Category Archives: Food

Bakewell tart and pure apple and mango juice

I know that’s not an evening meal. I had my lunch today (sandwiches, etc), and then was surprised to pass what used to be a Somerfield store, to find it had been replaced with a Marks and Spencers. Brilliant.

Despite already having had my lunch, I stopped there anyway and bought some apple and mango juice (not from concentrate), and a bakewell tart from the bakery.
Very nice they both were too.

I wish they’d replace the rest of the Somerfield’s in the country with a Marks and Spencers. There’s two on Gloucester Road that could be got shot of straight away. In fact they could just replace the ones in Bristol. In fact I’m not that harsh. One of the ones on gloucester road. And I wish the residents would stop whining and get that big Sainsburys built too. Then I can stop shopping in that tiny Sainsbury’s MetroExpressDailyLocal..whatever it’s called.

Tea-Roulette and Jacket Potatoes pt2

In my day-job in IT, I had a scheduled call-out this morning in an unusual place. It’s a company staffed almost exclusively by Chinese girls.
When I arrived, I was asked to wait for a moment or so as the person I had come to see (a man), was not available yet. I was given a seat in reception and offered a drink of tea or coffee. I accepted the tea politely, and the receptionist disappeared off to get it for me.

Only after I asked, and she had disappeared (although she was still visible through a doorway, from my chair), I realised I hadn’t told her if I wanted milk or sugar or what. I don’t know why, but I decided not to mention it at this point. I would just wait and see what she brought me.
This could have been risky. It could have been earl grey, green tea, apple tea, or any number of strange other variants.

After a few mins waiting, and me watching her cross the doorway back and forth as if she were looking for something, she arrived back with my tea and a smile. She presented the tea to me in a strange round glass with no handles – much like the empty Nutella jar you can wash out and use again. It was passed to me in a very oriental way as well – much like you might pass someone a bowl of soup – held at the sides with both hands, and slight bowing of the head.

I took it from her in the same way, then relaxed into more of an English way of drinking from it – one handed, occasional slurping noises, etc.
Anyway it wasn’t bad. A bit too much milk perhaps but it was definitely tea, drinkable, and may have had a sugar added perhaps. While I don’t have sugar at home, I often prefer it at work as a lot of people are so bad at making tea it wouldn’t be drinkable without it.

Dinner tonight was jacket potatoes. I thought I’d have another go after the other night.
The remaining pre-packed potatoes are 3 days past their date, but I don’t see what can go off that quick as they’re only potatoes, so decided to take my chances.
I realised I wasn’t onto a great start after I put them in the oven and stood chatting to some of my housemates for a while, only to suddenly remember I hadn’t made the holes in them like you’re meant to.

I removed the potatoes from the oven one at a time with oven gloves on, and prodded holes in them, then went and sat at my computer. Another mistake ahoy. I’d been sat there a while when I wondered how much longer my dinner was going to take. It’s at that point I realised I wasn’t really sure when I put them in the oven.
Through a series of guesstimates, questioning how long one of my housemates had been sat in a particular chair, and trying to work out what time a tv show I didn’t know the name of, that I hadn’t really been watching, finished, and how that related to when I saw it, and when I went back to the kitchen to put the oven on – I removed them after what may have been anything from 1.25 to 2 hours.
Beans and cheese added again.

They are a lot better than a few days back when I first tried them. Cooked entirely inside, and I ate some of the skin as it was so superbly cooked.
That’s quite annoying, as now I don’t know what I did differently, and I can’t really work out an optimum time based on tonight’s, given that I’ve no idea how long they were in there.

It has proved I can cook them to a good standard though – even if I’m not sure how I did it.

pasta shells in creamy tomato sauce

Not to be disheartened by my earlier attempts at eating pasta, I decided at 21.00 tonight when I still hadn’t eaten any tea, to try some pasta again.

Last week I bought this Dolmio stuff – pasta in one bag, creamy tomato sauce in the other. You buy them separately and can mix and match as you like.

No E-numbers, no artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives (says the packets they’re in). It is described as a “healthy choice meal for one”, and apparently you should check with your parents before cooking.

So, contents of tonight’s meal is:
Pasta: 200g – “My Dolmio” Pasta Shells
sauce: 150g – “My Dolmio” Creamy Tomato Sauce

Sauce contains mostly tomatoes, cream, and mascarpone cheese. Oddly enough, it also may contain traces of peanuts. Only the sauce though – there’s no such warning on the pasta itself.

It comes with good very simple directions, and as they take different times to cook in the microwave, it even tells you to cook the sauce first, and leave that to stand while you do the pasta.

It says 45 seconds for sauce and 75 seconds for sauce. Despite me having the exact same wattage microwave, I never trust microwave times, so always add on a little bit. Plus with my recent experience of pasta going cold very quickly, I thought putting it in for a bit longer might help to combat that.
I cut the corners from the packets, put the sauce in for 60, removed, and put the pasta in for 90.

There was a funny “sparkly” sound coming from the microwave during cooking. I’m not sure what it is – maybe our microwave is on the way out, because presumably if Dolmio tell me to microwave it, it’s microwavable.

All ready from microwave, into a bowl.
The sauce smells, looks, and tastes very nice. It’s a shame there’s not a bit more of it.
However, I’d forced myself to eat maybe 1/3rd of the bowl of pasta, when even a nice sauce like that couldn’t cover up just how boring pasta really is.

Reading from the ingredients, pasta = water, egg, wheat semolina and…no..that’s it. There’s literally nothing in it.
In my problem-solving, energy conserving (lazy) brain, that seems like something extra to cook/eat for no real reason.

Someone told me once during a conversation about food, that they could “live” off of just pasta. I don’t understand it. For a while as a teenager (and possibly even into my early 20’s), I “lived” off of toast. I have to say that was considerably more interesting.

Tonight’s attempt does gets bonus points for the lack of almost-all washing up. The only washing-up you end up with at the end is one bowl and a fork. That’s not bad going.

I will say it again too. The sauce was very nice. It was so nice, I was imagining what else I could put it on while I was eating it. I bet it would taste great on a nice piece of chicken.

Thinking about that, I made myself so hungry I decided to toast some hot cross buns I purchased yesterday and have them instead of the pasta.
That’s not really a proper evening meal though is it?
I didn’t think so either, so I had a snickers bar as well.
I might have one of my healthy organic yoghurts for dessert. That will make up for it.

jacket potatoes with beans and cheese

Whenever I go to The Mall, from all of their food available, I nearly always have a jacket potato. Quick, nice, and I didn’t eat them as a child.
They’re also great at music festivals, because no matter how bad you store/cook a potato, the chances of food poisoning are considerably less than with meat of some kind. Nobody dies from eating an underdone potato. Some slightly underdone potato doesn’t keep you in the toilet for the next 2 days.

That said, I’ve always found them a sod to cook.
My first attempt at this in my old flat involved me putting one in the microwave for what seemed like forever, then removing it and finding it rock hard. Repeated blasts in microwave I think resulted in it being rock hard. Possibly even harder than it was when it went in.

I discovered a while back that Tescos sell pre-cooked jacket potatoes, with cheese already in them. You warm them in the oven for 25-30mins and then eat. They’re about 80p each though, and they taste a bit odd. I don’t know what it is – maybe something to do with the cheese. They’re not as nice as properly cooked-from-fresh ones though.

Talking of Tescos, it’s only in the last few months that I’ve realised just how poor the fruit and veg is in my local supermarket.
I went in a couple of days back, went to get a baking potato, and the loose ones were all blackened, beaten to within an inch of their lives, or a funny red colour. I’m not sure if red is good or bad, but its not the colour I was expecting. The pre-packed sets of 4 potatos “for baking” looked considerably nicer, but price wise – are clearly more expensive.
I went in this morning for some pineapple juice and went to buy some apples, and the only Royal Gala or Pink Lady varieties on display were bruised. Not beaten yet, I tried a layer below, or one of the green trays behind/beneath the visible one, and found them to be going mouldy under there.
Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t all a big con to get me to buy the fancy looking pre-packed ones.

Anyway, I got my pre-packed rip-off baking potatoes a couple of days back, so thought I’d have them for my tea with a can of baked beans and some cheese. Healthy and easy enough.
I was quite disappointed to read on the packet the potatoes came in, that the average cooking time was 75mins. It was already gone 20:00 when I was looking at starting cooking. I assumed given that I have a fan-assisted oven, I could knock 10mins off of that.
If I took a shower and watched some tv, it would fly by.

Potatoes washed, spiked, and in at 20.24.
I went for my shower – took my time. Was still out by 20:50.
Wasn’t much on tv, so started looking at some random rubbish on Youtube.
Sorted some household bills.
Finally, it was 21.20. I assumed it’d definitely be done by now.
Not really sure how to check if potatoes are done, so I cut one in half with a sharp knife, and poked the inside to see if it was rock hard. It seemed soft. Then I realised I was using an ultra sharp knife, that would probably feel soft if I poked it into a raw potato.
I repeated it with a normal knife, and it felt a bit raw.
Returned to oven.
Constant checking is probably bad for it, but by 21:40 I had waited enough, and cooked or not cooked, it was coming out.

Beans and cheese added, and eaten.
It was ok. About 95% cooked through properly, which is good I guess.
Quite nice..although not quite as nice as if someone else had cooked it for me.

I’ll cook it again – I just need to find something to do for 80mins next time, and not wait til I’m hungry before I think about cooking it.

Moon cake

I didn’t actually cook this. I was somewhere yesterday where somebody offered some slices of mooncake around. I took a piece to see what it was like. It looked quite nice, and “mooncake” sounds like something hippies might cook, but it tasted absolutely revolting.

I didn’t really know what was in it at the time, but according to wikipedia, the proper description of a mooncake is:
“A Chinese pastry traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.”

Just from the description, my sister said it sounded horrible.

As for tonight’s cooking, it’s better than last night’s, where I was naughty and skipped dinner entirely.
Tonight, I cooked the remainder of the oriental stir fry from the other night (froze the chicken in between). Was ok – chicken possibly slightly overcooked. Not sure I enjoyed it as much as before, but that could be because I was quite tired…probably because I missed dinner last night. I never learn.

Miss Millies

I’m very disappointed with myself today. I slunk back to my old ways of chatting on msn, downloading music, watching tv, sorting radio stuff, and not getting around to cooking anything at a decent hour.
About 22.30 I decided I was really quite hungry, and as I’m working tomorrow and need to be awake and make a good impression, I really can’t just skip dinner tonight entirely – because I know I’ll be exhausted tomorrow if I do.
Thing is, if I start to oven myself a pie and chips now, I won’t be eating for another hour.

After my oriental stir fry the other night, I froze half of the chicken that I didn’t use. I had intended to take it out the freezer this morning to thaw out in the fridge, and then cook the rest tonight in a repeat stir fry.
As anyone who knows me is well aware though, I’m never on-time for anything. In my rush to get to work this morning, I forgot to take it out the freezer, so I don’t really have anything much I can cook quickly.

So I decided to go to Miss Millies tonight for some greasy fried chicken and chips.
I normally go Thursday nights after my radio show (finishes at 22.00), but if I remember to take the chicken out the freezer tonight, then I can eat the rest of the oriental stir fry tomorrow night. Problem solved.

It has to be said that the food in there has gone right downhill in the last couple of months. There used to be a Spanish girl who worked there, and aside from having very random conversations where I didn’t understand half of what she said, and she didn’t understand half of what I said – she at least could cook some chips all the way through.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a crappy job and I wouldn’t want to work there (the girl from Spain moved onwards and upwards somewhere else), but tonight, half of the chips weren’t cooked properly, and I’m not convinced all the chicken was cooked either. They’re not even cooked by the same person so I don’t know what’s going on there.

It’s clearly a good reason to improve my cooking. Or at least go there on a different night.

sausage casserole

Highly unusual for me to want to cook anything after a long Monday at work, but in my excitement of trying new things last week I purchased a load more food than I made time to cook.
So I’ve wound up with some sausages that are best before yesterday’s date that I’ve decided I’m going to chance.

Ingredients:
8 pork sausages
Homepride ‘Fred’s Favourites’ Sausage Casserole 500g cook-in sauce

The majority ingredents of the sauce are: tomatoes, onion, peppers, lemon juice and vinegar.

The 500g sauce and 8 sausages is designed to feed 4, but I’m going to use the whole lot for skinny little me, because the sausages are yesterday’s date and if I cook half, sods law says I might want slightly more than half.
Plus the serving suggestion to go with this is mashed potato – I hate the consistency of mashed potato so I won’t be having that with it.

Again, I’ve decided to follow the recipe on the sauce jar, rather than the meat.
The first step of switching on the oven was easy, but right after that I am slightly lost at step 2.
“Gently fry the sausages for 10minutes or until evenly browned”.
If truth be told, the last time I attempted a fry-up, my eyes really hurt from the smoke that remained for several hours afterwards.

I poured some oil into a frying pan, and added the sausages. I had a lot of instant browning, which I think meant the oil was too hot. I removed the frying pan from the heat, and turned the gas down.
Waited a minute or so and replaced it back on the hob but then it didn’t seem like it was cooking at all really.

Apparently people love gas because you can set it to whatever slightly different amount you want – but for me this isn’t helpful. I’m used to computers, commands that you assign to one exact setting or another.

After a lot of turning the dial a tiny bit up higher and higher til it seemed like things were cooking again, I thought I was getting the hang of it, when a spit of fat from the pan caught me about half an inch below an eye.
This seems dramatically more dangerous than yesterday’s wok experience. I think I may have put too much oil in, as the fat leaking out of the sausages plus what I had initially put in, made it look like I was frying a lunch meal for someone from Glasgow and hadn’t added the Mars bars yet.

After about 10minutes of poking and turning, some of my sausages looked brown. Some didn’t. Some looked decidedly uncooked. As I’ve no idea how to tell if sausages are cooked or not, I did the only thing I could think of and cut them all in half, to check if the middle was still pink.
Some were, some weren’t. I cooked the ones that weren’t til they were darker, but then.. how do I know if the remaining half a sausage is each still pink in the middle? I slice through a few more til my expensive butcher’s choice sausages look more like the sort you get on sticks at parties, and then finally decide to take a chance and assume they’re all cooked.

That done, I had to look for a casserole dish. I’m such an idiot.
I ask a housemate if we have one. My housemate says its round with a lid.
I bring him back something.
He tells me “No, thats a saucepan”.
I wasn’t even joking – it was a kinda odd shaped saucepan.

I found it eventually, added what looked like the best-cooked sausages to the casserole dish, poured on the sauce, and whacked it in the centre of the oven.
The sauce says to cook “for 30-35minutes or until cooked through”. How do you tell if a sauce is cooked through? Or maybe they mean the sausages.. maybe the sausages weren’t meant to be cooked fully when you put them in the oven? That seems unlikely.

I gave it about 34mins, took it out, emptied some onto a plate and tasted.
Not bad. It tastes mostly like sausages in gravy. Theres other things in it, but its mostly tastes of sausage and gravy. It’s not really as interesting as the oriental thing yesterday. Then again, I’m always drawn to things that are oriental – electronics, sweets, women, the list goes on.
I might make it again, but I’d have to have something with it – roast potatoes maybe.

oriental chicken stir fry

Well I felt like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight (insert your own dance), tonight.
Knorr might have the K-now How, but I certainly don’t, so this was to be my most complicated new meal so far.
This wasn’t going to include any microwaves and if you read the instructions it sounded very simple but there were a few places I might lose it here.

Lets start with the positives though.
Ingredients:
1. 450g Tesco finest fresh, free-range, organic, chicken breast (2 breasts)
2. Knorr “Chicken Tonight” sweet & sour sauce

What it says on the side of the jar is “an Oriental inspired cooking sauce for chicken with pineapple, peppers, bamboo shoots and honey. Great with rice or noodles. Serves 4 hungry people.”
I’ll be honest, that sounds nice. I like pineapples, not sure about peppers, honey is great, and I’ve never eaten bamboo shoots but I think pandas are cute…although they aren’t interested in sex…so maybe it’ll stop my desperation where women is concerned too. Double bonus.
I love Chicken, so theres not much to go wrong there.

One slight downside to this was the price of the chicken. According to the “Chicken Tonight” jar, it is designed to go with 450g of chicken. 450g of finest tesco skinless organic, etc, etc chicken is £6.50. Seems expensive but then it’s designed to feed 4, so not too bad.
I must admit I hadn’t noticed the “serves 4” until I started typing up this. At the time I’d guesstimated 1 chicken breast, and roughly half the sauce.

So onto the cooking we go.
The directions for the sauce say “10mins in a wok” or “20mins on the hob”. Neither includes cooking time for the chicken, and I’ve never cooked fresh chicken before. I was hungry and thought 10mins sounded better than 20, so I found a wok in my kitchen.
I’ve never used a wok before either, and I’ve never fried anything since before I moved into this new house in July 2006.
I lived in a bedsit before that, and I used to fry food there every now and then, but the smoke from it used to prevent me from sleeping well, and make everything smell of smoke for ages, so I just stopped.

So in my new shared house, I was able to find a wok in my kitchen belonging to someone else. Looks like a big frying pan to me, so I poured in some oil. Don’t worry. I have seen some cookery shows – I know you’re not meant to pour loads in – just added a little bit.
While it was getting hot, I cut up one of the chicken breasts. The sauce directions say to “stir fry 450g chicken strips in a little oil until golden”. I’ve not really got any clue how long that takes, but cook until brown.. seems easy enough. Not sure what the definition of strips are..long and thin? Or some sorta rough size? I took a wild stab in the dark there.

About now, the wok started smoking so I shut all the internal doors to stop the smoke alarms going off. I was at V Festival in Chelmsford a while back this year, and someone having a barbeque said the smoke meant it was too hot. I turned the gas down a bit on the oil til it stopped.
Chicken added, cooked til brownish, sauce added. Directions say “add the sauce and simmer for 10minutes, not covered, stirring once or twice”. Those last 10 minutes seemed like an eternity. I think it was up too high to start with because it started spitting sauce all over the place.

That said, so far I’ve used one sharp knife, a chopping board, and one wok. Not looking bad on the ‘utensils used:food at end’ ratio.
It did say on the sauce jar “great with rice or noodles”. I hadn’t bought any of either so I missed them out.
It was only a few months ago that I tried eating rice for the first time in my life. Courtesy of my ex-girlfriend this was. I had no idea what it might taste like – looks like snow, and I’m not hugely keen on rice krispies. I was surprised that it didn’t really taste of anything. She’d had a slight mixup with spices and made the rest of the meal quite hot, so I probably didn’t eat a lot of it – but it was ok.

Almost exactly 10 minutes to the second the sauce went in, the heat came off, and it all went onto a plate.
I couldn’t find my emergency chopsticks I’d got free somewhere, so opted for a knife and fork. First impression – unusual. Dare I say it – “nice”. Interestingly..well.. it sounds obvious, but it really is sweet and sour together. I ate it all and felt like I could have eaten it over again. Sauce says “serves 4”? Well I’d eaten two people’s share already.
Very exciting. A food that isn’t completely boring, that I like, that someone else might want to eat, that I can cook in less time than a pie and chips. Result! 🙂

Beefy pasta-y…thing

Yesterday I forced myself to go to Tescos on my way home from work.
This is to stop me doing what I usually do – whereby I come home from work directly, get changed, have a cup of tea, chat on msn and don’t think about eating til 9pm.
So tonight, I had every intention of cooking something. Every intention I tell you.

However, while loitering in my kitchen, my new French housemate who moved in a few days ago, was cooking something that didn’t look half bad. It was spirally pasta of some sort, which had some form of minced meat in it (turned out to be beef), and he had apparently cooked a lot of it. He added a tomato sauce that came straight out of a jar and didn’t contain garlic. I questioned what sort of Frenchman he is, as he wasn’t even wearing a string of onions round his neck. He isn’t that keen on French food, it seems.
He asked me if I wanted some of what he’d cooked.

Normally I’d panic a little here, and usually decline – as I don’t like to accept generous offers of others’ cooking, as I think it seems a little rude then if I really don’t like it. I explained I wasn’t sure I’d like what he had cooked, and tried a small amount of it. Still not 100% sure, he told me he had cooked far too much and if I didn’t have some, he would end up throwing a lot of it away.
I figured if he was going to throw it away, it didn’t matter so much if I didn’t eat all that much of it, so got myself a plate and had some.

It was alright. There were a few crunchy bits in it – maybe some fat from the beef or something. It tasted quite nice, but I felt like I couldn’t eat that much of it. Plus it seemed to get cold very quickly. Maybe its a recurring design-fault with pasta. I might have to look into that.
I stopped eating it, and no sooner had he started putting it in tupperware to reheat (he said he was going to throw it out if it wasn’t eaten!), I felt hungrier.

I think at this point if I want to have some chocolate, I deserve it. I’ve tried my new food, eaten something healthy, so it can be time for something unhealthy.

Pasta – Carbonara Tortelloni

Friday nights have traditionally (for a few years anyway) been where I’ve had no real evening meal.
I would come home, relax, watch tv, and eventually about 9.30ish get hungry enough to need food. I would then snack on toast, chocolate, biscuits, or sometimes just go to bed and skip dinner altogether.
This very evening for example I got home just before 6, had a twix ice cream, a cup of tea, and a large vanilla and chocolate cookie I got from the bakery this afternoon.

So tonight I thought I’d break that habit with the second new meal of the week for me.
I went to Tescos a couple of days ago and picked up what’s described as “Carbonara Tortelloni” or “pasta”.
The reason I went for this is because I never used to like Chicken Pies when I lived with my parents. Now I like them a lot.
I’ve tried pasta before and not liked it.
When I say this to people, they normally ask “how can you not like pasta?”. I don’t know.
I’ve tried noodles (excuse my terrible cooking/food knowledge if this doesn’t count as pasta) and hated them. Supernoodles they were.
So tonight, pasta.
It’s part of Tesco’s “italian” range and it looks nice enough in the packet.
It is apparently “italian egg pasta parcels filled with pancetta, smoked ham, ricotta and Edam cheeses”.
I like cheese, I like ham.. what’s to go wrong there?

So I got it out, and read the instructions (open packet corner, add 75ml of water, microwave for 1minute, then shake, microwave for 1 minute). It sounds easy enough.
After I’d struggled to find anything that could measure 75ml of water, and decided 80ml was “close e-f**king-nough” – I measured the water, opened the packet and….well I’ll be honest I thought it smelt quite disgusting.
I’m not letting that stop me though, so in the microwave it goes.
At the mid-cooking shake it smelt decidedly different. A bit like something I’ve smelt before. Smoky bacon crisps perhaps? I actually like them, so maybe it will taste like them too and I’ll have something else I can eat.

Cooking time over, removed, left to stand for 30 seconds or so, and I nervously put an egg pasta parcel into my mouth. Tastes…well..I don’t know really. Quite bland to be honest.
I force myself to try another and not mix “bland” with “don’t like”.
I’ve eaten 10 or so of them and they’re still a bit bland. Less bland than they started but still not particularly exciting.
Also they have cooled a lot, so I whack them back in the microwave for another 30 seconds.
Is pasta meant to be hot? I don’t know.
Surely not, if its only cooked for 2minutes?

I remove it from the microwave, and place another pasta parcel in my mouth.
Still quite bland.

So I try something that has worked for me in the past when I’ve not known how else to make things taste different, but have known I didn’t like them much as they were.
When I lived with my parents, I refused all sauces. I’d have burgers and chips without ketchup or any sauce.
At some point since moving out of parents’ aged ~18yrs old, I’ve gotten a likening for HP barbeque sauce. I generally put it on everything from Birds Eye “simply cod” fillets, to new potatoes, to chicken burgers.
Most everything except sausage sandwiches (where I prefer brown sauce) get HP barbequed to the max.

Tesco’s finest carbonara tortelloni – in barbeque sauce.
It doesn’t really work. Tastes of barbeque sauce if I put enough on – other than that, bit bland.
I eat another few (probably still less than 1/4 of the 300g packet) and stop because I don’t really feel that hungry anymore.
God knows how anyone is meant to eat all of this in one sitting. Maybe they’re not meant to have the twix, biscuits, cup of tea, etc..first?

I’ll likely try it again somewhen, but I might buy a pasta sauce to go on it. I’m putting that down as a general positive – I didn’t totally hate it – but it is just as boring as anything else I might have cooked tonight, as it was.