That lasagne actually makes me want to cry. Lasagne is a beautiful thing, what has she done to it? Why would anyone think you could make a white sauce like that? If you cba to make a white sauce for your lasagne either make something else or do something like spinach & ricotta instead. Or there are things you can do with crème fraiche and an egg that aren’t authentic but aren’t actively useless.
Slopalong: Cooking with Jack Monroe
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The egg is a genius touch @Lazarus. Chapeau dear heart!
@VeniVidiVicki i was hooting at the lasagne athon, tbf horse spunk looks just like it did on telly. Omg by the time I got to the end of @Lazarus pesto I was choke cry laughing uncontrollably. Chapeau dear hearts 
Lasagne is so time consuming, it would ruin my day if I pulled it out of the oven looking like that. And that claggy nutty stalky pesto, FFS! She's surely pulling our pants down with these 'recipes'. And profiting from it.
Going completely off topic here but I watched that episode of TOTU again recently as it's one of my favourite RD short stories. I'd completely forgotten Brian Blessed was in it!
Chickpeas on to boil... until they are "soft and squishy", natch 
I thought this recipe was for using up leftovers? Why is she using raw sprouts when they'll be precooked if leftover from Christmas dinner, surely?I would pay good money to watch Paul Hollywood read this recipe and the guff she’s talking about with regards to dough. Those sprouts are going to be totally raw
I heard that American bloke who won masterchef years ago on a cookery programme yesterday saying that he made his wife lasagne when he was trying to seduce her because it is SO MUCH work. I knew it was going to be tit but I just can’t believe she lied on national tv - on a programme to help people through a really hard time - about how to make it properly. She should be cancelled for that. It’s unforgivable.
I‘m just glad I have a dishwasher.
Beery Berry Crumble. Oh dear.
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.
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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.
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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.
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This was then left to simmer, while I went on to the next step: 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.
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
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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......
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 crappy advice and actually *costing* them money rather than saving it.
I think the worst part about this one is that you could probably make a decent vegetable lasagne with those ingredients, but ofc Jack had to mess it up.
I was also going to say this. Lasagne is so delicious and so much effort, it makes me very sad to see it ruined like this!
Not surprised by the outcome, but I do feel sorry for you tender one. What waste of ingredients, time and fuel! I bet you that the lasagne in the picture were bought somewhere (notice the v visible béchamel) and styled in her kitchen.
Exactly this! The quantities sound off but the ingredients themselves are pretty standard. Mincing up the mushrooms is a fine idea. But it’s just so badly executed.
I think this is true. Also, Jack’s recipe looks to be a good 6” tall. I’ve always assumed she stacked two portions on top of each other.
Hello ninnies. I didn’t cook my allocated penance yesterday because I decided to go the anti austerity march instead. It was great. I don’t have Twitter; can someone who does please check if JM promoted or attended this event? As to the chicken liver bologslopse I will be making it this afternoon.
Totally agree! @Lazarus deserves a big, *fat* medal for trying to make the impossible work. Well done, that ninny!
I'm supposed to be doing this one, just won't have time till next week. Has another frau already completed it (mate)?
If anyone does actually need to cook on a budget I can recommend this book Amazon product
I’ve made a few things from it recently because I’m trying to eat a bit more healthily and the recipes are nourishing and genuinely quick and good. I made a butter bean and kale thing last night that we had with baked sweet potato and it was really tasty. There’s also a really nice ragu which I’m going to make into a vegan cottage pie.
I’ve made a few things from it recently because I’m trying to eat a bit more healthily and the recipes are nourishing and genuinely quick and good. I made a butter bean and kale thing last night that we had with baked sweet potato and it was really tasty. There’s also a really nice ragu which I’m going to make into a vegan cottage pie.
Ok here is the Pasta e Ceci!
The sauce is so so salty and I didnt add any. Just too much stock I guess?
The chickpeas, praise beans, are not actually soft and squishy, I dont see how they benefitted from almost 1hr of boiling time.
The real criminal here is the rinsed bloody hoops!!!! Theyre pure mush and add NOTHING to the dish - literally they disintegrate as soon as they enter your mouth. Horrible!
Oh and special shoutout to the ingredient, "vinegar". I only had rice wine and malt on hand so went with the former. Anyway I'm off to cook some garlic bread
Eta D'OH ratings...
Ingredients 2
Recipe 2
Visual appeal 3
Texture 1
Taste 2
The sauce is so so salty and I didnt add any. Just too much stock I guess?
The chickpeas, praise beans, are not actually soft and squishy, I dont see how they benefitted from almost 1hr of boiling time.
The real criminal here is the rinsed bloody hoops!!!! Theyre pure mush and add NOTHING to the dish - literally they disintegrate as soon as they enter your mouth. Horrible!
Oh and special shoutout to the ingredient, "vinegar". I only had rice wine and malt on hand so went with the former. Anyway I'm off to cook some garlic bread
Eta D'OH ratings...
Ingredients 2
Recipe 2
Visual appeal 3
Texture 1
Taste 2
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