Cheatin' When Eatin'

So whaddaya do when you've not got much in but you have to cook for someone? Simply cheat.

This is just a bog-standard stir fry, we've been through the stir fry before but I made one again and it looked like food so I'm gonna write about it.

This stir fry contained:

Carrots

Mange Tout

Broccoli

Peppers

Fake Chicken (defrosted in warm water then died off)

Onion

Chilli

Cumin

Soya sauce

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Fresh Coriander

So yeah, you know how to do the do. Oil > onion > chilli > cumin seeds > veg > fake stuff > soya sauce.

Then plate it up and garnish with coriander leaf and maybe some sweet chilli sauce.

Use any veg you've got. The fake stuff isn't necessary and could easily be replaced with other fake things or tofu or peanuts or cashews. Or just left out, whatevs, dude.

If your food is pretty standard (this was using up stuff lying around) then you can swank it up buy putting your cooked rice into a cup/small bowl then placing it on a plate, it'll take the shape of the cup/bowl and then you can put yr stir fry around it and garnish the plate. Then you can tell yrself you just paid £10 for it in some gastro pub.

As always, eat with yr face. Use chopsticks if yr a show off.

Motherflippin' Roast, Y'all

Making a nutroast is stupid easy. Look.

Essentially, you want about two-or-three-ish to one of nuts to breadcrumbs. Want wheat free? I reckon oats/brown rice/rice crackers would do it.

Then you need something flavoury. Onion, garlic, leek, pepper, left over veg, yeast extract, dried herbs.. seriously, anything you want.

One of the problems with nuts is they are expensive. I am dead tight, so I tend to buy roasted/salted peanuts because they are BY FAR the cheapest available. Not, you can use them as they are, or rinse the salt off, or rinse/soak them. You can also mix in any nuts you have around.

If you soak the nuts they will be easy to blend. Otherwise you can use a pestle & mortar.

Chop up/smoosh yr other ingredients as approriate.

Mix everything together and then, wait for it, this is my SUPER_AWESOME_TIP...

...spoon the mix in to a muffin tray. In the past I've found that if I put nutroast in a loaf tin the bastard thing falls apart when I try to vuy it. A muffin tray gives you portions, and I'd say 2 is about enough for an adult....

Put it in an oven around 190.C/Gas 5 and you should be sorted. Check after 10-15 mins to see how yr doing.

Serve it with veg and wotnot. Don't pretend like you've never had a roast dinner before. But if you wanna pretend to be fancy you can use packet stuff and chuck a few dried cranberries in like I did.

The leftover nutroast portions can go in sandwiches, you bet they fucking can. With salady stuff and mustard, please.

Back Once Again Like the Renegade Master

(with a quesadilla)

So my phone went screwy and wouldn't take photos anymore. A king soul donated her old iPhone so now I am well cool and stuff. Yeah, I'm lookin' down on you. Fucking scum.

Anyway, it means I can take photos. They're still shit cos I am rubbish at that kind of thing. Having my first ever Apple product has not changed Who I Am On The Inside.

I didn't have money for ages when I expected to have money, then some  finally landed in my account yesterday. I was (and am) still knackered from a busy weekend so decided to treat myself to fake foods which make tasty food quickly.

I don't need to remind you that I don't give a shit about your authenticity, right? Good, let's go.

Tortillas x 2
Red Pepper x 1
1/2 Can Red Kidney Beans
Small-ish Onion x 1
Some Fresh corriander
Some fake Cheez (I used one of these)
Some Kinda Fake Meat (I used one of these)
1 x Red Chilli
Cumin
Veg Oil
Salt & Pepper

Chop things that need chopping (onion/pepper/chilli/coriander).
Heat oil in a pan, add onion/pepper/chilli (+ garlic if you want, I left mine in the bastard shop).
In the mean time separate half a can of beans & smoosh 'em a bit.
Add some tomato purée + water or pasata or tomato juice or chopped tomatoes or real tomatoes or WHATEVER (I apparently was out of tom purée).
Put the beans in and cook and mix.
Add Cumin/salt/pepper and right at the end some coriander. You don't want this to bee too sloppy, it's going on the tortillas.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan, place a tortilla in then put yr grated fake cheez on top.
Spread yr beany onion mix over the top, and some cut up fake meat on top of that.
Put another tortilla on top.

Turn the tortilla over after a few mins, it should've gone golden with maybe some brown bits (I used wholewhat, it's easier to tell with white ones, though). If yr worried about it burning just turn it every minute or two, if yr slack do it less often.

Slice it up like a pizza, garnish with more corriander, serve with salady things or whetever.

You could easily whack some guacamole in there or something but that would mean buying/making it and today you are probably not in the mood.

I feel like I'm missing something somewhere. I guess I am tired and out of practice. We'll see what the future brings.

I wanted to brag about the pizza I just ate but I don't have a photo cos my phone is a bag of shit.

But you know what food looks like, right? Imagine that. Or yo could imagine my smug, smug face after eating pizza in my freezing office today.

When I got up this morning I realised I'd forgotten to sort out anything for lunch (usually it's left overs, but last night I had leftover soup so, no leftovers). For mere mortals this might have been a crisis, but as I am a demi-god genius-type I completely took it in my stride. There happened to be one of those part-bake baguettes lying around. That sucker got sliced down the middle, tomato puree spread across it with mixed herbs on top. What's more is the other day I bought some of those Tofutti mozerella slices for the first time in years. A couple of those on top, sliced up a pepper, chucked that stuff in the oven and went for a shower.

I totally cooked my lunch whilst bathing.

I also had an orange pepper and an apple for lunch cos fruit is good and tasty an' shit.

Butternut Squash Soup

It's true, if you want to make a perfect soup you will need to to be careful, you can use ingredients in such a nuanced, and in such combinations that will impress guests and make all the effort worthwhile. However, it;s super-mega easy to make a reasonable soup, and I am nothing if not reasonable, right?

I paid pretty much no attention whatsoever to what I was doing when making this soup, the ingredients are from my vague memory, but it was only last night so I think I'm pretty much right. It's not like I used much stuff.

Soup is pretty hard to fuck up. My one piece of soup advice would be don;t blend beans (unless you like vomit-texture in yr soup).

[MOTHERFUCK! My phone refused to tweet the photo then cold deleted it! I've written this now so yr getting the post. DEAL WITH IT]

2 small butternut squash
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
Paprika
Oregano
Parsley

Hella buttload black pepper

Some salt

You can use stock if you want, just leave out the salt.

Normally I would recommend frying off the onion/garlic but I didn't do that last night cos I am WELL MENTAL, me. Lazy, I meant lazy.

Heat some water in a pan, but in yr peeled & chopped butternut squash, let it simmer away.
Dice yr onion, slice yr garlic, they go in too.
Also yr herbs and seasoning.
Let it simmer away for a while, then turn the heat off.

Once it's cooled you can blend* it nice & smooth, add more water/stock if needed.

After that you will need a sofa and a spoon. If yr swanky use a bowl too, if not you can eat straight out of the pan. Some bread is probably more important than a bowl, though. If you have to pick one, go for bread.


*I use a blender similar to this one. I prefer the stick-type ones to the jug ones cos you can blend pretty much as little or as much as you need with the sticks, you can't blend a massive pan with a 1.5 litre jug, eh?
PS
Didja look at the photo? I garnished that shit. Yeah, I did.

Perpetually Underwhelming

Got rice?

Got any kind of veg whatsoever?

Got a pan?

Got oil?

You got a stiry fry, motherfucker.

Pretty much every time I cook rice I make at least one extra portion so I can keep it in the fridge and use it a day or two later. It's pretty good cos it means when yr hungry and lazy you have something available in the same amount of time it takes to make toast that isn't toast. Yeah!

And yes, I AM about to tell you how to make a stir fry as if you didn't already know. I'll let you in to a secret: Many, many years ago (but when I was old enough to really have known better) I genuinely did not know how to fry rice. I'm not sure, but I may even have attempted it without boiling the rice first. Seriously.

Nowdays we all have the internet hardwired into our medulla oblongatas, so we just need to have a vague awareness of what fried rice might be and the information could be explained a thousand different ways through fibre optics, but back then people were still dicking about with Napster and Yahoo Groups (And worse, people were still Asking Jeeves).

It's my opinion that a wok really will help with this kind of thing. Woks are good, buy a wok.

Heat yr wok, put some oil in, no one cares what kind.

Slice or dice an onion, chuck it in.

Slice or mince some garlic, chuck it.

Peel some root ginger, bash it with the flat side of a large-ish knife (always use larger rather than smaller knifes, you've got more control with a larger knife and you can still use it to cut small shit, okay?)

Slice a chilli, keep the seeds if you like things hot.

Stir everything up in yr pan. Heat is good.

What veg do you have? I had carrots, green peppers & tomatoes, so that's what went in. Cut it up however you damn well like. Things that also work well are mushrooms, water chestnuts, cucumber, beansprouts, leafy things, courgettes, broccoli, mange tout, peas.. you get the idea.

Throw yr chopped veg in, stir shit some more.

Throw some soya sauce about. It's fun.

There are all sorts of exciting things you can add to stir fries to make them more interesting, but if you had the kind of forethought to buy plum sauce or mangoes or red bean paste or black bean sauce you wouldn't be reading this, would you?

That picture up there also has fake chicken in it cos that's what's in the freezer. Tofu obviously works very well, peanuts, cashews, mock duck/beef... or just veg is cool.

I had some pre-cooked brown basmati so that shit got thrown in too. Just make sure everything is heated up properly and yr golden.

Throw it in a bowl, mayb introduce it to some sweet chilli sauce if you happen to find some in th eback of the cupboard.

Eat with yr face.

Now aren't you glad you had that rice in the fridge? Stir fried veg on toast is just weird, guy.

Beetroot Burgers

So, I have been eyeing up this recipe on the Post Punk Kitchen for what seems like forever. Beetroot is something I am always kinda confused by, I just don't know what to do with it so it either gets thrown in a stew or grated into a salad and that's about it.

I wound up with some beetroot, I had some brown rice, so I was all "yeah, fuck'n DO IT!" But, being the feckless wonder that I am, I didn't print off the recipe, and didn't bother fannying about on my not-very-smart phone. I guess I went commando on that shit.

And guess what? I forgot half the ingredients and fucked it all up. So take this for what it is, a cautionary tale. The result was edible, but just LOOK at how awesome that recipe looks. Follow the actual recipe, knobhead.

It looked alright, though:

I'm not even going to tell you what I actually put in the burgers because a) you'll know exactly how badly I fucked up, and b) You might for some idiot reason attempt to recreate my recipe and that would be [i]bad[/i], okay? Just follow the original.

Even though it's winter I had my burgers with salad (as you can see). this is partly because I am super lazy and couldn't be bothered to oven* anything after I'd sort-of concentrated on screwing up this recipe, and partly because I had already inhaled an entire packet of Choccie Dodgers when I got in from work. Incidentally, don't buy Choccie Dodgers, they are just shit, extra dry bourbons and you will feel even more gluttonous, hollow, and pathetic after eating a whole pack of those in one sitting than you would with the bourbons. And bourbons are cheaper, anyway. And you get more in a pack.

Oh, and if yr interested, the salady bits are:

Grated carrot

Diced tomatoes

Diced green pepper

Sliced avodaco

Generic cheapo dressing

*Yeah, that's right, I used 'oven' as a verb. Go shit yrself, dicksplash.