Finished

I’ll admit to it, I hate cooking with rice. I can never get it quite how I like it, it’s either over or under done. I’ve not gotten around to buying a metal strainer either. I like eating it, just hate cooking it. I was sitting at the doctors, going through the “20 minute meal” Jamie Oliver app, and he showed me how it’s done. It looked a bit of a palaver, but I was determined to try it, and it turned out good (the second one, the first one I wasn’t keen on.)

What you need for two people…..

• 200g Arborio Rice
• A glass of White Wine
• An onion
• Some frozen peas
• Asparagus
• Some butter
• A pint of  Chicken Stock (Make your own, pre-made or stock cubes/gels are all good)
• Parmesan Cheese (get Flaked or fresh if you can, not sawdust).
• Same garlic
• Olive Oil

What you need to do….

• Put the stock in a pan and on the hob, if you’re using cubes/gel, add one cube/gel to boiling water. Let it simmer and stir.
• Chop the Asparagus tips into 3 pieces.
• Chop up some garlic and an onion, shallow fry ’till translucent in butter and a bit of olive oil
• Pour in the rice and cook it for a few minutes (the point if this is to break the rice’s shell and let the stock and wine get in)
• [For the next few bits, keep on stirring every few minutes]
• Pour over the wine, and let it evaporate.
• Keep on adding a ladle full of stock when it all gets evaporated. Over the 15 or so minutes this takes, add the Asparagus, the thick end after 5 minutes, the middle after the next 5, and the tips right at the end. On the last one, add the peas too
• Once the stock is absorbed, if the consistency is too stodgy, add some water, or cook it for longer, use your judgement. Remember though, the Parmesan will thicken it.
• Add a nice nob of butter and the Parmesan, stir it all in, take it off the hob and leave it for about 10 minutes.
• Serve and enjoy =)

All the bits you need

Simmer the stock (using Gel here)

Sweat down some garlic and onions in butter.

Add the rice and let it cook.

Thick bits of aspagous first, then thin bits. Let the stock get absorbed into the rice.

Once all the stock and stuff is in, it tripples in size.

Serve and enjoy =)

Good stuff

I hate ASDA, ASDA is on par with one of the circles of hell. As you walk through the door, people seem to lose all sense of spacial awareness. I’m going to bullet-point this list.

• People with a complete lack of spacial awareness and think they’re the only people there. How can they think it’s a good idea to leave a trolley horizontal in an a aisle? People leave their trolleys and then walk off a few meters, naturally in front of the goods that you want at the time, so you can’t get to them without seeming rude by moving their trolley.
• Uncontrolled Children. I swear, if I acted half as bad as the brats there, belts would be touching bottoms. They’re skating about* without a care in the world. OK, I understand the “WAHHH I WANT THIS, I WANT THAT”, that’s kids, kids are always going to do that. But running around skating? I don’t mean to be grouch, I really don’t, but I would send them up the chimneys for some good old Victorian style punishment.
• Crates of stuff just left anywhere they want, and as above, right in front of the products that you want.
• People (I’m looking at you, Grannys) taking forever to turn the corner, and only moving their trolley at the last second, blocking not only the aisle, but the corridor too.
• The crowd of people hording over the reduced section. It’s a sad state of affairs when society is reduced to fighting over a packet of almost of date bacon. I don’t mean to be political about this, but it wouldn’t happen in Church-hill’s day**.
• The self-service tills. Oh god, oh my, I hate these things. I hate these things so much. I understand that you can fit 6 machines and 1 member of staff, where as before you would have 4 members of staff and 4 tills. It saves money in that respect. And I know it’s great for the “Oh diddiums, it didn’t scan? Oh my, my mistake, sorry m’lurd” people. Bleep, Bleep… Checking Weight. Checking Weight. While the member of staff has had a momentary laps in concentration (starting, probably, from the moment they signed up to the job).
• The unknowledgeable staff. OK, I understand these people probably don’t have degrees in media studies and are working for a base-wage. And there are (probably) 100′s of 1000s of various items and products, but today I had to explain what a chorizo is. I’m not sure if I’m in the wrong, maybe it is something obscure.
• There is no queue space for the self-service section, so it normally ends up going down one of the aisles and becomes a big mess. Then you get some twat with a trolley trying to get in on our basket-dude turf.
• One thing I will say, I got a lot of respect for the staff, it can’t be easy working in such a soul-destroying environment when they could just sign on instead (and almost be better off, financially), I don’t look down on any job what-so-ever, from the head of a bank to the guy who empties the bins, a job is a job. I think, personally, everyone who walks into that building looses a few points on their I.Q, and some people it grows back when they walk out. I can’t blame the staff for that.

Anyway, I managed to get everything I wanted into my basket, everything was going fine and I was at my self service till, when for the forth time I did that “checking weight” thing, and by then I had enough, I really did. There was some screaming brats next to me too and I completely autisim’d, just left it and walked out.

But the thing is, I had this idea of what to cook in my head, I’d been thinking about it for hours. So what did I do? I went to the fabled Tescos and “made do”, and this is what I “made do” with…..

Stuff you’ll need.

• A packet of decent sausages (Chorizo would be better)
• A mild chili
• Paprika, Garlic Salt (proper garlic would be better).
• Two tins of chopped tomatoes
• Two tins of Butter Beans
• Some oil
• Some herbs and stuff, honestly, whatever you got, just use it up.
• Red Onions and Red Peppers
• A bit of flour
• Some sugar
• …. maybe a bit of balsamic vinegar? Honestly, use your imagination here, nothing is set in stone.
• Some nice bread to serve it up with, like Tiger Bread.

How to go about making it

• Take the meat out of the sausage and brown them off in a bit of oil. If you got some garlic, mash it up with some salt and a fork and add it to the oil.
• Sweat down the onions and peppers
• Transfer it from your frying pan into a saucepan, including those lovely juices from the sausage/chorizo.
• Dollop in two tins of tomatoes and two tins of butter beans, keep the whole thing over a very low light.
• Add in whatever spices, herbs and chili you’ve got (eg, the garlic salt/garlic/paprika).
• Keep it over a low light for about 10 minutes until it’s thickened a bit and it looks good.
• Give it a taste, if you think it needs some sugar, balsamic, salt or pepper, put that in. Remember, you can always add, you can’t take away. Just a little bit at the time. The sugar cuts through the sharpness of the tomatoes to even and mellow everything out.
• Add some flour to thicken the sauce, I used about one and a half heaped table-spoons.
• Serve in a bowl with a nice bit of bread.

This was made really hap-hazordly, I didn’t really think, I just *did*. The sausage broke up a bit when stirring it around, which helped thicken things up… in general, it’s worked well, I bet it’ll be good tomorrow for lunch too.

* Skate? SKATE? In my day, in my day, if I wanted to skate in a supermarket, well, it wouldn’t happen. Bottoms would turn red first. How the hell do people allow their kids to ‘Helees’ (and yes, they are skating) in a supermarket?
** Ok, it would, but there was a war on, they’ve got an excuse.

The tomartos with sauce are quite lose, but we'll thicken it up later.

Browning off the saussage meat

Just bung it in, it'll work, hopefully.

Transfer it to a saucepan