Monday 6 February 2012

Pauper's soup



When it is so freezing cold and there is no food and no money (and no hope!) I am inclined to make this kind of pauper's soup. It is certainly the warmest and most filling 12p meal I can imagine and it makes me feel capable and vaguely wartime-ish, or at the very least, some way towards being as Irish as I claim.

I had one rasher of bacon left so I cut it into small pieces and fried it in a small amount of oil.
Then chopped one onion and half a stick of celery, chucked them in with the bacon and fried until they began to soften.
I Peeled the green skin and alien eyes off a large potato chopped it up into small pieces and put that in the pan.
After about 7 minutes I poured in a pint of boiling water mixed with a vegetable stock cube some green peppercorns and some old parsley stalks.
This simmered away until I considered it to have reduced enough, about 15 mins? 5 minutes before the end I threw in a handful of frozen peas.
Then I smashed roughly with a potato masher until things had come together a bit more and made a thicker texture, and ate it too quickly scalding my mouth. Just like old times. It was delicious.

Sunday 5 February 2012

cooking with lads




i was like good gracious....i can't buy fish in brighton! but it's where the sea lives! so i went to a restaurant and asked for 4 breams to impress some women.
I was wearing sunglasses and cycling around on my 34 year old peugeot bicycle. in brighton where i live, it's not just for mods and gays any more. it's actually quite cool. i asked some next brer, some top nerd, the peakest egg, where i could find some fresh fish.

interlude
"he'a the greatest dancer, i woinder why!!!!"
concludes.

I got 4 breams. from riddle and finn in meeting house lane. which is....phwer au uhh in the lanes. next to the tramp who makes origami.

paolo wanchope and rest of costa rica fc got promoted that day. yikes.

wooeaaooow.

ok so anyway, i wasn't allowed to build a fire in our garden, there were noise complaints, we had this party. the police came.

say something about that little tchuchi man josh cook not letting me build a fire indoors, even though like, fred does it, like every day. THANKS MUM! yeah we gon git him.

(don't be threatenin, we'll getdone over")

so my 4 breams. lined them up then salted them by putting salt on my hands then slapping them. and oily. oh then we made a drink. not a drink. a sauce. lemon juice, a bit of balsamic something, like vinegar but like a paste. in a tube. some crushed up capers, some salt and some pepper. some rosemaries and some thyme. we crushed all that up into a thing, then i covered the fish. we put 2 slices lemon and 2 cloves of garlic in one, a few capers, didn't count them, don't care. time was tight. ladies be arriving
a bit of chilli.
then,wrapped them up each in a little tin foil house, put them in all ext to each other. 4 little friends.
then i baked them, on a really high heat. prolly like a million or something. according to the interweb it was half an hour, which was brass, farily brass, because it was actually fiddy and they were perfect.

done me proud.

i was like chelsea last season, no mata. no juan mata.

then georgie made a salad, but i don't know how she did it.

it was with the fish paste thing. yeah marinade. but she enhanced it with some boiled potatoes. and it was banging. and we drank ribena. if you care.

and josh painted his room. but as you now know, josh is a pig egg. actually i can't say that twice, scrap that, josh cook aka super-mild dyspraxic.

Sunday night meatballs


A fridge almost exclusively full of pork products delivered in the post. everybody here feels that pork is the inferior meat. but we are hungry and we need something fortifying to broach serious subjects like "i'm not always having a go at you, you are just defensive" and "you smell like TCP gross you make me sick" and "have you done any homework at all this week?"

-brown some pork meatballs in a small amount of oil. we had 12 from 'the black farmer's daughter' which were v good in the end.
-1 onion and 1 stick of celery finely chopped and fried until soft in a bit of olive oil.
-add this "soffrito" to the meatballs with some smoked paprika (about a tsp?), smoked sea salt, ground black pepper, ground coriander seeds (about 5?) and 2 bay leaves. fry gently for about 3/4 mins.
-pour in 2 tins of chopped tomatoes and 1 tin of throughly rinsed flageolet beans (otherwise ugh so claggy) and a bit of chicken stock. I only had about 1/2 pint leftover, but it is just for rehydrating as you cook, so no need for precise measures.
- bring to a harsh bubble then simmer for approx 30 mins or until you can persuade people into the kitchen. I added a slick of double cream to slightly take the paprika heat off for my sister.
serve with masked potato