Category Archives: noodles

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February 8, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, noodles, poultry, recipe card, syn free

syn free chicken chow mein

That title suggests that our marriage is heading for the rocks, with some almighty scrap on the front lawn or atop the bungalow like in Die Hard, but no. We’d both look dreadful in a vest, like cottage cheese being strained through a yard of muslin. We’re an odd couple, we so very rarely argue, and when we do, it’s always over in seconds because Paul pulls a stupid face at me until I stop moaning at him. We’re both too laid back to argue – like everything else, if it gets us out of breath, it isn’t worth doing. That said, we did have a disagreement yesterday over what flavour stock cube to use in a recipe (honestly, it’s all go in this house) and it got me thinking of an idea of a blog article – those little tiny things that irk us about one another after being together eight years. So I asked Paul to compile his top five (and oh, because I’m the writer, I get a right to reply), and so…

Paul’s five things that rile him about me:

  • I put things on top of the kitchen bin instead of putting them in;
    • this one sounds reasonable to the reader until you realise my logic – I put big stuff on the top of the bin so I remember to take it to the outside recycling bin rather than clogging up the tiny kitchen bin with giant lemonade bottles;
  • I eat all of his ‘lunch’ ham -i.e. the expensive ham that he buys to put in his sandwiches for lunch instead of the wafer-thin shite we buy for the cats;
    • because it’s tasty;
  • I don’t put chicken on a plate when it defrosts;
    • because it’s in a sealed, freezer-proof bag! Plus it means we have an extra plate to wash…;
  • I play odd music whenever I’m typing the blog;
    • this one is fair enough, but I do have a defence, I can’t have the TV on because I get distracted, and I can’t have music with lyrics playing because I start singing, so it has to be score music or soundtrack stuff. Admittedly, he might not enjoy the theme from Rollercoaster Tycoon playing whilst I type but it’s infinitely better than hearing an almost-30-year-old-man caterwauling his way through the Cher back catalogue;
  • I always put my smelly feet on him whenever we sit and watch TV.
    • I’m six foot one, they have to go somewhere, and the floor is cold, whereas Paul is like a little hot water tank pumping out heat – cheaper than slippers.

Things that annoy me about Paul:

  • he’ll happily put the milk carton back in the fridge even if has the tiniest sliver of milk in it – not enough for anything practical but just enough to make sure I try and make a coffee and end up exasperated;
  • he’ll randomly and without warning decide he doesn’t like a food that I’ve cooked plenty of times before, turning serving up a new recipe into a dangerous game of ingredient russian roulette;
  • he’ll cheerfully announce to the room every time he’s been to the toilet;
  • he can’t take a single comment on his driving (although that’s partly because I’ve made him so sensitive about it by hanging on like I’m Sandra Bullock in Gravity every time he goes round a corner at 35mph); and
  • he eats all the fucking cheese in the fucking fridge – for all that he bitches on about me eating ham every time I go to make an omelette or something I’ll find the tiniest crumb of cheese left or even worse, a block with a great big crime-scene-esque tooth-print in it.

Well, if that’s all we have to moan about, I say we’re doing pretty well! At least we’re not the Trevor and Little Mo of the street, which is a shame because I do a brilliant Scottish accent. Weigh in tomorrow and I’m aiming just to maintain or put on a pound – my boss left us with a colossal box of Sports Mixture to work through, knowing my weakness is flavoured animal hoof. So we’ll see.

I’m off to the cinema on Tuesday, though not to see 50 Shades of Grey. I can’t genuinely think of a film I’d want to see less at the cinema, not least because I bet you can barely hear the audio over the sound of what sounds like 250 tiny pairs of bellows pumping away. Work that one out. I just don’t get it, I really don’t – the books were about as erotic as hearing an uncaring doctor telling a child that they’re not going to make their teenage years. Sex as described by the perpetually celibate – I’d get more aroused ringing up the speaking clock for a phonewank. BAH. Anyway that’s out of my system now, here’s tonight’s recipe.

chicken chow mein slimming world

Now, if I’m completely honest, this wasn’t a total success – it tasted alright, but it didn’t blow my socks off. Partly down to Paul adding the wrong stock cube, I reckon – it’s no wonder I’m planning some Machiavellian Gone-Girl scheme to frame him for my murder.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chicken breasts, cut thin, 2 carrots cut thinly, mushrooms sliced any old how, three big spring onions, cut however you like, 100g mangetout, 100g baby corn, two sliced peppers, one pack of dried egg noodles, 300ml stock made with two CHICKEN stock cubes, 1tbsp of worcestershire sauce, 2tbsp of soy sauce and 1tsp of bovril. Also, add some chinese five spice.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you should:

recipe: fry the chicken and vegetables until cooked through – hot and fast. Cook the noodles. Add them. Make up the stock, add the sauce, five spice, soy sauce and bovril. Tip and mix. Serve. That was easy.

top tip: serve with my bloody amazing spring rolls.

extra-easy: yes. Eat this and you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your ears, and, if you don’t follow my advice about cooking the chicken high and fast, you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your arse a good twenty minutes later.

K, must dash.

J

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February 1, 2015

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chinese, diced pork, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, pork, recipe card, rice

one syn sweet and sour pork

Look, here’s the deal. Come hell or high water, by the end of today we are going to have new curtains installed in our bedroom. It needs to happen. See a while ago I took our blinds apart so that I could paint the little bit of wall behind them, then promptly lost the chain that holds them together so that now, every tiny gust of wind and they splay around in all directions, rattling and bumping into each other. That wouldn’t be so bad, except we have to leave our windows open in our bedroom at night – how else could the cats deliberately go outside, get wet and then get under our duvet at 3am and press their tiny wet noses against our bumcheeks? We can’t build a cat-flap into our doors as they’re the wrong type. So given how windy and cold it is, our bedroom at night is always a) freezing and b) like sleeping through a particularly budget production of Stomp. It’s lucky that we’re both the type of person who likes to be entangled up in each other when we’re asleep – I reckon one morning we’ll just wake up as one person, melded together like the wax in a lava lamp. Fuck me, that would make typing this blog difficult.

Plus, god knows what our neighbours must think – our windows being open all night and us being in a bungalow means every fart, mumble, snore and sleep-cough echoes around the street. No kidding, I once finished an overtime shift at work and upon getting out the car at 3am I couldn’t understand what the strange rattling noise coming from the engine was until I realised it was Paul’s snoring from over 100 yards away. Worse still is that I’m forever talking and laughing in my sleep – Paul’s recorded me merrily singing Cerys Matthew’s bits from The Ballad of Tom Jones whilst deep in slumber. Plus, we’re always talking incoherently to each other, normally burbling away merrily about being too hot, too cold or ‘don’t fart, the cat’s in the bed and you’ll gas the fucker’.

So, whilst the neighbours would still be treated to the cacophony of noise from our bedroom, we can solve the blinds rattling – and that’s today’s project. You may recall that we’re both equally shit at DIY (remember our current bathroom situation?) so I can only assume this will end up with one of us in A&E and our home left a burnt out shell. We have to be the only couple out there who has a £200 drill and exactly 0 clues about how to use it. Ah well, wish us luck.

Today’s recipe – posted nice and early because then you can go out and get the ingredients, is sweet and sour pork – and for once, this is a recipe we’ve dug out from a Slimming World book instead of either making up ourselves or adapting another recipe. So if it’s shit, blame Margaret. Ahaha no, it’s tasty, trust me.

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to make one syn sweet and sour pork, you’ll need:

ingredients: 500g of pork, fat off, cut into chunks. One large onion and one large red pepper, deseeded and cut into strips. Two large carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks. Sugarsnap peas, just cut into chunks. Garlic cloves, finely chopped. You’ll also need 1/4tsp of chinese five-spice, 1 level tbsp of cornflour, 4tbsp of tomato puree, 1 tbsp of white wine vinegar, 4tbsp light soy sauce, 150ml of chicken stock and some dried egg noodles. You’ll also need a pineapple (RETCH), cut into smallish chunks.

I absolutely fucking detest pineapple (BOKE),  can I just make that clear. Whenever I’m prescribed anything at the doctors and the allergy notice comes up, mine actually says pineapple (OOH NASTY). Which is a bitch when it comes to my fruit-punch flavoured suppositories, I have to say.

I know that’s quite the list of ingredients, but you’ll use only a small amount of each of those, and the rest can be put away in the cupboard and used for different recipes, or to feed the weevils, whichever is more appropriate.

to make one syn sweet and sour pork, you should:

recipe: sear the pork in a hot pan. SW say spray it with Frylight, but urgh, don’t, use a bit of olive oil. You’ll not die. Hot pan, nice crust on the pork – chuck in a bit of salt and pepper. Take the pork out and replace it with all the chopped veg. Stir fry for a few minutes, chuck in the pork, and keep it all stirring. Hot and fast, just the way you like it. Meanwhile in a bowl mix 2 tbsp water with the chinese 5 spice, garlic, cornflour, tomato purée, white wine vinegar, soy sauce and stock. Add the mixture to the pan, stir and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 3-4 minutes until thickened. Whilst this is taking place, you’ll want to use your other two arms to cook and drain your noodles. Pop the pineapple (BLEURGH) into the pork and veg and stir. Serve.

top tip: as I always, always say on this blog – if you’re wanting uniform matchsticks, or you’re just too lazy to fanny about cutting up carrots with a knife, buy a julienne peeler. It’ll do the job in seconds. You can buy them from Lakeland or on Amazon – and here’s a handy link. You don’t need one, mind, a knife will do the same thing.

extra-easy – only one syn per serving, and that comes from the cornflour. You’ll need it to thicken the sauce off, but really, think how many syns this would be from the local takeaway. Best part? If you cook too many noodles, you can use them to make noodle cups to go with my cheese and meatballs recipe from yesterday? What, you don’t remember it? IT’S RIGHT HERE AND BLOODY DELICIOUS. Oh me oh my.

OK. I’m off to try and figure out the curtains. £20 that we’ll both give up after ten minutes of looking online and end up playing on the Wii U instead.

Don’t forget to share and tell everyone about this blog – it’s really growing!

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 27, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, noodles, poultry, recipe card

peanut butter chicken noodles

There was some discussion with colleagues today about babies and we often get asked the same thing – would we like to adopt? Well no, not there and then obviously, I don’t have a car seat – but could we be one of those gay couples who have a child?

The answer is an emphatic no. Or an astounding nope. Or a camp NOOOOOO-WAY-HUNAAAAAAAY. I genuinely can’t think of something I want less in my life than a baby. Paul is fine with them, cooing and marvelling over their ruddy cheeks, but I’m not – all I see is a red-faced, spewing, bawling bundle of energy that would leave me terrified and exhausted, the human equivalent of turning on the light in a gas-filled room. I seem to lack that warm, friendly gene that can look at a baby and think ‘aw how sweet’ – I just see about 1000 different ways that I’m going to accidentally damage the poor bugger – immediately drop it on the floor when I try to cuddle it, or rest my chin on their soft skull and make their skulls look like an ashtray, or suddenly develop a violent tremor and immediately end up in a Louise Woodward situation, or I’ll sneeze and deafen the poor bugger. It’s just awful, and to that end, I’ve spent my entire life avoiding babies – I’ll go sit in the toilet at work if someone brings their child in because I’m terrified that my lack of emotion will shine through. People must think I have a hair-trigger bladder the way I dash to the gents as soon as I hear a Mama and Papas hatchback pushchair being wrestled with in the lobby. I think babies sense this unease because they just start crying as soon as they see my face, the same way doctors, close friends, family, beggars and other men do. My nephew, who admittedly is a gorgeous, funny little tyke, cried his eyes out at me for almost eighteen months, finally thawing at Christmas when I had shaved off my sex-offender beard and brought gifts.

Plus, we’re entirely too selfish as a couple to even think about having a baby. We struggle to remember to wash and clean ourselves, let alone something pink and squashy and full of off-colour poo. At least the cats know enough to go outside for their craps and if they meow and rub along our feet often enough, the occasional pouch of Felix will be dropped in their bowls from on high. One of the many benefits of being gay, aside from all the cock and being able to wear each other’s clothes, is the fact you don’t have to spend money on anything but yourself. There’s no school uniform to buy, there’s no school trips to pay for – every penny can go on hobbies and fetishwear. It’s just great, and I know I’d immediately resent something that I had to pay out for on a regular basis – I still shoot mean looks at my car for taking all our money. BAH. Finally, there’s the biology of it all – the thought of having to yankee-doodle into a paper cup and mixing it with Paul’s like some sort of bleach-smelling watercolour set puts me right off.

So no – no children. Cubs Towers will remain forever more a two-man tent. And quite bloody right too.

Anyway, if I had a baby to look after, I wouldn’t have the time to type these recipes and Paul would be too tired to cook them, so you’d be fucked, too. So hooray for homosexuality, and onto tonight’s recipe, which is the delightful (and synned) chicken and vegetable peanut-dressed noodles.

peanut butter chicken noodles

You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? USE YOUR SYNS. Please, for the love of Slimming World, don’t see the syns and think you’re not going to bother. It’s your main meal of the day, spend the syns and bloody well enjoy it. This serves 2.

to make peanut butter chicken noodles, you’ll need:

ingredients: 2tbsp tesco reduced fat peanut butter (4 syns per tbsp), 300g dried noodles (we use the chilli ones from Sainsbury’s – 1 syn per 150g), 300g of frozen veg (or indeed, anything you want – peppers, fresh veg, sweetcorn, go nuts!), a diced onion, one minced garlic clove, 1/4tsp of ginger, 1/4tsp of salt, 1tbsp of water, 2tbsp of teriyaki marinade (you’ll find it in the world foods aisle, especially in the Japanese section – ours is by Kikkoman and is syn free).

to make peanut butter chicken noodles, you should:

recipe: make your sauce first by combining the teriyaki, peanut butter and water. Set aside. Then cook the noodles, drain and set aside. heat a large pan, fry off your onion in a smidge of oil and chuck in your veg, together with the ginger and garlic and salt and cook it through quickly. Add the noodles and the peanut sauce, stir fry for a moment longer until everything is hot and delicious and coated, then sit back and feel smug.

extra-easy: always. 5 syns a portion, but that’s fuck all in the grand scheme of things and all that superfree veg make it a perfect little dinner.

enjoy – I’m off to NOT feed, wipe, bathe or care for any little sprogs. Good job, right…

J