Category Archives: italian

Italian fakeaway recipes

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May 28, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients, syn free

I could be brown, I could be blue! baked spaghetti

Haha, weigh in tonight, and although we couldn’t stay, it was full of surprises – I’ve put on a 1lb after the most dedicated week off you’ve ever seen, which included:

  • more vodka during Eurovision than could be deemed reasonable, despite acts such as Israel and Serbia;
  • two Dominos in one week;
  • a pizza the size of a bus steering wheel followed by ice-cream and sweets and a second dinner when I got home;
  • a complete lack of exercise;
  • cookies, sweets and other nonsense gobbled up at work – and – and this one is shocking;
  • I had CHEESE AND SPICY BEEF on my Subway salad today.

Cheese! I thought since having my pencil sharpened last year I’d seen the end of having cheese on my hot meat, but there you go. Boke. Here, it gets better – Paul actually lost a pound AND he was still wearing his god-awful ‘Yes, I’m a registered sex-offender’ god-awful boots that we bought in the Brantano sale for £2.44. I reckon he’s been stirring ex-lax into his nightly Options. Yes see that’s how rock-n-roll we are in our household – a nightly hot chocolate and then into bed to listen to Radio 4. We do normally fit some blisteringly hardcore gay sex in at some point, all is not lost. Anyway, once we’ve enjoyed the Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, we’re going to have a good run at SW. In the meantime, here’s a bit about my cats that I wrote earlier today.

I really begrudge having to pay £200 to insure two cats who are healthy, worm-free and trackable. Especially when they’re so spoilt they have their own water fountain and bloody ensuite shed.

Of course, insurance wouldn’t be quite so necessary if our cats didn’t dice with death on a daily basis, and entirely through their own choice. See, they recognise the sound of our car approaching, and the very second they see the bumper of my car appearing at the end of the cul-de-sac where we live, they sprint across the front lawn in front of the car and run ahead of us, like we’re the star attraction in a tiny cat parade. They then proceed to run around the tyres, rubbing themselves up against the scalding chassis of the car, until one of us picks them up and they proceed to turn our face into mince with their razor-sharp welcome. I don’t think they feel we’re home until one of them has left an oily paw-print all over our shirts. They’re also forever eating things they shouldn’t and I’ve seen Sola, the tiny cat, fighting a dog and winning. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she smokes.

Sola we retrieved from some chav on an estate who was selling kittens on the basis that if no-one wanted them, she was going to leave them by the side of the road. I’d like to have left her by the side of a road, preferably trapped by her legs in a burning labia-coloured Vauxhall Golf, but I digress. We couldn’t drive at the time so we had to take two buses and by the time we got there, she was the last one, the runt of the litter. She meowed the way home and tried to commit instant suicide by falling off the balcony of our apartment. Thankfully, she only fell one floor onto the balcony below, but that made for a slightly awkward exchange because we weren’t talking to the neighbours at the point since we inadvertently told his girlfriend that he was having an affair with someone else. Genuine mistake. We also thought he was belting his lass too, which was wrong. That made for a few difficult bus journeys on the Quaylink, let me tell you.

They missed out not keeping Sola, for although she’s the most uppity bitch you’ll ever meet, she has the nicest fur you’ll ever feel. It’s the type of fur you can imagine ultra-rich women making gloves from. That’s partly because she never lets you stroke her – probably sick of trying to lick gravy and sweat from her fur to even entertain us. She’s the epitome of aloofness although for all of her delusions of grandeur, she’s certainly not averse to sticking her nose right up Bowser’s arsehole like she’s sniffing for truffles whenever he wanders back in from outside.

Bowser is the other cat, the tom, and we also got him from a very downmarket area. We heard on the grapevine that he was one of about ten trillion cats that had been found living in one of those houses you see on Hoarders. We could only take one and so we took the first cat that came over. If we had our way, we’d have more cats than furniture, but we’re realists – I already begrudge spending so much on Bite ‘n’ Chew, and not just because of that rebarbative little ‘n’. He settled in straight away, walking around like he owned the place and battering the other cats until we had his bollocks cut off. Now he comes in each day missing massive chunks of fur from fighting but touchwood, they haven’t got his eyes yet.

We also used to have Luma, and she was a lovely, fat cat who was painfully shy and used to hide, no matter how much coaxing, fresh tuna and fuss you tried to make of her. She had plenty of personality when she wanted to – she held us ransom for about two weeks by pissing on our Sky box because we had the bare-faced cheek to switch her to Tesco own brand cat food. Perhaps she was trying to electrocute herself, I don’t know, but she managed to break my Doctor Who series link so I sulked for a week. Along similar lines, I was once lying in bed and she came bumbling over, wheezing away in that gentle fashion, for a stroke. Naturally, I made a proper fuss of her in this rare moment of tenderness and she turned around, showed me her tiny cigar-cutter bumhole and sprayed a tiny jet of foul smelling nastiness right in my face, before sauntering off as I screamed like it was ammonia. We gave her away to a family friend in the end because she was fighting with our other cat all of the time and she’s far happier now, by herself, with an octogenerian who is too slow to catch her and rich enough to spoil her, though I did spot a packet of Viagra in his bathroom cabinet when I was dropping her off so god knows what she actually sees. No wonder she looks so haunted when I spot her.

baked spaghetti

to make baked spaghetti, you’ll need:

250g spaghetti, 500g lean beef mince, 6 Slimming World sausages (defrosted), two 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 200ml passata, 200g Quark, 80g reduced fat cheddar (grated), 1 green pepper (diced), 1 onion (diced), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 egg, 250ml chicken stock, 80g reduced fat mozzarella (using up two HEAs), 1tsp mixed herbs, salt and pepper

to make baked spaghetti, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the spaghetti according to instructions and set aside. For those who can’t cook spaghetti, don’t forget to breathe in AND out whilst doing this
  • mix the chopped tomatoes, passata and mixed herbs (and a little salt and pepper if you like) in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer whilst you do the rest…
  • meanwhile, chop the green pepper and onion and mince the garlic cloves
  • spray a little Frylight (heathen! use oil!) into a large saucepan and cook the onion and green pepper over a medium-high heat until softened
  • add the garlic and stir well
  • squeeze the meat from the sausages (the casings should be easy to pull away, given SW sausages are essentially toe clippings, best wishes and old newspapers wrapped in a diaphragm) and place in the pan along with the mince and cook until well browned, remembering to break up any clumps that form
  • in a separate bowl mix together the quark, egg and cheddar with a little salt and pepper until smooth
  • pour the tomato sauce into the cheese mixture and stir well, adding 250ml chicken stock and continue to stir
  • in a large pan or bowl, mix together the spaghetti, meat and sauce until really well mixed – don’t worry if it looks a bit watery, it’s a SW recipe – if you can’t drink it without choking, it’s not SW friendly
  • tip into a large casserole dish, top with the shredded mozzarella and bake for 30 minutes
  • enjoy! It’ll thicken down in the oven. Promise.

J

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May 16, 2015

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beef, cured meats, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, steak

cajun steak and cheese pasta

Our cat has betrayed me – normally he sleeps between the two of us if it’s a cold night but he’d gotten up early doors and gone out chasing mice. How the hell he manages to spend a night between the two of us I have no idea – we’re very much a ‘spooning’ couple, constantly intertwining our legs and arms and murmuring nonsense at each other. I actually woke up once with Paul having rolled on top of me, not in a ‘but it’s my birthday’ way but rather out of comfort, like I was an especially squashy lilo. Nevertheless, around 1am Bowser will be padding around our pillow and then crawls between us like a tiny potholer. How he survives I have no idea – the squashing I mentioned above must be bad enough, but the flatulence produced between the two of us vents out right where he sleeps. It must be like trying to sleep with your head stuck in one of those Dyson Airdryers you get in toilets, only one that blows out air that smells of turned corned-beef and death. I swear after a night of our easy chicken curry he’ll disappear under the duvet as a black and white tom and comes back a tortoiseshell who suffers night terrors.

 

Tonight’s recipe has the unfortunate problem of looking exactly like another recipe we did earlier in the week, but what can I say, we’ve missed carbs and we had some steak to use up. Isn’t that a first world problem right there?

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to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you will need:

500g penne pasta, 120g steak (sliced into bite size pieces) 1 onion (chopped), 1 green pepper (chopped), 1 clove of garlic, 300ml skimmed milk, 250g quark, 2 tsp Cajun seasoning, 120g extra mature cheddar (grated), 20g parmesan (grated), 50g chorizo (sliced), breadcrumbs (from half a wholemeal roll)

if you use the wholemeal roll and the cheese as your healthy extras (remember, this serves 4) this will be 3 syns per serving, 1.5 from the chorizo, and 1.5 from the milk.

to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you should: 

  • cook the pasta until al dente (like Al Murray, but less of a cock), drain and set aside
  • in a large frying pan or saucepan soften the onion and green pepper in a little oil over a medium heat for about ten minutes
  • add the Cajun seasoning and stir well
  • slowly pour in the milk and stir continuously
  • add the quark in small amounts and mix until smooth and creamy
  • in a separate frying pan quickly cook the steak and chorizo over a high heat for one minute
  • add the steak and chorizo into the cheese mixture
  • add the cheddar and parmesan to the mixture, remove from the heat and stir continuously until all the cheese has melted
  • add the pasta to the mixture and mix well
  • pour the mixture into a large casserole dish, top with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for ten minutes just to make it sticky.

Now this is proper stick-to-your-ribs cooking and we loved it, but for goodness sake, it serves four. Keep some for your lunch the next day. This with the rice bake from the other day is more than making up our carb deficit and it tasted delicious!

Oh, if you need a casserole dish, get a bloody Le Creuset one. We’ve had ours over two years now and yes, it is very expensive, but we use it daily – as a frying pan, to cook in, to roast in, and it’s never stuck or failed us. They’re £160 on Amazon at the moment. Click here and treat yourself! Do you need something so pricey? No. But you kinda want one…

Cheers!

J

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April 13, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, pasta, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto

Not a typo. The dish is a bit like a risotto but tastes a bit more substantial – tasty though and only uses one pot. Hooray.

But weigh-in tonight, and it’s VERY good news. You may remember that in between getting caught noshing in the hot-tub by a farmer and running caravans off the road, we managed to put on a total of 13lb between us last week? Well, we knuckled down a bit but as you can see from the recipes, still ate like pigs…and we’ve lost:

james – 7.5lb

paul – 5.5lb

Haha! A total weight of 13lb – or, for those who might be a bit touched in the head, we’ve managed to lose exactly what we put on (Paul losing .5lb more than what he put on and me losing .5lb less)! Brilliant, not least because I can’t be bothered to change the ‘total’ image on the right of the blog.

Hey I tell you what though – and this is in no way a disparaging comment against other classes I’ve visited, but what a difference a consultant makes. We’ve worked our way back to our very first consultant and she’s a genuine laugh – we were in that church hall digging those bloody awful church chairs out of our back-fat for a good two hours but it flew by. Reason? It wasn’t just ‘weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done’ which holds no allure for us. It felt like a proper class! If you get the right class, you stay, and if you stay, you learn. SIMPLE AS.

Now listen, weigh-in nights are normally a chance for us not to post a recipe but instead spend the evening ped-egging each others feet and tormenting the cat.

Well, we’ve been doing that, see?

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But lo, in the spirit of giving, here’s a recipe! Gosh!

chicken orzo moonblush tomatoes risotto

Firstly, the recipe uses sundried tomatoes normally, and feel free to substitute them for the moonblush tomatoes I’ve used in the recipe (sundried tomatoes are around 2 syns for 25g), but moonblush tomatoes are very easy to make and syn free. Perhaps half a syn at most per serving, anyway. I nicked the idea from Nigella Lawson and what that woman doesn’t know about cooking you could write on the side of a rolled-up twenty quid note. To make moonblush tomatoes, first whack your oven up to its highest possible temperature. You want it glowing like an Englishman’s shoulders in Benidorm. Next, cut a load of cherry tomatoes in half and chuck them in a bowl. Add a tiny drop or two of olive oil, a good glug of balsamic vinegar, salt, dried oregano, bit of thyme, pepper. Mix gently so the tomatoes are covered but try not to squash the tomatoes. Next, tip them onto a baking tray with the cut side facing up – pack them in tightly. Once the oven is at the highest temperature and you could light a fag off the vapours, turn it off, open the door, quickly throw the tray in and leave it overnight. The hot air will dry your tomatoes out – not completely, but that’s fine – you want them a bit squishy. Syn-free and full of taste! Make it even more interesting by using a range of tomatoes of all shapes and colours. If you DO insist on using sundried tomatoes in oil like a filthy slattern, hoy them in a sieve and pour boiling water on them – gets rid of the oil, see.

OK, so you’ve got tomatoes – either moonblush (overnight) or sundried (jarred – philistine). So…

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts cut into chunks, 200g tomatoes, tiny drop of oil, 1 large onion sliced finely, three garlic gloves, 400g of orzo pasta (or rice), 3 dollops of tomato puree, 900ml of chicken stock, 1/2tsp of oregano, 1/4tsp of thyme, 1/4tsp of lemon zest and 1/2tsp of balsamic vinegar. Basil leaves, black pepper and parmesan to serve.

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you should:

  • fry the chicken off in a tiny bit of oil or a squirt of frylight (bleurgh!) – chuck in a bit of salt and pepper to swoosh it along – once cooked through, set aside
  • chuck the onions into the pan now and saute gently until they go transparent and sticky – add the garlic for a moment or two
  • add the rice and fry along with the onion for a minute or two
  • add the tomato puree, tomatoes (chopped if particularly big, otherwise just tip in), all the herbs and the balsamic vinegar, plus the chicken
  • now cook gently, on a medium heat, adding stock one ladle at a time and stirring – don’t leave it to stick, and eventually, it’ll go nice and gloopy and thick – tasty!
  • serve in a big bowl with a smashing cheesy grin on your face.

Just a note – buying a whole lemon just for the zest is a bit silly. So use whatever you need to, then pop the lemon in the freezer – you can use it next time you need zest! Failing that, cut it in half, put it in a tiny bowl of water and microwave for thirty seconds or so, then use it like a sponge to clean your microwave. Gosh we really ARE the gift that keeps on giving tonight.

Cheers all!

J

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April 10, 2015

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beef, beef mince, budget, classics, fakeaways, italian, pasta, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, travel

baked bean lasagna

Usual drill – recipe at the bottom of this post. This week’s Slimming World Classic is baked bean lasagne, just in case there wasn’t a strong enough stench of death blowing out your arse of an evening. It’s actually pretty tasty, though we’ve added mince because we’re such incorrigible rogues…by the way, I’m never 100% sure whether to use lasagna or lasagne, so pick one and roll with it.

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You may remember that I said I wasn’t going to talk in a chronological fashion about our trip to Ireland? Well there’s a reason – me saying that we went out driving each day doesn’t sound alluring, so, here’s some more random scattershot thoughts about our holiday, in no particular order.

The first town that we visited was a tiny little village called Waterville, which was actually quite charming. However, it didn’t bode especially well given everything was shut bar one fish shop (I don’t do fish) and a ‘crafts’ shop. I can’t stand ‘crafts’. I just can’t. Everything about craft shops wind me up, from the nonsense tat on offer to the twiddley-dee music playing to the judgemental looks that your leather shoes get from Astrid Moonglow behind the counter. But who buys this shit anyway? Who has ever walked into a craft shop and said ‘Now that’s just what I’ve been looking for – the entire works of B*Witched played on a pan-pipe and fiddle’ or, to that end, what sums up a holiday more than an shamrock-shaped ashtray with ‘I ❤ Ireland’ emblazoned on it in flaking gold Mistral? I’ve never felt the need to fragrance my home with incense sticks which smell like lavender and burning hair and nor do I feel the need to dry my dishes with a teatowel with Daniel O’Donnell’s slightly warped face on it. Frankly, I wouldn’t dry my arse with a picture of Daniel O’Donnell but that’s entirely beside the point. We did the very ‘us’ thing of tutting at the window as we walked past and spent a good five minutes wondering how the hell a craft shop in the arse-end of Ireland stays profitable enough to remain open on a grey, dismal day when suddenly our questions were answered by the sight of an David Urquhart coach straining over the horizon and about 300 Chinese tourists bustling out to take pictures of an inexplicable Charlie Chaplin statue.

As an aside, I had to google David Urquhart there to check the spelling and amongst reviews of his coach company, I found reviews for a Pontins resort which were titled ‘NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD HAV BEEN’ (spelling hers, not mine). Is there ever a sentence that sums up a shit holiday more than that? And the reviews and photos are ghastly – it looks like a prison camp. That said, Paul and I are definitely going to one of these places, if only so I can practice my ‘well isn’t that just LOVELY’ face for a week’.

We also visited Sneem, which to me sounds like an especially complicated part of the penis – you know, like ‘Hannah found Geoffrey would agree to anything, especially when she flicked his sneem and prodded his barse’. It was lovely, although I caused immediate and swift embarrassment to poor Paul when he got out of the car to avail of the public lavatory, as I whirred the window down, shouted ‘I HOPE THERE’S NO BLOOD IN YOUR SHIT THIS TIME HUN’ and drove off down the street, much to the disgusted and aghasted looks of the nearby tourists. He only started talking to me once I’d bought him a Nutella ice-cream. Paul’s easy to win around in an argument (tickle his sneem) – basically, the naughtier I’ve been, the more saturated fats have got to be pumped into him – like a blood transfusion but with a bag of Starmix hanging on the drip stand. In fact, Sneem had rather a lot of lovely places to eat – we tried The Village Kitchen (twice) and it was amazing – they serve black pudding on the pizza, and what’s not to like about that? Mmm. Irontacular.

Fun fact – Sneem’s own website actually describes the village as ‘The Knot in the Ring of Kerry’. Now come on, someone’s having a laugh there, surely? You might as well twin the place with Twatt up in the Shetlands and be done. I’m not even kidding – look for yourself at www.sneem.com. I warn you, the website seems to have been designed on a Game Boy Colour by Stevie Wonder.

We had to leave Sneem as we were told, in hushed, dramatic tones like someone imparting a nuclear code or warning of an oncoming plague, that there was a tractor rally happening and the roads would be chaos. Good heavens – why there wasn’t a full BBC News crew there I still don’t know. I tease I tease, I know you need to find excitement where you can in a place like that – trust me, I grew up in a tiny village where the only excitement was the fortnightly library and wanking, though not at the same time, and certainly not with the librarian as she had a bigger beard than I did.

Whilst I’m here, driving around Ireland – and in particular, the Ring of Kerry, was an unending joy. The rain (which we love, so didn’t bother us) kept most of the other tourists at bay and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. They could do with levelling out some of the roads though because good lord it was bumpy (not helped by the fact that as usual I was driving like I’d stolen the car from the Garda). I was always told to drive like I had a pint of milk on the dashboard and I didn’t want to spill it – by the time I’d finished it would have been butter. I did show a little restraint after a particularly pronounced bump in the road where I almost turned the car into a convertible using nought but my own head.

I did manage to get stuck behind a caravan – almost inevitably – and immediately started turning the air blue due to the fact I couldn’t get past. I’m not against caravans – it’s nice that the happily celibate and doubly incontinent have a place to rest their heads – but I could have parked my car, lay down in the road and farted my way home and it would have been quicker. Every turn in the road required shifting down to first and piloting his Shitbox 3000 round the corner like it was made out of tissue and the branches on the tree were broken glass. I managed to overtake with Paul holding my left hand down so I couldn’t stick my fingers up at him as I went past. There’s no need to drive so bloody slowly!

That burst of anger seems like a good place to leave it, actually.

Tonight’s classic is baked bean lasagne. Confession time: we’ve made this before, but, as per usual with slimming world recipes, it didn’t taste that good. I’m a firm believer in taking proper recipes and slimming them down, remember? So we’ve jazzed it up a bit by adding mince, but you could just as easily leave that out. I’m not your keeper, for goodness sake.

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to make baked bean lasagna, you’ll need:

one onion, 250 of lean mince, 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, nice yellow pepper, any mushrooms that haven’t grown legs yet, 2 tins of baked beans, garlic (powder or cloves, but grate finely if you’re using cloves) salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, dried lasagne sheets (pre-soaked if the packet says to do so, but for fucks sake don’t use fresh lasagne sheets or your consultant will be sticking pins in their voodoo doll of you, tub of quark, 30g of parmesan, 30g of extra strong cheddar (both cheeses being 1 healthy extra each) and an egg. Basil leaves and tomato for the top if you’re a pretentious sort.

to make baked bean lasagna, you should:

  • finely chop the pepper, onion, garlic and mushrooms and hoy in a pan and lightly cook them off for a few minutes in a drop of oil, with the soy sauce and worcestershire sauce added for good measure (a tsp each)
  • add the mince with all the rakish carelessness of a lorry driver dumping a jazz mag in a hedge and brown it off
  • tip the beans and tomatoes into the pot and allow to simmer until the sauce is nice and thick
  • meanwhile, prepare the cheese sauce by whisking violently together the quark, egg and 30g of parmesan, with a good twist or two of salt and pepper
    • if you really want to splash out, buy a cheese sauce mix – this lasagna easily serves four so a 7.5 syn cheese mix (which is what the Schwartz cheese mix is works out at a fraction under 2 syns a serving, and that’s nowt!)
  • layer it in a pyrex dish – mince first (use a slotted spoon to take the mince from the pan to the dish, and that way your lasagne won’t be all sauce…), then the lasagna sheets, then the sauce, then the mince, then the sheets, then the sauce, and then wrap it all in foil and throw it in the oven for 40 minutes on 190 degrees – check on it after 30 minutes to make sure it hasn’t turned to ash
  • take it out, remove the foil, add the grated cheddar and any poncy decoration you like and pop it back in the oven for ten minutes or so until the cheese is golden and crunchy.

You really ought to serve this with a bit of salad but there’s a lot of superfree in there. So up to you.

I’m off now – Transco are sending an engineer around to fit a tap to my arse to relieve the pressure. Enjoy!

J

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March 18, 2015

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fakeaways, italian, kebab shop, low syn, pizza, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas, vegetarian

syn free cheesy garlic bread

I can’t begin to describe the absolute cuntnugget that I happened across yesterday. I was queued up in Subway awaiting my usual lunchtime trough of food (plain chicken, all the salad bar onion, double gherkin, double pickle, honey and mustard, no drink, cheers yes, haha) when in walks some twat wearing a top-hat. In Newcastle, in Subway, with a waxed pointy moustache to boot. It gets worse – when he got to the counter, he actually came out with ‘So how on Earth does this work, then’. I was filled with irrational hatred. All I could think about was dashing back to the counter, pushing his face through the glass sneeze-guard and holding his head down in the pickles container until he stopped struggling for life and the police arrived to take me away. He was singularly the most achingly try-hard hipster twat that I’ve ever had the absolute displeasure to orbit.

It is, without doubt, the worst ‘subculture’ that exists right now. Zip backwards fifteen years ago and it was easy (at our school at least) – you had normal kids, then on either side of those you had chavs or Goths. And mind, these Goths were the starter Goths – none of this professional goth/emo whatever you see around town. They all had knock-off coats like Neo from the Matrix and a Livejournal account for photos of their self-harming. I had long, black hair for a good portion of my later school years but I was never a goth, not least because I was too fat – there’s nowt worse than a tiny muffin-top popping out over a pair of New-Rock boots. One of my exes told me he was a goth before we met up but that only extended to have long hair – I’m not sure how gothic giving someone Enya’s A Box Of Dreams on a first date is.

Chavs on the other hand are less tolerable but I just put most of that down to being thick. It was the time of coke-can fringes and Kappa tracksuit and for the most part, given it was a fairly posh school I went to, we’d only really see them out and about in the wild, their tracksuits rustling in the breeze. As I get older I find myself growing more contemptuous of a subculture that seems to revel in stupidity and an ability not to throw a trampoline on any square of dog-shit littered grass bigger than a postage stamp, but that’s by the by – it’s hipster that draws my true ire.

It’s just so loathsome, so affected, so nonsensical. Every year – including going backwards and forward through time, no doubt – it’s the same. Newcastle becomes awash with students all trying to outdo each other on the poncy twat stage. Instead of the booming Geordie dialect ricocheting around the streets of the city centre, you’ll hear trust-fund rah-rah knobheads, whose idea of living dangerously is a quinoa salad on a terrace in Jesmond, stumbling around in their lollipop trousers and 1920s make-up. We have bars opening up all over the town catering to such predilections, all copying the ‘trends’ that London washed its hands off three years earlier – a drink served in a jam-jar? Oh outrageous. And I fucking hate it.

I don’t hate garlic bread, mind, but being a fat twat means I can’t have it. Sniff. But I can have this…

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This photo doesn’t really do it justice, I must say. I had to hurry through the kitchen like Electra from the Starlight Express whilst Paul juggled three separate courses at the same time. This tastes almost exactly like cheesy garlic breadsticks you get from the takeaway, with the exception that it’s healthy!

This will make about eight breadsticks – enough for two.

to make syn free cheesy garlic bread you’ll need:

one cauliflower (or 600g-ish defrosted cauliflower florets), one egg white, 2 cloves of garlic, 40g grated cheese (2x HexA), salt, pepper, oregano

to make syn free cheesy garlic bread you should:

preheat the oven to 190 degrees (gas mark 5). Cut the cauliflower into florets and bung into a large food processor. Blitz until it has a ‘rice’ texture with a few bigger chunks. Spread out onto a baking tray or Pyrex dish and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. Allow to cool for about five minutes. Tip the mixture into a dry, clean tea towel and pull the corners together. Squeeze the ball of mixture as much as you can (if it’s still too hot, let it cool down for a bit more). This will take about ten minutes of squeezing, until it has quite a dry, crumbly texture. In a bowl, add garlic and egg whites to the cauliflower with 10g of grated cheese and mix well. Tip onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and shape until it’s about half a centimetre thick. Top with the remaining cheese and bake in the oven for about twenty minutes, and grill for about three. Cut, and enjoy!

Don’t be put off by the cauliflower – yes, it does taste a little like cauliflower but if you’re not a fan of you really won’t mind – it gives a great ‘doughy’ texture. Make sure it’s nice and firm when it’s cooked so it’ll hold it’s shape for dipping. If it sags a little, bake for a few minutes more.

On a final note…

TWEAK

This uses half a cauliflower each as a base. Some might consider it a tweak and therefore requires synning, but given that half a cauliflower isn’t an extravagant amount of veg to have in one go and you haven’t magically deep-fried it in lard as you moved it from the oven to the tea-towel I haven’t bothered. You can if you wish.

Buon appetito or summat.

J

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March 14, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, kebab shop, low syn, one-pot, recipe card, syn free

cheesy meatball skillet

I am gutted that, yet again, we’re sending a load of dross to Eurovision! Have you heard it?

It sounds like the type of ditty that would play out over a Buy as you View advert. I’m not one of these tubthumpers who claim we’ll never win Eurovision because if we sent a decent act, pumped a lot of amyl nitrates into the air and actually spent some money on publicity, we’d do well! Paul and I will still be watching it, eating our Austrian food (that’ll be our European tour country for that week) and screaming at the telly, but just once I’d like to see us succeed. Still, it’ll be a good night in front of the TV regardless.

We don’t watch a lot of TV – at least, not British TV. We used to be well into Coronation Street (rock and roll lifestyle) but that went dull, fast – and Eastenders is only decent when something big is happening, otherwise I end up trying to cut my wrists with the butter knife by the time it’s over. We’ll take in the odd documentary and we do love a good drama (for good drama, I’m talking about stuff like Lost over crap like Broadchurch – if you want to see Olivia Colman cry, watch a film called Tyrannosaurus, she’s brilliant in that). If you like reality TV but with decent production values, download a programme called The Amazing Race – UK TV doesn’t show it because we’d sooner watch tone-deaf bumholes singing on a talent show. Doctor Who is a guilty pleasure as is popcorn fodder like 24. What we DO enjoy is a good quiz show, not least because we like shouting at thick people on TV.

That said, I’d be shit on that new show, 1000 Heartbeats, where your heartbeat is monitored as you answer questions and your clock counts down faster the quicker your heart beats – I’d be so out of breath climbing the three steps up to the podium that I’d only have four seconds to answer fourteen general knowledge questions whilst getting shouted at by besuited Yorkshire lamp-post Vernon Kaye. I’d love to have a go in The Cube, but I know for an absolute fact that when they did that swooshy camera movement where it spins 360 degrees around The Cube in slow-motion, my arse-crack would be hanging out of my George boxer shorts and I’d be pulling that cum-face I usually pull when I’m concentrating – tongue half out, brow furrowed like a crinkle-cut crisp. I’ve mentioned before that Paul and I would adore the chance to go on Coach Trip, and indeed we auditioned successfully for the show, but then they took it off air for three years, perhaps hoping our clogged-up arteries would kill us off before we had a chance to get on the bus, call someone a jumped up shitbag and get asked to leave Lithuania in an armoured car.

I’d have been absolutely top at The Crystal Maze though. I say that from the comfort of my living room, admittedly, but I would have been a guaranteed two-crystal winner and that weekend canoeing in Middlesex could have been mine. Of course, no sooner was I old enough to apply, they took it off the bloody air. There’s been talk of bringing it back time and time again, including, horrifically, the idea of having Amanda Holden present in the Richard O’Brian role. Amanda Holden! A woman so pointless and personality-free that you could put a privet hedge with a crow stuck in it where she sat on Britain’s Got Talent and people would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. That’s what ruins TV – ‘celebrities’ famous for fuck all (in her case, having the dubious honour of turning down Les Dennis’ cock in favour of the unfunny one from Men Behaving Badly) taking part in shows and quizzes in lieu of decent folk from Ordinary World. Even if they somehow resist the urge to throw celebrities into the mix at every opportunity, they try and turn the ordinary folk into celebrities instead – like the gay couple from Gogglebox for example. Yep, they’re funny, but why are they in an advert with Kevin Bacon for bloody mobile phone services? Actually, why the hell is Kevin bloody Bacon in an advert for a mobile phone service? Kev, I’ve seen Footloose, you’re worth so much more!

Gosh, that was a bit of a rant. See that’s probably why they didn’t come back to us re: Coach Trip.

Anyway, it’s just a little post today because I want to spend the day with Paul as I’ve seemingly been at work since Tuesday morning. But, because we care, here’s a recipe for cheesy meatball skillet. A quick google shows that a skillet is pretty much the same as a shallow frying pan, but we’ve actually got a proper cast-iron skillet so we used that. Whatever you use, make sure it can go under the grill. Something like this would be perfect, plus you could use it for frittatas and other nonsense!

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This serves four.

We used the new Slimming World meatballs (syn-free) available at Iceland and do you know, they were actually pretty decent! Nothing like proper meatballs and I’ve got a syn-free recipe for those right here. Getting quite good at this cross-linking on my blog-posts!

Also, in my tomato sauce, I added 175ml of red wine (hence the syns) but that’s only because we had dregs left over in the fridge. You can easily leave this out, but it does add a nice note to the sauce.

to make cheesy meatball skillet, you’ll need:

ingredients: meatballs (either Iceland or home-made), two tins of tomatoes, one large red onion, garlic (powder or grated (especially if you use this fancy pants microplane grater), dash of worcestershire sauce, red wine (optional), big ball of reduced fat mozzarella (65g is one healthy extra which is more than enough, but because we’re decadent bitches, we’re using 130g – that’s fine for Paul and I as it is a healthy extra each, but if it’s just you, remember mozzarella is 5 syns for 50g if you’re synning any extra). You can decorate with chopped chives, if you’re feeling poncy.

to make cheesy meatball skillet, you should:

  • cook off your meatballs in the pan – if they’re homemade, great, as they’ll release oil that you can use in the next step, but if they’re not, just keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t catch. Once they’ve cooked through, set aside
  • chop up your onion nice and fine and add that into the pan (with a tiny bit of oil if the meatballs haven’t released any) and gently soften – then add garlic, and cook a little longer
  • whack the heat up, throw in the red wine, let it deglaze the bottom of the pan and simmer off for a couple of minutes, then add the tomatoes
  • pinch of salt and pepper
  • add the meatballs, put it on a medium heat and let it bubble down for a bit until the sauce has thickened
  • cut the mozzarella into discs and scatter them carelessly all over the pan
  • whack it under the grill for five minutes or so until the cheese has melted, bubbling and looks ready
  • SERVE.

Have a think about what you want to serve this with – spaghetti is fine, but this would also go well with any old pasta you’ve got knocking about, or even slimming world chips and a salad. Enjoy!

J

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March 3, 2015

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american, bacon, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, pizza, pork, recipe card, taster ideas

bacon cheeseburger pizza

I very nearly became a Slimming World consultant, you know.

I say very nearly, it was as near as most of my other fleeting fancies, but I made the effort to make contact, drop in my details, attempt to find out more. I had plenty of cold hard cash ready to be handed over gladly to Magic Margaret and her Synning Sisters but alas, despite chasing three times, I got one phone call which was rearranged and then totally ignored. Ah well. Part of me remains disappointed because I think I’ve got the sassy people skills to really get a group moving. But most of me thinks that my money (well, our money) is better off in my pocket and that’s that.

I’ve been going to Slimming World classes on and off for over ten years now, and they’ve never changed. Which is clearly a good thing, because the results speak for themselves and I’ve been lucky – I’ve never been to a bad class. Actually, tell a fib, yes I have – I had to sit through twenty minutes where the class gave advice to someone with piles – what best to eat for soft poo. Plus, if you get a boring consultant, the class drags something chronic, although I haven’t had one of those in a long, long time. I did have some great ideas – Paul stepping in as my Debbie McGee in a glittery bikini on the payment counter, a wheel of fortune to win something decent other than a banana that fell off the side of the ark and a Mugshot, interactive recipes…the works. But it wasn’t to be.

The reason I’m bumbling on about classes is because of our recent decision to move to a different class – it’s primarily so that we can stay to class as I feel we get a lot more out of it, not least because I get to blabber on about recipes and make smutty jokes. When we get weighed and go out the door, we almost lose a sense of responsibility – that although we are following the diet, we’re only paying lip service to it. So, we needed to find a class that works for us in terms of times, and although ironically we have managed to miss tonight’s because of a late finish at work, Tuesday evening will be our new weigh-in.

Finally, as an aside, I made a post in a FB SW group about people not being able to say please or thank you. It’s always the same – some blurry, off-brand yoghurt thrust too far to the lens on their phone with a comment like ‘HOW MANI SINS’ and it does my nut in. I’ll personally help anyone if I have the time, but I can’t bear bad manners. Thankfully, and somewhat reassuringly, most people have weighed in with complete agreement, with only the odd little dolt kicking up a stink at someone having the temerity to ask for manners. Well. The day I take criticism who has Inside Soap listed as a ‘favourite book’ on their facebook page is the day I shut my bollocks in a car-door. MANNERS MAKETH THE MAN.

Tell you what else maketh the man? Meat. And pizza. And cheeseburger. Well, look at this for goodness sake. You might as well jog on if you’re one of those people who won’t use syns on their dinner, despite THAT BEING EXACTLY what they are for…!

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so, to make bacon cheeseburger pizza:

This is six syns for a quarter, but it makes a big pizza, and served with chips will fill the hole nicely. Put it this way, if you were to have a big pizza from Dominos, you’d be racking up syns in the sixties and seventies. Treat this as a treat…

ingredients for the crust: 125g of strong white bread flour, a packet of yeast (7g), 75ml of lukewarm water and a pinch of salt

ingredients for the topping: use a HEA for each of you – so 65g of mozzarella is one HEA, and 40g of grated light cheddar is the other. You’ll also need lean mince (5% or under), gherkin slices and a few medallions of bacon. Hoy some chilli flakes on too.

recipe (which I’m going to split into bullet points from now on for this blog – step by step):

  • make the crust – put the flour into a mixing bowl or a stand mixer, add yeast on one side, salt on the other, water in the middle and knead it together using your hands (wash them first, I know where they’ve been) or a dough hook (infinitely easier). When you have a big lump, stop, cover the bowl in cling film and leave it to prove for an hour or so;
  • prepare the toppings – grate your cheese, fry off your mince in a tiny drop of oil and some onion powder, fry off your bacon and cut into strips, cut your gherkins, do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight;
  • stretch your dough, hoy some tomato puree over it, add cheese, add mince, gherkins, tomatoes if you want them, bit more cheese, bacon;
  • cook in the oven for twenty minutes and serve with chips.

Tasty!

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February 10, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake

I can’t believe it – 1000 followers! Well fuck me! No don’t, actually, I don’t fancy Paul coming at me to cut my knob off for being a hussy and feeding it to the cats. But seriously, 1000 followers is pretty intense. I write this blog because I love nothing more than rambling on about nothing and sharing what we’re eating, so the fact that 1000 of you cared enough to actually follow and have me come in your inbox every day is really quite something. Oh you flirt. A big thank you for that, and to celebrate, I’m uploading a cheese and meat wonder. Be ready.

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Let me tell you what I’m not ready for though – idiots. I saw something today which almost made my heart explode, it was simultaneously so sad and so telling of the future to come that I could barely register it. On an online newspaper article, an argument broke out between someone with the inevitable -MAMMYOVLILANGEL’ following her first name and some other painted idiot about spelling. Her reply? What broke my heart? ‘WEL U DNT NEED GRAMAR THS ISN’T A BUK’

I might have slightly paraphrased there, I was that aghast I couldn’t let it sink in. Since when did it become socially acceptable to be thick and fucking proud of it? I’m not some snob who expects everyone to type like Mavis Beacon and never make an error, but it’s just become ‘alright’ to be dense and not make any strides to fix the problem. I appreciate there are plenty of people out there who struggle, and that’s fair enough, but everyone else, make an effort – don’t revel in your stupidity like a dog rolling in fox shit. If I don’t know something, I learn it. I don’t have a go at the people who do know the answer. It’s the equivalent of me going onto The Chase and if the Chaser got a question right and I didn’t, launching myself up the table and calling poor Anne a FAT SLAHG WIV A SHIT HAREKUT. I find it repellent, and I make no apologies for it.

Pardon me a moment.

Ah that’s better – our cat decided to be sick all over our living room carpet as a thank you for us letting her into the house and popping her bed near the fire to warm her up. Bitch. I wouldn’t care but she could have gone outside to be sick but decided that right in the middle of the living room was truly the best place. It doesn’t help that our living room carpet looks like a magic-eye drawing of a kaleidoscope pattern, so as soon as she was sick we immediately lost it amongst the pattern. It truly is a carpet that you’d expect an insane lorry driver to keep behind his cab to wrap his prostitute corpses in. Stare hard enough and you’ll not only see patterns, you’ll lose your fucking mind. We’re too tight to have it replaced though because it’s really quite decent carpet to walk on – easily the best shag this house ever had before us young bucks moved in, am I right?

OK, this recipe – the picture may not make it look like much, but it was delicious – combining cheese, meat, gnocchi and veg. Make it for a weigh-in night treat, although the syns are low low low anyway!

slimming world cheeseburger gnocchi

to make saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake, you’ll need:

ingredients (this serves four): handful of button mushrooms (sliced), a thinly sliced red pepper and a thinly sliced green pepper, a small onion (diced), 400g of gnocchi (1.5 syns per 100g), 500g of lean mince, salt and pepper, 250g of quark, garlic, splash of worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, a beef stock cube, 280g of light mozzarella, grated. (4 x HEA). Adjust accordingly if you want to make less but for gods sake INDULGE.

to make saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake, you should:

recipe: cook your gnocchi, which is nothing more than throwing them in boiling water and letting them float to the top. Set aside. Chuck your onions and peppers and garlic into a heavy bottomed pan (suitable for SW) and sweat down, then add your mince and fry it off. You want it fairly dry, so go at it. Crumble a stock cube in for a bit of extra taste. In another bowl, combine the quark, mustard (1syn per tsp, I only added one), worcestershire sauce and salt. Mix it into the beef and veg, chuck in the gnocchi, even it out. Top with all that grated cheese. Into the oven for 15 minutes or so at 180 degrees, then under the grill until you get the top all golden and delicious. Serve. YUM.

extra-easy – well, you’d need to serve it with a salad, as it only has superfree peppers in it. But considering it is so full of goodness, it’s low in syns and tasty! Give it a go. You could up the stakes by using garlic philadelphia (20 syns per tub so only five syns each), but then you’d be a decadent tart.

Enjoy.

J

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January 31, 2015

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fakeaways, italian, noodles, pork, pork mince, quark, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas

meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests

Ah now look at that – we haven’t had a quickpost this week, so tonight is the night – just the recipe today as I’m out and about! Normal service will resume tomorrow. And anyway, don’t be greedy – I did a big blog page earlier today on the ‘my favourite things’ post. Gimme a break damn it! WE’RE BUT TWO LADS!

meatballs and cheese sauce

This is another ‘use it or lose it’ meal where most of the ingredients are leftovers and/or stuff we haven’t got round to cooking. We’re trying to minimise leftovers, see? GO GREEN. We always keep a bag of frozen meatballs (made ourselves) in the freezer, the noodles were leftover from last night’s meal (sweet and sour pork – that’s coming online tomorrow, oooh a peek behind the curtain!) and the veg was what was left rolling around in amongst the vodka at the bottom of the fridge.

to make meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests, you’ll need:

ingredients: for the meatballs – pork mince, salt, pepper, dried sage – squash all together with your hands, shape into small balls and chill until needed. For the cheese sauce – 250g quark, 110g lightest philadelphia (HEA for me) and 30g of parmesan (HEA for Paul) and mustard powder. For the nests, use any leftover spaghetti or noodles. You’ll also need an egg and any old bollocks you have left in the veg drawer.

tip: make double the amount of meatballs, then freeze half. To freeze, put them on a flat plate not touching each other, freeze them, then pick them off the plate and put into a bag. That way they’ll stay separate and easier to work with.

to make meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests, you should:

recipe: start by making the cheese sauce, which is as easy as adding the quark, philadelphia and cheese into a pan and heating it slowly until it all comes together. Allow to cool. Then, get your noodles/spaghetti, coat them in about half of the sauce and include a beaten egg, and mix quickly. Get a muffin tray, do the frylight/oil thing (whichever you prefer!) so they don’t stick, and get a handful of spaghetti and put it in each muffin slot. Shape them so there is an indent in the middle. Hoy them in the oven for about 25 minutes and take out when golden – I took mine out a trifle too soon. Whilst they’re cooking, cook off your meatballs. If you’ve got a decent non-stick pan, have the confidence to let them get a good crust on them – they’ll take about 10 minutes on a reasonably high heat to brown off. Top tip – near the end, throw in a good glug of worcestershire sauce if you want – on a high heat, it’ll deglaze the pan and give your balls a nicer colour. Yes. Then, it’s just assembly – work your noodle nest out, put a dab of cheese sauce in the indent, top with a meatball. Serve your veg on the side with any leftover meatballs and cheese sauce. DELICIOUS.

extra-easy – yes, and syn free – the veg on the side is superfree, naturally. Try it!

Goodnight.

J

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January 21, 2015

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american, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, taster ideas, vegetarian

butternut squash macaroni cheese

It’s lucky I don’t have a gambling problem. Well no, it’s lucky I’m Geordie enough to be so tight I wouldn’t DARE have a gambling problem. TV is absolutely awash with ads for online gambling sites, and they’re such utter, utter bollocks. Invariably, they’ll have some drooling slab of beef watching some whizzy virtual reality site flash by, gambling with hilarity and a big shit-eating smile on his face, all the while chucking a few £1 bets on and watching the money roll in.

Well let me tell you this isn’t the case. I make quite a bit of pin money on the side by gambling for ‘free’. and I’ll come to that later, but a good part of that comes from having to play online bingo. Online bingo is the antithesis of fun. Put simply, you’re paying good money to watch a pen automatically dab off your numbers in the hope of winning a crap jackpot against thousands of others. However, there’s more – in the adverts you’ll see sprightly young ladies giggling away and typing supportive messages to one another in the chatrooms, whereas all I’ve ever seen is punters with one good set of teeth between them and usernames like ~~!!!PIXIE_DUST_ROFL~~!!! and TISHMAM4LIFE desperately trying to outdo each other’s bad spelling. Even the photos of the winners are invariably harsh – all slack-jawed, light-bendingly dense landmasses with terraced chins and poor taste in acrylic outerwear holding their cheques for £667 like they’ve won La Primitiva. Bleurgh. When even I can’t eke a little fun from reading people’s chatter, you know there’s a bad job.

BORING SENSIBLE BIT HERE

Anyway, the free gambling thing. I use Quidco, which is a cashback site, so if you’re doing online shopping you would go through Quidco, it tracks your purchase and offers you a small amount of cashback which gets deposited back into your bank account at the end of the month. You pay £5 a year and it’s very safe. There seems to be a intrinsic distrust of these sort of websites, which is fair enough, but this is a massive site used by thousands and I’ve never had a problem with it. Even old motormouth Martin Lewis recommends in. So – on Quidco are lots of offers for new customers on gambling sites, and they normally have a higher return than investment. Looking on there right now, William Hill Bingo is offering £30 back for new customers who spend £10. Obviously they want you to spend more than £10 but don’t. If you go for the offer and only spend £10, you’ll eventually get £30 back from Quidco, and you’ve made £20 right there. It takes a few weeks for things to track but there you go.

Of course, if when you spend the £10 on William Hill, you actually manage to win some money, that’s even more profit right there, but DON’T accept any of the introductory bonuses or little catches – just play with your own money, and stop the very second you’ve gambled whatever it is they ask you to gamble on Quidco. Remember, this only works if you:

  • you are controlled and never bet more than the minimum requirement set by Quidco
  • you ensure the cashback is more than the amount spent
  • you meet all the requirements set by Quidco, though they’re never especially onerous
  • stop, especially if you lose your money – remember to spend only what you have to!

If you want to join Quidco, feel free to go via my referral link!

BORING SENSIBLE BIT ENDS HERE

ANYWAY enough about that shite. Here’s tonight’s recipe – bloody lovely macaroni cheese!

macaroni cheese

to make butternut squash macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

ingredients: 1300g butternut squash, 300ml chicken stock, 250ml almond milk (1 syn or HEA). 200g macaroni, 
2 teaspoons garlic salt, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, 115g grated cheddar cheese (4.5 syns or HEA – remember this serves four). 

to make butternut squash macaroni cheese, you should:

recipe: cut up the butternut squash into cubes, add the stock and almond milk into a nice big pan, and chuck the squash in. Bring it to a boil and then reduce to a simmer under the squash is tender (about fifteen minutes). Blend this mixture in a decent processor or use a stick blender and really go at it – the smoother the better. Add the garlic salt and Worcestershire sauce. Add the cheese to the sauce and put it back onto the heat on a medium heat. Now you have a choice – you can cook the macaroni in a separate pan, drain and add to the sauce, or just chuck the macaroni into the sauce and cook it all in the same pan – this will help thicken the sauce because of all that tasty starch! Once the sauce is thickened, serve hot!

extra-easy: yep! here, you’re either using your cheese or your milk as your HEA on your serving. All that butternut squash makes this VERY high in superfree food and it just tastes wonderful, trust me. You can use up the rest of your HEA allowance (if you chose milk) throughout the day, you can have a fair bit on EE!

TASTY.

J