Showing posts with label quick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quick. Show all posts

Friday, 23 April 2010

Peanut Pork

My camera is all broken at the moment (ie. I can't be bothered to replace the batteries just yet) so this week is something very very simple without pictures: a sandwich.

YOU WILL NEED
bread
butter
Brussels pâté
peanut butter
gherkins


THE METHOD

# Toast two slices of bread. Try and make it good bread. Sourdough or rye would go particularly well with this.

# Slather both slices with butter.

# Spread peanut butter on one slice. Again, make it good stuff. I don't want to sound like a wanker, but that unsweetened organic stuff from health shops is marvellous.

# Spread Brussels pâté nice and thick on the other slice of toast.

# Slice up some gherkins and lay them on one slice.

# Assemble your sandwich. Eat and enjoy.

# Practice saying "I'm not actually pregnant" in the mirror. You might need it if you eat the sandwich in public.

Friday, 19 March 2010

Rabbit Dropping Pancakes

Actually nothing particularly horrific about this one. Just when my brother and I were little, we would joyously declare that raisins were rabbit poo as we wolfed them down. To be honest, we still do that.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 4-6 pancakes)
100g flour
20g caster sugar
50g butter
2 eggs
120ml milk
cinnamon
lemon juice
vanilla essence
raisins


THE METHOD



# Sieve flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a big bowl.

# Melt butter and add half to flour.

# Crack in eggs and whisk to a paste.

# Add milk and whisk until smooth.

# Throw in half a teaspoon of vanilla essence and two tablespoons of lemon juice.



# Heat up a pan and grease lightly with some of the left over butter. The best way to do this is by dipping kitchen roll in butter, then wiping the pan with it.

# Really make sure the pan is hot. Do a little test pancake. If it takes more than about a minute to cook, get hotter. If it burns, turn the heat down a little.

# Spoon some batter onto the pan.

# While one side cooks, sprinkle raisins on top.



# Flip the pancake. Normally I encourage showing off, but I recommend using a spatula or something for this instead of tossing it, mostly because it works best if the top of the pancake isn't cooked yet. Tossing would make pancake batter fly everywhere. Just flip it gently.

# Cook the other side of the pancake. Once this is done, feel free to toss as much as you like.

# That's literally all there is to it. Lazy this week. Anyway, enjoy your rabbit dropping pancakes. I like mine with raspberry jam that I can pretend is rabbit blood. Mwuhahahaha.

Friday, 5 March 2010

Blue Hawaiian Flapjacks

The Blue Hawaiian is a cocktail made by mixing equal parts rum, blue curacao, cream of coconut and a double helping of pineapple juice. All well and good (if a little sickly for my dry taste) but it's not my own invention and I think you'll agree what is really needed here is a way to eat cocktails.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 16 pieces)
200g butter, and a bit over for greasing
200g demerara sugar, also an extra tablespoon full for the topping
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
275g porridge oats
100g dessicated coconut
75g dried pineapple
1 orange
Captain Morgan rum
150ml double cream
blue food colouring


THE METHOD

# Get the oven warming up to Gas 3, 160c, 325f.

# Get a big saucepan and bung in the butter, sugar, and syrup. Leave it on a low heat to melt.



# Pineapple! I guess you could use fresh, but that will probably make your mixture a bit slippery and lead to its ultimate demise. Also, I found this dried stuff and it freaked my shit out, so I bought it immediately. Confront your fears.



# Anyway, chop up pineapple and grate up the zest of your orange. Yummy!!



# The butter, sugar and syrup should be melted now. Give it a good stir. Taste if you want, it'll be hard to resist, but probably don't lick the metal spoon that's been in the pan the whole time. That will be hot. Ow.

# Stir oats and coconut into the melty goodness. Then add pineapple and orange zest and give it all a good mix. Eat some. NOT ALL OF IT.

# Grease up a baking tray with butter and spread the mixture out flat. Pop in the oven for 30 minutes.



# While you're waiting for the flapjack to bake, grab a large bowl and drop a tablespoon of demerara sugar in. Then three tablespoons of dark rum. Give this a good stir and leave it for a bit so the sugar dissolves. Taste if you like, but you might die.

# Pour in the double cream and beat with an electric whisk until it's all stiffened up. At this point you may add the blue, depending on exactly how blue you want it. I went for a couple of teaspoons. BLUUUUUUUE! Put this topping in the fridge until you need it.



# When the flapjack is done, take it out of the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes, then cut into sixteen pieces and set out on a wire rack to cool completely.

# Decorate flapjack with boozy blue topping. And ta-da! Blue Hawaiian Flapjack! Damn tasty.

Friday, 26 February 2010

Garlic Stars

Ok, the way Horror Kitchen generally works is this: On Monday I start ruminating about what kind of thing I'd like to mess about with. On Tuesday or Wednesday I have a EUREKA moment and cackle helplessly to myself. On Thursday I go out and buy ingredients and spend an afternoon turning my kitchen into a bombsite. On Friday I post the recipe and photos to the blog, with the idea that the more mentally deficient of its readers can try things out over the weekend.

However, this Thursday it was dark and rainy and I was grumpy and had no intention to leave the house. Which left me without ingredients for the monstrosity I had planned (of which more next week) instead only what was already in the cupboards: things for cake (there are always things for cake, never know when the cake urge will strike) and garlic.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 6 cupcakes)
50g butter
30g sugar
1 egg
70g self-raising flour
3 cloves of garlic
tomato purée


THE METHOD

# Set your oven to Gas 4, 177c, 350f.

# Cream together butter and sugar, beat in egg, mix in flour. We all know how to make cake.

# Finely chop up garlic. Garlic crushers are for lazy dysdextrous people. CHOP. With a KNIFE.

# Stir garlic into cake mixture. Become increasingly confused as to why you're doing this.

# Taste mixture. Hold back vomit.

# Split mixture between six of the magnificent star-shaped silicone cupcake moulds your best friend got you from the Science Museum. If you don't have a best friend who did this, more fool you.



# Stick cakes in oven for 20 minutes, until the tops are lovely and crispy. Be confused by the smell. Mmmmmm, fresh cakes. Mmmmmm, baked garlic. But? WHAT?



# Let them cool a while, then decorate with tomato purée.



# And there we go. I can't emphasise enough how much you shouldn't make these. It will be a waste of everyone's time and resources and tastebuds. They are fucking horrible. This is the first real disaster to grace the Horror Kitchen, and in a way I'm a little bit proud of that. But please, for the love of everything you hold dear, never attempt garlic cupcakes. Thank you.

Friday, 5 February 2010

Swamp Toast

I'm currently nursing an absolute bitch of a head cold, so this week is very quick, short, easy comfort food.

YOU WILL NEED
clove garlic
half an onion
some mushrooms
seasonings
cream
some bread


THE METHOD

# Finely chop garlic and onion. Spend lots of time on this as the decongestant properties of airborne onion juice is very appealing. This is literally the only time crying while chopping onions is acceptable.

# Set onion and garlic off frying. Low low heat, the aim is to gently soften, not brown or crispify.

# Slice up mushrooms, as many as you can conceivably eat. This is a lot for me. Sorry, all you weirdos who don't like mushrooms, this is not your week.

# Add mushrooms to frying pan and stir. Probably add a bit more oil if it's looking dry.



# Time for seasoning! Plenty of salt and black pepper with your choice of extras. I like a tiny touch of both cumin (I adore cumin, I am obsessed with cumin) and cayenne pepper. Stir and keep on the low heat until everything is nice and soft.



# Add a little gloop of cream to the pan and turn the heat up a little. It will look thick, then more liquidy, then back to thick. While you wait for this to happen, whack some bread in the toaster.

# Toast done, swamp done, serve. If it suits you, add some HP sauce too. Delicious and soothing. Guzzle with a mug of strong tea.

Friday, 22 January 2010

Open Heart Savouries

These were devised as a tasty bit of weird for my friend Liz's birthday.

YOU WILL NEED
(makes 25 canapés)
15 cherry tomatoes
1 pack puff pastry
200g cream cheese
1 red pepper
1 egg

small pastry cutter (Doesn't have to be heart-shaped, but if it isn't you can't do the Open Heart Savouries pun, which would be a shame)


THE METHOD

# Pop on the oven and get it to a nice warm Gas 2, 149c, 300f.

# Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. This isn't essential, but advisable unless you want to try cleaning caramel sugar off your tray. Ick.

# Slice tomatoes in half and place cut side up on the tray. Season. This bit is really up to you. I prefer a good amount of caster sugar, a touch of salt, and a good twist of black pepper. Feel free to go crazy with basil, thyme, chilli, anything really.

# Tray of tomatoes in the oven. They will take a varying amount of time, depending on your oven. They'll be fine for an hour. After that, start checking every ten minutes until they look caramelly and dried and luscious. Eat one or two. They're amazing. Make these whenever you want. They store well in a jar of olive oil to be nibbled on as sweeties. Nom.



# I used pre-rolled puff pastry because I'm a terrible cheat. If you're an honest person, roll out your pastry to about half a centimetre thick. Line another baking tray with paper.

# Cut out twenty eight little pastry hearts and arrange on the tray.

# Beat up an egg and brush the hearts with the wash.

# Cut out more hearts, but these ones need a circle cut out of the middle of them. Place each heart-ring on top of the egg-washed hearts. Then give another egg wash. Put them in the fridge for half an hour.



# While you're waiting, finely chop a red pepper and give it a quick whizz in the blender with the cream cheese. Just mix, you don't really want to purée.

# Turn the oven up to Gas 7, 218c, 425f. Put tray of pastries in the oven. They will take about 20 minutes to bake. Again, keep an eye out.

# When the pastry hearts are ready, remove from oven and let them cool a while. They will have little circles on the top. Cut these out and voila! Little heart pastry cases!



# Fill the cases with a little cream cheese mix. Don't throw away any leftover cream cheese. It makes lovely sandwich spread, or dip or something.

# Pop a cherry tomato on each pastry and you're done! Eat some. Marvel. I did. I'm not sure I expected this to work.



# Serve at a birthday party with excellent friends. Give them pointed looks until they tell you how amazing you are in the kitchen.

Thursday, 14 January 2010

Dante's Chilli Chocolate Cookies

Chilli and chocolate has long been a flavour combination of choice for sinners and deviants everywhere. In the Special Hell, it is served in cookie form.

YOU WILL NEED
(makes 12 cookies)
100g butter
100g chocolate
75g granulated sugar
50g brown sugar
1 egg
160g plain flour
1 fresh chilli


THE METHOD

# Fire up your fiery pit of Hell (or, oven) to Gas 5, 190c, 375f.
Now would also be a good time to line up your soundtrack. I er, chose The Divine Comedy. Obviously.

# Get your butter and chocolate. Make it good chocolate, you hear? 70% cocoa at the very least. If we're going to do this, let's do it properly. Chop everything up good and proper and put in a bowl over a pan of boiling water. This is the good way of melting things. I suppose you could use a microwave. Y'know, since you're going to hell anyway.

# I took a picture of the melted butter and chocolate because it looks so good I pretty much want to dunk my head in it. I didn't though.



# Mix your two sugars in a big bowl and pour on melted stuff. Stir until mixed smooth. Really, try not to dunk your head in it. It looks amazing and I know you're going to taste it, just don't scoff the whole lot.

# Lightly beat an egg in a cup, then add that too. It gives a nice glossy sheen to your mix and binds it a bit more. STOP EATING IT.

# Sieve in the flour. Mixxy mixxy mix. YAY!! Cookie dough!

# Now for the chilli! Here is a picture of my chilli next to an egg. This should give you a rough idea of how much chilli to use.



You have two options here:

1. The Cerberus Variation
The Third Circle of Hell is home to gluttons who would rather chomp as many cookies as they like without fear of FIRE.
Cut your chilli lengthways and scrape out the seeds. Dispose of seeds. Finely slice chilli and mix into cookie dough.

2. The Minotaur Variation
Come violents, sodomites, and blasphemers of the Seventh Circle, melt your faces and feel the burn.
Cut chilli in half. Only use half a chilli. Finely chop. Leave the seeds in. Mix with dough.

# WASH YOUR HANDS DO IT NOW. It's much easier to do this now than accidentally touch your eye with chillifingers and then when your eye hurts you touch it AGAIN because you're a moron. Wash your hands.

# Roll dough into balls and shape into cookies. They don't spread, so make them the size you want them. Arrange on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.



# If you like, decorate the tops of the cookies with chopped chilli. Pop into the FIERY BOWELS for 15 minutes.



# Once cooked, let your cookies rest on the tray for a while before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.

# Enjoy your Hellish creations warm with a devilishly delicious cup of hot tea.

Friday, 8 January 2010

Lemonade Popcorn

A very quick one just to start off. A test run, if you will.

YOU WILL NEED
1 bag of microwave popcorn (sweet, not salt)
1 lemon
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar


THE METHOD

# Find a huge bowl.

# Juice your lemon. Juice it good.

# Follow instructions on microwave popcorn.

# Don't let your popcorn burn. A few extra kernels left at the bottom of the bag is much better than burning popcorn ruining your entire batch. If your popcorn burns you are a colossal fucktard and you probably shouldn't be allowed in a kitchen unsupervised.



# Empty bag of popcorn into huge bowl.

# Drizzle your lemon juice over the popcorn. The liquid hitting puffy corn bits makes a fizzing noise! Wheeeee!

# Sprinkle on sugar; that's a lot of lemon and we are not animals.

# Lemonade popcorn! So simple, only an idiot would fuck up any part of it. I am shamed.