Direct from Ben. Posts labelled personal are usually ones where Ben has offered his opinion on something, ranted, enjoyed, or just wanted to claim as his.
“This awesome tasty dish is something Sharon put us onto. It’s isn’t too difficult, besides making the sauce. The recipe was originally based off this site, but I’ve modified it slightly to make it easier and how I tend to cook it” – Ben
Sharon's Szechuan Eggplant
“I divided up the ingredients to make it easier to follow” – Ben
Ingredients (Meat):
500g Pork Mince
1/4 TSP Salt
1/4 TSP Black Pepper
1/2 TSP Cornstarch/Cornflower
Ingredients (Sauce):
1 Cup Chicken Stock
3 TBS Soy Sauce
1 TSP Balsamic Vinegar
1 TSP Brown Sugar (Granulated)
2 TSP Cornstarch/Cornflower
Ingredients (Misc):
1 Eggplant (Large)
1 TBS Garlic (minced)
1 TBS “Hot Bean Sauce”
1/2 TSP Chili Paste
1 TSP Sesame Oil
Method:
Combine Pork, Salt, Pepper and Cornstarch (all the “Meat Ingredient” section) and allow that to marinate for 15 minutes.
In a small bowl, add 1/2 cup of Chicken Stock, Soy, Vinegar, Sugar and whisk in cornstarch (remember to whisk before adding this mixture to anything!) [See Photo Gallery #3]
Cut Eggplant into 1-2cm cube pieces [Photo #4]
Over a medium-hot heat, brown eggplant with a some oil (~2 TBS) until softened. Takes ~5 minutes. Remove, drain and rest on a paper towel.
Over a hot pan, add garlic and bean sauce. Stir-fry this for a minute or two until it becomes aromatic (careful that the garlic + oil mixture doesn’t spit up onto you). Add Pork and stir-fry until it changes colour. You will need to spend some time breaking up the pork mince mixture into small amounts and not ‘clumps’. [Photo #5]
Push cooked pork up to one side of the pan, add sauce and bring to boil. Stir this mixture as it is on the heat to thicken. Add eggplant, Chili Paste (to taste) and sesame oil. Cook for a few minutes more. [Photo #6-7]
“This post was inspired by Ev’s post. Problem is that I’m now starting from scratch and it’s going to be short list to start with. I told you I was posting more stuff today.” – Ben
I’m sure you are all aware of the concept of a Bucket List (aka ’100 things I want to do before I die’). Basically it’s a list of cool things that you really want to do with your life. It doesn’t have to be sensible things like “buy a house” or “pay off mortgage” or stuff like that (but I’m going to include some ‘grown-up’ ones like those). Basically it’s something you’ve always wanted to do.
“One of my unannounced New Years Resolutions for 2012 was to partake in doing the 365 Project. Since it’s my Birthday today I’ve decided to post a few additional items to the blog, Happy Australia Day!” – Ben
CLICK on this image to visit my 365 Project page
The 365 project is a simple enough concept: you take one photo everyday, for a whole year. I decided that I should attempt this for two reasons:
I like taking photos, and this is a good way to force me to do so daily
Its an easy way of making my Instagram account interesting.
I have some ‘rules’ that I’ve been trying to adhere to:
Don’t just take photos of food.
Try and sum up the day, or the most interesting aspect of your day
Make it personal, not just obscure photos of nothing.
Actually take the photo each day, and not ‘upload’ a cool photo from somewhere else.
This is just a Tumblr blog that collects all the 365 posts. One thing I like about Tumblr blogs is that you can get a really cool overview page, ‘the Archive‘, though for some reason it displays my Jan 1st photo as Dec 31st (I blame being in Fiji). I am also posting the photos to my Twitter account (@Benjamin_Lewis).
So far I’ve taken a photo for everyday of the year, and have only screwed up once, but managed to fix it.
“This is my signature dish. Everyone loves it, so I thought I’d post it here so you can see how it’s made.” – Ben
Ben's Moroccan Lamb Cutlets
Ingredients:
A Large flat bowl (for coating).
A Medium/Large non-stick frying pan.
3-4 Lamb Cutlets per person (You’ll want some extras).
210g Masterfoods Moroccan Seasoning.
2 packets (75g) Tandaco ‘Coating Mix for Southern Fried Chicken’
Dried Rosemary leaves
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper, Pepper and salt (to taste).
Oil
Broccolini
Method (Coating):
In a large bowl, pour the entire jar of Moroccan Seasoning (saving the container for later). Add all other dry ingredients and stir together.
Take half of the coating mixture and put back into Masterfoods Jar (you’ll have spare coating, which is great for the next batch).
With the remaining half, take a cutlet and press lamb into mixture, coating it well. The flatter you make them, the quicker/easier it is to cook later.
Make sure you coat all areas of the lamb cutlets, including the bone!
Method (Cooking):
First bring a pot of water to boil (to cook Broccolini – or any other side dish you want).
Heat the oil to a medium-high heat, ensuring that there is a generous amount of oil to ensure adequate frying (you will need to add more oil the more you cook).
Cook each lamb cutlet until each side is nicely brown (takes about 4-8 minutes each side), turning once. Make sure you lift each cutlet occasionally to ensure it is frying properly and not sticking to the pan.
When you are near the end, throw in Broccolini to boiling water pot – it only takes 4-5 minutes to cook.
Serve and enjoy immediately
If making batches, have oven hot at ~110 degrees, and keep warm whilst cooking more.
“My sister made these onion rings the other night from scratch. We recently got her a small deep fryer and the only issue with making these is that we can only 4 rings at a time. A lot of people have been asking for the recipe so I decided I should post it.” – Ben
Sift flour into a large bowl. In another large bowl, whisk egg yolks. Mix in beer, butter and salt. Set aside 1 cup of flour for dipping the onion rings. Slowly stir the egg yolk mixture into the remaining flour and mix well. Allow the mixture to stand for 30-60 minutes.
Heat deep-fryer to 190 degrees C (375 F)
In a smaller bowl, stiffly beat the egg whites. Gently combine the egg whites with the batter.
Coat each onion ring with flour and dip into batter.
Deep fry the battered rings, several at a time (without over-crowding), until golden-brown. Drain on paper towels and serve.
“I am back from my overseas trip and back to blogging. To celebrate, here is a summary of the blog over 2011 that WordPress generated.” – Ben
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 390,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 5 sold-out events for that many people to see it.
2012, the year the world will end… unlikely. Even though right now I’m on a tropical paradise in Fiji I’m going to go over my 2011 resolutions from Jan 1st 2011.
New Years Resolutions for 2011:
Lose weight – SUCCESS < I have been exercising, running and losing weight since July 2011.
Catch up with old friends – SUCCESS < I have worked hard on making sure I’m keeping in touch with my friends and making new ones.
Find some direction with my life – SUCCESS < I have decided that I really want to do medicine and have been studying hard for the GAMSAT exam in 2012.
Do some photography / art – FAILURE < Whilst I love being creative, I have failed at actually forcing myself to do artistic pursuits. The best I’ve done is use instagram on twitter a bit.
Learn a new life skill – SUCCESS < I have started updating my Lifesaving awards and very very very slowly learning Korean.
New Years Resolutions for 2012:
Continue to lose weight – I’ve started on a path of weight loss and need to make sure I keep it up.
Study like a demon for GAMSAT.
Get into Medicine – how is that for a target… bam!
Travel domestically and internationally with my gf – I hope to travel to Somoa and Korea in the near future, I also would like to visit Melbourne, Tasmania and some other places within Aus.
Learn a basic level of Korean – Learning a language, not easy, but possible.
Be more organised – Stop double/triple/quadruple booking events.
“Merry Christmas everyone. I shall be in Fiji whilst you are reading this. Here is a photo of what I’m planning on doing today (taken a previous visit). Ahhh, it’s nice having this kinda things pre-written and scheduled to post. Hope you all get some good loot” – Ben
“This is something really personal to me. Its a very clever moment which teaches us to attempt things we know we can accomplish rather than let our fears hold us back. I was having an issues with accepting a specific leadership position when I was 17 years old, but then realised I knew everything I needed… and knew how to act…. the only thing holding me back was me.” – Ben
“I love the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I drive across it daily. I have wanted to take an awesome photo of what the view is whilst driving over it… but that is difficult and dangerous. I was fortunate that my gf took this photo… and then made it look amazing. I’m jealous that it’s not mine” – Ben
“To celebrate my blog reaching 500,000 views I have made a small Q & A Video starring…. me. I shall keep this video up on the top of the blog for the rest of this week (new posts will continue to populate under it).” – Ben
“This was one of my favourite scenes from Bowling for Columbine. A lot of people immediately look for a scapegoat when something horrible happens. Manson does a great job of addressing what happened in a very intelligent and polite way. Sure he’s weird, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.” – Ben
“I just spent some time and generated my first iMovie clip and uploaded it to YouTube. It was pretty easy except for all the times iMovie crashed on me. Enjoy” – Ben
