This is just a short show-off post because I'm fucking addicted to making pizza.
Refer to the Pig Destroyer Pizza post for instructions on preparing the dough, the only difference with this pizza is my choice of toppings, and the shape of the base. Pretty fucking good, right?
So this pizza would live up to it's name I crumbled a tonne of blue cheese throughout the toppings, & splashed a shitload of Chipotle hotsauce over everything to give it a kick.
This pizza ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit!
I fucking love fish and chips. It's one of the few traditionally British dishes that I can really get behind, and I find myself craving it a helluva lot. Unfortunately, despite living on an island, and thus surrounded by fish-filled oceans on all sides, the price of fish is fucking extortionate. But when the cravings get too much, you just need to bite the bullet, pay the price, and savour every last bite.
This week I found myself firmly in the grip of a severe craving for the flakiest fish, the thickest chips, and the crustiest batter I could get my teeth into, so here's the result; From Fishes Fries.
Here's what you'll need. This amount of ingredients serves 2 or 3 people, depending on your appetite.
I've gone for a half-kilo cod fillet, but you can use the fish of your choice, though haddock or cod would be your best bet for authentic British-style fish n' chips.
To mix up the crispiest, crustiest batter you'll need: 150g plain flour, 2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder, and about 120 ml of beer. I went for one of my favourites, the smokey, full-bodied Hoegaarden, but you can put whatever you want into the mix.
Mix it all in a bowl, thrashing it up to the consistency of a light whipped cream. You want it light enough to be able to permeate every contour of the fishy flakes, but a thick enough coating for it to sound like the world ending when you bite into it.
Keep the batter (and your beer!) cold while you do the rest of the prep work. Wash, peel and chop your potatoes into massive chunky fries, the give them a good soak for about 5 minutes.
Fire up your frying weapon of choice. The deep fat fryer I have is a temperamental piece of shit that sometimes just decides it's had enough, switches itself off, and refuses to turn back on again. Which is great fun, when you're left frantically trying to finish cooking your meal on other heat sources.
Anyway, crank it up to about 170 degrees and throw all your un-fried fries in there, and let simmer for a few minutes.
While that's going on, salt and pepper your fish fillets, before very lightly coating them in flour to soak up a little of the fish's natural oiliness.
What a fucking shit picture. Does not properly convey the fact the fish was like 1.5 inches thick.
With that done, you can remove your chips from their first scalding oil torture session. That's right, these fuckers are getting double-dipped!
What, you think I'm only gonna fry these once? No I will not, no fucking way!
Pop them on a tray, and leave 'em in the oven to dry out a little while you do your fish. Remove the beer batter from the fridge, and dunk your fillet right in there, making sure every last piece is thickly coated. Let it drip off a little before tossing it into either your fryer or a pan.
Give it about 5 minutes to crisp up and cook through, then remove it, place it on a greaseproof paper-covered tray, and stick it in the oven while you finish up your chips. Just another few minutes in the bubbling oil will ensure they're just the right mix between delicious and a cardiac event.
Remove them from the oil, toss 'em onto some kitchen roll for de-greasing, then sprinkle with rock salt.
Take your fish outta the oven, and serve the whole lot with a wedge of lemon and lashings of tartare sauce. Bon fucking appetit!
Incase the references weren't explicit enough, here's a serving of something with as much bite and crunch as the food, Nashville/Portland's finest; From Ashes Rise
This will most likely be my final entry in this blog, at least for a few months until I have a kitchen again.
It was originally supposed to be a collaborative effort between me and the girl who I first had the drunken conversation with that gave me the idea to do this almost two years ago, but a combination of illness, lack of appetite and good old-fashioned laziness meant that we never got the chance to cook together. Bummer.
A few days passed after buying everything before I actually got the chance to make this dish, so my ingredients were perhaps less than fresh (though it didn't really affect anything except the leek).
The first thing I did was chop my vegetables and garlic, boil up enough water to make my stock, and measure out enough rice (I used about 200g of this paella rice for a portion for one person).
I put about 10g of butter and a little splash of oil into my frying pan, mixed up the vegetable stock cube with boiled water, then added in half a diced onion to the pan. Lightly brown the onions for a couple of minutes before adding in your chopped garlic. Fry that all together for another minute before you chuck in your rice. When that's been in there for a couple of minutes, pour in around 400ml vegetable stock, and let that simmer and soak into your rice.
And that was all I did before following the instructions sent to me by my girl, who is far better versed in the art of cooking white meat than I am. I'm always scared I'll either over or under-cook chicken, and it'll either give me salmonella or taste burnt and rubbery. No such concerns with my beloved bleeding red flesh, I can eat that either bloody as hell or charred to death.
Anyway, her instructions were as follows:
"You'll need a biiiiiiiig pan for this.
Ok, first you hack the chicken breast into biteable chunks.
Salt and pepper it.
Preheat pan, tiny bit of oil, throw the chicken chunks in there.
I cant tell you how long they take, they should be white on the inside (pink is bad, very very bad) and light brown on the outside. Should take like 10 minutes."
"Done? Sweet. [...] Once the paella rice is ready, squeeze half a lemon, mix with the rice. Add the chopped leek and ready fried onion."
ACTION SHOT! WHOOOOOARGH!
"Add max 100g of cream to make a nice, mushy rice concoction.
Thats all your ingredients done, all you need to do is the spice finetuning and let it all simmer til its nom nom nom (boak)."
Which I followed to the letter, adding in liberal lemon squeezes, plenty of paprika and chilli powder, but I definitely screwed up on the cream aspect, since I picked up single cream which is FAR too liquid-y to work as a topping. I'll know better for next time when we can cook this dish together.
/disgusting 'romantic' bullshit
And to tie in with the latest pun-tastic title, here's some live footage of Finnish grind creeps
Rotten Sound playing at last years Obscene Extreme, which I'll be attending this year.
If you see a guy there looking out of place because his denim is covered in doom (rather than grind) band patches, buy him a cheap beer, because that'll be me.
