Pizza oven
www.thethoughtfulbreadcompany.com/building_clay_oven.php

nuff said

Yawwwwn see you next week when we can swap knitting patterns or some shit
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:42, 2 replies)

Cooking isn't as hard as it looks
stick a chicken breast between either two pieces of clingfilm or two pieces of greaseproof paper. Bash the crap out of it with a rolling pin (or an empty winebottle in my case) until it is much wider and flatter - under a centimetre thick.

Crumble blue cheese or spread soft cheese on it, and add something else - chilli pickle, redcurrant jelly, cranberry sauce, hoummous, mushroom duxelles - whatever you like. Most things work. I try something different pretty much every time.

Season it and roll the chicken up.

Lay out strips of pancetta overlapping a little until you have the width of the chicken roll. Roll the chicken up in the pancetta.

Put on a baking tray, drizzle on a little olive oil, bake at 200 deg C for 20-25 minutes.

Rest it for a few minutes and then slice it to show off the pretty swiss roll effect.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:40, Reply)

Bolognaise sandwich
Don't knock it til you've tried it.

A few years back, I used to live in a house that was generally used as the place where we'd end the night, often accompanied with many different takeaways. One night, whilst the others were arguing about what pizzas to order, I remembered that I'd left a bolognaise going in the slow cooker.

I went through to check it, and all was fine. However, as I checked it, I noticed the unopened pack of bread next to it. This put an idea into my head, that of the title. I realised very quickly that I couldn't just do this with normal bread, as it would fall apart. As such, I made some toast, and made myself a rather nice sandwich.

My friends quickly noticed this, but only one was willing to try it. The others spent over £30 on takeaways that night (that'll teach the stupid bastards not to go to Dominos, FFS), whereas my friend and I ate for the sum total of probably about 50p each.

Since then, I've always reserved enough bolognaise at the end of cooking for a sandwich, it's always good. I even once put a pot on simply for the sandwiches when we got home.

Ingredients aren't too complicated -
Toast
Bolognaise

Yep, that's about it.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:39, 22 replies)

I had a massive urge
to smash Ainsley Hariott's head to a pulp with a 'Percy' pepper mill every time I saw his stupid face on TV.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:34, 3 replies)

Drunkenly go to "Munchies", my local takeaway.
Order a large doner, extra chilies, chili and yoghurt sauce, shit load of salad. And a couple of poppadoms. Go home, eat and fall asleep. The perfect meal.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:18, Reply)

Pot Noodle Omelette
Otherwise known as a Tramp's Foo Yung.....

Prepare your Pot Noodle as per instructions (I tend to go for the Bombay Bad Boy, but a chicken and mushroom one works just as well) but add a little extra water. Leave for a couple of minutes until the noodles and its freeze-dried bits are softened then drain the noodles from the liquid. Reserve the liquid and keep warm.
Beat a couple of eggs with a dash of milk and some seasoning (a bit of garlic won't go amiss either). Heat a bit of oil in a pan until hot then lash the noodles in closely followed by the beaten eggs.
Move (not stir!) the mixture around until cooked and serve on your finest china.
Re-heat the Pot Noodle juice and serve as an accompanying consommé.

Thankfully it tastes far nicer than it should...
(Findo, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 9:03, Reply)

Recipes? Seriously?
What the fuck?
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:57, 5 replies)

Very simple salad
This goes well with a barbecue.

Shread an iceberg lettuce. Wash well and leave to drain.

Cook 4 -6 rashers of bacon, till crispy. Chop into small pieces.

Fry an egg, till solid. Chop that into small pieces too.

Make a simple vinagrette - 4 spoons of oil to one spoon of white wine vinegar. Shake well until it emulsifies, should go cloudy.

Put lettuce, egg, bacon in a bowl, mix it all up. Pour on dressing and mix again.
(username failed moderation, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:50, 4 replies)

top tip
You may have noticed in Tesco you can get olive oil with added omega-3 (the thing that is healthy in fish). Like me you might think it's a harmless additive to make you healthier. Wrong. I spent 2 hours making an awesome bolognese from scratch only to have the pasta taste like fish. I hate fish. Put thee whole lot in the bin and cooked up more spaghetti, sans essence of rat-in-wetsuit.
(tyrellsOwl, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:47, 2 replies)

Mad rice.
or 'arroz maluco', as the Brazilians call it.

- Rice
- Bacon
- egg
- Onion
- Pack of ready salted crisps. The 'ridged' ones work best.


Boil some uncle bens in a bag, leave to cool.

Quantites for one bag of rice. Adjust as you like.

Grill / bake 4 rashers of bacon till crispy, leave to cool.

Fry the bejesus out of an egg, both sides. You want the yolk solid. Leave to cool.

Chop up an onion, fry it in a mixture of half sunflower oil, half butter - the butter will make it soft, which is what you want. Cook till brown, leave to cool.

I find leaving these in kitchen paper is good, you don't want it too greasy.

Chop the crispy bacon into small pieces. Do the same with the egg. Say 0.5cm kind of size.

Squash the crisps, you want small pieces but it's not a precise science.

Heat up a big frying pan, or a wok. No oil required, just a hot pan.

Put the rice into the hot pan, and chuck everything except the crisps in. Give it a good stir, so all the stuff is well mixed in. Keep going till the rice is wrmed up.

At the last minute, chuck half the broken crisps in, give them a quick stir.

Put in a bowl, put the other half of the crisps on top.

Voila.

Tip - this can be a bit dry, so goes best with something that has a bit of moisure. A rare steak maybe.
(username failed moderation, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:43, Reply)

Leek Mush
I enrolled in a program where I receive a box of fresh vegetables biweekly. In season, I received bunches of leeks. What are leeks? They look like giant onions, so I thought maybe something like French Onion soup would be nice. So, disregarding my lack of a recipe, I made something that might be called leek mush. It wasn't as appealing as it sounds.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:23, 2 replies)

Oh man, I made some food once.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 8:04, 9 replies)

My Special Mash Potato
To make my 'Special Mash' all you need to do is to boil your Potatoes until soft, Mash it up then add these in the following order mixing it in after adding each ingredient...

Salt & Pepper
Dash of Milk (About 10 ml)
Grated Mild Cheese (About 10-50g depending on taste)
One crushed Oxo Vegetable Stock Cube
Lightly Fried Onions

Tastes great with Sausages fried in Butter/Margarine and my 'Special Gravy'. Ask nicely and I'll tell you how to make it.
(Claude Speed was a Roman called Claudius Speedicus, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 7:51, Reply)

Crayfish and bacon pasta with feta
Used to make this one fairly frequently a few years ago; I don't repeat the experience much these days as it tends to turn you into a fat fecker.

1. Cook some pasta. I love tortellini - best of all the pasta shapes;

2. Fry up some lardons, picking through them beforehand to remove all those that don't contain any actual bacon, to make the recipe less fatty (even though this is arguably the equivalent of ordering a Diet Coke with a supersize Big Mac Meal);

3. Remove the lardons, drain and keep to one side. Place one block of feta (approx. 200g) in the pan and add one small carton of 15% fat cream. Heat until the feta has melted fully and you have a creamy (and amazingly salty) sauce.

4. Add a stupendous quantity of hot paprika.

5. Drain the pasta, replace in saucepan and add the feta sauce, the lardons and one small packet of crayfish tails. Heat through without boiling, add black pepper and serve.
( .Yeti., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 7:42, Reply)

This is how you make the traditional Welsh potato and swede dish of Potch.
Take some boiled spuds with a few roast spuds and mash them together with boiled diced swede. Add a little horseradish to the mash, and stir in little bits of chopped bacon. And bits of spring onions or chives. And use cream instead of milk. And plenty of butter, not much salt and a bit of pepper. Serve with pork and leek sausages and onion gravy.
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Fri 29 Jun 2012, 7:27, 2 replies)

I'm going to teach you all the secret of the perfect sausage and dippy egg sandwich.
It's all in the lower slice of bread.
Take one slice of bread, cut it diagonally.
Lightly fry the bread triangles, not as much as you would for normal fried bread, you don't want them too crispy. Press down firmly with a spatula in the centre of the bread. This makes the reservoir for the dippy egg.
Next, fry two eggs. You want the yolk nice and runny, but turn the edges of the white over a little. While you're doing this fry or grill the sausages.
Place the eggs in the reservoirs you've created in the fried bread, cut the sausages lengthways and place them on top of the eggs, add ketchup or brown sauce to taste, place unfried bread on top.
Nyom.
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Fri 29 Jun 2012, 7:25, 2 replies)

Cheese and marmite sandwich
Yum
( zulu eh?, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 6:52, 1 reply)

autumn on hotdog island
dollop of mash in a bowl
sprinkle grated cheese on it
stick hotdogs in it like desparate dan
surround with tomato soup.
(ruff secks R.I.P. uncle Jim :(, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 6:35, Reply)

Posh student cheese on toast
Ingredients:

Bread
Domino's garlic and herb dip
Cheese

Method:

1: Toast bread
2: Apply Domino's dip to toast liberally
3: place sliced or grated cheese onto toast
4: Place toast/dip/cheese combo under grill until cheese turns brown on top
5: nom
(SarcasticBarSteward wants to be good at Photoshop when he grows up, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 3:25, Reply)

Scalded Mud Dawg
One Hot Dog
One Hot Dog Bun
3 Tbsp High Grade Chili
3 Tbsp Hottest of Hot sauces available to man

Combine Chili and Hot sauce. Drape over Hot Dog in Bun (additional condiments may be included).

Enjoy!

Wait approx. 24 hours.

Enoy again!
(CasualGovtObserver, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 3:06, Reply)

Holland's Meat & Potato Pie butty
Heat up a Holland's Meat & Potato pie (or to give it it's proper name, potato & meat pie), add some ketchup to your bread and then squash the pie in between 2 slices. Surprisingly nice.

This won't be the same or as good if you use one of those nancy boy southern Pukka Pies. Don't compromise you say? Ok I won't, Holland's pie please
(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 2:59, 1 reply)

Mashed Potato Sandwhich
...Don't try this, it sucks.

I was chatting with a mate at work about stupid foods that you make, just as I thought my digestive sandwhich (very dry, not too healthy) was going to clinch worst food idea possible... out he came with "I actually really like mashed potato sandwhiches!" Okay, maybe with gravy or something this could make sense I thought to myself? So I went home and made one... not only was it a hideous mess, it was just too heavy.. potatoes and bread are super starchy, they just dont work together..
(MarkyBee life is short, waste it properly, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 2:49, 3 replies)

Egg Banjos
Simplest thing ever. Really. It's insulting but they taste so good...

Fry an egg for a bit longer than you think. Slide it between two buttered pieces of slightly old bread. Old bread doesn't enhance the taste but it's stiffer and provides support.

That's it. It's been a British Army staple since the Great War and is rightly credited with being the decisive factor (aided in part by sugary, milky tea) in every military victory we've had since then.

They're called egg banjos because you end up holding it up in one hand while you swipe up and down at the yolky front of your clothes with the other.
(judgetheobscure used to sweep in butchers' shops., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 2:47, 2 replies)

The missus is a chef,
Im a stoner. So a match made in heaven.
Some of the odd meals she has built for me are,
Chicken carborana lasange quiche.
Curried fish kedgire/pie.
Pig/fish pie.

All have been just mouth watering and leaving me wanting to eat more.
( jakedamusss I understand, and dont care., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 2:45, Reply)

Morrocan Deathslop.
www.b3ta.com/board/5158941

Never, ever again.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 2:19, 1 reply)

Dead simple chicken adobo
A national dish of the Philippines which isn't some baby chick boiled whole in it's egg.

Half a dozen chicken drumsticks or thighs or a mixture, or three or four diced chicken breasts.

Mix a third cup of rice vinegar or white vinegar with a half cup of light soy sauce. Put it in a dish, and let the chicken marinade in it for 15-20 mins.

Brown the chicken pieces in oil in a frying pan then transfer to a pot on low heat. Add the marinade to the pot, chuck in a couple of bay leaves (and chuck em when you're done), some chopped garlic and a few twists of black pepper or whole black peppercorns, whichever.

Let simmer, covered, for 45 mins - 1 hour checking to turn occasionally so the pieces don't stick to the pot or that the liquid doesn't dry up (though it should reduce). The chicken will get really tender and will start to fall from the bone.

Serve with plain steamed or boiled rice.

Simple and delicious.

For variations you could add:

a handful of frozen peas,
a sliced onion
or removing the chicken and returning it for a second browning to the frying pan for a minute or two while you add oyster sauce to the soy mix in the pot, stir it in and let it heat through and thicken. Put the chicken on the rice, pour the oyster and soy sauce on top and tuck in.
(Dildo Bugger destroyed a ring on, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 0:51, Reply)

steak and ale pie, honey-glazed carrots and mashed sweet potato


Cut up beef and marinate in stout for a few hours. Then take the beef out and sear it, add onions, carrots, garlic, thyme, and the stout from earlier (and maybe add some more), add beef stock and simmer until beef is very tender. Place in a pie dish and cover with puff pastry [NOTE - make puff pastry BEFORE starting pie. Or just buy the bloody stuff!] and cook in't oven. 10ish mins before pie is ready, boil sweet potatoes. 5 minutes before ready, boil carrots. When carrots are soft, drain water and leave about 1cm in pan, add honey and leave to simmer. Mash potatoes.

Serve.

EAT.

NYOM.
(McChinaman banned, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 0:39, 6 replies)

Crumbed lamb chops
Particularly the french cutlet type - instead of using bread crumbs, use the packaged chicken/turkey seasoned stuffing mix(which is basically breadcrumbs but with herbs). Much nicer flavour and they crispy up real nice when shallow fried in olive oil (or any oil of your choice) on a hot bbq plate. Serve with mint jelly.
(Monkee girl not a monkee, not a girl, Fri 29 Jun 2012, 0:27, Reply)

timing a breakfast
I used to say to anyone who started a Food Thread (on b3ta or IRL with, y'know, talking) that I didn't consider myself so much a cook/chef/BBQ wizard, as a ReHeater. Drooling conversations between sensation-starved diet slaves about the exact topographical in/out coordinates to slash a roast potato (with implied hand gestures) so that the gravy formed plentiful photogenic rivulets of brown shiny lustful slavering patterns on the plate have long annoyed me. Food porn is not my bag. Sustenance is essential but not to be idolised and fetishised. Terms such as 'Just punch it on the crown to crack it up somewhat' in relation to a solo roast potato that is being prepared for its gravy pop shot seems a little to involved for me.

It is a result of function and form and if I didn't have to eat, I wouldn't really miss it as a sensation. Still, if a new world order declared salt and pepper a criminal offence I'd kick up a fuss but I eat to live, not live to eat.

For survival's sake in my previous batchelor past, I have descended down to the laziest food prep that is between ordering a takeaway and munching a raw turnip, i.e. I was a fair hand at nuking a Birds Eye ready meal like a champ (and it would be leathery burnt crispy one end, ice-encrusted exploded vegetables the other. Still got eaten.

Things in a tin (nondescript) could be decanted and smacked about in the saucepan on a flagrantly-over heated hob, whacking away with a wooden spoon until the individual chunks were somewhat of a puree but at least the end result was that they were uniformly lukewarm and safe to ladel into your gaping maw while watching Robot Wars. Memory sparks a query- I just ate what? In a moment of subconscious vacillation about 'tastebud analysis is inconclusive, memory is temporarily unavailble, more information is needed' , you'd have to go back and dig into the kitchen bin to look at the label on the discarded can, to see what it was supposed to be and then mentally compare in disbelief at the abortion on your dinner plate compared to the succulent shiny delicious looking epicurean delight as shown on the 'artists impression' or 'serving suggestion'. Still got eaten.

Or, I would forget to stir during the reheat, no doubt something more demanding had my attention at the time (one does not simply discard a Level 9 Tetris game for mere food- yes, I could stop but I'd lose the adrenaline edge when I came to recommence.) so you got a charcoal-flavoured gravel at the bottom of the pan and a weakly bubbling tepid cloud of bits at the surface. So much for cooking for 1.

Since I've had the urge to try to cater for others' tastes and sensibilities these days (rather than just put up with my own crap for no-one else's amusement but my own)- read 'no longer a batchelor boy - I've tried to improve in the kitchen and by most standards have done.

Where to get my inspiration? TV chefs? Teletext recipes? those big tree-derived slabs of thinly sliced printed.....erm, y'know, Books.

I'd cast a jaded eye over pictures in colour supplements of Sunday Papers, showing glistening towers of meat and leafy green rice conglomerate, or smears of sauce on a pan which had 0.1 calorie value but carried a huge weight of artistic value in MasterBaterChef judging contests. Or even the marketing term 'rustic' which was code for 'they haven't done it properly so it'll be rough round the edges'. Pah.

Let's just get the basics right.

What I've done is not so much to invent new experimental items (although some of my improv gravy recipes owe more to the book of Revelations than Larousse Gastronomique) as to make a league table of what items take different times to cook, so as to make them arrive at (within a +/- 10% error) the same time.

The Saturday Morning Full English Breakfast can - depending on where you get it - consist of bacon (BACON! FUCKING BACON!)/fried eggs/sausage/beans/scrambled eggs/mushrooms/tomatoes/toast/black pudding/hogs pudding/fried bread/hash browns/ if you're aristocracy, kippers for some reason/if you're in a Premiere Inn, Coco pops and grapefruit juice and a Smug Guy croissant as an appetiser prior to the animal/vegetable/mineral banquet that is the reward for you doing the extremely hard job of Being Asleep for 8 hours immediately before. I say 8 hours, 7. Well, 6. Definitely 4. And if it's less than four, then you need this to stave of a potential heart/lung/kidney/spleen failure in the next lunar cycle.

Having a breakfast brought to you on trays is fine, someone else has to figure out getting it to you warm (or cold in the case of the Euston Rail Buffet in the 1990s, they never failed in their duty to make it uniformly cold first). As an aside, this is what we should be doing with tanning salons up and down the country, turning them into 'maintaining acceptable heat in meals stations by toasting them with UV rays'.)

But to quote Ronnie Corbett, I Digress.

You're making your own Full English. Let's take the middle ground and assume you aren't going too far outside the standard menu option provided by a Wetherspoons (p.s. the one in Derby town centre is a fab one for this and I don't even live there).

Say you have the ingredients and sufficient cooking rings on your camping stove/log fire/ Hindu faith fire-walking pit to be able to cook the different items in different cooking vessels. Prioritise by what takes longer to complete and start that on the road to deliciously cooked finishment in order.

A lot of people here (including sworn vegetarians who have iron willpower but still have pornographic dreams about it) will say- Breakfast is Bacon. Bacon is Breakfast. All else is supplementary. Without Bacon, there is no Breakfast. Amen. I count myself among the addicted.

So while coming back from the fridge with an armful of items to fry/toast/squeeze/flail/pulverise, a lot of attention goes to the bacon. Let us cook the bacon first, that way we know we shall always at least have bacon, the brain says. This is the Silurian hindquarter of the brain making its demands. There might be disagreement in the local troupe of primates, the alpha male might nick it, you may have to offer it to a potential mate to secure sexytime options, a tsunami might sweep it out of your frying pans and have it forever circle the mid Atlantic Gyre.

But stay your twitching grasping hand from instinctively slapping the slices of bacon on the fire first.

Bacon takes, what, 3 minutes to cook on a high heat frying pan? So what is going to happen to that bacon while you are fumbling about thinking 'OK Eggs next'? either it goes on to a plate and gets cold or it goes in a warming oven to complete the magical chemical process that slowly turns meat protein from juicy to leathery. This is the meat equivalent of hardening armour grade steel, where the bacon gains tensile strength by going through tempering, forging, annealing, quenching, resulting in a slice of belly pork that could smack the turret off a Soviet-era T72 tank if swung from the end of Iron Man's secret bungee cord launch platform.

Why put your bacon on 1st? Eggs take longer. Mushrooms take even longer. Hash browns take 10-12 minutes!.

So pace yourself. Bacon should be almost last to go on, unless you are planning on frying the OJ up to body temperature as well.

My Saturday Morning fry up is usually bacon eggs mushrooms tomatoes (maybe sausages) fried egg, (maybe hash brown). As much as I'm looking forward to the bacon and the rest is just decoration, it has to go cooking in almost reverse order.

time sequence-

Hash browns in oven 1st
2 mins later Sausages next on grill
Mushrooms chopped and put in oiled/buttered pan
2 mins later eggs in pan
2 mins later tomatoes in microwave
THEN and ONLY THEN do you put on the bacon as it cooks the quickest, except for the tomatoes but they can happily sit in their own juices and steam, they don't lose anything with waiting. Bacon needs turning.

3 minutes later, everything should hopefully be ready at once.

YAY!
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 29 Jun 2012, 0:16, 8 replies)