Only_Oli (The O_Zone) | A place for me to share Stuff

Lemon Meringue Tart

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

This is a bit of a complicated or more accurately lengthy recipe. It is not difficult but it just takes a few steps and as a consequence you end-up spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen…however the final product is to roll on the floor…this recipe is also fairly rich with a lot of butter, eggs and sugar. Perfect for a rainy autumn or early winter afternoon. See my notes at the very end about the amount of sugar.

Ingredients for the base :

1 egg yolk (keep the white for the Meringue)
225g butter, room temperature
50g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp sea salt
350g plain flour

Simply mix all the ingredients in the Kenwood robot and make a dough ball. I tend to cut the butter in a lot of smaller pieces to help with the mixing. Also, ideally you want to leave the butter out of the fridge for a little while before using it so that it is easier to make the pastry. It takes approximately 15 minutes with my robot to get a smooth dough.

Once the dough is made, put in the fridge with some cling film over it. leave it to cool down for about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Then take a 23cm pie base (with a removal bottom). Spread the dough so that it is the correct size for the base. you should have a fairly thick base with thick sides. Let’s say about 8 to 10mm thick.

Cover the base with aluminium foil and then the cooking beans. Put in the oven at 160 degres for a fan assisted or 180 if not. Bake for 15 minutes with the beans and foil, then for 10 minutes with the foil and beans taken out.

As soon as the dough is in the fridge, you want to start working on the Lemon curd. It will take time to make the Curd and you will probably be cooking the base before you finish the curd.

Ingredients for Lemon Curd :

Juice of 5 lemons
Zest of 3 lemons
200g of caster sugar
125g of unsalted butter, cut into a few pieces
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk (Keep this white as well for the Meringue)
Pinch of salt

This is the part of the recipe which can be a bit annoying because you want to make a curd without having lumps and it requires a constant mixing and control of the temperature of the mixture so that the eggs don’t over cook. This is where the Kenwood Chef is really helpful as you simply let the robot do the work…

I start with taking 3 lemons Zest. Then I juice all the 5 lemons. I strain into the main bowl of the Kenwood. I add the sugar, the butter, the salt. I setup on the quickest mixing with the flexi beater. I set the temperature to 85/90 degres. It is not extremely precise, but it is important to prevent the mixture to get too hot as it will over cook the eggs if not.

Once the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth, I beat the 2 eggs and the yoke in a separate bowl before introducing to the Kenwood bowl. I keep the machine steering for a good 20 minutes. Sometimes longer to get a custard like smooth curd.

Once the base is gone through its cooking time without the foil, take the base out of the oven and pour the warm lemon curd on the base. The base won’t be fully cooked but should be firm to the touch. (not brown, more like light beige). Put back into the oven for another 10 minutes. I usually increase the temperature here to 180 in my fan assisted oven.

It is now time to make the Meringue.

Ingredients for Meringue :

4 egg whites. (2 from the above recipe and 2 new ones)
225g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Beat the whites and the salt on full blast with the Robot for something like 10 minutes. Then incorporate the sugar with a spoon to get a silky stiff Meringue base. ( It is possible to mix all the ingredients in one go and beat the whole lot together until you get the Meringue base, I just prefer to incorporate after).

Once the Base+Curd has been in the oven for the time defined above, take the base out, pour the meringue on it, put back into the oven. Still at 180c on my fan oven. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes until golden brown peaks or you see the Meringue is ready.

I prefer to stop the oven at this point but keep the Lemon Tart in it and leave the Meringue go crispy on the top.

It is a long recipe but it is very nice ! Manu find it a bit too sweet, so next one I will do with a little less sugar to try.

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Pastrami – First Try

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I have been waiting to try a few recipes where you need to cure the meat before cooking it. Such as Ham or Pastrami or even Saucisson.

I am trying today Pastrami….

[Update] The pastrami is very nice but a bit too salty. I used the same brine for a Ham as well and it was also a bit too salty. I have updated the quantities below to adjust for next time I make it.

The ingredients and the recipe below is for 1.5kg of Beef, I only have half of that today so will simply halve all the ingredients.

Ingredients for curing :
3 to 4 litres of Water (enough to cover the meat when curing)
1/2 cup salt [was 1 cup of Kosher salt]
1/4 cup pink curing salt – Also known as curing salt or prague powder
1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp pickling spice
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds
1 tbsp whole yellow mustard seeds
4 cloves garlic, minced
1.4kg to 1.8kg beef brisket

Make the brine with all the ingredients above and bring to a boil to dissolve all the sugars and mix well the spices. Put the meat and all the brine into an airtight container for 5 days. turn the meat daily and shake about the brine. Perfect for Sunday afternoon preparation so that next Saturday morning cooking..

Then rub the meat with the spice rub ingredients below and cook slowly for 1 hour for each 500g of meat at 150 degres. Put the meat on a rack inside a tray like dish. put some water [should put plenty because it evaporates a lot] in the dish. Do not use the brine for this as it is salty. Cover the meat with aluminium foil. Let is slow cook…

Spice Rub Ingredients
1/4 cup ground coriander
2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp smoked paprika

Once all done, let it cool-off and can be kept in the fridge for a week or frozen.

Friends enjoyed this recipe, I will make again.

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Plum Tarte Tatin

Posted on November 12, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I made some Tarte Tatin today but with plums instead of apples. It is very nice !…Maybe the plums are giving too much juice and water as they cook, so there might be a way by which you could soak some of the juices before cooking the pastry. Next time I will try to either pour the extra juice out or collect with a spoon before cooking the puff pastry.

The Sauce is an “extra” that is not required for the plum tart but it makes it very special. Overall it was very nice.

Ingredients Sauce (taste like mulled wine):

450ml cote du rhone red wine
150g caster sugar
4 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
Grated zest of an orange
3 cloves

Ingredients Tarte :

25g unsalted butter, melted
130g soft, light brown sugar
650g of plums or enough to cover the disk, halved and stoned
ready-rolled, all-butter puff pastry

How to Prepare :

For the sauce place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally, leave to boil for 15 minutes. Filter out into a bowl, leave the sauce to cool.

For the tarte tatin, heat the fan oven 180°C. Pour the melted butter into the tart dish and sprinkle half the sugar. Arrange the plums, cut side up, in the dish making sure they are tightly packed but still in one layer. Arrange a few blueberries between the plums. Sprinkle over the remaining sugar. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove and leave to cool for 15 minutes. This will prevent the pastry from melting on contact with the hot plums.
Put the puff pastry over the plums. Make a large slit in the centre to allow steam to escape. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 5 minutes so that the juices become a bit more jelly like. Place a large serving plate over the dish and flip over. Lift off the dish and remove excess juice with paper towels.
Serve in slices with a tablespoon or two of the spiced red-wine syrup drizzled over.

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Weekend activities busy bee

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

Well weekend was full of varied activities of all sorts, including fireworks and trying to repair front door of the house !

Manu used the kenwood blender to make some very nice almond butter. Essentially take fresh almonds, roast them for a few minutes, then put into the blender with a pinch of salt, run the blender until you get a smooth and creamy texture. This might require a few stops with pushing the almonds from the sides back towards the blades. Looking forward eating this on toast over the coming weeks…or is it week ?

I also cleared the vegetable raised bed garden during the weekend. The tomatoes will not go red as the temperature has dropped too much and the sun is now very weak. I tried to take a few tomatoes and make them turn red by putting them under the Phillips grow lights in my hydroponic setup in the garage but it did not work. Everything was taken down and cut in small pieces to go on the compost heap.

Took the opportunity to cut down the verbena plant and cleaned the leaves before setting them up to dry. I plan to use these leaves as a xmas gift of scented pouches. I need to design a small pouch and see how easy it is to keep the leaves in it. I will probably use a few pebbles of clay to go inside to help with the crushing of the leaves to release the nice smell of verbena.

The curry plant and the kaffir lime now have to live inside the house for the rest of the winter. I know they will not like it ! So I am looking closely at any signs of weakness. The curry looks ok but the kaffir lime tree is being attacked by bugs. At least one spider is still leaving here and there is a fair few xxx who are little buggers to kill. I am now on my 3rd round of spraying insecticides.

Finally, I manage at last to do some further embroidery work for a friend. She is making a gift for a new “mother”. I had to make a large “m” using a pre-defined font in adobe illustrator from the creative cloud. I then converted the adobe file into a jpeg, which I imported into a software to convert into stitches, called easy saw. I then transferred the file into the sewing machine and adjusted size and position. Loaded the material and press “start”. I had a couple of broken thread because it was a bit too fragile for the job. Still it all worked out ok at the end. This is another area of hobby “making” which could benefit greatly from open source and improvements in the overall workflow. The standards are very loose and the software is very clunky and expensive. When I look at the amount of time spent to essentially embroid a few stitches it is difficult to see how can small businesses survive on these jobs in the real world !

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Bon Appetit !

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I made a few things this weekend !

I made a copy of something I did a long time ago for my sister in law. It is a chopping board made out of bamboo.It is actually a “file” folder/tray from John Lewis which I cut with the hacksaw and then used the laser to make the final shape and engraving.

I then made a small box to put the many charging cables that we have laying around in the living room. This is a simple variation on other boxes I have made before. It is a design that I know works well and is easy to assemble. The bamboo cuts with a larger kerf and I should probably change a little the design for the hinge, but it still works. I just think it might be fragile over time (there is a little bit of play in the hinge and the top piece could be a be larger to fit more snugly into the side holes). I made the top design from scratch and used adobe illustrator to make the simplified USB cable and charging sign.

Finally I am making a variation on the small magnet box that I made before to keep the seeds of this interesting flower/plant I bought for Manu last week. I have no pictures of it yet because I am still making the design. I am trying to make a design that is a bit more “organic” in its shape rather than the usual square boxes.

I would really like to be able to have these flowers in my garden. I have not found yet the name of the plant (I forgot to memorise it from the shop…)

I have harvested a few seeds and will take more from the current flowers when they fade away. This might be an interesting growing test for the winter.

I have found they are called Chinese Lantern Plant. but most plant shop would refer to it as Physalis.

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I love this place – Hakkasan

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

A great lunch place after some shopping in london : Hakkasan.

This is Dim Sum Platter (varied and very nice)

Aubergines and Oat and Mushrooms (amazing but needs to be a side dish)

Salt Pepper Squid (not particularly special but perfect)

Soft shell Crab (it used to be served with curry leaves which made a huge difference, I still like it very much but it has lost its “amazing” ranking…)

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Trancheur – Trancheuse

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I know what I want from Xmas… !

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Tray without Glue

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I have been researching a few designs to make a small box or a tray with my laser cutter, but the challenge was to not use any glue for the assembly.

Most of the tenon and mortice setup allow for 2 dimensions to be locked. It is possible to use 3 pieces of wood or acrylic and some of the parts used will be locked in 3 dimensions.

There is always a “final” part to be included which provides the final locking of the assembly.

I have been trying to use a “flex” method, which allows for a piece of the design to flex under stress so that it can pass a no return position, and therefore locking the whole assembly.

I have found so far, that the stress it creates on the parts can be too much for the material.

I need to do a bit more research to understand better what makes the part break and what allows for the slight bend.

I have made a few with wood and acrylic. The popular one so far is the acrylic one. Although the tray is solid and stays put all together, it has a few broken bits.

The design with the engraving takes about 8 minutes to cut on my laser. I cut at 15mm per second with 100% power on my 60 watts CO2 laser and engrave at 400mm with 30% power. It comes out nice without too much flameouts.

A design to be refined.

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Powerbank

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

Made a powerbank with some lithium batteries so that I can power a Raspberry Pi on a field trip…Currently testing how long it will last under battery power.

It uses a 4200mah 4cells battery, delivering 14.8V to a UBEC 3A 5V converter. Should be around 12500mah if there is not too much wasted energy in the conversion etc…if I get 10000mah it will be good enough.

The 5V current monitoring tool is telling me that the Raspberry Pi is consuming approx 250ma per hour.

So I could hope for around 48 hours of “running”. I am sure that a solar panel will need to be added at some point…again this will need to wait !

[UPDATE 16th Oct 2016]

I have been running the Raspberry Pi all day with the powerbank. It has been running for approximately 12 hours and the battery is still approx 65% full. I am pleased that the system is working, but it is unlikely that it will run for 48 hours.

I will try to leave it overnight but I am concerned that I might forget it tomorrow morning and run the batteries flat. Potentially setting a fire ! (Lithium batteries are really scary)

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Vegetative or Flowering ?

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

For reference, the ideal time for the lights to be “on” during the day for vegetative growth is 18 hours of light for 6 hours of darkness. That is 5am to 10pm ! For flowering you want to move to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. Flowering and fruits is the same time.

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I joined the revolution

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I bought a Farmbot !…yes I am an early adopter of emerging technologies…this one has a lot of things that I like, it is open source hardware and software, it uses Raspberry Pi and Arduino, it is a Robot, it is a farmer trying to change the way we grow food similar to hydroponics.

Check it out !

I expect to get mine next year for the 2017 growing season !

I probably will initially set it up in my garage to benefit from the hydroponics lights.

I would love to build a glasshouse on the side of the garden next to the garage so I could put this robot in it and have a larger growing Zone….another long term project.

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More laser with Bamboo

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I recently bought some Bamboo sheets. Hobarts is the first one I think to be selling these sheets. They are quite expensive at the moment with circa £15 for a 600X400 sheet. That is approx 3X the price of acrylic sheets and 5X the price of a normal plywood sheet.

I have experimented with the laser cutter and it cuts very easily. The smoke has a different smell which gets a bit of getting used to.

With this wood you need to consider in which direction the wood grain is, in particular if you are going to put some stress across the grain. In contrast with the plywood sheets, the bamboo is glued in the @length@ and therefore is fairly weak in one of the 2 dimensions.

It makes nice boxes and the grain allows for some “effects” like simulating traditional joint or dove tail effects.

I made a box for Manu to put the “mess” of the various medications and vitamins are that re usually lying on the counter. They are all out of sight now in a simple box.

I also made a “trivet” for a good friend. They now have the “original”. I even forgot to take a picture.

I like the idea that such a simple and common item will be part of their everyday life but also a reminder of our friendship.

It is also Sunday evening and although I am not keen on getting back to the office, I am also glad that I can still help my son with some equations solving…well almost…

Must make another trivet so that I can take a picture and post here…

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A few things I made this weekend

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

Desperately needed a bit of time off this weekend. Last week and next few weeks are going to be horrible at work.

Went cycling on Staturday morning, then did a some DIY around the house and garden.

Made a design during the week and wanted to try on the Bamboo wood with the laser cutter. The top opens by rotating around a small bolt. It stays closed because of a couple of neodymium magnets. Came out nice. I might create a few different shape designs.

The Bamboo cuts nicely and there is not too much mess to clean-up after the cutting. I did 2 boxes, the first one was my “prototype” and then moved to the bamboo sheet which is a little bit more expensive.

I will use the bamboo one to keep a few seeds from the peppers I like to try to grow them next year !…

Installed a few lights in the garden. Struggled with the 12V connections, there is no good 3 way connection for 12V lighting. It is all proprietary connections or simply soldering bits together. I ended-up soldering pieces of wires and using self-amalgamating tape to make weather proof.

I spent bit of time polishing the lights to make them last a bit longer this winter. Replaced it all with LED lights. All looking quite nice.

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Beef Cuts

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

A nice infographic summary of the various beef cuts and cooking levels…

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Experiment in Solar – Updated Aug 2016

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

Just been recently thinking of using Solar Panels to provide power to recharge for my electric bike. The idea is to use a battery to store the electricity from the sun, use a DC to AC converter to power the bike charger which can charge the batteries of the bike.

Given that I use the bike during weekends mostly, the speed at which the “storage battery” will charge is not a big problem. So I can charge the storage battery over a few days and use it during the weekend. I need to make sure the storage battery is big enough for a couple of charges of the bike.

I don’t want to go overboard in terms of spend and I want to explore some different technologies as I have noticed that the price points and the technology in general is evolving at a rapid pace.

I have ordered a few parts which hopefully will get me to a working prototype and I will be able to make a few tests.

[UPDATE] I bought a solar Panel obviously (a 100W – Monocrystal from SunPower), a charger controller, a 12V Car battery and finally a Pure Sine Inverter. The charger uses a MPPT algorithm and electronics setup which is supposed to be better at harvesting power than the usual PWM charger. I bought a standard car battery to start and might upgrade later to a Deep Cycle leisure battery, if this proof of concept works. The inverter is the device that will convert the continuous 12 volts from the battery to a 230V with 50HZ.

So far so good…

[UPDATE] It works ! I have recharged the bicycle batteries a few times now. There is no difference in charging duration. It is like simply plugging the charger into a wall socket. Just that the electricity is coming from the battery and through the inverter. There is no humming noise or heat generated etc…Obviously the battery itself discharges quite quickly given the amount of energy I drain from it. The official Bosch charger draws about 180W when it is in “full charge mode”, once the batteries are 80% charged, the charger adjust down the amperage to trickle charge the finish. The consumption drops to 40/60W and lower until Zero when fully charged.

I have also tried to use it with a couple of power tools. The latest being my Fein sander. It worked without issue at all. I started with a low speed first to ensure I was not drawing too much current on the inverter and then cranked it up. All fine.

Very pleased with this setup. I suppose, it would be possible to make all this gear fit in a smaller space and make it portable to move around. The big drawback it the fact that the car battery is so heavy in compare to the lithium batteries. It would be very expensive to make a solar system with a storage bank of lithium batteries.

What I have learned about this solar experiment is that most of the issue with Solar power is not so much generating the electricity but storing it for future use. Solar essentially trickles from the sky and we need to harvest it into batteries to be able to use it. The fact that the solar panels have 20% efficiency or 19% is a bit irrelevant if you can store it for the day you need it.

I will wait for the Tesla power walls…

[UPDATE – Aug 2016]

I have plugged a Raspberry Pi into the main inverter and it is now “on” all the time. I am planning to build a connection between the Raspberry Pi and the Solar controller so that I can track the energy generated and consumed by the overall system. I have found a few tutorials on the Net on how to connect this particular charger to a computer and will need to adapt it to the Raspberry Pi. So far, I am just making sure that the Rapsberry Pi can run all day all night all the time and not “burn” too much of the power from the battery.

Would also like to experiment with the ideal angle the solar panels should be. At the moment, I have laid them flat on the top of the roof structure. With a bit of browsing, it seems that I could improve the efficiency by having them angled at 40 to 50 degres and facing south, this might not be practical for my particular setup but it would be interesting to see how much more energy I could extract by changing those parameters.

Another long term project.

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Flowers from the Garden

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

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Incent Box

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I made these following a “shopping day” of my wife and sister-in-law. As they came back from what was a “modest” shopping spree, they shared what they had bought and all the good bargains, including some incent sticks.

The shop (Selfridges) was displaying the incent in a nice box, but the cost of it was eye-watering. The brand is Fornasetti. The incent itself was quite expensive as well. Selfridges sells the incent for £45 and the box for £145 !, sounds a bit expensive for something that is just going to burn in smoke… So they decided to buy a single set of incent betwen the two of them and did not buy the fancy box.

As I was told the story in the evening, it came to me that I should try to make a “fancy” box myself.

I found a nice picture, similar to the one used on the “real” box and designed a simple box that would fit the size of the incent sticks.

I adjusted the picture for size and converted it to black and white so that it would engrave on the laser machine.

The assembly is very easy as long as you take time to make sure the top will fit appropriately with the bottom. Using wood glue allows for some adjustment time and once sanded the wood grain is beautiful. I have now made a few with a couple of different picture designs and my preferred is the ones that are simply made of plain wood.

This is another project that would be a great school project for kids of all ages. The design of the box on the 3D Cad system is reasonably easy and can be done with free tools like Onshape or others. Most schools will have laser cutters in their main workshop. The amount of wood used for making these boxes is reasonable and you can optimise the space used in the laser to “cut” two boxes at the same time.

For sure, buying a laser cutter to make wooden boxes to avoid buying expensive ones in the shop is not a good business decision…but the skills that you learn are so much more valuable.

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test 2

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

[socialfeed id=’1801′]

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Helping a friend

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

I struggled with the laser to create this “easy” project.

The aim is to create a template for soldering a train set “catenaire”. This is made of brass parts that require precise soldering. The wood template allows for the parts to be put inside small track before being soldered together.

We started creating an Autocad Inventor file and exporting the “faces” as usual. Unfortunately this would create some faulty files which the laser could not understand. Some parts needed vector cutting and others engraving. The engraving could not be done because the DXF file created by autocad inventor was creating conflicts of overlaps and non-closed loops.

I initially discounted the use of a JPG because of the requirement for precise sizing of various part on the template in mm or sub-mm.

After many trials and errors, including the creation of a file on the CNC router X-Carve. I just reverted to the JPG method and sized the file inside the lasercut software. Although it was not as “elegant”, it got the part done which sometimes is the only thing that really counts.

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Quadcopter Legs

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Olivier Dehon

As I was building the new Discovery Pro quadcopter, I realised that it would be better if it had longer legs to accommodate for the fact that the camera tilting mechanism would hit the ground during setup.

Also, it seems like a good idea as well for any rough landing in high grass.

I searched the internet a little and found a nice design that seemed to fit the bill. Also, it would allow me to use the laser cutter. My favourite tool.

I replicated the design using autocad inventor and then exported the face to a DXF file which I then open in the lasercut 5.3. I then send the file to the laser for cutting. Simply position the 3mm plywood at the right level and hit @START@…

I then attached the legs using some zip ties