Cooking from Around the World: Sierra Leone

Last week we decided to choose a random country and cook a recipe from it. Italian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican cooking etc is very common these days...but there are lots of other countries that can be explored! The internet gives us possibilities to find recipes from anywhere around the world (although sometimes it's difficult to find the ingredients if you don't live in this country).
We decided on African food, since this isn't so common in Europe (or most other places in the world). Then we chose a country that had an interesting sounding recipe and which we didn't know very much about. This turned out to be Sierra Leone.
The recipe we cooked can be found here:
http://recipes.wuzzle.org/index.php/26/79
The combination of peanut butter, hot chilis (this proved to be difficult yet again - see my previous post - so we used some Texan hot Habanero sauce), thyme, and bay leafs turned out to be superb. I can absolutely recommend it.
We also took a look at the creole language Krio, as well as facts about the country and listened to some traditional Sierra Leonian music from myspace. (This way we discovered Freddy Shabaka, who is a great Reggae artist from Sierra Leone).
http://www.myspace.com/freddyshabaka
To conclude we watched one of the few movies that is about Sierra Leone (but unfortunately filmed in other African countries): Blood Diamond. Excellent but shocking movie about diamond smuggling and rebel wars etc.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450259/

More of these random cooking evenings will follow for sure!

Music

These are the two instruments I play. My custom handmade Les Paul, and a Yamaha Alto Saxophone. I experimented with some different lighting to create these shots.
Unfortunately I hardly find the time these days to play saxophone as well as guitar. I think soon I will take pictures of my other guitars - each with a different theme.
I listen to music whenever I can and I couldn't live without it!

Chili peppers in Germany

Unfortunately it is near impossible to find good chili peppers in Germany. Most supermarkets and fruit/vegetable stores sell chili peppers...but all they have is "green chilis" and the supposedly spicier kind: "red chilis". Boring. They never have a clue what type they are!

There are so many different variations that taste distinctly different! Jalapeño, habanero, serrano, cayenne, tabasco (and I'm not just referring to the sauce itself), ancho, thai, anaheim, chipotle etc etc to name just a few.

At least a few basic varieties (habaneros, jalapeños, cayenne for example) should be made available. They grow very well in green houses, and it doesn't seem impossible for England to have all sorts of varieties available at any point of the year...the climate there surely isn't too much different.

Unfortunately spicy food is only just gaining in popularity I suppose...most families own some cayenne powder and a bottle of tabasco and might occasionally purchase a red or green chili pepper. But for spice addicts such as myself this really isn't enough! I have quite a collection of hot sauces ranging up to 1.5 million Scoville units, but sometimes fresh chilis are really the best.

I assume in 10 years or so this won't be a problem anymore, but I guess I have to wait a while longer and keep ordering dried chilis, powdered chilis, and the occasional fresh habaneros from the internet.

Happy burning!

Welcome

Hello there...

I guess I should be writing some sort of introductory post about myself and this blog...but honestly I have no clue what I will be adding in here yet!

Basically I'm a laser physics PhD student, thus the "photons" part, and I enjoy photography, hence the "photos" part! Quite simple really.

I will be posting some photographs I've taken with my Canon EOS 400D from time to time, as well as random opinions etc as stated in the title.

So if you enjoy my blog, please contact me and send me lots of money. Thanks.

Ben