Svenuary Fun

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Sven is doing #genuary2022. There are different daily prompts. Tomorrow, Jan 6th is, “Trade styles with a friend”. This was the first piece, all made in Blender 3.0:

which became:

If you look closely you can see the grain. Wild. This is very reminiscent of a shot i took in Berlin:

Which is used in I Wrote This For You, and discussed on the “other” blog.

The final piece:

#genuary2022 blender geonodes pretending to be a friend’s photography style

Originally tweeted by fforw (@fforw) on 2022-01-05.

reminds me of this Tokyo Hasselblad shot:

Obviously different, but there is more than a passing resemblance. Yes, you’re right – i should reprocess that and brighten it up a little. Thanks mentioning it.

Rajma Redux

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Not like “indigestion” but part of the “pre-digestion”. I mentioned in the Rajma post that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was making recipe sites trash. Today at the top of the orange site is an app that removes the clutter. No endorsement / recommendation implied – i’ve not even opened the link.

Take a brief review of the top comments to get a flavour (see what i did there…) of how the big ole goofy search monopoly google is making the web a better place.

Repeating myself at this point, but google is likely the biggest misallocation of engineering resources the world has ever seen. The greatest computer science minds of several generations, all grist for a trillion dollar advertising mill. Possibilities ground to dust under the wheels of silicon valley “progress”.

[With all due respect / apologies to my friends that work there… but come on, you know it’s mostly true!]

Up Around The Bend

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Wanted to write about what Hamburg has done to my photography. To see if it was possible to define my “Hamburg School”, a parallel with the “Düsseldorf School“? A few hours later it would appear that i’m unequal to the task…

The basis of my Hamburg is interplay of water and light. Which sounds pretentious enough to form the basis of a school of photography. It also has the benefit of aligning well with what seems to draw my eye in recent years.

In the end there just isn’t enough to go any further. The idea remains out of reach, up around the bend.

Rajma

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Like most recipe sites, Dassana’s Veg Recipes has succumbed to the SEO horror. The end result is presumably good for stickiness, but terrible to following a recipe. End result? I’m writing up my own notes for Rajma!

  • kidney beans (see below)
  • green chilies (2 – 4)
  • root ginger (2 – 3cm chunk)
  • garlic (4 cloves)
  • oil / butter (1 tsb)
  • purple onion (medium size, approx 150g)
  • ripe Tomatoes (2 or 3, approx, 200g)
  • cumin seeds (1 tsp)
  • mango powder (1 tsp)
  • chili powder (1/2 – 1 tsp)
  • turmeric (1/4 – 1/2 tsp)
  • garam masala (1/2 tsp)†
  • asafoetida / hing (1/4 tsp)
  • salt (1/4 – 1/2 tsp)
  • kasuri methi / dried fenugreek leaves 1 tsb)

I’m cooking kidney beans in a pressure cooker after soaking them for at least 24hrs. The thing with Rajma is that the beans need to be well cooked all the way through, close to the point where a few of them have skins cracked. It would probably work pretty well wish good quality canned. We usually cook more than are needed, but i guess that one, or one and a half cans would be about the right balance.

Steps

  • finely chop the onion and tomato.
  • crackle the cumin seeds in the oil, and start to slowly fry the onions. they need to be soft.
  • while the onions are frying grind the chilies / garlic / ginger into a paste (it doesn’t need to be smooth, and probably wont be!)
  • when the onions are soft, add the chili / garlic / ginger paste, let it cook for a minute or so – until the raw garlic smell goes
  • add the tomatoes, let them cook for a couple of minutes and start to break down
  • add the ground spices (mango powder, chili powder, turmeric, garam masala, hing) mix well
  • now you need to cook this masala until the oil starts to come out of the mixture. it’ll probably take longer than expect, but don’t let it dry out.
  • add the kidney beans, mix them into the masala
  • add 1 – 2 cups of water, or the cooking liquid from the pressure cooker, add salt, mix well
  • cook on a low simmer for around 10 minutes. the sauce will thicken, you have to make a decision about thick you want the rajma… the longer you let it simmer, the thicker it’s going to be. if you’re eating it with rice leave it a little thinner, with naan / chapati thicker. have noticed i tended to let it thicken too much in the first couple of attempts
  • crush the kasuri methi, and stir well

The whole “until the oil starts to come out” stage of cooking the masala seems to be the key to getting a good curry. You’re basically making a roux to thicken whatever comes next, and if you don’t let cook well things won’t end well!

The original recipe has a step about adding a couple of tablespoons of cream right at the end. Have never tried it with cream, but yogurt also works, just make sure it isn’t too sour. It doesn’t really add too much – but i’m not into that whole “restaurant style” thing, prefer to keep things “rustic”.

† – the garam masala that i’m using (TRS brand) kind of sucks… it’s so strong that you either use so little that you may as well not bother, or you don’t bother! When i forget and put it in… regret. Should probably try some other mixes. All the other spices are kind of integral to the experience – the mango powder providing extra sourness, and the asafoetida doing that thing that is does with beans / lentils… which is kind of indescribable. Sorry.