Tag Archives: dinner

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October 11, 2015

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, rice, taster ideas

lemon chicken, spring rolls and egg-fried rice

Spotify just dropped Celine Dion caterwauling her way through My Heart Will Go On into my recommended playlist. She still sounds like a car backing over a cat. How the hell did that song do so well, aside from the fact it gave a reason for Michelle from accounts to hitch up her knickers and scream her way through karaoke night at a Yates Wine Lodge? I love cheese – hell, I even quite like Celine Dion – but I think I’d rather listen to an uncaring doctor telling me I had five months to live.

Only a quick post tonight because I’m feeling a bit blue. Not blue in the ‘quick, go douche’ sense, but in a rather more melancholy way. My very dear, very deaf and well, very dead nana has been on my mind a bit lately. Partly because I found this rather mean photo we took on our iPad when I was demonstrating all the different functions…

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…she was amazed – this was a woman who thought the TV remote was something to scratch her foot with and for who turning off the chip pan was an optional extra. It’s also because when she was alive our Sunday would normally be spent trying to fit in a couple of hours to go and see her. We don’t need to do that now, but I do wish we did. The best part was that the hour or so we’d spend with her would always be the same, to the point where Paul would silently mouth her stories to me as she talked – the time that she had to jump off a bus into a snowdrift, the time she wanted to shave her dad’s beard off, something mysterious about a stolen boiler and that she ‘knew all of the secrets in the village’ like a lavender-scented Sherlock Holmes, only with a slightly better moustache.

We’d spend the hour fighting off offers of sandwiches that were more butter than bread or cakes that, though delicious, you could cut a pane of glass with. I also miss the ‘guess who has died’ game, where she’d gleefully keep that bit of gossip until we were settled in and then start us off rattling through villagers until we alighted upon the poor unfortunate old bugger who’d stroked off into the sun or clattered down a flight of stairs. For someone for whom death courted for many years but never committed, she did sure love talking about the end. My very last memory of her is a delightful one, her shrieking and grabbing Paul’s leg as I told her we were going to adopt six babies from the local ward, and, I had added darkly, one of them was from Africa. She never could abide not having a matching set of anything.

Ah well. Look, it doesn’t do to be too introspective. Everyone leaves the stage in the end. Does no harm to make the most of the moments before, though.

CHRIST that’s heavy. I can’t even segue into the recipe now because it’ll feel weird. Let me throw in a particularly charming slang term to lighten the mood:

“buttering the whiskered biscuit”

I’ll leave you to decide what it means. Give you a clue, only ladies can do it.

RIGHT, so we wanted a takeaway tonight, but I couldn’t face Mags getting furiously into her little Astra and making a scene on our front garden, so we made our own. Lemon chicken and egg-fried rice, served with spring rolls. The spring rolls recipe can be found on a previous post (click here for that) and the rice is simple enough – cook your plain rice, tip into a frying pan with a little cooked onion, get it nice and hot and crack an egg into the middle, then after just a moment or two, break the egg up and push it around the rice, so you have chunks of egg in there. We added some greens from a spring onion for good measure. So: the lemon chicken:

lemon chicken

to make lemon chicken, you’ll need:

  • four chicken breasts, plump and lovely like a dinner-lady
  • 3 tbsp of soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp of rice vinegar
  • just a pinch of salt and pepper
  • 175ml chicken stock
  • 75ml lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp of honey (5 syns)
  • 1 tbsp of cornflour (1 syn)
  • little knob of grated ginger, or use dried ginger, I’m not going to kick your arse either way

By gaw, chicken is expensive isn’t it? The good folk at Musclefood are doing a deal where you can buy 2.5kg for £9 (click here, you’ll need code SMALLCHICKEN) or 5kg for £19 (click here, you’ll need code BIGCHICKEN). I did try and get them to use ‘SMALLCOCK’ and ‘BIGCOCK’ but they wouldn’t bend! BOO. Very good chicken mind, not watery and smelly.

then to make your lemon chicken, you should:

  • chop up that chicken into chunks big enough to get in your gaping gob
  • chuck it into a bag with the soy and vinegar and toss it around for a bit until it’s well coated – then leave it to sit for as long as you dare to let the flavours soak in
  • when you’re ready to get the show on the road, heat a frying pan and drain then throw in the chicken until it is cooked through and you’re sure you’re not going to be sat on the toilet later with the world falling out of your arse – then set aside
  • in another bowl, whisk the chicken stock, lemon juice, honey, cornflour and ginger
  • pour this sauce into the same pan you just cooked the chicken in and let it bubble merrily away until it’s thick and gloopy
  • put the cooked chicken into the sauce and coat every last bit
  • serve – now you don’t need to serve it up in those awful takeaway cartons like we did, we were just being pretentious fuckers, you can serve it on your elbow or throw it on the ceiling for all I’m fussed!

Enjoy it. It’s not quite the same as getting a takeaway but it came pretty damn close. Oh, and if anyone gets a cob on because I’ve tweaked the diet to make spring rolls, I refer you to my charming bum, which you can promptly kiss. We sprinkled on some sesame seeds, remember to syn them if you want them. A tablespoon is three syns.

LOVE YOU

J

 

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October 10, 2015

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airfryer, lunch, recipe card, salad, sausages, syn free, taster ideas

sausage and potato salad – oh my

Very quick post tonight – no fussing about. I’ve spent almost two hours picking tomatoes from the greenhouse and all I want to do is recline on the sofa with the Doctor and an IV drip of vodka. This recipe isn’t our own – it belongs to Nigel Slater, but we’ve bastardised it a bit for Slimming World. It contains big portions of both sauerkraut and mushrooms – but don’t let that put you off. Sauerkraut might hold the unique title of smelling better coming out of your body than it does going in, but nevertheless, persevere – the mix of flavours here makes for a lovely Autumnal dish.

sausage and potato salad

to make sausage and potato salad, you’ll need:

  • 200g sausages (we used the sausages from our Musclefood deal, but you can use any as long as you’re sure they are syn free)
  • 350g potatoes
  • 1 brown onion, finely chopped
  • 200g mushrooms, sliced
  • 200g sauerkraut
  • 2 tbsp chopped dill
  • 2 tbsp fat-free fromage frais

to make sausage and potato salad then, you should:

 

  • cut the potatoes into large chunks and place in a large saucepan of boiling water – boil until just tender, drain, and slice thickly
  • cook the sausages according to the instructions – (ours always come out beautifully in an Actifry)
  • when the sausages are cooked, slice and set aside
  • meanwhile, add a little Frylight to a large saucepan, place over a medium heat and cook the onions for about five minutes
  • add the mushrooms and cook until they start to turn a little golden, adding a little more Frylight if necessary
  • add the sausages to the pan with the sliced potato – crush the potatoes with the back of the spoon a little bit as you add them to the pan
  • add the sauerkraut to the pan and mix well
  • remove from the heat and serve
  • add a tbsp of fromage frais to each plate and sprinkle on the dill
  • enjoy!
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October 9, 2015

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dips, dressings, fakeaways, indian, low syn, mince, persian, poultry, recipe card, rice, taster ideas, travel

turkey biryani and Corsica shenanigans

Three things before we set off:

  • I was in ASDA before (the glamour!) and as I was busy upsetting the self-scan machine, I heard some pompous bellend bark at an ASDA employee to ‘fetch me a basket’. The worker had the good grace to point him in the direction of some baskets, but I was instantly reminded why I hate people before I love them. The only thing I would have fetched him was his arsehole through his throat. 
  • It’s approaching poppy season, which means the people whose DNA had to decide between growing black teeth or growing brain cells and promptly decided on the former will be on facebook telling you that poppies can’t be sold in XYZ because of Muslims. I’ve exhausted myself on facebook arguing with numpties, but look, it’s bullshit. The Royal British Legion have confirmed. Just research it!
  • First weigh-in since we decided to give it a bit more effort. I lost 5.5lb (and you’ve seen the meals I’ve been eating!) and Paul managed a respectable 2lb, meaning half a stone’s worth of pressure has been taken off the metal slats of our bed. Good. See, eating properly works, so put down your Scan-Bran and crack on.

A lovely lady at class last night told me I had to crack on with my Corsica holiday trip – and she’s quite right, of course, as ladies always are. So here we go. The last entry finished with us landing at the world’s smallest airport and being given a Peugeot 206: Sloth Edition to trundle around the island in. If you’re not a fan of my writing and you just want the recipe, hit the scroll button, because this is a long one. Like you can’t handle a long entry, you FILTHY MINX. So…

After landing at Figari, and wrestling the keys from a woman who probably could have brought the car in on her shoulders, we were on our way down the N198 (the main road ‘around’ Corsica) to the charming little town of Sainte Lucie de Porto Vecchio, which was a good half hour drive away. We didn’t mind the drive, it gave us an opportunity to let the scenery sink in. Corsica is beautiful – a true island of contrasts, with white beaches, heady mountains, green fields and dusty trees – and not what I was expecting. Our car, protesting as it did every time I dared nudge it above 40mph, shuttled us towards the town, and, us being us, we drive right past the turn off for the villa. Good stuff! We realised our mistake a good twenty minutes down the road and pulled over in a dusty lay-by by a beach to take stock. I could have texted the rep for directions and assistance but Paul had packed away my mobile into the suitcase, locked the suitcase, and put it in the bottom of the boot. It was altogether too much effort to sort. Paul insists on locking the suitcases at every opportunity, partly because they’re fancy-dan editions where the zips actually form part of the locking system. He locked them after we had wedged them into the boot of the car. He remained entirely non-plussed by my bewildered reasoning of ‘who the fuck is going to nick anything from a moving car, a tiny Corsican gypsy hiding in the ashtray?’. Honestly, the things I have to put up with. Frankly, if someone is that desperate to be at my passport that they want to sort through my extra-extra-large t-shirts and his ‘broken in’ boxers shorts, they deserve a reward.

Paul nipped into the bushes for a piddle and came dashing out with an alarmed face – not because of snakes, or scary wild boars, but (in his words) ‘there’s SO MUCH SHITTY BOG PAPER IN HERE’. Oh lovely! That would be a bit of a theme mind. Corsica is astonishing, but by god don’t venture into the bushes to change your clothes, empty your shoes of half a ton of sand or for a piss, because they sure do love shitting and leaving the paper for nature. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t imagine anyone would take their skidmarked paper home like a flower pressing, but at least bury it, don’t festoon the fucking branches with it. Honestly, it looked like Christmas in Worksop.

We stopped at a nearby Spar for groceries. Groceries isn’t quite the right word for the food you buy on holiday, though, is it? The only thing we left the shop with that could provide any nutritional value was the receipt. I’m going to hazard a guess that it will be the only time in my life that a bottle of Limoncello, swimming googles, eight bags of Haribo, headache pills, Pringles and enough bread to build an ark would appear in my shopping basket together. We did buy a token bag of rocket which looked great in the fridge at the start of the holiday and even better in the bin at the end. As a ‘car snack’ we bought a pretzel the size of a steering wheel to eat in the car (I was reassured that I could have dislodged any errant blobs of dough from my teeth with the toenail clipping that the previous driver had generously left on the dash) and we were back on our way. Let me tell you – it’s difficult to drive an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads whilst trying to make sure Paul didn’t get more than half of the bread. We made our back, veering dangerously across the road and spraying crumbs everywhere until we spotted the turn-off.

I have to say, the approach to the villa wasn’t very inviting – it looked like the start of every dodgy serial-killer film I’ve ever seen – and the architects had carefully and assuredly made sure to put as many possible pot-holes and boulders on the drive-way, so that the 100m drive up to the villa made me feel like a trainer in a tumble drier. It was worth it, though.

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living_dining_terrace master_bedroom_2

Casa Julia! I’ve stolen the photos from Simpson Travel’s website because frankly, my photography skills are up there with Stevie Wonder’s. I could be alone in the world and still manage to get the back of someone’s head or a rogue thumb into my shots. Anyway, we paid a king’s ransom for the villa, I’m fairly sure they can let me use their photos. Isn’t it beautiful? It accommodates ten people, so naturally it was just the right size for Paul and I to mince around naked and use every single bed to get the full value out of the holiday. Anyone else do that? God forbid the maid would get a moment to herself, we were too busy crinkling the bedsheets and leaving chest hairs in every conceivable crevice to care. Paul went for a dump almost immediately, despite having ‘freshened the air’ at the airport a mere hour ago. He uses new toilets like one might stamp a passport – to say he’s been. 

Nevertheless, the suitcases hadn’t been unlocked more than half a minute before I was fully undressed and scampering to the pool. That’s a fib, I’m too fat to scamper. Let’s go with trundle. Lumbered. Yeah – I lumbered excitedly to the pool. That doesn’t work either, actually, because you can’t lumber with enthusiasm. How the fuck do you describe that grotesque speedy ‘shift’ that us fatties do? Shall we say I galumphed to the pool? That means to move in a ‘loud and clumsy way’, which describes the way my thighs slap when I go at speed. I galumphed to the pool. Not quite ‘Arnold raced out of the door’, mind.

I spent five minutes teetering on the step of the pool because it was SO BLOODY COLD. Not because it wasn’t heated, it was, but because I was so overheated in my ‘English’ clothes that anything less than a pan of boiling jam hurled in my face would have felt a bit ‘nippy’. Paul shouted encouragement from the lavatory (thankfully that was a one-way process – I don’t think the locals would have been especially pleased to hear my Geordie tones shouting ‘PUSH’ and ‘IS IT CROWNING YET’ across the fields) but that’s rich coming from him. Paul has never, ever just ‘got’ into a pool. He has to inch himself in, letting the water hit each part of his body and letting out a tiny scream as it does so….OOOH ME ANKLES…OOH IT’S COLD…OOOH IT’S ON MY HELMET…CHRIST MY GUNT….and so on. He’ll then spend ten minutes with it lapping just under his tits before finally he’ll crack and tumble in like a falling mountain. A fatslide, if you will. I’m the opposite, I’ll dither and fanny on for a little bit and then just jump in. I’ve got the luxury of all-over hair, see – the cold doesn’t bother me so much because it has to penetrate my shag. It does rather look like someone has pushed an old persian rug into the pool, however. Even the air-filter gasped rather unnecessarily when I waded in, I thought.

Once I’d managed to acclimatise to the coldness of the pool and my scrotum had stopped resembling a Shredded Wheat, it was lovely. I swam around in that fat-person style – 2m of front-crawl, bob under the water, kick my legs about, lie on my back. I got a bloody fright when I felt something swim underneath me and envisioning some kind of aqua-wild-boar, I hurtled (again, however a fat man hurtles) to the other end of the pool only to realise it was the bloody pool cleaner. I hated it immediately. I have an inherent and deep phobia of machinery in water ever since I watched 999 and watched some poor horse-faced lady get stuck underwater when her pony-tail was sucked into a filter. Brrr. Although looking back, everyone was panicking and screaming but really, no-one thought to grab a pair of scissors? Anyway, this little device looked like a Roomba – a smooth circle of menace attached to a hose and with three turning wheels, and it’s job was to beetle around the pool during the day (when normally, the guest would be out), sucking up leaves and hair and tagnuts. It was creepy. It moved silently through the water aside from a tiny electrical hum every now and then and all I could think was that it was going to either get entangled in my arse-hair (imagine THAT 999) or it’ll somehow become live and fry me in the water like an especially fatty pork chop. I couldn’t relax until Paul finished his dump, fished it out for me (the robot, not the poo) and placed it to the side, where it lay gasping and spluttering and wishing me dead. We did manage to turn it off before it drained the pool. Phew.

We then spent a hearty two hours getting in and out of the pool, lying on every sun-lounger and swinging in the hammock that rather put me in mind of a big metal bollock. By god they were comfy. I looked for them online when I got home only to discover they were over £1,000 each. I like comfort, but I don’t think an afternoon lying in the mild air of Northumberland quite justifies the cost. Plus, I’d need to be dressed here, and it just wouldn’t be the same. I was swinging away in my hammock telling Paul all my thoughts on the stewardesses and Corsicans when his lack of answering – and his rumbling snoring – told me he was off to sleep. Ah well. Regular readers will know that we can’t go more than a few scattered minutes without impressing some kind of embarrassment on ourselves and it was my time to shine with a trip to buy yet more beer and bread. Beer and bread, it genuinely doesn’t get better than that for a fatty. Don’t worry needlessly however, we weren’t forgetting our roots – the beer was an entirely unnecessary raspberry froth called pietra (recommended by a far classier and tasteful friend) and the bread a foccacia with pressed olives and bacon wedged inside. We’re that fancy. Leaving Paul in the hammock to fart away to his heart, and indeed his arse’s, content, I stole out of the villa with a view to restocking the fridge with all manner of local ‘nice things’ from the other grocery shop I’d spotted down the road.

You may recall that I can’t speak a lick of French. I really can’t. I only managed one year of ‘French lessons’ before I got so bored it was either transfer to Spanish or defenestrate myself. Actually, we used to take our lessons on the ground floor so the most I could have hoped for was a grazed knee and an audition for drama school. It didn’t help that our French teacher had an eye full of blood for seven months. It’s all any of us could look at. No wonder I never learned my pronouns for goodness sake, he looked like the Terminator 2 poster rendered in Microsoft Paint. After a year I transferred over to learn Spanish and well, no me arrepiento, right? That said, I’m always keen to at least try, so I spent the fifteen minutes walking down to the shop reading my language app and practising out loud anything I may need to say – ‘…huit tranches de jambon, s’il vous plaît’, or ‘une petite portion de fromage local, mon amour‘ or indeed, ‘…pouvez-vous me montrer aux préservatifs extra-forts?‘ I genuinely thought I’d be welcomed and praised for my attempts, that perhaps someone would admirably slap me on my back and strike up in French with me about the local political situation or Greece’s turbulent economy. Thank fuck they didn’t – me repeating ‘QUOI’ over and over wouldn’t have quite the same effect.

Anyway, you can guess, that didn’t quite happen. No. I minced around the shop, filling my basket with ham and eggs and cheeses and, somewhat inexplicably, a box of blonde hair dye because I had a fit of the vapours and thought about dyeing my hair blonde because I’m on holiday, which has to rank up there amongst the ‘unlikeliest thing to do because I’m on holiday’ together with having a colonoscopy or visiting the dentist. My basket was full of deliciousness and I was immensely proud of myself for engaging the various shop folk in stilted, bare-bones chatter. I spotted the beer I’d seen earlier and put two six packs in my basket. All good. No. In my haste to reach for a bottle of mixer, my basket tipped over and deposited everything I’d picked up all over the bloody floor, each beer bottle shattering at once in the most noisy fashion. It would have been quieter if I’d ramraided the shop in a fucking train.

Time stopped. Every single person in the shop – indeed, the island – span around to look at me in a most accusatory manner, as if I was some tiny-scale terrorist. I stood there, desperately fishing around in my head for any relevant French, but I could feel every last French word in my brain popping like champagne bubbles, rendering me entirely mute and confused in a sea of glass and blood-coloured beer. Finally, the silence was broken by the absolute harridan behind the till yelling and shouting at me in incomprehensible gibberish and waving her hands around like Tony Blair bringing in an aeroplane. After a good couple of minutes I FINALLY remembered and I blurted out ‘je suis désolé‘ over and over until she FINALLY twigged I couldn’t understand her. Do you know what is shameful? I only know ‘je suis désolé’ from a bloody Madonna song. Thank God for ole Vinegartits! Some genuinely tiny hairy man came bustling out from the back with a brush and set about clearing away the glass with such exaggerated sighs and harumphing that I almost emptied out my tomatoes and gave him the paper bag to breathe into. I wish I knew what the French was for FAT, ENGLISH, CLUMSY OAF. I felt paranoid that the cow behind the counter was going to put a tannoy announcement mocking my silliness so I hastily paid (her slapping the coins down into my hand with such venom that if I turn my wrist towards the sun, I can make out the imprint of a two euro coin under my thumb) and scuttled back to Paul, who hadn’t so much as noticed I was out of the pool.

To make up for my folly, he prepared a delicious tea of French bread, cheese, ham, grapes and that great equaliser, Pringles. ROSEMARY FLAVOURED PRINGLES, mind you. Living the dream! We spent the rest of the evening lounging and watching Modern Family on the Chromecast.

Sweet Jesus. I’ve typed 3,000 words and all I’ve managed to do is get to the villa and drop some beer. I need an editor! We’ll leave it here, because the tip-tapping of this tiny Mac keyboard is getting on my tits. What do we have for dinner tonight? Turkey biryani! I’m making a bit of effort to use turkey mince where I can because it’s cheaper and a lot of you ask us for cheaper recipes – plus it’s very low in fat. That said, if you’re feeling like a decadent trollop, swap in beef mince. Don’t let the long list of ingredients put you off – it’s easy to make and tastes delightful. Ah fuck, I said delightful. That’s one of my least favourite synonyms.

turkey biryani

to make turkey biryani, you’ll need (deep breath):

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 500g turkey mince
  • 1″  knob of ginger, finely chopped
  • 1 chilli pepper, finely shopped
  • 1 tsp of cardamom seeds
  • 1 tbsp each of ground cumin and ground coriander
  • 6 cloves or half a tsp of clove powder (but you’re so much better with actual cloves)
  • 1 cinnamon stick or half a tsp of cinnamon (see above)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 tsp crushed black peppercorns
  • 1 tin of tomatoes
  • 300ml chicken stock
  • 25g sultanas (4 syns)
  • 250g basmati rice
  • 1/2 tsp tumeric
  • salt
  • 100g fat­free yoghurt
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 2 tbsp chopped mint (or 1 tsp mint sauce)

You can get away with leaving out the odd spice, just use what you have. 

then to make the turkey biryani, you should:

  • cook your onion gently, until nicely golden
  • add the turkey mince and cook over a medium heat until cooked through
  • stir in all the spices bar the turmeric and leave to cook for a minute or two
  • add the tomatoes, stock, sultanas and a pinch of salt
  • bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to let it gently cook for around forty five minutes
  • meanwhile, preheat the oven to 160 degrees
  • cook the rice however you like – we use the one cup of rice to two cup of water rule – add the turmeric before it boils – BUT STOP after ten minutes – you don’t want the rice fully cooked yet
  • mix together the turkey and the rice and place in a casserole dish
  • cover and cook in the oven for 25 minutes, add a little more stock if the rice isn’t cooked after 20 minutes
  • meanwhile, core the cucumber of its seeds and then grate it into the yoghurt, adding the mint
  • serve everything together

Yum. I am so tired now.

J

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October 8, 2015

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american, budget, lunch, mince, poultry, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas

courgette and turkey meatloaf balls

Well, howdy. Just a quick post tonight as we’re both feeling pretty lousy for a myriad of different reasons – all rather banal and a bit wimpy but will be solved easily with some trash telly and a cup of tea on the new sofa. Which, I have to say, is divine. I don’t know how we existed before we had a reclining sofa. My ankles have never been so unswollen!

This recipe comes courtesy of the latest ASDA magazine and tweaked a little bit to make it Slimming World friendly. I hate those magazines, I really do. They’re always full of gap-toothed kids doing something cutesy-poo whilst some yummy-mummy type looks on. Blechh. So, anyways, here it is – courgette and turkey meatloaf balls. This is a great recipe to make from whatever’s left in the cupboards at home – turkey mince can always be found in our local supermarket reduced so we’ve got a freezer full of it, and all the other bits are probably floating around in your kitchen. And now you’ve finally got a recipe for that softening courgette you’ve all got in your fridges…

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Here’s what to do:

to make courgette and turkey meatloaf balls, you’ll need:

  • 1 courgette, grated
  • 500g lean turkey mince
  • 2 spring onions, sliced
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1 wholemeal roll, made into breadcrumbs (HEA)
  • 2 tsp mixed herbs

and then to make the courgette and turkey meatloaf balls, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200°c
  • squeeze as much liquid as you can from the grated courgette and then place in a bowl with the spring onions, garlic, egg, worcestershire sauce, breadcrumbs and herbs
  • line eight muffin tins holes with greaseproof paper (or spray with frylight)
  • divide the mixture into eight, roll into neat balls and plop into the holes
  • bake for 25 minutes

and that’s all there really is to it. Easy! We served ours with some mashed potato and baby turnips but you do whatever you like. The only uses 1/4 of a healthy extra so go to town, why not throw in some syns as well?

Enjoy!

P

 

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October 7, 2015

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card

tomato, soy and sesame chicken

Genuine quickpost tonight because, you know, Bake Off. One final chance to see Mary Berry gum her way through someone’s cake and me to wince whenever they say ‘baaaaake’. Nearly there, James.

Before we get to the recipe, a quick word about Slimming World’s new soup, available to buy now at Iceland. I picked up the tomato and basil flavour. After ELEVEN minutes in a microwave, it came out like this.

IMG_2087 

Mmm. Doesn’t that look about as inviting as a punch on the fanny? I genuinely don’t mind their food and I think the ready meals are a great idea if you’re a) pushed for time or b) insufferably lazy, but this was revolting. All I could taste was salt – it was if they’d used the Atlantic to bulk it out. I’ve never had to stop halfway through a bowl of soup for a bottle of Lucozade and a flask of water before. Plus, it looks so unappetising, all separated and pillar-box red. If anyone out there reading used to watch Bad Girls, well, it looked like what crazy Di Barker made in a bowl to stop Jim Fenner leaving her. Plus, £1.50! Aside from the fact it looks like something you’d see dripping out of a pipe in a field near Sellafield, that’s FAR too expensive for what should just be tomatoes, stock, basil, potato and a bit of onion. When I can be arsed, I’ll throw up a recipe on here for tomato and basil soup.

Tonight’s recipe is for a sticky chicken breast covered in soy, sesame seeds and tomato paste. It couldn’t be easier to make. The marinade comes in at 12 syns for the lot, but divided by 4 is only 3 syns a serving. Plus, if you were so inclined, you can have 2 tbsps of sesame seeds as a healthy extra…

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to make tomato, soy and sesame chicken, you’ll need:

  • four chicken breasts
  • 2 tbsp of sesame seeds
  • 2 tbsp of soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp of sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp of tomato puree

and then to make tomato, soy and sesame chicken, you should:

  • mix the oil, puree sauce and seeds together
  • cover your chicken breasts in the marinade
  • leave for as long as you like
  • bake in the oven for 25 minutes 
  • serve!

Done

J

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October 6, 2015

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beef, beef joints, british, fakeaways, low syn, recipe card, sauces

roast beef with french onion gravy

BEFORE I BEGIN. We have a major backlog of comments. I turned off notifications for the blog when I went away on holiday, forgot to turn them back on and just noticed I’ve got 78 comments to approve. Oops. If you have commented and you’re sitting there thinking what a rude fucker I am for not replying, I apologise profusely. I’ll work through them. OK? So calm down!

Gosh. Finally something to do with that slab of beef I’ve had chilling in the kitchen going a bit green. Yes, I set him to work cooking some roast beef for ma dinner. BOOM. He deserves to be put to work, anyway, for the cheeky crack he made about me in my new coat, which zips right up to under my chins. Upon seeing me (and remembering that I’m especially bearded at the moment) in my fancy new coat, he told me my ‘face looked like a seventies porno muff’. Nice!

I’m spending the evening looking at hotels and bits and bobs to do in Iceland. We’ve decided to give Air B&B a go. 

I know, I know. We’re asking for trouble. 

I’ve always wanted to stay at a B&B, because they’re usually somewhere beautiful and it doesn’t quite feel like you’re sleeping in the jizz-dust of 1,000 businessmen that have literally come before you. But I just can’t. For one, I have a shit poker face, and if I was shown into a room and I didn’t like it, the disappointment avalanching across my ashen face would immediately make me an enemy of the host and she’d spit in my breakfast. I can’t bear chintz and flimflam and unnecessary accessories (although that would make a good band name, no?) either, so unless it was a perfectly sterile room decorated in tiny nice things, I’d feel uncomfortable. Then there’s the small talk – I don’t want to be fussed over as I try not to die in my morning coffee or asked where I’m going / how I’m getting there or tutted at when I don’t take my boots off. I’d spend the entire time away agonising over any little offence I may have caused that I’d simply need another holiday afterwards to relax. 

That said, I did once see a B&B on Four in a Bed where about two hundred cats roamed the property and it was pretty much a guarantee that you’d end up in bed with a hairy Persian sitting on your face – and well, that sounds good to me.

Speaking of cats, we took ourselves off to Mog on the Tyne (what can I say, I’m a sucker for puns – I’d eat my dinner in a clap clinic if it was given a pun for a name…something like Spotted Dicks or The Leaky Bucket) a couple of weeks ago. Mog on the Tyne is Newcastle’s first cat café and, with a rare afternoon off, Paul and I decided to try it. 

It’s brilliant. The food is basic café food – paninis, quiche, brownies et al – but the focus lies squarely on the ten or so cats that mill around the place, fighting, purring or – as is always the case with me – showing their bumholes as you try to finish your brownie. The café is fitted out with all sorts of toys, climbing frames and beds and the cats seem perfectly content – of course they are, they’re getting made a fuss of. You have to pay a fiver each for entry (which is unusual, because in the Bigg Market, usually it only takes a Blue WKD and a ten-deck of Lambert and Butler to be guaranteed entry) (sorry) which pays towards the upkeep of the cats, and the food is reasonable quality. It was a charming way to spend an hour and I’d heartily recommend it if you’re a cat fan. Of course, if you’re not a cat fan, then you have other options available, such as having a quiet word with yourself regarding the direction your life has taken. Our favourite cat was seemingly everyone else’s – a beast of a pussy called Stan who had suffered a nasty road accident. Aye, he took the bend at Billy Mill roundabout at 50mph in a Ford Capri and lost control. 

No, he got run over and although he’s fine now, he’s unable to put his tongue in his mouth, meaning he has a permanently dopey expression. I’ve shamelessly stolen a picture from another blog because all of my photos look like I’ve taken them using a potato (credit to fragglerocking.com – click here to read their report).

stan-fraggle

Now then! You can find more details on Mog on the Tyne at their website – www.mogonthetyne.com – give them a go!

Of course, the bonus of visiting Mog on the Tyne was that as soon as we got back, our cats were all over us like flies on muck. I felt like a husband cheating on his missus, especially as the cats kept sniffing the end of my fingers and recoiling (which to be fair, I do myself). Awkward.

Right, tonight’s recipe.

roast beef with french onion gravy

to make roast beef with french onion gravy, you’re gonna need:

  • 1kg beef (silverside or topside) – tip if you’re a tightarse, scour the reduced sections in your supermarket on Monday morning, they’ll always be shifting beef
  • 8 small carrots or four large ones or two massive carrots or one carrot as big as your leg – chopped

Sorry, can I just jump in here and say how much I hate logging onto Slimming World’s website to check syns? It’s the ‘Log in and Love It’ slogan. Love what? Using a website that acts and feels like it was built back when geocities was a thing? Love typing ‘olive oil’ into the syns checker and getting nothing but typing ‘artisanal rice crackers’ and getting Tesco’s entire stock inventory? Fucks sake.

  • 1 celery stick, chopped
  • 170ml white wine (6 syns)
  • 600ml beef stock
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 500g brown onions
  • 1 tsp honey (1 syn)
  • 3 sprigs of thyme
  • 1 tbsp corn flour (1 syn)

Shit the bed! Eight syns! Yes, but the syns all belong in the gravy and unless you’re going to be drinking from the gravy boat, you’ll not get anywhere near eight syns. Hell, this serves 4 anyway. So calm down.

to make roast beef with french onion gravy, like a big bloody pansy, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 160 degrees and heat a large casserole dish
  • lube up your meat with a little oil and plenty of salt and pepper
  • pack your meat in the warm, waiting dish and return to the oven to brown for about ten minutes
  • meanwhile, spray a frying pan with a little Frylight and fry the carrots and celery for ten minutes, and it’s alright to spend five minutes shaking your fist at the sky at a cruel God who decided celery should be a thing
  • plop your meat out of the pan, and slap it to one side
  • pour the wine into the casserole dish and boil for two minutes over a high heat
  • pour in the stock, return the beef and add the carrots, celery and bay leaves – you’ll feel like such a posh fucker using bay leaves
  • cover and return to cook in the oven for two hours, turning the meat halfway – you don’t need to wait at the oven until exactly sixty minutes to turn it, this isn’t The Cube
  • meanwhile, thinly slice the onions and heat a little oil in a large frying pan
  • stir in the onions, thyme and seasoning to taste
  • cover and cook gently for twenty minutes on a low heat until the onions are soft but not coloured (racist)
  • remove the lid, increase the heat and add a little more oil and the honey and cook the onions until they caramelise, stirring often
  • remove the thyme sprigs, brush the cat’s teeth with them or something
  • when the beef is ready remove from the casserole dish and leave to rest
  • reheat the onion mixture, stir in the corn flour and cook for one minute
  • mix the onions into the casserole dish to make a thick gravy – you’ll want it thick enough that it runs down the side of your meat and makes your tatties sticky
  • slice the beef and pour the gravy over the top – now, if you’re not good at slicing meat, let someone competent do it – Paul cuts meat like he’s shaving a fucking ice-sculpture with a chainsaw – we only get two slices a pop from our sourdough
  • serve with a fabulous selection of superfree food, or, in our case, more roasties than ten decent people would eat

Get it down you!

J

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October 4, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, indian, kebab shop, poultry, recipe card, rice

tandoori chicken with roasted romanesco

Roasted Romanesco sounds like the title of a high-class porno, doesn’t it? Join sweet Romanesco as she joins college and gets more than her timetable filled.

Christ, I should write the next 50 Shades of Grey.

Anyway, only a quick entry tonight (see previous sentence) as we’re doing boring domestic things like ironing and re-messing-up our candle drawer, and I only wish that was a joke. 

We’ve spent the day being entirely middle-class and fussy. First we washed the car in what must have been the least erotic car-wash vista imagined – I can’t imagine the sight of Paul and I clad in bubbles and shrieking and screaming our way through cleaning the car with a jet washer would float anyone’s boat, although judging by the search terms people use to find the blog, maybe we’re in the wrong business. Afterwards, I made a tomato sauce from the glut of tomatoes that have fallen onto the greenhouse floor since we went away on holiday – I slide the door open and it’s like I’m on Fun House, slipping and sliding. Then, off to the garden centre where we bought some Christmas cards (!) and a trillion more candles. Finally, off to Alnwick for a drink in a pub whose atmosphere was so forgettable the name already escapes me. There were lots of people clacking dominos though. We ended the day in Barter Books, which is a giant secondhand bookshop in what used to be the old train station. It’s a great shop – all the books smell foisty and everyone looks like they’re on at least two registers, but we normally come away with a car load of books and a scent we can’t shift from our shirts.

Not today though. Gutted – I’m forever reading and I’m certainly not picky as to the content – I’ll cheerfully sit on the netty for a good twenty minutes reading the back of the bog cleaner, but nothing took our fancy. Bookshops are a swizz anyway, they’re full of people who all desperately want to look at the low-rent stuff like JK Rowling and Stephen King, but instead feel the need to stand there stroking their facepubes and nodding at a book about the sewing trends of 1900s’ Liechtenstein. I, hand-on-heart, heard a lass say to her boyfriend (using both of those syllables exceptionally generously) that ‘would he really want a cookbook with pictures?’. She spat out the ‘…with pictures’ bit like he’d picked up a book about how best to chargrill newborn babies. Oh fuck off. Fuck off with your look-at-me hair and the same ‘unique and individual’ tattoo style that I’ve seen on countless other mouthbreathers clattering out of Newcastle University. So pretentious. I almost spat out my organic lapsang souchong into the section on Armenian cooking.

Perhaps that was what put me in such a fettle that we left without any books. We cheered ourselves up by making a quick stopover on the way home to look close-up at the giant golfball up on the moors. This thing:

Cloudy_Crags_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1497819

We (my sister and I) used to ask my parents what it was every time we were taken on our bi-monthly trip to Seahouses to eat chips, have the back of our legs slapped and play in the arcade. We were never told, so it’s always been a mystery to me. To be fair, my parents were probably tired of us telling them to floor it down ‘the bumpy road’ (which Paul and I did – the DS3 was in the air so long someone came out of the boot with a trolley of cigarettes and perfume) or asking where we were going. Their reply to that question was always ‘there and back to see how far it is’. How infuriating. Anyway, it’s an RAF listening station or something. Naturally, being keen explorers, we managed to find a little road which, after many ignored signs, took us all the way to the entrance. However, naturally, being cowardly British people, we didn’t want to cause any fuss by asking the armed guard what the deal was, so we promptly span the car around and thundered back to the main road. And, remember, we’d just cleaned the car. BASTARDS.

Anyway christ man, I said a quick entry, and I’ve spent 700 words telling you about a trip to a bookshop. I’m such a tart.

Tonight’s recipe is tandoori chicken, served with onion rice and roasted romanesco. Romanesco is that pretty vegetable that looks like a crazy science experiment but you can swap it out easily enough for broccoli or cauliflower. Roasting any veg in spices makes it tasty. FACT.

tandoori chicken slimming world

to make tandoori chicken, you’ll need:

  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • 1/2 red onion, chopped
  • 2 chicken breasts (remember, you can get loads of chicken as part of our meat deal! CLICK HERE)
  • 150g fat-free greek style yoghurt
  • 1/2 inch piece of ginger, grated
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1/3 tsp garam masala
  • 1/3 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp chilli powder
  • pinch of turmeric

for the rice:

  • the other half of the red onion
  • enough basmati rice to fill your belly
  • handful of frozen peas
  • pinch of turmeric

for the romanesco:

  • one large romanesco
  • pinch of mustard seeds, cumin, salt, pepper, garam masala
  • thumb sized knob of ginger
  • few squirts of olive oil spray

to make tandoori chicken, then:

  • FOR THE RICE: cook the onion, throw the peas into the same pan and add a bit of turmeric – cook your rice at the same time, then mix it all together
  • FOR THE ROMANESCO: chop it up into little florets, put on an oven tray, squirt with a bit of oil (syn it if you want, but we’re talking less than a syn), cover with spices, shake, and bake in the oven for thirty minutes or so at 180 degrees
  • FOR THE TANDOORI CHICKEN: mix together the lemon juice and paprika
  • cut three slashes into each chicken breast and place in a large, shallow dish
  • pour the juice mixture over the chicken, add the chopped onion and toss well to combine, and set aside
  • meanwhile, mix together the yoghurt, ginger, garlic, garam masala, cumin, chilli powder and turmeric
  • mix together the mixture with the chicken and toss well to coat, leave to marinade for at least an hour, but as we all know, the longer the better
  • when you’re ready to roll, preheat the grill to medium high and cook the chicken until charred and no pink meat remains, turning halfway through

Done! I’m going to have to really work on this ‘quick post’ business, aren’t I?

J

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October 3, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, panko, poultry, recipe card, rice, speciality ingredients

bang bang chicken – sort of

Just a recipe post tonight (remember we promised you eighty five recipes before Christmas, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let you down) (can’t you have comfort eating and blaming me, can we?). Doctor Who is already waiting to be watched, though I’ve managed to pause the TV on an especially filthy moment from Strictly Come Dancing. Here’s a wee fact for you – I’ve never seen more than five minutes of that show. I can’t bear dancing – either dancing myself or watching others – and the idea of watching someone who was a market inspector in Eastenders in the nineties cha-cha-chaing doesn’t set my blood pumping. Strictly Come Dancing? Strictly Fuck Off. 

So, slimming world style bang bang chicken then. Ours didn’t turn out exactly right – it’s supposed to be more of a glaze as opposed to the gonorrheah-esque ‘sauce’ that appears in the photo below. It’s tasty, though.

bang bang chicken

to make slimming world bang bang chicken, you’ll need:

and to make slimming world bang bang chicken, you should:

  • in a small bowl, mix together the yoghurt, sriracha, rice vinegar, paprika and onion powder with 2 tbsp of water (the water is needed to thin the sauce so it makes a shiny glaze rather than a creamy mixture – as ours did!) and set aside
  • in another bowl, mix together the egg and milk
  • in yet another shallow dish, mix together the flour, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, garlic and basil
  • spread the chicken out onto a clean tea towel and pat dry
  • in small batches dip the chicken into the egg mixture and then the breadcrumbs, and set aside on a plate
  • heat a large saucepan over a medium high heat and spray with a little firelight
  • cook the chicken until golden
  • place the cooked chicken into a large bowl and pour the sauce mixture over the top – toss well to coat
  • serve with rice and peas and sprinkle some spring onions on top – oh how classy!

Easy. I know 97% of you won’t share this but the 3% of those with a heart will!!!!111111

J

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September 30, 2015

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fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, vegetarian

sundried tomato and cheesy spinach pasta

Well, I did promise you a competition, didn’t I? Admittedly, you’re not going to drive away with a brand new car whose axles you could grind to dust, or a supermarket dash around Aldi (where after five minutes, you could easily pull together £12.75 worth of produce) – instead I’m giving you a chance  to fill your freezer with syn-free meat. Well, maybe not fill, but it certainly touch the sides. I can’t be held responsible if you’re a bit gappy. A smidge welly-top, if you will.

MEATCOMPETITION

So, how does this work? Easy! First, click the image above. You’ll be taken to our facebook page, where all you need to do is like the image (like the page first if you’re not already a fan, and if that’s the case, shame on you!), share it with friends or via a group, and leave a comment with your favourite twochubbycubs recipe – simple as that! In two weeks time we’ll pick a random name and make contact, and we’ll get a lovely box of meat delivered to you just as quick as you like. You remember our deal? All the meat above for £40, a perfect bargain! You can find recipes to use with every bit of meat by clicking here and you can order a box yourself by clicking here! EASY.

Right, that’s quite enough of that.

Today has been a weirdly emotional day with various odds and sods. Not emotional for me because I have all the depth and emotional range of a postbox, but certainly dealing with others. I’m no good at dealing with people who are upset, especially when they’re people I actually like, so I’ve most of the day with a face like I’m shitting out pinecones and avoiding making conversation. I watch other people who seem to know exactly the right thing to say to console people, and I do try my best, but I always end up putting my foot in it, saying something awful or making it worse. It’s like when someone brings in a baby and everyone descends to coo and go ‘oooh, isn’t he/she lovely’. I don’t like babies and because I’ve got the empathy of an introverted rock, I just go and hide in the toilets. So not only do people think I’m coldhearted but that I’ve also got the skitters. At least they stay away.

Today was actually my first full day back, too. I’m lucky in that I enjoy my job, I really do, and the people are for the most part charming and lovely, but I’d still (like everyone else, I imagine) sooner be sunning my back-hair on a nice beach somewhere. You always imagine that a holiday will result in you coming back to the office refreshed and full of vim, whereas I actually find myself sulking for a good two weeks about ‘what could have been’.

sundried tomato and cheesy spinach pasta

Tonight’s recipe is unusual in that we didn’t manage to take a photo because we tucked in too quick, story of our lives. You’ll have to imagine what it looks like – a tomatoey, creamy pasta with all the taste and wonder you come to expect from our recipes. It serves four and works out at half a syn per portion, thanks to the dried sundried tomatoes. Dried tomatoes are cracking – just bring them back to life by chucking them in some boiling water for ten minutes or so. Because there’s no picture, I’ll just park this picture here instead. I’ve just got no idea what it is. Yep.

xehwgLr

you’re going to be needing this:

  • 250g dried tagliatelle
  • 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 28g sun dried tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 3 tbsp tomato puree
  • 120g 0% fat natural yoghurt
  • 50g fromage frais
  • 50g baby spinach
  • dried chilli flakes

got that? fabulous – you should then do this:

  • bring a large pan of water to the boil and add the tagliatelle and cook that motherfucker until it’s superbly al-dente (don’t cook it until it’s Al Murray mind), then drain and keep aside 250ml of the pasta water
  • in a bowl mix together the yoghurt and fromage frais and set aside
  • in a small pan heat a little oil or pffffrylight and add the garlic and sundried tomatoes (up to you if you want to bring them back to life in some boiling water beforehand) and cook for about two minutes
  • reduce the heat to low and add the chopped tomatoes and puree and mix well
  • remove from the heat, leave to cool for a few minutes and add the yoghurt and fromage frais in small amounts until well mixed. If you add the yoghurt in whilst it is still really warm, it’ll split. It will taste fine, yes, but it will look like the contents of a pair of knickers wedged behind the toilet in a Yates Wine Lodge
  • cook the tomato mixture over a low heat for a few minutes until warmed through
  • add salt and pepper to taste and the spinach and gently cook until wilted
  • add the mixture to the cooked pasta, add the reserved water slowly to your own preference and mix well
  • serve and top with the red chilli flakes

This is pretty much just cook the pasta, cook everything else, and mix together. It’s not a flash harry dinner, but you know, it tastes good and it hits the spot, so what more do you want from me? BLOOD? Screw you!

J

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September 8, 2015

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low syn, pork, pork joints, recipe card, rice

cuban mojito pork with pineapple salsa

Firstly let me apologise for any spelling errors that may arise during this post – we have finally unpacked our super shiny iMac and I’m not used to the tiny keyboard. I feel it is made for delicate, straw-like fingers to dance over, not having my hairy sausage digits pummel away at it like a sailor applying lip gloss to a £10 hooker. WOW there’s a sentence you didn’t expect.

We bought the Mac because we are pretentious, shallow bastards it is a lot easier to edit the blog photos on, which means you better hurry along and buy a billion copies of my book to pay for the fucker. It wasn’t hard to win Paul round – he has such a love of polished metal and smooth edges that I’m surprised he isn’t dryhumping the Micra on the side. But everything about using a Mac is different from a Windows computer. Even navigating using this tiny mouse is proving a bloody chore, yes it’s fair enough taking away the buttons and relying on me using gestures but so far the only gesture I’ve managed is calling it a dick and scratching my foot with it.

In fact, it almost looks like a sex toy, all slick and polished – but it would be a boring person’s sex toy, something slipped into a pastel handbag and wheeled out between  accountancy seminars at various Days Inn across the country. It would be called something yawnsome like ‘Pleasure Max’ or ‘Orb’. Amateurs. Everyone knows a good sex toy needs to be tapped into the National Grid and come with an instruction manual on DVD, called something like ‘The Ripper’ or ‘Uvula-nudga’. Anyway. One thing I do like is how sharp everything looks – it’s in 5k, which is apparently like HD but even better. Even better than 4k. Great, now when I watch Jeremy Kyle on catch-up I’ll actually be able to see the sheen of smugness that he has in every pore. I just hope the ultra high definition doesn’t turn online pornography (a healthy part of any modern marriage) into a disturbingly accurate affair – god knows bumholes aren’t pretty to look at in soft-focus, let alone splayed in billions of colours and filling the screen like a flattened sea anenome.

The Mac does look good in our new living room, and the good news is that we’re almost finished with decorating. We’ve got someone coming around to hang our artwork on the wall, fix the TV to the wall and various other little odds and sods, someone coming around to fix the alarm and then finally, the house is our own and we don’t have to make small-talk with anyone but the cats every again. Yesterday was a painful case in point – we had a chap around to install new blinds throughout and because I’d responded to his question of ‘How do you like them hung’ with ‘Well’, Paul retired me to the kitchen to research recipes.

What this actually meant was I got to eavesdrop on Paul making small-talk and the good news is that he’s even worse than me at it. Clearly both Paul and the blinds man were hard of hearing because every sentence by one of them was met with a ‘pardon’ from the other, then an ‘EH’, then Paul clearly doing that thing where he hasn’t heard a word of what was said but is too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it. At one point, he answered the question ‘What do you do for a living’ with ‘absolute junkies’ and that killed the conversation dead. Like the good husband that I am, I just spent the two hours laughing into my fist and trying not to fart too loudly.

One thing we’ve learned from all of this decorating is that buying furniture is a bloody chore. We can’t buy stuff in shops because we’re too common for the posh shops and too posh for B&M, so we’re stuck buying things online, which is fine to a point until you order what you think is a cushion and you get a 7ft beanbag delivered. I mean it looks nice enough but work don’t half raise their eyebrows when they have to hoick that into the lift. We’ve bought most of our new stuff from made.com which has been a revelation, but we’ve tried shopping local for all the accessories and bits and bobs. What a waste of time. Since when did it become acceptable to half-arsedly rub a bit of sandpaper over a shitty chest of drawers from IKEA and call it vintage or even worse, distressed. Distressed? I certainly was, I could barely stop the tears. There’s a shop near us absolutely rammed full of the sort of trinkets and sculptures you’d imagine someone who has the word ‘healer’ in their job-title to have littering their house and it is quite genuinely one of the worst places I’ve ever been to. And I’ve been to Southend, remember. (I’m joking, before I get any barely-understandable voicemails left). Who decides that what they really need for their house is a friggin’ incense burner made from a rusty tin and a feeling of malaise? 

My mother, god love her, looks a bit of chintz and tat, saying it makes a home – well, that’s one gene that didn’t make it down the line to me, I can tell you. For a woman of normal, reasonable taste, she refused for all of my teenage life to throw away what I consider to be the ugliest statue I’ve ever seen. It was a grinning monkey dressed as a waiter holding a tray. It looked to all the world like the final thing a demented mind might see before the hands of hell grabbed your ankle. I dreamed of kicking it down the stairs or accidentally setting fire to it (I’m not sure how well stone would burn in a Hotpoint oven but fuck me I longed for the chance to try) but my mother was fair attached to it. A quick look online suggests I can buy one for around £150, which might actually be money well spent if it meant I could fulfil a fantasy. I note you can buy a similar statue in the shape of a rooster – that would certainly be more suited to our house, given how much we’re fans of large cocks in our bedroom, but still.

Mother, if you’re reading this, it really is your only decorating faux-pas.

Tonight’s recipe then. As part of Musclefood’s generous care package, we were given some of their pork loin steaks to try. I struggle with pork, I always think that unless it is done really well, you might as well chew your arm. It’s what I imagine human flesh to taste like. Nevertheless, these steaks looked juicy and plump, just how we liked them. You can buy Musclefood’s pork steaks right here along with all their other marvellous meats. It’ll open in a new tab, don’t worry. I know I might sound like a corporate shill but I promise you, if they tasted like farts and nothingness, I’d tell you. As it is, they’re thick as a sadist’s slipper and juicier than a happy orange. Or something. Actually thinking about it, they’re no more expensive for pork than Tesco, so you’ll be reet. Take a look!

A bit of research was done as to what we can cook with them and Paul came up with a recipe for ‘Cuban Mojito pork’. The only thing I associate with Cuba, because I always revert lazily to stereotypes, is cigars. They’re about the only thing I occasionally miss about smoking. Before I joined my current job, I almost took up a job managing a cigar and pipe shop in Newcastle. How different my life could have been, dispensing cherry tobacco to whiskery old buggers and burning my eyebrows with the cigar lighters. 

Paul and I used to be members of a mail order cigar club that would send out a variety of different cigars every month – I always remember one month they sent a cigar that looked like a bloody roll of carpet – I could barely get it in my mouth, and let me tell you, that’s a problem I almost never have. It took about ten minutes to light the bugger (I had to use the grill function on the oven) and it was enjoyable for approximately sixteen seconds before the emphysema kicked in. There’s something inherently butch about cigars, well, decent cigars – mincing along with a Café Crème  that you’ve lit with a novelty lighter shaped like a phallus doesn’t quite have the same gravitas. 

Oh, if you’re wondering how this is mojito, well, I dunno. It has mint in it. There’s no alcohol in it, so if you’re shaking your way through this blog entry in the hope of getting a fix, have yourself a morning gin and a packet of Polos and get a grip.

cuban mojito pork

to make cuban mojito pork, you’re gonna need:

  • 1 tbsp olive oil (6 syns)
  • 1 tbsp orange zest
  • 150ml of orange juice (we use Tropicano 50/50, which is 1 syn per 100ml) (1.5 syns)
  • 50g coriander leaves  (a good handful)
  • 5g mint leaves  (about 8 big leaves)
  • 8 garlic cloves
  • 2 tsp dried oregano
  • 2 tsp cumin
  • salt and pepper
  • pack of pork steaks

to make cuban mojito pork, you should:

  • add all of the ingredients (except the pork, salt and pepper) into a food processor and pulse until everything is finely chopped into a nice green paste that you definitely wouldn’t like oozing out of any hole on your body
  • if you don’t have a food processor simply chop the coriander and mint, and grate the garlic and mix together
  • pour the mixture a into a sandwich bag or sealed container, add the pork and mix everything together
  • leave for a few hours, or overnight in the fridge
  • when ready to cook, preheat the oven to 220 degrees
  • remove the pork from the mixture and discard the remaining marinade (you’ll actually lose a few syns this way, hence I’m only putting this down as 1.5 syns each)
  • place the pork onto a rack over a baking tray and add salt and pepper, just a pinch of each mind
  • roast the pork for around twenty minutes until it is lightly browned
  • reduce the heat to 190 degrees and cook for another ten minutes
  • transfer the meat onto a chopping board, cover with foil and let it rest for twenty minutes – don’t worry if it’s black – that’s intentional!
  • serve with plain rice and pineapple salsa.

hang on, pineapple salsa? shit-a-doo, forgot to give you that recipe. OK, you’ll need:

  • a few rings of fresh pineapple (use the rest in a fruit salad)
  • two ripe tomatoes
  • half an onion, chopped
  • handful of coriander leaves
  • one green chilli
  • 1/2tsp of cumin
  • 1/2tsp of salt to taste
  • 1 minced garlic clove

to make pineapple salsa, you’ll need to:

  • chop everything into uniform small cubes
  • mix
  • put in your mouth
  • enjoy
  • turn into poo

Easy!

Fuck me ragged, that was a long entry, was it not? I spoil you.

J