Slopalong #3 She doesn't understand beans

[wintercynic]

I think I'm ready to re-enter the fray.

I'm going to try to make Brown Bread Icecream because it's icecream: how bad can it be?

I think the answer you’re looking for is…very.

 

[Salmonshirt]

This just fills me with rage again that Jack is recommending this to people who have little money to spend. It’s infuriating. Just an utter waste of money and food (not by you tenderstem).

also these dogs have made my day.

 

[jf99]

Ok ninnies, I’m fucking bored so it’s time to have a go at the Pangrattato al Pomodoro.

Wish me luck because my knife is fucked after opening a tin with it last night.

 

[HotesTilaire]

She likes to poach fish in its own defrosting juices and bake it for an hour She hates fish

 

[Witchfinder Sargeant]

Why would you blend beans?! (Refer to thread title.)

It thickens the soup. But I wouldn't blend the whole thing, I'd scoop out a couple of ladles and blend those and stir back in.

@That Forensic Man Stick this in the "amount donated" list, please? It's a local charity that works with vulnerable mums and under fives in my borough. I put aside a tenner a month and then buy stuff with it for the children, last year it was three huge bags of toys.

 

[Geetbo]

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

The name made me want to boff my ring up so I'm not hopeful.

 

[Pocahontas]

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.

View attachment 1753451

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.

Looks dire.

 

[That Forensic Man]

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 View attachment 1758669

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
View attachment 1758676

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

I'd reserve judgement until the prunes have spoken for themselves

Go well, pal x

 

[kachoochoo]

Dear god 60g of oats? It wouldn’t be worth putting the oven on for it!
Actually Katch you might be too hard on yourself, I’m sure the cheap shop curd is 80% pectin

yup, this is the recipe which specifies 60g of oats for 2 servings. i genuinely did think it would turn out dry and crusty, instead of how it did - bland slop and a massive waste of raspberries (i don't do most fruit and veg but I love raspberries)

also here's me packing up the leftovers for our brekky tomorrow. and it looks so much worse somehow!

it tastes of nothing!!

 

[Smol Pixel]

@Lostcat pork and beans cassolulet. Thank you @That Forensic Man

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee baby donkey, will someone PLEASE teach her that herbs have different flavours?

I just want to say that these threads are perhaps the absolute pinnacle of canal madness.

Lovely microwave @Smol Pixel, did you find it in a puddle?

Actually that one is from a bin shed. My kettle is from a puddle.

I think I'm ready to re-enter the fray.

I'm going to try to make Brown Bread Icecream because it's icecream: how bad can it be?

 

[AndrewsDaddy]

Would I be allowed to make the Georgia Suppers Ham Ball for slopalong?

 

[NellieBoo]

I, OTOH, was absolutely ENTHRALLED when one of my mum's friends made the for me for the first time ever, I must have been about 10 but the memory is burned in my brain. Absolutely love the salty little buggers.

Oooh I love whitebait. Dredged in seasoned flour and fried then sprinkled with salt, pepper and lemon juice. We used to have them at home on a Saturday night (when our Mum wasn't working nights) when we were kids as a starter. Then proper rotisserie chicken, hot buttered new potatoes and coleslaw cos we were FANCY 70's and 80's kids. Happy times!

I'm not entirely convinced you can batter and fry tinned sardines either. How are you supposed to drain and remove them carefully from the tin and yet poke around to remove any large bones?

 

[DameCarlotta]

Coming here from the main thread!
Just coming here to say … not sure what possessed me to do it but I decided to make jacks fiery upside down pineapple chicken.

I am indeed one of those heathens that’s likes fruit in my dinner but let me assure you that she has the most awful palette and that recipe was definitely not tested…

I shall begin, firstly I didn’t realise slop along was a thing, if I’d have known I’d have taken pictures!

i read the ingredients and immediatly thought there wasn’t enough spice, so I did adjust them, basically added much more than jack, i also used fresh lime as I had one hanging around. I also note jack mentions she purposefully left out salt as the 1 tbsp of soy would provide ‘all the salty lip smack it needs’
IT DOES NOT.
so I whacked in plenty more soy sauce.
I added all the ingredients to my food processor (bought in the mid 90s, still going strong) as I’m can’t afford a decent bullet blender as jack suggests.
it’s impossible to make the smooth paste she describes with a food processor, the marinade resembled 6week old dish water but hey, who am I to judge!
I poured onto my chicken in a bowl (not a plastic bag as I hate plastic waste)
stired it all with a spoon and covered and shoved in the fridge over night.
upon removing the bowl the next day, well … it simply looked like I’d fridged a bowl of vomit
never the less, I plucked my chicken from said bowl and put into a dish, poured on the remaining mix, topped with the pineapple slices and put in the oven.
I would personally never cook chicken thighs for an hour on gas mark 5 with this type of marinade but I thought I’d try, NOPE!

alllllllll the liquid from the blended onion combined with the pineapple juice so that my chicken was now swimming in a sea of vomit looking grimness.
so after 45mins of cooking, I took the chicken from the dish and transferred to a baking pan, whacked the heat to gas mark 7/8 and had to cook for another 20+ mins to they and ‘dry off’ some of this mess.
couldn’t bare to waste the pint + or so of left liquid so put in a sauce pan, thickened it to make a ‘sauce’ which I still had to add salt to, even though I’d already added so much extra soy.

eventually after using a million kwhs of gas the chicken looked semi reasonable.

I served with rice and broccoli (which I over cooked as I had a nightmare placing an online order )

the flavour was ok (with the adjusted spices) it’s the ‘method‘ that ruined this for me
it was edible but I won’t make it again

 

[Anyfulekno]

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.
View attachment 1738124

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)
View attachment 1738132
Melted it all together, stirred in what seemed like A LOT of oil, then milk, egg, sugar and flour.
View attachment 1738136
(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.
View attachment 1738168
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.
View attachment 1738173
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.
View attachment 1738188

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.

 

[lurkerfrau]

Thanks for everything you've done tender one x

Scores on the doors:
Fruit Cocktail Cake - 1
Courgette Sultana and Lemon Bread - 1
Lardy cake/buns - 2.5
Chocolate pear cake - 1

With the benefit of hindsight and the memory of the heartburn that followed the lardy buns, could I bring that score down to 1.5.
And the courgette bread really needs to be a zero now.
Sometimes you need to have a few slops to gain wisdom and perspective.
Slop on

 

[Veronicaaa]

FIRST OF ALL there's no way Jack made these

This is what battered anchovies are meant to look like - more like whitebait than whatever the hell the above is.

SECOND OF ALL you can't batter tinned anchovies. Dickhead.

 

[Lostcat]

Has anyone tried the Energy Saving Cassoulet yet?

https://www.archive.is/oldest/https...14/jack-monroe-cassoulet-recipe-saving-energy

I was going to make something sausage-stew related this weekend anyway, and am fully prepared to wrap up a casserole dish in my dressing gown as part of the cooking process. In the interests of THE SLOPALONG, and of SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

 

[katycat]

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.

Yes, absolutely. I have never seen a custard - based ice cream made like this. Normally you would whisk the eggs and sugar together (no need to whisk the yolks separately first), heat the cream/ milk, then pour it on to the eggs, return to the pan and cook, stirring, over a low heat until you have a custard. The way she's done it, those eggs are raw. Really hope there is no food poisoning in the Owl household this week, though as you must all be accustomed to eating raw mice and shrews I expect your constitutions will be resilient.

 

[That Forensic Man]

Whatever you do, please be mindful that you don’t confuse Jack’s Sicilian fish stew, pictured above and with recipe here:

Sicilian style fish stew - Jack Monroe - Canned Food UK

This simple recipe is inspired by a fish stew I had in Italy a few years ago; I have made many versions of it since, and it’s beautifully versatile - you can use any beans in place of the chickpeas, wine instead of beer, and any tinned veg that takes your fancy. It’s a complete meal in a bowl...

www.cannedfood.co.uk

With her Catalan fish stew, not pictured above, but recipe here:

A Book & A Bite: A Recipe from Jack Monroe | Waterstones.com Blog

Published this week, Jack Monroe's Cooking on a Bootstrap brings together over 100 of her recipes for simple, speedy and cost-effective meals along with money-saving tips and advice. Here, we present a recipe from Jack, exclusively for Waterstones: a delicious Catalan classic with a twist.

www.waterstones.com

Here, we present a recipe from Jack, exclusively for Waterstones: a delicious Catalan classic with a twist.

The twist is she just rewrote the ingredients in different measurements and mixed them up so it looks different at a glance.

 

[Witchfinder Sargeant]

This is such dangerously bad advice, if any water or the wet towel touches the oil it's gonna flash meaning you'd drop the pan and it's gonna explode everywhere including all over you
Using a wet tea towel on the handle means all the heat will be transferred to your hand, compared to a dry towel or nothing, so you're more likely to pick it up and then realise it's too hot to hold (because of the wet towel) and then drop it.
And she's so extraordinarily fire conscious as to routinely leave flammable objects on the gas hob and put stupid little cabinet locks on doors, what an absolute twat.

I've been thinking about this and the advice is somehow more dangerous because she mentions being in the fire service, so she gives her stupidly dangerous advice a veneer of being good advice.