Devilishly Delicious Oriental Chicken Casserole

This entry in the book was contributed by the absolute LEGEND that is Bobby Liebling from the mighty fuckin' PENTAGRAM!
I don't care if you don't take anything away from this entry food-wise, but please check out Pentagram, doom pioneers and still going strong!

So, this is probably VERY different to anything I've ever cooked in the past. The only reason I chose it is because I was cooking for my family, and they're all fussy as fuck, and this was the only thing they could all agree on. It's a dish made using both rice and noodles, two things I usually cannot STAND, because they just seem like fatty lumps of tastelessness designed solely to provide cheap sustenance with no real nutritional value or taste.

However, I'm willing to give anything a shot. Here are the ingredients you'll need for this bizarre carbohydrate-packed meal:

You're looking at around 500g of chicken breast, and that white bowl is actually filled with crushed up cornflakes (yeah I know, what the fuck Bobby, right?).

The first step I took was to get out my casserole dish, and smear the entire inside of it with full-fat butter. Once that's done, you can start cooking your various ingredients one-by-one.

First up is the chicken. Arrange all 500g worth on a baking tray, and stick it a pre-heated oven at around gas mark 5. It should take around 20-25 minutes to cook through.

While that's going, slice up your red onion into rings, or you can take it further and dice them, but due to the severe weeping involved with chopping onions, I try to take as little time with them as possible. Fire up your frying pan, and fry the shit out of the onions til they're nice and oily/burnt, then remove them and leave them aside for now.

Boil up a pot of water, and dump in your entire bag of rice. If you're like me, you'll probably only use around half of it, but what the fuck, it costs nothing, just use it all. Once your rice has been boiling for around 10 minutes, quickly remove and strain it, and put that aside too.

Refill your pot with water, re-boil, then dump in your noodles for about 4 minutes. Once the onion, rice and noodles are taken care of, your chicken should be about good to go.

Remove the chicken breasts from the oven, and leave them to cool for a minute or two. Here comes the fun part: tearing apart the flesh of an animal with your bare hands!

Grab the chicken and start ripping it up frantically, so that no strip is the same size. Tear at it like you're filled with murderous rage, like it's the face of everyone who's ever wronged you. Who says cooking isn't therapeutic?

Once your chicken lies in a ravaged heap, flesh clinging to your hands, bring over your casserole dish, and start to add in everything you've prepared so far.

Add it all in stages, so you're getting a good ratio of rice:noodle:chicken:onion. As you do this, splash in some cream of mushroom soup, this might seem fucking weird and gross, but it's pretty necessary to ensure that this doesn't just become a dry, tasteless mess. Once it's all in the casserole, give it a good mix around, preferably using your hands. Close your eyes and feel all those disgusting textures swirl between your fingers. Yeah, I'm a fucking creepy weirdo, what's the problem?

Sprinkle your cornflakes, and any sort of condiments you desire on top of this whole mess. I went for soy sauce, to follow the recipe as close as possible, but maybe go for something with a bit more flavour?

Pop the lid on your dish, and stick this in the oven at (my favourite!) gas mark 5. Give it maybe.... 40 minutes, 50 at a push. Remove the lid 15 minutes before the end so the top layer crisps up nicely, gives it a bit of BITE!

I made enough to serve 4 people if they're REALLY hungry, but this could easily stretch to serve 6 when combined with a starter. I wasn't expecting it to be as tastey as it turned out, I think the mushroom soup and chicken strips helped to liven up the boring-ass rice/noodles combo. I probably wouldn't make this again though, it took me waaaay too long, for very little taste payoff.

Mummified Chilli Bacon Bombs

A couple of weeks ago I was aimlessly wandering around Waterstones, drooling over their cookery section, when I caught sight of what I can only refer to as some sort of bible. I audibly gasped, and through the haze of excitement I discerned the name of this mighty tome: 'Hellbent For Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook'.

I knew I had to possess this gastronomic grimoire no matter what, so with shaking hands and sweating palms, I handed over the book to the cashier, and prayed to the man downstairs that I'd have enough coins in my pocket to purchase this thing of beauty. I got financially lucky, for once, and came home with the book in my clammy grasp, aching to try out every recipe immediately. Somehow it's taken me until now to actually get around to it.

This will be the first of two posts, as I cooked two recipes in one evening, in an attempt to make up for lost time, and I decided to go for recipes by two bands I really fucking love.
The starters were inspired by AUTOPSY mainman Chris Reifert's contribution to the book.

Due to my inability to find a decent deli in the whole of central Glasgow (even venturing into the shitty affluent hipster/student areas yielded no luck!), the ingredients have changed a fair bit from his original concept. Here is what I managed to find in the shitty supermarkets:

In the original recipe it was jalapenos instead of regular chilli peppers, and Monterey Jack cheese instead of haloumi, but hey, those are some pretty good substitutes.

First things first, buy that album, because you're going to need it as your soundtrack for cooking this stuff.
Secondly, you want to remove the stalks, and the seeds from those chillies, because even I can't handly that much spiceyness. Slit your chillies length-ways, and just scrape out the insides with a spoon/knife. Set those aside for a moment, and open up your haloumi.
For anyone who hasn't tried this cheese before, be prepared for it to taste NOTHING like cheese. It has a texture more akin to chicken, except it's entirely dairy. It's this texture which makes it fucking EXCELLENT on a BBQ, or just to grill in general.
So slice and dice the whole block into a size that you think would fit well within your chillies/jalapenos, and arrange it on a baking tray, and pop it under your grill for... lets say 10 minutes, why not.

Once you have your grilled haloumi nice and golden brown, stuff it into the corpses of the chillies. For embalming fluid, I chose to use spreadable 'smoked' cheese. Take a butter knife and just wedge as much of the cream cheese into every available gap not filled by the haloumi, until it's seeping out of the cavity in your chillies.

Next you want to bring in the bacon. I went for streaky (FINALLY FOUND SOME!), but any kind is good I guess. Cut it into nice manageable strips, and twist it around your entire pepper/cheese things, making sure it completely envelopes them so no innards are spilled. Impale these with toothpicks to hold it all together, arrange them on a foil-covered baking tray, and stick them in your oven at gas mark 5.

In around 20 minutes they should have cooked through, and started to even crisp up the bacon a little. Unfortunately I didn't have time to wait around for that to happen as I was cooking for mi familia, and they have no love for crispy bacon. Serve on a bed of lettuce with bbq dressing. I didn't, because I forgot to buy any, but hey, you live and learn, right?

Give Me Inconvenience or Give Me Death

I fucking hate fast food.

Everything about it, from every single purveyor of the stuff (except Taco Bell, but you don't get that over here anyway). The whole process of walking into the fluorescent box, surrounded by overweight spotty drones, squinting at the tiny text behind someone's head for 5 minutes, trying to work out which option is least likely to give you the shits. Then trying in vain to explain what you want, to the point of using sign language because the overweight spotty drone behind the counter sure as fuck doesn't speak English past the phrase 'next over here, please'. Within 30 seconds, your pre-made 'meal' is being handed to you shrink wrapped in glossy paper and cardboard, and your drink that is pretty much just flavoured ice is spewed out of the giant gurgling robot on the counter. You sit down at the crappy formica booth, trying not to vomit at the sound of all the other pigs snuffling away in their troughs, and attempt to force this (barely edible) cardboard nightmare down your gullet without the aid of any cutlery whatsoever. Now, to me, that sounds like fucking hell. I'd rather starve to death than eat M*******'s.

Safe to say, when I want a decent burger and fries, the process is anything but 'fast'. Occaisionally I get a craving for one so strong it upsets me, because there are NO decent burger places this side of Glasgow, so I usually end up just not eating. Today I actually stood up and audibly said "Fuck this!" and ran out the door with burgs on the brain, much to the surprise of my family.

Here are the ingredients I picked up:

You can pretty much see from the picture the list of ingredients, but the amount of minced beef there is about 1lb, and that makes enough burgs for two.

As usual, the first thing you want to do is slice, dice, dismember, disembowel, sever and generally destroy your vegetables.

Dice your red onions into the tiniest squares imaginable, and sprinkle them through your mince. Add salt, pepper and chilli flakes to taste, and mix it all up using your hands (shout out to Steff: MEAT MANICURES!). Set that aside for now, and get into those potatoes. Slice them into... let's say 8ths, so that they're more wedges than chips, really. Place those into a basin of water for about 10 minutes.

Now you can get back to the fun of playing with carcass! Yay! Grab a handful of your mince mixture, and round it off and pat it into a vaguely burgerly shape, really squash it together so it's good n' dense. You should get 4 pretty decent sized burgers out of that amount of mince.

Empty your potatoes out of the basin, and into a tea towl to dry them off a bit. Fire up your deep fat fryer, and fill it with oil to about halfway full. Once your tatties are dry and your oil is hissing, dump them into the wire basket, and slowly lower them in. You can basically just leave them alone for 10 minutes while they crisp up, and concentrate on your meat.

Get your burgers into a frying pan, and throw in a couple of slices of (preferably streaky) bacon if you have any space left. You're looking at maybe 3.5 minutes per side for the burgers, but don't take my word for it, always cut the biggest burg in half and make sure they're cooked through.

While that's all just cooking away, slice your cheese (I went for Canadian extra mature, mmm pungent!) along the long side, if that makes any sense? Basically the way that will give you a biiig surface area of cheese. If you're of a healthy disposition, rustle up a basic side salad, and get all your other toppings and condiments ready. When your chips are a beautiful golden brown, and your burgs and bacon are a crisp, meaty pile of deliciousness, well then you're done ain't ya? Put it all together and serve with a non-alchoholic beverage, because you're feeling pretty tender after last nights ridiculous intake of beers.

Brew-nicipal Waste

Ok, contrary to how I condusted my last beer reeeivew, I'm actually typing this after consuming all 4 beers, instead of as I go long. I've just noticed that my spelling has gone to shit, fuck it. I'll leave it in for comedic value.

This is kind of a cheating review, as I've actually had a couple of these brands before, some in great quantities, some in very few. but fuck it, I like em, why the fuck shouldn't I review em?
So, here are my four choices for the evening: 

People slag Corona off for being a 'girls beer' or whatever bullshit, but if you can find me a smoother beer to chug down while you eat, I tip my hat to you sir. That shit's like water, it goes down so well. people put a  wedge of lime in the neck, but who the fuck actually has the time to be cuttin' up limes at home? pfft, fuck off. so yeah, chugged that down in about 5 minutes out of sheer thirst.

Second beer of the evening: Zeitgeist. As far as I know, this is a local concoction. only reason I know of it;s existence is because I've been to a few parties with the girl who designed the label. Always fun to geek out over booze and illustration with someone. so yeah, I've been promising to try this shit for over a year now, just never got around to it. It has kind of aaaaa... funky taste? like a brand of sweets I never got into, or something. either way, I'm glad this shit isn't sold in bars, I sure as fuck wouldn't oirder it.

3rd beer: Nawlins Dixie Brew. This was by far the most... delicious brew I've tasted in a long-ass time. just a really satisfying, savoury, substantial beer. i could happily demolish a 6 pack of these and feel like I'd just eaten a full meal. In fact, I pretty much might do that tomorrow night. Goddamn, back to the beer. this was a good one. look at the picture, then go try and find a bottle for yourself, then thank me.

Last beer of the evening (HA! yeah, right): Samuel Adams. I first tried this little over a year ago when i ende up in a Boston-themed boozer over in the US of A, and kinda fell in love. well, what actually happened was I got drunk as all hell & had to be 'escorted outside', but that's besides the point. Basically, this is a reeeally smooth, slightly funky beer that's incredibly 'more-ish', and reminds me of excellent times with my best friends. so yeah, deliciousness combined with nostalgia is definitely a  winning combination!

so there's how I spent my friday night, chugging down brews on my own, laughng at terrible movies and wishign i had better friends to drink with. Now go get fucked up, you cunt.

Enshroomed

So I had the idea for the title of this meal long before I acually had any idea what to put in it, except for the eponymous mushrooms of course. It was between 'Enshroomed' and 'To imbibe, cook straight and lose a tooth', and the latter is perhaps a little too specific to me alone.

I figured I could pull my usual trick of loading it up with beef, spices and cheese, but then I figured why not make it a bit interesting and use... oh, I don't know, sheep lungs, beef heart, and various other grisly ingredients? Or as most, less morbidly inclined, people call it, Haggis.

So with that idea fully formed in my mind, all I had to do was get the time to actually make the fucking thing. I had originally planned to just use 1 or 2 giant portobello mushrooms, but by the time I eventually got off work and got to the only supermarket open at that time, they had somehow sold out of giant fuckin' mushrooms, DAMNIT! So this recipe was made under extremely compromised conditions, and I apologize for that, it should have been so much better.

My plans for the other ingredients were pretty rough, except that I wanted it to look like a delicious death metal album cover when I was done. So I picked up some good strong red cheddar, some ground peri peri spices, a bottle of Louisiana hotsauce, and for some reason I decided that red food colouring would be a good idea. It wasn't.

So, to start this off, you have to choose your weapon of choice when it comes to cooking your haggis. You basically have 3 options:

• The quick option, 5 minutes in a bowl in the microwave.
• The medium, and probably optimal option, boiling it on the stove in the skin for around 45 minutes.
• The sloooooow tedious option, 90 minutes (!) in the oven, on Gas Mark 5, or whatever the equivalents are.

I went for the slow, doomy option, as always. I needed time to shower as I hadn't felt human in days and I had started to suspect there was a small eco-system living in my hair. Also, it gives you time to throw on some music while you prepare all your other ingredients. Obviously, you should go for Entombed while making this meal, but any death metal will suffice. Wrap your haggis, still in it's skin, in a good amount of tin foil, and stick it on a baking tray with a slight covering of water in it, and shove it into the fire.

So while you're torturing your mushrooms with a big fuckin' knife, removing their stalks and all that... whatever they call that weird-black-shit-inside-mushrooms, your haggis should maybe be around the 80 minute mark.
Pop the disembowled mushrooms on a baking tray, and don't be an idiot and forget you hate oil and accidentally add some like I did. urrrgh. Put those in your oven besides the haggis for around 5-10 minutes.
While those are hopefully sweating out all that gross mushroom-y liquid, take this time to grate up a pretty good amount of cheese, and to gut some red chillies. Don't, whatever you do, decide to make it look good by splashing red food colouring all over your plate like blood spatter patterns, as that stuff tastes NASTY!

Always put taste over presentation, but if you can have some fun with it without sacrificing taste, go for it!

Remove both the mushroom tray and the haggis tray from your oven, and switch on your grill immediately. Your mushrooms should hopefully have 'baked' so they're nice, crispy and dried out. This wasn't the case with mine, but I blame the fact they were just shitty normal-sized mushrooms, not ones of the magnitude that they have an atomic blast named after 'em.
Slit open the skin of the haggis, and dig around inside until you've turned that fucker inside out, scraping out every last disgusting morsel. Cram in as much of the haggis as you can into your mushroom(s), really pack it in.
Finally sprinkle on some of that strong-ass cheddar, splash in some hotsauce, and impale your chilli peppers on toothpicks, then stab 'em all the way into the mushroom, so it looks like some kind of delicious weird voodoo doll. Stick this under the grill for 3-4 minutes, just enough to char your cocktail sticks and melt your cheese.

Finally, serve with a glass of milk, coz this stuff is SERIOUSLY spicey!