Friday 26 October 2012


Even I am Embarrassed by This One




Looks shit, dunnit? It tasted alright though. If you can;t tell, this is a bowl of chilli with corn bread muffins. It actually tasted pretty good (and didn't look so bad in the flesh) but I was too hungry at the time to give a shit about how badly this photo might turn out.

I feel stupid typing up how to make a chilli, but I have been so rubbish at updating this week that I will force myself to do this as punishment.

What's in it?

Chilli
1x tin Back eye beans
1x tin Cannellini beans
1x tin Chopped tomatoes
150g Mushrooms
1x Llarge-ish onion
2x Large cloves garlic
1x Green Pepper
1x tsp Chilli Powder (more is okay, but if yr sharing w/ other don't be a dick)
1x tsp Oregano
1x hella buttload Cumin
1x tblsp tomato puree (optional)
Some stock ( I used Vecon)
Black Pepper
oil

I would also have maybe put in sweet potato if I had some. And peas cos peas are rad.


How to
I feel stupid typing up how to make a chilli, but I have been so rubbish at updating this week that I will force myself to do this as punishment.

-Oil/pan heat - use a big pan, the pan is never too big, okay?

- Add chopped onion & crushed garlic, stir til onion is translucent

- Add chopped tomatoes & stock (I just put the stock straight in and add extra water as/when needed), and powdered things.

-Simmer this for as long as you can be arsed, put in some tomato puree if you think you need it

- Add beans & mushrooms for a few mins, then pepper a few mins before yr ready to eat.

Corn Bread
150g Corn meal
1/2-1 tsp Baking powder
I dunno how much water, enough to make it kinda batter-y, yeah?
Seasoning 

- Put yr oven on about 200C, grease a muffin tray

- Make a batter with corn meal, water, seasoning . you can put pretty much anything you like in there. If you add some kinda fat it will probably be tastier.

- Stir baking powder in at the last minute.

- cook til they're done, maybe 15, 20 mins?

Put all the stuff on some kinda bowl so shit doesn't go all over the fucking floor, then sit down and eat it all with your face.

I made enough chilli to feed about 3 household, I made enough corn bread for about 3 people. Chilli freezes, and even if you can't be arsed to freeze it stays goof for 3 days or so.

I am gonna eat some left over chilli pretty much right now, but not with cornbread, oh no, I am gonna eat chilli with rice & peas. Get the fuck in.

Hopefully the recipe next time will something funner/tastier/less fucking obvious. We shall see.
(The photo will be just as shit though, obviously)

And this is what it looked like w/ rice for lunch today


Wednesday 17 October 2012

Disappointment in a box.


So today I forgot my god damned packed lunch. It was nothing terribly exciting, but it would have been tastier, cheaper, and no doubt more nutritious than the above box of shat.



Cranks are supposedly an institution in vegetarian food because they opened a restaurant on Carnaby Street back in 1961. Someone should tell 'em that 50 years later they need to book their ideas up.


I have 30 mins for my lunch break (another reason I bring my own) and Holland & Bastard is 5 minutes away so I dived in there today to see what I could find. I decided a sandwich might be better than a pasty or sos roll so looked closely at the shelves with the Cranks stuff on. From looking at the whole range on their website there appear to be a whopping TWO options for vegans (three if you count the same filling in different bread). So, even being generous to Cranks that's 3/22, less than 15%. Depending whose stats you believe (there are too many for me to be arsed to link) yr looking at a good 10% of the veggie population of the UK who are vegan. Add to this that vegan sandwiches are suitable for vegetarians, mix in a dollop of "FOR FUCKS SAKE, HUMOUS & SALAD OR HUMOUS & SALAD?" and you've got a slightly depressing lunch which leaves you thinking "If it weren't for that £2.50 H&B rewards voucher I'd've just got a bean salad from Sainsbury's."
Seriously guys, it's 2012, you're specialist vegetarian food producers and you think humous, lettuce & carrot vs humous, chickpea, and pepper is a world of options?


As it happens, the H&B I was in didn't even stock both of the vegan sandwiches (I wonder why? Why should they use shelf space for two almost identical sandwiches? The mind boggles), so I had the one up there. Humous, lettuce, carrot & coriander. And you know what? It tasty pretty much EXACTLY like every other sorry, pre-made humous/salad sandwich I have had to settle for in the past. But with a bit of coriander.
I'm not just annoyed with Cranks cos they make a disappointing sandwich with a crap selection for vegans. Why should I be? That describes pretty much any other food producer you're likely to come across in the UK (in chain stores, at least) and they obviously wanna be in with the in-crowd and down with the kids, yo. They probably even pretended to like that Mumford and Sons* record because they didn't want to be the ones standing out saying "but.. but.. this is terrible, lowest-common denominator pseudo-zany, patronising, 'look at me, I'm cultured I've got a flat cap,' in-touch-with-something fucking gash" and then have the beautiful people mock them for not "getting it."
Why should they make a sandwich I wanna buy? Hardly anyone else does. No, I am also annoyed with them because of the awful patronising "we're so bloody lovely we are, look at the fucking nonsense written on the packaging" thing they've got going on which may have started with Innocent but has gotten way out of control these days. Not to mention lots of use of works like PROPER, and REAL to show you that their food ain't full o' none of that GUNK you get from them others, OH NO! Unless you read past them telling you how fucking great they are and notice that the "fresh" sandwich has a shelf life of at least three days, and that the "proper" bread features such "real" ingredients as Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids. Who doesn't remember those days? Yr grandad would come back from t' pit whistling a faux-Irish tune that's been cleansed for the ears of dullard students and jaded musos alike, yr granny would place a plate on the table saying to him "go clean up first, then you can have some scran" and your pops would come back in a few minutes later, drying his hands on a towel which was more holes than cloth. And his eyes would light up, his mouth moisten as his famished stomach came to realise that his beloved wife had prepared for him a nice steaming plate of Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mon- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids. And it's because of this fond memory of being just a nipper that to this day you, yourself never let your store cupboard run dry of Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mon- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, because when the people you care about need some good, honest, REAL, PROPER food, you want to be sure to give them Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mon- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids.
I'm not pulling rank on anyone with this, I'm not saying no one should eat things that sound like they might be ingredients in that weird blue plastic that's only ever used for carrier bags in off licences, I'm not saying I don't eat space-age shit. I'm just saying don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining, okay?




On the upside I also got a Trek Cocoa Brownie bar and these things are AWESOME. It's not even my favourite bar they make, I ration that one so I don;t get too used to it cos I am paranoid that it's awesomeness might wear thin. No really, that's how my brain works. I'm not even gonna tell you which one is my favourite.






Edit
*It's a few weeks later (20/11/12) and I just read this article. Seems I'm not alone.

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Moroccany Thing

So part of this is based on something I saw a guy cook in Chefchaouen a couple of years ago. I seem to remember he served it with a fried egg. I could have tried to mock-up a fried egg but eggs suck so screw that. Instead of rice you could maybe serve this with fruity cous cous, but I didn't have any cous cous. Some raisins and maybe some toasted almonds sound pretty good.


Looks okay? Right?

Ingredients
200g firm tofu (frozen & defrosted)
200g green beans
1 medium onion
2 dozen or more cherry tomatoes
1 Tbl spoon (more if you like) of ketchup
Some soya sauce
Some oregano
More cumin seeds than you might think
Oil (pref olive, obviously)
Seasoning

This serves two. Or if you are a pathetic loner like myself you can have some for lunch the next day.

So one you've defrosted yr tofu and got as much liquid out as possible, you will want to cut it into a suitable shape. The stuff I buy comes in 200g blocks so I just sliced it in half. The shape isn't really important. though if you do it steak/cutlet style like I did, you will want to score the tofu to get the marinade right in there.
For the marinade I used the arse-end of some ketchup, poured in some soya sauce, oregano & black pepper. Then I shook it up to mix all the ingredients. The longer you leave it the more flavour you will get in to the tofu, if you can do this the night before all the better. I gave it maybe 20-30 mins and it was alright.

Then you can just bung it in the oven somewhere around 200-220C. You could grill if you prefer, you can probably dry fry too. The sugar in the marinade with crisp up a little without having to use oil.

You can probably put the rice on now too. I'm not telling you how to cook fucking rice. Read the packet if you must.

Okay. So heat yr frying pan and put in more cumin seeds than you would thin necessary. Then add a little cumin. Then put in some oil, when that's heated up put in yours sliced onion (dice if you must, but I think sliced works best). When the onions start to be come translucent turn the heat down a bit and put in all the halved cherry tomatoes.

Let all that cook down so the tomatoes barely have any shape, then put your beans in there. I used the same ones that were left over from the other day which I had to freeze. If you  have frozen ones you can just put them in some warm water for a few minutes to defrost them. If not, then just top & tail 'em and throw 'em in.

Add a bunch of black pepper, some salt, chilli if you're feeling frisky (or, you could forgo the chilli here and maybe put some in the marinade instead? Yeah, go one, try that you bleedin' mental).

Then way to tell if everything is done is that it looks done. The rice looks like cooked rice, the tofu looks tasty, and the beans/tomatoes concoction looks pretty awesome too.

Serve, eat, and forget about the typically fucking awful day you just had at work. Maybe read a comic.





Tuesday 2 October 2012

Sweet Potato Cottage Pie thingy


Okay, so it doesn't look great, but you need to get over that. I have a crappy phone, the pie looked better in person, but not super-great.

This is dead simple to make, the ingredients aren't too crazy. No one's reinventing the wheel, but yesterday was Monday, then after work I had college, so if you want something that's pretty tasty but you can be arsed to make at 9pm then this might just be for you.

Two things: this has no added fat. I'm a big fat fuck and I'd like to change that. I really don't think this would have benefited from any added fat, so that's nice. Secondly, my flatmate's fella was round last night, I offered him some, he ate it and afterwards said "You know, I reckon I could be veggie."

I'm just sayin'.

Ingredients.
3x small sweet potatoes - peeled, chopped
Some (couple o' big handfulls?)  TVP/soya mince (the dried shit cos I'm cheap)
1x big handful frozen peas
1x red pepper
1x medium onion
2x big cloves garlic
1x tsp yeast extract/stock ( I used Vecon which you can get in hippie stores inc. H&B)
1x tsp cumin powder
black pepper

These quantities are based on whatever the hell size dish that is up there. You should be able to figure out if you need more/less. I mean, you have some kinda spatial awareness, right?

Boil salted water & chuck the sweet potatoes in.
In a another saucepan put yeast extract in water & simmer, add chopped onion, crushed garlic & cumin.
Add your TVP & simmer til it stops looking like sawdust and starts looking a bit like tasty fake meat.
Chuck in yr peas at the end.
Add the mix to the oven dish.
Take sweet potatoes of the boil, removes excess water, mash & add black pepper.
Put the mash on top of the fake mix & stick the lot in the oven.

You don't have to put it in the oven, I think I do that more out of habit (at about 200.c). As there's not extra fat in the topping it won't get the crisp golden layer. If yr mad for it you could brush some oil or melted marge over the top and that should do the trick.

After that you might wanna let it sit for a while cos this shit'll burn your face off.

You may have noticed we didn't do anything with the red pepper. this is because I meant to dice it and throw it in just before putting the pie in the oven, but I forgot. So in the end I sat around eating diced red pepper while waiting for the pie to finish. It was actually pretty okay as a starter and counts as two portions of fruit/veg. So go me!

I also meant to serve some green beans with this but I forgot. I have plans for those babies anyway, so it's not all bad.

A note on stock:  I used Vecon cos I think it's pretty good. You could use Marmite or any supermarket knock-off, or even gravy granules (loads are vegan, including a couple of the Bisto ones - check the label).