Luncheon 02/07/09

Yesterday I was stuck at work being bum-raped by auditors so I didn't manage to post luncheon details. I was also in a rush and in need of a serious carb fix. So we have the old classic hummus 'n' bread!



As you can see, I also availed myself of some bhajis and samosas. Very tasty, standard stuff. Shan't bore you too much...

Frazzles and SCIENCE!

Frazzles are bloody great, especially for breakfast. I've come to the conclusion over the years that a savoury breakfast is much more fulfilling than a sweet breakfast. Also, I find them more palateable. I'm one of a breed of people that just can't deal with breakfast in the morning, I need to do something first. Generally, I get up, have a glass of water, shower and walk the 2.3 miles to work every day. When I get there I have my brekkie, toast, porridge, nutrigrain bar, banana, whatever. That's fine. By the time I've managed to saunter all the way there, my bizarre digestive system is ready to accept sustinence. If I try and eat straight after getting up, I feel awful. Can't stomach it at all... An example, I stayed at my bro's gaff on Friday night, as I am often wont to do. We had to get up pretty early the next day to set up a summer fête, and upon the morn, my brother's wonderful fiancée provdide me with two rounds of splendid toast. I was nearly sick... I don't know what it is about mornings but I can't deal with it.

Now, what has this to do with Frazzles you say? Well, frazzles appear to be the only thing I can stomach first thing in the morning. Why? I think it's down to salt content. I can manage a bacon sarn about half an hour after getting up, sausage, maybe 45 minutes, toast an hour, cereal 90 minutes. It seems to me that the salt content is inversely proportional to the time in which I can consume said product. This can be displayed thus:

T=Ô/S

Where: T = Time after awakening (minutes); Ô = The nut scratch constant; S = Salt content (grams)

The nut scratch constant varies from person to person and applies only to males. The constant for women is still to be discovered. Ô can be described as the amount of minutes, per gram of salt in a man's sweat, that he spends scratching his nuts and arse after getting up. Extensive research has been done on this and it has been empirically proven to be a constant. However, this is out of the scope of this article.

Therefore, I conclude that sweet breakfast items are less sufficient as a breakfast item than savoury products.

Luncheon 13/02/08

Today I thought I'd go a bit unconventional. All morning, I've been craving hummus, don't know why but I have. So I thought I'd get some. What goes well with hummus I thought? Well bread of course! Hummus and bread. That could get a bit bland methinks, so I also got a bag of southern fried chicken strips and a smoothie. Here is what it looks like:



Oddly on the packaging, it was spelt houmous. I've never seen it spelt like that anywhere before. I've seen hummus and humus, but never houmous. Even the Firefox spellchecker agrees with me...

Here's how to make some hummus:


Ingredients:

125g dried chickpeas soaked over night
Juice and zest of one lemon
2 tbsp of sesame paste (also known as tahini)
2 peeled cloves of garlic
100ml Olive oil
salt and pepper to season

Cook the chickpeas in unsalted boiling water for about an hour or until tender. It's important that you don't salt the water as, for some magical reason, the chickpeas never soften otherwise. Drain them and allow them to cool. Whack everything in a blender or food processor and wazz it till its smooth. If you like it smoother, add some water. I like it chunky though =]


Hummus is really good with grilled chicken breast in pitta bread with some roasted veg like onions and peppers and courgettes and maybe a little spinach. Enjoy!

Also, last night I went for that curry, and I must say Quinton Balti is one of the finest Indian Restaurants I've ever been to. the food was excellent! For starter I had an invention called the Nargis Kebab, essentially this is a tandoori scotch egg. It some lovely tandoori keema (lamb mince) covering a whole boiled egg with a small omelette draped over the top. It was most special! I also had some kind of bhuna with chicken and paneer in it. Top Norris!

EDIT: I just found this and had to share: Nargis Kebab Appreciation Society

Seafood Sticks

I love seafood sticks, I've just eaten about ten of them. I thought you might like to know how they are made though. It's nasty.

Basically you get some white fish trimmings such as Coley, Pollock, or Cod and you beat the shit out of it until it becomes a gelatinous goo. You then add some egg white, flavourings, preservatives, soy protein, starch, oil and sugar and then cure it. This is called 'surimi'. You then have to flavour it because it tastes of exactly nothing.

The curing process involves heating it up to polymerise the myosin in the fish flesh. Some fish is unsuitable for this such as whiting, which is where the starch comes into play. In the 70s and 80s before the outbreak of BSE, a cow's blood was typically used to set the fish. Now they tend to use transglutaminase which is an enzyme, to set the myosin. The pink colouring that you see on the edge of the sticks is most commonly artificial but sometimes it is achieved from grinding up shellfish exoskeletons like those on cooked prawns or crayfish.

Doesn't that sound tasty? Apparently the art of surimi making dates back 900 years ago to somewhere in East Asia. Industrialisation was realised in around 1960.

Seafood sticks rock!

Luncheon 11/02/08

Well, first of all, I am very sorry, I've been very busy at work so I haven't been able to keep this as up-to-date as I would have liked. Very naughty I know... Well, to be honest, I haven't really eaten much that's been special. I've made a few salads, done some wonderful things with cous-cous had some Morrisson's salads, you know the score. Here's a gallery of a few of the things I've been eating since last time:


Some very nasty Tuna salad from Benjy's


Something random and slimy from Boots


A marvellous sarnie I made


Liquid luncheon


Porky baps from the canteen


Today I could only be arsed to go to Boots so I had the meal deal which has now gone up to £3.20 I might add! Still cheap though, and I had a 'Tomato and Basil Chicken Pasta Salad', which came with a box of carrots and dip and an Orange and Passionfruit smoothie. The salad wasn't bad, slimy and mayonnaisey as usual but that's par for the course. The chicken was a little dry but the dressing was nice. I even got three whole leaves of spinach as a sort of token effort at justifying the name 'salad'. We all know my feelings on the misuse of that word! Wasn't bad though in terms of flavour though, I'll give them that. Here it is in all it's glory:



At the weekend I perfected my 'Special Sauce for Putting on Pan-Fried Seabass mmm it's Dead Nice'. That's it's official name by the way. You make it thus:


Ingredients:

~6 spring onions or one and a half shallots, finely chopped
4 tbl spoons of sherry vinegar
2 egg yolks
200g clarified butter
7 big fresh basil leaves, shredded
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
3 tbl spoons of water
salt and pepper to season

Chuck the spring onions and vinegar in a hot pan and quickly reduce. When the liquid is down to about a third, pour out and reserve. clean the pan and refill with some cold water and put on the hob until boiling. On top of the pan place a glass or metal bowl. Chuck in the egg yolks, water and seasoning and heat while whisking until the mixture has gone pale and fluffy then slowly pour in the clarified butter whisking all of the time. This is the difficult part cos you end up with butter everywhere and all down your arm. The mixture should start to emulsify like a hollandaise and thicken. Lob in the chilli, basil and vinegar and onion reduction, and whisk for a little bit, then take off the heat and keep it warm over the water until ready to serve. Don't let it go cold before serving or it'll go proper nasty and congealed, a bit like marzipan but horrible.

Pan fry your seabass (also works well with red snapper, mackerel, and trout) and spread some of this tasty stuff over the top, not loads cos it can be quite tart. Server with rocket and cherry tomatoes and a spoon of mushroom risotto or cous-cous. Absolutely bloody splendid! Very pleased with myself over this one. I also have a tasty recipe for a roasted red pepper sauce that goes amazingly with plaice or skate. I'll give you that another time though...


In closing, I thought you might like this poster I found in a pub in Cannock yesterday, made me chuckle!



Oh yes and...

project:Adonis weight: 14st 1lb

Luncheon 09/01/08

First of all, who the hell voted for sweetmeats?! Do you even know what that is?

Any way, to luncheon. Well today, I was supposed to meeting big, hairy Pete. Well actually, I was supposed to meet him yesterday, but I forgot my wallet. So we rescheduled to today. At 10.30AM I sent him a reminder, I know how useless he is at timekeeping. Anyhoo, at 12 o'clock, I gave him a ring. After some mumbling and unintelligible rambling, I ascertained that he was still in bed... So there went that plan out of the window! Well done Pete =]

So, I decided to give into the peer pressure and head to Subway... Therein I ordered an Italian BMT footlong on Oaty Stoatey Scrotey bread or something, with some salads and sweet Chilli sauce oh and something they call cheese. It wasn't bad, pretty sloppy but essentially very meaty! Ham, salami and pastrami, so the whole thing was made of porks! My favourite! Here it is in all its glory:



It was pretty tasty but I ended up with one end of my sarnie being a big sloppy mess of sauce which was a little bit oo sweet and spicy to be very nice. It was a ridiculous amount of money as well, £4.70! I won't be frequenting it... For pudding, I had a bag of BBQ Mini Cheddars. I love BBQ Mini Cheddars, they're amazing. When I was at uni, I'd buy a multi pack and eat the lot while I was doing bits of coursework. Sooooo sweet and BBQey and nice!

Right, back to work. I'm documenting boring stuff again so it looks like I'm not doing any work cos the stats say so, while in fact I'm doing stuff with other people and not getting any credit for it. Going to watch I Am Legend later. Hit and miss from what I've heard. I shall maybe do a little review later, maybe not...

Cereal Drought Over

Hurray! I managed to get some Choco Snaps on the way home from band rehearsal today! I've just contently munched through a bowl and am now fulfilled! However, I forgot to stock up on Marmite, so I shall have a little sulk about that.

I've just been watching 'Hugh's chicken run' on Channel 4 and I think the next episode will upset me. What annoys me are the people who whinge and moan about not being able to eat free range food because its too expensive. Fair enough, it costs a load extra if you buy from Tesco, but if you get off your fat arse and went to the butcher's you'd find that there's a whole world of tasty cheap cuts of meat that were reared humanely and cost you a whole lot less than Tescos! Try quitting smoking and spending the family allowance on biscuits first! I can go to a butcher near me and buy a whole roll of pork leg joint for £10. That roll of pork can easily be cut in two and feed two families of six, and have spare for a tasty sarnie, maybe with some mustard or horseradish. The same cut of meat, a quarter the size, injected with water and preservatives, shrink wrapped and refrigerated for a week, before it even gets to the shelves from Tesco would cost you about £12. No wonder these stupid people think they can't afford food, it's because they're too bloody lazy to shop around! And that's not even a cheap cut, you can get 2 lb of steak mince in most butcher's for about £2, two massive pieces of shoulder steak for about £3, that'd make a casserole big enough for about 6 or 8 people if you did a lot of mash with it. It's just pure laziness. I hope a whole lot of people watch this program and see just how horrific it is to battery farm animals. Cheap meat is not worth it, if you choose to ignore the suffering and continue buying Asda Smart Price chicken, you're an arsehole.

Rant over, sorry. On a lighter note, I just found out that these exist from one of my favourite websites: Snackspot.org.uk...

New Nobby's Nuts Flavour

I can't wait to have a go on these babies!

Luncheon 07/01/08

Today, I was going to make a lovely salad to bring with me. However, I managed to sleep through the dulcet tones of Chris Moyles, wailing in my ear for 45 minutes, and awoke 15 minutes before I had to be at work. Therefore, I made a little trip to Tesco to see what they had on offer in the way of salady things. The answer was a large quantity, but bugger all that looked very nice. I decided upon the least offensive of the salads, which was the aptly named: 'Tuna & Sweetcorn Pasta'

Bearing in mind, this was the nice looking one, here is what it looked like once opened:



My thoughts? A bit like macaroni with cat sick on it... After a little mixing, I managed to get rid of the idea of feline vomit and set to work. Actually, it wasn't too bad at all. The strange mayonnaise based sauce was oddly sweet with a strange spicy kick at the back which I put down to pepper. Started to get a bit sickly after about four forkfulls but I was ravenous. What I did think worked well was the combination of sweet sauce with the salty tuna. I'm a big advocate of the sweet-salty combo, I feel it's underused. My favourite sweet-salty combo is the sweet and salty popcorn mix when viewing a film. The people at the cinema think you're a loony, ignore them, its amazing! Also to go with it (not pictured here) was some kind of 'Innocent Smoothie' knock-off called 'I Am Fresh'. I read the label as Apple and Mango, it was in fact Apple and Mango and Lime. It was quite strange but not entirely unpleasant. I don't think the lime works though really.

Other fun things to note, I have run out of Sainsbury's Choco Snaps. This has made me very angry, not least because there weren't any in Sainsbury's yesterday! Instead of an evening bowl of Choco Snaps, I decided to do some Marmite on toast. Alas! No bleeding Marmite either! So I peeled me a carrot and that was my evening snack. What's up doc etc...

How was Christmas?

Mine was pretty crap. I was ill for the whole time... In fact I was so ill, I didn't eat for three days! I was actually very fearful that I may never want to eat again... I had a little weep because I couldn't eat. However, I did use my time productively, as I was too zoned out to do any shopping for Christmas and in fact far too skint to buy anything, I decided to try my hand at tasty home-made treats. I spent three days experimenting, ruining and finally perfecting Red Onion Chutney and Fudge!

Now first of all, the Red Onion chutney is fine, and I mean fine! So tasty, I started with a random recipe I found on the internet and played about a bit. I', not going to divulge my exact recipe as it is so tasty, I might think about jarring it up and selling it. In essence it contains many an onion some fine merlot, some unrefined castor sugar, a wee bit of sherry vinegar and some special stuff. Takes bleeding ages to cook but it's worth it. mmmmmm

The fudge is a nightmare, how anyone invented fudge is beyond me. There's such a fine line between what's essentially butterscotch sauce and sweet sand that you can't take your mind of the job for a moment. It takes ages and you have to stir it all the time! I've tried a few recipes now and the ones with condensed milk are second rate. Use one with the fattiest milk you can find and you get fudge so sweet and tasty you can only have a little bit before you don't want to eat fudge again. Thus making it healthy! I shall let you in on the fudge recipe cos its easy:

100g Butter
350ml Milk
300g Caster sugar (I prefer the unrefined golden stuff)
1 tsp Vanilla essence
[Optional, four squares of dark chocolate and 50ml of scotch]

Plonk the butter, milk and sugar in a heavy pan and heat up, stirring all the time. After about two or three minutes it will start to boil. Turn the heat down and keep it boiling, stirring all the time. Keep this going for about 35 minutes. Don't worry, it will look disgusting for the vast majority of the time, like the milk has separated. Ignore it and press on. You may want to get yourself a glass of wine and put the TV on. Maybe even grab a chair. Don't stop stirring for a second or it'll burn and become nasty. If you do have to leave for a wee or whatever, take it off the heat. At no point think about sticking your finger in for a taste, this stuff is hotter than the sun!

After about 35 minutes, it will become a little thicker. This is where it starts to get annoying. Annoying because the time it takes to do this next bit can vary from ten minutes to an hour in my experience, with no bearing on any physical factor. It must be voodoo... At this point, chuck in the vanilla and chocolate and booze if you want to. Careful with the booze, when you chuck it in, the alcohol will evaporate almost immediately and the pan will bubble like a deep fat fryer. Keep your face out of the way! Get yourself a bowl of chilled water on hand. Every five minutes or so, you need to test the mixture. You're looking for a stage that pastry chefs call the 'soft-ball stage'. Now, its no massive secret what this means, it simply means, drop half a teaspoon in some cold water. Leave it for a few seconds to cool to room temperature, take it out and it should be able to rolled into a soft ball. If it isn't ready yet, it'll basically dissolve leaving you with a minging, murky mess (check out my alliteration!). If you go too far, it'll be like toffee. The turning point is very narrow as well so you have to keep on your guard.

Once you have your soft ball, take it off the heat immediately. Run a sink of cold water a couple of inches deep. Take you pan and wooden spoon and plunge the pan into the water, taking care to get none in the pan. Now frantically beat it with the spoon until it starts to make your arms ache but its cool enough to handle without burning yourself. Then you need to spoon it out onto a greased baking tray and pat it into a rectangle so its about half an inch thick all over. It should still be quite warm to the touch and the consistency of warm plasticine. Cover it with a towel or some kitchen roll, not cling film and leave to cool on the work surface. Don't put it in the fridge.

If you for any reason go too far, you'll know pretty quick. Your biceps will burst and you spoon will snap and you'll end up with something resembling builders sand. Tasty sand, but still very gritty. No loss though, I've found its very tasty sprinkled on ice cream!

I think Christmas would be much better if everyone gave up on all of this buying crap for crap's sake, like remote controlled UFOs and novelty pint glasses; and actually put some effort in. How cool would it be if, for Christmas you got a load of hand made food from all of your mates? Delectable desserts, savoury sauces, tasty treats, piquant pickles, marvellous, mouthwatering masterpieces? It would be awesome!

Enjoy your fudge!

Welcome back

Due to the banning of mySpazz at work it has been increasingly difficult to update you on the progress of my preferred hobby, eating. Hopefully, I'll now be able to keep this one up-to-date =]

I shall update after lunch...