The Everlasting Desert starts off as a ball of something, maybe ice cream or maybe a vanilla sweetened mascarpone that has been frozen? Not a necessarily big ball, maybe only about 2” in diameter. Cover the whole thing in a thin crispy batter and deep fry it. Then cover that in something else, in this case, mashed banana, then batter and deep fry it. Next up can be some peanut butter, and, you guessed it, batter and deep fry. Why stop there? Nutella comes next, then golden syrup. Keep on going until you’re satisfied, slice it up and serve.
It’s going to be wonderful, both the beauty and the beast.

Forgive me father for I will sin.

Anyway, back to the food, this was the first time I’ve tried real crab before, or at least, in recent memory. It tastes, oddly enough, of Crab Sticks, but the texture is slightly hairy. The dark meat has more flavour and more of a pate type texture. I wasn’t in love with it, texture wise, but the taste was right up there. I was expecting almost a prawn/lobster type taste, and although it wasn’t too far off, it wasn’t the same.
If you know someone who likes a bit of crab, this is a nice one to show off a crab’s crabbiness.

What You Need, enough to make for two.

• White crab meat and/or a ‘dressed crab’.
• Some pasta, I used Fusilli, but I think something like a linguini would work well too.
• A glass of white wine.
• Garlic, Chilli, Ginger and Parsley.
• Some Single Cream
• A drop of olive oil.

What you need to do.

• First up, boil the kettle for the pasta
• While that’s going, chop up the chilli, garlic, parsley and grate the ginger. Keep the seeds if you want a bit more heat; it’s the white coating on the seeds that are the ‘hot’ bit. I found the parsley very stalky, so chop this one up fine. I found the best way to do that, was to roll it up and do a rough-chop on it.
• Heat up some oil in a frying pan and add the chilli and ginger, then a few minutes later, add the garlic.
• By now, the kettle will be boiled, so boil up some pasta according to the packet, don’t forget to add salt and oil to the water, it stops it sticking and flavours it better.
• Add a big glug of white wine and let it reduce down to basically nothing.
• Add the crab, cream and parsley, let it simmer and reduce.
• I found it needed more ‘oomph’ to it, so I added juice from ¼ of a lemon, some salt, and some more wine, so I added that and let it reduce.
• Pasta should be done, taste a piece and if it’s the way you like it, drain it and add to the crabby creamy goodness.
• Serve and enjoy =)

Frozen white crab meat and pasta.

A nice bottle of plonk.

Chop the chili and garlic, great the ginger.

'Dressed Crab' - The mix of white and brown meat works well.

Fry up the Garlic, Ginger and Chilli.

Pasta ! Tip Top Tip: Fill up about 2/3 of your bowl to get the right amount.

Add the crab: It looks rank, but won't end up like that =)

Add the cream and wine, let it reduce.

Plonk in the Parsley: chop it up finer than this though.

That's more like it, give it a taste, add some salt or whatever you think it needs.

Stir in the pasta to the sauce.

Look. At. That.... Lovely.

Crabtastic Creamy Pasta: DONE.

What You Need For One Person (plus enough for lunch the next day)

• Wok, Ladle, a good knife for chopping things up, serving plate. I can’t work out weather it’s a Spoon Soup or a Fork Soup, so I opted for both.
• A packet of noodles, don’t get pre-cooked, as they don’t’ soak up the soup as well; the ones in nests are what I went for.
• A packet of stir-fry veg, or some mixed veg that you like. I used baby sweetcorn, Mushrooms, Sugarsnap Peas, Spring Onion…cut up into bite-sized pieces.
• Thai Curry Paste, but I suppose any kind of curry paste you like would work. I used Marks’n’Spark’s “Malaysian Rendang Paste”, it’s nice and peanutish, not to hot at all. I suppose this isn’t really ‘Thai’ thinking about it now, oh well.
• Uncooked Prawns, ‘cus I like them, but would work with beef or chicken.
• A touch of oil, whatever you got, it’s not important.
• A lime, a bunch of coriander, a chilli, garlic (didn’t use, but would work) and fat man’s two-fingers-up of ginger.

What you need to do to make it work =)

• Preparation first. Cut up the veg into bite-sized pieces if you’ve not used a packet of stir-fry mix.
• Cut off the end of the chilli at about ¼ of the way from the tip and chop that up. If you like it hotter, cut ½ or more, or even the whole one and use another for this next bit. With the rest of the chilli, cut a line down it, that way when it comes to cooking, it’ll release some of it’s heat and flavour without making the dish too hot.
• Chop the ginger into matchsticks, as thin as you can get. I found I used too much in these photos but use your own judgement.
• Open the can of coconut milk.
• Heat up a bit of oil in a DRY wok, doesn’t need a lot of heat at all as he wok gets hot easily. Put your hand over the wok and if you can hold it there for about 5 seconds before it starts to really feel hot, you’re about right.
• Add the ginger, about 3 dollops of paste and the chopped bit of the chilli to the oil; give it a minute or two (it might spit at you a bit) for everything to do its business.
• Add the veg and mix it up, about 4-5 minutes should do it, keep on sturing it around so it’s all coated.
• Now add the can of coconut milk and then again about ¼ to ½ the can of water on top, mix it up a little. Plonk on a nest of noodles on top, it doesn’t matter if half the nest is covered by coconut goodness, and half of it is sticking out the top. Add the stabbed chilli thing here.
• After about 5 minutes, the bottom of the noodles should all be the way they should be, so you can stir them around a bit and get the non-covered part under the coconutty goodness. It’ll still hold its nest shape though at this stage, so flip them ‘round.
• After about 5 minutes, chop up the coriander, and add that. I got it from the shop across the road that’s by a busy road, so ran it under a tap before I chopped it to get any sort of car-crap out of it. Add that to the wok and stir it up. You don’t wanna do this to early ‘cus then it’s too coriandish. All the noodles should have separated by now.
• After five minutes now, it’s all more or less done, give it another stir and add the prawns. About 5 minutes should do it depending on size. Give it a stir every minute to make sure all the prawns are covered. I’m gonna do a chicken version of this for Ma’ next week, where I’ll cut the chicken thinly and add it a bit earlier. My mate Nielly P says that if you dust them in cornflower first, the chicken will go slightly silky and tender, so I’ll give that a shot when I do that.
• Roll the lime on a hard service with the palm of your hand to break it up a bit, cut it in half, add the juice and serve (remembering to take out the stabbed chilli thing). Sprinkle some more coriander on top and some chopped chilli if you want it hotter.

Sorry about the mess, photo was between Try 2 and Try 3 and I didn't clean up between them (it was only 5 minutes while i nipped to the shops to stock up again)

Lovely _Malaysian_ Curry Paste... Ok, not Thai.

ERmmm.... prawns. Quite small so only need a few minutes to cook. Bigger ones would take longer.

Veg: Use half a stir-fry pack or chop your own.

The stabbed chilli bomb.

Fry up the paste, chopped chilli and ginger.

Stir up the veg in the paste and bits.

Add the coconut milk, corriander and 1/4-1/2 cup of water.

Noodles ! (use one nest, not two as in here)

Add the prawns !

KAPLOWIE ! Serve and enjoy =).... I used to many noodles though, wasn't quite soupy enough.

Roast Beef (I think)

I really like Roast Beef. I grow up not having it, I don’t think my mum ever cooked it for me, but when I go to the likes of a sandwich shop, a roast beef and horseradish sandwich is one of my favorites. My mum did make Salt Beef, which I’ll try to make myself one day, but it just isn’t the same (in fact, it’s far better, but still, not the same).

By chance, I was browsing around ASDA with my flatmate, Russingleton, when I spied a ‘brisket’ and my juices got flowing about having having lovely roast beef sandwiches for a week.

I couldn’t find any recipes on the video websites by any of my favorite chefs, so I thought I would piece together what I thought I remembered from Telly and do something myself.

Here’s what you need.

• A bag of carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 Garlic bulbs
• Some port or red wine
• Some concentrated beef stock
• A brisket of beef.
• Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Mustard (Grainy or English)

Here’s what I did….

• Put the oven on full-whack
• Cut the onions into 6 or 8 pieces, all put together.
• Cut the carrots up into bite sized chunks.
• Cover the beef in Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
• Make up about 1½ pints of beef stock, I used some concentrated stuff because I thought it would taste stronger.
• Add three good glugs of port to the stock.
• Brown off the beef in a frying pan
• Cover the beef in grainy mustard, or English if want a fuller flavour.
• Rest veg in the pan, with 2 bulbs of garlic separated into cloves (I didn’t bother to peel it, life’s to short) cover  the veg with stock.
• Place the beef on top, cover with tin foil.
• Put the oven down to about 150ish.
• Cook it for about 3 hours, turning it every now-and-then.
• Leave to rest for 30 minutes, carve and serve.

Most of the stuff I used.

Brown off the beef.

Veg in a pan

Beef covered with mustard, veg covered in stock.

The liquid doubled ! Oops, oh well, makes a nice soup.

Looks good, but was way too tough.

The soup bit is amazing though.

The garlic is nice and squidgy, but the other veg was too hard.

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 =)

Something a day

It’s a new year, and a new decade. There are a lot of ‘Photo a day’ things. My plan is to dedicate a bit of time (maybe 10 minutes, maybe a few hours, we’ll see) a day, every day, for the next year, into doing something creative. Weather that’s cooking something new and interesting, designing some wallpapers or web apps, developing a new section to a website…. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s something. It’ll help keep the mind sharp, and hopefully I’ll come up with something useful to someone.

So, everyone, have a great 2010, I’m going to make this one My Year, and I look forward to the journey.

A lovely christmas prezzy.

Have I come up trumps, or have I come up trumps. Oh boy, this is a great recipe. There was a bit of flaffing about, cutting up all the vegetables (and braving ASDA a few days before Christmas), but I think this one is worth it, and it makes so much that if you give 3/4 of it away as a gift, you’ll still have enough to last you a good while. There is a Sweet Chili sauce I buy from the local butchers, “So!Go sweet chili”, it’s about £4 a bottle, and although it lasts a little 200ml bottle. It’s great stuff, but if I was charging that for this stuff, I’d be a millionaire after the 5th batch, and let me tell you, it’s a damn sight better.

This is the first time I’ve made a Jam/chutney/thinggy. If It sets, then I’m calling it a jam, if it doesn’t, it’s a sauce… I’ll let you know in the morning.

What you’ll need….

• 8 ‘pointer’ red peppers (they’re nicer than normal peppers)
• 10ish Red Chilis (don’t worry, it won’t blow your head off)
• A bundle of Spring Onion.
• Two red onions
• A bottle of Red Wine Vinegar (350ml)
• 1kg of Preserve Sugar (or I hear you can use Golden Caster Sugar).
• A nice thumb of ginger
• A haa-aaa-UGE pan.
• Some jars to keep it in.
• Two ‘things’ of Cherry Tomatoes… about 500g.
• Hand Blitzer

What to do

• De-seed the Chilis, you can just cut the top off, slice them in half and use a spoon to scrape out the seeds.
• ‘Rusticly’ fine-slice all the various vegetables, (if you’ve got a blender, it’ll make life easier, but I don’t, so I did it by hand)
• Shove half of all the veg, sugar and vinegar into the pan and mix it about. If you do it in that order, the vinegar will melt the sugar, rather than taking up so much room.
• Do as above with the second half, in the same pan. There is to much there to stir around if you do it in one go.
• Put the heat on under the pan, and let it boil, then put the heat down at let it simmer for 50 minutes, making sure you give it a good stir every 5 minutes.
• After then, give it a little taste, if needs a little bit of this or that, add it. Personally, I thought it tasted perfect.
• Let the mixture call down a little bit, about another hour.
• Get a hand blitzer and blitz it down a bit, but keep it slightly course, it’s about getting a good mix.
• Get some jars, I needed 4 coffee jars and two bigger ones.
• The idea is to sterilize them, so you fill them half way up with water and microwave them for about 2 minutes, making sure that you’ve removed all the labels as in the ones that I used had metal in them.
• Fill the jars up if the Sweet Chili goodness, and enjoy =)

Cut off the top, slice in half, use a teaspoon to scrape out insides

8 Chillis, but mild and not hot.

Use a rough chop on everything, or even better, a food proccessor.

It's a lot of Red Pepper, but it's good.

Bung it in, in two halfs, to make life easier (I did it in one and it was too much)

oops, forgot the tomartoes, never mind, they'll break down when cooking so don't bother chopping... to much hassle.

Ok, I made a mess, i'll clean up in the morning.

Use the blitzer to get the consistancy you like.

A lovely christmas prezzy.

Doesn't look amazing, but tastes great.

Pad Gonz, it’s like Pad Thai, only not quite. The whole thing was easy to make, took less than 10 minutes, most of the stuff I already had in the fridge. I’ll be honest with you, I forgot a few bits as I was cooking it, I was going to incorporate Peanut Butter to give it that Satay’ish touch, I still think it would have worked, but never mind, I’ll try that next time. I’m separating this into two recipes because the chicken part would work with any sauce. I used to really like those packets of Chinese’y sauce you can get in the shops, but now I find they all taste synthetic… I promise I’m not a snob when it comes to food, but I really do find they taste of chemicals.

What you’ll need –
The Chicken Part

• Chicken breast. (it’s cheaper with the skin on, which is easy to take off and you can always use it for Chicken Scratchings)
• A couple of beaten eggs
• Some flour
• Some sesame Seeds (if you want).
• Some Sun Flower oil
• A pinch of salt, or some seasoning (maybe something like Mild Curry Powder would work?)
• A wok, and some Kitchen Paper

What to do –
The Chicken Part

• Cut up the chicken into bite-sized strips, the smaller they are, the crisper, but less succulent.
• Beat an egg in a bowl, sprinkle some Sesame Seeds in there
• Cover the chicken in flour with a pinch of salt or seasoning
• Heat up the oil in the Wok, the hotter the better. Pour a drop of the egg in, if it’s sizzling, then you’re hot enough.
• Dip the chicken in the egg, then put in the oil.
• When the chicken coating is slightly brown, turn it around. If they all start to stick together, like a pancake/doughnut-with-chicken thing, separate them up.
• When you think they’re all done, cut the thickest one in two, if that’s cooked, then the rest should be.
• Leave them to rest on some kitchen paper.

What you’ll need –
The Stir Fry part

• Honey
• Dark Soy Sauce
• Peanuts and/or Cashew nuts
• A chopped chili (I like the mild ones)
• Some chopped up red pepper
• Chopped up red onion
• Chopped up Spring Onion
• The fried chicken from above (if you want)
• The left over egg (from above, if you want)
• Some noodles, straight-to-wok is fine.
• Some sunflower oil (about half from above if you want… empty the half into a cup or something to dispose of later)
• A wok

What you need to do –
The Stir Fry part.

• Chop up your veg, chop up the nuts
• Pour a drop of oil into the wok and heat it up.
• Put the chili and spring onions in the wok (from here onwards, shake the pan around every 30 seconds or so)
• Put in the Red Onion and Red Pepper
• Then add in a generous drop of honey and a good few dashes of soy sauce, most (but not all) of the nuts, and the sesame seeds.
• Add the noodles (and chicken from above)
• Give it one last shake-up and pour onto a plate.
• If you’ve got the left over egg from the chicken above, pour that into the wok and keep on stirring so you get almost like a scrambled egg.
• Put the stuff back off the plate, into the scrambled egg, shake it all up, and put it back.
• Sprinkle some chopped nuts on top
• ….. enjoy =)

Just bung it in.

Egg and Sessimi seeds to cover the chicken and make the scrambled egg thinggy.

Fry up that chicken - Flour, Egg, Sesame Seeds in sunflower oil

Really really nice, works with most sti-frys

The noodles take on the flavours and colour of the sauce.

The scrambled egg thing works well, soaks up the sauce and gives a nice texture.

Doesn't look amazing, but tastes great.

CHICKEN SCRATCHINGS !

It was cheaper for me to buy chicken fillets with the skin on, than to have them with the skin off. I didn’t need them in what I was cooking, and didn’t what to just chuck them away. When having a roast chicken, the best bit is the crispy skin… so can I do this by itself?

I covered them with some sesame oil and a sprinkling of sea-salt, put them on some tin-foil*, and put them in a low oven (about 150ish) for about 10ish minutes to crisp up. This is when I forgot about them and turned the oven off, without turning the fan off… I’m not sure if this effected things. When I did remember about them, about an hour later, they came out as the pictures show. They were a little too dry, but I think if I took them out at around the 12-13 minute mark, they would have been perfect.

* I’m going to tell you that it was to reflect the heat to the underside, rather than me being lazy and wanting to save on some of the washing up.

sesame and a sprinkling of sea salt, on tin foil.

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