Slow Motion Lightning

Amazing view of lightning shot with a high speed camera:

Whole Crispy Fish Recipe

This Spirit House signature dish is one of the easiest to make - as long as you’re not scared of a wok of boiling oil or you have a large deep fryer.

The Tamarind Chilli Sauce

The easy way …
You can take the easy way out and head to an IGA and buy a bottle of Spirit House Tamarind Chilli Sauce. Here’s the method: open bottle, pour 100ml or so into a saucepan and heat. For a strong flavour, boil sauce for a few minutes to reduce the sauce down a tad.

… If that was too easy, you can do it the hard way and make your own sauce …
Make your own tamarind chilli sauce
4 tablespoons chopped garlic
4 red chillies, finely chopped, deseeded
2 golden or red shallots, sliced
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh or
pickled galangal
1 tablespoon finely chopped coriander root or stem
10 white peppercorns
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm sugar
half cup tamarind water
coriander or Thai sweet basil to garnish

method:
in mortar, pound white peppercorns, add garlic, shallots, galangal, coriander root - pound to coarse paste.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in wok and stir fry the paste and chillies until fragrant - about 2 minutes. Add fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind water. The sauce should be sweet, tangy and salty and should be quite thick. If too dry, moisten with a few tablespoons water. Simmer this sauce for a few minutes for the flavours to come together. Remove sauce from wok, keep warm.

Cooking The Fish

1 whole fish, weighing about 500 gms -cleaned, scaled, gutted & gilled
plain flour to coat fish
4 cups vegetable oil for deep frying

Method
Score both sides of the fish diagonally with a sharp knife. This opens the flesh making it quicker to cook and easier to eat.

In a Wok, make sure oil is sizzling hot by testing with a piece of garlic. Slide fish gently into oil, head first. Using wok flipper, spoon oil over the top of the fish while cooking. This will take about
10 minutes. Carefully turn the fish over, fry on the second side for about 5 minutes. Carefully lift out, drain on paper towel.

Transfer to serving platter, spread apart the gill area just behind the head, this will make it easy for the fish to stand upright on the plate spoon over sauce and garnish with coriander leaves or basil.

Louis Vuiton Trash Bag

How rich people take out the trash:

Leaves and spray paint = art

Not food related but very cool - grab a cheap chinese canvas from a hobby shop and some spraypaint and you’re ready to make some high end art. Well at least that’s my plan for my 8 year old niece and I this weekend. This video shows you how:

Had trouble with your luggage?

We all have our share of travel stories but none are as funny as what happened to this Welsh comedian’s bag when he came to Australia. I never would have thought such a simple event could be so funny and not a swear word in sight.

A whole new way of seeing the world

Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.

Rosling developed breakthrough software which animates trends in incredible ways showing you that most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did. This has UNBELIEVABLE impacts on the world as you and I might know it.

Bring a tear to your eye

Cleaning up the bookmarks in my web browser I found this gem. At the time of this clip, Paul Potts used to be a salesman at ‘carphone warehouse’ … just shows you never to judge anyone by their job. Turn your speakers up, and try not to cry.

Old Australian Cook Books

Who says we don’t have culinary heritage. The library of NSW is exhibiting cookbooks from our pioneering days that include recipes for bandicoots, kangaroo brains and black swans.

“Even less appetising is a recipe in Australia’s first known cookbook, dating from 1864, for a dish called ’slippery bob’, consisting of kangaroo brains mixed with flour and water then fried in emu fat.”

The story of a sign

Cool short film that won the NFB online competition at Cannes 2008. With a change of words, a stranger transforms the afternoon for a blind man:

How much food does your family throw away?

The daily mail has an interesting article that really made me think about just how much food we buy and how much of it ends in the bin. The image below shows a weekly shop for one of the participants in the survey - half of it will end up in the bin.

What a waste… my family is throwing away �1,800 worth of food a year | the Daily Mail