Foody things from 2013

Once again, i've got a backlog of posts from the last few years that i've neglected to actual post.

This last year I've found a few things food related which don't really need a whole post to themselves and have kind of ended up straggling as a non-entity. So there are a couple of posts coming about some of the slightly random bit of food stuff I've found in the last year. I might make it a regular thing for those bits that don't fit anywhere else.

As a regular at Costco, I've many times sampled their in store hot dog and soda for lunch. For £1.50 it's a bargain and you can refill the cup after while you wander about, or leave, either way.

Recently (read sometime in autumn '13) the Reading branch started doing a chili-cheese dog. 50p extra per topping, so in essence still a bargain, but with great toppings, come great problems.

Sometimes, they can get a little more generous then usual, not that i'm one to turn down a plentiful meal, but it does sometimes become tricky to hold. Even when cut in half, napkins are required.

In the same vein as before, both of these are from imgur posts and by extension of that, reddit. but imgur is where I found them, so that can have the credit.

The first was pretty simple, why dunk oreo's in milk, when you could just have a bowl of oreo's and milk, like you would cereal. they do soak up pretty fast and in fairness they do also make an oreo's cereal. But as that's hardly widely available in the UK, this is an acceptable, and delicious substitute.

The next is somewhat more radical. Sweet potato fries, and Nutella. Yes, that's right, read it again if you need to, I'll wait.

It works, it sounds a bit mad, but it really does work well, my parents were skeptical too, then we made it, and once the Nutella melted slightly and was more dippable it worked even better.

The potato was sliced fairly thinly into chips, shallow fried in the pan (they probably need more time to crispen next time) and then have a good sized teaspoon of Nutella dropped on top. The picture was taken about half way through the bowl. Like I said, they were good!

I'll probably do a proper write up on these sometime this year, there were a few things I'd change if/when I do it again.

And finally, Showing just how long ago this was (I've moved twice since I had this kitchen). What do you do when you've got a load of odd bits and pieces of lunch and snack food. Have all of it!

Granted this was for 3 of us (I think) and it was good. Plus it's actually pretty healthy, at least in comparison to the last few things i've posted. Probably worth doing again

Not Quite the Healthy New Year

It's a new year, and I should probably make another effort to keep updates coming more regularly. So what with New Years being all about healthy eating, here's something that's not, on pintrest. 

One sheet of ready made puff pastry, because new years eve is no time for making pastry when you could be doing anything else at all. Roll it out just over a foot square, ish. Or more or less, whatever, i'm not a cop.

The original has a large bar of chocolate, but it seemed like a much better idea to use Cadbury's Caramel, but the bar is a bit smaller than the one in the video, so...

...Improvise! Splitting the bar into three strips filled out the pastry much better, but then what to do about the large gaps? Marshmallows. Always marshmallows.

Cut in at an angle and fold the ends over to hopefully stop the contents leaking everywhere.

Slice the sides in strips and fold over in a lattice, alternate sides, then egg wash the pastry.

Bake it for 10-15 minutes at 180C and then see how it looks, if it's not golden yet, give it a bit longer.

Impressively very little leaked out, although it was fairly fragile, getting it from the tray to the plate was a bit trickier than imagined, but it survived.

It was everything I wanted it to be, and the caramel and marshmallows were the right decision, as expected.

Would I make this again, yes, would I probably die early as a result, yes. Would it be worth it? Yes.

Short and Sweet

Browsing imgur today and saw this:

Specifically this image

Remembered I had both of these:

And then did this:

There were no regrets.

Five Guys At Last.

I'd love to think of a witty titles for this, but I really cant. I'm just happy that they've arrived and they're near enough on my doorstep.

when I was in Florida last year I had Five Guys burgers a number of times, and every time it was fantastic. I just cannot praise them enough for making a fast food* burger with texture and flavour.

That * up there is important, because unlike McDonalds or Burger King, every order is cooked fresh no matter how simple it is. there's nothing waiting for you on a hot shelf, you have to wait. And in reality, waiting 7 minutes for something that really looks like the picture isn't that much of a hardship is it?

While I was there, I said to the guys while I waited how much I wished there was one in the UK and it'd be a long disappointing time before I was back to Florida or anywhere on the East coast to get another. I joked that if I could get a franchise for over here, I would. Don't I feel stupid now...

A few months ago however, Five Guys opened a branch in Covent Garden in London, queues went round the block and all seemed well and very similar to the states. But its London, and not only that, an annoying bit to get to for just a burger, so I resigned myself to having to wait until I happened to be there to get a fix.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this in Reading, all of about 20 minutes from home:

After being away for a few weeks I was in Reading again last week, and sure enough:

This time, with an opening date. September 3rd. (Go on, look at the date today, i'll wait).

Yes. That is today (well, yesterday now). I'm sure some people went in at Stupid O'Clock to be there first, but I am not one of those people.

I got there mid afternoon and it was reasonably quiet at the counter. Behind the counter they'd obviously thrown people at it to keep everything going smoothly. 

Service was quick and pretty much identical to when I was in Florida, probably in aprt due to a number of guys from the US being there keeping it running the same way.

Two things are of note here. Firstly, the drinks machine is incredible. Aside from there being 17 different options on the main page, half of them then had another page of flavours and types.

Fanta and Diet Fanta plus their Still variants each had 7 options, the Cokes also had half a dozen types as well, including raspberry which works SO well. Seriously, this stuff needs to be bottled and sold here. Those 8 drinks alone make up nearly 50 options.

The other thing which is also great and exactly what I'd hoped they'd keep is the liberal portions of fries. We ordered two regular and one small fries and this is what we got.

Not bad at all, obviously potato shaped, decent thickness chips overflowing the cup. Whats awesome however is that when they make up portions of fries, instead of having portions sitting around for more customers, they'll give you the extras so they don't go to waste and just chuck them in the bag. Good for you (more food for your money) and good for them (happy customers, and less wastage). So in out bag, this is what we had in addition to the cups.

Obviously they go through a lot of potatoes, there were plenty of 25kg bags proudly labelled with their origin in Yorkshire. The name of the farm was on the walls too, but I've forgotten which one it was (sorry whoever's farm that was).

Finally, as a fringe benefit, the extra fries we took home reheated better than just about any I've had from a fast food or restaurant in the past. Not floury or soggy, they were just really good fries, even after a second heating.

All in all, it's not the cheapest burger around, McDonalds and Burger King have them beaten on that, but the burger is MUCH better than anything they do. I mean, I love a Big Tasty or an XL BDC, but this is just better on every level. Whats more is it actually looks like you expect a burger to, not a crushed mess in a box, more an explosion of stuff loosely held by a bun.

Yes i'm enthusiastic about this, and no i'm not ashamed. I expected to wait a lot longer than 11 months for another one of these burgers and to have to travel a lot further than 10 miles. It might be the death of me, but it'll be a hell of a way to go.

TL;DR, GO HAVE A BURGER AT FIVE GUYS.

Pulled Pork in JD Honey BBQ Sauce - The BBQ Smoker Finale

The BBQ smoker last weekend was a resounding success and to round off the recent BBQ trend thread for the time being here's what happened to the pork. 

The joint cooked and came out looking, well pretty black. I decided i'd chop it into smaller chunks and serve it along with the other meat and heat it through on the BBQ itself with the burgers, when I had an idea!

A few weeks back i'd made a sauce for the THaTLAN BBQ. We marinated the left overs of the 6Kg rib challenge (that's another post entirely) a number of us tried the previous night in it and served it in cups as a sort of starter if you will.

So this time, instead of using 1l of coca-cola as the base, i took some advice form a friends brother who's a chef. I got some brown sauce as a base (in this case HP Guinness flavour) and put about 1/3 of the bottle in a pan with what was left over from a couple bottles of maple syrup (probably about 50-75ml at most), some malt vinegar, some honey and mustard sauce and the juice (and some flesh) of a large lemon.

The mix looked a little short, so after adding another dose of everything I had I'd increased the volume about another 1/3 and whisked it more.

Next i raided the cupboard for more flavours, not that it tasted bad, just it couldn't hurt to add more at this stage. The next lot was basically just a rummage to see what I had ending up with Basil, Parsley, Oregano, celery and garlic salt, onion granules, mixed herbs, and some liquid seasoning, sometimes called liquid smoke.

This, and more of the mustard sauce from earlier went in the pan, along with 100-150ml of coca-cola which I'd used to rinse the maple syrup and mustard jars out with to avoid wastage. The whole thing got whisked again and then left to simmer for half an hour with the lid on. Then all the pork was poured in and left another hour to breakdown. I also added some of the fat from the joint which was taken off and chopped it as finely as I possibly could to allow the flavours to mix in more. In addition to this I also put 3-4shots of Jack Daniels Honey Sour Mash in the mix before the meat was added, just to make it that little bit more delicious.

After an hour or so cooking down the pork started to break apart and formed more of a pulled, rather than chopped pork. The pan went outside to the bbq and got thrown onto burgers for the last few minutes before serving them.

All in all, i'll probably end up making this again and give some better measurements and more pictures, this was put together in about 20 minutes while guests were arriving and got a good reception. Maybe with more time to think about stuff instead of just doing it, it wont be as good or spontaneous, but we'll see.

BBQ Smoker - v0.2

For version 2 (ok, 0.2) i swapped out the broken dish for a glazed one to hopefully give it more heat resistance and bought a pizza try which had holes throughout to lift the fire off the lower plate entirely. This also allowed air to come up through the base of the fire and burn far better.

Ideally i would have added holes to the saucer but wasn't sure if the lack of total protection form the eat would make it crack. Best try the first one without the holes and see what happens. At least its not wasted work if it does break now.

Took a while to get a decent fire going (as you can see by all the matches, which were dire and either broke striking or went out as soon as the head burnt) but once it went it kept a good temperature. For this one I used some scrap wood, but amde sure it was actual wood, rather than mdf/chipboard.

Because this time it was getting food! It generated a good amount of smoke, but having a very limited supply of wood at this point, it was never going to cook the whole chop.

The lid went on and then i decided to move it off the BBQ, party because i didnt want to melt the cover and party because if it toppled, maybe something would survive and lower fall.

The fire burned for about 40minutes, an the chop good cooked through on the George Forman along with another chop which hadn't been in the smoker as a comparison.

The difference in flavour was noticable even after only a very short time cooking in the smoker itself, so some success at least.

BBQ Smoker - v0.1

[From-the-archive-of-things-didnt-post-at-the-time: This post should have gone out last year, but didn't and as i've not improved it, and used it with success. It's about time]

For a while I've been wanting to try some different styles of BBQing. One specifically sounds and looks more delicious - slow and low.

Its fairly simple: Make fire, direct smoke over meat, leave for some time, tend fire as needed.

Firstly, the fire. Most large scale smokers in the US have a brick fire box and large metal box with shelves or racks four the meat. But, that's a tiny bit impractical. B&Q provided the answer, somewhat unexpectedly. A large thick walled plant pot upturned on a saucer makes a good firebox and another pot on top with wire racks for holding the meat.

The pot needs a hole cut for fuel and air to get in. Fortunately, the clay pot is soft enough a dremel eats it away nicely.

Sadly the enamel pattern is somewhat harder and took as long to cut through as the rest of the pot.

Once the hole is cut the inside of the pot and saucer got a liberal coating of fire sealant and the saucer had some holes drilled at the edge to draw air in.

Unfortunately about 15 minutes into the fire test, the saucer shattered down the middle. The pot at least stayed intact which as it took the most work is probably for the best.

The new saucer has enamel which should resist the heat a little better and i've got a pizza tray for the next test to lift the fire up to get air under it as well as maybe keep the saucer from breaking.

The top of the smoker is a straight sided pot, with a bell pot upturned to trap the smoke inside. To hold the meat up, i've made a rack from a couple of dish racks for a microwave. Soon i'll get some proper fuel for it and test it for a full cooking time on something.

Baked Alaskan Rasberry and Chocolate Chunk Brownies with Chambord

Whilst making this cheesecake for Norway Day we had to go to Tesco to get some supplies (namely food colouring). While wandering about the home baking section I had an idea to use up some remaining raspberries which has been frozen. While i didnt plan on making it tonight, when we got back form Tesco I had a couple drinks and half midnight seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea while I waited for the cheesecake to bake.

So heres the mix,m again, its premade, but i'm going to make it better.

The remaining pot of raspberries, delicious and defrosted.

The dry mix didnt look to have many chunks, so I improvised and found some Dairy Milk minatures in the chocolate tin. You used to be able to get a dispensing machine for kids to play with for these. Mine took 2p coins and dropped out a bar for each one. You could load half a box at a time and it made it last a bit longer, until you worked out how to unload all the coins again and just run them through or take the back off. But thats no fun.

Half a pack of those chopped into thirds made a nice pile of decent sized chunks.

Again, the mix needed and egg, some oil, and some water. Instead of water I added what was left of the chambord (just over a shot) and the raspberry mess

The mix was a bit thin due to the extra liquid from the fruit, so a few teaspoons of flour were added to bulk it out. Forgetting to use the sieve was probably an error...

... But part 1 of the instructions saved the day

The cheesecake had to be cooked in a hot water bath, and the only tin I had was an oversize cake tin. This turned out to be cakemix tight, but not water tight, so the pan I intended on using for the brownies was acting as a drip tray to stop the bottom of the oven being covered in water. As it happened the leaks were far from bad and what little escaped evaporated pretty fast.

Because of this, while I was waiting to get the pan back I had more free time, and what seemed like a good idea was to use the two egg whites left over from the cheese cake and try and make a meringue. Having never done so, and it being 1AM, i elected not to use the mixer and just put in some elbow grease.

First it got whisked to a foam and then gradually added caster sugar so as not to make it collapse. After about half an hour, heres the results. Firm enough to stand the whisk in and forming soft, but fluffy peaks. First attempt and making a meringue, first success.

In the mean time of finishing the whisking to end all whisking the cheesecake stopped leaking enough to retrieve the pan and line it with baking paper. The mix went in and hid under the other try catching the drips so it didnt get wet and would crisp nicely. After 20 minutes the brownie tray came out and I decided to put a layer of the meringue on the top as they were a bit thin at the edge.

There was just enough form the two egg whites to cover it.

Finally it went back in the oven to turn the outside a golden brown.