Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans

[HotesTilaire]

This seems like it might be the best place to ask this question, because it seems like the group has an entire collection of JM's books.

Does she tell her readers at any point how to grow cuttings (for example, the ends of green onions) to make more food and save seeds (eg squash both to eat and to grow the next year)? Anything like that?

Oh dear heart, she doesn’t even tell them all the steps in a recipe! She doesn’t tell them to warm the oil before adding the onion. She does mention repeatedly that she grows herbs and chard.

 

[colouredlines]

Brown bread ice cream is fairly common in Ireland. The bread is usually caramelised so it adds texture, but that is famously forbidden in the Monroe household.

Also, it uses proper bread, not sliced supermarket pap.

 

[Smol Pixel]

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.

Despite myself I do keep hoping these recipes will actually work. It is truly shocking how bad they all are.

 

[Lostcat]

I made these when I was a Jackolyte and they were awful. I am going to find a different recipe and try them again.

Paul Hollywood is a smug git, but this recipe of his is a good'un

Lardy cake recipe

This recipe has a generous amount of dried fruit in a rich dough that’s lighter and less sweet than most shop-bought lardy cakes.

www.bbc.co.uk

Jacks' cakes were never going to have the right layered consistency because all the lard goes in at once and is evenly worked through all the flour, so you don't get the layers/lamination.

Hollywood (the smug git) has the proper instructions to make a dough, then place 1/3 of the fat atop that dough, and fold, roll and repeat, so you get variation of dough, lard, dough, lard, etc, and it cooks to produce the lovely flaky layers.

Takes a bit longer, and takes a bit more practise, but Hollywoods' method definitely makes a better end result (the smug git).

 

[U ok hun?]

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:
View attachment 1734767
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

View attachment 1734761

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.
View attachment 1734783

Spoiler: Tricksy timings

I bring the watery soup to the boil. A piece of macaroni stares back at me.
View attachment 1734786

At this point I question my sanity.
View attachment 1734788
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.
View attachment 1734809

Spoiler: Let's eat

View attachment 1734814
View attachment 1734816

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.

The macaroni periscope absolutely sent me over the edge

 

[BlairWaldorf86]

Omg the hot oil advice! Can we add that to the list of dangerous things she’s promoted in the kitchen as well as the botulism etc?

 

[pumbilical cord]

I can imagine nefarious Pro life groups pinching that last photo for propaganda.

 

[That Forensic Man]

Monster bums get a 2 - terrible
Thank(space)you Andy

 

[Fruitjack]

I just made That Man's sweet potato, spinach & chick pea meecrowaaahveeee curry from his £1 meals selection. It is beautiful.
He's so clever because he grates the base ingredients which has the effect of allowing it to cook fast but with intense flavour. All timings and processes worked to the letter for me and my equipment. Just realised it is vegan too if you don't add the optional yoghurt (which I haven't bothered with) and it is a substantial meal for two; more for less-greedy people. Obviously it's been thoroughly researched and tested - lovely, I recommend.

ps @That Forensic Man , I donated 3 advent calendars from my kids to the local foodbank following their specific appeal plus ketchup and sugar - £4.50 cash value (I already had sugar and ketchup at home to donate so haven't included that value). Also just a minor FORENSIC detail I know you'll want corrected, my rillettes was from the Asda version of Tin Can Cook, thank you my dear x

eta: vegan clarification

yes but what you fail to understand dearheart, is that poor people can’t afford graters and some people can’t use graters due to illnesses or injuries. (These people can’t be vegan as they need to wear leather hats to help with the issue). So as you’ve just proved, Jamie’s recipes only serve to show off his enormous level of privilege.

 

[Lostcat]

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

My god. It's maybe just because I'm slightly allergic to jackfruit and associate it with pain already, but that shot of the drained jackfruit in the sieve made me retch a little. It looks so much like canned tuna that's gone mouldy, the way it shades to greenish-brown on the edges...

I salute your bravery, mon frere...or ma souer...and hope you enjoy your wine!

 

[That Forensic Man]

As if I didn't learn the hard way last time I am going to have a go at this for my lunch today. Anyone fancy taking a guess on how edible it's going to be?

View attachment 1734743

Found where all the small cloves of garlic end up

 

[katycat]

White chocolate and brandy butter ice cream

Part 1

Spoiler: Ingredients

White chocolate - £1.65
Double cream - £1.35
Brandy butter - 58p (total cost £2.25, but you only need a quarter of the tub)
Milk - free
Sugar - free
Total cost: £3.58, if you don't include the milk and sugar that I already had, or 3/4s of the brandy butter)

Spoiler: Method

First of all, she tells you to melt the brandy butter in the microwave for 30 seconds. No indication of power level. I put it in at 900w and have to rescue it after 20 seconds.

Then, you have to chop (or bash) the chocolate into small pieces. This is where the first dilemma arises. Does she mean pulverise into a dust (like you would if you were making a ganache) or is the aim to create chips that will stay solid in the finished product? I assume the latter, so I give the chocolate a good seeing-to with my big mezzaluna.

Now we have to combine the milk, cream, sugar and chocolate, and 'stir through'. That's far too casual a direction; what you really need to do here is stir until the sugar is dissolved. However, I'm going to pretend I don't know that, and just give it a cursory stir.

Now we add the brandy butter 'quickly to stop the cream splitting'. I'm puzzled by this, since the risk of splitting can't be high since she's told you to let the butter cool first, and in any case, I'm not sure why speed would be of the essence. What I suspect she is referring to is the fact that the butter has split; well, yes, that's a fairly unavoidable consequence of melting it. It doesn't look very appealing though...

Now it goes into the ice cream maker. I ignore the nonsense about 30 minutes clockwise and 30 minutes anticlockwise, and put it on for 60 minutes. A couple of minutes in, the chocolate pieces are building up ominously on the paddle - perhaps I should have pulverized them after all.

After only about 30 minutes churning, the ice cream maker gives out a kind of sighing sound I've never heard before, and the paddle stops. I race over, and see that it is pretty much done, so I scoop it into a plastic tub, and into the freezer to firm up.

Results to follow in part two!

 

[MooBelle]

Chapeau Laz, chapeau.
Although your house must stink now. May I suggest fashioning your own candle out of an old can with holes in and lighting it to help remove the smell?

 

[MancBee]

Well done @MancBee, glad to see the famous horse spunk being put to good use

I couldn't get a horse so had to improvise,

 

[Witchfinder Sargeant]

I have not been in the fire service for many years, but is carrying a hot pan of hot oil advisable? I was taught to move it off the heat and put the lid on it.
The bit about not pouring cold water on it is sound, I'll give her that.

 

[Lostcat]

That's what I was wondering. Puttanesca is pretty cheap already - even just a tomato, garlic, capers and olives sauce is tasty. And capers can be used in many other recipes, so if you have to buy a bottle or jar of them, it's not a waste.

Puttanesca literally means "in the style of a prostitute" in Italian, ie, the sauce is cheap, easy and quick.

(no, seriously, Italians use the word "puta", meaning prostitute, as a sort of all purpose profanity, so pasta alla puttanesca essentially translates to "pasta with shitty odds and ends thrown into it")

 

[Thank(space)you]

A kind friend (yes seriously) gave me a bombay bad boy pot noodle and jar of peanut butter as a joke because they know about the jack threads and this one and deemed it Jack's probable nicest "recipe"

 

[HotesTilaire]

Me when someone says “have you tried yoga?”

 

[FlirtyThirty]

Would genuinely rather buy a new oven than clean it.

 

[Nonah]

Hi sloppers
Nothing in these threads has convinced me to have a go at my own slop-along but I did put a tenners worth of Xmas treats in the local food bank collection at Tesco today so that’s my contribution sorted. I hope poorly owls feel better soon.