Knife 'n' Spork

New York Street Food: Korilla BBQ

2011-10-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

So if you read this article the other day, maybe Korilla BBQ would have caught your eye. I happened to be near where they park their truck on Mondays, and I had their bulgogi burrito one week and their pork tacos (below) the next. Korilla, according to their story, is “a portmanteau of Korean and Grill.” Yeah, kind of. Except what’s the a doing on the end? As far as I was concerned, it was about a gorilla, maybe a Korean one, but their mascot appears to be a slightly angry version of Tony the Tiger. According to Wikipedia, “the tiger replaces the lion as King of Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, representing royalty, fearlessness, and wrath.” OK, fine, and I guess that explains the cartoon tiger’s scowl. It doesn’t explain why you get Korean BBQ served inside a burrito or tacos, but that’s kind of besides the point. What matters is that it/they are delicious. The burrito’s kind of small for $7, but actually I don’t even know what $7 is worth anymore. That was a lot of money for lunch when I was a lad, but it seems pretty normal in New York now, and it is good, though not a patch on Luardo’s on Whitecross Street in London. It’s fun to get kimchi in a burrito, and the sticky rice and bulgogi were delicious, but I just missed the black beans and guacamole. The tacos, on the other hand, were outstanding. You get three of them, and they are double-wrapped to make sure they don’t disintegrate under the weight of all the meat and goodies you get on top. That thing on the left is a spicy and delicious pickle – it’s huge! These tacos aren’t enormous either (about two big bites each) but they’re extremely satisfying. If the orange van with the tiger and the dudes who all talk like Leo Fatzpatrick from Kids while they blast trance music under an overpass and treat your lunch like a new designer drug that’s going to blow your puny mind and the three tacos for $7 came by once a week, I’d definitely eat there often.

The van:

The tacos:

Really good.

Wedding vs Ottolenghi

2011-08-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

Some very dear friends of ours got married recently, and some of us were lucky enough to be invited. So we went. And lo, it was nice. But before that, Lucy and I went to Ottolenghi with some other friends - huzzah!

Lucy tucked into a suitably mustardy welsh rarebit, topped with a poached egg so handsome it should have been a European prince, accompanied by some kale. It didn't last long...

Naturally, I went for the biggest thing on the breakfast/brunch menu - the cannellini bean stew, featuring some pretty ace chorizo n bacon, plonked seductively atop some white toast and served with yet another amazing egg (fried), accompanied by (and this was the selling point) some bastardly brilliant black pudding! Yes!

Obviously, we had a pretty good time. And so did our brunch companions, Willow and Anders, who definitely ate things, I just don't remember what they were. But just look at their pretty faces - does it look like they're not having a good time?

Exactly. Ottolenghi, we salute you. Oh, and Sam and Helena - congratulations x

Bhajis that look like mythical beasts: 4

2011-08-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

The saga continues:

(Hint: it’s asleep.)

Dirty Breakfast

2011-07-13T14:48:00.001-07:00

One of our number is getting married soon, and on his stag we made sure that there were a minimum of 2 eggs per person per day, with equal amounts sausages and bacon. Sunday recovery mode:

English mustard on everything is the way forward...

It happened again...

2011-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

So I'm 'Home Alone' again. And, once I'd finished crafting ingenious booby-traps and slapping my hands across my face in an adorable fashion, it was time to make myself another stupid dinner.
Todays lonesome feast consisted of an eight sausage toad-in-the-hole, served with roasted potatoes and leeks cooked with garlic and fennel, together with a red wine and mushroom gravy.
Pretty low key for a one-man-meal I'd say.
This evening's meal was sponsored by several episodes of Deadwood (the finest TV show ever made - fact) and, of course, 'red wine'. Super.

Strangely Soft Focus Supper

2011-06-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

So everyone went out without me. Again. As usual, I took my revenge by having an awesome dinner all to myself. Take that, fun-havers!

Clams with pine-nut and garlic picada, oysters rockefeller, and home made french fries.

Not as beige as it looks cheese selection with super sticky onion relish.

Throw in half a bottle of pink wine, half a bottle of red wine, and a book about Caribbean politics in the sixties, you've got yourself a party. At least it's what I call a party. A very quiet party.

Happy Midsommar!

2011-06-21T14:52:00.001-07:00

Today is my favorite day of the year. I wish I were celebrating in Sweden. Since I’m not, I tried to find some appropriate food, but I don’t like herring and there were no meatballs or salmon or new potatoes to be had, so I settled for venison-and-wild-boar sausages and one of my favorite beers, Nils Oscar’s God Lager (good lager):

...

Happy BoomBloomsday!

2011-06-16T07:05:00.001-07:00

This was my lunch:

Roast beef sandwich with a Yorkshire pudding as the bun (yes there was horseradish).

Scotch egg as big as my fist:

With a still-runny yolk. So. Good. All the odd things people pick up for food.

Bhajis that look like Delicious Burger Pub!

2011-06-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, though I have been continuing to assiduously snap pics of bhajis on my lunch break, perhaps we’ll give that a rest for a bit...

The other week I ate this:

Everything about this burger was delicious, from the bun to the chips. And look what it had inside it!

These were not mushrooms from a tin. No, they were lovingly sautéed for my delectation.

I’d spent the entire three-day weekend painting the same two rooms (ineptly) and was in no mood to cook. This was exactly what I wanted. Cosy pub, delicious food, good ale ... what more do you want? They even have rooms above the pub if you can’t face going home.

The Rose and Crown, Stoke Newington

Bhajis that look like (mythical) beasts: 3

2011-05-29T03:56:00.001-07:00

Ankylosaurus?

Wolverine?

Awesome?

Bhajis that look like mythical beasts: 2.5

2011-05-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

OK, it’s not a bhaji, but it’s still pretty cool:

And, check this out:

Eh? Eh? Yeah, I thought so.

Wow. Who knew lunch could be this much fun?

Bhajis that look like mythical beasts: 2

2011-05-10T14:19:00.001-07:00

The second in a series.

Bhajis that look like mythical beasts: 1

2011-05-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

The first in a series.

A Birthday Night Out

2011-03-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

What feels like a billion years ago, but is actually just a couple of months, Scott and I went out to celebrate his birthday. Why it's taken this long to say anything about it, I'm not sure, but as it was one of the best evenings ever we wanted to share it, even if this is now ridiculously overdue.

Thanks to the wonderful world of twitter and some very hearty recommendations, we finally arrived at our choice of resturant, and a tip for a place to have a pre-dinner drink.

So, we started the evening at the excitingly secretive Whitelock & Grace, a fantastic new addition to Bristol's drinking establishments located next to Clifton Down railway station. They do serve other drinks, but our priority was trying out their exciting cocktail menu, which is both reasonably priced and tasty delicious. A double whammy of greatness. To top it off, they're really friendly and chilled out. We were sad to leave after a fairly short stay, but also very excited to move on to the eating section of the evening, especially as we had booked a table at Flinty Red, a hop, skip and jump over Whiteladies Road to Cotham Hill.

An evening of delicious food and wine ensued - we decided to push the boat out and enjoy several courses. In fact, one of the best things about Flinty Red is that there is a range of sizes of course and you can have some dishes in different sizes. The other best thing about it (apart from the delicious food) is that Flinty Red is co-run by the wine merchants of the always excellent Corks of Cotham (just up the road) - going to a restuarant where you are happy to ask for wine recommendations, nay, seek them out, was a new and extremely pleasing experience. And let's just say, they knocked it out of the park everytime.

Amazing goat curd, quince, celery leaf and walnut salad - great combination of textures and flavours

We enjoyed many foodie delights. To start we shared Anchovy toast (fishy and buttery deliciousness) and grilled monkfish liver (delicately cooked and served with spring onion which nicely balanced the richness of the fish), which was accompanied by a glass of Lambrusco (a discovery we made before Christmas at Corks) for Scott and a glass of Weisser Burgander for me. We then moved on to Innes Goat Curd w. quince, celery leaves & walnuts for me (which I think was actually my favourite, such a perfect combination) and gnocchi with rabbit for Scott. The carafe of Massaya went very well with both. After our middle course we had another, consisting of veal onglet (Scott) and chesnut & squash ravioli (me) for a main course (annoyingly I cannot remember the name of what we drank, but it was excellent - a red, but not too dark or rich). Then came the cheese, a rich and creamy Bleu des Causses with quince jelly and a good strength and piquancy of blueness, washed down with a glass of Negromara. Seeing as we'd come this far, we said yes to pudding and ended the meal with Affogato with PX (the ice cream was maple & walnut)....not to mention a nightcap (or two) at our new friends, Whitelock & Grace. The hangover the next day was definitely worth it.

Bloody Salad

2011-03-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Right. At the risk of sounding like the biggest tool in the toolbox, I am writing this blogpost on an iPhone. Which means: a) I'm so cool and b) This post is like tuning in to Knife 'n' Spork LIVE. Like we're actually living in the freaking future or something.

Anyway, here's the salad that we're troughing for lunch RIGHT NOW. I'm actually putting the phone down and eating a forkful between each sentence. That was a good one. The salad is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty easy to make: blood oranges (like, soooo seasonal), watercress, feta, pistachios, croutons on top and a dressing made from the orange juice and olive oil. Last forkful. Good. Now I'm off to make love to a robot. All hail the future.

A day trip.

2011-02-24T10:35:00.000-08:00

A little over a week ago I went to visit my good friend and fellow Sporkmeister (you bet I wrote that) Bob in little old London town. Bob will have you believe that he eats only biscuits and, having seen the inside of his fridge, I can confirm that this is frighteningly true. Why hasn't he died yet? Lord only knows. Anyhoo, while I was around, I made him stuff his big face like any normal person would, and I think he enjoyed it. The highlight of the weekend started off on a trip to Brick Lane and a visit to the endlessly awesome Beigel Bakery. If you've never been there, you're wasting your life. Exhibits A and B:

After all that excitement, it wasn't long before I needed a drink. And some lunch. I know that for some the bagel itself would've counted as lunch, but still. In the words of Gordon Gekko: Greed is Good. And I'm pretty sure he was talking about lunch when he said it too... Right? Anyway, after some shuffling around, we went to the mega-awesome Carpenter's Arms for a refreshing beverage, or five:

The Koestritzer was a new one on me, and I feel like I've made a friend for life. Vedett is always a winner, and it's nice to see things like the Anchor Steam Beer available, especially alongside so many other fine drinks. That Caribbean rum was pretty cheeky too. However, not wanting to let Gordon Gekko down (he wasn't there) we naturally had to have a bit of tuck, and this we did in style. Colchester Oysters, Escargot, and a very fine meat/cheese board were our weapons of choice, and we ate every last bullet. Right down to the, er, handle? I don't know.

Stonking. Even old Biscuity Bob was having a whale of a time. Just look at him:

Ooh, the excitement. This was more food than he'd eaten all month. For real. For his is the wild life. Anyhoo, having dined like greedy fat kings, we toddered on down the road, stopping for drinks hither and thither in our effort to reach a late night whiskey bar who, by the time we got there, wouldn't let us in. Ah London town. You sure are a wild one.

Diary of a morbidly obscene biscuit addict

2011-02-20T05:14:00.000-08:00

4.

I have been going through a wildly experimental phase, pushing the boundaries of biscuit eating to the very limits of time and space. I have been on a supersonic journey and have returned with the following knowledge.

COOKIES ARE THE SAME AS BISCUITS IN THE CONTEXT OF KNIFE & SPORK

Ha! Controversy!

I tried to do a bit of research but stopped after one lazy Google search. Turns out it’s all down to the Americans making biscuits wrong right from the off. When they realised that their versions of biscuits weren’t actually all that nice they had to try again. But they couldn’t call them biscuits, they’d already screwed that up and so the cookie was born.

I am going to claim right, here right now, as a self appointed biscuit expert, that cookies are just big biscuits. Yeah Maryland, you’re not cookies, you’re just biscuits, or by my logic only small cookies, which are called biscuits. So says I. And I reckon I’m right. Right?

Enough of this high-brow biscuit existentialism! To the point!

I have recently got into the terrible habit of buying Sainsbury’s white chocolate & raspberry cookies. Casting my eye over biscuit shelves across the land I must conclude that these are possibly the most unhealthy biscuit items ever. Basically a wonderful combination of soft cookie dough, annihilated raspberries (to ensure no goodness remains) and great globs of white chocolate (the only kind of chocolate that doesn’t actually have any chocolate in it!).

Fig 1. These are they. Bloody gorgeous!

If you could describe any food stuff as being comfortable, it would be these cookies. They are so delightfully soft that I just want to get loads of them and make a cookie bed. I would sleep and nibble in equal quantities. I would be a slothful glutton and a fantastic genius to boot. I would start a church of cookie and biscuit disciples will worship at the altar of the little round baked consumables. I of course would never attend and maintain that wonderful air of mystery, and besides by that point I will need to be crane-lifted out of my cookie bed and you’ll see me on the next series of Britain’s Biggest Loser.

And on a side note, they come in packs of four. Which means you have to eat all four. Preferably one after the other in a violent and rather unpleasant scoffing action.

The Pasta Papers: II

2011-02-17T13:39:00.000-08:00

I would eat pasta every day twice a day for the rest of my life. You know, if I had to. I’m not Stanley Kubrick. Or whoever that director was who ate one dish every single meal until he was sick of it and then switched to another. My memory is failing me and so is the Internet, but I could swear I read it in the New Yorker. So if someone wants to read every issue from about 1996 to 2001 to check, I’d be very grateful.

ANYWAY.

Here is another pasta dish I ate about four months ago but I’d eat it again right this second if the farmers’ market was in town, even though I just had two enormous bowls of pasta and am feeling a bit sick:

Where the heck did those place mats go? It’s like I’m on safari! In my house! Also there are mushrooms.

But not here! Because I ate them all!

So. Insanely. Good.

I really can’t remember what I did, since I just discovered that I ate this meal in September. But I probably sliced some garlic and sautéed it in some olive oil and then chucked in the sliced mushrooms until they were nice and done and then BAM! fresh parsley and lots of black pepper and parmesan. So good.

The Eggpire Strikes Back!

2011-02-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

It happened again. This time I've gone for little tiny quail's eggs, and I lovingly gave each little guy an eggy bath before he was coated in bread crumbs. It made for a crumbier, crunchier, yummier egg all round. There was still some assistance, this time from my mum, as well as time for meat goggles and another losing attempt from Emmett to gain some Scotch goodness. In your face, dogman!

The Triumphant Return of Quality Meats

2011-01-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

On the third of December 2010, I left a butcher's shop with tears in my eyes. This is not a normal occurrence. Having lived in the Bedminster area of Bristol for a number of years, I'd long been a fan of North Street's finest butchers, named for its owner, Bob Wherlock. Quality meats, excellent service, reasonable prices, this was the place to buy your bacon. And then something bad happened.

Bob was retiring. Frank was going too. Fortunately, Ken planned to stay on and help the new owners settle in. At least there would be new owners. The mantle was being passed on, a sad thing, but also a sign that everything was safe. Top notch pork pies could still be had. And bacon. And black pudding by slice. And then something terrible happened.

The deal had fallen through. The handover was due to happen on Saturday the fourth of December, but somehow, on the evening of Thursday the second, the deal had gone sour. One of the new guys was pulling out. The feast was over. I went in that Friday unawares, hoping to buy something for lunch, maybe meet the new guys. After a brief chat with Ken, I came out with as much meat as I could carry, and a damp cheek. And I wasn't the only one. By close of play the next day, the butchers had received dozens upon dozens of cards, gifts, and good wishes from literally hundreds of saddened shoppers.

Christmas deposits were refunded, the shop was cleaned out, the shutters went down.

And then a great thing happened.

All of a sudden, in late January, a small sign went up. Re-opening soon! Then another appeared. re-opening Thursday 27th January! Oh happy day!! Oh dreadful job! I had to wait until today, Saturday, two whole days after it's rebirth before I could get down there and witness it for myself. And thank the lord it was all true. There I was, 8:30 Saturday morning, back in the queue, only to be served by Bob himself, helping out for a spell while the new guys find their feet. And it seems like they're gonna do just fine. Eager, friendly, funny, and with the same great products available, they're gonna fit right in.

In celebration of their return, I treated myself to a slightly comical amount of food. But as an example, have a peek at this picture perfect porterhouse steak, purchased this morning, eaten this lunchtime, together with the note explaining my strange early morning absence.

Sirloin steak, rare, onion rings, fat bread and butter, fresh made Coleman's English mustard.
Shazzam.

Bristol Food Blogs

2011-01-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Since Knife 'n' Spork recently went all technological with a shiny new Twitter account, I thought it might be nice to say something about the nice people we have met (online) through it and share some of the nice Bristol-based Food blogs I have been enjoying as a result.

Blogging about food does seem to be a very popular past time, and in some ways it seems that blogging is an ideal way to share thoughts about food, partly because the internet is such a visual medium (cue lots of lovely pictures of food) and because it is such a democratic medium (anyone with access to a computer can set up a free blog in which to discuss food they have eaten - this is no longer exclusively the province of the newspaper food critic). Best of all, blogs about food present an opportunity to share a passion, and to share knowledge about all things foodie, especially local restaurants, events, markets and so on. We recently benefitted greatly from this local knowledge, as a recent evening out - to superb Bristol restaurant Flinty Red and elegant but out-of-the-way cocktail bar Whitelock & Grace (will be saying more about that trip soon!) - was inspired by local blogs, and then further encouraged by excited comments on Twitter. Strike one for the internet!

So, here is a very short list of some Bristol foodie blogs I have been enjoying so far (and I'm sure this list will rapidly grow, so look out for a follow up post at some point):

Plein Comme un Oeuf - loving the range of recipes (the picture of a cheese scone at the top of this post followed a recent recipe from here, though they weren't as elegant as hers!) and lists.

Bristol Bites - full of ace restuarant reviews and info about food-based deals around Bristol (I wish I could eat out as much!)

Essex Eating - foodie exploits, with recipes and reviews, with very funny accounts of both. Also is co-creator of the Montpelier Basement (surely a new year's resolution)- a new-ish supper club with a rapidly growing reputation - along with Elly of The Pear Cafe, whose posterous also has lovely recipes and some very mouthwatering photos!

There's also What's Hot in Bristol - excellent for local deals and recommendations (like this one of Whitelock and Grace - definitely an influence).

Thanks guys! Looking forward to finding more internet-based foodie peeps....

The Contos

2011-01-16T11:32:00.000-08:00

One of our number has another blog, in which he chronicles meals which include a fried egg on them, it's called 'put an egg on it!'. We noticed early on that one of his favourite places to put an egg is a vegetable stir-fry with noodles. When I first saw this I thought he was flat outta his mind, then I tried it and I realised he is a genius. This dish is now a staple in our household, and in honour of him we call it 'The Contos'. We ate it last friday:

(that isn't a super orange yoke, but a dash of chilli/ginger/garlic sauce - it was gooooood)

Scotch Eggs = Yes

2011-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

So I was obviously going to call this post Scott's Eggs, but all joking aside, it just doesn't sound like something you'd want to eat, does it? Anyhoo, today I made some Scotch eggs for the first time. This was a recipe free event, guided only by the voices in my head, and what I thought seemed right. It's fair to say, they turned out pretty good.

Hard boil some eggs, just long enough that the white won't fall apart when you crack them - about a 7 minute simmer. I did some some nice Free Range Burford Brown-shells, as well as your standard Free Range Oganic Whites. Tasty food comes from happy animals.

Wrap each egg in some wonderful skin-healing sausage meat. I added plenty of salt pepper and thyme, but next go around will see more experimenting with mustard, and hopefully black pudding.

Wrap 'em up, nice 'n' snug.

It's about this time that you'll want to make yourself some nice 'Meat-Goggles'. Don't hold back. You're worth it.

When they're all shapely, roll 'em in some plain flour.

Now you, or your glamorous assistant, can roll those bad boys around in plenty of bread crumbs. We found it best to wet your hands first, dampening the floured balls so you get a better crumb-to-stickyness ration. And yes, that is a technical term. I saw it in a maths book once.

They should now look a bit like this. Tempational.

As you can see from Ben's little man-paws, this isn't all hard work - it can be great fun too!

Once the little beasts are all crumby, put them in some hot-hot oil, and keep it all movin' around for a while.

Be careful not to set yourself on fire, but do cook them evenly. Once they're browning all over, after about 8 minutes, it's time to take those puppies out and let them dry off on some kitchen roll, or a nice thick tea towel if you're feeling wasteful.

If you're as lucky as I was, they'll look as sexy-eggulitious as these.

Yes.

No... Sorry.

And there you have it. I'd like to thank Ben for his assistance in the creation (and eating) of these tasty treats, and Emmett, for not biting my fingers off when he didn't get any.

Egg Porn.

2011-01-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

My Pickled Egg Debut

2011-01-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've always been wary of pickled eggs. While they might be a fairly good flavour of monster munch, I couldn't really get my head round eating a real life one (though probably something to do with my slow start with eggs in general). But having got to like other pickled things - particularly gherkins, which I now adore so much that I wanted to make my own this year (as can be witnessed here) - when Scott made his own pickled eggs, I couldn't really resist. What follows is my mini-exploration of the pickled egg:

Step 1: Scott reliably informs me that pickled eggs should consumed from within a packet of cheese and onion crisps. So, out comes the egg (from its pickling home - full of dill and garlic - in which it has been sat for at least a week)...

Step 2: ... and into the crisps it goes, with a general splash of vinegar to make it feel at home. It sits in here for a few minutes, while I eat at least one half of my sandwhich.

Step 3: I eat the egg, and it turns out it's not as scary as I thought. I particularly enjoyed the extra vinegary crisps and I did quite like the egg. My only criticism is that it was quite dense and eggy, and although I realise this makes me sound like a right wimp, maybe a little bit much for this moi all at once.

So there you have it. A little foray that turned out pretty OK. Wild, huh?

Christmas: over and out

2011-01-04T03:17:00.000-08:00

The festive season was filled with food. Here is just one example of the tasty treats being sampled on Christmas day:

Blinis with soured cream and lumpfish caviar (to accompany present opening, of course).

Pham Sushi Crabathon

2010-12-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

Pham Sushi rules:

Nuff said.

One sick carrot!

2010-11-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

Whether you see some sort of octopus thing (like I do) or the Elephant Man or something else entirely (you’re sick), there is no denying that this is one weird carrot:

I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!

Gross!

Barf!

No, no, it’s awesome.

This year's harvest - part 2

2010-11-08T12:21:00.001-08:00

This is horrendously overdue, considering it's now November, but back in September we picked some stuff we had been growing over the summer. It took a while, but the cucumbers finally got big enough to be used for something.

We also had a nice steady stream of tomatoes during August and September, which generally just got eaten raw or put in a nice and garlicky tomato and vegetable sauce for pasta - we never really had enough to do anything more long term with, but never mind.

Here is our motley assortment of cucumbers, the bulk of our crop (we picked a few more at the end of September, and there were some left on the plants even then but nothing really happened with them as they stopped growing - good to know for next year).

They looked pretty tasty and tempting to eat raw, but they all had the same destiny: the pickle jar. The recipe we followed was taken from the incredible Scandinavian Cookery Bible that I bought whilst on holiday ... I went for the easiest looking recipe, which basically consists of chopping and pouring over a pickling mixture of vinegar, water, salt and sugar.

I had some help with the chopping while I tried to figure out what a 'gill' of water was in UK measurements.

Then the sliced cucumbers were put in clean jars (which had once been the home of store-bought pickled gherkins).

with alternate layers of dill and mustard seed (we added quite a lot more of both than the recipe suggested - just for kicks).

Then the liquid went over the top...

... see how I match the demonstration in the book (!).

And here we have the product of our labours:

I have to admit to being slightly suspicious of the recipe and the mixture's ability to pickle, but I was totally wrong and the end result was better than I could have hoped for - salty and sweet, with a nice bit of residual crunch, and good for anything (I have particularly enjoyed them in cheese sandwiches). We have since pickled some cucumbers bought from the greengrocers (since the first batch didn't last that long). I think they will be a Donaldson fridge staple for a while to come.

I leave you with another good use for home-grown cucumbers: #1 - the false moustache

Ben's Best Cuts

2010-10-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some super tasty pictures from my good friend and illustration-supremo Ben Newman. He's created them for the super market chain Morrisons. Go there. Look at them. Buy meat.

Visit: http://www.bennewman.co.uk/ and http://benhasapencil.blogspot.com/

Images copyright Ben Newman. No pinching.

Man Vs Hotdog

2010-10-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

Stupidest lunch ever.

Very, very tired now...

Put a tortilla chip on it, Dad!

2010-09-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Fatherhood, and the attendant exhaustion from sleep deprivation, can make you do weird things.

Case in point:

Take this delicious Swedish treat. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or as a snack at ANY time of day or night:

DAY: Sunday lunchish. (My breakfast, Dad’s late morning snack. He’d already been up several hours by this point looking after his two babies.)

NIGHT: Next day, ca.11PM. Just back from the airport. That cheese didn’t stand a chance of making it to the next day! Note the delicious Swedish smoked porter. It is at this point that I cannot resist showing my haul of Swedish treats, even though my camera battery was dead and I couldn’t hold my cell phone still because I was so excited:

Crappy pic. But so awesome!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I was enjoying my first snacks of the day when Dad went back to the kitchen and reemerged with last night’s guacamole-delivering vehicles. He then proceeded to crumble them over his snack:

Also we were drinking coffee:

Hey, it’s not the first time this blog has gotten freaky with the sandwiches. And that Swedish cookbook has loads of weird and awesome sandwiches, including this sandwich gateau! So get over it. Dad says it’s awesome.

Holiday Bounty: Cook Books

2010-09-04T04:59:00.000-07:00

Over 2 glorious weeks off (the first holiday Scott & I have had since last year) lots of food was bought and eaten - gourmet curry dinner in the Lake District, tasty Fish and Chips eaten near a lake and the sea, fishy treats from Norfolk pub, The Anchor in Morston etc etc. Instead of chronicling this tummy pleasing adventure I thought I would share something else food related: recipe books.

Whilst away we went to plenty of second-hand bookshops - in Windermere, Keswick, Bowness, Burnham Market, Holt, Norwich - and bought a lot of books between us of various types and genres. I came back with 3 cook books which I would like to share.

In Windermere I bought 2 slim volumes: The Book of Pies by Elisabeth Orsini, published by Pan Books in 1981 & French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David, first published in 1951 (my edition was published by Penguin in 1976).

The Book of Pies is part history and part recipe book, with over 200 recipes adapted from traditions of pie-making and sections dedicated to pastry, fish pies, vegetable pies, poultry and game pies, meat pies and sweet pies and tarts. I look forward to thumbing through this in the coming autumn and winter months. Best of all it has some wonderful illustrations:

The author of French Country Cooking, Elizabeth David, is the heroine of British Foodies, as it was she who brought Mediterranean cooking to England, rescuing us from the blandness of our national dishes. Her French Provincial Cooking was recently named 2nd best cookery book by The Observer Food Magazine. I for one love that the book has chapters like 'Wine in the Kitchen', and it also has some lovely illustrations by John Minton:

Then, in one of my favourite bookshops, Brazen Head in Burnham Market, I picked up a rather weighty tome, The Great Scandinavian Cook Book: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Cookery translated and edited by J. Audrey Ellison, published in English in 1966 by Allen and Unwin. It lives up to its subtitle as encyclopaedia, with sections on kitchen equipment, food nutrition and menus for parties as well as every food type imaginable. It too has wonderful illustrations, with sketches which strongly remind me of the kind of scandinavian design found in the 1950s, that I so love in the ceramics produced by porsgrund, fiijo & gustavsberg (to name a few) ...

... as well as glossy photos ...

... and more realistic, informative and very thorough drawings of food.

However, whilst flicking through it there was one particular aspect that made up my mind that I had to buy it. There is a chapter on sandwiches, with pages of pictures of open sandwiches with all sorts of food combinations (from the classically swedish potato, herring, chives and soured cream, to the frankly peculiar and pointless sounding grated carrot and banana slices).

And if that wasn't exciting enough, there is a recipe for a sandwich gateau, which you can see below. I can't wait to make this.

Watch this space for the making of recipes from these cookbooks!

A terrible beauty is born

2010-08-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's Bank Holiday Monday. That End of Summer feeling. Helena and I on a morning walk through Victoria Park and along the River Lea to lift the spirits. The Olympic Park, its barricades and monoliths, to drag them back down. "We'll have to have pizza for tea." I go to get the ingredients but forget to buy stuff for lunch. Back home, face in the fridge-light, Helena rummaging the cupboards: Salad? Just lettuce. Cheese sandwich? Only a scrag of cheese. Toast? Boring. Soup? No. Baked Potato? No No. Quiche? WHAT? No No No. Nothing's right. Then Helena suggests a banana sandwich just as I forage the fridge-back and pull out some Danish Blue from the other day. Dirty, dirty, disgusting thoughts that even the filthiest, firiest priest could not imagine. But it's right. It's bad but it's good. It's exactly what I want. Banana and Danish Blue cheese sandwiches for lunch. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!

Innocent ingredients...

Waahaha! Banana hacked up! Bread toasted!

Dirty cheese! Naughty cheese! In your bed!

Filth! Absolute FILTH!

In which we almost eat Peter Rabbit

2010-08-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

Something of a Knife 'n' Spork holiday took place last week. Scott, Lucy, Helena and I got all 'Swallows and Amazons' in a glorified static caravan near Windermere. (I say 'static caravan' - I mean fancy shmancy log cabin with decking and a jacuzzi - Wordsworth wept! Good.) We've holidayed together before and have developed a merry pattern of dog-walking, movie-watching and face-filling - some of which I'll share with you now.

Before I do, I should explain that this post is really a failure. Scott and I had discussed a number of potential holiday/Lake-District themed post ideas: some would have been pleasant (documenting every main meal of the week;) some would have held literary merit (making a Rabbit Pie a la Beatrix Potter or buying some of the Beef Olives from the local butcher as in B.S. Johnson's novel "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry";) still more would have been outright disgusting (The Cumberland Sausage Challenge, The Kendal-Mint-Cake-A-Thon.) In the end we had too much fun for any ideas to come to fruition. Lost hopes. However, having cooked a proper good roast and a cracking curry during the week we were confronted with an impossible choice for our last supper: curry or roast? Roast or curry?

We chickened out, manned up and did both. Here's how:

We started in traditional curry fashion - Poppadoms!

For the CurryRoast meat Scott marinaded a joint of pork shoulder in yoghurt, cumin, turmeric and plenty of mustard seeds. This was left to marinade for twenty four hours and then roasted with onions and tomatoes added towards the end of cooking to make it a bit saucy.

For the CurryRoast potatoes we boiled new potatoes and diced them fairly small before roasting them with black onion seeds, cumin, turmeric, garlic and chilli.

In place of mashed potato we made mashed chickpeas by simmering a couple of cans of chickpeas with some grated ginger and garlic, turmeric, black onion seeds and plenty of salt and pepper.

We considered making cauliflower cheese with paneer but felt that this would probably be horrible. Instead we made a cauliflower and aubergine curry with tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic and the usual array of spices. Bubble bubble until delicious. We made loads of this so there was plenty the next day when it was even better.

The CurryRoast greens took the form of some hot and sour green beans. Mustard seeds and black onion seeds were heated to popping point in oil then onions, garlic, chilli and plenty of ginger were sweated down with the seeds. Ground ginger and cumin was added before adding the green beans, lime juice and a little water. Boil the water away leaving green beans and jammy spicy-tart onions to which we added chopped coriander.

On the plate it looked like this. And then...

...like this! CurryRoast!

The Pasta Papers

2010-08-14T02:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, more pasta. So what I’m drunk. On pasta.

This recipe is (again) courtesy of Mr Slater, with whom I have beef as a result of a dastardly plum cake recipe, but you’ll see what I mean as soon as I can sort out all those photos. This is fast, easy, and delicious, and it’s a perfect way to use up all those cherry tomatoes you bought because they were on sale and are now dangerously ripe.

Pop your tomatoes in a large baking tin with a couple of cloves of sliced garlic and drizzle the whole lot with e.v.o.o. Grill them until they blacken. Seriously. Not charred all over, but in some places the skin must be black. While this is happening, boil your pasta in A LOT of water, and make sure that that water is adequately salted. Nothing spoils pasta like a lack of salt in the cooking water.

When the tomatoes are burnt, mash them up a bit with the back of a wooden spoon and pour in some double cream and a handful of torn basil. Stir it all around, salt and pepper it, and grate over some parmesan liberally. You can probably skip the double cream if you want, but why would you want that?

Preserves

2010-08-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

PRESERVES

I’ve just made my yearly load of bramble jelly (recipe below), so I thought it would be a good time to post this. It’s a passage from ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson.

It’s a haunting, slightly surreal and darkly comic novel narrated by Merricat, a young woman whose family (apart from her sister Constance and uncle Julian) have perished in mysterious circumstances some years earlier. An overriding theme of the novel is food - growing, preparing and eating it – and I found this bit particularly emotive, and also a suitable way to introduce a jam recipe:

On Saturday morning I helped Constance. I was not allowed to handle knives, but when she worked in the garden I cared for her tools, keeping them bright and clean, and I carried great baskets of flowers, sometimes, or vegetables which Constance picked to make into food. The entire cellar of our house was filled with food. All the Blackwood women had made food and had taken pride in adding to the great supply of food in our cellar. There were jars of jam made by great-grandmothers, with thin labels in thin pale writing, almost unreadable by now, and pickles made by great-aunts and vegetables put up by our grandmother, and even our mother had left behind her six jars of apple jelly. Constance had worked all her life at adding to the food in the cellar, and her rows and rows of jars were easily the handsomest, and shone among the others. “You bury food the way I bury treasure,” I told her sometimes, and she answered me once: “The food comes from the ground and can’t be permitted to stay there and rot; something has to be done with it.” All the Blackwood women had taken the food that came from the ground and preserved it, and the deeply colored rows of jellies and pickles and bottled vegetables and fruit, maroon and amber and dark rich green, stood side by side in our cellar and would stand there forever, a poem by the Blackwood women. Each year Constance and Uncle Julian and I had jam or preserve or pickle that Constance had made, but we never touched what belonged to the others; Constance said it would kill us if we ate it.

I think I am generally a sucker for talk of preserving food in literature. It is also an ongoing thread in ‘Cold Mountain’ by Charles Frazier (try not to think about the dreadful film version featuring three of my least favourite actors). I think it must be some kind of fantasy nostalgia, imagining living in this somehow authentic state of self-sufficiency, relying on what grows in one season for all-year-round nourishment.

My annual blackberrying outing to Hackney Marsh is one of the small ways I try to emulate this. It’s a slightly treacherous activity, calling for sturdy shoes and leather gloves, but the bramble jelly lasts all year and is worth it.

Recipe

Cook as many blackberries as you can find with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan for about 45 mins. Strain it through a cloth over a sieve overnight. Discard the pulp and measure how much juice you have. For every pint of juice add 1 lb jam sugar and half a lemon. Boil, and test every so often to see if it’s ready to set. Do this by putting a drop on a plate, wait a minute then touch it to see if the top has set. If it stays liquid, keep boiling. Decant into sterilised jars (heat glass in hot oven for 5 mins or so, pour boiling water over the lids). A good tip to create a jam funnel is to cut the top off a large plastic milk bottle. Put the lids on the jars while the jam is still hot.

The best vegetarian bacon pasta ever!

2010-08-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

OK, so this was a total accident, which is why the photographic evidence is so poor. Or lacking, rather. This was Saturday night’s dinner and was so good that I couldn’t stop laughing with pleasure and rocking back and forth as I ate it. Seriously. It’s that amazingly good. Also, it’s incredibly simple. This is what you will need:

Half a red onion (preferably one that’s been sitting open in the refrigerator for a few days)
Half a red pepper (ditto)
Half (in fact, less, maybe a third?) a thing of mascarpone (ditto)
Dried oregano
Dried, crushed red chilies

Chop the onion and pepper and, while the pasta is boiling, sauté in extra virgin olive oil. Add the oregano and chilies. When the pasta is just about done, take the pepper and onion off the flame and add the mascarpone with a bit of the pasta water to loosen it. Drain the pasta and toss it in the pan, stirring it all around and coating it with the mascarpone mix. I ate the first bowl without parmesan because I didn’t think I could handle that much pleasure. By the second bowl my head was exploding and the parmesan was like a rocket of DMT up my spine and into my brain.

It tasted like it had bacon in it, but it’s completely vegetarian. Maybe you have to wait until everything is just about to go off. I definitely sniffed the mascarpone several times before using it and thought about throwing it away all together. Boy am I glad I didn’t. Do this recipe and die.

Sweet, sweet superfood...

2010-07-26T14:23:00.000-07:00

I say potato, you say potatoe. You cannot spell.

Here is a delicious thing:

Scrub your sweet potatoes but leave the skin on. Cut ’em into big chunks. These were kind of unwieldy, but I like that. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, and chili powder. Don’t be scared of the chili powder – it gets into the skin and gives a depth of flavor that I cannot begin to describe here. [Imagine licking a brick from a pizza oven.] Shake it all about and bang it in the oven for twenty minutes on hot. After twenty minutes, throw in a sliced onion, stir about, and leave for another twenty, twenty-five minutes.

Add fresh baby spinach. Washed. Thoroughly. Do you know how many bugs come out in the second rinse?

Crumble some feta. Never enough feta. And more pepper.

I forgot the kalamata olives, but boy would they have been good here.

A brief note

2010-07-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

As a schoolboy I'd always come home and ask my mum what was for dinner.

Her reply?

'Air Pie and Windy Pudding'

Diary of a morbidly obscene biscuit addict

2010-07-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

3.

It is time for me to take a good hard look at myself. Why do I eat so many biscuits? Why is just the one or two never enough? Why are all the best biscuits the most unhealthy, artery clogging, weight scale shattering objects of brilliance?

THE CONFESSIONAL OF THE MORBIDLY OBSCENE BISCUIT ADDICT

So it comes to this. Only my third entry and the breakdown is already upon me. I even ate a chocolate bourbon the other day. I don’t even like chocolate bourbons! And listen to me! Are there any other types of bourbons than chocolate ones!? NO! I have clearly taken leave of my senses. I am having a biscuit crisis! CRISIS!

This stark realisation of my precarious position only became startlingly aware to me after I gratefully received one of those wonderful biscuit selection boxes, the ones that include the rare but delightful Happy Faces. Surely the most accurate embodiment of a consumable to express the joy of it’s delighted consumer. (That sentence just doesn’t look right, but I’m lazy. It stays.)

I stared in delight at the wonderful collection of delights in front of me. This was like staring at the contents of a really cheap Pandora’s Box. But maybe that’s the whole problem. Maybe that is my horrible Sisyphean task. To eternally eat these ghastly biscuits in order that no one else hast to. Am I some kind of vile guardian to society’s health and prosperity? No. That is delusions of grandeur. I am just a filthy glutton with no willpower, destined for the third circle.

Ugh! The crisis is surely upon me, just look at that last over indulgent paragraph! Not one, not two, but three references to Greek or Roman mythology. I’m here to talk about biscuits god damn it! These are black days.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be confessing something aren’t I? Well the truth is I don’t think I actually like biscuits all that much. I just eat them because they are there, and because I’m so miserably malnourished that they constitute a viable food group. I would eat carrots if only they looked and tasted like biscuits. But that would make them biscuits, so I’d be right back to square one.

Christ, you’re bored of reading this now, and I haven’t actually confessed to anything that you can really get your teeth into, like a Garibaldi. Sorry.

Still, I left one Happy Face in the box. All is not lost. (back to the mythology again, what a pompous pseudo-intellectual prick I am.)

Fig 1. Fuck my hat! That’s not a happy face! If biscuits could give you a nasty dose of the clap, that’s the face it would make afterwards.

Late lunch for one.

2010-07-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Tasty beverage, tasty words, and one heck of a tasty scotch egg.

Bloody brilliant.

This year's harvest - part 1

2010-07-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a while I've had some time to think about gardening, and as a result the prospect of having some home-grown vegetables to eat seems pretty good this year. In order to not over-stretch our ability to attend to plants, I decided to concentrate on 3 vegetables: tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers.

Tomatoes:

Pretty much every year for a while I have grown tomatoes, with varying success. Last year, for instance, was not very productive (a combination of a wet summer and too little time to concentrate on vegetables), but previously we have had enough tomatoes to make pasta sauce and store it (for a little while at least). Unfortunately, since the arrival of the dog, we've had to give up the best tomato growing flowerbed as that is where he prefers to sit. But there are other areas of the garden which seem to do ok. This year we have 'Shirley' and 'Juliet' in some pots on the corner of our yard (as pictured left). Last year I bought some hanging baskets and tried out growing tomatoes in one, which seemed to work (runner beans, however, do not). This year I bought a variety of tomatoes specially suited to hanging baskets and so far there is lots of fruit.

Courgettes & Cucumbers:

For the first time ever I have successfully grown

some plants from seed (a big bonus of having windowsills at last - woo!), both cucumbers and courgettes. I have grown courgettes before, fairly successfully (again, the last couple of years have been rather wet, and there have been mould issues), but never cucumbers. The main impetus behind this addition is to make pickles. We go through jars of pickles like nobody's business in this house, so it seemed sensible to try creating

our own. Wary of slugs - which plague our garden - I decided to put some of the courgette/cucumber plants outside, and keep some inside (the first photo of this post is our view from the kitchen sink). Despite not quite managing to re-pot over half the plants, they all seem to be doing ok, or more than as the cucumber plants in particular are taking over every space they are in, with their curly tendrils reaching out to grab anything they can. The most exciting thing is that we now have our first cucumbers showing up - teeny and prickly at the moment, but hopefully they will manage to get big enough to pickle.

I will be back with further news as the plants progress (and the pickling begins). Watch this space!

Sloe Gin

2010-07-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

On a walk this weekend I noticed the Blackthorn bushes from which we picked lots of sloes to make sloe gin are looking heavy with fruit, which bodes well for production of this king of drinks in the autumn.

In preparation for that time (around September/October - after the first frost if you can wait that long, I don't think we did. I seem to remember picking them when they looked ripe), here is the recipe we followed which worked very nicely. We picked our sloes, froze them for a while, then defrosted them and added them to gin with some sugar in the amounts that the recipe suggests. Needless to say it was very much worth it - so get looking for those sloes in readiness!

Solo Celebration!

2010-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Today sees the end of that marvellous tyranny which has been my wife's Phd - congratulations Doc!
Naturally, this is cause for celebration, but unfortunately, I'm at home, on my own, all day. Not that that's enough to stop me. So, in honour of Lucy's big brain, I made some curry.

Onions, garlic and ginger are fried in butter, with turmeric, chilli powder and salt. Then some sliced tomatoes are chucked in, followed by some minced beef. That's all cooked gently for about half an hour under a lid, then some peas are thrown into the mix, then there's a bit more cooking while I rewind a video. The fabulous Savitri Chowdhary suggests eating this keema with flat-bread and vegetable sides. I, being English, can't resist a bit of 'the usual' with my curry, so pile my plate with plenty of keema, alongside a mound of nice clean basmati rice, some wholewheat flatbread and of course a popadum or two. Then I sit and watch a documentary about Edward Said with my dog.
Who says I don't know how to party?

Fourth of Juillet

2010-07-05T01:24:00.001-07:00

Hamburger + Boursin = oh so delicious.

Feasting in Art

2010-06-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few novels out there that revolve around food, recipes or eating and i must say i'm a big fan of the gastro-novel. At some point i decided to list down as many as i could find. Here's 10 i've so far read and liked or think could be a decent read.

The Debt to Pleasure – John Lanchester (brilliantly written with strange, sinister undertones and recipes)
The Devil’s Larder – Jim Crace (a novel in 64 parts, in which the reader's cultural, culinary and sexual appetites are fully catered for)
Les Liaisons Culinaires – Andreas Staikos (Greek culinary delights and love)
The Mistress of Spices – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (love and spices in California)
The Club of Angels – Luis Fernando Verissimo (dining club that where everyone bites off a little more than they can chew)
The Confessions of a Flesh-eater (or Orlando Crispe's Flesh-Eater's Cookbook) – David Madsen (Cannibalism – Food/Menus - Strange!)
Whiskey Galore – Compton Mackenzie (Scots and a shed load of fire water)
Thousand Cranes – Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese Tea Ceremony)
The Vintner’s Luck – Elizabeth Knox (Wine and the French)
The Brotherhood of the Grape – John Fante (Lots of wine and the Californians).

Looking through these though made me think - what about the other arts?? How has food inspired these? Intrigued, I did a little research and found a few choice morsels.

Popular music

Fried Chicken - Nas (feat. Busta Rhymes)
Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer - Bessie Smith
Shepherds Pie - QOTSA
Eggs and Sausage - Tom Waits
Satan Gave Me a Taco - Beck
All that Meat and No Potatoes - Fats Waller
Cruisin' for Burgers - Frank Zappa (from the album 'Uncle Meat'!)
TV Dinners - ZZ Top
T-Bone - Neil Young
Roast Fish and Cornbread - Lee Perry

Loads out there and meat, somewhat unsurprisingly, seems to be a a big inspiration.

Films

Babette's Feast
Delicatessen
Sideways
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Like Water for Chocolate
Mid-August Lunch
Eat Drink Man Woman
Tampopo
Festen

Again, quite a few out there (lots of these coming from novels or short stories). I've listed 10 again and i've seen most of these and really enjoyed them. And film scenes about food? Loads, with some almost as memorable as the film - the pasta sauce scene in The Godfather, making meatballs in Goodfellas, eating a live squid in Oldboy, the eggs in Cool Hand Luke, Mr Creosote in The Meaning of Life.

Art/Photography

The still life is a big favourite here but scenes of celebration, feasting and picnicing also seem popular, such as -
Dejeuner sur l'Herbe - Edouard Manet
Peasant Wedding - Peter Bruegel
On the Banks of the Marne, 1938 - Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Dinner Table - Henri Matisse
The Luncheon - Claude Monet
Summer - Giuseppe Archimboldo

Pop Art too likes to dabble in a bit of food Art with Andy Warhol and his Campbell's Soup Cans and Claes Oldenburg and his giant sculptures of hamburgers or ice-cream cones.
Photographers like Martin Parr and Araki also seem fascinated by food, in different ways, in their work.

My favourite food image though has to be by the French Photographer Willy Ronis and it's of a boy running joyfully along a Parisian street with a baguette clamped under his arm. http://www.nouvellesimages.com/willy-ronis-457.html

I feel that way about fresh French bread too, sometimes.

Conclusion - food is good in all mediums. Oh yes. Now, what time does the baker's open...

Sunday Breakfasts #1

2010-05-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Asparagus and Poached Egg on Toast with Spicy Crumbs

I drank too much port last night. My Dad and my uncle Stu had rattled into Paddington that morning at elevenish. The three of us are Swindon Town fans – a hereditary disease. Swindon were playing Millwall, potentially for promotion to the Championship if results went our way. Our aim for the day was perverse: We didn’t have tickets for the match but we wanted to soak up the atmosphere, to drink in riverside pubs, to be part of it. On the other hand we wanted to avoid Millwall fans, to avoid the score, to be apart from it. That tryst of hope and fear familiar to any football fan.

The more we drank, the more fear won out. Dad and Stu had to catch their return train from Paddington at five. From Butler’s Wharf near Tower Bridge we scuttled back west along the river in a slow boat, disembarking at Embankment so they could easily hop on the Bakerloo up to Paddington when time pressed. A last drink to impress them before they went: Gordon’s Wine Bar. A drunkard’s crypt of a bar, all dripping catacombs, tallow-lit barrels and braying atmosphere. Port, sold by the schooner. Or the slightly larger beaker. Which we ordered. Twice.

Half a bottle of port each, then Dad and Stu bow-legged it, bladders bulging, for their train. We’d avoided the score so far, but now, alone, I was intrigued. I staggered up the road to find a pub with Sky so I could catch the results. Swindon had lost. The agony of the play-offs beckoned. I had another pint. I chatted to a Millwall fan. I was woozy.

Helena met me with a glass of wine back at Gordon’s. I was a bristling mess. I gabbled in cod Geordie at a goof in corduroy. Corduroy! Pah! Helena took me home.

So, last night I was sick. Twice. I drank too much port.

This morning I felt rough as guts and wanted something pure and fresh to put in my mouth and purge me of my sin. Something that tasted of grass and of the sea. Something smooth but spicy to hug and punch me. Something of an apology to Helena. This is the breakfast I made.

You will need…

Asparagus

Two large eggs

Wholemeal bread

Two anchovies

Some chilli flakes

Olive Oil

Parsley

How to cook it…

Blitz up one slice of bread in a food processor to make rough bread crumbs. Add the anchovies and chilli flakes with a slug of olive oil and give it a whiz to blend it all together. Pour the crumbs onto a baking tray and bung in a hottish oven to crisp them up.

Snap the woody ends off the asparagus by bending each spear. It will snap at its natural breaking point.

Boil till tender in plenty of salted water then drain and keep fresh in cold water.

Poach your eggs as you like. This recipe works best if the yolks are runny as toddler’s tears though.

Whilst the eggs and asparagus are looking after themselves hew off two thick slices of bread and toast. Chop the parsley.

How to put it all together…

Put the toast on a nice plate and drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle with some salt. Put the asparagus neatly on top.

Put the poached egg on top of that and grind some pepper over it all.

Sprinkle over some of the spicy, crispy crumbs.

Sprinkle over some chopped parsley.

Eat it and get over your hangover!

Ode to the Potato

2010-04-25T13:11:00.001-07:00

This has been a long time coming, so sorry about the wait (small matters of finishing the PhD, marking essays, conferences etc. which clearly shouldn't be interfering with the might K'n'S). This time round I thought I should share my great love for the potato...

Potatoes are undoubtedly one of my favourite foods. If I had to, given the choice between this and your other basic carbohydrates - pasta, rice etc. - I would choose the potato. Every time. To honour this great love, I decided to take on a mini knife 'n' spork challenge, to make potato my main concern for a weeks eating. Every night (friday to thursday) I ate a different mode of potato, and it was lovely. So here it is:

Day 1.

Kicking the week off with a true classic: Egg, chips and beans (and as you can see, a cheeky slice of bread and butter).

Day 2.

Tonight was the turn of the mash, accompanied by a little ratatouille and roast aubergine.

Day 3.

This was a big one, potatoes thrice today. First up was breakfast: the leftover mash from the night before put to good use for bubble 'n' squeak, plus a poached egg. yum!

Next up. A sweet afternoon snack, incorporating potato? Yes. It's seed cake...made from grated potato (plus rice flour, ground almonds, eggs, sugar, caraway seeds and nutmeg). My first encounter with seed cake, and I'm not entirely convinced, but overall it was a success. Good light cake texture, and not a hint of potato taste. Intriguing.

And for dinner, we had seabream with fried potatoes, steamed greens and carrot. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but this was really tasty.

Day 4.

Tonight was the humble boiled potato, doing what it does best and playing a supporting role for something with gravy (unless its a new potato served with butter and mint...but 'twas not the season for that quite yet). Pie (lentil, bean and carrot), potatoes and peas.

One of the best things about tonight's dinner was the pie's crust, furnished with a little blog tribute:

Day 5.

A big crowd pleaser tonight: the baked potato. Possibly my favourite form of potato, I would happily eat this all the time. Make of that what you will....

This one had egg mayonaise in it. Totally delicious. fact.

Day 6.

The final night. To achieve as much range as possible, tonight's potato was roasted. It was the spicy potato wedge, served alongside one of Scott's excellent chillis. Not far from a chip in some ways, but still a roast potato.

It would be very difficult to choose my favourite meal (all except one, cooked by the talented Mr Donaldson), though maybe the baked potato might just tip the scales (even as I wrote that I was thinking, but wait, what about the wedge, the mash etc.)

So, are there any other conclusions to be drawn from this exciting potatoed week?

1. The experiment proved beyond a doubt that I love potato, in its many forms (one of the chief reasons for loving it so much).

2. I'm fairly greedy, and probably eat far too much carbohydrate (and quite a lot of egg judging from this).

3. mmmmmmmmmm potato.

Not very scientific, but there it is, my ode to potatoes.

Diary of a morbidly obscene biscuit addict

2010-03-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

2.

It’s been a tough week. I am battered, bruised and broken. Why you ask? Because I have been assaulted by the breathtaking biscuit brothers, the biscuit MEGA POWERS!

CHOCOLATE HOBNOBS & CARAMEL DIGESTIVES

Fig 1. – the human embodiment of chocolate hobnobs and caramel digestives. And look! A saucy cup of tea in the middle!

I have spent all week having the mighty leg of the hobnob crashing down across my throat while the caramel digestive postures from the top turnbuckle before dropping the elbow on my chest. OOOH YEAH!

As far as I am concerned you can’t have a chocolate hobnob with out a delicious caramel digestive to follow. You know what they say about rats in London? That you’re never more than 6ft away from a rat (or some such tosh)? Well I reckon if you have a chocolate hobnob in your hand, you are never more that 6ft away from a caramel digestive.

So, I bought these biscuits, as I always do, with the intention of sharing them with my embittered colleagues. Only they already know that they will be lucky to even start salivating at the thought of eating biscuit, let alone seeing a solitary crumb.

With determined zeal I begin attacking my foes with confidence. High spirits. Gnashing teeth.

3-4 biscuits – I feel terrific. Nothing can stop me! King of the World! Lord of biscuits! etc etc

7-8 biscuits – It just gets better! I can’t believe this. I want to live in a land made of biscuits!

11-13 biscuits – I am struggling although I still have the upper hand. I should quit while I’m ahead

14-15 biscuits – except I don’t quit

17-18 biscuits – CRASH! I’m burnt out. I must be dying or something. I’m withering like a spoon in Uri Gellers hands

19-20 biscuits – why am I still eating them!? I am sobbing into my hands. My colleagues shake their heads, pouring shame and scorn on me with equal measure. They knew this was coming. It was as inevitable as Gordon Brown doing that nauseating breathing thing at the end of a sentence.

All gone – I feel truly terrible. My insides are well and truly clogged up. I am of the firm opinion that I’m not going to be able to have a good poo for days. This thought only serves to compound my misery. I’m sobbing again.

1 hour later – I am sweating uncontrollably

2 hours later – I am swearing uncontrollably

1 week later – I finally have a good poo. I want some biscuits.

2010-03-22T14:27:00.001-07:00

Afternoon Tea at Albion Café

Albion Café is within a new Conran Hotel called The Boundary just off Shoreditch High Street. Its potential for pretentiousness is overcome by serving nice, not too pricey food, having a relaxed atmosphere and containing lots of pretty things such as enamel coffee pots and stripy tea-cosies with pom-poms on top.

I went there for afternoon tea one grey Saturday afternoon with two good friends, a sister, a boyfriend and a baby. Getting there felt like a relief after walking down through Broadway market which was filled with people trying too hard to look like they were relaxing while being stuffed into expensive cafes with not enough seats and being sold overpriced vegetables. We had to wait about 5 minutes for a table, which gave us a chance to look at some of the stuff in their shop, including very cheap (60p) massive brownies, very tempting and more expensive (£3 but possibly worth it) loaves of bread and aspirationally displayed vegetables and well-packaged grocery goods.

We sat at a spacious round table with comfortable chairs. The waiter was prompt. My sister and I ordered ‘Cream Tea’ (£6) hoping for a scone and tea. Alice ordered a pot of Earl Grey (£2.75) and a treacle tart (£5.50). Paul chose prune and almond tart (£3) and Earl Grey tea also. Helen modestly ordered a pot of coffee (£2.75). We also asked for some glasses of tap water.

Our order arrived quickly. Jo and I were pleasantly surprised to find that Cream Tea means a big fruit scone with a pot of strawberry jam and a pot of cream, a slice of fruit cake, a chocolate brownie and a flapjack as well as a big pot of tea. I normally find it difficult to leave food on a plate, but after eating the nice scone with jam and cream, I couldn’t face much more than a taste of the other stuff. Luckily the baby (Dennis) helped with the fruitcake, as did Helen, who was eventually tempted out of abstention. Paul enjoyed his tart but managed to also polish off my brownie. Alice exclaimed delight after finishing her treacle tart, and I believe helped Jo with some of her cakes too. So there was a healthy consumption of cakes all round, as there should be at an afternoon tea.

Helen’s pot of coffee was big enough for 5 cups, so Jo and I had a cup each, as well as 4 cups of tea each out of our teapot (after a gracious topping up by the waiter). The red enamel coffee pot really pleased me – it was almost identical to one I bought Helen for her birthday. And the enamel jug that the water came in was a agreeable object too.

The toilets are through the hotel and down the staircase, which is covered in a huge, colourful mural. In the individual unisex toilet rooms (one of which has a nice baby-changing table) there are small folded flannels to dry your hands, and smart hand cream. All very wasteful and unnecessary I’m sure, but again highly pleasing.

On the way out Paul and Helen both bought some bread, and Alice could not resist getting a huge scotch egg to take home to her lucky boyfriend.

The design of the place and the choice of things in it obviously has been meticulously thought through, but somehow it’s not overbearing. Essentially it does what a café should do – provides an environment and refreshments that contribute to a pleasant social experience.

I found it most enjoyable and would like to go for lunch there soon.

www.albioncaff.co.uk

Man Vs Dog

2010-03-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

A day of food and drink consumed by a man,
and his best friend.

Water: for hangover, for life, for all.

Emmett eat blanket. Man drink tea.

Chipolatas, bacon, black
pudding, poached egg,
beans, bread and butter
for one. Biscuits, bacon
rind and a hint of blood
sausage for the other.
But who gets what?!

Out on the walk, it's fizzy pop for
pop and cheesey treats for the hairy baby.

IMPENDING DOOM!!

A couple of these between myself and
fellow sporker, Mr Samuel Butler.

Lettuce, like all things in life, comes at a price. And the price is obedience. Good boy.

PHOTOGRAPH MISSING. Sorry. But it should be our Mighty Lunch

consisting of potato salad, parma ham, vegetable samosa, green salad,

Danish Havarti cheese, chilli olives, pitta bread and roll mops. Wowzers!!

Despite it all, there's always room for tea and chocolate,
carrot and peanut butter cupcakes, courtesy of another
talented sporker, Mrs Lucy Donaldson (pictured left).

So this is where it all starts to get messy.

Featured models: Mrs Donaldson, Mr Butler, Emmett, the
Money Box Owl, Masterquiz the Boardgame, Mr Donaldson,
and Captain Beefheart.

Featured beverages: four
bottles of ale, four bottles
of wheatbeer, and a lone
bottle of calvados.

Emmett drinks water. Again. It's pretty dull.

The carrot of OBEDIENCE!

The pepper and cheese of IDIOCY!

Dinner time.

Thai style curry: prawns, peppers, coconut, whole lotta limes, noodles,

so on and so forth. Deeelicious.

Quite literally, a dog's dinner. Biscuits, carrot n' pepper. Not much else!

Somewhere between the fourth and tenth glass
of calvados, I still managed to find the times to
cram in a couple more cakes. Cheeky.

As the loser bows out gracefully, I go to bed. Tired, tipsy, and slightly ashamed of myself. Ta ta x

2010-03-05T04:10:00.000-08:00

An incomprehensive guide to Maltese cuisine

First kill your bird of prey, crush and cover in chocolate, make round and roll down a hill. For those who do not know, cooking the Maltese way, not only are the recipes unpronounceable they are equally inedible. But for the tryers amongst us who just can’t resist a challenge I have scoured the larder, the internet and looked into the dark heart of my own past to come up with the following recipes.

FOR STARTERS:

Angels on Horseback, which is grilled liver, wrapped in bacon. Essential at any traditional wedding cocktail buffet.

Soppa tal-Kirxa (Tripe Soup) – as it sounds. Horrible

Soppa ta’ l-armla (Widow’s Soup), which is basically vegetable soup simmered for an hour until so well done the veg are losing their identity and merging with each other in one big gloopy mess. You then crack some eggs into it and add ricotta and gbejniet (sheep’s cheese). Cook for a further 30 mins. Just when it couldn’t get any worse you top it off with a glass of milk. Why?

Pastizzis, (a.k.a Maltese cheesecake). They are kind of like pasties. My dad would hang around outside Maltese cafés waiting for sailors to throw him one of these - or at least that’s what he told me. Traditionally they are filled with either ricotta cheese or mushy split peas. Although, I had some at my brother’s wedding that were filled with minced lamb – and were rather nice. Best bought from the Little Malta bakery in Toronto,

Canada

INTO THE MAINS

Lampuki Pie - Lampuka is the Maltese name for Mahi Mahi or Dolphin fish. It has fine, white flesh and only a few large bones. It is in season for around four months and doesn’t freeze well. So should you be fortunate enough to have one in your hand, here's what to do with it. Cut into slices, roll in seasoned flour, and fry lightly. Use the same oil to fry some onions in until brownish, add chopped tomatoes for 5 minutes. Then add spinach, olives, capers, mint and lemon peel. ½ pint of water and simmer till sauce becomes rather thick. Season and leave to cool. Line a greased dish with flaky pastry, dot with fish and sauce. Cover with more pastry. Bake in mod oven for about an hour.

Timpana is baked macaroni in pastry. So not only do you get a pasta dish you get pie too. Result.

Only the filling is tomatoes, hardboiled and raw eggs, chicken giblets, ox brain, pork liver and a little bit of minced beef (you wouldn't want to overdo it now). I know a woman who swears she makes the best Timpana in

Britain

and on family gatherings we are forced to consume this rather starchy and slightly foul smelling concoction. It's a bit like eating corrugated cardboard the dog has been using as a toilet and guarantees you won’t be able to shit for a week.

Pulpettun - A Large Meat Cake – mix together beef, pork, ham and liver with parmesan, breadcrumbs and beaten eggs; wrap in a pork caul and say a prayer. Bake until well done. This should be eaten cold or not at all.

For the unsentimental, there is Laħam taż-żiemel (stallion meat) –which is exactly what it says, usually steamed.

Fenkata – Rabbit Stew: 1rabbit, 2 onions, garlic, 3 large tomatoes, tomato paste, 3 potatoes, 5 carrots, 200 g peas, 2 bay leaves, mixed herbs, half stock cube, 275 ml red wine, seasoned flour, olive oil . Roll rabbit bits in the flour and add to heated oil and cook until light brown. Add veg. Pour over wine. Add the bay leaves, stock and paste. Simmer for 1 ½ hours. Add more wine if the sauce begins to dry up. This is actually rather nice.

JUST DESSERTS:

Qagħaq tal-Għasel (Treacle Rings) Made from a semolina pastry with a filling of treacle, semolina, anisette, citrus zest, cinnamon and cocoa. We used to get deliveries of these post Xmas and I used to think they had gotten stale on the slow boat from Valletta until I tried some fresh. It is like eating the calcified bones of a dead sailor flavoured with deep sin.

Or the even more unpronounceable /inedible Kaghka Tal-Kavatelli. I once made this as a birthday treat and it turned into a work of art. Form a paste from flour, egg, butter and orange-flower water. Roll into long strips, out of which cut tiny diamond-shape pieces. Fry the pastry pieces until crisp. Leave to cool. Boil treacle, sugar and rind of an orange and a lemon. Throw in pastry pieces. Place into a buttered baking dish. Leave to set.

SOMETHING TO WET THE WHISTLE:

Cassar de Malte, of course. Malta’s first quality sparkling wine which is produced in the “Méthode Traditionnelle”. It is made in limited quantites and is made with the chardonnay grape with citrus lemon fruits and complexities of yeast, biscuit and bread. What more could you ask?

And don’t forget to listen to the Land of Honey’s favourite children while you slave: Bryan Adams, Gary Glitter and Britney Spears. You couldn’t make it up!

P.S. If you do try any of the dishes Ix-Xorti t-Tajba! as they say.

Philip vs the Chefs 1: Nigel

2010-02-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

In which I try to replicate some glorious dishes from famous kitchen folk.

Up first, a recipe from Nigel Slater, from The Kitchen Diaries. The book itself is a gorgeous object, especially the endpapers. Go get yourself a copy if you don’t have one already. This recipe is a bit perverse, because it combines ingredients that I’d never considered putting together. I’d had prosciutto e melone, but before reading this I would never have mixed melon and mozzarella, nor lemon juice and mozzarella, nor olive oil and melon. Put it all together, though, and it’s extraordinary.

His version:

My version:

side by side (why not? I took the picture, but yes, it is a bit redundant):

It was a hot summer day when I made this and I was sweating by the time I finished slicing up the melon and tearing up the mozzarella. I was so excited I had to stop and get my camera and when I took the first bite I couldn’t believe how fantastically good it was. I totally burst it against my palate fine.

If you want to do it yourself, get a ripe (verging on the overripe) cantaloup; some prosciutto crudo; a ball of mozzarella (di bufala, if possible); juice from an unwaxed, handpicked, organically grown lemon complete with stem and leaves; olive oil that has been pressed between the toes of a virgin, extracted only on the first and third Thursdays of alternate months except during a new moon, vernal equinox, or postal strike; Lake Retba salt; and a pinch o’ parsley. Mix it all together and serve on a bed of wild greens.

Ode to Vera and Tomatoes

2010-02-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago my partner Lisa's grandma, Elvira, showed us her method of preparing a batch of passata/tomato sauce to last throughout most of the year. I thought i'd share this with you, my fellow 'sporkers, as it was an inspirational experience and having plenty of prepared passata to hand is truly convenient and the results delicious.

Elvira is quite an amazing woman. Born in southern Italy, she moved to Wells, Somerset just after the WWII when her husband decided he wanted to stay in the area after being interred in a POW camp in the city. Many others did the same and the place is like a Goodfellas outtake at times (without the violence, of course). Despite having lived in England for most of her life, her Italian accent is still impenetrable at times. She is typically Italian working class and like many typical working class Italian ladies of a certain age, life revolves around food and it's preparation.
Almost in her '90s, she still has the energy to tend a large vegetable garden (beans, sprouting brocolli, rocket, fennel, lettuce, courgettes, carrots, herbs etc), a greenhouse (tomatoes, peppers, basil) and also to make things like her own salami, sauces and pickles. On occasional Sundays when most of the family comes over for lunch, she will either create a huge lasagne (often featuring double figures of mozzarella balls), a mountain of meatballs, an avalanche of penne and pork chops or something similarly as vast. I'm in awe of her work rate and her desire to feed. Nothing makes her happier than a person consuming enough food almost to the point of collapse.

Anyway, enough waffle. Let's move to the main sauce event. You'll need a sieve machine (a bit like a meat mincer that clamps to a table) and i'm not sure if you can get them here but i'm sure, if not, they can be got online.

Buy/harvest a couple of crates of tomatoes (Italian tomatoes if poss. but any smallish ones if not). This will make 30 to 40 medium sized jars.
Put jars in boiling water to sterilise. Boil for an hour and a half. Leave in water overnight to cool.

Put tomatoes in boiling water for a short time to soften slightly and to let skins come off easily in the mincer. Take out, leave to drain.
Put tomatoes through the mincer (put waste and skins through again). Add salt.
Put a bunch of basil into each of the jars, then add the passata. Tightly screw on jar lids.

Then the jars need to be bain-maried. Put jars in large saucepans, upright or on their sides, padding them with tea towells/cloths to stop them rattling around. Cover completely with water. Put saucepan lid on and bring water to the boil and continue to boil for at least 1/2 an hour.
Switch off heat and leave to cool. Take out when cool and store, ready for use, in a cupboard or garage.
Enjoy!

Literary Grubs #1 - Bloom's Breakfast

2010-02-06T04:54:00.000-08:00

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray.”

(Calypso from “Ulysses”, James Joyce, 1922)

There is joy in the mundane. The grit nuggets of the just woken eyes. The huff of night-old farts. The dozy, distant clink of teaspoons, mugs. The whistle of the kettle. The cuffing of a partner’s footpads over the carpet.

I had always felt that this – the simple sensuality of the bread and butter – this, above any creed, is what shapes lives, gives meaning.

When I first read Ulysses it was pottering, gobbling, pocketing, guzzling, mucky, naughty, fallible Leopold Bloom with whom I identified. I still do, and in particular I enjoy the celebration of everyday processes, the fuzzy filtering into the day ahead, and the smutty, workaday meatiness of Bloom’s morning routine in the Calypso episode.

Here is his breakfast which I cooked this morning:

"He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white ... The shiny links packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's blood."

"A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last."

"He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers, ringwise, from the chipped eggcup."

"He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over..."

"Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it."

"Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth."

Food in my favourite films

2010-01-24T10:53:00.001-08:00

I thought I would ease myself in by making my first post about film, and food. Rather than write about particularly amazing moments of food on film, or compiling a list of films to make you drool while you watch them, I thought I would pull a bit of a switcheroo and present food (and drink) moments in my favourite five films (which are not in order of preference, not set in stone - just a for now kind of list):

1. Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968).

The chocolate mousse (or "mouse" as Minnie calls it) with the chalky undertaste:

"There Daddy. Do I get a gold star?"

Forget about the devil, there's the horror.

2. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940).

One of the best drinking (and hangover) movies:

Champagne, its a great levellererer...

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

3. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954).

The perfect romantic dinner, brought to you by Lisa Carol Freemont & 21:

"Lisa. It's perfect, as always" (Try not to sound so disappointed!)

What could have been. The views across the courtyard:

Miss Torso 'juggling wolves'

Miss Lonelyhearts dines alone.

Mr Thorwald tends to his invalid wife.

4. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)

The unknown woman goes to dinner with her unrequited love:

Another Lisa, another lobster dinner

"Now I see you as a little girl"

5. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

A film dominated by drinking. Amusing at the beginning:

Kyle (Robert Stack, on the left) and Mitch (Rock Hudson, right) have flown from Texas to NYC for "the best steak sandwich in the world" at 21 (of course), but where's the steak?

Takes on a tragic turn towards then end:

Kyle arrives late, and very drunk, to his own dinner party

"Bring me a cocktail I can drink"

"spose you're wondering why I invited you all here tonight"

His wife, Lucy (Lauren Bacall), in love with Mitch but carrying Kyle's longed for child, takes him away

leaving the cocktail to remain undrunk. Kyle is shot in a struggle with Mitch moments later.

Diary of a morbidly obscene biscuit addict

2010-01-24T10:20:00.000-08:00

When asked to put something together for this feast of a blog, I think only one person was expecting such a biscuit shaped spanner in the works such as the following.

Diary of a morbidly obscene biscuit addict

1.

This week I have been facing insurmountable odds in my battle with an aggressive combatant:

PARTY RINGS

These vile little biscuit specimens with such catastrophically kaleidoscopic faces, so gaudy they famously made Andy Warhol sick*1, have been taunting me remorselessly all week. The sugar rainbow adorning their attractive topside a very affront to my maudlin mood. I don’t know whether I think that by eating the Party Rings some of the delightful colour will some how rub off on my general outlook on life or that I am eating them to just get them out of my face!

Whatever the reason, it’s beside the point; dwelling on the philosophical ramifications of ingesting these day-glo edibles is not going to keep me from the task at hand. So I go about throwing hippy biscuits into my gaping maw with the same fervour as a hairy biker sucking the marrow out of a human femur “wye eye man, its right teehsty”*2

And then I’m off. Like Super Mario being fired out of a sour faced cannon I’m on a space odyssey. Look there’s the famous Friesian nebula, where all the planets look like cows. And look out! Crafty Pete the Cosmic Gibbon is aggressively waving his fist at me for trespassing. I chart a new course for the coco-pop asteroid rings of the cookie dough planet Great Uncle Beta. I take a closer look. Nine seconds later I have eaten my way through the Great Uncle’s 10,000 mile interior. Oh my God! Cheesy Sue is here, and with her sausage roll dog! Me and Cheesy Sue go way back, we had a thing together for a while. She was great! But then Carol Vorderman told me too much cheese could cause dietary problems*3 so we had to split up.

The sausage roll dog calls my name. The voice is familiar. My fantasy space voyage dissipates. My boss is asking me why I have been flying around the office spreading crumbs and eating any and all perishables that cross my line of sight. “I have been eating Party Rings” I triumphantly cry, dragging out the word ‘rings’ so I sound like a crazed telephone. “Only 89p a pack”*4 I add as my eyes dart around the room. “If I give you £1.78 exactly will you buy another two packs?” she politely asks looking rather nervous but also a little eager. “HAHA” I bellow, snatching the money and making for the door. “I will return as your king and military commander – Captain Riboflavin Cholesterol, the Caramac Kid, the Sultan of Smarties, the Double Decker douchebag, messiah of Maltesers, the pink wafer prince...

Exit.

My battle with Party Rings an abominable failure.

*1 - Not true
*2 - Requires a Geordie accent, oh and the hairy bikers are categorically not cannibals, I hope. For otherwise we are all doomed!! Doomed!
*3 - This could have actually been from GMTV’s Dr Hilary Jones
*4 - True! Go and see.

2010-01-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

Two Delicious Lunches.

Cooked for me by some kind friends.

Saturday.

Nibbles: Olives, cured ham, celeriac salad, pickles and bread.

Preparation of first course.

Some nice grey mullets, and their guts.

Uncompleted pudding, with a ladybird.

First course: Pumpkin ravioli.

Main course: Roasted grey mullet with fennel and olive salad.

Pudding: Hazelnut meringue with raspberries (or without for those allergic) and cream.

Sunday.

Colourful selection of vegetables and tofu.

Frying.

Another uncompleted pudding.

Main course: Stir-fry with vegetables and smoked tofu.

Pudding: "To represent all that is wrong with Western society" banoffee pie.

Stew For Newman

2010-01-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

My friend Ben had a stew at our house once. Since then, he’s asked me about fifty times (ie twice) what went on so that he might make it for himself. I’m generally pretty low on patience, so I thought I’d get it right out there straight away, then it need never be repeated again. So this one’s for you Ben, now leave me alone.

STEW FOR NEWMAN

The Insides

Garlic – in bits.

Onions – yes.

Celery – if you know what’s good for you.

Some root veg – carrot, swede, turnip, whatever you fancy.

Greens – leeks, purple sprouting, peas, it’s all good.

Pulses – Puy lentils make it good. Adding borlotti beans makes it better.

Herbs ‘n’ that – I’d say pepper, thyme, maybe a bit of rosemary.

The Method

Cook the veg up in a big pan with a lid for a bit, holding fire on the pulses, until it all starts to soften, then pour in a couple of glasses of red wine (or a bottle of half decent ale) and a similar amount of water. Insert herbage, and maybe a good sprinkle of stock if you’re well, er, stocked. Sorry. Get it bubbling-hot, then add a handful or three of tasty puy lentils and let it cook for about 45 minutes or until the lentils are done and the veg is soft enough for an old man’s teeth to manage. Hopefully, you’ll add some borlotti beans near the end, making it a bigger, better and bolder stew all round. Eat it with potato cakes for added fatness.

SCOTT’S POTATO CAKES

The Insides

Potatoes – hence the name.

Greens – because they’re healthy.

Butter – to counteract the greens.

Salt – because it’s important to live dangerously once in a while.

The Method

Make a load of mashed potato, skins ‘n’ all, with plenty of butter and a good pinch of salt. I like a bit of mustard, but more of that another time. Stir in some lightly fried up greens; again, just whatever’s hanging about like leeks, sprouts or cabbage. Mix it all up and form into fat wadges of goodness, about the size of a teenager’s angry fist – you probably want one each, so make as much as you think you can handle, tough guy. Lay ‘em out on a baking tray, add a little pat of butter on the top (because you’re worth it), then bake in the oven for about half an hour or until the edges go crunchy.

Ready? Set the table? Go.