I had a big Mac. Didn't take a pic.
^Did you need to get that off your chest?
^^ i had a burger today. Looked nothing like advertised though
And a homemade hotdog
The wife's been spending a lot of time with her sick mum lately... still, every silver lining has a cloud... it meant I've been cooking a lot this week.
Steak and kidney pie, chips and beans a couple of nights ago... (the bladdy convection oven packed up last night, so we've a real problem for next week).
I used the 'livening up a shite meal with a glass of wine' technique...
And tonight really was a blokes effort... the gardener made me this chicken in a tomato and onion sauce kind of thing. It was remarkably similar to the mackerel sauce last week... I'm starting to think he's a one sauce gardener. But anyway, some bread out the freezer and boil up some peas... and I was away!
And then... my favourite nights... just me and the daughter. An early night with a picnic in bed!
Small ice cream for me, real cheddar from Cheddar included! Would have been perfect if I'd remembered to butter the bread and put some pickle on the plate!
Are you trying to appease them? Might as well drown your plate with peas as well. I mean I would smash that dog anytime but man with all the beans these soap dodgers post up here it is your duty as an American to avoid them at all costs.
I went to dinner with my aunt and had a massive meatball sub but forgot to take a pic.
Pork and beans bro.
If this makes you feel any better, beans are better with dinner..
Campbell's pork and beans were served in my house as a kid.
Last edited by aging one; 05-02-2020 at 05:52 PM.
OK thanks ya but I only eat them in the summer with BBQ. I would never ever consider them a legit side dish. I get what you did with the dog and the beans that is American and they couldn't possibly understand the way that we use beans in their origin country.
Well because the soap dodgers have no idea what a real BBQ is and how to properly use a off road vehicle.
Homemade Chinese Chips and Curry Sauce
Dump a 1Kg bag of frozen oven chips on an oven tray (I went for crinkle cut just to be a bit fancy)
Add one pack of Golden Curry sauce blocks to 500ml of water
Heat up the sauce while the chips are roasting in the oven
Put half the chips on a plate
Pour half the sauce over the chips et viola!
Microwave the remaining chips and sauce tomorrow!
Bloketastic!
^I hope you sparked up a blunt while that was cooking
That curry sauce is way too runny.
Have a bash at this Loopy
Homemade chip shop curry sauce – Easy Cheesy Vegetarian
Or just buy a packet of readymade chip shop curry sauce.
^It is weird you should say that Dill since I found the second days batch much better than the first.
The sauce had set overnight into a kind of solid gel.
I had to mash it up and add more water but even then it was still thick as fook with tonnes of artificial chemical thickener!
I did a bowl serving for the second batch. Even the chips were yummier than days one since 2 cooking sessions with the 2nd being microwave made them more mushy.
^ I do see the appeal there but....
I always thought those little lumps were potato.
Fuck entering a Chinese nowadays
Reading this in the Sunday Times this morning (Jeremy Clarkson in the Magazine section) immediately brought this to mind. I'll try and cut/paste it as The Times has a paywall.
Cooking with Jeremy Clarkson: no‑nonsense recipes from the renowned gastronome
When I was a small boy, we’d eat out once a year, always at the Berni Inn in Doncaster. The choices were not extensive. To start, it was either grapefruit juice or pineapple juice, and then it was breaded plaice or steak. Mind you, customers were able to choose how they’d like their meat cooked. For an hour. Or for much, much longer. The vegetables, meanwhile, went into the pot when you booked the table.
I knew this was wrong, even when I was only six, because my dad was a fanatical cook. He would cook for people all day. He cooked for the postman. He cooked for the women who worked for my mum in the barn at the bottom of the garden. And when he ran out of people to cook for, he’d make elaborate cakes for the birds
Plain sailing: growing up near Doncaster, Clarkson enjoyed the simple meals his father would prepare, such as tripe in milk sauce
He would rise at six so he could start cooking and I still yearn for some of the things he made. Tripe in a simple milk sauce, especially. And his roasted heart was one of the cornerstones of my childhood. Alongside Mungo Jerry, being bullied and the hedgehog-print jeans my mum made for me because Levi’s were too expensive. And which were the root cause of much of the bullying.
Later, in my teens, he would take me to London occasionally, and we’d go to a restaurant at 235 King’s Road, which was called 235 King’s Road. Or an Italian place on the Earls Court Road called Il Palio, where Bruno the owner and his chef would have furious rows all night long. And then at lunchtime, he’d take me to a place he knew in Marylebone for a salt beef sandwich.
Later, as my mum’s business started to become more successful, we’d go to San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place and Odin’s, which belonged to Peter Langan. And I didn’t like the food they cooked because it wasn’t plain. It wasn’t simple. It wasn’t tripe in a milk sauce. It wasn’t roast heart.
Much later, AA Gill did his best to make me understand food and cooking. He would take me to places where the rabbit tasted like bacon and the pigeon like ham, and he would swoon and kiss the chef on the mouth. And I’d stare wistfully at my pigeon, thinking, “If I’d wanted something that tasted like ham, I’d have ordered ham.”
This is why I despise all provincial restaurants today. And please don’t write to tell me about a place your daughter-in-law has just opened in Penrith, because I won’t like that either. In restaurants outside London, it’s always about the chef’s ability to create a visual taste sensation. No one’s allowed to talk. You are expected to sit there in reverential silence, marvelling at how the single piece of cress is a perfect accompaniment for the bubbles in the broth.
And it’s bollocks. When I go out to eat, it’s because I can’t be arsed to do the washing-up. I want exactly what I’d make at home, only without the faff of making it. Shepherd’s pie. Spaghetti bolognaise. Lamb chops with new potatoes. And no effing sauce. I also don’t want a new concept, where I order 876 little things and then share them all with the people on the table by the loo. Or plates made from wood, or metal. I swear to God, restaurants that do this always provide cutlery that you can’t hold properly, so you can’t stab the waiter.
What a whopper: Clarkson lovingly cradles a marrow grown in the new kitchen garden at his 1,000-acre farm in Oxfordshire
What I hate most of all, though, is travelling with film crews. Because when we are abroad, they treat food as fuel. Which means we never walk the streets looking for the sort of restaurant that does home cooking well. They just eat whatever is provided at the hotel, which is almost always like the sort of food you get in Birmingham.
Nicola Formby — aka the Blonde made famous by AA Gill’s reviews — is always suggesting little places in back streets that do great gnocchi on a bed of lightly killed rattlesnake, but I don’t want that. I want simple. I had roast grasshoppers in Cambodia and Burma and they were terrific. I had a trout, plucked from the stream next to my table in Croatia, and then grilled. And that was even better. But the absolute best food I’ve ever eaten was a bruschetta in Bologna. Bread. Olive oil. Tomatoes. Basil, probably, and maybe some balsamic vinegar. I can’t be sure because after smoking half a million cigarettes, my taste buds have the sensitivity of steel. All I knew is they were really good tomatoes on a really nice piece of bread.
I can add another couple of things to this list of culinary triumphs. The chicken pho by a chef called Ms No at the Six Senses Con Dao island resort off Vietnam. And the Denny’s breakfast experience in any of those Reacher towns in the red bits of America.
If you break a perfectly poached egg, and in Denny’s the poached eggs are always perfect, onto their hash browns, I swear you end up with a taste sensation that would stop Jesus in his tracks. I have searched the world for hash browns made the Denny’s way, but when they’re offered, the chef has always suffused them with his own twist. By which I mean “ruined them”.
I have a similar global quest to find a better eggs benedict than the one I was given at the then Regent Hotel in Hong Kong, back in 1988. So far, it’s no dice. No one gets the simplicity right. Simplicity is always the key to my enjoyment of food. It’s why, when I cook, I never use cheese unless what I’m making is cheese on toast or a cheese sandwich. This is because cheese is a powerful flavour that sits in the pan like the Russian president sits in a room full of diplomats from former Soviet states. It’s the same story with bacon. Pop that into the mix and what you always end up with is something that tastes of bacon.
“Are you not getting the delicate hints of pomegranate?”
“Nope. Just bacon.”
Clarkson is on a quest for simplicity
All of which takes me back to my dad’s roast heart. I sometimes look online for how this might be made and what I get is “roasted ox heart stuffed with a mushroom duxelle” or “beef heart braised in wine” or “lamb’s heart stuffed with lemon thyme and streaky bacon”. No. And then no again.
And nor can you serve them with a Dover sole so you have the chance for a jokey “Heart and Sole” offering in the menu. I just want heart. I like the taste of it as it is. I like the texture and all I want added is a spoonful of mashed potato to mop up the blood.
I’ve just started an internet thing called FoodTribe, on which people can share thoughts and ideas on food. And I’m going to be sharing this quest for simplicity a lot. I may even go further and start turning the stuff I grow on my farm into straightforward food that I can sell in my simple, straightforward, unheated shop.
As I write, I have three sheep that are due to go “down the road”. I feel sad in some ways, but I’m cheered by the fact that I can have their hearts. And even more cheered by the fact that I’ve accidentally grown 20 tons of potatoes. It’s going to be a supper that makes me feel young again and it will be the first I’ve grown entirely by myself.
Yes. I started a kitchen garden earlier this year and have spent the past few months taking a weird pride that the spring onions, and the carrots and the peas and especially the golden beets, all of which were grown by my own . . . ability to tell girlfriend, Lisa, and gardener, Josh, exactly what I like.
I don’t know why we enjoy eating vegetables that we’ve grown ourselves more than those grown by some disinterested Mexican on minimum wage. Maybe it’s because we know we haven’t urinated on them. Or because we know that no carbon was burnt in their trip from the soil to our table. But whatever the reason, we do. And I cannot wait to do that with meat as well. It’s simplicity in its purest form.
Lamb chops and new potatoes
INGREDIENTS
Sheep
New potatoes
Butter
Bisto granules
01 Kill a sheep. Remove its chops. Place the chops in the top right-hand oven of your Aga.
02 Call Aga and ask them to send a man round to fix it.
03 Throw away the chops.
04 One month later, after the man has been, kill another sheep and place its chops in the top right-hand oven.
05 Peel the new potatoes. It’s lazy to keep the skins in place and it’s not healthy because the potatoes will have been drenched in glyphosate.
06 Do not be impatient. Wait until the potatoes are properly cooked before draining the water. Put them on a plate and add a knob of butter.
07 Remove the chops from the oven. Realise you should have done that sooner as chops cook faster than potatoes. But put them on the plate anyway and eat. If you wish, enliven this simple dish by adding three heaped tablespoons of Bisto granules to half a pint of boiling water. Then pour in the fat from the chops so it looks like you made the gravy yourself.
McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestives
INGREDIENTS
McVitie’s Dark Chocolate
Digestives
Tea
01 Go to the shop.
02 Buy a packet of McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestives, then bring them home.
03 Open the packet and remove two. Serve with a cup of tea.
04 Eat two more as the tea cools. Put what’s left in a cupboard. Start your tea. Go back to the cupboard and get three more biscuits, or four.
05 Finish your tea and take the mug to the sink.
06 While there, open the cupboard and finish off the biscuits. Write “McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestives” on your shopping list.
Pheasant breast
INGREDIENTS
Pheasant
Horseradish sauce
Bread roll
01 Shoot a pheasant, being careful to hit it in the face.
02 Lay the dead bird on its back and place your feet on its outstretched wings. Grab its legs and pull firmly but smoothly.
03 Say, “Are you sure this is correct?” but keep going because, eventually, the bird’s breasts will emerge from its anus.
04 Throw away what remains and place the breasts on a grill above the open fire that you’re bound to be huddled round anyway.
05 Roast for half an hour, turning occasionally, and serve with a bit of creamed horseradish sauce in a bread roll.
Pork and pepper pasta
INGREDIENTS
Pig
Chilli-infused olive oil
Shell pasta
Mushrooms
Green peppers
Onion
Bottom-breaking chillies
Plain flour
Oxo cube
Milk
01 Kill a pig. Remove its tenderloin. Chop into cubic inches and heat in a pan you’ve smeared with chilli-infused olive oil.
02 Add some shell pasta to a pan of salted boiling water.
03 Dice some mushrooms, some green peppers, half an onion and a couple of those small bottom-breaking chillies. Add the whole lot to the meat.
04 Stir it all about.
05 Sprinkle some plain flour and an Oxo cube into the pan when the meat is cooked. Add a splash of boiling water and stir until it starts to thicken.
06 Add a cup of milk. After it all starts to bubble, remove the pasta from the water and add that too. Stir and serve. Everyone will think you’re very clever.
Marrow
INGREDIENTS
Marrow
Milk
01 Peel the marrow.
02 Cut it in half.
03 Scoop out all the seeds and that stringy stuff.
04 Chop what remains into cubic inches.
05 Place the cubes in a pan of salted boiling water.
06 Wait until they are soft, then drain the water.
07 Do not eat the marrow as it will be hotter than the surface of the sun.
08 Place the cubes in a colander so that this vast heat can dissipate.
09 About 30 minutes later, grind some black pepper onto what’s left and eat.
10 Rush to the fridge for a glass of milk because you won’t have waited long enough and now your mouth’s on fire.
Radishes
INGREDIENTS
Radishes
01 Build a bed out of oak planks and fill with topsoil.
02 Plant radishes — go for a peppery variety.
03 Wait about four weeks.
04 Pick a radish.
05 Remove leaves and wash it.
06 Eat immediately. Any delay at all and it will taste like the insipid radishes you get from a supermarket.
Chicken pho
INGREDIENTS
128 different herbs and spices*
Chicken
Rice noodles
Star anise
Cardamom pods
Cloves
Coriander seeds
Garlic
Onion
Beansprouts
Mushrooms
Insane chillies
Bok choi
*The proper recipe requires 128 different herbs and spices, none of which will be available in any shop, unless you live in Notting Hill. If you do not live in Notting Hill, don’t worry as pho is street food, so you can pretty much do what you like. This is my suggestion
01 Kill a chicken, pluck it and boil what remains in a pan of salted water for two hours.
02 Remove the chicken and, after it has cooled down a bit, tear all the flesh off the bones. Pour the water through a strainer into a pot and let it simmer for an hour.
03 While that’s happening, soak some rice noodles in bowl of cold water.
04 In a dry pan, cook some star anise, cardamom pods (Notting Hill only), cloves and coriander seeds for 2 minutes. Remove from the pan and add them to the chicken stock.
05 Throw away the garlic you bought because it will make your breath smell afterwards. Chop up an onion and add that to the stock, then leave for 30 minutes. Pour the stock through a strainer to remove what you put in half an hour ago. No idea why.
06 Add beansprouts, mushrooms, some insane chillies and some bok choi (don’t be alarmed — it’s really nice).
07 Remove the rice noodles from the cold water and add them to the broth. Simmer for four minutes.
08 Place the meat you tore from the bone into a bowl and cover with the broth.
09 Eat, and while doing so, wonder why anyone ever cooks anything else.
Cabbage and breadcrumbs
INGREDIENTS
Cabbage
White bread
Butter
01 Go into your garden and pick a cabbage. The pale sort. Not the winter cabbage, which is used for making gym people feel self-righteous.
02 Wash away the mud.
03 Cut off the leaves and chop them into pieces about the size of a stamp.
04 Boil the stamps for about 10 minutes.
05 While this is happening, crumble up a slice of white bread. Brown bread has difficult political connotations you need to avoid. Toast the crumbs in a dry pan over a low heat.
06 Strain the water from the cabbage and add an enormous knob of butter. Then a bit more for good measure. Let the butter dribble all over the cabbage and then sprinkle on the toasted breadcrumbs.
Shepherd’s pie
INGREDIENTS
Sheep
Olive oil
Onion
Carrot
Potatoes
Beer
Tomato purée
Butter
Milk
Ideal for when known vegetarians are coming round for supper
01 Murder a sheep. Mince up its innards and place in a frying pan with a few splashes of olive oil and a chopped-up onion.
02 Chop up a carrot sideways and put it in a pan of boiling water. Peel four big potatoes. Chop into four and put them in boiling water too.
03 Open a bottle of beer and enjoy the contents while you stir the mince and onion. Then have another.
04 When the carrot is soft, drain and add to the mince. Squirt tomato purée into the mix until everything becomes sort of red.
05 Drain the potatoes when they are soft and mash them. Then keep on mashing them until there are no lumps. Add a huge knob of butter and a cup of milk and stir. Then place what results on top of the mince and carrots.
06 Put under the grill until the potato starts to go brown.
07 Later, when your vegetarian guest says he, or more likely she, is happy to eat just the vegetables, scoop a bit of potato off the top and give her that. Then eat the rest yourself.
^ The longest post ever?
I thought it was a decent article.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)