Be Excellent To Each Other

What, and nothing else at all? No potato? No carrots?

Nah. Just chicken.

But what has free range chicken to do with goose liver pate?

Shut up, you.
I'm awesome.

Cheap food? A dog that is excess to requirements? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Citation needed.

/gets out his huge cock with 'citation, biotch' written on it.

/in big letters

I think so! Quick, you get the balloons and I'll see about renting us that helicopter!

I've got a glass desk we could use, and some cheese for the balloons!

Sorted! I'll meet you all outside Buckingham Palace at midnight then. Everyone remember their flippers!

Oy! My squatting days are over sunshine!

Oh noes, it's dead.

I was thinking the same about the girlfriend, to be honest, but then I just ate about eleven kit kats for dinner. Nobody else at work eats them



Meh. Unless you've got seventeen kids running about, it really is far easier and faster than everyone seems to think. It can also be relaxing and deceptively stress-relieving.

If this is correct, I certainly hope to prove that

The trick is not to think of it as a "bleugh, got to cook, can't be arsed" thing, and just stand up and grab some ingredients immediately. You'll get into the swing of it that way, instead of slowly convincing yourself to have a microwave meal or something.

Chilli con carne is an aces meal:

1kg of mince
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
2 tins of kidney beans
A large onion
A couple of peppers
Some chilli powder

Fry the onions, then add mince and fry until brown, then chuck in the rest (apart from the kidney beans) and let it simmer away for about 20 minutes, then give the kidney beans a good rinse and put them in for the last 10 minutes.

Piece of piss to make and you'll end up with a meal plus another 4-5 portions to freeze. Tip: if you have half a portion left over, don't share it out amongst the others but freeze it separately; chilli on toast is a lovely weekend lunchtime snack.

Oooh, Chilli on Baked Potato

*dies of love for teh humble baked potato, with chilli, and just a tad sour cream and chives, if you please...*

Mmmmmmm. If you're cooking that I'll be over in one second flat...

You still haven't said why you won't marry me

I was waiting until you said that you can make a kick-butt chilli.

I will not seal the deal until you say that chilli should be served in bowls. In bowls! Never on plates - in a bowl!!!!

Ahem...

To my shame, I don't think I've ever tried freezing unused portions. Do stews/sauces really survive the thawing-out-and-re-cooking process all that well? If so, awesome!

I used to LOVE cold, yes, cold, chille con carnie.

Absolutely. They'll dry out a little - just add a tablespoon or two of water when you reheat them, job done.

Yup, they definitely do.

If you can find some really cheap ice-cube trays they are great for freezing sauces as a) they thaw much quicker in smaller blocks and b) you can defrost exactly the amount you need - not just the whole amount you froze. Ikea do some good rubber/silicon ice cube trays for £1

Cold and in a bowl, right?

See also wine - a glass left in the bottle that no-one wants? Ice cube trays of wine are great for sauces and casseroles.

A bowl m'dear, yes.

Some cream/yoghurt-based indian dishes can be nicer when reheated. If you fry them with a little water/oil/extra cream/yoghurt a day or two later, they can thicken and become stronger. They become less saucy though, obv.

Tonights meal for two:

Tesco scallops (1.99), two chopped onions (10p), one green chili (20p), two potatoes (no idea), 1/3 bag spinach (40p), 1/3 yellow pepper (no idea).

Stir fry everything except the taters (boiled them) and spinach (ditto). Total prep and cooking time, 20mins.

Total cost - about 4 quid?

Nice one, thanks! To be honest, though, I usually only save food with the intention of eating it the next day, in which case the fridge suffices. I'll definitely try this out for wisdom points, mind you.

Far too expensive, my target is £2.70 a day.

Don't worry, I'll work it out. I'm cheerfully grateful for the interest and suggestions. Once the 1st rolls around please feel free to pass the link around.

That was a meal for 2

CG. Get some Google Ads or something on there if you haven't already. This is the sort of thing that gets linked by a lot of people.

If it gets enough hits to start crashing the server, I might think about it, otherwise it'll earn me about £2 and it's not worth the clutter on the currently neat and tidy page

*pastes*

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Sticky Chilli Chicken, Bitches

Two cloves of garlic
One or two red chilli peppers
Two lemons (if you're cooking for 3-5 people, stop at three)
One or two tablespoons (or just chuck it in, sod it) of chopped coriander
Two or three tablespoons of honey (if cooking for 3-5 people, stop at four or five)
Two chicken tits

Measurements are PER PERSON - For any more than about 5 people, you'll have to use your judgement I'm afraid.


*Crush the garlic, juice the lemons, chop the chillili, slice or dice the chicken tits (you could do them whole, in which case I'd recommend baking).

*Mix the honey, lemon, coriander, chilli and garlic together in a cup.

*Marinate the chicken in the sauce for a couple of hours (can be skipped, but it suffers. I'd give it at least half an hour or cook something else)

*IF FRYING - drop a little oil in the pan and let it heat up. Drop the chicken in and cook until sealed, then pour over the sauce and fry for about ten minutes, or until it's cooked through.

*IF BAKING - place the chicken with the sauce in a covered casserole dish and bake at a moderate heat (say 180-190C) for roughly 35-40 minutes, giving it a quick stir as necessary.

*Serve on a sexy bed of equally sexy rice.

*Realise you forgot the garlic and kick yourself all night (I was drunk, sod off)


If you're frying, you'll probably need to make up more of the sauce to compensate for boiling/thickening of it as you cook. In fact, it might be wise to fry the chicken beyond sealed, until it's almost cooked, and then add the sauce for the last few minutes. You could even bake it for, say, fifteen or twenty minutes, and then finish it by frying (if you can be bothered, I suspect this would yield best results). When baked, you tend to get a more lemony flavour and more, thinner sauce, which goes well with the rice, but when fried it's thicker, stickier and sweeter, but also a bit hotter and slightly juicier.

Either way, the result should be a sweet, tangy and perfectly spicy-as-a-side-effect meal that might possibly also work with pork.

As I said, I'll test it some more.

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You can also use lime, but I tend to have lemons in the fridge anyway, since I use them more.

Also, buy cajun. Slice and fry chicken tits/sausages in it. Lovely with rice and lettuce and pitta bread, and the excess can and should be eaten as a snack/lunch cold the next day, as it is even tastier cold.

Just charge people £2 to read it

I've just shown this to Mrs A.

She's now making a list. Next month, I'm going to fucking starve now.

You cunt.

You utter, utter cunt.

She's got a fucking pen and a list and everything.

I'm going to become the BEEX food critic. I'm going to come round to all of your houses and you all have to cook for me then I'll do a write up on here.

*licks lips*

Eat more, CG. Your brain needs it.

*goes to freezer*

Oooh... 4 home made turkey burgers tomorrow, with sage & onion flavouring. Call it 50p. ENOUGH FOR TWO.

Yes but the hight of cooking for me is.

Toast.
thin sliced cheese.
Branston Pickle
Baked Beans
Piri piri sauce.

You're welcome to that

Sounds like a good start to me, it doesn't all have to be gormet.

Spaghetti Carbo-not-ra

Spaghetti (enough to be a base. Use your judgement, you'll be fine. Tagliatelli would work, also)
8 slices of bacon (ham/frankfurters if you're short on cash - saltier is tastier)
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
Roughly 300ml double cream (Single cream may suffice, fuck knows)
Roughly 50ml white wine vinegar (white wine would likely work, too)
Lots of pepper
some olive/vegetable oil

Optional: Mushrooms, ham, parmesan cheese, an egg.


* Dice the onions and bacon (removing the rind from the bacon where possible), or slice thinly if you prefer. Crush and chop the garlic.

* Drop some oil in a deep frying pan and set to a high heat. Add the garlic and onions, cooking them for about a minute.

* Add the bacon to the frying pan and cook for about five minutes, stirring frequently. Grind lots of pepper into the pan as you go. Get your spaghetti in a pot, boiling.

* Add two sloshes of white wine vinegar (a "slosh" is roughly between 20-35ml, probably) and continue to fry for another minute or two. Turn the heat down to low/moderate if necessary. Tipping away a small amount of bacon fat/oil at this point is optional. Personally I think it tastes better if you leave most of it in, but it depends on your bacon.

* Reduce the heat and pour the cream into the pan. Stir it together with everything well, and heat gently, stirring constantly, for about five minutes - until it's hot, basically, and your pasta's ready. But don't let it boil or even simmer much, and don't leave the kitchen. It should turn a yellowish colour and be liberally dotted with pepper. Add pepper and/or white wine vinegar to taste.

* Drain your spaghetti, return it to the saucepan and crack an egg into it. Stir the egg in well and return the saucepan to the hob over a low heat, stirring constantly for, say, 30 seconds - the egg should cook rapidly and mix bittily.

* Pour the bacon, cream etc. mixture into the saucepan with the spaghetti and mix together.

*Whack it onto a couple of plates and gorge. GORGE.

Serves about two normal people, or one Tom.



Storage: Whack it in a tub in the fridge as is. It should keep for a few days - just add it to a frying/saucepan with a wee splash of water and heat through. Reheated taste verdict: 7/10

Vegetarians: This could work without the bacon - just use plenty of mushrooms instead. You might also want to add some salt to compensate. I would experiment, but I'm not sleeping with you, so can't be bothered. Sorry.

Vegans: Gutted. Edit: "You could make it vegan by using Bac-O's, silken tofu, olive oil, nutritional yeast and a coupla other things", apparently. I do not endorse this. Do not sue me.

I get the worrying feeling that people are going to be better at this than I am

Practice, man. Practice.

Actually, this thread is a hell of a lot better than most recipe books. Mainly because we're not flowering all the language up. How much salt is in a pinch, anyway?

1/3 of a peck.

83% of a smidgen.

Huzzah!

When I start the blog I'll treat you all to a picture of my kitchen. Oooh, look at how I entice and excite you all.