This dish I cooked up is like a risotto with a combination of spice,  savoury and tang.  The rice takes on the flavours of the spices and vegies.

Savoury Chilli Chicken with Capsicum and Snow Peas

Ingredients

1/2 diced onion

1 small diced tomato

1/4 diced red capsicum

4 Buk choy leaves chopped

3 Broccoli flower heads

Lemon (optional)

Handful of diced snow peas

Crushed corn flakes

Sauces: Chilli, Tomato, Balsamic Vinegar, Hot Peri Peri, Worcestishire 

Method

Part A – The vegies

- Combine all the vegies above into a rice cooker and fill with water, enough to cover the vegies.

- Add a generous amount of tomato sauce to the vegies.  Stir.

- Add a generous dash of hot Peri Peri sauce.  Stir.

- Add a dash of Chilli sauce.  Stir.

- Microwave for about 5 minutes on high.

Part B – The rice

- Add a generous amount of olive oil to a wok/fry pan.

- Add a generous amount of Worcestishire sauce, proportional to the amount of olive oil.

- Add a small amount of Balsamic vinegar.

- Drain the water and sauces from the vegies into the fry pan/wok. This serves as our stock for cooking the rice.

- Pour a desired quantity of rice into the fry pan. Generally the water should cover the rice by about a centimetre or two.

- Fry the rice until most of the water has evaporated (see below). Be sure to stir the rice when there is little water left to prevent overcooking.

- Once the rice looks to be ready split the rice to one side of the pan and add in your vegies:

- Cook the vegies on that side of the pan for awhile (5 minutes or so) and then mix into the rice.

- Continue cooking until most of the water has evaporated and the rice has a good crispy and clumpy consistency (ensure it isn’t soggy). At this stage we cook our chicken.

Part C – The Chicken

- Chop the chicken fillet into bite size peices

- In a separate pan, lighlty cover with olive oil.

- Place the chopped up chicken into the pan and cook until the chicken turns white. Drain any fat.

- When the chicken becomes white pour more olive oil in,  such that the chicken is half covered in oil. This assists to add flavour to the chicken.

- Add a dash of chilli sauce to each chicken peice and let it simmer for a couple minutes.

- Once the chicken starts turning golden brown, sprinkle with crushed corn flakes.

- Continue until cooked.

Part D – Serving

- Serve the vegies and rice first onto a large plate.

- Place the chicken on top and add a dash of lemon if desired.

- Garnish with a fresh lettuce leaf.

- Enjoy with a Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot.

Just cooked this up and it turned out pretty good. It’s a nice spicy dish with a bit of tang and zest!

Spicy Tomato and Lemon Fish

1. Lay out a sheet of tinfoil and place the following ingredients on it (preferably in order).

• 3 fillets of your choice of fish.
• 1 Garlic, diced and then crushed. Place on the fish.
• 1 Tomato sliced and positioned around the fish.
• Sprinkle the tomato with black pepper.
• Squeeze half a lemon over the fish and place it on top to add flavour during the cooking.
• Add a dash of hot Peri Peri sauce.

2. Wrap tin foil around the ingredients to seal in the flavour.

3. Place in an oven dish and bake for 20 minutes at 200c.

4. Serve on a large plate, opening the tinfoil and wrapping it across the edges of the plate.

5. Enjoy with a glass of smooth red.

6. Finish with dark chocolate.

I thought I would share with my readers how to climb a palm tree… considering my newfound experience over the past few days

1. Firstly, it’s very important to toughen up your feet… so walk around barefoot for a week or two.
2. Once the soles of your feet are ready for the challenge… approach the tree carefully
3. On approaching the tree, wrap your arms around it.
4. While holding on, jump off the ground and put your feet (bare) on the tree… at this stage you should look sorta like you’re squatting
5. Now we’re on the tree, slide your arms up again and whilst on the tree jump and move your feet up
6. Repeat.

As a perfect example, please refer to below:

In the time where I should have been coding, my creative procrastination has led me yet again to something perhaps more useful than what I learn at uni. In my previous article I went through how to setup access to a homeserver through a dynamic dns service. This is all well and good but you are using one of their subdomains for access. What if you want to use your own top level domain name (i.e. mydomain.com) to host your website?

It’s quite easy to do. Here is one way I found to achieve it (of course there may be better ways):

1. Setup a port 80 redirect using No-IP

Most home ISP plans block incoming port 80 which is the default port for viewing web pages. To workaround this, you can setup a port 80 redirect. This means that when someone accesses your domain name, it redirects to another port such as 8080 which isn’t blocked. To do this you can use No-IP (refer to my previous article on how to install this). Simply add a host, add a domain name (in the example below myhost.hopto.org) and the port to redirect to (most likely 8080 as this is the alternate HTTP port).

2. Forward your top level domain name to the No-IP domain name

Now how this is done will depend on your domain registry management tools. I use GoDaddy so i simply open the domain name and forward it to my No-IP domain name. For example:

3. Enable masking on your top level domain name

Your domain provider should enable you to apply masking. Masking allows you to customise the title of the page and the metadata and it is important if you want your site’s address to remain in the title bar (instead of the no-ip address showing after the redirect).

4. Forward port 8080 on your router

We need to forward port 8080 so that people can access your website. To forward port 8080 on your router, have a read of the guide for your router at portforward . If you’re using Windows Firewall, you will need to make an exception as well. Read Microsoft’s guide here. You will need to allow port 8080.

5. Setup your website on IIS

Finally, to run your website you need to use something like Internet Information Services (IIS) to act as a webserver. Read this article to learn how to setup IIS and get your website up and running. And we’re done.

It’s something that’s been on my mind for awhile and I haven’t had the time to get it setup but thanks to Adam, who’s continual delving into the technology undergrounds forced me to compete, I have enhanced my previously simplistic home server.

I’d like to run through how to setup your home computer so you can access it from anywhere. One of the big problems for most is the fact that you have a dynamic IP address, which changes regularly and therefore you can’t really point a domain name to the IP address as it will later change and render it useless.

1. Setup your server to use a Dynamic DNS Service

To overcome this you can use a free dynamic DNS service such as no-ip or dyndns . These sites require you to install a simple application on your server which then notifies their DNS when your IP has changed. No-IP is the service I am using and it seems to work well. Basically, you register an account and then under “Hosts/Redirects”, add your IP address of your server (if you are using your server to create the account, this will show automatically) and assign a name to it. Select the first radio button “DNS Host (A)” as per the screen shot below:

2. Installing the Dynamic DNS update tool

After you have done this, you’ll need to install the application on your server from here. After installation open the application and click the edit button to login:

If your server has been successfully updated to No-IPs DNS, then you’ll see the server appear in the list and a smiley face. At this stage, you have successfully setup your server to be accessed from the domain name you selected but you won’t be able to do anything so now we have to get your server applications going!

2. Allow applications access and forwarding your ports

If you want to run server applications, such as vibeStreamer (to access your music anywhere), an FTP server (to access your files), the uTorrent web interface (for your torrents), or a web server (to run a web applications using IIS), you will need to forward the ports on your router and allow access on any firewall software you may have. All of these applications have certain port numbers that they require to be open to allow communication. It should be easy enough to find these port numbers within the settings of the applications or by googling. To forward your ports on your router, have a read of the guide for your router at portforward . If you’re using Windows Firewall, you will need to make exceptions as well. Read Microsoft’s guide here. You will need to allow the application and also add an exception for the port number (the same as when you port forwarded on your router).

Once this is done, you should be able to access your server apps from your chosen domain name. An example of how you may access vibestreamer for example:

http://myserver.hopto.org:8081/

With any luck, that should work.

Next challenge: ISA Server