"(former) RV Poseidon" #FromTheArchives
(later: #SeaWatch4, since 2022: #Humanity1 )

Research vessel "Poseidon" at Kiel Seefischmarkt pier, taken w/ Agfa Optima II on Kodak BW400CN chomogenic b&w film. Just a preview scan, full negative frame, uncut & unedited.

@Ernst_Grabowsky Weil wir eben unter Deinem Post über den BW300 gesprochen haben. Ich habe aber offensichtlich gelogen: Meine letzte BW400 Rolle ist diese hier Januar 29, 2015. Ich sagte ja 2009, aber da hatte ich einen zum Flughafen Hamburg dabei.

#RVPoseidon #ResearchVessel #ForschungsSchiff #GEOMAR #Seefischmarkt #Kiel #Kodak #BW400CN #KodakBW400CN #chromogenic #madewithkodak #35mm #AgfaOptimaII #AgfaOptima2 #martimephotography #filmphotography #analogphotography #schwarzweiss

#blackandwhite #photography

"Stena Scandinavica II"
#FromTheArchives for #shipsaturday / #schiffssamstag

Shot w/ yellow/green-filter on Kodak Gold 200 film. Scanned to b/w in VueScan on Linux, a few adjustments for brightness and contrast as well as a bit of adding a very few warmer tones I've done with GIMP.

#StenaScandinavica #ferry #Stena #ferryship #shipphotgraphy #ship #filmphotography #analogfotografie #KodakGold #VueScanPro #VueScan #c41tobw #c41inbnw #blackandwhite #schwarzweiss

"Und der Himmel voll Zorn" ('A Heaven full of Anger')
#FromTheArchives

Camera: #CanonT70 slr
Film: very expired #KodakVR400 plus

#clouds #sky #redsky #kodakvr400plus #35mm #filmphotography #analogphotography #AnalogFotografie #naturephotography #natur #Wetter #beforethestorm

Baked Marinated King Oyster Mushrooms

How do you use King Oyster Mushrooms? We love them – they are easily purchased in Asian shops if you can’t find them in your regular grocery. Slice these giant beauties and marinate them before cooking – forming a heavenly caramelisation of the marinade. The stems, how cute they are when sliced, and they look amazing placed on a plate on their own.

I have had a dish similar to this in Thailand, where the mushrooms are served on blocks of the softest tofu you can ever imagine.

King Oyster Mushrooms are also known as King Trumpet Mushrooms, Trumpet Royale and Eryngii.

Pilafs, pulaos, pulau, mixed rice dishes – many names for a delicious technique for smartening up a plain grain (usually but not always rice) to use as a flavoursome side dish. It can be simple – just a few spices added – or a complex layering of flavours. They are usually without a dressing although they are sometimes topped with a dollop of yoghurt.

Yoghurt can be baked, but it isn’t often seen – sadly, in my honest opinion.

This recipe, from Irfan Orga’s 1956 book Cooking with Yoghurt, takes the most unusual of ingredient – Brussels Sprouts – covers them in yoghurt and bakes them. It is the most intriguing of dishes.

Even though a lemony yoghurt sauce is sometimes made with sprouts, I have never seen one that bakes them with yoghurt. It is a dish that reflects its mid-last-century origins, but nice enough to have in your repertoire of Brussels Sprouts recipes.

Plus I am always on the lookout for oven baked dishes that I can cook in Winter to warm the kitchen.

One of the precious gifts of Spring is Broad Beans. If you do not grow your own you miss the young, tender pods, no more than, say, 8cm long. Often smaller. Sweet with the grassy taste of Spring, these need not be podded or peeled – they can be used as they are.

If you are not so lucky, purchase them from your green grocer and always look for the younger pods. Remove the beans from the pods, scald them for a few minutes, and then remove the outer peel of each bean. Perfect! You can even buy frozen broad beans.

This simple salad pairs the beans with tomatoes and parmesan, a classic pairing, easy to prepare, delightful to eat. Even if the parmesan is a bit hard

Broad beans are particularly good with parmesan, but it can be replaced with a creamy Persian feta. Cut into cubes and toss with the salad.

Garlic chips are also wonderful when add to the salad.

France is full of sauces. If you are going to categorise French food broadly, you might say – meat, sauce, butter, cheese, baked goods. It is pretty accurate – one of my comprehensive books on French cooking contains 2 salads and a small clutch of vegetable recipes. To be fair, (I have spent time working in France) French food does include a large variety of salads. It is just that the other elements have a stronger focus.

So, with a love of French food, we pick and choose from amongst the cuisine, and make to our #vegetarian style. This is a beautiful version of a Tomato Sauce – one we added to our collection of tomato sauces – and, like the others, it freezes very well. Also, of course, it is delicious.

It comes from #HowsAndWhysOfFrenchCooking

Beetroot. Earthy, versatile, raw or cooked, beetroot is a colourful and delicious addition to our table.

Not the best looking sambol, but fresh and delish.

Mint Sambol is a Sri Lankan fresh chutney recipe akin to Pachadis or Thogayals of South India. It takes lots of mint leaves, some onion, garlic and chilli and grinds them with sultanas and coconut for sweetness, and lime juice for tang. It is a great accompaniment to rice or any Indian or Sri Lankan spicy dish. (Also as a spread in a salad sandwich, dolloped into soups or on haloumi or other such things.)

You can make it finely blended or chunky.

The recipe is from #SriLankanFlavours, by #ChannaDassanayaka.

Roasted Eggplant with Special Miso Sauce

The thing about #SpecialMisoSauce* is that it is rich and dark and almost overwhelming in its deep flavours, so it is perfect for dishes in which you want the sort of umami that things like fish sauce or anchovies usually provide. Not that it tastes the same but it does have that same affinity for certain ingredients.

And we all know just how well miso pairs with eggplant anyway – it is a classic combination in the miso-loving parts of the world. So in this dish we brought together eggplants and the Special Miso Sauce for wonderful results and a very simple dish.

*Click on the hashtag link to see where to get the recipe.

Here is another of my loved rustic soups. It is a health-boost in a bowl, this soup. I usually don’t make it until later in the Wintery cough-and-cold season, but if it seems a bad season I make it early. It was a staple during lockdowns.

Chickpea Soup with Parsley and Turmeric.

The best time to freeze ginger or make Ginger or Ginger-Garlic Paste is Late Summer or Early to Mid Autumn. Ginger and garlic are plentiful then, good quality, local and cheap. You can often get young ginger at this time – it is gentler in flavour and delicious.

A good strategy for Autumn is to make a couple of jars of Garlic Paste and Ginger Paste (or Ginger-Garlic Paste), freeze 1 or 2 kgs of garlic, broken into cloves, to supplement the paste, and freeze some ginger root. Adjust the amounts to suit your family’s consumption of garlic and garlic.

These pastes are fairly common in parts of India, with households making it every morning. Traditionally ground by hand, it is now most commonly ground in electric wet-dry grinders.

Outside of India it is made in the food processor or spice grinder, but the texture is a little different. It keeps well in the fridge and much longer in the freezer, so make some when garlic and ginger are at their peak of quality and are cheapest in price. Grind with salt, and sometimes I add a little vinegar to boost the preservation qualities.

You can make ginger, garlic, ginger-garlic and chilli pastes the same way. Ditto turmeric and galangal pastes.

For longer lasting paste, avoid any use of water. My trick is to take whole cloves of garlic and roughly chopped ginger and break it down with my hand-held immersion blender. Then I transfer it to the small processor in two batches to produce a nice creamy paste without any water.

There is some concern about the safety of storing garlic. Please do your research and make up your own mind. Keep all pastes refrigerated at all times. You can also freeze any paste that you are not going to use quickly. It is good to freeze it in icecube trays, then store the cubes in ziplock bags. The cubes are conveniently sized for adding to dishes.

Saffron Rasayana for the Weary

Are you weary? Stressed? In need of some relaxation? I have a rasayana for you – saffron in milk with honey and ghee. Always use less honey than ghee in the recipe. Amazingly, this drink relaxes and destresses. You feel your breath ease and deepen and worries vanish.

The art and science of #rasayana is about lengthening the lifespan, and individual rasayana recipes can be considered as tonics or something that enhances well being. Rasayanas not only include food but behaviours and practices.

I have been lying in bed this morning – a cool morning of Autumn where it is nice to be sipping coffee and reading under the warm blankets. I have been watching the sky as I read, wondering what kind of day it will be, and it has varied from blue with clouds, to dark and stormy, and back to clouds without patches of sky. Such are the joys of our Australian weather. We watch the sky in Summer to see what heat levels we need to endure during the day, in Autumn we watch the sky for much needed rain, in Winter it is about how cold and wet it will be, and in Spring we wait for the first warm to hot day to arrive.

So it is heading towards Winter and the soup pot has emerged from the depths of the cupboard again. We made an awesome spicy tomato soup the other day, quite Indian in style, and today we turn towards Italy and the simple but awesome products that come out of kitchens.

I have heard the food of Tuscany particularly is called Poor Man’s Food, that is, food that is made from locally grown produce without fanciness or pretension. Exactly my kind of food. I remain a country girl at heart despite living in various cities for the majority of my life. The influence of those first 15 – 20 years never leaves you.

The recipe for this soup is from Ilva, a Nordic gal married to an Italian and living in Tuscany. She ran a very successful blog back in the day, but eventually specialised in food photography.https://www.instagram.com/ilvaberetta/

Her recipes were always simple, with a focus on making the ingredients shine. I loved them.

Für den #schiffssamstag
( for #shipsaturday )

A few days ago I had a chat here and we talked about the wonderfully poor color reproduction of the old Kodak VR films, I dived deep into my archive and found this old maritime night photography, which I took on March 2007 with the #Minolta #Dynax700si on (exoired) #KodakVR400:

Look, @roguemusiclab: xtra for you!

#maritimephotography #nightexposure #nachtaufnahme #KodakVR400plus #35mmfilm #MinoltaDynax #LateAtNight #35mmphotography #filmisnotdead #photography #analogphotography #grainisgood #FilmIsMoreFun

When Winter comes, we are suddenly looking for tomato (and other) sauces to make soup out of, add to lentil braises, vegetable stews, gratins, dipping sauces, and other dishes. Luckily I often make several of these each Autumn so that they are frozen, ready for the first Wintery dish that needs them.

Some of these sauces are the sort of sauce that you put on your (vegetarian) bangers and mash or over your BBQ’d veggies and patties. But the other purpose of these sauces is to add flavour to dishes, or form the base for soups, other sauces, and dipping sauces for snacks.

I have about 7 or so different tomato sauce/puree recipes that get repeated. Autumn is ideal to make them - tomatoes are at their best, especially if home grown. You can, of course, bottle /preserve them instead of freezing.