I think you’ve mentioned the wrong Blair but x@Blair-Waldorf I can't get enough of this 5 minute thing
I think you’ve mentioned the wrong Blair but x@Blair-Waldorf I can't get enough of this 5 minute thing
Another excellent spoon choice (and actually, 3 of those is quite a lot so you did very well to choke it down)Microwave mac’n’cheese appealed to me because of its simplicity. There’s even a helpful video on the BBCgoodfood 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.
View attachment 1707070
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.
View attachment 1707082
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.
View attachment 1707094
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.
View attachment 1707108
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.
Apologies @Blair-Waldorf , it should have been @BlairWaldorf86.I think you’ve mentioned the wrong Blair but x
"optimum temperature"@MavisBeacon pina colada bread
Lost the use of her hands but can still tweet prolifically.Lovely man (are you a man?) I have those thank[space]you. In my determination to be fair, I thought I should try and see if the recipe appeared in a book especially as 1) the blog recipe does not list oil in the list of ingredients for the ragu and I was (probably naively) hopeful this obvious error would have been corrected in the print version; and 2) this recipe elicited some very angry responses from the squigs which I assumed were book related.
But I guess the squigs were just angry about the whole kickstarter debacle.
So I shall press on, using the ingredients in the recipe and the method from DKL.
I particularly love the bit in this ep of DKL when she implies Matt would be a bit handsy if it weren’t for social distancing and he is all WHAT THE duck??!!
here are the angry squigs (there are several posts from angry ‘this looks dire’ squig)
View attachment 1704425View attachment 1704426
I don't want to cast aspersions on your cooking ability dearheart, you were following the recipe after all. But I'm a silly old ninnie and completely forgot to get the most important thing when I went shopping earlier - Dog food. I could have gone back out but the feral lil local urchins are going wild with fireworks, I daren't take the risk. So I cooked my dogs favourite of chicken, rice and veg in the pressure cooker. I'm not seeing an awful lot of difference .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.
View attachment 1706344
There are two pictures of this recipe: neither matches up to the instructions given.
View attachment 1706351
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:
View attachment 1706358
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 duck that. i rinsed it thoroughly, then put it together with the onion in a cold pan.
View attachment 1706366
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!
View attachment 1706372
Next add half the stock, allow to absorb and add the rest gradually until the rice is just about al dente.
View attachment 1706374
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.
View attachment 1706375
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.
Spoiler 5 with the boiling frogs had me owl champagning. chapeau!Here goes - Jack Monroe's "Cuban-inspired Beef, Red and Black bean stew".
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 duck 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 attop-upshopping, 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.
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. duck off x.
I laid out my ingredients for the crucial performative photo opportunity.
View attachment 1707272
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.
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.
View attachment 1707281
I obediently got my mise en place, washed the red kidney beans, and boiled the kettle.
View attachment 1707284
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.
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.
View attachment 1707288
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.
View attachment 1707298
duck that looks disgusting.
Back it goes into the rest of it. And now the final minute of heating to make it HOT HOT.
to try it...
I feel all kinds of sad to be honest, looking at it, but it’s not horrible in taste.
View attachment 1707398
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.
View attachment 1707331
I did work out the calories and it comes to 398 kcal per portion.
Thank you, as ever, for your consideration.
Im going to have to wait until my Old Harold is out of the house to cook mine. He’s a proper ‘foodie’ and if he sees it in progress he won’t be able to resist trying to add things to make it actually edible. Better to just serve it up to him in all its glory when he returns!I cannot wait. Mr Beacon will be cooking while I bark instructions and do commentary. I am so intrigued to see what a half soda bread half yeasted bread comes out like. I suspect disgusting
Well done dearheart on your commitment and well done for raising such a diplomatic young man.Here goes - Jack Monroe's "Cuban-inspired Beef, Red and Black bean stew".
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 duck 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 attop-upshopping, 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.
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. duck off x.
I laid out my ingredients for the crucial performative photo opportunity.
View attachment 1707272
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.
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.
View attachment 1707281
I obediently got my mise en place, washed the red kidney beans, and boiled the kettle.
View attachment 1707284
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.
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.
View attachment 1707288
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.
View attachment 1707298
duck that looks disgusting.
Back it goes into the rest of it. And now the final minute of heating to make it HOT HOT.
to try it...
I feel all kinds of sad to be honest, looking at it, but it’s not horrible in taste.
View attachment 1707398
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.
View attachment 1707331
I did work out the calories and it comes to 398 kcal per portion.
Thank you, as ever, for your consideration.
He's fine! Just a tad dramatic at times, sorry should have made that clearer@overdueanadventure and @Shimmering 10/10 for effort and 11/10 for entertainment awarded to you both. Hope you're not up all night with your sons being violently sick.
My son is like that. Show him what he could have had .He's fine! Just a tad dramatic at times, sorry should have made that clearer