Category Archives: pasta

Pasta recipes

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October 3, 2016

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bacon, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

droptober recipe #3: cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake

Here for the cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake? It’s a few paragraphs below, but I beg your attention for a couple of minutes whilst I witter on. Let’s get the exciting news out of the way…

christmas tree week 3

Canny! I’m more surprised than anyone, trust me. We’re going slow and steady but after the week of naughtiness I had last week, I thought I’d put on for sure. Just shows: you should still go to class even when you can barely catch a breath because your mouth is so full of pie crust. If you want to take part in this challenge, there’s 100 syn free recipes and some colouring charts available all in one place right here! Remember to share.

Yes, last week then. See, I was sent up to Glasgow on a sort-of business trip to learn some new skills and socialise – both of which I’m terrible at. Had I been single I would have been up there so fast my shadow would have only appeared an hour later – Paul and I both love a Scotsman and between you and me (because who reads this, honestly) the biggest willy I’ve ever seen belonged to a Glaswegian. I didn’t know what to do with it – I’m surprised he didn’t pass out from lack of blood on the brain when he got an erection. It looked like a sausage casing stuffed with two cans of Carling Black Label. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or smash a bottle of champagne off the side of it. But those days are behind me (though I still whistle like a keyhole in a haunted castle) and so I didn’t have that to look forward to.

It also meant a whole week without Paul – I know. Before you’re all sick in your mouth (although, think of the weight-loss) please understand that we haven’t been apart for more than a week in the totality of our almost ten year relationship. I was fretting at the thought of being unable to sleep without the smell of death being blown across my nostrils at five-minute intervals. I shivered at the thought of being able to occupy more than 10% of the bed without Paul’s wandering hands, feet and knob poking and prodding me. There are nights I feel like a stress-ball. But hey, it had to be done, and it was with an aching heart and a threatening arsehole (we’d had easy peasy beef curry the night before, and whilst delicious, it was making a dramatic reappearance throughout the morning) that we schlepped off to pick up my hire car on Sunday.

I could see I was in for an easy time when I got to the desk and was assigned a car-rental-spokesperson who I wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t dead. I’ve made more responsive omelettes. He didn’t look up from his keyboard once – perhaps he was trying to find the ‘wake the fuck up’ key but if so, he failed miserably. He didn’t check my insurance details, didn’t check my payment details, didn’t check my lyrics, nothing. I’d have had a more fruitful chat if I’d turned and had a discussion with the leaflet stand. I was going to ask him about fuel but I rather thought I’d need to fetch a defibrillator to just bring him back into some form of sentience, and well, my ankles were already hurting from having to concertina myself into Paul’s tiny Smart car. He did perk up when he remembered he could sell me an upgrade, and, remembering the Ford Boredom we’d been given last time, I asked him what he could offer me. First a Skoda – no. Then a Fiat 500 – no. Then his trump card (honestly, his eyes nearly opened with the shock) – he had an Audi. Did I want an Audi? I leaned over the desk and tried to explain that I’d be unable to take an Audi because a) I know how to use indicators and b) I’m not a middle-aged, impotent, prematurely-balding twat, but he’d pretty much already signed the card for me and was back to looking like he was trying to remember to breathe in and out. Resigned (and a fair few pounds lighter) I went to pick up my car.

Well, I’m not going to lie. It was lovely. I wanted to hate it, really I did, but it drove well and was comfortable for a long drive. I still wouldn’t buy one on sheer principle and I still think every single Audi driver – bar you and any of your charming family and friends, I’m sure – is a minge, but I can definitely see the appeal. I thought I’d do my best to be a decent Audi driver so I spent the first sixty miles or so driving gently and letting people out at junctions before a transformation took place and I was flooring it. You know how the Incredible Hulk turns green when he gets angry? I turned violet. In my defence I was stuck behind a little old dear doing 40mph on a single carriageway designed for 70mph and because I’m a nice guy deep down, I couldn’t flash my lights, but by god was I raging. I had to stop at the next services just to have a McFlurry and calm myself down.

I drove on, loving every second of having the car to myself for a long drive. I could sing along to my music without any protestation from Paul and there was no Alanis Fucking Morrisette to contend with, which was lucky as I don’t think my Budget Special Povvo Insurance would cover deliberately driving into the back of a petrol tanker. As I drove past Lockerbie the tyre pressure warning light came on. Horror! I pulled over, walked around the car kicking the tyres because I’d seen someone do it on the TV, then spent twenty minutes reading up on how to change a tyre. I have no clue. I know that I should have acquired this skill by now but really, I’m very much a pay-someone-else-to-do-it sort of guy (i.e. lazy). I didn’t want some oily-handed mechanic to come and tut at me on the hard shoulder whilst I tried to make crass jokes about helping him with his tight nuts or jacking up. I waited a bit and kicked the tyres again and they seemed hard enough, so on I went.

You may recall I’m somewhat of a catastrophic thinker – well, this meant that I couldn’t relax for the rest of the journey. That tiny light with the deflated tyre haunted me like the Telltale Heart, burning away at my retinas as I tried to think about anything else than my tyre exploding and sending me ricocheting into oncoming traffic. Imagine that – being found buckled into a shoebox cube of metal with the Audi rings imprinted on my forehead, with some coroner declaring me dead due to my lack of manliness. The last sixty or so miles into Glasgow were tenser than the last round of The Cube – I reckon there’s still a fingernail wedged into the steering wheel. However, after navigating my way down to the Clyde (via the road system, as opposed to plummeting off the A74 in a fading shriek of ABBA Gold) I arrived at the hotel, the not-especially-salubrious Garden Inn Hilton.

Alas, Paul just minced in from the kitchen to inform me dinner will be ready in ten minutes, so I’m going to plough straight on with tonight’s recipe and finish this story another time! This makes enough for four massive portions, so we’re going for comfort food here folks, not grace…

cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake

cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake

to make cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake you will need:

  • 6 bacon medallions, chopped

We use some of the bacon from our fantastic freezer filler deal – 24/26 chicken breasts, a load of bacon medallions, 5 big portions of extra lean beef mince and two portions of beef chunks – get yourself stocked up for Autumn by clicking here – it’ll open in a new window!

to make cheesy caramelised onion and bacon pasta bake you should:

  • heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and add a splash of oil
  • slice the onions into 0.5cm slices and add to the pan, coating well
  • leave to cook in the pan for half an hour, stirring only when the edges start to brown, scraping up any bits sticking to the pan
  • when the onions are nicely browned (after about 15-20 minutes) add the balsamic vinegar, stir well to coat and continue to cook until it has evaporated off
  • meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190°c
  • fry the bacon in another frying pan over a medium-high heat until crispy
  • bring a large pan of water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions, minus a minute or two so it’s still firm to bite into
  • in a large bowl, mix together the quark, creme fraiche, garlic powder and a little salt and pepper to taste
  • stir in the cooked bacon, chopped red pepper and half the grated cheese
  • stir in the drained pasta and caramelised onions and mix well to combine
  • slop out into a large baking dish and top with the remaining cheese – yes that’s right, we use words like slop out in our recipes – some might say gently transfer, but we’re not that kind of blog, fuck no
  • bake in the oven for 20 minutes, and finish off under the grill for 2 minutes until golden and the cheese is bubbling – we were terrible and crunched a stray packet of BBQ kettle chips that we had lying around over the top (six syns, so that’s 1.5 syns extra per person – you don’t need to do it but man, was it good)
  • serve!

Easy! Looking for more pasta recipes? One-pot? All sorts? Have some buttons and you know what to do!

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J

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September 9, 2016

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, one-pot, pasta, recipe card, syn free, travel

one pot super-quick cheat’s lasagne

Lasagne in one pot? But of course. To be fair, this one pot super-quick cheat’s lasagne is not strictly a lasagne, rather more bolognese and soft pasta, but hey, it’s still easy to make and it all comes out the same colour in the end, right? Naturally, before we get to the recipe, I’m going to say words at you until your eyes glaze over and you stop nodding politely. It’s part two of our fabulous whirlwind tour of Peterborough, so let me bust out the banner once more…

peterborough

You can find part one by clicking here, but honestly, don’t bother. Actually do bother, I’ll get 0.0001p for each page-load, and if I earn enough money, I can pay someone to raze Peterborough to the ground so it never haunts my life again. Where were we…

Ah yes. The charming Norman Cross Premier Inn. After a night spent sweating, tossing and peeling our back fat away from each other with loud slurps, we woke bright and breezy. We decided that we’d take care of our ablutions and then see about getting some breakfast. Can I let you in on a mortifying secret? We chose not to get the Premier Inn breakfast that we normally do because it wasn’t an unlimited buffet. How greedy, I know. Technically it was unlimited in the sense that I could ask the waiter to bring me more bacon, more eggs, more sausages and a portable ECG monitor, but I’m always too shy.

We like our breakfast to spread far beyond what the eyes can see and frankly, if I’m not clutching my chest, hoisting my fat-arse out of my chair and walking to a tureen of beans with the barely-disguised disgusted whispers of the other occupants of the hotel, I’m not interested. We made do with a Twirl from the vending machines and that was that.

We stopped by reception to ask if we could change rooms. I explained that the room was too hot and that Paul’s genitals now looked like a trio of celebration balloons left tied to a fence for a week, and the receptionist promised that she would arrange a new room for us once we returned from our day out. The charmer from the day before was obviously off meeting with Big Men in New York. We decamped back to our sweatbox so Paul could slide the chocolate bolt across, giving me time to plan our day.

I logged onto tripadvisor to find something to do. When the third or fourth suggestion is a chain cinema, you know you’re in trouble. I searched High Wycombe and Lowestoft (sorry, I’m so proud of that laboured joke that it’s staying in) and there was absolutely bot-all to do that didn’t require an outrageous drive and the threat of growing old prematurely by osmosis due to close proximity of coach tours.

Eventually Paul’s voice piped up from the thunderbox to tell me Bletchley Park (home of the codebreakers during WW2) was about an hour away. Shamefully, my reaction was meh, but faced with the prospect of X-Factor repeats and turning into a prune in the hotel room, we agreed that Milton Keynes our best chance of happiness – something which I’m fairly sure has never, ever been said about Milton Keynes before. Before we yawned our way down the A1 we needed fuel, and thanks to the good folk at the Mace garage in Yaxley, even that turned into a right song and dance.

See, Paul got out, put the nozzle in and clicked the handle. The pump dispensed about 4p worth of fuel then shut off. The lady behind the counter looked grimly at him through the window and ignored his plight – he kept clicking, the fuel would dribble out enough fuel to get us approximately 4ft off the forecourt and then shut off. I’m sitting in the car effing and jeffing because I’d spotted an Esso literally over the road and Paul’s clicking away like he’s a farmer counting his sheep.

Eventually, the Queen of the Pumps spots something is awry and comes out. What followed was an excruciating exchange where she just didn’t accept it was her fuel pump that was broken. No, Paul hadn’t ‘put it in right’ (I find that easy to believe, given the years and years of ‘up a bit, down a bit, up a bit more, push forward – honestly, sometimes gay sex is like I’m guiding someone in Knightmare – SIDESTEP LEFT), then he ‘wasn’t clicking hard enough’. In a gesture that speaks volumes about his character, he decided against going all No Country For Old Men on her and smiled politely throughout. IT TOOK TEN MINUTES. I mean, God loves a trier, but we know how to use a bloody petrol pump for goodness sake, we’re not on the fucking Krypton Factor.

She went in and reset the pumps about a dozen times before asking whether we’d like to switch to another problem. Guessing that the second pump would probably require us to solve a cryptic crossword and a complex Sudoko we politely declined and went on our way over the road, where only a packet of Cadbury’s Snacks could calm our ire. I wouldn’t have minded so much but Paul actually went in and paid the £2.10 of fuel we eventually got. Bah.

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Driving in Milton Keynes is an adventure, isn’t it? Bill Bryson absolutely hated the place and whilst I thought it looked alright from the car, I had no desire to step out and trip the light fantastic myself. Things became tense when we realised the Sat-Nav, built into the car with no obvious way to turn her down, was having a complete shitfit over the amount of roundabouts. If the British government ever need to break a terrorist they need only to strap them into a Ford Fiesta and let them endure 20 minutes of ‘AT THE NEXT ROUNDABOUT TAKE THE SECOND LEFT AT THE NEXT ROUNDABOUT TAKE THE THIRD EXIT AT THE NEXT ROUNDABOUT TAKE THE THIRD ROUNDABOUT TAKE THE JUNCTION TAKE TAKE TAKE ROUNDABOUT ROUNDABOUT ROUNDABOUT’. I felt like I was being driven by Johnny 5 in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

We arrived at Bletchley Park with only mild tinnitus and discovered a small computer museum at the arse-end of the car-park. Being giant geeks we were very excited, and, being giant geeks, we waddled breathlessly to the entrance just as the volunteer flipped the open sign over and opened the door. Hooray! We immediately got stuck behind a visitor who thought he was God’s Gift to comedy, every line to the cashier was a ‘joke’ and bit of patter. It was just awful. I had a thought that it must be what it is like to be stuck behind me in Tesco but I quickly tucked that thought away into the same mind-folder where the ‘I bet that ingrown toenail goes septic and you lose your foot’ and ‘is your heart supposed to go boom-badum-boom-badum-BOOM-whoo when you climb stairs’.

The computer museum was a treat. It was a pleasure to be somewhere which wasn’t full of screaming children getting their arses smacked and stupid interactive displays that don’t work. No, this museum was decidedly (and fittingly) old school – full of amazing old computers and genuine pieces of history like the Tunny machines and Colossus, which were both instrumental in helping decipher secret messages during World War Two. We revelled at the old computers from times way past and then were horrified to find that computers we remembered from our youth were classed as ‘retro’. I’ve never felt so old. A lot of the old machines were switched on and I couldn’t resist typing

HELLO SORRI HUNS MI APP IS DOWN HOW MANI SUNS IN ALDI YOGURTS PLEASE XOXOXO

into an old ICL DRS6000. I know, I’m a stinker. We did want to sit and play on the old BBC computers (I’ve never finished Granny’s Garden and god-damnit, I still remember where the magic tree is) but there was a group of three lads in the room spraying spittle through their braces and chuckling loudly about frame-rates. Is there a word for intimidation mixed with pity? I bet there’s a German word. Regardless, we moved on and after a quick fanny about with a few knobs in the classroom (oh that takes me back) we were done. We left a lovely positive Tripadvisor report and made our way down to the actual Bletchley Park estate.

Now, something to annoy you, due to ongoing issues with the managements of both attractions, you pay twice – once to visit the Computing Museum (block H of the estate) and once more to visit the rest of the estate. Hmm. Naturally, because the estate had a few interactive boards and a video tour, the price for entry is £34.50 for the two of us. Bah. However, this too was a lovely few hours – we wandered around at our own pace, taking in the interesting stories and displays, and credit where it’s due, the attraction does an excellent job of celebrating the amazing work that folks like Alan Turing did. I confess to a little bit of museum-fatigue: there’s only so many times you can walk into a hut, look at a map on a table and nod appreciatively. It also gave us both pause to think that only 64 years ago being gay was cause enough to lock someone up for gross indecency. How far we’ve come, eh.

Tell you what – let’s pick the rest of our tale up tomorrow – we’re already at 1,500 words and I know how you all get when you’re hungry. Tonight’s one-pot recipe then is one pot super-quick cheat’s lasagne and whilst it doesn’t look like much in the photo, it’s a very tasty wee dish to make during the week and take to lunch the next day. On we go…

to make one pot super-quick cheat’s lasagne, you’ll need:

to make one pot super-quick cheat’s lasagne, you should:

  • add a little oil to a large casserole pot and heat over a medium-high heat
  • add the mince and cook until browned
  • add the garlic and onions, stir and cook for another three minutes
  • add the passata, chopped tomatoes, stock, spinach, herbs and pasta and mix well
  • bring to the boil the reduce to a simmer and cover with the lid
  • cook for about 15 minutes until the pasta is al dente
  • add the mozzarella to the pan (tear into chunks if you’re using a ball) and stir through the mixture until melted
  • serve

Nice, right?

If you’re looking for more recipes with beef, pasta or seafood (why not), click the buttons below!

beefsmallpastasmall   seafoodsmall

Goodnight all.

J

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August 18, 2016

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, pasta, quark, recipe card

ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni

Genuinely just a quick post tonight before we get to the ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni, but first, can someone answer me one question?

Why do people write on their own walls? Hear me out. Chunkles and I were watching Britain’s Benefit Tenants yesterday, laughing at the poor inbetween handfuls of caviar and swigs of champagne. Not quite – we had been watching something on Channel 4, the remote fell out of reach and we couldn’t be arsed to switch over. It was illuminating. I’m not going to get into the whole ‘landlords are bad’ / ‘tenants are scum’ because obviously there’s good and bad on all sides, but it did make me think, not least whether there a direct correlation between neon pink walls and jet black teeth.

What troubles me is the state of some of the houses. Look, I can be as slobby as the next person, but unless you’re unwell, there’s very little reason for your house to be so unclean. You see the same old tropes – the writing of names on the wall (why? WHY? It’s not even graffiti on an outside wall, just shit scribbling and the inevitable weed leaf on the living room wall), dried up dog poo in the kitchen and, in the garden, a broken Fisher Price slide that someone stepped through back in 2005 and two dogs so inbred and vicious that they’re fighting their own feet.

Now, I know, I’ve always been lucky in that, so far, I’ve always been gainfully employed and in reasonable health, so until I moved into the house I own, I always paid my rent. I do wonder if I was a mug for doing so, though, given it seems to be a-ok for someone to rent a house, smash it up and then move on to be rehoused. It’s why we don’t buy our own property to rent out – I’d be fucking livid if someone decided it was an appropriate reaction to kick their foot through my internal walls. Oh and plus, if we were landlords, I know we’d be the type you see on Crimewatch rubbing our thighs and suggesting ‘we come to other arrangements’ if the tenant so much as called in to report a leaky tap.

Anyway, speaking of stuffing tubes, let’s get straight to the ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni recipe, shall we? We used to make a variation on this all the time back in our proper Slimming World days when we took it seriously (cough) but that involved cottage cheese and sweetener. God knows why. This is proper food! We took inspiration from a blog called flavourbender which won us over on name alone. This makes enough for four.

1.5 syn ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni

to make ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni, you’ll need:

  • 10 large canneloni tubes
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 bag of spinach
  • 3 cloves of garlic minced (mince mince mince, mince mince mince, shake your mincer…with this)
  • lots of salt and pepper
  • 270g of ricotta (90g is one HEA or six syns – this serves four – so if you want to syn it, it’s 4.5 syns per serving)
  • 150g of quark
  • 30g of parmesan (which is one HEA, or six syns – so again, between four, it’s 1.5 syns per serving)
  • one 400g packet of extra-lean beef mince (use one from our Musclefood deal – perfect size, perfect quality – click here to order)
  • one carrot
  • one stalk of celery
  • one large onion
  • one carton of passata

So, per serving, it’ll be either 1.5 syns or maximum of 6 syns per serving.

to make ricotta and spinach stuffed beefy cannelloni, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • chop your onion, carrot and celery nice and fine, and sweat them off in a squirt or two of oil in a decent non-stick pan
  • add the minced garlic
  • add the mince and brown it off
  • add the passata, a pinch of salt, and let them simmer away gently so it thickens up
  • put your canneloni tubes in boiling water for a few minutes just to soften them up, though we didn’t actually bother and although it was a bit chewy, we still enjoyed it
  • in a seperate pan, tip all the spinach in with a tiny drop of water and put a lid on it – let the spinach wilt right down, then drain, squeeze, squeeze again, squeeze like it’s the windpipe of that bitch/bastard you hate, then chop it nice and fine
  • mix the ricotta, yolks, parmesan and quark together with the chopped spinach and a good pinch of salt and pepper to make the filling for the tubes
  • get the dish you’re going to cook everything in the oven with and put a thin layer of the tomato sauce on the bottom
  • push the ricotta mix into the tubes – you can either do this by using your fingers like the filthy slattern you are, or tip the ricotta mix into a sandwich bag, tie it up at the top and cut a corner off on the bottom – voila, instant icing bag – much easier
  • place each filled tube into the dish and then cover the lot with the remainder of the tomato sauce
  • add more cheese on top if you dare, I won’t tell if you won’t
  • cover with tin foil and cook in the oven for 20 or so minutes, then remove the foil, whack the heat up to 210, and cook for another 15 minutes or so until the cheese is golden and the pasta is soft

Serve! Pretty easy, right? Again, it’s one of those recipes that sounds like a lot of instructions but actually, is dead easy. If you want more beef or pasta ideas, click on the buttons below! You could make this veggie by leaving out the beef and adding more veg to the sauce, so I’ve whacked in the veggie recipes link too.

beefsmallpastasmallvegetariansmall

Cheers all.

J

 

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August 11, 2016

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bacon, beef, beef mince, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card

beef and bacon stroganoff – quick and easy comfort food!

Here for the beef and bacon stroganoff? Well of COURSE you are. It’s take take take with you! But, as usual, before we get to the recipe, a preamble…

James is running late, he rang me from inside the multi-storey car park shouting and bawling about the barrier being broken – I could barely hear him over the sound of his car, his rage and my Now That’s What I Call Soviet National Anthems CD. I made out the words ‘…’king sick of this cun…’ and ‘as much fucking use as a sandpaper tampon’ then he cut out. He’ll be home soon, but I thought I’d do a blog entry for once. Poor guy. Poor you lot.

This week I managed to find a major motivator to lose weight in somewhere that I least suspected – clothes. That’s right. Despite being two of the most uninterested people in fashion as well as being the most unfashionable people out there, it was trying to find a nice suit for a job interview that really hit home how much we need to lose weight.

I have more trouble than James on this front – despite him being a good few stone heavier than me he’s also got another half a foot, so his chub is much more easily spread out – he’s like a wardrobe – whereas I’m more like a chest of drawers. Or imagine sputnik balanced on a chubby pair of thighs. It’s a bloody nightmare to find anything that fits properly, if at all. It’s like trying to dress a car accident.

As we’ve previously touched upon, we’ve finally found somewhere that caters to our needs that doesn’t result in 100% polyester or finding them between rows of Pringles – except for a Jacamo run on payday we often finds ourselves strutting around a local garden centre and a franchise of Cotton Traders. I know, I know, we’re not on deaths door or enfeebled but the stuff fits. Well, it fits James – I have to make do with a chequered bit of cotton that sits over my belly but results in the breast pocket being underneath my tit, and the bottom of the shirt floating around near my knees, which if I don’t tuck in ends up billowing about like a curtain in a Celine Dion video.

So it all came to a head when I needed a nice suit for a job interview – there’s a few suits in our wardrobe but they’re all suspiciously high in acrylic (it came to a point a few weeks ago that we had to chuck a few out because every time we swished open the floor to ceiling wardrobe door, there’d be a smell of plastic burning and an alarming amount of smoke). Plus, naturally, they are all far too small (keep hold of them…we’ll fit into them eventually, we say…).

Seeing as though I actually wanted this job we decided to splurge out on a reasonably priced one. So, being fat fucks and the garden centre of no use we went online to Jacamo and ordered a few, in different sizes so I could try one or the other and make a choice but all to no avail. I just cannot look good in a suit. At all. It feels like the shoulder pads are jutting out like I’m the sexiest milkmaid ever and I have to swing my arms around like a wind turbine to stop the sleeves from flapping about. It’s an absolute mare.

And, naturally, because it was something nice, the cats immediately took a dislike and left me looking like Grizabella with just a quick vag-flash and an ankle rub. So that was no good. I did manage, however, to hang on to the waistcoat which didn’t do too much of a bad job. It did make me look as though I was presenting Big Break alongside Professional Shitrat Jim Davison, but hey, you can’t have it all.

Perhaps I do need to lose weight then. I would love to be able to get something without schlepping out to a place where I can also get barbecue tongs and a lavender plant. As convenient as it is.

OOH I hear the door. One moment please. CUT TO ADVERTS.

Remember: our Musclefood deal is running for only three more days! 10% off! Canny deal – even if you don’t want it, share it with a friend!

FREEZER FILLER: 5kg (24/26) of big fat chicken breasts, 2kg (5 portions of 400g) less than 5% fat mince, 700g of bacon, 800g of extra lean diced beef and free standard delivery – use TCCFREEZER at checkout – £45 delivered!

BBQ BOX: 5kg (24/26) of big fat chicken breasts, two Irish rump steaks, 350g of bacon, 6 half-syn sausages, twelve giant half-syn meatballs, 400g diced turkeys, two juicy one syn burgers, two bbq chicken steaks, free delivery, season and 400g seasoned drumsticks (syn-free when skin removed) – use TCCSUMMER at checkout – £45 delivered!

Remember, you can choose the day you want it delivered and order well in advance – place an order now for a couple of weeks time and they’ll only take the payment once the meat is dispatched! Right, that’s enough of that.

Eee yes! Anyway, flying in the face of all of the above, we’re having chippy tea tonight because we’ve had some good news. GASP. But listen, I’m not going to let you down with thoughts of James pushing a spam fritter around his face like a greasy sponge. So let’s get tonight’s recipe done. You can reduce the syns in this by making a proper white sauce but you know sometimes when you get home from work, you want to sit on the settee with your bollocks out doing fuck all? This is for one of those nights. It cooks itself pretty much. Plus, unless you’re super careful, all the white sauces on Slimming World end up looking like something scraped off the side of the bin at the GUM clinic, so, make this, use your syns and rock on. This makes enough for four, so the syns in the soup aren’t that much per serving!

beef and bacon stroganoff

to make beef and bacon stroganoff, you’ll need:

At 15 syns for the whole dish, I’ll call it 4 syns a serving. I know that’s not quite right but hey.

to make beef and bacon stroganoff, you should:

  • chop up your onions, the green pepper and the mushrooms nice and fine
  • sweat it off in a few squirts of spray oil (not Frylight, haway) with the minced garlic
  • add the mince and the chopped bacon and cook it off with a pinch of salt and pepper
  • add in the frozen peas
  • pour the condensed soup into a jug and add the milk – you want a nice thick sauce – you’re not going to have loads of it, but that’s the point
  • lower the heat, add the soup to the mix and simmer gently just to thicken it up – if you want more sauce, add more milk and then simmer it for longer
  • cook the noodles, drain, add the sauce, serve!

 

Easy! Sounds complicated but it’s really just chop, chop, cook, cook, mix. Even you can do that! Oh and we’ve done a couple of stroganoff recipes before, too:

OK, if you want more pasta recipes or beef recipes, go ahead and click on the buttons below.

beefsmallpastasmall

Enjoy!

P

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August 4, 2016

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budget, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, sausages

sausage, fennel and pesto pasta

Sausage, fennel and pesto pasta? Have we gone all posh here at the always unpretentious, classless twochubbycubs? No. Don’t worry. We’re not going to start asking you to sous-vide (I’m sure she works in our local chippy) your food or start using sweetener that you can only buy in an Axminster branch of Holland and Barrett. However, we were asked for more sausage recipes so that people had something to do with those Slimming World sausages other than open the box and pour them directly into the bin because they’re so bloody awful. To make Slimming World sausages palatable (why is the third ingredient – after the 79% meat – citrus peel? I want to eat a sausage, not a pork-flavoured Yankee Candle), you need to add lots of flavour, hence the fennel and pesto. Before we get to that, though, some business to attend to.

I went over to visit The Progenitors this evening to make sure that a) they’re still kicking about and b) to casually remind them that there really is no better time to make a will than right now, and yes, don’t worry I’ll share. They’re in rude health as ever, and although I got roundly admonished for proclaiming that ‘the iPad can’t sense through leather’ when my mum told me her iPad wasn’t recognising her fingerprint, all was well. However, my mother has two messages for the blog which I feel I must pass on, at the very least to ensure that the flow of newly-laid eggs keeps coming my way.

First: she’s taken umbrage with the fact that I like to portray my childhood as some kind of Catherine Cookson-esque, poverty-stricken wasteland of bland meals and stolen potatoes. Well, obviously that wasn’t the case. We didn’t have much money but my sister and I never went without – we always had good food in our bellies, clothes on our backs and all the second-hand Lambert and Butler smoke a child could want. I reckon I was on ten fags a day by proxy by the age of ten. I’ve certainly inherited my lack of worry from them – they’re both very down-to-earth, decent people – just because my mother can drink like a sailor and my dad uses flatulence like one might use a full-stop doesn’t change that.

No, look, I do jest, and I do like to make gags about growing up, but I couldn’t have wished for better parents and when I listen to them now, bickering on at each other and twisting their faces, there’s still so much love there, it’s marvellous. They’ve been married for absolutely bloody ages and it’s quite inspiring to think you can make small-talk with the same person over dinner for thirty years and not want to stab them in the eye. It’s all I can do not to set myself on fire if I pass the same person on the stairs twice in one day. I think the anniversary gift for 30 years is pearl, and I’m definitely not going to mention that to my parents because, Christ, if you think I’m bad for smut and innuendo, you haven’t seen anything yet…

The second public service announcement from Mother Cub is a new gadget. See, since buying hens she has been awash with more eggs than she knows what to do with. My poor dad has had fried eggs, cubed eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs, eggs eleven, eggy-eggs, eggy-bread and god knows what else. Anyway, my mum has found this on Amazon and it filled her with so much excitement it was the third thing she said to me after I stepped through her door (after DON’T GO STRAIGHT TO THE FRIDGE and CAN YOU JUST HAVE A LOOK AT SOMETHING ON THE COMPUTER FOR ME).

61-XSJ5jExL._SL1184_

It’s a three way egg-slicer. For when cutting with a knife won’t do, but then, nor will boring old slices. This one makes perfectly chunked egg mayo, wonderfully measured egg slices and, for that decadent touch, egg quarters. Whilst admittedly it’s quite literally the only time I ever want to hear about my mother having a three-way in the kitchen, it’s a gadget too much for me. I’ll say this though – the egg mayo sandwich that she made me was terrific. I’ve never had such uniform egg-based texture.

This makes enough for two big fatties to shovel in as dinner. So, just enough for me and Paul. So let’s say three syns per serving, but remember, it’s a giant bloody serving. I do like how the Amazon picture above already has the nicotine mottled-effect that most things in my parent’s house have. I’m joking again, just to be clear. Anyway, it’s on Amazon for only a few quid, so if you’re looking for a slicer that will blow your mind, go for it!

Anyway, that’s quite enough from Eva Braun, this is my blog, damn it.

Before we get to the sausage, fennel and pesto pasta, I have a quick question. I listen to The Archers. Love it. Don’t care that it’s a fuddy-duddy programme, I like how relaxing it all is. I’ve probably been listening for a year now – I tuned in when Rob Bastard started terrorising poor Helen and she stabbed him over the burst custard. But three questions:

  • am I ever going to get to the point where I recognise who is talking and who is related to who – I’m currently treating it like a white noise machine but I reckon I’d get more out of it if I actually understood the characters. But see, I go onto the Radio 4 website, read up on them, and then instantly forget everything I read, like my brain is trying to save me from premature old age;
  • is that young Johnny fella ever going to boff that other one (Josh?) – I feel like they’ve been building to A Beautiful Thing, but maybe that’s just me; and
  • am I wrong for getting teary-eyed over poor Scruff? SOB.

Now, you might be scoffing and tittering into your hand about my love of The Archers at the age of 31, but you know what, I don’t care. Not after poor Scruff’s death! LIFE’S TOO SHORT.

Right, let’s do the recipe.

sausage, fennel and pesto pasta

to make sausage, fennel and pesto pasta you will need:

  • 500g pasta
  • 6 sausages, skins removed (have you tried the sausages in our special Musclefood deals? They’re only ½ a syn each! Plus they have the added bonus of not tasting like you’re chewing a draught excluder – click here to order!)
  • ½ tsp fennel seeds
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 1 red onion, sliced
  • 2 tbsp reduced fat green pesto (3 syns)advert - summer-01

to make sausage, fennel and pesto pasta you should:

  • cook the pasta according to the instructions, towards the end of the cooking time take half-a-mugful of the pasta water for later on
  • meanwhile, heat a large frying pan over a medium high heat, sling in some oil and chuck in the fennel seeds, cook for about 30 seconds
  • add the onion and saute until it softens, about 5 minutes or so
  • mash the sausages the best you can with a fork and chuck into the pan, stir quickly to make sure it stays as broken up as possible – it doesn’t hurt to get a potato masher and smash things up a bit
  • add the black pepper, reduce the heat and keep stirring every now and again – don’t worry if bits stick to the bottom of the pan – that’s good
  • stir the pesto into the mug of pasta water and add to the pan and use it to scrape off any bits on the bottom of the pan
  • add the drained pasta to the pan and stir so it’s coated evenly in the pesto sauce and the sausage is mixed in
  • serve

Easy, right? If you’re looking for more sausage or pasta recipes, you’ll do well to click on the buttons below. We’ve got loads!

pastasmallsausagessmall

Enjoy, won’t you?

J

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July 17, 2016

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breast, lunch, mince, pasta, poultry, quark, recipe card, syn free

chicken and pea lasagne

Chicken and pea lasagne? Yes! Just scroll down if you don’t want to hear all my prattle.

Before we start: some good news. I’ve had a weird thing happening with my neck for ages where if I look to the right, there’s a click noise and a lot of pain. Very frustrating. But the good news: I was sniffing a flower and the pollen made me sneeze so hard that I’ve fixed whatever what was wrong with my neck. I’ve sneezed myself better! Let’s celebrate by being nice. No…

I’ve discovered a new past-time. Admittedly it’s one that shows off my mean, vexing side, but I don’t care. I <3 looking through and commenting on the Facebook ‘buy and sell’ groups in our local area. Honestly, the tat people try and sell is just beyond me. Plus, you get the bonus of looking at pictures of people’s houses and getting to suck air over my teeth at the state of the wallpaper or the “canvas art” littering every room. If I see another KEEP CALM AND DRINK PROSECCO poster I’m going to find a way to reach through the atoms on my iPad screen and torch their house.

As an aside, Paul used to know someone who drank from a cup that said ‘KEEP CALM AND GO MENTAL’ on the side. I rather think it remains to his credit that he didn’t smash it over her head.

I recently got into a spat with some orange harridan with a face like a rushed omelette who accused me of being a bald fat fuck because I accused her ‘100% NOT FAKE’ Calvin Klein dress as being fake. First of all, you can’t insult me by calling me a bald fat fuck because, if you remove the spaces from that and add slut, that’s my Grindr name, and secondly, I don’t think Calvin’s knocking out dresses under the name Calvan Kline. Calvan Kline sounds like a ski village in Norway, for one thing. Anyway, spluttering ill-conceived and predominately vowel-less insults at me has no effect. It rolls off me like gravy off a fat duck’s back.

Just an aside, I’m not always mean. I’ve bitten my tongue all weekend after seeing a PicCollage (it’s always a fucking PicCollage) recipe for ‘Hawiian BBQ chicken’. Hawiian? That’s how a Geordie mother calls her children in off the street.

Now, a lovely bit of news. You may remember from previous posts that we are part of something called the Reddit Gift Exchange? In short, you pick one of the monthly themes (for example, The Simpsons, or The 90s) and you’re matched with a complete stranger from somewhere else in the UK. You then buy this person a gift pertaining to the theme and send it to them. It’s a giant Secret Santa. You’re guaranteed a present in return from someone else and it’s all very jolly-hockey-sticks and amazing. We love it. In the twelve months we have been doing it we’ve had some genuinely brilliant gifts – homemade cookbooks, a massive box of ‘tourist’ paraphernalia from Scarborough, posters and gaming kit and plenty of others too numerous and marvellous to mention. I do love a Secret Santa, although I did once get my ex-boss a duck for her bath without realising it was a vibrator. That caused much embarrassment, especially when she tried it out in the office no-she-didn’t-don’t-worry. We didn’t have a bath!

So the theme this month was favourite decade and for both Paul and I this was definitely the 90s. It had it all – great TV in the shape of The Crystal Maze, 999 and dinnerladies, superb music (aside from Eiffel 65, fuck those guys) and proper morning-piss yellow Sunny Delight. Though for the record, remember we didn’t have much money and so branded radioactive drinks were out – the best we had was a bottle of Overcast Ennui in our lunchbox. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, our Secret Santa totally knocked it out of the park with their selection of 90s goods – just look at what we received!

bodacious-90s-gifts-1468606962-32659247819

Quite hard to see from Paul’s tiny photo which, in the spirit of the 90s, he seemingly took with a Game Boy camera, but there’s three CDs which I used to own and absolutely fucking love (especially the one on the right), a packet of Nintendo Playing Cards, two Tamagotchis, some Hot-Wheels and a proper little watch. There was also a lovely card. But good lord, what a perfect selection of 90s goodness – I had such a rush of nostalgia that my pubes disappeared and my voice unbroke. I know that’s not a word, squiggly-red-line, but it makes sense in this sentence.

I was always very lucky in that I didn’t go through the whole protracted stage of my voice breaking – I went to bed one night with a voice like Joe Pasquale and a scrotum like a tangerine, woke up the next morning sounding like Isaac Hayes and had a ballsack like a Bassett Hound’s ear. Perhaps it didn’t go quite as deep as Isaac but certainly I avoided all the squeaking and dropping that so many teenage lads seem to experience.

It was the Pogs that really sent us both whooshing back into memory land though. I absolutely loved them. God knows why, it’s just some natty coloured cardboard discs, but something about the simplicity really won me over. Paul and I tried to have a quick game only to send them tumbling all over the kitchen floor so god knows what has happened since, but back in the day, I was the King of Pogs. Well, perhaps the Queen of Pogs. I had the full set, a fluorescent green Pog holder and a slammer which was really just a massive, heavy-duty washer that my dad brought home from work. The Pogs epidemic swept through our school like the norovirus, with fights and scuffles leading to the outright ban of Pog battles in the playground. Didn’t stop us – we used to just play out of the sight of teachers. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the amount of lads I beat off behind the sheds when no-one was looking. Some things never change, eh.

I reckon Pogs was also the first flirtation with crime for both me and my sister. We had been dragged along to a car-boot sale somewhere inexplicable and indoors and were bored shitless. Parents, don’t take your kids to car boot sales. They’re full of things other people don’t need or want and anything interesting a kid finds is always met with a ‘WE DON’T NEED THAT’ from the parents. Oh, but we do need a VHS of Beverley Callard’s Fitness First and a giant glass ashtray, apparently.

We had spotted a Pog stand full of slammers that looked like something out of Saw and not-quite-Pogs that were possibly printed at home. Didn’t matter. All about volume in those days, see. Anyway, I distracted the lady behind the decorating table by commenting on how fine her moustache was or something whilst my sister proceeded to fill her trousers with Pogs, all held in by virtue of her Adidas Poppers had been tucked into her socks. Genius right? We were like the Krays of South Northumberland.

Don’t judge us too keenly, we were young and bored. Karma got us back anyway because the Pogs were of such bad quality that the ink ran and they were ruined by the heat of a rustling shellsuit. I’m sure my sister probably has a faint imprint of a Tazmanian Devil somewhere on her ankle even now.

Mind, as an aside, Pogs were nothing compared to the thrill of completing a Panini Premiership sticker book. Seeing Alan Shearer’s smug, insufferable face sliding out of the packet on a shiny backing meant being King of All Things, if only for a day. Nevermind the arguments that Pogs caused, I’ve seen fights that looked like when The Bride battles the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill 1 over a four inch by two inch sticker of Tino Asprilla. No amount of trading Paul-Furlong-for-Kevin-Pressman-and-the-Nottingham-Forest-logo is worth having your first adult tooth kicked clean out of your mouth for.

Dangerous times indeed!

Speaking of teeth, you’ll need them to chew the next recipe. I know right, a flawless segue. Now listen, I can’t claim any credit for the idea of this recipe, I found it on another site (Every Nook and Cranny) and thought it looked delicious. Naturally, ours came out looking like someone had driven a car over it before serving, but hell, who cares. It tasted fine and I’ve adapted it for Slimming World. So let’s do this.

chicken and pea lasagne chicken and pea lasagne

to make chicken and pea lasagne you will need:

  • 2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (three if you’re using supermarket ones) OR 500g chicken mince

Here’s the thing. Chicken breasts from our big Musclefood deal – you only need two because they’re so large and don’t shrivel away to nowt like the supermarket ones do. Click here to have a look – it’s definitely a good deal!

  • 2 leeks, finely sliced (save your fingers and time by using a mandolin slicer, not least because they’ll be uniform and so skinny it’ll make the other vegetables jealous) (also that’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen this slicer)
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced (use a mincer – garlic powder is fine, but a mincer makes short work of this and takes no time at all – buy one here and I promise you you’ll never look back)
  • 8 to 12 lasagne sheets (it depends on what size dish you use, see, I’m not just being awkward) (totally am)
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp sage
  • 3 tbsp passata
  • 2 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 200g peas
  • 250g quark
  • 30g grated parmesan (HeA)
  • 70g reduced fat mozzarella ball (HeA)
  • 12 cherry tomatoes (because I’m an ostentatious sod, I’m using ones grown in our greenhouse – next year raise a tomato plant and you’ll be amazed by the difference in flavour – because home-grown tomatoes actually taste of something, see)
  • salt
  • pepper
  • worcestershire sauce

If you can’t get chicken mince and don’t have a food processor to make your own, don’t panic – use turkey mince instead. Perfectly acceptable swap and very easy to buy in supermarkets. Chicken is tastier, though.

to make chicken and pea lasagne you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • if you’re using chicken breasts you will need to mince it – if you don’t have a fancy mincer (who does?!) then you can use a food processor with a grating blade, or use a cheese grater. Either way it’s a clart on so use chicken/turkey mince when you can!

Because we’re super fancy, we have one of these wonderful Magimix mixers. We threw the chicken breasts in there, pulsed them for a few seconds and that was that. If you cook a lot and have some spare moolah, I can genuinely and heartily recommend it. If you’re someone whose refrain to anything is ‘I CAN GET IT CHEAPER IN ALDI’, perhaps don’t even look.

  • heat a large saucepan over a medium heat and add some squirty olive oil, but not Frylight. Never Frylight, it scares me.
  • add the leeks, reduce the heat to low and cook until they soften, which will take about ten minutes
  • when the leeks are soft, add the garlic, stir, and then add the chicken
  • raise the heat to medium and stir well and cook until the chicken is no longer pink, because you don’t want to be revisiting the lasagne thirty minutes after eating as it thunders out of your arse
  • add the oregano and sage, stir, and then add the chopped tomatoes, passata and tomato puree with 60ml of water
  • stir the peas into the pan and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the sauce has reduced. If it looks too thick add more water
  • add salt, pepper and worcestershire to season however you like it
  • in a small saucepan add the quark and parmesan and heat over a low heat until it softens, then remove from the heat as soon as the mixture is well combined, adding salt and pepper if you like – I like a really peppery sauce so I always shoot for the moon at this point
  • in a deep dish assemble the lasagne however you like
  • spoon a third of the chicken mixture into the bottom of the dish, followed by a third of the cheese sauce and a layer of lasagne sheets. repeat for two more layers – if you don’t have enough, just do two layers – it’s all going to get turned into poo, it doesn’t matter how well you put it all together
  • top with torn chunks of mozzarella and pop on the cherry tomatoes
  • bake for 35 minutes or until everything looks delicious and the top looks like a burnt knee
  • serve with a side salad of speed food, or, do as I do, give a portion to your other half and then secretly eat all the crusty cheesy topping under the guise of going back to the kitchen for a drink
  • it’s no wonder my thighs smell of bacon, is it

See? Nice and summery and a bit lighter than your traditional hefty lasagne. You can adapt this recipe however you want. I got scolded last time for using two HEAs in my recipe on the basis that one person is only allowed one healthy extra. This is true. But, this also serves four folks easily and six people at a pinch, and frankly, if you’re eating enough lasagne in one sitting to feed six people, you’ve got more to worry about than an extra 30g of cheese.

We’ve made three other lasagne recipes, why not take a look?

If you’re looking for more pasta ideas or chicken recipes, click on the buttons below and be whisked away to a land of recipes and whimsy.

pastasmallpoultrysmall

Cheers!

J

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July 11, 2016

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low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, sausages

sun-dried tomato and sausage pasta

Here for the sundried tomato and sausage pasta? Well, you’ll have to wait. Adults are talking.

Actually, I’m not so much talking as effing and jeffing angrily under my breath. I’m fizzing with anger! Remember we traded in the tiny Micra way back in March for an even smaller Smart car (next year we’re trading the Smart car in for a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe and some magic beans)? Well, we did all of the paperwork to switch the ownership of the Micra only to receive a stern letter from the DVLA telling us that we were breaking the law because GASP the Micra was uninsured despite a) us not owning it anymore and b) I’m fairly sure it’s a fucking cube of metal the size of a box of Swan Vestas by now.

I had the joy of speaking to someone so thick she’d struggle to look through a ladder who, after much umming, aahing and dribbling into the microphone so it sounded like she was in a washing machine, told me to send a letter in proving we had indeed sold the car. I did this promptly, without delay, and with only minimum amount of swearing. Hell, I even used my full name on the letter because it sounds lovely and posh. Then I, comfortable in the knowledge that the good folk at the DVLA were sorting it, immediately forgot about it and moved on with my life, which has recently consisted of looking at and ruling out garden furniture for 23 hours a day.

Until today when lo and behold I get a fucking penalty in the post for having an uninsured bloody car! Great! I’d understand if the penalty was for reasons of bad taste because we bought an orange Smart car that looks like we’re driving around in a Fruitella but no! AARGH man. Now I’ve got to send another letter with further proof and I’ve been told, via another wonderful customer service adviser who was also knitting with one needle, that I’ll still need to pay the fine regardless. Honestly, I almost did a proper Jeremy Kyle punch through the wall, though knowing my current luck this would result in a penalty from More Than for unauthorised household alterations.

Why are these things so difficult? We live in a world where, if I wanted to, I could nip onto the Internet and show my button off in glorious 1080p to some pervy old masochist in Canberra, but we seemingly can’t invent a system where we can submit our documents online in a safe and secure fashion. No, I have to leave important financial documentation to the idiosyncrasies of the Royal Bloody Mail, who currently have a 0% success rate with me. Perhaps I had a dyslexic postman who thought I meant VLAD instead of DVLA and is currently hiking his way through deepest Transylvania with a furrowed brow and a garlic necklace. Who knows.

Samsung was another experience – product still in warranty, had to call six times before I got through to someone who dared break the script in front of them and even then, still got absolutely nowhere until I complained via Twitter and got you lovely folks to chip in. In the end we had our hob fixed for free and the chap dealing with it was lovely but why make me jump through so many hoops? I mean COME ON I’m morbidly obese, jumping through hoops makes my ankles splinter. PAH. Nevermind.

Just as an update on the garden furniture situation – because I know you lot will have been gasping awake in the night with fret and worry about whether we’ve got somewhere to bronze our bitch-titties this summer – we found the table we want only to discover we’d need to hire a bloody crane to get it into the garden. Paul and I both agreed that this would be fine only on the basis that the fat builder from the moneysupermarket adverts was the crane operator, and oopsy-daisy-let-me-get-that-wet-hi-vis-off-you-oh-goodness-me-my-cock-fell-out, but they couldn’t guarantee this., the unreasonable swines. So we’re back to square one.  Great!

Now, before I get to the sundried tomato and sausage pasta, a quick favour. Just a tiny one, I promise. It’s two clicks. A friend of mine has entered his dog in a competition. When I say entered his dog, I don’t mean it in perhaps the way you think, you dirty moo. She’s (hopefully) to be the star of all of the vet’s correspondence from ‘Spot needs his anal-glands draining‘ (don’t we all) to ‘Oops we’ve put Rex down LOL #YOLO‘ and she’s currently being beaten. And well, if you don’t help, that means you enjoy seeing animals being beaten and that makes you worse than Hitler. So, for the love of all things chubby, click here (it’ll open in a new window) and vote for Pearl. Let’s make her a star!

OK. Enough chitter chatter. To the recipe…

sundried tomato and sausage pasta

to make sundried tomato and sausage pasta you will need:

  • 250g pasta (we used farfalle) (because we’re just FARFALLE people, boom boom)
  • 4 sausages, fat free or low in fat then syn appropriately (why not use the ones in our Musclefood deal?)
  • 1 tin of cannellini beans, drained
  • 5 sundried tomatoes (use the dried kind, not the one in oil! and steep them in hot water for 30 minutes beforehand to plump them back up and chop finely) (2 syns, apparently)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced (come on, you know it’s coming, but haway, buy one of these, it’s genuinely brilliant!
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp chilli flakes
  • 3 handfuls of baby spinach
  • 2 handfuls of rocket
  • little bit of grated parmesan

to make sundried tomato and sausage pasta you should:

  • cook the pasta according to the instructions, drain (reserve 125ml of the water for use later) and set aside
  • meanwhile, heat a large, deep pan over a medium-high heat and add a little oil or frylight, listen, be your own person, make your own rules here
  • cook the sausages until brown on all sides and add the tin of beans, tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic and chilli flakes, and cook for about a minute – stirring frequently
  • add the pasta to the pan along with the spinach and rocket and stir well
  • cook for about 30 seconds or so, until the leaves have wilted, and add a little of the reserved pasta water if it starts to look too dry
  • serve and sprinkle over the parmesan

Enjoy. Tell everyone about it. If you’re looking for MORE recipes, you greedy slattern, you’ll find more sausage recipes and more pasta recipes right here by clicking the buttons!

sausagessmall pastasmall

Done. Now I’m off to attach a notice of new ownership to a carrier pigeon and hurl it at Wales.

J

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July 4, 2016

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budget, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

james’ any old shite salad

What an alluring name! But my any old shite salad is so called because I literally dice up and chuck in any old shite that I have lying in the back of the fridge. I’m on a bit of a drive to stop wasting so much food – something that is quite difficult when running a food blog given how many new recipes we have to come up with. Plus, I spend £3 a day on Subway for my lunch and thought this would be cheaper, plus I don’t have to stare angrily at the back of some poor lad’s head whilst he umms and aaars his way through the choices.

As an aside, do I win Pickiest Subway Salad award? I get double plain chicken, no cheese, half lettuce, cucumber, no onion or olives, double gherkins, double jalapeno, tomatoes (with a pinch of salt), honey and mustard dressing but the dressing has to go on before all the salad so the leaves are wet. I know, I’m a terror, but I think I get away with it because I’m so unfailingly polite and I bought them a box of Celebrations at Christmas. I’m not convinced the guy behind the till speaks a lick of English – and alas, my Latvian is a little rusty – so he could be calling me worse than muck under his breath and I wouldn’t know. Ah well, them’s the breaks. I prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

Oh, I once got thrown out of a Subway in Southend after getting steaming drunk in Colours in Basildon with my ex who looked like Granitarse from Knightmare and storming in demanding a chicken ticky-licky sandwich and crying when they didn’t understand what I meant. Look, it had been an emotional evening, my ex’s then-partner had caught us…what a slut. I’m not usually such an arsehole when I’m drunk, I hasten to add. I’m not.

Right, anyway, no diversions, we weren’t going to post tonight as we’re in the middle of decorating our bedroom and getting jizz off the ceiling takes a great deal of determination. So: the any old shite salad.

any old shite salad

I’m not going to treat you like a moron and tell you how to prepare any old shite salad, but here’s what is in mine:

  • sliced baby cucumber with the seeds cut out
  • a variety of cherry tomatoes, chopped, salted and drained
  • a handful of baby corn, sliced
  • a fistful of sugarsnap peas
  • a baby’s mitten of gherkins, sliced
  • a cat’s sneeze of new potatoes, diced
  • an extravagant wave of tiny soup pasta
  • a perfunctory sexual act of tiny pickled onions
  • a discarded cigarette packet of olives (which I don’t syn, not the pitted black ones, and that’s not because I’m racist)
  • a blushing smile of tiny pickled red peppers
  • a knee-slapping chortle of broccoli
  • an angry drunken confrontation of asparagus tips
  • a thought of mint leaves
  • a carpet sample of ham – leave out for a veggie option
  • an uprising of chopped red and green pepper
  • a don’t-tell-Margaret-HEA (X2) of crumbled feta cheese
  • an after-coitus-dribble of fat-free dressing (I make mine from balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of dijon mustard and some lemon juice – I don’t syn the mustard either, it’s a tiny amount, but you can go for it)

You can surely tell from my piss-take amounts that there’s no set rules when it comes to amounts. Make as much as you like, vary the ingredients, take out what you don’t like and add stuff you do. I like to cram as many different textures and tastes into each salad because it keeps things interesting. I make enough on a Monday night to fill four large lunchboxes and this carries me through to the end of the week. It keeps well in the fridge because you haven’t saturated it in dressing and actually, the less moisture in the salad, the fresher it seems to stay.

Lunchboxes? Sistema all the way. Cheap but reliable and next to nothing on Amazon – see!

any old shite salad

See, I might have called it any old shite, but it’s a bloody good idea for lunch!

Oh, as a little extra, I made some pickled red onion slices a couple of weeks ago when I made those fancy eggs – nothing special, just a load of very thinly sliced red onion (this is where one of these comes in handy – and ooh, it’s almost half price on Amazon – buy one and you’ll use it lots, I promise), stick them in a sterilised Kilner jar, top up with rice vinegar with a teaspoon of sugar added (heat the vinegar, add the sugar so it dissolves, then take off the heat), throw in some black peppercorns and leave in the jar in the fridge for as long as you need them. Everything goes a pretty colour, as you can see. Up to you whether you syn the sugar – if you do, it’s 1 syn per tsp, but really, it goes into the vinegar and well, you’re not going to eat all the onion in one go). This is lovely on a burger but even better mixed into your any old shite salad!

any old shite salad

Enjoy. If you want more ideas for vegetarian recipes or snacks, click on the buttons below!

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Thanks!

J

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June 5, 2016

Posted under

beef, beef mince, classics, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card

best ever spaghetti bolognese

Yes! The best ever spaghetti bolognese! Well no, you can do so much better by adding things like bone marrow or bacon or delicious dates but I don’t want to be responsible for any weigh-in-ladies getting slapped around the chops, so this is the best you can do within a reasonable amount of syns. We have done a syn free version way back when which you can find here.

Anyway, we weren’t going to post today but see we were discussing in bed this morning our old crushes. Everyone has them – that one celebrity that makes you damp and uncomfortable in the minnie-moo area. Because Paul’s common, most of his were characters from Eastenders because seemingly that was all that was on in the smokehouse where he grew up. Mine are a little more cultured. Pffft. Without further delay:

Paul’s old crushes – then and now

IMG_2890

What can we take from this? Well, it certainly explains why he calls me Sonia during sex and makes me do a little turn on the trumpet to kick things off. It also demonstrates that, if you were lucky enough to have teenage Paul rub one out over the thought of you, you are blessed with immortality and NEVER AGE. Seriously, aside from the chap on the bottom who has upgraded his weirdly phallic beard into a decent sculpted affair and Sean from 5ive looking slightly more boss-eyed, no-one has changed!

Bonus mentions for: the fat Di Marco from Eastenders (who I couldn’t put into the pictures because there’s not a recent photo of him – luckily he hasn’t died. Well no, his acting career has. Bitch). Reese from Malcolm in the Middle.

James’ old crushes – then and now

IMG_2889

Mine are a little more obvious, no? I ummed and aahed over that picture of Tyrone there – just to be clear, the actor is two years older than me so I’m SURE he’s over age then. AND I WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE 16, SO GIVE ME A BREAK. Anyway Paul and I both agree he’s aged well and we were both aghast and stiff when that evil walking Afro was setting about his nethers with the hoover extension. Bears and BDSM, what can I say. Viktor Krum was quite possibly more a case of being in love with his red jacket and furry muff than anything to do with those strong, Slavic eyebrows and jaw. He does however seem to have aged into someone you’d see on the front page of a local paper being sentenced for ripping off old ladies for bogus roof repairs. Pity. Oh and Travis Fimmel – now there’s an interesting one. I just can’t think what attracted me about the top left picture as a young’un – I remember I used to pass a giant billboard for Calvin Klein’s Crave on the way to college and there’s just something that caught my eye. That kind of look is the antithesis of the type of man that Paul and I find attractive – which makes it all the more curious that he now looks like someone we’d both let sit on our face and pedal our ears. Eee, isn’t lust fun.

Bonus mentions: Rhino and Shadow from Gladiators. I swear they’re about 60% responsible for my homosexuality. Not because of their looks, as such, but rather their costumes. Good lord. Thank goodness we didn’t have 3D TV’s back in the day – we would have needed to move the settee back a good half a foot. I vaguely remember liking Toadfish from Neighbours but a quick look at google images reveals that this couldn’t have been true given he used to look like a tiny version of Penn from Penn and Teller – or, nineties fans, the Head of the Witches Council from Sabrina. I never had much time for the dreamboats like Harvey from Sabrina or Billy Kennedy from Neighbours. Too pretty. I used to enjoy Janice’s bit on the side in Coronation Street (Dennis?) – he’s a bit of a gay icon! Oh and Krycek from The X-Files. And Mulder! And poor Pendrell! I’d go on, but it’s too difficult to type with the keyboard constantly being nudged away from me. So let’s do the recipe!

I’m putting this recipe up so you have a reason to use up the rest of the wine you might have used for our previous recipe for dirty macaroni. But come on. We both know you drank it, you filthy lush.

best ever spaghetti bolognese

to make the best ever spaghetti bolognese you will need:

to make the best ever spaghetti bolognese you should:

  • bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the spaghetti according to the package instructions – although for fucks sake, it’s spaghetti – boil it, eat it – if you can’t manage that, perhaps it’s time to give Dignitas a call
  • meanwhile, heat a large pan over a high heat and add a little oil

Just jumping in for a second – we get asked a lot about what pans we use that are non-stick enough not to need loads of oil. Now, I know there’s loads out there made from ceramic or teflon or whatever, and they’re probably alright, but we bought some Le Creuset casserole dishes a few years ago and genuinely use the big casserole dish every single day – without anything sticking and (gasp) we clean it in the dishwasher. They are expensive – very expensive – but absolutely and utterly worth it. Buy cheap and buy twice, after all. Amazon currently have a discount – why not treat yourself?

  • add the mince and cook until browned
  • remove the mince from the pan using a slotted spoon into a bowl and set aside
  • in the same pan quickly cook the onions for 3-4  minutes
  • add the chopped garlic and cook for another 2 minutes
  • add the chicken stock to the pan to deglaze (i.e. get your wooden spoon and scrape all the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan) and stir the onions often until the stock has reduced by half
  • add the wine to the pan and do the same again
  • add the bay leaves to the pan and the passata, bring to the boil
  • reduce the heat slightly and cook until it has thickened slightly, which will take about 6 minutes or so. add salt and pepper to taste
  • remove the bay leaves, add the mince and the spaghetti to the pan and mix to combine
  • serve with lots of black pepper, parmesan from your HEA and some basil leaves

DELICIOUS.

If you’re looking for more pasta or beef recipes, click on the links below!

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Now I’m off to put my greengrocer’s tabard on for Paul.

J

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June 4, 2016

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beef, diced beef, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, steak

rick stein’s filthy macaroni

Very quick post tonight – just time to rattle off the FILTHY macaroni!

Ah Rick Stein, let us count the ways we love you. Your food is simply delicious. You look like a Waitrose take on Brendan from Coach Trip. You have a great sense of humour which shines through all of your shows. You make us both feel confident that when we get to 70 we’ll still have a twinkle in our eyes and the ability to act slightly camp in unusual situations. People at work have decreed that I must want to stare moonily through his windows at him because I idolise him so much.

Gush, gush. Look, we’ve only just happened across Rick via his Long Weekends show on BBC2. For years we didn’t bother because most of his meals revolve around seafood and although god knows we’ll put most things in our mouth without blinking, neither of us have ever managed to get away with fish.  We spotted, however, that he was holidaying in Berlin and Iceland for his show, staying both times at the same hotels we did, and since then we’ve become massive fans. He’s brilliant! Let’s do the recipe, then, shall we? I absolutely can’t claim this as one of our own – it’s all darling Rick’s work. The original recipe is called sporki macaroni which he doesn’t like as it means dirty pasta. Frankly, we like him so much we’re going to call the recipe FILTHY macaroni! 

You can buy Rick’s book with this recipe from Amazon and I’d heartily recommend it – yes, you’ll spend syns per meal but christ it’s worth it. Click here for that. Oh and we’re not getting paid to promote Rick. I reckon the fact we bought two fish and chips from his little outlet in Padstow means we’ve given him enough money. They were delicious.

filthy macaroni

to make filthy macaroni, you’ll need:

  • 400g lean beef – we used one of the packets of diced lean beef you get in our Musclefood deal – very tasty meat indeed! Have a look!
  • 3 small red onions, chopped
  • 3 small carrots, sliced
  • 1 bay leaf (we have a little plant growing in the garden – buy one and never look back)
  • pinch of salt
  • a good grinding of black pepper, then do it again – you can never have too much
  • 2 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced, using a fabulous little mincer that feels good in the hand, such as this one
  • 300ml chicken stock
  • a few handful of spinach
  • 250ml full-bodied red wine (11.5 syns – this serves 4 and I reckon most of it boils off, so let’s live life on the edge and call it 2.5 syns each) (don’t tell Mags though, she’ll key my car with her nails)
  • 600g pasta – any old shite will do, but we used penne that’s been rattling around amongst the weevils for the last year – only the best

to make filthy macaroni, you should:

  • unusually for a gay man, I’m going to recommend you brown off your beef – do this by putting a drop of oil in a decent, heavy pan, getting it sizzling and then dropping in the beef – better to do this in two batches rather than trying to cram your meat into a space that perhaps isn’t designed to accommodate it all at once (also unusual for me to say…)
  • add the chopped onions and carrots and stir
  • once these are brown, add the bay leaf and a good pinch of salt and all the pepper
  • stir in the tomato puree, cinnamon and garlic and fry gently for a couple of minutes
  • add the red wine and chicken stock – heat all the way up to a gentle simmer, cover with a lid and cook for about an hour or so until the meat is tender
  • about fifteen minutes before, cook up your pasta – don’t cook it to mush, keep it nice and al dente (not Al Murray) – and about five minutes before it is done throw the spinach in – drain the pasta, add to the meat sauce and stir – then cook on a low heat for another ten minutes to get the flavours working together

Done! Rick serves with chopped parsley but I’d genuinely rather set my eyes on fire than do that. Bleurgh. It’s the Devil’s Pubic Hair!

If you’re looking for more beef or pasta recipes, click the icons below to be whisked away to our fabulous bank of recipes!

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J