Slopalong: Cooking with Jack Monroe

[Kittypops]

The slop slinging mood struck and I've gone and made the Vegetable Peelings Loaf.

Join me on my first ever Jack Monroe cooking adventure. I'm so excited!

Ingredients carefully gathered, I'm all set to get a-slopping!

Fuck me, how many peelings?

OK, so I get busy with the blending business, mmm, every time I heave the blender out to let it come up for air, I'm treated to a deliciously reverberating slluurrrppp sound. The sound you only normally hear when unblocking a drain. A sign of slop to come perhaps? Let's see! My blender keeps getting stuck in the swampy soup. Is it trying to tell me something?

Yes it is. The whole thing has become a puree! Where did I go wrong? Could it be that two apples and a large onion are just too heckin wet to give a damn about binding with vegetable peelings?

The mix is mixed. I'm like Betty Boo Doin the Doo:

I'm super excited about this next stage - pulsing the bread, chickpeas, the egg, the cheese and all the tasty seasoning as it'll no doubt add some essential heft into the runny brew. Oh look, the chickpea liquid goes in too, because more wet stuff is exactly what this recipe needs. Fraus, Herren, I'm starting to worry:

Next stage... I see mention made to "lightly grease" a loaf Tin. Hold up, there's no mention of grease being needed in the recipe. Do you think I'm made of money and have grease on tap?

I press it into my oven dish. You know when you make papier mache and it's just a bit too wet and you know you need more torn up newspaper? Hmm, yes,that...

I'm cooking the whole mixture in one go as I make the executive decision this is a one-and-done dish. So, into the oven it goes:

Exactly one hour is up! Time to reveal the loaf in all its glory!

I'm going in...

It smells like stuffing. I like stuffing.
It tastes... there's a taste of something, surely? Nope. A hint of something earthy, but not quite perceptible. It tastes of wet slop. It goes down like wet slop. I now need a solid slab of toast to eradicate the memory. With it being bonfire night, should anyone need something to dampen down some flames, I have just the thing.

Score: 1. Dire.

 

[HaveTinCanRattle]

Half way stage lads

 

[HaveTinCanRattle]

I'm going in

 

[MrsMop82]

Thank you for this thread. I posted in the other thread about how I attempted sausagne three times. Truth is I had attempted a few Monroe recipes. Back in 2015 I was going through some rubbish, my mum passed suddenly and our household income was halved. I’d never really been able to cook, relying on easy stuff like pasta and cheese, salads, sandwiches and ready meals and takeout. This wasn’t going to be possible with my new budget and seeing Jacks books recommended for budget recipes I bought a few on kindle and figured I’d learn to cook and manage my money at the same time. It didn’t go well. As well as the sausagne I tried the 9p burgers, the risotto, a curry, salmon paste pasta, apricot and white choc loaf, cookies, bread. Each one failed. I got more upset each time, and believed I just must be a shit cook. I was already struggling with my mental health and this just added to the depression, and I started to get anxious around food shopping and cooking to the point I gave up and went back to eggs on toast or cheap tins of soup because I knew I couldn’t get these wrong and I wouldn’t be wasting money. So thank you for this thread, I can finally tell myself it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my fault, and hopefully in future give cooking another go.

 

[Lazarus]

Unusually for Jack, the Lazarus pesto wasn’t costed but I costed mine.

• Fresh thyme - 55p
• Fresh rosemary - £1.50 (didn’t have any in packs so I had to buy the plant)
• Fresh parsley - 55p (Jack’s recipe describes her parsley as some sticky soggy parsley but Tesco didn’t have this, even in the yellow sticker part, so I opted for curly instead of my usual flat leaf)
• 2 cloves of garlic - Jack’s recipe doesn’t suggest which size but as many of her recipes call for big fat cloves that’s what I’ve gone for. These were free as I had them at home. Jack’s recipe also calls for 4 cloves but as i wouldn’t mind a bite in the neck from Christopher Lee, I went for two.
• Cashew nuts - 100g - 58p
• Lemon - I had this in, so of course it means it was free
• 50g Hard cheese - cheese not specified so I went for provolone as I had this in. Of course, this means it was free.
• 100ml oil - Jack suggests a variety of different oils but as I wouldn’t normally use them either in cooking or in pesto, I went for my usual type of organic olive oil. This is 74p per 100ml

Jacks method suggested I should either blend my herbs, with the stalks, or use her favourite method of chopping them in a mug with scissors. As I went for the harder herb pesto, I was concerned that I didn’t have the time to chop thyme in a mug so I went for the blender

I then moved on to rinsing the cashews. This broke my heart as I really like cashews, but we are where we are.

knowing Jacks knife skills, I attempted to finely chopped garlic the way she would. I put this in the blender too. The method doesn’t say whether, once finely blending the herbs whether I should then blend them again when doing the cheese, nuts and garlic. So I took the herbs out of the blender and done the nuts, grated cheese and garlic separately.

as you can see, despite putting my blender on turbo, there were still large stalks from the thyme.

^finely chopped my garlic to a similar size to half a cashew.

ETA:
The cheese. Recipe calls for 50g. I cut mine to 49! Who am I to quibble over J1g?

once blended, the cheesy garlic nut mix looked like this. It doesn’t look like any pesto I’ve ever eaten or made before, but she’s now on her 7th cook book so I have to assume she knew what she was doing with this.

next step was to mix the nut, cheese, garlic and herbs together. As you can see, it’s an odd looking mix but I still had faith.

100ml of olive oil follows, using the pub measure thing I had at home, so this was also free.

100ml felt like a heartbreaking amount of oil to use but surprisingly the cashews could take it because they made everything else so dry.

As you can see, they’re quite absorbent.

Once fully mixed through, I identified a number of stalks but I’m sure this will be fine.

Jack hasn’t suggested how the Lazarus pesto with rosemary and thyme should be eaten. She has suggested a sage one, which I won’t be trying, would make a nice base for a pasta dish, but is silent on this one. I can’t imagine why.
Using my own autonomy I’ve decided to plate it up and eat it as one standalone meal. I’ve served it up on a plate, where, as demonstrated, I’ve made a well - a sort of hole.

I was unsure what to fill this hole with, and wasn’t sure what would compliment the overwhelming dryness yet wetness of this ‘pesto’.
in the end, there was only one choice.

An inexplicable egg. These are Tesco organic eggs but as I had them in it was free.

On a scale of 1-5 I’d mark this as 1= dire. The dish is expensive to produce, it’s wasteful, it’s untested by Jack and it wouldn’t really work well as a pesto. The nuts, despite having an unbelievable amount of oil, made the rest of it really dry. With 4 cloves of garlic, it would be inedible for my taste, but Jack’s the expert, not me.

 

[overdueanadventure]

Here goes - Jack Monroe's "Cuban-inspired Beef, Red and Black bean stew".

Spoiler: Part 1

Channelling Jack, a couple of days ago I swung a rucksack over my dessicated shoulder (I didn’t and I don't.) and walked through wind and rain (I stopped off when I was driving home from work) to Asda (Lidl, cos fuck you, Asda-shill Jack) in a state of anticipation and glee.

My painstaking stocktake of the cupboards at home had instilled in me the certainty of a thousand Jacks who’ve just announced their fathers are Marxist Leninists: I could do this, I could gather provisions for a slop!

It takes practice and experience to get this good at top-up shopping, so don’t feel bad if you can’t do it yet. I knew I had onions, oil, cumin, dried herbs & chillis, salt, pepper and white vinegar at home already, so you know, FORENSIC. (If anyone cares, I did check the prices of the herbs & spices at Lidl and they were between 69 – 75p per pot.)

I made sure to palm all the goods, feeling the heft of the tins, testing the hnngh of the vegetables. My purchases for this endeavour amounted to £4.83.

To balance my karma or chakras or conscience for my upcoming, potential(!) (let’s not pre-judge) food waste crimes, I bought some extra tins which I stuck in the foodbank collection on the way out.

Jack costed hers at 95p per portion. I think mine worked out about the same but honestly couldn't be arsed to figure out the salt/pepper etc. Just using the tins and veg, it worked out at 91p per portion.

Spoiler: Part 2

At home, in a dramatic climb-down from my self-declared shopping brilliance, I realised belatedly that I had bought Lidl’s chilli-spiced kidney beans instead of plain. Fortunately I had some Aldi red kidney beans to substitute from the cupboard.

This does NOT undermine my claims of forensic stocktaking because I bought the new kidney beans in order that my stock of ingredients can ROLL on. Fuck off x.

I laid out my ingredients for the crucial performative photo opportunity.

Spoiler: Part 3 - The inevitable sad life story anecdote

Now I’m not really a confident cook – as a SINGLE MOTHER I did all the cooking for years, but I mostly stick to things I know and that I know will get eaten. I also came from a home where my SINGLE MOTHER didn’t really like cooking and was exhausted from working full-time in a manual job – let’s just say when I left home washing lettuce came as a surprise to me.

Are we getting the violins out yet?

So I was, in the past anyway, possibly just the audience Jack is aiming at.

Spoiler: Part 4 - OK, to business.

Finely chop veg. Yes, done.
Grate carrot. Yes, done.
Grate those fat lil chubby cloves of garlic? Seemed a scary enterprise as I once grated my finger and have the physical memory of it engrained, but OK, done.

All in the pan, with the oil and salt. Flash-marinade? If you say so.

I obediently got my mise en place, washed the red kidney beans, and boiled the kettle.

And because this is a 15 minute of cooking dish, I got my timer out. 2 minutes heating the veg, then chuck in all the beans, tomatoes (chopped in the tin with a sharp knife), and the stewed beef.

Then herbs, cumin, chilli, black pepper and stock cube go in, followed by boiling water. Here I had a crisis of confidence? How much water?! No clue. No instruction. I put in about 200ml. Too much? Who knows?

Stirred, lid on and 12 minutes on the highest heat.

Then it sits for 20 minutes to think about what it’s done.

I suggest this 20 minutes should be for self-care.

Spoiler: Part 5

OK, back in the room. I lifted the lid, it did not look appetising. It kind of looks like frogs trying to escape a swamp.

I give it a stir.

She wants me to blend a quarter of it – well, it’s optional, but I’m trying to follow as I feel she’d want, so off we go.

Fuck that looks disgusting.

Back it goes into the rest of it. And now the final minute of heating to make it HOT HOT.

Spoiler: Part 6 - Right then!

to try it...

I feel all kinds of sad to be honest, looking at it, but it’s not horrible in taste.

Quite sloppy, as you’d expect, but edible.

I fed it to son as punishment for gaming all afternoon. (He's adult son now, so don't feel overly sorry for him ).

He said, diplomatically, when I discovered his bowl still full and cold, "it was OK, not my favourite consistency or favourite flavours. I kind of filled up on the bread & butter."

He seemed relieved when I told him I'd done it for an internet bet.

Score - I'm feeling generous so 3, Middle Class.

Spoiler: Epilogue

At no point did she tell me when to put in the vinegar, so it stayed out.

I did work out the calories and it comes to 398 kcal per portion.

Thank you, as ever, for your consideration.

 

[hoopdedoo]

Beery Berry Crumble. Oh dear.

Spoiler: Spoiler 1: preparation

My first clue that this was not going to go well: the picture in the instructions showed a long rectangular baking dish, while the instructions said "a deep ovenproof baking dish around 20cm in diameter". As I had neither a rectangular or round dish, I went with a deep square dish with 20 cm sides.

My big shop consisted of a tin of Sneaky Weasel strong lager (had to sub in for porter or stout as no single tins of either were available), a bag of frozen berries, and two large apples. The recipe said "frozen or fresh berries", and as we know, all berries have the same taste and texture and are interchangeable in recipes . I went for a bag of frozen diced strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and peaches.

Everything else in the recipe I had on hand, in my forensically organized stock cupboard (I make crisps and crumbles quite often). Cost of the shop was £1.89 for the beer, £5.86 for the frozen fruit, and £1 for the apples.

The biggest excitement of my shop was that when I arrived at the supermarket, there were three police cars outside and a bunch of policemen were arresting a shoplifter. Then when I was leaving, the same policemen were there, arresting a different shoplifter. Given the geographic distance I doubt this was the Essex Celebrity Squad, but you never know.

Spoiler: Spoiler 2: the filling

Nowhere in the recipe does it say to defrost the berries, if you are using frozen berries. I left the bag on the counter for an hour.

The first step is to chop the apples, dump them in a saucepan, add the berries and a tablespoon of sugar, and top it with the beer. This produces a nasty-looking mess that smells absolutely vile. The recipe neglects to mention the vital step of actually mixing all of this together, but I took the daring step of doing just that.

The instructions say to bring this evil concoction to a boil, "watching carefully as beer can get a bit excitable when heated". I had zero idea of what excited beer looks like. But I can now tell you that when mixed with fruit, it produces a pink foam that looks like some kind of ladies' "personal care" product from the 1970s.

This was then left to simmer, while I went on to the next step: the topping.

Spoiler: Spoiler 3: the topping

The topping has the standard ingredients for a crisp or crumble topping: flour, butter, sugar, and oats. The recipe doesn't specify which kinds of oats to use, which is important in this type of dish (don't ask me how I know this ). I used quick-cooking oats which is one of the kinds that will work. What rapidly became apparent, as I worked the butter into the rest of the ingredients, was that there was far too little butter to make a proper topping. The recipe says the butter should be worked into the ingredients until the mixture resembles "fine breadcrumbs". After 10 mins of mixing, it looked like......light brown flour with a few random flecks of butter.

Also, most crisps or crumbles have cinnamon or nutmeg in the topping, to punch the flavour up. But despite the 10,000-odd spice containers in Jack's spendy kitchen, there are no spices in this recipe.

I knew that more mixing was not going to improve the topping. There just wasn't enough butter in it. But I had to follow the recipe, so on to the next step.

Spoiler: Spoiler 4: into the oven

The recipe says to scoop the fruit out of the boiled beery sauce, put the fruit in the baking dish, and spread the topping on it. The fruit barely filled up one-third of the height of the "deep" baking dish. If Jack really made her recipe in the dish in the photo, there would hardly be enough fruit to cover the entire bottom. But then when I added the topping....there was too much. If I had put it all in, it would have been tumbling over the sides of the dish in the oven. So the proportion of fruit to topping is seriously out of whack.

Here's what went into the oven

and here's what was left behind. A substantial amount of topping and a saucepan of beery fruit juice. I fished a leftover blueberry out of the saucepan, and it tasted so sour I had to wash my mouth out with some water.
I won't comment on the absurdity of "budget" cooking leaving this much unused......

Spoiler: Spoiler 5: et voila

The instructions were to bake at 180c for 30 minutes "or until the top is golden and crisp". There was absolutely no way the topping was going to turn out "crisp" unless the kitchen caught on fire. So I gave it 35 minutes, keeping in mind that my oven tends to run a bit hot. After 35 minutes the top was somewhat browner and the fruit was bubbling, but I could still draw my finger through the topping like drawing a line in sand.

I couldn't be arsed to get any fancy wallpaper for the beauty shot, so here's a bowl of the finished product, sitting on some old brown parcel paper that was lying around. Not a Jack-size spoon but an actual teaspoon.

My OH and I had one spoonful each, and that was more than enough. The fruit reeked of beer, was mushy, and tasted horrid, and the topping was completely dry. I'm very grateful that my OH didn't LEAVE after this.

The final resting place of the entire sorry mess, in a composting bag. I hope the alcohol in the beer will help everything return to the earth from whence it came.

The verdict: I can pretty much guarantee that no one tested this recipe, because the proportions of both parts are way out of whack. And I really don't want to know what was going on in Jack's head to make her think that beer and berries would taste good together, much less boiled together.

My rating: HELL NO. Vile = 1.

I would like to add that although the Slopalong is great fun, making this recipe made me really angry. A crisp or crumble is very simple to create, and it doesn't have to cost a lot. Jack is supposedly helping people with limited budgets, and this recipe was so bad that all of it ended up in the compost. Not a bit of it was salveageable or edible. If someone had spent part of their weekly shopping money on this, even when fresh fruit was in season and maybe a bit cheaper, they would have wasted every penny of that spend. Jack isn't just a pov cosplayer, she's giving vulnerable people really shitty advice and actually *costing* them money rather than saving it.

 

[HaveTinCanRattle]

I'm sorry not to have been able to engage more fully as I endured my slopalong challenge. It may feel counter-intuitive to have to stir something in a slow cooker every few minutes for an hour, but we are where we are.

Ingredients:
Full marks for me here. I already had milk, sugar, peanut butter and long grain rice. Fortunately, I'd procured tap water yesterday, so we were all set.
10/10

Recipe:
Fairly clear, albeit I worried initially that the milk I had painstakingly measured would idle next the slow cooker. The method only called for the occasional splash if the "rice pudding" appeared to be sticking. Fortunately, I'd have ample opportunity for the milk. None remains.

8/10

Process:
Very hard to catch up on admin when having to stir constantly.

1/10

Texture:

Well, there's definitely a texture. Imagine eating most of a lasagne, waiting half an hour, going back for seconds and then the very next mouthful has a pube in it which curls around your epiglottis and makes you regurgitate earlier stuff. Just like that.

1/10

Taste:

Would have been almost edible without the peanut butter. However, peanut butter is the mainstay of the taste profile. So, with regret: 1/10.

Visual appeal:

Have you seen the photos? 10/10

(thanks for the broccoli love. You can substitute dandelions in a pinch)

All in all.....

2 = Terrible @That Forensic Man

God speed you, Frauen.

 

[OwlChampagne]

Today I cooked Bread, Bean & Fennel Stew

Bread, Bean & Fennel Stew, 17p

The idea of putting bread in stew is one that dates back hundreds of years, to a medieval broth known as ‘caudle’. It is both a use-up for stale bread, or crusts cut off for fussy children, and add…

cookingonabootstrap.com

A couple of points before I start:
1. Even though it would have been more authentic not to, I did wash my hands before and throughout making this, as needed.
2. I don't have any rolls of wallpaper lying around so I used wrapping paper instead. Hopefully whoever ends up getting a present wrapped in this doesn't mind a few stray crumbs.

I actually thought this looked quite nice from the recipe photo but compare what you can see in the bowl with the ingredient list:

The version in the photo has at least two different types of beans, I see some sweetcorn, cheese, and it looks a bit oily. None of that is in the ingredient list. She says in the intro that you can use any type of beans and she sometimes uses kidney beans but baked beans are best. I think it's misleading to show a photo that is not actually of the recipe as written. I followed the written instructions as closely as I could.

Step 1. Rinse the baked beans and put in a pan. This is a tomato based dish so I don't really see why you'd bother rinsing the beans. I think this was written with a tin of kidney beans in mind. But, it says rinse, and so I rinsed.

Step 2. Bring the beans, tin of tomatoes, herbs and stock to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes until the beans start to soften. Again, this was clearly not written with baked beans in mind. They were very soft straight out of the tin. Also, in the intro she says to use either fennel or mixed herbs plus some sugar, but there is no sugar listed in the ingredients so I just use mixed herbs.

Step 3. Rip the bread into chunks, mix through and heat for another few minutes.
Step 4. Enjoy! At this point I realise that the lemon juice was never used. Good job I didn't buy it just for this.

You can see this looks nothing like the recipe photo. This supposedly serves four so one portion is essentially half a slice of bread, a quarter of a tin of tomatoes and a quarter of a tin of baked beans. Yum. So filling.

Rating scale from the Wiki:
1- Dire
2 - Terrible
3 - Middle class
4 - Inhale greedily
5 - Ovary groaner

Taste: 3. It just tasted of tinned tomatoes.

Texture: 1. Snotty. Imagine eating a jar of baked-bean-on-toast flavour baby food. I think I could only eat it because I used crusts of bread so they held together ok. Slices would have just turned to slime. I had to eat a bag of crisps straight after this to apologise to my mouth and give it some flavour and crunch.

Look: 2. a dry yet gloopy looking mush dotted with baked bean skins.

Process: 3. It's a very easy recipe: rinse beans, simmer with other ingredients, add bread, eat. But this scores only a 3 because of all the inconsistencies - different ingredients mentioned in the intro, ingredient list and instructions.

Nutrition: 2. It's got carbs, fibre, protein and veg but the calories are woefully inadequate:
1 tin beans: 364
1 tin tomatoes: 88
2 slices of bread: 188
stock: 16
total = 656 so one portion is only 164 calories which is ridiculously pathetic. You'd have to eat over 12 portions of this to hit your daily calories. (ETA this is actually an overestimate because the bean sauce was all washed away)

cost: 5 I already had everything I needed so I looked up prices online. I didn't have the cheapest version of all the ingredients e.g. Kingsmill rather than value bread so you could make this cheaper if you wanted. I gave this a high score because the ingredients you need to buy in bulk (bread, stock cubes, mixed herbs) are not unusual and would easily by used up for other meals before they go off. One thing I noticed was that prices for smart price beans and chopped tomatoes seem not to have really changed since she published this at the beginning of 2018:
1 tin beans: 27p (27p for tin)
1 tin tomatoes: 32p (32p for tin)
2 slices of bread: 12.5p (£1.25 for loaf)
stock: 10.4p (£2.50 for box of 24 cubes)
1/4 teaspoon mixed herbs: 2p (£1.05 for 30g tub)
Lemon juice: not used

total cost: £5.39
cost for just amount used: 84p
cost per portion: 21p

Overall Rating: 2. Edible but boring and gloopy and not very nutritious. The worst thing about this recipe is that I think the original version that the photo is of was probably quite nice. It looks like maybe you would have fried up some onions and added different veg and multiple types of beans. But probably that worked out too expensive and so she just crossed out half the ingredients, didn't test it and called it done.

 

[OwlChampagne]

@HaveTinCanRattle I made the mistake of reading your texture thoughts while eating my concoction
Thank you for the great write-up format!

I'll try and post mine later today

 

[BlendedSlop]

It's time.

Spoiler: Slop ahoy

Ninnies, it's time for me to tackle the enticingly-named "Tinestrone."

Because I'm following the recipe to the letter, I duly tip the chopped onion and garlic into a cold pan and drizzle over the oil. This feels as unnatural to me as wearing socks on my hands and pants on my head, but who am I to question the wisdom of a 7x cookbook author who's cooked for MARY PORTAS, for fuck's sake?

I didn't mention that I had to add the carrots at the same time as the onion and garlic, but that's what the recipe said, so that's what I did. Jack tells me to stir over a medium heat for around five minutes "to start to soften the veg." The veg that's tinned? And therefore already soft? OK then.

In go the tomatoes, stock and dried mixed herbs. I'm sure half a teaspoon of herbage will impart the rich depth of flavour Jack's recipes are so renowned for. I crank up the heat until everything's bubbling, then reduce to a simmer. At this stage I'm still unsure how this is going to turn out, but the appearance of the pan contents doesn't inspire much optimism.

Now comes the most essential step in any slop recipe - The Rinsing. I'm not sure whether to douse the beans or spaghetti first, so in authentic Jack fashion, I choose the path of least effort and decide to rinse them all together.

What am I doing with my life?

With every dribble of sauce that disappears down the plughole, I fear I'm straying further from God's light. Still, I persist. Into the pan with the beans 'n' hoops, both of which retain the vestiges of a radioactive orange glow despite having been rinsed as thoroughly as Jack's Twitter followers.

I'm now instructed to cook for a further ten minutes, "until the beans have softened and it's looking good." As THE BASTARDING BEANS ARE ALREADY SOFT (this is my aneurysm) and I suspect I could wait until the heat death of the universe without managing to achieve the latter, ten minutes it is.

That'll do.
(I did a minor chaos when trying to take the pic but I think the tide mark adds to the overall effect.)

The best thing I can say about this is that it isn't completely inedible. In fact, with a bit (a lot) of tweaking, a longer cooking time and some more seasoning/flavourings, you'd probably end up with a decent pan of soup. But in its current incarnation it doesn't taste like I'm eating minestrone; it tastes like I'm eating rinsed beans and hoops in a watery, vaguely tomatoey broth. It tastes of nothing. The onions are still crunchy. The herbs might as well not even be part of the recipe, because you sure as hell can't detect them. I can't help but wonder whether not rinsing the sauce from the beans would have given it more flavour. I suppose we'll never know, because the only way I'm ever making this again is in some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario.

You can buy a tin of minestrone at Jack's favourite supermarket for as little as 55p:

In contrast, I spent £2.45 on the beans, hoops, toms and carrots (I already had the oil, garlic, stock cube and mixed herbs in). In the interests of FORENSIC costings, I probably should have bought the basics versions of the tinned ingredients, but I suspect the finished dish would have tasted even worse. Why would anyone choose to make this when the combined cost of the ingredients is more than four times as much, it takes more effort, lacks nutrients, and doesn't taste anywhere near as good as the bought versions?

I'm fortunate enough to have enough disposable income that I can afford to spend a little on experimental recipes. People on low incomes and foodbank users (who make up Jack's target audience, according to her) don't have this luxury. I'm honestly angry on their behalf, because they deserve so much better than this.

Here, you're using four tins to make two portions of a single meal. Why? No doubt Jack's defence would be "What if someone got these in their foodbank parcel and had no idea what to do with them?" To that I'd say this: you'd be better off using the tinned tomatoes, onion, garlic and herbs to make a simple pasta sauce, have the spaghetti hoops on toast, the beans on a jacket potato, and the carrots simply boiled and served with something else. OK, those are basic and not very exciting meal ideas, but at least you'd be using four tins for four different meals, not wasting them by combining them into one slop that frankly isn't worth the time, effort or expense.

Verdict: 2 - Terrible

 

[dickanddom]

Microwave mac’n’cheese appealed to me because of its simplicity. There’s even a helpful video on the BBC goodfood website where Jack takes a burning greasy mug out of the microwave and explains to the concerned presenter that she has ‘asbestos fingers’. Then she tries to move the mug using a piece of kitchen towel. Anyway, I digress.

I used penne instead of macaroni (allowed) and an old piece of Comté instead of cheddar (my own substitution). Other than that you need chicken stock, Marmite or spinach, and butter. The recipe says you need a large mug, so there was only one option here; to clean out the Sports Direct mug which normally holds my printer ink cartridges.

A rather complex process follows where you put the pasta and stock in the mug, cover it in cling film with a container or bowl under it, and blast it repeatedly in the microwave for 2 mins each time, until cooked. But here’s the twist: the recipe says that after every burst you need to take off the cling film, and pour the overflowed boiling greasy stock from the container back into the burning mug.

After three bursts of 2 mins, the pasta was still on the hard side of al dente but I’d had enough of the palaver of transferring the hot liquid.

Stirring in the cheese, butter and Marmite turns it into a gloopy mess, but to be fair that’s normal for mac’n’cheese. With the Marmite it was incredibly salty, and I could only eat 3 spoonfuls. It might have been better with spinach. I’ve since drunk two pints of water as I felt I needed to flush out my system.

(There’s also a work slop version, where you pre-soak the pasta in stock and take the cheese, oil instead of butter, and spinach or Marmite in a separate container, to cook in your office microwave. This process wouldn’t have gone down well in my office. But it’s not going to happen).

Verdict: 2 = terrible. It would have been less of a health and safety issue, and much less messy, to cook it in a saucepan. This thread is very entertaining and well organised, and as a tribute I will donate £20 worth of food to my local food bank.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

@hoopdedoo - I was really cross when I had made the horse spunk lasagne too last night which is why I haven’t posted until today.

So, I followed the recipe which mysteriously - despite being named ultimate lasagne - doesn’t appear in her book but only on her blog.

This is what I was trying to make which apparently costs 40p a portion, makes plenty of leftovers and she posted due to clamorous demand on insta. I can’t be arsed to check her Instagram but I can tell you those first two things aren’t true.

I assembled my ingredients and followed the recipe almost to the letter. I say almost because she doesn’t tell you to turn the oven on until the end of the recipe and she doesn’t include oil in the list of ingredients for the ragu as she calls it.

She tells you to put the onion and garlic in a blender so I did. She then tells you to chop the 400g of mushrooms. Obviously I put them in my food processor or I’d probably still be chopping. First you dump the onions and garlic in an unspecified amount of oil (I used a tablespoon) and then you add the rinsed lentils (which leaped about alarmingly) and then add in the mushroom mush.

You then add in red wine, a can of tomatoes, some spinach, thyme and gravy powder. Gravy powder as I’m sure everyone knows thickens things are runny. But this wasn’t runny! It was quite dry and firm. At this point the lentils are still really hard but she assured Matt of the forearms that they’d soften up in the oven.

and now onto the white sauce! As i promised, I followed what she did on DKL - which is to say I mixed milk, oil, flour and half a teaspoon of mustard (honestly, what does she have against flavour) in a jug with a stick blender and didn't cook it. Yum!

Onto assembly! She says to choose a suitable dish that looks like it will hold that quantity of slop. I chose the one I have that I use when I make things for 6-8 servings which is about A4 size. It basically made two layers. This is the first layer with the horse spunk.

Of course this quantity of horse spunk is not going to cover all the lasagne sheets on the top layer. I did try and cover it as best I could and topped with breadcrumbs and grated cheese (she doesn’t mention that in the recipe but she used it on DKL and I did want it to taste of something).

I put it in the oven and put a timer on for 40 minutes. Unfortunately my #actuallyautistic teenager was in the kitchen when the timer went off and I was watching strictly and he didn’t tell me so it was in the oven for slightly longer than 40 minutes.

As you can see, if you mix milk with flour and oil and pour it over a lasagne, it doesn’t turn into bechamel. It just sort of dissipates into the general mush leaving with you with a crispy crunchy pasta topping.

This is1/6 of it and this is a regular size dinner plate. It’s not a huge portion and it was dry and claggy with crunchy pasta on top. The overwhelming flavour is wine and thyme.

I gave another portion to my dog who was equally unimpressed. The rest of it is in the fridge. I’m going to buy some plain yoghurt and see if I can rescue it somehow but I’m not hopeful.

It cost me £8.33 to make excluding the white sauce ingredients. Per portion if you divide it into six, it’s 273 calories per person which isn’t enough to keep a sparrow going. It is quite filling though.

Final verdict: 1 - dire.

If I’d actually made a white sauce, it might have made it to a 2 or a 3 but I’m not tempted to try it again to see. I can only conclude that she entirely forgot about making the white sauce when she was on DKL and just thought she’d try and style it out rather than admitting that. Twat.

 

[Madonna_Claws]

Slopalong with Madonna_Claws presents: Tinned Potato Fishcakes

Ingredients (parsley in fridge)

Had to buy the sardines, parsley and flour. I needed the flour anyway so wasn't bought especially.

Drained and rinsed tinned spuds were cooked for 10 minutes, as per Jack's carefully, forensically tested/one and done (take your pick) method.

As I wanted to try both suggestions - with paprika and with tomato puree - I separated the potatoes equally into separate bowls. The sardine oil was mixed into the potatoes first, giving them a slimy, oily hue, then the rest. There was no way in hell I was just chucking the sardines in bones and all so I flaked them with my fingers and discarded the main bone thing in them.

Left: paprika Right: tomato puree. Photo taken before gently beating the flour in. The mixture was stiff ish - it would hold together well enough, but was tacky and slimy, probably due to the sardine oil. However, I didn't feel it warranted any more flour as it held on a spoon when upside down.

Now the cooking! As I don't have a cooker or oven I fried them. Unless you were doing an absolute shit ton of them, who puts the oven on for sodding fishcakes anyway?

Paprika fishcakes first

Finished!

Frauen, they were... distinctly average, but edible. Kudos to Jack, the paprika gave the fishcakes a nice kick and much-needed flavour. Comparing my photo with the one in the recipe I suspect I also mashed my spuds more than Jack, but who wants lumpy fishcakes (unless the lumps are fish?) Texture wise they were sloppy in the middle rather than fluffy and light. This may be due to them not being oven cooked but I doubt it - the mixture is too heavy for fluffiness.

Now for the tomato puree fishcakes.

(One for the HMHB frauen und herren there )

The tomato puree fishcakes were pretty tasteless. No hint of tomato whatever, not even a tanginess or sharpness. Texture etc was exactly the same as the paprika ones, to be expected.

Now for one of each using the George Foreman grill. This is how I would cook normal, sane, shop-bought fishcakes.

As you can see, because the mixture isn't completely solid, but just right to shape and doesn't fall off an upside down spoon as per Jack's instructions, the mixture as spread a bit. Not really an issue to be fair. There was a fair bit of fat that came out of them which I presume was the sardine oil mainly.

Reader, they were...

... a bit shit. Nicely grilled on the outside, hot but sloppy on the inside. Again, edible but meh.

Verdict: they pretty much turned out how I expected they would, and not dissimilar to my own homemade fishcakes (though I tend to tip the lot into one big frying pan and call it 'fried sardine mash'). Jack's fishcakes were edible but ultimately tasteless and slimy. A definite unsatisfying 'meh'. Adequate if I'm being generous.

Pros: Generally edible. As mentioned above, the paprika came as a nice surprise. Gave the fishcakes a very pleasant and welcome kick, and something I may incorporate into my own in the future.

Cons: couldn't taste the lemon juice or the parsley so why are they there? The consistency was sloppy (maybe add more flour?). Not sure tinned potatoes are good for such a recipe as they are heavy, waxy and filmy - instant mash would be better as long as you don't use too much water in the mixture.

My main beef however is... why sardines in oil and *then* add tomato puree? Just buy the tinned sardines in tomato in the first place! They are *far* tastier and all that tomato juice is yum and would add delicious flavour. The tomato puree fishcakes had no hint of tomato whatsoever so what.is.point? Also, I think adding the sardine oil into the mixture made it more slimy than it needed to be, plus it didn't add anything to the flavour.

Scores: 2 (I'd give it 2 1/2 if halves are allowed).

I'm off for proper food now

 

[Walkdengirl]

I have a fan oven that I normally reduce the temperature and time when cooking however as no mention is made of this (and usually in cookbooks it does talk about this) I gave it the full 45 mins. After the time was up I took it out, and it was still liquid so I put it back in for another 12 mins, however that was enough for it to sink. It then got taken out of the oven and left to cool. I then girded my loins and did like Jack did and cut a slice.
The inside was wet and soggy, there is no way that would every dry out and become a cake, and no Jack that isn't fudgy, it is just soggy
I then tasted it. It tasted of water with a bitter disgusting aftertaste. No chocolate, very little lime, and not in the slightest bit sweet. This recipe has never been made by her as it simply wouldn't work. There is no way that anyone would willingly eat this. This actually makes me really angry as if you were hard up that would be money wasted as not way could this be eaten, and if you weren't a baker you would think you had done something wrong. I suggest zooming in on the cut slice photo to see the true horror.

If in being kind I would give it a 1

 

[IcanSpellBéchamel]

I chose the brie and bacon risotto as I thought it would be reasonably edible rather than wasting food. There are two versions of this, one on her website and one in AGCJ.

First, like a hunter-gatherer, I sourced the ingredients. The recipe doesn’t specify what kind of rice (as they are all interchangeable) but is costed using long-grain white rice. I only had Basmati so that was what I used. I also had the stock cube, onion and cranberry sauce.

Sainsbury’s had the cooking bacon, but the essentials Brie was out of stock. There is no parsley in my garden so I bought some.

There are two pictures of this recipe: neither matches up to the instructions given.

This picture from the website shows the cheese (only 20g per portion) as a garnish rather than swirled in, and rather less than half a handful of parsley.
In AGCJ:

The cheese garnish has been replaced by cranberry sauce (again, the recipe calls for it to be swirled in) and there’s still almost no parsley.

Time to sling the slop! With advice from the canal, I used the book recipe and quantities.

First, chop the bacon and rinse. The website says rinse for five!!!!! minutes but I’m on a water meter so fuck that. i rinsed it thoroughly, then put it together with the onion in a cold pan.

As should be obvious to any slopslinger, wet bacon in a cold dry pan with onions will exude water as well as fat, so the onions will taste boiled.

Once the onions are cooked, we add the rice and toast it a bit in the watery fat. Delicious!

Next add half the stock, allow to absorb and add the rest gradually until the rice is just about al dente.

Boiled bacon! Delectable.
Next, swirl in the Brie and the cranberry sauce, and top with the parsley. So much parsley, but that’s the recipe.

Not having any wallpaper, I improvised with the wrapper from a Who Gives a Crap bogroll, as it felt somehow appropriate.

The result was… not good. Not awful - it’s edible - but it could be so much better without compromising on cost.

The Brie and cranberry sauce are completely overpowered by the stock, the huge amount of parsley, the bland rice and the boiled onions. The bacon is tasteless and chewy, and the rice isn’t creamy like arborio would be.

Some wine/lemon juice/pepper/butter would have helped but they are not in the recipe so I didn’t add them. I’m not going to waste this but equally I can’t eat it as it is, so it’s going in the fridge and I’ll add a few things and make arancini with it later.

In Jack’s favour, this does make two generous portions of about 475 calories each.

Verdict: Tasteless slop with chewy bits.

 

[People-huv-tae-know]

Right, the loaf is done and the verdict is in. First, the process and the recipe, with which I found a few issues.

Here I have my ingredients plus a couple of passive aggressive bonus ones.

The oil method was disgusting and messy. Personally I would prefer to use parchment paper in the tin. But as per the recipe I did use two fingers dipped in oil.

It's not clear if she means mash the bananas with the side of the fork, I assume not because it's impossible. Amazingly or not, the oily banana mixture does resemble a horrid mess.

Next, I had to prep the white powder/MSG/baking powder. I knew my old Tesco club card would come in handy one day.

Next add white powders to the banana oil gloop.

Then add flour in two stages, why I do not know. The addition of all the water made it extra runny

Fold in the raspberries and look how much it resembles vomit.

Baked for an hour and look how bloody flat it is! Despite the oven being at the right temp and following the recipe properly. It looks nothing like Jack's photo. I felt gaslight by the recipe, what did I do wrong?

It looks well baked on the outside but don't let that fool you. The inside is raw and gummy as I feared it would be It also tastes quite bland despite the berries. They do not pack a flavour punch and even after 10 minutes of cooling, the berries are burning hot. Overall it tastes of banana and not much else.

The verdict is




PS, typical Jack at the end of this recipe.

So overall, a waste of time, ingredients and an hour's worth of fuel. Husband not impressed as my food is usually tasty. I'm off to get pished now! A medicinal whisky to rejuvenate my taste buds should do the trick.

 

[traumatised sideboard]

I might do the vegan pop tarts as I can scale it down to a single tart which is coincidentally my Tinder bio.

 

[HaveTinCanRattle]

Et enfin...

 

[definitelynotvlad]

Tattlers! Whilst baby mini ninny is gently sleeping, and rain has left us housebound, me and my OH went on a culinary adventure of the Crappucino. Here’s how it went!

we had no whole milk and using SBs oat milk felt wasteful, so semi skimmed it was. I don’t think it would have made a difference. The “recipe” says to add oats, then ice, milk, coffee & sugar - I used a full tablespoon of each - why not just say “put all ingredients in and blend”? This was the blended result:

I did not need to add water to loosen it as the recipe suggested I might.
How did it taste? Dire. A full tablespoon of coffee is too much, it was incredibly bitter even with the tablespoon of sugar, it gave me a headache. It was the texture that really made it awful though, I blended it for the few seconds suggested and then did a few more for good measure, but the oat lumps remained. I don’t know what everyone else looks for in an iced coffee, but I’m not after grainy oat lumps. I think the only possible use for this drink would be as a pre-colonoscopy cleanse? OH said he would give it minus points if he could, we’re having cups of tea now instead.
Total cost: 0p as I had all the ingredients in already and therefore do not have to include the cost in my performative weekly shop.
Marks out of 5: 1/5, better as a drain unblocker or if you want to give yourself a headache for some reason.