Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans

[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.

 

[EllaEm87]

Just admitted to my Northern Irish mother about mince and onions with notions. She said “isn’t that the recipe you sent me the other day that I said looked disgusting, and you said you’d meant to sent it to MrEm?” The very same.

Shower her my post here. “A skin!” She cried! “Surely it was more than a couple of minutes?” She protested! “Why wouldn’t you just make mince and onions?” She clawed and howled into the carpet! “She’s got middle class parents! She was never poor enough to use foodbanks. And she pretended to be Vegan!” My sister hollered! (a secret tattler? I have my suspicions). Chaos has broken out in Casa del Em.

 

[heastlanda]

Scoring.
Ingredients. 4/5
As my 13 year old put it, they are all good ingredients

Recipe. 3/5
Fairly easy to follow recipe and timings pretty much spot on. 1 point knocked off for no chilli and 1 point knocked off for the chocolate. 2 squares is just too much

Visual appeal. 1/5
'It looks like diarrhoea, Mum'

Texture. 1/5
What texture?

Taste. 1/5
Like chocolate and tomato flavoured risotto. Might be appealing to some but definitely not to me.

Portion size. 1/5
This actually makes a huge cereal bowl full. Shame it's so downright fucking gopping no fucker in their right mind is actually going to want to eat it. If this was in any way edible (which it isn't) half of this would still be a sufficient portion.

Final scores:
Miss Heastlanda: 1 out of 5
Me: 1 out of 5. Its so dire its inedible.

 

[Lostcat]

Not to discourage any of the good Slopalong energy, but this recipe has pork in it. Taking partially cooked pork out of the oven and leaving it to cool for a while - no, I don't believe Jack's claims that it will continue to cook inside the dressing gown - can be really dangerous. https://www.webmd.com/diet/is-it-safe-to-eat-rare-pork

There is a thing called a Hay Box, an ancient method of cookery, where the cooking pot is heated up to boiling point, then put in a box thickly insulated with hay for several hours to finish cooking in that extremely well insulated environment, they were still doing it in rural places during WW2 to save on fuel and it seemed to work okay.

I 100% agree that a dressing gown is not a hay box though, and it's insulating properties will be nowhere near as good..

Nevertheless, I am going to do it. But I am going to do it WITH SCIENCE.

I have a Digital Thermometer Probe and am going to pop the probe into the casserole dish and monitor the ongoing temperature over the next couple of hours. I might even plot it on a graph. And will only taste it if the pork sausage has hit 75C for at least 10 minutes, I have no desire for my obituary to read "Lostcat died of e coli in the pursuit of internet hilarity".

I have other concerns about the recipe for the Sausage & Bean Cassoulet regarding the cooking/cooling/recooking of the sausages, and the reheating of them for leftovers, but will go into that once I've made the darn thing on Sunday.

 

[BlossomKil]

I made the prune smoothie.

Full confession: I own this book (Tin Can Cook), I liked the concept, I think it could be a really clever book in the right hands. I was expecting chilli with tinned beans, lentil bolognese, nice curries that sort of thing. I like tinned fruit. I had tinned prunes at a hotel breakfast buffet and they were quite nice.

First the ingredients

Prunes £1
Oats £2
Milk £2.15

I halved the recipe and had lots of everything left over, the full recipe probably uses about a third of a tin of fruit.

Method
Put it all in the blender and blend

Result

It formed a slightly lump liquid, and tasted really sweet and a bit like raw oats. It was edible but not great. I don't know the consequences of consuming raw oats.

Overall I just don't see the point. The prunes weren't that cheap, a banana would have made a better smoothie. The oats were a bit weird tasting. Given those ingredients I'd make porridge instead which would be more filling and warming.

Do people really donate tinned prunes to foodbanks? It seems like a bit of a dick move.

I will update on any side effects as they occur

 

[Amanda Lin]

I am going to try the chicken and cannellini soup. It sounds like a waste of ingredients, but I’m game.

Mmm lunch today kids is… blended un-rinsed (what a twist!) beans. Sure whole family will be thrilled and clapping for joy.

Well the executive summary is: unpleasant and salty

Chicken and cannellini Soup:

1. I found some beans to use

2. I had some concerns about wasting food in the midst of a cost of living crisis so I made a few tweaks to Jack’s recipe so the food wouldn’t have to binned. (Sorry if this breaks some slopalong rules, I will try harder next time)

3. I fried the additional items of: onion, garlic and herbs in a pan. I used a pan without a lid for the full Jack experience

4. I couldn’t bring myself to use the bean water. The best before date was 2024 but I bought these beans over a year ago during a short lived Ottelenghi phase, which I had to abandon because sourcing all the ingredients was a full time job.

5. In with the chicken stock cube water

6. I wasn’t sure about blending, but did want to try to stick to the Jack experience. Luckily I had a blender, I’m not sure what the recommended substitution is in Grifty Kitchen, perhaps run over the soup with a lawnmower.

7. soup slopping time.

Essentially it was a bowl of stock, there was some flavour from the garlic and herbs that I added. Beans don’t have a taste and by blending them their texture and heartiness was negated.

It was a pointless bowl of slop, also zero chicken taste. In conclusion I wish I had ottolenghed the beans!

 

[HotesTilaire]

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

 

[BeardyBap]

This may be the single greatest image ever recorded.

 

[Gl1tt3rUn1c0rn]

OH has just come home early. He knows nothing of this site and nothing of Jack, he doesn’t really do social media.

He’s looked in the oven and asked why I’ve got a placenta cooking in there

Berry Bread Pudding (aka Placenta Pudding)
I made this for a dinner party for 12 strangers, having travelled all day with the main course held in my bare hands as I’ve no money for a rucksack. When I arrived at the party I realised I had left the pudding at home in my kitchen 300 miles away. I had taken several trains, a pedalo and a zip wire to get here so couldn’t go back and retrieve the pudding. Whilst pondering all this I happened to step in a puddle and lo and behold a bag of frozen berries and a loaf of bread were bobbing gently in the puddle. Hallelujah the day had been saved.
Or
I had bread and frozen berries in the freezer

Ingredients
400g frozen mixed berries
8 slices cheap white bread
Spread for greasing

instructions
Cook the berries in a saucepan over a medium heat for 15 minutes don’t let it boil. Cut the bread on to quarters then each quarter in to quarters. It’s a lot of bread. So so much bread.

then add the bread pieces to the saucepan. So much bread!

leave to soak for 15 minutes

put in a greased 20cm tin she says to pour out excess juice there wasn’t any bake for 40 minutes

The pudding tastes absolutely disgusting. I stuck to the original recipe and didn’t add any sugar. Im
Not sure sugar would save it. The texture is both gloopy and solid at the same time The flavour is just weird. Kind of bready and stodgy with a weird aftertaste. Not exactly bitter like I was expecting. Just weird. I can’t quite explain it. OH won’t go anywhere near it. Unicorn offspring who will normally eat pretty much anything poked it and won’t even try a tiny bit.

 

[OwlRightsReserved]

Stollen Ice Cream

Spoiler: Ingredients

These are Jack's ingredients:

Here are mine:

Jack says that stollen and panettone are interchangeable, so I am using some panettone leftover from my office Christmas coffee morning on Friday - £2.50
Bag of sugar - £2.39 (I needed sugar anyway, so this wasn't an annoying purchase, but still)
Cream - £1.35
Eggs - £1.50
Pinch of salt - free (although watch this space)

£7.74 outlay. Probably could have been less if the Morrisons near me had anything other than Silver Spoon sugar, and I'd got cheaper eggs.

Spoiler: Recipe

First of all, Jack can't spell panettone, so there's that. 1 N, 2 Ts, Jack, like cuntt.

I separated my yolks from my whites (although lazily, so there is a bit of white left). They looked sad in my big mixing bowl.

I then had to beat until "creamy", which is not something I've ever heard used to describe egg yolks. Fluffy, yes; creamy, no.

I whisked them until they were well-whisked, what can I say? I was then instructed to add the sugar and beat until well-combined.

Is this what she meant when she was talking about creamy? I beat this a lot with an electric whisk, but as you can see from the bowl and the spatula, this is still grainy. I didn't try it because it's raw egg and sugar, but I don't imagine that texturally, it would be pleasant.

Jack then tells me to add the cream; not incrementally, or anything, but just add it so I slop it in.

Then comes the whisking, which took forever. I used an electric whisk and it felt like universes were born in the time it took to whisk to soft peaks.

I now was instructed to add the panettone. I'm not sure Jack has ever eaten panettone. The reason I say this is because she suggests thinly slicing it and then cutting it into pieces, and as anyone who has eaten panettone knows, this just produces panettone dust and is, in essence, impossible. I resorted to just breaking it with my fingers like an animal.

At this point, I chucked it in an old Carte D'or tub (fancy), and went out to watch my daughter in her choir concert, hoping the ice cream would freeze while we were out.

I still don't know when to add the salt because Jack never told me to.

Spoiler: Scoring

Visual appeal: It's just lumpy ice cream, isn't it?

Texture: Not actually as gritty as I anticipated. I also don't understand what she expected the panettone to be other than wet? It's just wet bread bits but cold. Maybe stollen works better because it's denser to begin with, I don't know. I know other people have done mince pie ice cream well etc. so I suppose the theory is there, but the outcome is poor.

Taste: It's very eggy. Not so much so that you can't eat it, but enough that you're aware of the egg taste, and to start wondering about freezing temperatures and food poisoning. I had a quick peruse of some other ice cream recipes (the one I use has condensed milk and cream, no egg) because I have a suspicion that you're supposed to temper and cook egg-based ice creams. This vanilla one from the BBC did as I would expect: the egg yolks are tempered and then cooked into a custard. Likewise this one. There are also 3 egg yolks to almost-double the liquid in the BBC one in comparison to Jack's. This might be why the egg is so strong.

It's also SO sweet. Referring to that BBC one, it's the same amount of sugar for half the liquid, plus then the dried fruit etc. It probably didn't help that I necked a large glass of red wine with it, but I'm already reaching for the Gaviscon. Frauen over a certain age, avoid it.

Just a bit much. It's not the worst thing she's invented (omg looking at you, stretchy hummus) but it's really not great, either. If the inhabitants of Owl Towers all succumb to food poisoning this week, you know who to blame.

Overall: 2 - Terrible. Also, when do I add the salt, Jack?

I have sent £50 to Refuge, who run the National Domestic Abuse Helpline.

 

[That Forensic Man]

Microwave mini egg snow balls hot chocolate

Part 1

Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans

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...

tattle.life

Substitution of mini eggs with snow balls suggested by @Lostcat, merci x
It calls for 8 mini eggs at 3.3g each so 26.4g
The snow balls are 3.9g each so 7 does the trick, but what's 1 snow ball between friends
These j1g msg scales are really handy

When I was banging on about 200ml not being a proper mug here's the proof, mug on the left is a bog standard size, it ain't full. My proper hot choccy mug on the right is about half full

It says microwave the milk (200ml) and mini eggs for 60 seconds on half power, stir then repeat thrice more.
As predicted it was just warm so I put it on high for another minute.
Finished article including 'bits' left over, they were mushy rather than hard shell pieces left and weren't keen on dissolving. I assume mini eggs would be similar.

The drink itself is another 3 - middle class, but it's not as good as the peanut butter hot chocolate version. Again can't call it terrible despite not enough heating time.
I had enough milk and snow balls to make a second batch to fill my big mug so "dangerously doubled" up.
Not sure I would choose to do it this way again, between the two recipes I would probably go for 300ml milk, 100ml water with 6+ squares and a tbsp peanut butter.
But I have had some nefarious ideas with other chocolates, watch this space

 

[ChickenPorridge]

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.

View attachment 1733670

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 -

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

View attachment 1733677

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


View attachment 1733698

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

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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

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Well that’s the baking tray fucked

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

Spoiler: The Result

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


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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

View attachment 1733743

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!

The cake slops have been the most hurtful to watch. There are not many cakes/biscuits/desserts in this world that I would turn down - even if they're a bit shit I still eat more of it than I probably should. It's quite amazing that her cake recipes have been quite this bad...like truly unappetising looking, failed, eggy, collapsed messes. Imagine being really skint and trying to make a cake for your kid or another loved one and rather than go for a 99p box mix with foolproof instructions on the back, you attempt a Jack Monroe cake recipe. Absolutely woeful.

 

[MavisBeacon]

So for that recipe, it should be 100g each of flour/fat/sugar plus the two eggs. The other way to do it to make it work would be to weigh the two eggs in their shells and then weigh out the same amount of flour/fat/sugar (so if your eggs weigh 107g each for instance, then the same weight of your flour, fat, sugar)

I remember childminding a small kid who set about making a cake by putting two eggs on one side of an old set of balance scales and then weighing the ingredients against them as her mum had taught her. I was boggled and impressed in equal measure. And the cake was delicious.

 

[allybongo]

Okay it’s been 2 weeks since I cooked the kidney bean and pineapple curry. I’ve been offline (it may or may not have been linked to the curry) but I am here with pics - I know you have all been waiting with baited breath.

I need to read the scoring system but I’ve gotta tell you it was fucking foul

The Gaviscon chaser was the best bit

 

[Nonah]

What really rinses my rice is the lack of teaching in her recipes. I think this is something I’ve just had a lightbulb moment with. You can make really good, low cost meals if you know how to cook. And it’s not difficult. So a simple recipe for béchamel would be really valuable. And how to properly cook onions (fgs Jack, please)! Rather than the interchangeable herb nonsense an actual lesson on which herbs work with what and why. Of course she’d have to know this herself and it’s probably not as much fun as chucking some random pulses and fruit together so it’ll never happen but it would be so much more valuable for people who want to cook with less.

 

[katycat]

White chocolate and brandy butter ice cream

Part 2: The Verdict

Spoiler: I'm going in.....

For context, that's a small bowl and a teaspoon. I didn't think I was going to want to eat this by the bucketload.

It was.....ok. The texture of the ice cream itself was better than I thought it would be, although it didn't have the creaminess of a custard -based ice cream. The white chocolate was a complete waste of time and money - you can't taste delicate flavours at low temperatures, so it was just an unpleasant sensation of claggy fat in the mouth. I couldn't really taste the brandy butter - maybe the faintest aftertaste, but I don't think I'd have picked up on it if I didn't know it was in there.

Results

Ingredients - not very many, and mostly easy to find. I'm not going to mark her down for the fact that my local Morrison's inexplicably didn't have ordinary white chocolate. Brandy butter is a bit niche, but it was supposed to be a 'using up' recipe, so fair enough. Overall: a respectable 3.

Recipe - not too bad. 30 seconds was too long to microwave the brandy butter, and she should have specified stirring long enough to dissolve the sugar, and what size to chop the chocolate. Also, it didn't need anything like an hour to churn. But overall, pretty easy to follow. Another 3.

Visual appeal - Better when finished than during the process. 3 again.

Texture - badly let down by the claggy chocolate chunks. 2.

Taste - in itself, not terrible. Nondescript sweetness. But since neither of the named ingredients were really discernable, I can't give it more than a 2.

Overall - it's edible, maybe even mildly pleasant. But it's a waste of the two main ingredients. You could make a custard -based vanilla ice cream for about the same price if you didn't use the white chocolate and brandy butter and spent the money on eggs and a vanilla pod instead, and it would be so much nicer. Or you could have chucked in some brandy-soaked raisins to accentuate the brandy flavour. I will eat it again, but I'll probably drown it in espresso, affogato-style, which isn't the greatest of compliments. 2.5

Spoiler: Second opinion

Someone enjoyed it, apparently. But he's basically a dustbin with whiskers, so I wouldn't place too much credence on his verdict.

I will be making a donation to the local food bank next time I'm in town (quaintly, it doesn't accept money donations except by cheque! I looked at another local alternative, but it was Trussell Trust so.....no.)

 

[GladysMcHaggis]

Good morning all.

I'm hoping to do the Carbrienara this weekend. Apologies for the delay - I have had the world's worst cold and spent the week at death's door, wailing and weeping, furiously garnering handfuls of men's size tissues and gently, painstakingly wiping my nose while working eleventy billion hours behind the scenes doing *gestures vaguely*. Please don't offer advice as whatever it is I'm sure I've completed it mate. Do you want me stop breathing, etc etc.

Yours
(Bit under the weather of Slopland)

 

[lurkerfrau]

So here they are - not overly offensive looking

the small ones are basically rock hard missiles that could smash a window with a flick of the wrist

The bigger ones are hard on the outside but still quite soft in the middle. Very stodgy. They don’t hold together particularly well. They taste of cinamon and sugar. They are basically ok?

Can I give them a 2.5?

 

[OwlRightsReserved]

Update: I am reducing my score for the ice cream to 1 because Mr Owl and I are both suffering from a heartburn that he described as "on a par with the fires of hell."