Excuse the blur, but this is Arctia caja, the garden tiger. Pretty little red sections underneath those leopard wings as well. Lovely. Thanks @inaturalistorg for the id!
Another round of kimchi this morning. Sweetheart, Savoy and Napa cabbages in the mix with some pepper, onions, carrots and garlic. Fish sauce, rice porridge, gochugaru pepper flakes to season, add creaminess and spice respectively. Just scaled up Maangchi's ratios for the porridge and chilli flakes and went with 2% by weight of the total for the salt. This will likely be pushed up to around 2.3% due to the fish sauce, which is an acceptable amount for a ferment.
Inspired by The Bear's rather expansive cooking bookshelves, here's a pic of the one close to hand in my kitchen. These I think are a mix of often used and "want to read" books. There's about four more shelves of books that I've not posted here. What do your shelves look like? Please share in the comments!
After a slightly disappointing couple of trips to fishmongers on a recent trip (West bay and Kings bridge), albeit on a Sunday, we finally hit the jackpot and found a local fisherman. Big Dave operates out of Hope Cove in SW Devon and has done all of his working life: 30 years plus. I made the drive from our accommodation after being told the day before he came back around 11am from checking his pots. He supplied me with 2 decent sized live lobsters, fresh from the pots that morning. Fortunately, our Airbnb host was able to supply a large pot and we simply boiled them in seawater level salted water for 15 and 17 minutes respectively for the smaller (600g) and larger (660g).
As an alternative holiday souvenir, I decided to collect ingredients for a foraged herb bitters. From top left, clockwise: mugwort, clover, rock samphire, yarrow, rosemary, spruce, meadowsweet, wild carrot, tansy, sage. Collected around south Devon and Dartmoor. I've added some bitter and sweet orange peel (we took a few with us!), as well as gentian root (to up the bitterness quotient a bit. I'll leave this to infuse for a month, strain and simmer the dry ingredients with a bit of water, which I'll add back to the alcohol.
Kimchi gyoza 🥟 yum. Hand ground pork shoulder, home made kimchi, soy, sesame sauce, I think that was about it. Mix well till pasty, fill wrappers. Freeze. Cooked in the usual way: pan fry for a few mins, add water then cover for 4 mins or so, when the water is evaporated enough that it's quite thick, take the lid off and wait till it's dry.