Slopalong #2 You can’t polish a turd, but you can cover it in parsley
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REDPUM!
Really enjoyed the lengthy essay with supporting pictures for your pancakes and then this succinct summary for the cake - chapeau, a brave effort xx
Why did it scream when you impaled it
Frying the aubergine first would have given it lots of flavour. Also salt.Slop has been slung. Are you ready ninnies?
Ultimate Moussaka, 31p [VG/V/DF/GF*]
As the granddaughter of a Cypriot immigrant, I know my claim to have made the ‘ultimate’ moussaka is indeed a bold one. My grandfather would laugh in my face at the very notion of this vegan …cookingonabootstrap.com
I assembled my ingredients, some were free as I already had them. I had to get the aubergine, cashew milk, sunflower oil (because I usually cook with coconut oil but wanted to be PAINSTAKINGLY authentic), lentils, mustard, wine chopped tomatoes and dried thyme. I spent £13 although I do have some of those ingredients left for future slops.
I softy, gently rinsed the lentils and covered them with water. No amount of water was specified so I just covered them. This clearly wasn’t quite enough as the lentils absorbed it pretty quickly once they started boiling.
View attachment 1722414I While the lentils were cooking I started the sauce, chopping 6 cloves of garlic and adding them to a cold pan with two tablespoons of oil and two-small-onions’ worth of frozen onion because that’s how I roll.
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After a few minutes I added the other ingredients, making a lovely slop.
View attachment 1722450This included an entire teaspoon of dried thyme (or optional interchangeable herbs obvs) so I was feeling fairly hopeful that there might be at least a small amount of flavour.
I then rinsed the lentils again (THOROUGHLY. WARNED!) and added them to the slop.
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The recipe then inexplicably told me to fill a cup with water and pop it on the side.View attachment 1722480
And then I set about making the bechamel. I am fairly practised at making bechamel and felt concerned about stirring flour into cold oil, but it did form somewhat of a roux.
View attachment 1722490The cashew milk made a smooth sauce (no need to sieve out any lumps) but it didn’t really thicken. Also, there just wasn’t much of it.
But I ploughed ahead very finely slicing my aubergine.
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I then assembled the “moussaka”. There was literally a dribble of bechamel in each layer, but I dutifully spread it with the back of a spoon.
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I had not bothered to count my aubergine slices so the dearth (NB Jack: correct use of the word dearth) of aubergine in the top layer was entirely my fault. The dearth of bechamel was entirely Jack’s. I didn’t bother to grate the whole slice of bread, but I’m not sure extra breadcrumbs could have really saved this anyway.
View attachment 172250440 minutes later, I removed it from the oven and served myself up an eighth of it as per Jack’s claim that this serves 8, generously.
View attachment 1722506So, my verdict?
Well, it is edible but pretty flavourless. The aubergine is fairly chewy despite being so thinly sliced and the lentils are a bit chalky. It mostly tastes of tomato and garlic. One “portion” is definitely not generous and nutritionally is significantly lacking.
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i was debating giving it a 3, but honestly, I wouldn’t ever make it again. I’m sure it could be saved with some additional flavours and a decent bechamel (no seasoning in the bechamel and this jar of mustard, listed in the ingredients for the sauce, never got mentioned in the actual recipe)
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So I’m giving it a 2 - terrible. Would not recommend.
Loved the tattoos.
A very witty write up of another tragic recipe.
Jack if you’re reading and I really hope you are a much better use of those ingredients would be to use the flour, eggs and milk to make pancakes for breakfast and then use the rhubarb and custard for a tasty warming pudding after lunch/dinner/tea depending on when you eat your main meal and what you call it.
The real one sounds lovely.I've put myself down for another little recipe Whoa F*ck Dressing
It's got everything you would want from a Monroe number:
I bought chilli flakes (in error for another version of pasta sauce) and white wine vinegar for slops, and only need to get hold of sunflower and peanut/sesame oil. I've also decided to buy the real thing to compare but also to spite Jack - £5.95
- Jack being given a friend's product for free then trying to reverse engineer it on the cheap, rather than promote the product or just... buy some more
- Then posting the recipe on her website to 500,000
potential customersreaders- NO praise whatsoever for the original ("all I could remember was the sheer amount of chilli flakes suspended in a sesame oil dressing") but exaggerated praise for her version ("my tastebuds shot off on an exuberant joyride... made my eyes pop and my tongue sing")
- Basically saying make her version don't buy the real thing (with friends like Jack eh?)
- Claims it will get better with age and the concerns over things in oil having botulism are 'scaremongering'
- 'Sainsbugs'
- A reader corrects her about the botulism which she accepts (!) but only as a 'wrong word'
- Says she'll correct it but never does, gets called out on it months later
- Reader irritatedly explains that many would like to sell this kind of product but they're so risky they don't/won't
- Therefore highlighting a major benefit of buying the real product in the first place
- It oozes with narcissism
Tonkotsu
Shop for the perfect present for the ramen lover in your life. Use our vouchers in any Tonkotsu restaurant (sorry, excludes Selfridges). Looking for Eat the Bits Chilli Oil? Head back to the Tonkotsu website to find the Chilli Oil shopshop.tonkotsu.co.uk
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I am not in the pay of Big Ramen but yes, the actual 'Eat The Bits' sauce is incredibly good.
ELBMUP 🫣
I like
Exactly this. Or put the rhubarb into a saucepan, add a little brown/Demerara sugar or honey, cover it with water, and simmer it gently and tenderly for about 20 mins. This also works very well with fresh rhubarb when it's in season, not that Jack ever uses any seasonal ingredients.
No! Maybe there's something wrong with the oven...You can’t blame me for trying
10 out of 10 for determination, dear
.If it's got oil in it, it's not bechamel. Abusing the name like that is like, oh, I don't know, sitting on your arse 100 hours week and calling it activism.
It’s possible tweaks were made by the BBC website people - I do think they test their recipes.Hmmmmm. I think Jack nicked this recipe due to the amount of garlic/ginger, curry powder, butter and coconut milk.
@Slop n slide The inexplicable Doc Marten! 
I'm ashamed to say I didn't notice it until the stirring briskly photo and then it was extra funny for being unexpected.
I'm ashamed to say I didn't notice it until the stirring briskly photo and then it was extra funny for being unexpected.
so far I've counted:
Letting rice sit on the side for ages instead of cooling quickly - allows lots of Bacillus cereus bacteria to grow and give you the shits/food poisoning peanut milk rice pudding
frying tinned potatoes - they can explode due to the water content (can't recall which recipe this was in - will update when I find it)
storing/infusing herbs in oil - risk of botulism Whoa F*ck Dressing
*edit : found it, it was the recipe for hot nicoise mentioned upthread hot nicoise
The thing (not calling it a dish, it isn’t) is cooked and tasted.
I’ll write a proper review later but now I’m off to cleanse my mouth with homemade brownies (double fudge and walnut, thanks for asking!)
I’ll write a proper review later but now I’m off to cleanse my mouth with homemade brownies (double fudge and walnut, thanks for asking!)
I’ll go out and buy a (pigskin) hat asap
I was shooketh that they were made of beef and pork, which surely should be portmantea’d to “bork” is it normal to mix beef and pork? Let’s face it they contain the same amount of fillers as a Linda’s veggie sausageOkay, I’m having to defrost my sausages which I didn’t really think of, so in the meantime I thought I’d do a little Bollock Sausage review.
I thought they’d be bad but they surprised me, they’re not only 40% pork but also about 40% edible.
For newbies these are the Asda essentials frozen sausages that Jack puts into a lot of her dishes. They £1.50 for twenty.
View attachment 1723119
First I paid tribute to our hero.
As you can see they’re almost as white as my chopping board.
View attachment 1723135
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Obviously they’re not going to be amazing at that price, and poor welfare meat is a whole other discussion.
But these are minging, I said before that I’m partial to overly processed food but I can’t think of anything good to say about these and neither could my sister.
The texture is weirdly dry and sort of foamy? They really do melt like Jack says. The part that doesn’t melt is the bleeping skin.
I refuse to believe that the skin is made of beef and not plastic, I still have bits in my teeth.
You can see from the picture that they go weird and saggy as soon as you take them out the oven, kind of like a limp dick with a dried up contact lens on it (soz about the imagery but it’s genuinely the best way I can describe it
Lastly the smell! The bleeping smell.
Have you ever had a very cheap sausage roll that kind of smells like fart? Well image that X five filling up your flat and that was from cooking one sausage. Why you’d stick these in instead of veg is totally beyond me, there’s probably more meat in a courgette too just from one caterpillar crawling across it.
Not recommended.
Stay tuned for the sausange, I’m sure it’ll be lovely
EDIT: forgot to actually say what they taste like and there’s a reason why - nothing. They literally taste of nothing
Possible, but they seriously fucked up with the prep vs cooking time.
@Notmycat please can I request the original dal makhani recipe from Cooking on a Bootstrap book for comparison. Thankyou.
Weirdly my Dal Makhani slopalong seems to have disappeared from the Wiki. Is this a deliberate attempt to sabotage our smol pixie because I gave it a 4
Or, it is because I'm blind drunk (absolutely) following eating 1 portion of dal as my total nutrition for the day and a bottle of cava?CONSPIRACY THEORY
Edited for typos cos I'm pissed
feels like some refresher training is needed
I think we also have concerns about manky salad pesto - she says “give it a sniff” to see if it’s ok to eat, but people can’t smell botulism
Catchy, might bring out a #merch range
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