbling.
…… serve and enjoy, I had it with mash, and believe me, you will enjoy.

Get everything you need out on the table, to make life easier.

Dust the meat with flour and seasoning

Once browned, remove the meat

Use the butter to de-glaze after browning the meat.

Shalots browning in the butter and meat juices

Stout, flour, stock and herbs; boil then simmer

Add the meat and mushrooms to the liquids.

Give it a taste if you want before it's finished simmering for two hours, but it won't be nice (yet).

Once cooled, this is your time to adjust with salt/pepper/sugar.

Put a hole on top of the pastry for steam and use some trimmings to make pretty bits.

With some left over pastry, I made twists with cheese, chilli and egg-wash.

OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY !

Does that look good, or does that look GOOD?

Serve that bad-boy with some mash and a crap film on the telly; evening - sor'ed !

I won this week’s “The Southgate Club”‘s “Redtooth Poker League” =DD

Paul — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:03:38 +0000

Last week, I came 5th out of 10. This week I came 1st out of 14.

First times I’ve really played poker, but I really enjoyed it, and now I’m top of the league !

TOTAL WIN !