The Best Meal I Ever Made... Ruined

Today's meal is something else.  Truly, it's delicious.  So delicious that I'd pretty much already decided it was too nice for the blog,  I didn't want to alienate my readership (oh hi Rick).


This is date fare, the sort of meal that you'd cook a few dates in when you were hoping to impress, seriously impress.  Although possibly if I was hoping to seriously impress I might have bought a garlic baguette too, maybe some rocket and perhaps a vienetta or a couple of magnums for dessert.

I took photographs, just in case.  In case tragedy befell me, which to be honest I was sure it wouldn't.  This was a sure fire hit. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

Unless...

Unless...

Umm, tastes better than
it looks

Unless the chilli and curry powder are in such similar containers that you grab the wrong one, and, knowing that the chilli powder is so old it's sort of stuck into its container, you shake vigorously and unthinkingly into your delectable saucepan meal and realise too late that you've just made a thoroughly revolting and completely inedible pesto curry.

Anyway,  I'm speeding ahead.  I'd decided to make my signature dish with a twist.  This is genuinely the one meal that I think I make well,  I'd make it for the in-laws or if I was having a friend over for dinner who I didn't know very well and couldn't get away with providing two ryvitas to start, a cup a soup main and a twix for dessert.

Dropped a bit so I know
it tasted nice pre curry powder

It's pesto, tuna and gnocchi.  "Gnocchi, huh?  That's posh." I hear you say and you're right it is posh, although you should probably get over it, the whole world is middle class these days.  It's the sort of thing you'd eat out of choice IN A RESTAURANT or if someone else was cooking.


The combo is really very tasty, put a hint of chilli in and you're laughing.  Add some sundried tomatoes and jeez louise this is the best meal you've ever made.  Add curry powder and it tastes weird.  And like curry. And you'll probably have to have peas and gravy instead.

Curried Gnocchi

What you will need:

Gnocchi

Pesto (out of a jar, only idiots would try to make their own, it's a lot like humous in that respect)

Tuna - tin of

Sundried tomatoes (mmm, dreamy)

Curry powder - lots of, a whole tub if you have.  I don't really know anything about curry leaves but at least, like, 4 handfuls of.

Recipe

1. Boil kettle (you should be familiar with this by now)

2. Put gnocchi in saucepan

3. Add boiled water

4. Wait for, like, about, 3 minutes or until gnocchi is floating.

5.  Drain water from gnocchi

6. Put gnocchi back in pan.

7.  Add tuna and a healthy dose of pesto.

8.  Quickly chop up some sun dried tomatoes because you forgot and throw them on top.

9. Stir a bit

10.  Add in absolutely shit loads of curry powder.

11.  Try to scrape out with a spoon but know that it's already too late. You've done it again.

This post could also be called, "how to destroy the only vaguely pleasant thing you've ever made" or "how to make a terrible cook even worse"

A meal without peas or vinegar - now with added vinegar

It has been brought to my attention (by myself - I'm not sure if anyone other than my sister and my friend Rick has ever actually read this blog) that all of my dishes thus far contain peas and vinegar.  Not to diminish the little green gems value because by Golly I love a pea as much as the next man, vinegar definitely even more so - but occasionally I have been known to endure a meal without them.

If you're looking to concoct a tasty late night feast then look no further than my pot noodle con toast y crisps, or for the philistines out there pot noodle with toast and crisps.

This is a simple dish that anyone out there can rustle up if willing but it does take a little time to prepare.

Firstly, you should meet up with a group of people with the intention of having one drink, sure. Start lightly with a pint of lager top (nb. may be substituted for a white wine spritzer) follow it up with another, then another, then another, then a jager bomb, then another, then a tequila (we all know that you're lying if you say that you're "allergic" to tequila to try and get out of drinking it by the way).  And relax.



By this point you should have worked up a healthy appetite, especially if you and your friend Sean selfishly took over the ENTIRE dance floor doing dirty salsa routines and the splits to the point where other people who "just wanted to come out and have a nice night" had to dance in their seats because the big kids wouldn't let them play.  Not that we're big, probably both quite small but you know what I mean. (Oh and by the way, self, just because you say "oh my god,  I must be drunk, I'm doing the splits to show off" doesn't somehow mean that you're not showing off anymore).






And so to the last tube home and dinner.

Pot Noodle con toast y crisps

What you will need

Chicken and mushroom pot noodle

Salt and Vinegar Mccoys - bugger there's vinegar in those

Bread - brown and seeded - you're a lady for Christ's sake

Butter or margarine or whatever

Recipe

1. Take lid off pot noodle

2. Boil kettle

3. Put toast into toaster

4. Open crisps

5. Eat some crisps

6. Pour water to water fill line - this isn't easy to find so just pour some water in to your pot noodle

6. Eat some crisps

7. Take toast out of toaster, realise it isn't cooked put it back for a bit.

8. Take toast out of toaster

9. Spread butter or whatever on to toast

10.  Stir pot noodle with fork.

11. Eat in bed

12.  Drink pot noodle juice

I went back to my Mum's this weekend and while I was there my wondrous niece made me a delicious plastic meal of plastic croissant and plastic "peas".  I think we all know where her culinary prowess is heading.

A Two-Course Feast for One

I feel like I should probably point out that I'm not a complete slob.  In other areas of my life I'm really very grown up; my house has a front and back garden, for example (in London, who even knew that existed?), and we have a cleaner who comes around once a week AND a water filter, so...

Tonight in honour of all things civilised and grown-up I decided to cook myself a 2-course feast.  I hear ya ladies, "but think of all the calories" but I'd been for a run so it's ok.

All day I'd been fantasing about the two Linda McCartney sausages that I had in the freezer (mmm, seasoned cereal and vegetable protein) and what I could have with them.  As I attempted to stay awake on the tube I remembered a supersize bag of tesco petits pois that I'd bought in a rare moment of forward food planning and just knew that the combination would be absolutely delicious.  But it didn't quite seem... enough.

I raided the fridge. Rocket salad?  That could work... but alas, the fridge was on too high and the rocket had frozen.  I had solid leaves (get it? solid leaves, sol-id leaves, salad leaves?  It's not even funny, don't worry about it) so that option was off the table.  Some extra mature cheese?  Perhaps but I wasn't sure it'd go with the vinegar.

I gave up.  I had nothing that would go with my sausage/pea/vinegar feast and I was hungry - Now. Unless..                                              
                                                                             
...unless I had two-courses... that's right a two-course meal for one.  Pleased with my ingenuity in the kitchen I returned to the fridge: a cheese starter, followed by a sausage and pea medley, what a treat.

A Two-Course Feast for One

What you will need:

Cheddar Cheese (it doesn't have to be ticklers mature cheddar but it helps)

Linda McCartney Sausages x 2

Tesco's Petits Pois

Sarson's Malt Vinegar

(Filtered) Water

Recipe

1. Turn grill on (setting irrelevant)

2.  Put sausages under it and turn when you remember.

3. Cut yourself a bit of cheese to eat.

4. Pour water from tap into a water filter.

5. Wait a bit.

6. Pour now filtered water into kettle and boil.

7. Place peas into saucepan.

8. Eat a bit more cheese.

9. Add water to peas and watch for a bit.

10. Eat a bit of cheese, put cheese back in the fridge.

11. Drain water from peas and but peas into a bowl.

12. Take sausages from grill and put sausages on top (doesn't matter if you've burnt them a bit).

13. Get cheese back out of the fridge and have another bit really quickly as if someone might catch you.

14.  Add gravy or brown sauce (optional).

To be honest I've finished that and I'm still a bit hungry.  I might get myself a twix which would obviously make it a 3-course meal.  Watch this space...

Delicious Vegetable Soup

(I definitely didn't make this)

Returning home for a long, hard day at the office, much like Mother Hubbard, I discovered that my cupboards were bare.  And while this is in no way unusual (well-stocked for me means bread AND milk) it did leave me in the predicament of what feast to conjure up for my dinner.

Usually I'd take a trip down to the local 7-11 (I think this might be an American thing but it's always open when I go to work and open when I get the last tube; but closed when I venture into night bus territory so...) and get myself a dreamy tinned feast, Stagg Vegetarian Chilli is my current fave.  But alas, it's the day before payday and my purse is as empty as my cupboard.

(this isn't the mix I used,  I just liked the word melange)

In a flash I recalled a bag of frozen mixed veg that I once bought at 3 o'clock in the morning but never quite got around to eating. Hurrah!  Even for me this constitutes a bland meal so I decided to have a rummage around in my ex-flatmate's cupboards (the pyscho was unceremoniously slung out a couple of month's ago) and discovered some gravy, yesss.  As you may recall from my previous post, frozen veg and gravy constitutes fine dining in my household.  But lo' the gravy is out of date... by 2 years.  Thinking on my feet I spotted a couple of oxo cubes, could it be... the packet shows a simple recipe for vegetable soup = SUCCESS.

Delicious Vegetable Soup

What you will need:

Mixed frozen vegetables

2 vegetable oxo cubes

Recipe:

1. Boil kettle

2. Pour water into a saucepan

3. Put frozen veg in saucepan

4. Tip some of the water out because you used too much

5. Crumble one oxo cube into saucepan

6. Wash hands

7. Crumble up other oxo cube into saucepan

8. Watch for a bit

9.  Put into a bowl

10.  Eat quickly (it tastes of nothing but you don't notice as much when it's really hot)

And voila! A feast fit for a dog.

Too many cooks

I'm surrounded by cooks.  

They're everywhere.  Perhaps you get to a certain stage in life where people have started to grow up and settle down and in the process have learnt to cook and eat well  My friend Rick is great, my sister is great (was awful, now great - see link), my Mum is obviously great but I'm terrible, really, really awful.  The major difference with me and my sister is ("are you two sisters? you have the same face") I don't really care.  I'm not trying to get better.  I mean,  I wouldn't know where to start, but I'm not.  I'm just going to cook the things that occur to me and then take a picture for you to judge me and feel better about yourselves and how advanced in life you are.

Today for dinner I had quite the feast,  a delicious concoction of frozen peas, sainsbury's pre-chopped broccoli and cauliflower, a mug full of gravy and a generous helping of vinegar.  It was great.  Look here's a picture...

You may notice that the table underneath isn't a dining table but a bedside table this is because I have a pyscho flatmate who is trying to kill me so when home I generally try to avoid the communal areas.  

Recipe:

1. Boil kettle.

2. Put boiled water into saucepan.

3. Add broccoli and cauliflower to pan.

4. Add peas to pan.

5. Wait until peas float or aren't frozen when you scoop them out of boiling water with your fingers.

6. Take mug

7. Put bisto gravy granuals in mug.

8. Pour water from peas onto gravy granuals.

9. Stir in mug with a fork.

10. Pour all of the above into a bowl and eat.

Oh also, while I'm on the subject of the homicidal flatmate, she's really messy and gross, say what you like about my culinary skills but I'm nothing if not clean and tidy.  Maybe next time I'll take a picture of the kitchen, it's currently even more delightful than my frozen pea feast was.  So if my dinner didn't whet your appetite perhaps her two day old bowl of microwaved beans will.