…eggs for breakfast!

So this is me. Quite a nice looking chap I would say. Right? Quite a nice looking, yet helplessly delusional chap? Well, you’re entitled to your own, at least equally misguided opinions about what my head looks like, but I was walking today back from work thinking to myself “this is quite a nice day”….how is this relevant?

Well, it’s quite a nice day to focus not on the things growing on my head, but rather on what’s growing inside.  Madness !!! I have an idea, but I know it’s mad. Utterly mad !!!! I can feel it, it’s a voice in my head saying “hello you, Mr. Face, I am coming out of your head, and the only thing you can do is eat more or less cheese…it makes no difference, but it makes a huge difference, start now !!!”…. Yeah, the voices generally speaking are fairly incoherent. In any case, I can’t run from it, I can only run with it. And you’re going to get involved, whether you like it or not.

So, stay tuned. I will go ahead and concoct the details and come out with these in a few weeks time. All relevant announcement made here. It’s feeling explosive like houmous.

Can you believe this ?????

Disclaimer: I don’t know these people, and I had nothing to do with any of this. However, I wish I had, because it’s quite funny

So here I am with some exciting news, but first: this beef brisket is delicious. Just over a week ago, I bought a 3.5 kg beef brisket. I actually had to cut it in two, chiefly because I didn’t have any container big enough to fit the whole thing in and let’s just assume I only ever had 1.75kg. I then brined it for a week and cooked for a few hours. The whole process went a little something like this.

I prepared some brine in which I put in fresh thyme, one anis star, 500 g demerara sugar, more or less 1.5 kg of sea salt, 4 cloves, 4 bay leaves, 1 tea spoon of ground white peppercorns, covered with 4.5 litres of water. After boiling this concoction for about 5 minutes, I let it cool down and submerged the beef brisket in it. I used a brick wrapped in two plastic bags to push the beef down as it wanted to float in the salty water.

Left is the one in water, right is still in brine

After 6 days in the Fridge I drained the brine away and soaked the beef in fresh water for a further 24 hours. After the 24 hours, I removed the beef and rinsed it well, and it then looked like this.

Before cooking

I chopped up 2 carrots, 1 onion (not peeled, just cut in 4 wedges !), 2 celery stalks, 1 leek, 2 garlic cloves, some parsley and some fresh thyme to the bottom of a large sauce pan, placed the beef on top and filled with water so that half the beef was covered. I brought this to boil and then let simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

After cooking !

And presto ! Serve with mash… It’s delicious.

In other, much more important news: I got a job at Google and will be moving to Dublin on 12th April.

I think this is very exciting, potentially even a ‘little bit’ more exciting than a week-long beef-brining project. Google is one the big three in IT and it’s really the place to be to working now in the industry. I obviously don’t know yet too much about what the work entails, but I will be working with AdSense-customers in UK and Finland…So here I go, bye bye Birmingham….hello Dublin!