London free love Day 5: Ping Pong at British Library

Here are a few snaps of my work buddies playing ping pong at British Library. Every summer, London fills up with free activities. Last year, there was a piano at the BL, and during my lunch break, I could get entertained for free from these amazing random musicians. 

This year it was ping pong - both fun and free to play and to be a spectator.

Headless Scottie dog on the prowl

They thought I was mad

A few weeks back, on my way home from work, this lorry drove past my bus stop with a giant headless dog on the back. I quickly took a photo with my mobile (sorry about the motion blur). I've been telling people about this dog ever since.  People looked at me as if I was mad. 'Sure you did'. 


But finally I am vindicated and my curiosity is sated. Londonist reports that one of their readers sent in a near-identical photograph (@bloomsburyblue must have been at the same bus stop!) It turns out the puppy is part of a publicity stunt to promote the board game Monopoly. Yes it's Scottie Dog. I always had to be Scottie Dog when I played Monopoly. 


When I'm rich, I'm going to buy a giant Scottie dog. And Mayfair. 


That is also another thing to do in London, albeit neither free nor easy. In fact it is dangerous and expensive, to your wallet, your health and your dignity: the Monopoly pub crawl. Do it at your peril. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

London free love Day 4: Thames Walk (via Brunel Museum)

Dough stick wrapped in rice paper

Matt's been craving yum cha - Chinese dumplings - for a few weeks. So today, we travelled to our favourite Chinese restaurant Phoenix Palace at Baker Street.

After lunch we went to the Brunel Museum, which is not part of the Free Love challenge because it's £2 entry, or £5 for the full tour. The Brunel Museum is a seriously kooky, but under-funded little museum that needs your attention. The Museum focuses on the Thames Tunnel, one of the first sub-aqueous (underwater) tunnels in the world, and the oldest tunnel in use on the London underground system. 




You can ride on the London overground (which goes underground - confused yet?) from Rotherhithe to Wapping and you pass under the Thames via Brunel's Thames Tunnel.


The tunnel was built in 1843, and was an engineering feat of its day, although a complete commercial failure. Back then, there were no big drills. Instead miners were employed to work in, what Brunel named, the shield, which looks like something from Dante's Divine Comedy.


"The shield was rectangular and had 12 digging positions across its width and three digging positions on top of each other so allowing 36 miners to work simultaneously. in front of each miner there were a series of horizontal boards. The miner would unscrew the top one to expose the earth and would then dig horizontally away from him two inches of earth. He would then replace the board screwing it tight into the void he had created. He would then unscrew the next board down and do the same. once he had got to the bottom board he would start from the top again. The second time he finished at the bottom board his whole digging position would be jacked forward using screw jacks and the process would be started again. So the Thames Tunnel was dug two inches at a time for 1,200 feet across the River Thames."


For the extra £3 there was a tour of the Shaft, which is literally a big concrete tank. It now has a floor so people can stand in it. Before then it was just a hole in the ground that went straight to the London tube system. The only reason they built a lid on the shaft was during the Blitz, in case a German bomber managed to take out the London transport.


The museum was also a good excuse to go for a wander along one of my favourite parts of the Thames - the gritty old warehouses along from Rotherhithe to Tower Bridge.

Tower Bridge from the East

There's something stark and lonely about looking to the West from the East side of the river. There's less people about and life is a little slower.

So if you are looking for something to do this weekend, head down to the lonely side of Tower Bridge. 

Meeting the locals

The Visitor aka Pushkin

(Matt typing) For the past year Siobhan and I have lived at The Cottage, we've had The Visitor popping in to say 'Hello' from time to time.

Sometimes he just comes in for 5 minutes for a bit of love before heading back out, sometimes he comes in for a drink of water and sometimes he'll and curl up on the couch for a couple of hours and have a good old sleep.


At first we didn't know his name, so we've always just called him Mr Cat. 

We always assumed that he comes calling when his owner is out and he's lonely.


Siobhan came home once while an oven technician was around fixing the oven (the second time it broke) and the technician informed her that 'our cat' has been waiting at the door when he came over so he let him in for us. Needless to say, Mr C was found fast asleep on the bed!


He also recently left us a gift of a half mouse on the doorstep... Thanks Mr Cat.

This last weekend there was a street party in our street, and chatting to our neighbours it sounds like he visits anyone who'll let him in and takes his liberties sleeping on most of the couches of the houses on our street. Someone had also invited Mr Cat's owner to the party (even though she doesn't live on our street, because her cat is considered a resident). We found out that his name is Pushkin and he was rescued from the streets of Moscow while his owner was working there on assignment.


So Mr Cat is a Muscovite, and after a year of him sleeping on our bed, we are finally on a first-name basis. 


Pushkin is an unusual feline. He's certainly no beauty. He is cross-eyed, and his youthful misadventures in Russia have left him with a few battle scars. But he is the friendliest cat I've ever met. He doesn't judge anyone, and is quick to make friends. He was the first on the street to welcome us to the neighbourhood. When he looks up at you, he seems to smile as if to say 'scratch my belly'.

London free love Day 3: Abbey Road

(Matt writing) Recently my friend Alistair, from SA, was in London for the day on a 24 hour stopover between flights and came to stay the night. The weather was nice enough so we stepped out the door on a stroll, to see what we could see ("It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to", Bilbo Baggins).


We started off heading down to Primrose Hill, to see the view, and Regent's Park, past the zoo and the ducks. Our plan was to find somewhere to stop for lunch. We picked The Volunteer on Baker Street, a couple of doors down from Sherlock's place, as we happened to be on that side of the park (the food isn't great, but they pour an 'ok' beer).

After lunch we decided to head to Abbey Road. 


Abbey Road, the famous album by The Beatles, also immortalised a certain pedestrian crossing in north London where the famous four posed during the 1969 photo shoot for the cover of their album. I'd seen this link, (http://www.abbeyroad.com/visit/*) a couple of days before, where you can watch tourists posing on the crossing. I'd been past it a few times whilst on a bus, but had never got off for a look around.

The crossing is adjacent to the Abbey Road Studios, the gates of which can be seen in the album photo.  Here is the album (via Wikipedia. I think it's ok to reproduce here. Does anyone else struggle when reading through image licensing laws?)

Not only is the zebra crossing still around, but it's free to visit so fulfils our challenge. 

London free love challenge Day 3: Abbey Road

From the webcam

After lunch we took a stroll home via Lord's Cricket Ground, which happened to be on the way.

It had been quite a long day with all the walking so we stopped for a much needed refreshment break at the Pembroke Castle in Primrose Hill. It's one of the four 'Camden Castles' dating back to the 19th century when construction gangs from the four corners of the United Kingdom, working on the 'new' railway through Camden, needed to be kept apart to stop the drunken brawling. The other castles are the Dublin Castle, the Edinboro Castle and the Windsor Castle - one for each nationality. 


All in all, a fun day out was made complete with a refreshing lager.


* The webcam is great because it's a live feed, so you could let people know that you're there and they can watch you. The footage from the webcam is also archived on the site for 24 hours so you can go back and save images from it, or tell your friends and family when you were there and they can check you out later on.

How to make pasta with one hand behind your back

About two years ago, Matt got into making pastas from scratch and he is a natural. He had an instinctive delicate touch to making pastas, even filled ravioli. We bought an Imperia pasta machine, and he was away.


Matt did a cooking course a few weeks ago with celebrity chef Valentina Harris, and she taught him a few tweaks that have improved his pasta making practice.


Here is how to make pasta from scratch. This is just the tips and techniques for the dough. We will go into more info on cutting, shaping ad sauces in another blog post:

Basic pasta dough for two

• 200 grams flour (50 % semolina flour and 50 % plain flour)
• 2 eggs

The basic rule of thumb is one egg per person, and about 100 grams of the flour mixture per egg. I also asked about flour strength. Matt said to use normal plain flour. You only use strong flour for breads. Also you need semolina flour, not semolina.

Make a well out of flour. Whisk eggs in separate bowl.

In go the eggs. Note the butter knife on the left here. That is there for a reason.

One hand behind the back. Show off.

The reason he keeps his hand behind his back is so he's not tempted to use it, so he can keep one hand clean. It reminds me of eating in Morocco.

The next stage is to just keep working in the egg and to form a dough. 

You just need patience here and eventually it starts coming together.

Mmm dough. Are you ready? Here comes the knife. Not the Swedish band, the butter knife. 

Scrape off all that doughy goodness.

It's starting to look like a ball now. What you are looking at is science. The kneading of the flour and the egg forms gluten, and creates elasticity in the dough. You can test this elasticity in action by pressing a finger in the dough. When the pasta is 'ready' the elasticity will cause the dough to gradually spring back so the finger mark almost disappears

Once the pasta springs back, Valentina recommends 'resting' the pasta for 30 mins before you start to cut it. Simply wrap in cling film and leave on the bench for about half an hour and you're ready to roll.

Nice dough ball

We did take photos for Part 2 of this tutorial, however our camera memory card corrupted so we lost them all, sadly. We will make pasta again soon and share the rest of the tips that Valentina gave Matt on how to roll pasta.

Fortean Blue Plaque

This plaque is just around the corner from where I work. I may have to pop along tonight.

Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena, such as Jedi mind tricks, UFOs, raining frogs.

From The Londonist:

"Tonight is his birthday and there will be a brief celebration outside Fort’s home at 39 Marchmont Street, which has a plaque above it dedicated to Fort, at 6.30pm on Friday 6th August. Fort would enjoy beer and cheese with friends so there will be a toast, a short reading. Then we shall write FORT across Bloomsbury in a pub crawl in his honour visiting the Friend at Hand, Old Red Lion, Rugby Tavern and Truckles of Pied Bull Yard. All but the worst fundamentalists are welcome."

London free love Day 2: Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross

I realised the folly of this challenge this morning, as I work full-time and have pretty busy evenings. How am I going to find the time in working hours? Anyway, just as I left for work this morning, Matt suggested I go to Kings Cross in my lunch break to see the platform 9 3/4 during my lunch break, the fictional railway platform that Harry Potter boarded the Hogwarts Express train to Hogwarts. Suspecting a prank, I got into work and did a quick Google search and Wikipedia check. Sure enough, there is a baggage trolley stuck halfway into a wall below a sign that reads "Platform 9¾"


Disaster. I went to Kings Cross at lunch but there is a lot of construction work going on, most of the walls were covered in scaffolding and boarded up. I couldn't find the infamous tourist spot, despite all the evidence on the Internet that it exists. I should be in this photo!

But all is not lost, I shall have to revisit this site and work up the courage to ask at the Information Desk. I know how Harry Potter must have felt when he was trying to find the platform. 


UPDATE: After a bit more investigation, i'm pretty confident I know where it is, and I was definitely near it, but I think it might be boarded up while the station is refurbished. I shall have to reinvestigate this, but may need something else to fulfill the challenge. Perhaps I can do two in one day tomorrow. Pressure! 

The London free love challenge: Day one

I have decided on a new challenge: To do something new in London every day for 30 days. Also, I want it to be free. In a way, I started this by mistake and have decided to roll with it.

Day one: Magnificent Maps at British Library

I work very close to the British Library so actually managed to squeeze this in on my lunch-break. However, I was so absorbed by some of the maps, that I didn't actually get to see the full exhibition in my lunch hour. It's well-worth returning to on another lunch break to see the other half.

Some of the guys in my office came along, and we decided it would be funny to buy a map in the shop, put Where's Waldo? on one of the maps and hang it in the exhibition to see if anyone notices. 

Jokes aside, maps are utterly captivating. In those early days of map-making there was no satellite or GPS systems, and maps were not objective. Most maps were made to make a comment about a country's wealth or status, or to boast of a king's reign, or ownership of space. Artists were commissioned by land-owners to reflect their wealth in these creations, cartographers were still experimenting with ways to represent the form of the world, kings used maps to intimidate neighbours. 

If you are in London, try to get down to see this exhibition before it closes on 19 September. 

Open seven days a week : admission free

Highlights:

• A HUGE atlas apparently the largest ever made, and it was published in 1660 (I think it's for giants)
• The world's biggest woodcut, an incredibly detailed map of Venice. I read it was by Jacopo de Barbara's and was made in 1500. "Sprawlingly wonderful, it's still the largest woodcut map ever created, so large in fact, as one of the helpful curators informs me, that they needed to construct a new paper mill in order to print it." 
• Henry VIII's map of Italy, where Venice is out of proportion and huge because it was a city of importance. 
• A gilded parchment of 1550 where Australia (my homeland) continues large underneath Europe, and the red sea is actually red.

© British Library Board

The oats with the most

On Saturday, I made Blueberry Oats, or Blueberry Porridge, inspired by Ashley at Edible Perspective with a few modifications because we didn't have any ripe bananas. 


Disappointingly, I used Tesco Frozen Blueberries, which turned out to be not very sweet and also had a strange texture compared to most blueberries. The skin was thick and chewy and the taste was not so great. 


Blueberry Stuffed Oats 

• 1c rolled oats
• 1.5c almond milk (I used coconut milk. It was on special)
• 1 banana (next time!)
• 1c water
• 1t vanilla
• 1c blueberries (we only had frozen, which weren't that great)
• pinch of sea salt
• 1-2T chia seeds
• 1tsp [heaping] cinnamon

1. Add oats, milk + water to a pot set over medium heat.
2. Stir in a thinly sliced banana.
3. Add in chia, vanilla, salt, + cinnamon and bring to a simmer until desired consistency is reached.  ~5-8min  [Ashley said she only stirs a few times during the process]
4. Take the oats off the heat, stir in the blueberries and then pour the oats into a bowl. (as I used frozen (left at room temperature and rinsed to defrost, I put these in a bit early so it wouldn't make the oats drop too much in temperature)

Chuck the oats, milk and water into the pan over a medium heat

Chia seeds!

The Chia seeds helps the porridge get nice and thick

The controversial blueberries.

I DO NOT recommend Tesco frozen blueberries. They mustn't freeze them on the day they are picked. Better to get fresh and freeze them yourself. Best to pick them, but we can't all be so lucky. 

After stirring through the blueberries, the oats turned a pretty blue colour.

Ashley recommends topping with Maple butter and maple syrup. Sadly, we don't have maple butter in the UK. I tried to make some myself and let's just say it ended up lumps of butter with maple syrup. 


Ashley also gives her fabulous looking recipe for almond maple butter. Yum, it sounds mad, I love it. But if you are feeling a bit lazy and you don't trust your food processor, you could just mix together a teaspoon of almond butter and some maple syrup. Just saying... 


It was nice, but the blueberries were quite a let down. It's not a fail, it's a first attempt. Next time I will make sure I use fresh blueberries and hopefully have a ripe banana on hand. 

I'm just mad about saffron

We watched The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo on the weekend. Matt and I loved the books, and I was obsessed with the anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander. Someone described her as Lara Croft for grown-ups. Very true.

The actress that played her in the film, Noomi Rapace, was how I imagined Salander, tough but delicate, androgynous but sometimes disarmingly feminine. Salander in the novels is so superhuman, I wondered how an actress could play her and also make her likeable. Rapace also had a rocking body. She must have worked hard as there was no weight, and she looked a bit like a rock climber with her defined arm muscles. Apparently Rapace took up Thai boxing to get into shape. 

Anyway, she inspired me on my run today. I don't want to put myself on the diet that Rapace apparently went on... 

"I started the very next day on a diet. No bread, pasta, potatoes, no candy and no alcohol. All protein and vegetables. It was pretty hard."

... but I'd quite like to step up the training and get a more tough body. 

After the run, I made an Ottolenghi salad of roast aubergine with saffron yoghurt dressing, pine nuts and pomegranate.

I halved the recipe as we only had one aubergine in the house, but this is the original recipe. The ingredients:

2 medium-sized aubergines
olive oil for brushing
2 Tbsp pine nuts, toasted
a large handful of pomegranate seeds
a large handful of basil leaves
sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

Saffron yogurt:
a small pinch of saffron strands
3 Tbsp hot water
200 g thick Greek yogurt
1 garlic clove, finely crushed
3 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
sea salt flake

Infuse the saffron in hot water for five minutes.

Preheat oven to 220 C. 

Start making the sauce. Place the saffron strands into glass, pour over the hot water and let infuse for 5 minutes. 

After about five minutes, the water is a nice dark yellow

Pour the infusion into a bowl containing the yoghurt, crushed garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and some salt. Whisk well to get a smooth, golden sauce. Taste for seasoning and chill until ready to use (This keeps for about 3 days).

Cut the aubergines into 2 cm slices. Brush both sides with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill on a very hot griddle pan until soft and golden brown, then flip over and fry the other side until golden brown as well. 

After this, I also roasted in this the oven for about 10 minutes. But you can skip the griddle pan and just roast these for 25-30 mins instead. The difference is that the griddle pan gives the aubergine some nice charcoal blackened spots so it looks like it's been barbecued.

Before it went in the oven

While the aubergine is cooking, I toasted about a tablespoon of pine nuts on the already hot griddle plan. You don't want it to be too hot. You won't need any oil, pine nuts have enough oil in them, but you will need to keep an eye on them to stop them from burning. Confession: I burnt the first lot!

If you are making this in advance, you can stop after you have roasted the aubergines and the saffron dressing. Both keep in the fridge for about 3 days. But if you are making it to eat straight away, you will need to cool the aubergines down before serving them. If you are like me, in a hurry, you could even throw them in the freezer! But I think it is tastier if you let them cool to room temperature first and refrigerate them over night. 

To dish up, layer the roasted aubergine slices onto a serving dish, slices slightly overlapping. Drizzle with saffron yogurt, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts, torn basil leaves and pomegranate seeds. 

Then sit back and wait for your boyfriend to pour you with compliments.


Now check out Noomi Rapace in this trailer. She's my new hero. Look at those strong arms!