Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans

[Fleasyweezy]

Tender ones, I fear I am beyond the help of even four therapists on speed dial. Tonight, I made the banana peel pancakes & there is insufficient mind bleach to unsee the things I witnessed tonight in my own little sanctuary I have previously called home. Even the squabbling cats are too traumatised to keep up their feline warfare.

Spoiler alert; I made this exactly as per the recipe until the very end when I got a bit agitated by what was going on in my own kitchen… Also, I have no idea how to do the spoiler alert stuff so apologies for dragging unsuspecting victims to join my complete mental breakdown & very recent serious concussion (as in last hour from banging head against a convenient wall as the gloop gradually turned beige & even more unappetising)

1) Recipe

2) Finely sliced bananas (with skin as she only retrospectively informs the reader to finely chop the skin separately

3) Pop banana slices in a bowl with the milk & oil

4) Beat well with the tines (prongs) of a fork. Not entirely sure how you would beat it with anything else, like the handle, but I’m just a simpleton in the kitchen c/w our Jackie

5) Oh, I was meant to realise I should have peeled the bananas first Oh well, lucky I’ve got one of them bullet gadgets that you so helpfully suggest after I’ve mashed banana peel until my crumbly wrists disintegrated. I digress

6) Add flour & beat well to combine to a thick smooth batten (stet)

 

[crystaleyesd]

CONFIT 'DUCK' AND PEAR CASSOULET PART DEUX

It is now Post Slop and I feel strong enough to report back on the rest of the experience. Part un here.

Spoiler: Method for the cassoulet

Ok so we've got our 'duck' marinading in the fridge, now to tackle the cassoulet, which in Jackspeak means it has beans in it. Because of course it does. Let's slop to it.

Step 1. Make your 'base'

Jack's base is finely sliced onion, leek, celery and carrot. Now I'm no slop maven, but finely slicing is an odd term. Surely chopping a small dice would be more appropriate?? I try to slice the veggies as per the directions, but they end up much larger than I would normally chop them for a stew. Of course all these veggies get slung in a cold pan and the oil added later.

Jack's recipe stipulates a teaspoon of oil. And with my half recipe that means half a teaspoon of oil to cover a quite substantial amount of vegetables. It's sadder than the measly quarter tsp of coffee.

The veggies are still drier than the Gobi desert but Jack wants me to cook them on a medium heat for 10 minutes until they soften.

10 minutes later...

They look exactly the fucking same

Step 2. The rinsing of the beans.

Funnily enough, Jack doesn't ask you to use baked beans here, but I end up buying them cos I can't find cannellini or haricot beans anywhere (Jack states they are interchangeable). Maybe Norwegians are secret bean rinsers?? I find I'm quite excited to take part in this ancient ritual.

Praise beans

Jack tells me to keep the liquid from the beans but I SHAN'T because I don't hate myself. The beans are added to the pan, along with the 'booze' (all alcohol is interchangeable) and the tomatoes. There is no cooking off of the wine, so the whole thing smells overwhelmingly of alcohol. I sprinkle in the herbs which add to the raw pungency, and then top off with the stock.

Sloptastic! But also fucking raw. Jack's two favourite textures.

Step 3. Cook for an hour(!)

This is highly extravagant for Jack. But seriously, SOMETHING has to soften these veg. By now it's 7pm and I'm hungry. But I must wait for the magic to happen. Time to drink some wine then.

One extremely long hour later...

To be fair, things do look a lot more cooked now. But that acerbic raw smell from the wine and herbs lingers, somehow. There's about as much depth of flavour here as a dry cracker - I don't need to even taste it to tell. I've suddenly lost my appetite.

Step 4. Slice your pears and 'fold' them in.

I forget to do this. I've drunk too much wine on an empty stomach.

Step 5. Cook your jackfruit.

I'm hoping the jackfruit has absorbed some flavour after an hour in the fridge. And miraculously all that oil has disappeared . Jack tells me to discard the leftover marinade, but there is none, so I dump it all in a hot frying pan. It sizzles and actually smells quite appetising...

As I'm frying all the oil the jackfruit has sucked up oozes out again. Despite this, it's the only bit of the dish with any structural integrity so I'm quite looking forward to trying it.

Jack once again asks me to 'fold' the jackfruit into the bean slop. I'm not sure this is necessary as this is not a cake - mixing it together will suffice.



Step 4 (again).

Fuck! I remember I forgot the pears!

Jack tells me she has no manners and drinks the juice from the tin. Well, when in Sloptown... (look away now @blurstoftimes whilst I put another appendage close to an open tin)

Pears are 'folded' into the slop. I decide a little video might be nice of these defenceless pears sliding to their doom.


(apols for my music on in the background - probably breaking all manner of copyright laws. Also this video will self destruct in 24 hours)

Step ???. Lemon.

This was supposed to go in somewhere.

Step 6. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and POBP and SERVE.

Fuck, what have I done?

Spoiler: The finished dish

I serve up a teeny weeny smol Jack portion. I'd mainlined a whole load of crisps while I was waiting for my slop so am no longer famished, but even if I hadn't my appetite drains away like bean juice down a plughole. Taking a deep breath, I bring the fork to my mouth...

Ingredients - N/A. Not sure it's fair to judge the cost of these ingredients given I live in a country famous for its high cost of living. The beans and veg would be quite cheap in the UK, and you'd likely stock things like soy sauce and tin toms. The wine is fucking pointless though - it's a waste of good wine and actively makes the dish worse because she doesn't cook off the alcohol.

Visual appeal - 1/5. The 'finely sliced' stuff is far too big. Perhaps I misunderstood Jack's instructions, but she should make it clear this should be a fine dice. Given that they never melt into the sauce because there's no oil to sweat them in, they just remain as turgid lumps whilst the beans turn to mush, giving the whole thing an aura of a mudslide aftermath. Meanwhile, the dry breadcrumbs are like a snowstorm in june (and not a Jack snowstorm either) - they shouldn't fucking be there.

Texture - 1/5. The jackfruit is the only saving grace in this (sorry frauen, I quite like it), but coated in the sauce it becomes claggy. The bean/veg 'cassoulet' is fucking disgusting, with hidden but perceptible lumps throughout. The pears are slimy - perhaps if they'd been cooked into the sauce instead of 'folded' in at the end they might have had a chance, but nope. The breadcrumbs make me cough up a lung.

Taste - 1/5. Again, the jackfruit is actually OK. The sugar and oil caramelises in the hot frying pan and creates crispy bits, and there's actually some flavour. Then you're forced to ruin it by dumping it into slop. The cassoulet (how dare you besmirch its good name, Jack) is both tasteless and too acidic (thank fuck I didn't add that lemon) from the wine and tomatoes, and the pears are just, well, they're fucking pears so they're sweet! Dire.

Overall - 1/5. I wish I'd been a fly on the wall when a pampered Countryfile presenter had to choke this down and pretend to like it. Jack says she was sheepish about the recipe because she'd made it up on the fly and hadn't even had a chance to taste it before she served it up on national TV (sadly there is no evidence of this) - apparently this meal was enough to convince her this 'recipe' belonged in a cookbook and one can only assume she never cooked it again

I did eat it because it was my dinner. Unfortunately, despite halving the recipe, there's fucking loads left. What's this? A Jack recipe with larger than average portions?? Just my luck I'll be desperately attempting to add some depth of flavour before it becomes my sad lunch tomorrow in the form of some chanterelle stock and smoked paprika, but I suspect it simply cannot be saved. Fuck you, Jack.

 

[heastlanda]

Oh lordy are you all in for a treat. I didn't make this for my lunch as I thought I would be kind and involve my 13 year old, Miss Heastlanda (MH). All photography by her.

1. The ingredients.

I had everything in stock except for the chocolate. Switched the malt vinegar for red wine vinegar and used a chicken stock cube because that's all I had. Ingredients are interchangeable, right? Rice not in this photo as I buy it in 20kg sacks and I'm not hoiking one of those on my worktop.

2. Garlic and onions.
The recipe instructed us to 'saute' the garlic and onions in a tablespoon of water in the microwave. So we did. FYI Jack, nuking things in water in the microwave is not sautéing them. The only thing that will happen is you will stink out your kitchen. MH asked me 'why does it smell so weird?'

3. Everything else.

MH is now whining because she thinks it's a waste of good chocolate. I give her the rest of the bar to shut her up even though I had planned to eat it myself. Instructed to mix everything in the jug so I did. Maybe this might just work......

4. I was wrong. Very, very wrong

This took 7 minutes to cook in my microwave. While it's cooking my kitchen now smells strongly of burning rubber. Take it out and the first thing MH says is that it looks like diarrhoea. Yummy.

5. The proof is in the tasting

Continuing with the festive theme we've gone for a Grinch bag for life this time. All arrangement is courtesy of MH, including the spoon stood up in the middle. Vinegar and salt delicately sprinkled over the top. MH and I both take a generous spoonful. It's absolutely fucking disgusting. . MH makes the point that it's not chilli without any actual chilli in it and why does it taste so disgusting if we used good ingredients. If you want to know what chocolate and tomato flavoured risotto with undertones of burnt rubber tastes like, then this is the dish for you.

Scoring to follow.

 

[crystaleyesd]

CONFIT 'DUCK' AND PEAR CASSOULET PART UN (IT'S FRENCH YOU SEE)

Good evening frauen. Tonight's slop will come to you in two parts. This is actually quite a labour intensive dish (Jack doing work whaaaat), although it features Jack being under INTENSE PRESSURE cos someone said her vegan food was beautiful (lol) but simultaneously not having prepared to host Countryfile presenter Tom Heap so it turns out she just cooks him any old wrinkled veg rolling around in her fridge plus ca change, Jack, plus ca change...

Of course Tom and the team wolf it down in a feverish dervish, completely amazed at how Jack had concocted such ambrosia from her weird little head. At one point Tom's eyebrows vanish into his hairline when Jack reveals she used the maverick ingredient of coffee, something that has literally never been put into a dish of food before. Personally I couldn't wait to check if my botox was still working so I scampered to the kitchen...

Spoiler: Ingredients

Not gonna sugar coat this one fraus, this lot was EXPENSIVE. But it's Norway so it's normal to pay £15-£20 for a single meal. Plus I have plans for the rest of the celery, leek, carrots etc (and of course, the wine) so it's not a total waste. I do plan to actually eat this, no matter how disgusting it is, so I've halved the quantities as I'm only a smol pixie who doesn't have BBC presenters to entertain for, and I refuse to subject any of my actual friends to this.

Didn't save the receipt sos but off the top of my head these are approximate:
Oil, salt, pepper, soy sauce, breadcrumbs, sugar, garlic, onion - FREE cos I already had in
Coffee - 25Kr/£2.10
Chopped tomatoes - 10Kr/80p
BEANS (unrinsed) - 10Kr/80p
Pears - 30Kr/£2.50
Jackfruit - 40Kr/£3.40
Herbes de Provence (Jack asks for rosmary, thyme and basil but they're all in here innit? I usually hate dried herbs) - 35Kr/£3.00
Leek - 25Kr/£2.10
Carrots - 35Kr - £3.00
Celery - 25Kr - £2.10
Passive aggressive lemon - 7Kr - 55p
Veg stock - 25Kr - £2.10
Wine - 130Kr - £11 (this was the cheapest bottle in the shop but still...ouch)
TOTAL = 397Kr or £33 of your English pounds.

Now of course this is an outlier, and sadly I have no Asda to yomp to with my big rucksack for tear-inducing deals, but it's still a huge outlay for a dinner that is likely going to be shit. Of course, without the wine, it would almost be affordable, but this is still SPENNY. I guess if Groucho Club company is coming over, nothing is too good eh??

Spoiler: Method for the confit 'duck'

Jack separates the ingredients into two sections, one for the 'duck', one for the 'cassoulet'. One might think that this means the 'duck' needs to marinade, seeing as jackfruit is very bland and needs to suck up flavours, but nope, Jack only says to make the 'duck' and then 'leave it in the fridge until it's needed', which I guess could be 30 minutes or 4 days if making a bean salad. Seeing as in her recipe preamble she states she makes this recipe in 2 hours, I'll use that as a guide.

Step 1. Make the marinade.

This is what seems to be a disproportionate amount of flavourless oil, a smol spoon of soy sauce, and then sugar and garlic. That's it. Oh, and the KERAZY ingredient of coffee. My eyebrows are ready. But the recipe calls for half a teaspoon. And seeing as I'm halving the recipe, that's the measliest quarter teaspoon of coffee in the world - if there's any coffee flavour in this thing I'll shave my eyebrows off.

(P.S the peanotter are from my delicious pad thai the night before...god I wish I was having that for tea again)

It's smelling overwhelmingly of brown sugar at this point and nothing else. Even the garlic is overpowered by a sickly, pungent sweetness. And the coffee granules are just floating there, suspended in space and time, refusing to disintegrate in the cold oil. It ain't good...

Step 2. Open the jackfruit

Open the jackfruit...

Open the jackfruit...

I don't have a fucking tin opener...

(look, I moved here with nothing OK. This flat has a chive cutter but no tin opener???)

I refuse to be defeated. I google 'how to open a tin with no tin opener'. Wikihow gives me several methods, one safe but long with a spoon, one fast but dangerous with a knife. I'm fucking hungry. I'm furious. It's stabby time.

I'm stabbing the tin with the fire of a thousand suns. Jackfruit juice is going everywhere. My knife is small (it's the wee knife on a bottle opener) so it's hard going. Sweat beads on my forehead. With every stab I punctuate with a curse: FUCK YOU JACK. FUCK YOU JACK. FUCK YOU JACK. The sharp edge of the tin grazes my finger, luckily not enough to send blood spurting across the kitchen. The tin now has lots of holes in it but the fucking thing still won't open. I start sawing at it with the knife.

Then...EVENTUALLY...

Fuck you Jack.

Step 3. Squeeze the jackfruit.

Jack tells me to squeeze the jackfruit really hard otherwise it will be sloppy () and won't take on the 'flavour' of the marinade. So I obediently squeeze. The jackfruit is slimy and, to be fair, quite a bit of juice comes out.

It now resembles a smoker's lung.

Step 4. Add the jackfruit to the marinade.

Done. Now fuck off.

Part deux upcoming as it needs to cook for an entire HOUR (serves me right for not reading the recipe properly I guess). It's bubbling away right now, smelling alarming...

Meanwhile, I'm having a glass of wine

 

[Lostcat]

(Apologies, my angels, my previous post on this had to be deleted due to the worst formatting issues known to man, thank you to the kind mods for removing it and sparing my blushes)

Sausage and Bean Cassoulet Stew.
First off, I refuse to call this recipe a Cassoulet. It's a stew, just call it a stew. A cassoulet uses a staggering variety of meats, almost always involving sausage, duck confit, chicken legs, fatty pork/salt pork and pork skin, and the beans are some kind of large, firm ones that will hold their shape even after hours of cooking. And it is cooked in the oven for a long, long period of time so that it forms a crust on top (modern varients use breadcrumb to achieve this).

If you gave this to a Frenchman and called it a cassoulet he'd be singing the Marseillaise and dusting off the guillotine before you could say "rinse yer baked beans".

The French are a wonderful people, aren't they?

Spoiler: Ingredients (serves 4)

• Splash of oil £0.04
• 8 sausages £6.89 (gluten-free from a trusted butchers, I ain't eating Unknown Frozen Pig Product from ASDA, sorry gang, call me a snob if you want, but I can't
• 1 carrot £0.07
• 1 onion £0.33
• 2 cloves garlic £0.40
• 100g chopped bacon (Tesco Finest Back Bacon, UK reared), reduced section, £0.50, what a bargain!
• handful of fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme, whatever) £0.50
• zest and juice of 1 lemon, or 1 tsp of lemon juice (these two things do not seem equivalent in the slightest) £0.09
• 1 chicken stock cube (gluten free) in 400ml boiling water £0.15
• 200g (1/2 can) chopped tomatoes £0.23
• 1x 400g tin of haricot beans, or rinsed baked beans £0.70

Total 10.15, serves 4, so £2.58 per portion. It would be a great deal less if you bought cheap sausages, but I got a *real* good deal on the bacon, so swings and roundabouts, eh?

Spoiler: Method/Recipe

Mise en place done, I begin with cooking my sausages. These are good sausages. I feel worried for them.

The recipe says to take them out, let them cool and chop them up. I do not do this, because heating & cooling minced pork repeatedly is only for people who do not believe in e-coli.

In goes the carrot, onion, garlic, bacon. No mention of pepper. I am baffled.

In goes the parsley and the miserable spot of lemon juice. I feel dried mixed herbs and a good glug of red wine vinegar would be nicer, as well as cheaper in the long run, as a little goes a long way and they keep well, but hey-ho.

In goes (far too much) stock and (far too little) canned tomato. It is heated for a mere 15 minutes, then the beans are plonked in right at the end and it is heated for 3 minutes. Jack says this will slightly reduce the sauce. Slightly being the operative word.

Spoiler: Result

The result:

Thoughts

• It's perfectly edible, and with a side of potato would quite nice, and very filling. But Jack. Jack, babes. Pepper is cheap. Cornflour/flour as a thickener is cheap. Salt and sugar are cheap. Mixed herbs are cheap. Hell, a full can of chopped tomatoes is cheap, half a can for 4 people is madness.
• It's not cooked for long enough. Simple fact. It's not a tasty stew, it's items suspended in a liquid that would have become a stew, had you cooked it for 45 minutes longer
• The sauce is miserably watery and the predominent flavour is salt from the stock and the bacon. Even just bunging in baked beans in their sauce would have worked better, you could have got a bit of sugar and starch that would have softened the acidity and harshness of the other ingredients, and thickened the stewing liquid up a little
• The sausages are good, but that's because I bought very good sausage, from happy free-range piggies. God knows what this would be like with bargain sausages that are mostly filler and sadness

Massive Honking Safety Concerns I am not putting in a spoiler because it's important:
Jack says to cook the sausages, then let them cool and chop them up, then reheat them in the stew. At the end she says you can reheat the leftovers the next day with pasta, so that's 3 cycles of heating /cooling. Better to not bother cooling the sausages in order to cut them, or just not cut them at all, and make sure they're cooked through before serving.
While you can reheat leftovers a couple of times, I would be very wary of eating sausage meat that has been heated then cooled, then heated then cooled and then reheated once more. It puts it in the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth at least three times over, and that's not something I want to risk, especially with minced meat that has a higher chance of baterial contamination in the first place.
(Confession time: I live less than 5 miles from Wishaw, home to the deadliest outbreak of e coli in the modern age. 21 people died in 1996 because a butcher didn't store meat correctly. I have very strong opinions about this sort of thing, and so do most people here who lived through that dreadful event.)

Spoiler: Overal Thoughts and Scores

Conclusion
Overall 2.5/5

Ingredients: 4/5 These are all genuinely excellent ingredients. But a spoonful of cornflour, some pepper/fennel/mixed herbs, the full can of tomatoes and a good glug of red wine vinegar would have pepped it up significantly, and barely added anything to the price
Taste/Texture: 2.5/5. It was perfectly edible, just a little undercooked and watery.
Visual Appeal: 2/5 Stew never looks very pretty. This was...not a very pretty stew even by stew standards.
Cost: 2/5. This is kind of pricey, mainly because of the snausage, that's on me. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Recipe: 2/5. It's not a cassoulet, it's a stew, stop trying to sound fancy, Jack. Also, it would have been 3/5 because the sausages were browned nicely, the onions, carrots, garlic got sauted correctly...but those instructions regarding the heating/cooling of pork gave me the horrors.

But wait, there's more! Energy Saving Cassoulet Stew

So, I made my dish, and it was average. But in my reading of Jacks' recipes I noticed a funny old thing. For in the Guardian newspaper in 2015 Jack wrote the following recipe:

Jack Monroe’s energy-saving cassoulet – recipe

Slow-cooked dishes don’t need to sit on the hob or in the oven for hours. After a short blast of heat, they can be tightly wrapped in a towel and left to carry on cooking at no cost

www.theguardian.com

And it's pretty much the exact same recipe as the Sausage and Beans Cassoulet Stew, save for the fact that the following ingredients are also added

• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 3 stalks rosemary, or 1 tbsp mixed dried herbs
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar or cider vinegar
• 2 slices white bread, grated into breadcrumbs (except I didn't have non-gluten free bread and my fellow taste-tester is celiac, so I made a slurry of cornflour/water and added that as a thickener instead)

And after being cooked on the hob, it is placed for 3 hours in an oven, or wrapped tightly in a towel/dressing gown and placed in a box for 3 hours. The towel/dressing gown will conserve the heat, allowing your cassoulet to carry on cooking at no extra cost, Jack says.

Well. Darlings. I had to give it a shot, didn't I?

Spoiler: Method/Recipe

To the base stew (as detailed in my post above) which was still on the hob, I added the extra herbs and the red wine vinegar. It was very exciting to be adding extra herbs to the dish, I found myself growing quite jolly as I prepared my Dressing Gown Cooking Box as follows, with a blanket, a towel and my trusty Primark dressing gown.

It does look very safe and hygenic, doesn't it?

At this point I whipped out my trusty digital thermometer (so useful if you are a paranoid wreck about cooking temperatures like me) and measured the temp. According the UK Food Standards Agency pork needs to reach an internal temperature of 75 C for 2 minutes, to kill off any harmful bugs. My pork was very comfortably above that at 84C:

Into the Dressing Gown Cooking Box! Night night, little stew! Sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite!

I put the lid on too, to give it the best possible insulation and chance of cooking.

I had to wait for 3 hours, so I then did my housework and some yoga and felt very virtuous. Then I slumped on the sofa and ate some chocolate buttons whilst watching terrible Channel 5 Christmas movies and felt less virtuous.

And then, it was time!

Spoiler: Result! I am SHOCKED

I took it out of the Dressing Gown Cooking Box, and the casserole dish was still very toasty warm. The cooking thermometer gave a very respectable temperature too! I am genuinely amazed at how well this thing held the heat!

And this is how it looks:

And gang, I think I have found the Holy Grail, the thing we thought we'd never find. This recipe, this weird, baffling, Dressing Gown Cooking Box Sausage And Bean Energy Saving Cassoulet Stew..is really nice.

The extra few ingredients and time spent snug in a well insulated box has worked magic. The tomatoes have become sweeter and have cooked down, the vegetables are soft and blended into the savoury sauce, the beans and cornflour (or breadcrumb if you so wish) have thickened the stew up nicely. And the snausage and beans are good. Maybe a little overcooked and prone to disintegration now, I think this is a recipe that would work better for a tougher and fattier meat like pork belly/shoulder, and some bigger, hardier beans (butterbeans, maybe). But still acceptable.

I fed it to my sister, who had been regarding the Dressing Gown Cooking Box with slight horror, and she confirmed it was perfectly acceptable and something she would not hesitate to make...except she would do it in her slow cooker/oven, because she's not a lunatic who would spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points and to win an imaginary war against some minor celebrity chef who nobody really cares about.

Also, she felt it needed pepper. My sister is right 50% of the time.

Spoiler: Overal Thoughts and Scores

Ingredients: 4.5/5. The addition of the extra herbs, wine and the breadcrumb/cornflour as a thickener is a great improvement. Half point removed for no mention of pepper. It needed pepper, my sister was right on that point.
Taste/Texture: 4/5. It was tasty! it was savoury and meaty and the herbs were nice. It was a little bit gloppy, and the sausage and beans were definitely overcooked, but still good. We had it with mashed potato and green beans and were extremely full and happy afterwards
Visual Appeal: 3.5/5 It's a nicer looking stew now, I must admit. Not beautiful, but okay.
Recipe: I am conflicted, gang! The recipe worked, and yet...Dressing Gown Cooking Box. It's just...weird. And a little confusing, and now I have to wash my dressing gown because it got garlic on it.
Jack does say you can put it in a low oven instead, and I think that would appeal more to normal people who don't spend a whole afternoon doing weird stuff for internet points. Also, the breadcrumbs would go all crispy on top via that method if you took the lid off for the last 1/2 hour of cooking in an oven, and that would probably be very tasty indeed.

Overall: 4/5. My shock, you could use it to move mountains.

 

[lurkerfrau]

Bringing my slop forward, slop pickers. Was going to do this tomorrow but my other half is working late so knocked this up while the kid was eating dinner.

Chocolate Pear Cake
I have never done any vegan baking so was very curious to try this particularly as a friend’s daughter has a dairy allergy. I have no reference points for vegan baking so can’t tell from the method whether it’s sensible or not. Soon find out!

Spoiler: ingredients

Had everything in but the tinned fruit (£1.05), the apple sauce (£1) and the coconut milk (£1.50) (

Spoiler: Method

I combined the ingredients slop by slop, stopping to blitz up my (drained) pears.
First up, apple sauce and oil and sugar. Hard to get this to combine fully and there’s a distinct ‘halo’ of oil round the edges.

She says to reserve the pear juice and says she immediately pours this into a glass and drinks it, diluted with water. (Like a greedy goblin, I imagine)

I give this a go too. I didn’t have any vases to hand so had to make do with a glass.

It tasted … like pear juice diluted with water.
Back to my pears

Note the lumpy texture when coconut milk is added to the mix, above. I’ve never baked with coconut milk before so don’t know if this is good, bad or neither. Couldn’t get the lumps out when stirring but maybe that’s ok.

Flour, bicarb, cocoa powder and cinamon goes in. This is way more cocoa powder than I’d usually use for a chocolate sponge cake. Three times as much in fact.

Here’s the batter. Quite lumpy but smells good. I transfer to my loaf tin and even lick the bowl.

At this point she says to put the oven on. I do and wait for what feels like ages, for it to get to the right temperature. It’s a good opportunity to gaze into the distance and question some of my life choices.

In it goes

While it’s cooking, I must admit there’s a lovely cinamonny baking smell through the house. I feel optimistic. Maybe this slopalong is the one.

After it’s been in the oven 45 mins, she says to check it’s done by inserting a clean knife. The test reveals it’s still sloppy so I return to the oven. Then begins a very frustrating period of checking the cake is done every 5 minutes. It’s not. After 20 more minutes I accept that the knife will never come out clean. I’m worried it’ll burn so I remove it and leave it to cool while I deal with my crabbit toddler.

I do the bedtime routine and wonder if I will have an edible cake to enjoy on when she’s asleep.

Spoiler: Results

Here’s my cake fresh from the oven. It’s all cracked but I can live with that.

This bit is from repeated testing to see if it’s ready

Once it had cooled, it looked not bad inasmuchas it was loaf-shaped and seemed solid rather than slop as I feared

And cut into ..

Spoiler: The verdict

It’s just really disappointing. The texture is more like a pudding or a fondant than a cake or a loaf. You can’t hold up a slice without it all falling to bits. You can’t taste the pears because it’s got far too much cocoa powder in it. You can taste cinamon but no discernible pear flavour. It tastes bitter. Bitter with a hint of cinamon.

Fraus, this is my last slop. Fun as it’s been, I am now fully convinced that the recipes don’t work. Even with my previous efforts, I’ve had the feeling I might have done something wrong along the way. But this was such a simple recipe and I followed it to the letter (apart from baking it 20 minutes longer to try and make sure it was baked through, and not slop.) The texture is wrong, the flavour is horrible.
You’d be better just melting some chocolate over your tinned pears. This is just garbage.

I give it a 1.

I will keep reading the slopathons as they are brilliantly entertaining. But I’m done trying to get an edible bake out of any of her recipes.

 

[Smol Pixel]

Roll up your sleeves and get slopping, ninnies. The Jaffa cake Mug Pudding has slopped its way into my microwave.

Spoiler: Recipe

https://tattle.life/attachments/screenshot_20221114-002754-png.1729060/

https://tattle.life/attachments/screenshot_20221114-002802-png.1729061/

Spoiler: Ingredients

5/5 All things I had in except the marmalade. But marmalade is hardly a weird ingredient so can't fault her on that.

Spoiler: Recipe

3/5 The recipe was pretty straightforward to follow. No mug size suggested so I just went with a regular mug. Possibly a bit on the small side, but no info given. I melted the chocolate spread and marmalade. Before shot (Trigger warning for Iqbal. Sorry if you're reading, Iqbal)

Melted it all together, stirred in what seemed like A LOT of oil, then milk, egg, sugar and flour.

(I mean, it's not the Groucho Club)
The flour was quite difficult to mix properly in such a small space.
View media item 3482Jack suggested that the cake/pudding would rise and then deflate. I decided to put a plate under it just in case, which Jack hadn't suggested. She also included no fire safety tips whatsoever so I figured it would be fine to put the mug in the microwave with a fork in.

JK, don't try this at home, kids.
The plate turned out to be very much needed.
View media item 3480I was then instructed to add an extra "smudge" of chocolate spread and marmalade to the top of the towering pud.

And back in the microwave it went for its final 30 seconds.
View media item 3479Watch out! It's becoming sentient!

Spoiler: Visual appeal

2/5 I mean I've seen prettier things. Jack suggests the option of adding chocolate sauce to finish, which I had on hand, but there was no way anything else was going to fit in that mug when the chocolate spread and marmalade were already making a break for it so I abandoned the chocolate sauce.

Spoiler: Texture

1/5 Stodge. With sloppy edges. Kinda claggy mouthfeel afterwards. I didn't expect it to be this firm. But it was also sludgy.(Volume up for this one!)
View media item 3481

Spoiler: Taste

3/5 I will give it to her, this is definitely reminiscent of Jaffa cakes, flavour wise. However, the more cooked bits in the middle had a definite eggy undertone and there was a bitter aftertaste (which may be the marmalade?)

Spoiler: Conclusion

It didn't taste bad and I confess I scarfed the entire thing because, um, it was chocolate. And then I felt a little sick. It was still sloppy/uncooked around the edges (I tasted the sloppy bits on their own to check they weren't just melted chocolate spread) and then very stodgy in the middle. It overflowed the mug and tbh just wasn't worth the labour intensity. I'd rather make a batch of brownies and delay my gratification by 30 mins.
I think it'll have to be a 2. Sorry(not sorry) Jack.

 

[FrumpyCat]

made no-cook pasta from TCC. When Jack is travelling for work and has no access to cooking facilities (or if she is feeling sad) this is what Jack makes, apparently.
The recipe. Not sure if the spoilers have worked[

ISPOILER]

Mostly when I stay places there is either a restaurant, or at least a vending machine that sells pot noodles. But, let's pretend there isn't

[/ISPOILER]

The ingredients and cooking conditions

Because Jack used this recipe for travelling, I tried to replicate hotel conditions.

I had a freezer bag (free) but I had to WALK to Lidl to buy some pasta because we only had fancy wholemeal pasta, and I didn't think I that was in the spirit of things. So pasta 69 pence, plus the bamboo bathmat I bought while I was there, £10.68. I carefully, gently weighed out 75 grams of pasta to put in the freezer bag.

Jack said you could add anything, so I gathered all the sachets I could find, including one marked 'do not eat'. I could not find any dried cheese, so I used a slice of processed cheese painstakingly cut in to little pieces.

I had a kettle and spoon. The largest mug I could find was problematic, as most hotels do not give you a choice of mugs. I found a mug that replicated the size of mugs I would expect to find in a hotel room


The recipe

Simplicity itself. I put the pasta in the cup, boiled the kettle, added water, stirred carefully. and quickly popped a saucer over the top.

I waited ten minutes.

Hmm, raw pasta.

Still, Jack did say it may take more time. Jack said to top up the boiling water so I did this, I drained the cooling water first. Jack didn't say to do this, but I thought I'd better.

I waited another ten minutes. I ate the peanut butter. I uncovered the pasta. Still raw. Maybe I hadn't stirred carefully enough, or I didn't cover the pasta quickly enough. Who knows?

I rinsed and repeated, ate the cheese, got distracted for 20 minutes.

Result! It was cooked. I added the marmite and stirred and consumed it like a greedy slop goblin.


The conclusion, an overall 2. It was edible, but not nice, the portion you could fit in to a hotel cup wouldn't fill you up, and it took ages to make. In fact My husband came home before I could hide the evidence.

Conversation as follows.

H: you have bought pasta. Why have you bought pasta, we already have some nice pasta. This doesn't look like nice pasta.
Me: It was for an experiment, I was making pasta in a mug.
H 'sniggers' are you trying to write a book of stupid ideas?
Me: No, it was a recipe from that Tin Can Cook book.
H:But there aren't any tins in it

 

[Toffee finger]

Last night I made Jacks Lemon Curd Sponge Puddings. I picked this recipe as I had every ingredient already so it was FREE and I thought such a simple recipe may actually work. Spoiler, it did not.

https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2013/04/05/lemon-curd-sponge-puddings-24p/

Spoiler: Ingredients

100g self raising flour
70g butter
2 eggs
50g sugar
Splash of lemon juice
8 heaped teaspoons of lemon curd

It doesn’t mention what size eggs or what kind of sugar. I went with the large eggs I had and caster sugar.

Spoiler: Process

First mix the butter and sugar. Add the lemon juice (It’s pointless adding the suggested “few shakes of lemon juice” as you can’t taste it)

Then add eggs and flour -

“Mix well with a fork or wooden spoon to create a smooth, glossy batter.”

It was fairly smooth but beating in the eggs then flour would have been better.

The method says to add a generous dollop of lemon curd and the recipe states 8 teaspoons so I added 2 teaspoons to each bowl.

Next add the cake batter on top till 2/3 full

Spoiler: Oh they’re oozing

Jack says to cook them for 30 minutes. After 10 I had a peeky mink through the oven glass and they looked like this

Well that’s the baking tray fucked

Another 10 minutes went by and they were cooked. Another 10 minutes as suggested would have burnt them

Spoiler: The Result

(just realised I used cake forks instead of spoons but all cutlery is interchangeable)

They look ok but the burnt lemon curd on top isn’t good and the sponge has a really weird texture.

Spoiler: Have this instead

Ingredients - I had everything so not sure on the cost but 6 ingredients isn’t bad. Marked down for not stating which sugar or size of egg to use. Also needs more lemon juice. 3/5

Recipe - Easy to follow but, according to google as I’m no baker, the eggs/flour should have been beaten in to avoid the eggy flavour. Plus maybe putting the lemon curd in the middle might have stopped it either oozing out or sticking to the bottom. 30 minutes cooking time is too long. 2/5

Visual Appeal - Seen worse seen better. 3/5

Texture - Like rubbery sponge but also wet and hard at the same time! 0/5

Taste - Egg. Inexplicably eggy. With the slightest hint of lemon at the end. I fear I’ll be tasting this for days like our poor @MancBee and his soup.
0/5

Overall - 1/5 DIRE. I could have just about forced it down if someone made it for me and I had to be polite.
OH rated it 0 dogshit, couldn’t have eaten it even to be nice!

 

[Lazarus]

PANGRATTATO AL POMODORO (Ve)
I start by getting out all of the ingredients, which are:

1/2 small onion
1 tbsp cooking oil
black pepper, to taste
2 medium-sized tomatoes
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tbsp sage and onion stuffing
300-400ml water
30g or 2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp light-coloured vinegar, white wine or cider are best but distilled malt vinegar will also work
1 tsp sugar or sweetener of choice

Clearly I am unable to follow a simple instruction and also bring salt (not required) and a tin of tomatoes (not required) from the cupboard.

When planning for this recipe I was going to go to the shed, get the mallet and open the tin using the mallet and knife, however it’s dark and wet outside and the outdoor light isn’t working and I know Mr Laz hasn’t picked up old man pupper Laz’s poo from earlier on so I stay indoors.

I finely slice my onion and add it to the warm oil in the pan. Realising my wooden spoon looks fairly normal, I decide to season it slightly by charring it on the big burner, aiming for a more authentic Jack Monroe experience.

I felt meticulous today so I confess that, like Jack, I cut the tomatoes into 8 pieces each.

Then added to the onions which had not yet softened despite following the instructions in the recipe.

I crumbled over my last veg stock cube knowing it was a waste.

I added the stuffing mix (never bought this before - again, I know it is a waste)

I open my tin of tomatoes before realising these weren’t in the recipe and aren’t included in the final dish. This means I’ll be making a tomato based dinner tonight. My mistake.

I realise too late that I have no tomato purée, therefore I’m throwing good money after bad adding some pesto instead.

The smoke has now cleared after charring the wooden spoon and it’s time to add the scant teaspoon of both sugar and cider vinegar.
I am in disbelief that such an insignificant amount of vinegar will make a difference to the dish, but we go…

by this point I’ve slowly added the water and now leave this to work it’s magic.
it smells vile very Italian 🤌
20 minutes pass, the “soup” is stuck to the bottom of the pan despite me stirring it regularly.

I decide not to adjust the seasoning to my taste because what is the fucking point?

instead I prepare 3 little mugs a gü pot, and a normal sized mug and the “soup” is now ready to serve

I can’t wait to ladle this into the little mug but sadly this soup is not built for a ladle, and it just kind of gets stuck

I go ahead and spoon some into the Gü pot and decide it isn’t worth the bother messing up a mug and giving myself more washing up.

I taste it, it tastes of disappointment and a pointless waste of ingredients.
Old Man Pupper Laz has recently been shouted at for eating waste off the street. I offer him some and he sniffs it before turning his nose away. I won’t keep this for Mr Laz to come home as I know it’ll turn his stomach.
I toss it into the bin, wash up and leave myself wondering what tomato based recipe of Jack’s I might cook for dinner tonight seeing as I’ve just opened a tin by accident.
Score:
Dire. Even the dog won’t eat it. It isn’t soup, it isn’t anything really.

 

[jf99]

Spoiler: PANGRATTATO AL POMODORO (Ve)

Firstly, a confession. This recipe is a twist on an Italian classic, pappa al pomodoro, which is essentially a bread-crust and tomato soup, with olive oil, salt and pepper, and sometimes garlic and basil or rosemary — depending on whose recipe you consider to be sacred. This version eschews the traditional, using dried stuffing crumbs to replace the bread and herbs. But Stuffing Crumb and Tomato Puree Soup didn't seem like a particularly appetizing recipe name, so I translated it into Italian as a nod to the original.

MAKES ENOUGH FOR 3 LITTLE MUGS, OR 1 GENEROUS PORTION

1/2 small onion
1 tbsp cooking oil
black pepper, to taste
2 medium-sized tomatoes
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tbsp sage and onion stuffing
300-400ml water
30g or 2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp light-coloured vinegar, white wine or cider are best but distilled malt vinegar will also work
1 tsp sugar or sweetener of choice

First peel and finely slice your onion and set to one side for a moment.

Measure the oil into a heavy-bottomed saucepan, preferably a non- stick one, and warm it for a moment on a medium heat before adding the onion. Season with a little black pepper and cook for 3—4 minutes, until starting to soften.

Quarter your tomatoes and add those too — when feeling meticulous I confess I cut them into eight apiece, but this may be a step too far for some people.

Crumble over the stock cube, add the stuffing and a splash of the waten Stir well, then add the tomato puree and stir again to incorporate it. Slowly add the remaining water and a scant teaspoon each of vinegar and sugar.

Bring to a simmer, then turn down the heat and continue to cook for around 20 minutes, until the stuffing has swollen and the soup is glossy and thick.

Taste it and adjust the seasoning to your liking before serving.

TO KEEP: This will keep in the fridge for 3 days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months. You may wish to add a splash more liquid if freezing, as I find some dishes go a bit 'thick' in the freezer, so I tend to loosen them a little before storing. Defrost thoroughly and reheat to piping hot throughout to serve.

As promised earlier I made this for lunch.

1. Ingredients as described...I added a bit of class with some Paxo as it was all the corner shop had in.

2. This is where my concerns first began to grow. I was feeling meticulous (ie. I took an extra 10 seconds) to cut the tomatos into eight instead of quartering them which still seemed to be too big. It seemed obvious that the onions would be much better diced considering the short cooking time, but we're following the recipe so in they went 'finely sliced'.

3. In goes the stock cube, tomato puree, stuffing and a bit of water.

4. I wasn't really sure what the point of 'slowly adding' the rest of the water was, but again we're following the recipe so in slowly it went along with the vinegar and sugar.

5. I let it cook for 20 minutes - but with the occasional stir as it seemed to thicken up very quickly despite me using the full 400ml of water in the recipe.

6. The whole lot served in a mug which isn't especially large

Review

In fairness to Jack this didn't taste as bad as I was expecting. It did however have a couple of major problems.

The first was the flavours. As above it didn't taste as bad as I was fearing, but the issue was that none of the flavours really seemed to come together. You got the tomato flavour, and the onions (see below) but the only real taste of seasoning was when you happened to get a couple of nuggets of the stuffing, because they don't really dissolve or otherwise flavour the whole dish.

The second, and bigger issue, however was the texture. As I said above, my fear when chopping the onion and tomato was that they really should have been diced up so that they would cook properly and this was definitely an issue. The tomato had just about broken down so wasn't terrible, though the skins were still a bit tough. The onions however were still very stringy and had quite a bit of crunch to them, which wasn't very pleasant as part of the overall dish.

The 20 minute cooking time is quite short for something like this anyway, but with Jack for some reason not specifying to finely dice the onion and tomato, the whole dish just didn't taste properly cooked. I managed probably slightly less than half of the mug and I really didn't want any more.

I think the main thing I came away from this thinking was simply 'why?'. I think i'd rather just have a tin of tomato soup with some bread than the effort of making this. It's the addition of the stuffing that is particularly weird for me. Surely most people are more likely to have a bit of stale bread and some dried herbs in the cupboard than a pack of stuffing that you need to open just to use a couple of spoonfuls of?

This gets a "2 - Terrible" largely because the recipe as followed gives you something that doesn't taste like its properly cooked and the stuffing just feels totally unnecessary. Calling for the tomatos to be cut in quarters (or eighths if you're 'feeling meticulous') and slicing rather than dicing the onion just smells of laziness - you save a few seconds of prep but end up with a dish that would probably be much better if you'd just done it properly in the first place.

Now fuck off x

 

[NaeDebates]

My partner has for so long struggled to understand why I have such a problem with Jack Monroe despite my ranting and raving (I think she just doesn’t listen to me in all honesty) but the slopalong has been an absolute revelation to her - chapeau ninnies! She even gets into bed at night and asks “any new slops today?!” (I know, I know, really sexy pillow talk). She totally gets NOW why I think JM is a fraud. However, she has just caught me intently watching a mug spin round in an internet stranger’s microwave and I think she thinks I’ve fully lost it. This thread is GENIUS, thanks guys

 

[overdueanadventure]

Ninnies, I give you Jack Monroe's Brown Bread Ice Cream!

Spoiler: Ingredients

Ingredients acquired from Lidl and my cupboard. The cinnamon is hiding, but it's there.

As you can see, I got started with soaking my bread with milk right away. Mmm squishy.

Spoiler: Method

- Separate egg yolks, beat until fluffy and golden.
- Add sugar > I used caster because it's the first one I saw in the cupboard, as she didn't specify any particular type. More beating.
- Add double cream > whisk until soft peaks
- Squeeze out the milk from the bread and tear into small pieces > ugh squishy
- Add the sultanas and fold both into the mix

Then into a container and sprinkle the topping of breadcrumbs, cinnamon and sugar on top. I used demerara for the topping, so was going off on my own a little there.

My sprinkling was more of a clumping, but that's probably user error

I wasn't displeased with the way it was going.

Spoiler: 4 hours later

So it looked alright.
Consistency good.
And it tasted quite nice - sweet, creamy, bready. Bready?
Yes, definitely tastes of bread, quite strange, but to be expected I suppose.
It is after all brown bread ice cream. Does what it says on the tin.

I think it could have done with maybe sweetening the bread?
Or more cinnamon through the mix rather than just in the topping, she only suggested a few pinches in that.
It was a bit bland and strange, but definitely edible. I ate it.

I'm going to hold off on giving it a final mark until I can find some other suckers volunteers to test it as well.

I'm hoping to try it out on my ex-husband tomorrow

Spoiler: Fin

I made a donation to Women's Aid.

It amused me to let them know it was a virtual event leading to the donation, although there wasn't a slopalong option oddly.

 

[Knit one Pearl one]

Sardinesca! Bit later than intended - sorry!

The mashed sardines looked very similar to the gunk that's recently been dropped on I'm A Celeb's Matt Hancock. The smell . A before and after picture of the sauce - it was still watery after 30 mins. And salty. I continued cooking for a further 15mins which helped, a little.

Jack didn't say whether to drain the sardines, but looking at the gloop in the tin, I did. She also didn't indicate whether a lid should be used during the simmering stage. I used a splatter guard. I didn't relish the thought of eau de sardine permeating the grouting.

It tasted vile. The sardines where overwhelming. It was so slimey in the mouth. The finished product is one serving.

Mr Knit asked me to rinse the pasta.

I had all of the ingredients bar the sardines which cost 43p each - @That Forensic Man, if you'd like full costings, let me know.

It's another 1 from me.

I've donated £50 of products to The Hygiene Bank.

Nutritional values per serving:

Spoiler: Nutritional Values

 

[Fleasyweezy]

Part II - the “cooking” bit

6)

Tender ones, I fear I am beyond the help of even four therapists on speed dial. Tonight, I made the banana peel pancakes & there is insufficient mind bleach to unsee the things I witnessed tonight in my own little sanctuary I have previously called home. Even the squabbling cats are too traumatised to keep up their feline warfare.

Spoiler alert; I made this exactly as per the recipe until the very end when I got a bit agitated by what was going on in my own kitchen… Also, I have no idea how to do the spoiler alert stuff so apologies for dragging unsuspecting victims to join my complete mental breakdown & very recent serious concussion (as in last hour from banging head against a convenient wall as the gloop gradually turned beige & even more unappetising)

1) Recipe

2) Finely sliced bananas (with skin as she only retrospectively informs the reader to finely chop the skin separately

3) Pop banana slices in a bowl with the milk & oil

4) Beat well with the tines (prongs) of a fork. Not entirely sure how you would beat it with anything else, like the handle, but I’m just a simpleton in the kitchen c/w our Jackie

5) Oh, I was meant to realise I should have peeled the bananas first Oh well, lucky I’ve got one of them bullet gadgets that you so helpfully suggest after I’ve mashed banana peel until my crumbly wrists disintegrated. I digress

6) Add flour & beat well to combine to a thick smooth batten (stet)


View attachment 1838917View attachment 1838918View attachment 1838925View attachment 1838929View attachment 1838933View attachment 1838936

oh FML, I even attached the wrong bloody recipe

Tender ones, I fear I am beyond the help of even four therapists on speed dial. Tonight, I made the banana peel pancakes & there is insufficient mind bleach to unsee the things I witnessed tonight in my own little sanctuary I have previously called home. Even the squabbling cats are too traumatised to keep up their feline warfare.

Spoiler alert; I made this exactly as per the recipe until the very end when I got a bit agitated by what was going on in my own kitchen… Also, I have no idea how to do the spoiler alert stuff so apologies for dragging unsuspecting victims to join my complete mental breakdown & very recent serious concussion (as in last hour from banging head against a convenient wall as the gloop gradually turned beige & even more unappetising)

1) Recipe

2) Finely sliced bananas (with skin as she only retrospectively informs the reader to finely chop the skin separately

3) Pop banana slices in a bowl with the milk & oil

4) Beat well with the tines (prongs) of a fork. Not entirely sure how you would beat it with anything else, like the handle, but I’m just a simpleton in the kitchen c/w our Jackie

5) Oh, I was meant to realise I should have peeled the bananas first Oh well, lucky I’ve got one of them bullet gadgets that you so helpfully suggest after I’ve mashed banana peel until my crumbly wrists disintegrated. I digress

6) Add flour & beat well to combine to a thick smooth batten (stet)


View attachment 1838917View attachment 1838918View attachment 1838925View attachment 1838929View attachment 1838933View attachment 1838936

oh FML, I added the wrong recipe I included one that actually does work. @admin, do I need to remove or can I cause a smoll chaos?

Anyway, here’s the correct shite

1) recipe #2

2) Heat remaining oil (low, medium, hot heat is not clear) & dollop two tablespoons at a time. (Am I actually meant to be making crumpets, two dropped scones at a time or pancakes? Send helpios)

3) Fry for a few minutes (2 mins, 3 mins? Will experiment each side)

4) Looks a bit charred though - will try cooler temperature. Turns to lowest heat

5) Hmm, no words now to describe; think I might leave it here..,

BTW important details

A) Cost - 2 x bananas at today's cost in the Co-Op; 23p but FOC as already had some in my incredibly well stocked store cupboard. Milk - 13p; however, I only had fancy milk in the fridge which meant I had to buy two pints of Co-Op milk to keep it fair. So £1.49 outlay. Flour - also 13p but this time the well stocked store cupboard told me to f’ck off & buy me own so another 65p. Two tbsps of oil - actually lost the will to live to calculate this level of granularity & the store cupboard remembered it’s manners & told me to look in the puddle next to the shed I don’t own & there it was, a free bottle of extra virgin olive oil from a kind, anonymous friend, no less. So cost is somewhere between £0.26 or about £5 if you apply the full VBI.

B) Texture - actually weirdly without any. Maybe I beat it too well

C) Taste - despite smelling promisingly of banana, it was like a cheap wine where the taste faded before it hit your tastebuds & then finished with a weird aftertaste. Maybe I should have saved the extra virgin olive oil for something better & used a different one. Clues would have been helpful.

D) all in all though, does no-one test the recipe???
Anyway, I’m off to find the details of the local (non-Trussell) Foodbank to make a donation

 

[Lazarus]

Fraus, I will pause my plans to make tragedy mash this evening. My own ED is not great at the moment; I should have recognised this sooner than I did, but I don’t think it would be helpful to me at the moment to cook this. Especially with Mr Laz away as I know what my eating habits can be like when I’m home alone. Xx

 

[crystaleyesd]

Update for the morning crowd.

I couldn't face bringing this mess to the office and feeling the judging eyes of my colleagues as I choked down my slop, so I decided to try it for breakfast. I'm usually one of those people who can eat anything for breakfast - I always wake up ravenous.

But when I retrieved the cassoulet from the fridge, it had somehow gotten worse. I'd foolishly imagined that perhaps the sugar from the Jackfruit and pears might have mellowed out the sauce overnight, but the stench was just vinegar at this stage, which is pretty impressive considering there is no vinegar (it is mentioned in the method but not in the ingredients list so who fucking knows). The slop had turned into stodge so thick you could stand a spooooon in it. My attempts at rescuing it with sugar, paprika and soy sauce failed utterly.

Instead I ate the leftover pears, as god intended, and they were nice. I'm sorry fraus, this is going in the bin

I'm furious because this could have been fine. This was never one of her super budget recipes - if you're going to put the hob on for an hour, take a couple of minutes more to cook off the wine. And why skimp on ingredients once you've got them? A proper spoonful of coffee for the marinade and a couple tablespoons of oil to properly sweat the veg would have improved this immeasurably. Instead it's pale and insipid and if I served this on TV I think I'd simply die of shame.

 

[overdueanadventure]

Hi there, today I have been mostly creating rage soup or should I say Jack Monroe's Carrot, Cumin & Kidney Bean Soup.

Taken from her instructions here https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/19/carrot-cumin-kidney-bean-soup-18p-vg-v-df-gf/

Ever since I read the post it's been itching at me - how does it come out that colour with a tin of red kidney beans in it? Which is why I finally broke today and had a go.

Spoiler: Ingreedients

I don't feel like it will make a radical difference to the outcome but I'm using frozen sliced red onion.

This is because I forgot to buy onions this week, and that's why I keep frozen onion in the freezer, so when I forget or have used up my fresh onions I still have onion to use. It's amazing, I think someone should write this hack down.

I had all the other ingredients in my cupboards so it cost me NOTHING!

Spoiler: Method

Imagine if you will, that I have written a few paragraphs about supermarkets price and politicians, and now I can begin.

It's the cold oil and chuck it in approach again.

After a few minutes, it's add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

Right oh.

Spoiler: 20 minutes later

Bean rinsing! Hurrah.

Then heat through in the soup.

After that we blend it to heck. Or don't.

Spoiler: The soup is a lie

My soup is actually a bit browner in person (a kind of digestive problems brown) than it came out on camera, so, benefit of the doubt, maybe her lighting of her soup makes it look more golden than it is in reality?

Either that, or that picture isn't the same soup she explains how to make.

Spoiler: Taste

It's not bad on first taste, but there's a bitterness as the secondary impression, kind of drying feeling at the back of the throat.
It's mostly cumin I can taste, I think. It doesn't really taste of much otherwise.

There's no seasoning added during the cooking, so that would have probably helped.

Spoiler: Score

I'm going to score it as 3, because it's edible if uninspiring.

I think if I can probably cheer it up by seasoning it, for a start.

And there you have it. Will I ever try another of her recipes? I don't think so - it just feels a bit depressing at this point, you know? It's not that the ones I have chosen have been so awful they're inedible, they're just incredibly mediocre.

I can make up mediocre recipes myself. I am NOT Jack tho. Honest, guv.

 

[SocksMagoo]

Like Jack, I gleefully announce I am working on something and then promptly forget about the promises I made.

So it's a bit late, but here's Tuna, Sweetcorn & Mushroom Pasta from Tin Can Cook.

My main annoyance reading this recipe was this particular paragraph:

I grew up eating meals made with condensed soup, as I'm sure many other people did. It's not miraculous, they're designed that way ffs. But in true Jack fashion, all soup (and cooking methods apparently!) are interchangable, so we are using regular soup and boiling it on the hob.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Spoiler: The Ingredients & Costs

You might be thinking "Socks, this recipe is called Tuna, Sweetcorn and Mushroom Pasta. Why do you have a tin of tomato soup?" Well Dear Reader, I don't fancy wasting my money so I'm going for a tin I already had.

Pasta: Free
Soup: Free
Sweetcorn: 50p
Tuna: 55p x 2 = £1.10. Jack's recipe calls for a 160g can of tuna which I couldn't find. She does state I can use 2 tins if I can spare them but I SHANT.
Total: £1.60
Grated cheese is also on the list but Jack says it's no worries if I don't have it, so I'm not worrying

Spoiler: Let's cook

Into a large saucepan goes on pasta, then soup, then I dutifully fill the tin with water and add that too. Jack tells me to refill the tin again and stand it to one side as I will need it later.

Spoiler: Tricksy timings

I bring the watery soup to the boil. A piece of macaroni stares back at me.

At this point I question my sanity.

The recipe says cook for 10-12 minutes. After 12 minutes the pasta is nowhere near cooked. Jack has further instructions for me to keep checking whether the pasta is cooked and that pasta cooked in sauce takes longer than the packet instructions and she usually multiplies the given time on the packet by 1.5. My macaroni takes 13 minutes to cook so multiplied by 1.5 gives 19 minutes cooking time. It took 22 minutes in total to cook.

Spoiler: Water mitherings

I'm supposed to add water as I need it to stop the water-soup sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning. This is how much I had left over. It's uust unnecessary.

Spoiler: Let's eat

Ratings:
Ingredients: 4, easy to get and cheap. This recipe serves four. In the pan looks like a lot of food, however you're still only getting 50g of pasta, 100g of soup, 80g of sweetcorn and 40g of tuna each.

Recipe: 0, cooking the pasta in watery soup is a terrible idea. Confusing timings for cooking the pasta.

Visual appeal: N/A if I had used mushroom soup it would have looked better so I'm not going to rate this.

Texture: 0, it's slop. Cooking the pasta first and then stirring through the soup would have been so much better. At least then the soup would be thicker and act more like a sauce. Adding the sweetcorn and tuna makes the water-soup look thicker than it actually is.

Taste: 0, It tastes of nothing. The pasta tastes of nothing. There's a vague hint of watery tomato because normal soups are not concentrated in flavour enough to withstand being diluted. I can't taste the tuna as it's disintegrated. I can taste the sweetcorn but that's only because there's so bloody much of it. More tuna and less sweetcorn would have been better.

Overall: 1. Sure it's edible compared to some of her other recipes (which is the only reason I'm not giving it a 0)but it's just not good. Poor people deserve food which is better than just "technically edible"

If she had followed her mum's process of baking everything in the oven (and using condensed soup!) I'm sure it would have been much better. I doubt she tested this recipe otherwise she would have realised the second tin of water is unnecessary. It's as if she's just imagined how the recipe could be cooked on a hob to fit her narrative of low energy cooking.

 

[Lazarus]

Lads I’ve been to the haunted hellscape, trawling tirelessly through tweets sent in Feb 22 in order to find names of those local foodbank charites who were nominated to receive the teemill income, post-tRussel. You know what I mean.
I’ll be donating to one of these during the slopalong, because my local are TT and they can get in the bin. Also these smol charities were skanked out of donations by Jack giving everything to Southend Vineyard.

Spoiler: Nominated foodbanks

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This makes me fucking furious. Everything about this is so misleading. All those kind souls giving a shout out to their local charities, hoping they’d get a slice of the pie and then Jack spends the money and months later sends <£300 to a charity on her own doorstep.