Devils On Horseback

This was probably the most impulsive meal I've made in a long time.

My work schedule doesn't leave a whole lot of time for cooking anything weird these days, but today was an exception, I finished while the supermarkets were still open!
During my usual end of day 'I have another 30 minutes before I can catch a train home' internet-browsing malaise, I stumbled upon an article about one of the few chefs whos career I actually follow, one Matthew Matheson, or as Cancer Bats fans may know him, Matty BSOD.
I'm just gonna save myself some typing and link to the article in question, which fills ya in on his impressive background, and gives a sneak preview of what I'd be making this evening.

So after reading that, and being intrigued enough to want to try it out myself, I thought fuck it, why not? Picked up the ingredients within an hour of first hearing of this dish, and got to work!

I was unable to track down the specific cheese mentioned in that article, but luckily they did suggest camembert or brie as a suitable substitute. I went for camembert, as for some reason I had it in my head that it would work better when melty, and brie was more of a cold cheese.
Fuck knows, I know next to nothing about food.
I did however manage to get the Medjool dates after much trawling of aisles, I almost punched the air (and a shop assistant) when I finally found them. I also splashed out a bit of cash on some pretty top notch bacon, because all the other streaky stuff looked like the shavings left on a slughterhouse floor.

So with it all assembled in a photogenic fashion, I got cutting! As you can pretty goddamn clearly see, you need to de-seed the dates yourself, yet leave them intact enough to be able to close like a casket around a particularly cheesey corpse.

Since I was making enough to feed two (HA! as if anyone else would ever eat my cooking), I de-seeded every date, and used half of my wheel of camembert to fill 'em.

Yes, actually, it WAS necessary to arrange them like that. It makes food taste better when you're a pretentious prick during the preparation, true fact. You can probably guess what comes next, but incase you're too fucking stupid, here's a pic anyways...

Yep, big shock, you stuff the dates with the camembert! Holy shit, I did not see that one coming.
Start a fire under a pan, and tear into your over-expensive pack of bacon. Give it a quick sizzle on each side, before removing it from the pan and rolling each streak around a cheesey date, pinning the whole messy thing together with a toothpick. When you have enough of 'em made, pop them in the oven at around gas mark 4 for a coupla minutes to melt the cheese and caramelise the sugar in the dates.
Remove, and serve with something slightly healthier than thick cheese entombed in pure sugar and shrouded in flayed pigflesh. In the spirit of hallowe'en, I went for a Spooky Satanic Salad.

Put it all together, and get ready to taste something that feels like a heart attack as you type up some bullshit about it an hour later.

Here's some weirdo music I've never heard that fits the post title. I can't be fucked finding references to horseback in music I love, and devils is too obvious. Enjoy, or don't, I give no fucks either way.

Ministry-one

Minimal preamble for once. I've never made soup before, and I fancied giving it a shot, so... I did.

Here's what went into it

First up, chop all your veg (celery, carrot, leek, red onion, chilli pepper). I'm not a fan of really chunky soups, so I diced it all pretty finely. Pre-heat a massive pot while you chop, then throw it all in there.

Give that a couple of minutes to reduce down a little, before opening up your tomato puree, and add a tbsp of that into your mix. Open up your tin of plum tomatoes, and chop them up finely by plunging some scissors into the can and snipping away at the innards, blood-red juices spattering your clothes.
Pour the full tin into your pot, and get stirring!

 

This is the point where you can decide to either keep your soup nice and vegetarian-friendly, and skip the 'dump in a tonne of animal parts' stage. But fuck that, I can't eat anything that doesn't have corpse in it. Fry up some bacon, a minestrone standard, cut it into tiny pieces before adding to your pot.

And since I recently returned from Barcelona, which was heaven for a spicey smoked sausage fiend like myself, I can't resist adding some chorizo to this already thick-as-fuck mix. So... do that, too.

Boil up some water to make a stock with. Ideally, if I'd had more time, I would have used a fresh chicken stock made with real chicken, buuut... I was hungry, and lazy, and I wanted to get this made as fast as possible. At the same time as your stock water is boiling, smash up some pasta into small pieces. I used my fists because I'm just cool like that, but probably best to just lightly smack it with a rolling pin while it's still in the bag to break it up, if you're not quite as angry at pasta as I am.

Pour in your chicken stock, shortly followed by adding your pasta, stir well, and leave to heat through for a further ten minutes. Once it's all thickened up nicely, either grate some fresh parmesan, or do what I did and cheat, using the (still fresh) pre-grated stuff. Chop some parsley into tiny pieces for garnishing purposes, and serve!

If this was 2004, I would have more to say about the band that coincides with my latest terrible pun title. I used to fucking love Ministry. Then shortly after I did, they came back all heavy-handed political messages and uninspired songs, so I swiftly fell out of love. Psalm 69 is still a terrifying, stomping, corroded banger of a record though. Those fucking robot-Bonham drums!

I DEMAND TO HAVE SOME BOOZE!

The first thing that attracted me to this particular brand of beers were the labels.

If you know anything about... well, anything, then you'll recognise those obscene scrawlings to be the work of the great Ralph Steadman. Most famous for his work with Hunter S. Thompson in illustrating his book Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, Steadman has been one of my favourite illustrators for close to a decade now, ever since I saw this little beauty:

That illustration was included as a folded up poster with my dvd copy of Withnail and I.
Withnail and I, incase you are somehow insane/unaware of it's existence, is Bruce Robinson's paean to 1969, a counter-argument to the commonly held view of the '60s as being all sunshine, light, hope and peace.
I won't get into the movie TOO much, since I'd keep you reading for an hour if I did, but Withnail and I is often mistakenly seen as just an invitation to imitate it's elegantly wasted eponymous characters, reduced to a student drinking game in some circles.
True, it does contain a HEROIC amount of booze consumption and general drunken hilarity, but watch it 30+ times (I had a very boring adolescence) and you'll see so much more to it.



ANYWAY! That illustration, with it's scraped out lines, disgusting unidentified stain of a colour scheme and depiction of living in utter filth blew my tiny teenage mind. So the point is, I've always had a soft spot for Steadman.
So when I saw a collection of beers packaged in this awesome insanity, I didn't hesitate to try 'em!

The geniuses behind these beers are Flying Dog Ales, who I think are based out of Baltimore? If you want to know more, read up at their awesome site here http://flyingdogales.com/

I'll confess, this isn't the first encounter I've had with these beers, I'd actually sampled one of the varieties a few days previously after a trip into Peckham's Deli. When paying for the bottle I bought that day, the cashier got talking about the new arrivals to their stock, the unusual names, asking if I'd ever tried them before.
As I leave, she hollers after me "COME BACK IF YOU EVER WANT TO HAVE A RAGING BITCH!". Which is a weird thing for a girl to shout at you in public, especially when you're there with your girl.
Without any hint of innuendo, I took her up on that offer, and went back to buy as many of these beers as I could carry.

First of the evening is the, yep, you guessed it, Raging Bitch!
Usually when I open up a bottle, first thing I do is take a long, hard, Hannibal Lecter-esque sniff of it, and this one had a REALLY overpowering reek. I mean that in the nicest possible way. It was almost fruity, really quite a nice smell, so I was a little skeptical as I'm not really a huge fan of fruity beers.
Luckily, this was nothing of the sort, and upon the first swig it's true taste hit me like a sledgehammer. A very small, liquid sledgehammer.
It has a really strong, dry taste, or at least the first gulp did. My first thought? I don't really like this. I was gutted. I really hoped it would turn out like a lot of other beers, if I gave it a chance it might surprise me. So I persevered, in the name of science! Or just being a drunken git.

Swig after swig goes by, and it never QUITE hits the enjoyable stage. It has a taste, I'll give it that much, I just never really warmed to it.

Next I go for the Old Scratch, which is the bottle I tried previously.
It says on the bottle this is a lager, so I take the first sniff n' swig combo thinking I know exactly what I'm gonna get from this. It's everything I expected and... less? I don't know if it's the fact I'm drinking it after a VERY overpowering-tasting beer, or if it's just a very smooth lager, but this doesn't really pack a punch at all! Two disappointments in a row? Nooooo!

I wonder if it's one of those beers that goes really well when you're stuffing your face with a gigantic pepperoni pizza? I endeavoured to find out. Turns out it is! Probably doesn't need to be QUITE so specific in your choice of accompaniment, but this was a real tasty, smooth lager to take a gulp of after a few famished bites. I'd definitely have this again, just without any overly-high expectations.

With two beers down, and a pizza devoured, I'm more than ready to take on their classic pale ale, the eponymous Flying Dog.
Now THAT'S more fucking like it! The second it hits my tongue, there's a good frothy texture, genuinely delicious taste, and I think I've finally found my weapon of choice.
It's not a sour taste, but it definitely has a real robust bite to it, nice n' zesty, but still goes down smooth. I'm getting through it pretty quickly by this point, maybe slightly influenced by the fact I've actually decided to leave the house for once and go for a coupla drinks out there, in the... OUTSIDE WORLD!

I blame the two beers I've consumed before the invitation arose for my foolish decision to go out. Anyone who knows me (or has read any of my other terrible so-called 'reviews') knows that I cannot handle my beer. The myth that the Scots all have ironclad stomachs and can drink anyone under the table? I'm the exception that proves the rule. Give me a bottle of whisky and I'm fine, I'll sit quite content, slugging through it for hours. But give me more than 3 beers in the space of an hour? I'm useless.

So with that moment of self awareness and deprecation, I'm off out to the pub!

postscript: I managed to work my way through a further 3 bottles of Newcastle Brown and a couple of Jameson that night before wandering home and falling asleep fully clothed. I'm a real class act.

Cinnabourbodons

So I've been talking about making something along these lines for a year now, and I finally found myself bored outta my skull enough to finally do it.

I haven't baked a cake since I was about 13 years old, so I didn't go into this filled with confidence at how it would turn out. Especially not since my ingredients were... a little unusual.

Yeah, the name is basically a drunkenly assembled portmanteau combining three things I fucking LOVE: cinnamon, bourbon, and Mastodon. Since I couldn't get a hold of any of Brent Hinds' every-drug-under-the-sun-infused blood (I suck at being a stalker), the first two alone will have to suffice.

So first up, seperate out your various measures of ingredients:
• 5oz self-raising flour
• 4oz caster sugar
• Stork margarine
• 2 eggs
• 2 large tbsps of cocoa powder
• Cinnamon (add to taste)
• A very, VERY generous splash of bourbon. I went for Southern Comfort, the wimpiest, but sweetest, brand I know.

So firstly, grab a pyrex bowl, pour in all your dry powder ingredients first, then add your margarine, then your eggs. Grab a whisk (I'd recommend electric, because I'm a lazy motherfucker, and you're guaranteed a better consistency with a little high-powered assistance), and bury it right deep in there, and start mixing!

Once it's mixed together pretty well, you can start splashing in some bourbon 'til you get the correct texture. I don't really know what that is, not being a cake/bake expert, so I just kinda played it by ear. Or sight. Or taste. Whateverthefuck sense is applicable here.

Add some extra sugar, bourbon, and a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon, all to taste.

[Insert photo of finished, whisked product here. Or don't, if you're an idiot who forgot to take one.]

Divide your mixture up between several cake... things. What are they called? The wee paper... skirts.
Cake skirts.
Fuckit, that'll have to do.
Anyway, divide it up between a lot of 'em, or just a couple, depending on how big you want the finished product to be. I went for big-ass-motherfuckers, as I believe is the correct industry term.

Once thats done, pop them into a pre-heated oven (gas mark 3) for between 15 - 20 minutes.
If you're feeling particularly limber, try and air-drum to anything from Blood Mountain. I pulled every single muscle in my arms doing so.



Once the time has passed, take 'em out of the oven and poke one with your finger. If it raises pretty quick, they're done. If it stays poked, then they're either not quite baked, or you've added FAR too much bourbon.
Guess which I fell victim to?

So now that your cakes are ruined, it's time to make the icing.

I didn't realise how fucking annoying it was to whip up some simple chocolate icing! Goddamn!
Dump your butter into the dry ingredients, and basically just... fuck around with a fork trying in vain to integrate the ingredients. Eventually lose the rag with it and say "fuck this!", storm off in a huff for 15 minutes, then grudgingly return and have another shot.

If you're still completely inept, boil up a tiny amount of water, and splash that in there, to help break up the chunks of sugary butter, and continue whisking it into something resembling dog shit.

It tastes marginally better than it looks.

Spread it out over your terrible cakes, and attempt to make it at least halfway presentable by swirling the icing around to little points. God they look awful, don't they? Sprinkle a little cinnamon over the finished products, and try to muster up some faux-enthusiasm at the prospect of eating all of them by yourself...

Börek Too Late

I know, I know, that's an awful title, but it gives me an excuse to listen to Saint Vitus as I type this, so fuckit, it'll do.

Anyway, this will be a super-quick post because this is a super-quick snack.

Although I originally intended for this to be part of a wider range of BBQ snacks, but since no-one ever wants to hang out, grill meat and neck beers with me, I still made enough to serve about 6 people and ate them all myself.

First off, gather your VERY minimal ingredients. When I last ate this, it was made with either just feta cheese, or also using sucuk, a type of Turkish sausage. Since central Scotland isn't exactly known for it's rich Turkish culture, I couldn't get a hold of any sucuk, so substituted it for some chorizo.

Before you do ANYTHING else, turn your oven to gas mark 5, and place your chorizo in a covered dish, and let it sit in there for around 15 minutes. Next up, up dice your feta into small manageable chunks. Such a minimal amount of effort really shouldn't justify a picture, but...

Another ingredient I had to substitute is the standard filo pastry used in borëk, for the much more readily available puff pastry. No major difference, really. Anyway, lay your pastry out on some flour-covered film, and roll it as thin and flat as possible. Cut into sections about the width of a credit card.

Once your chorizo has been in the oven for it's allotted 15 minutes, remove from the dish and dice into (incredibly oily, messy) chunks. And try not to eat about half of it as you do so. I fucking love chorizo. Fun to eat, fun to say. Chorizo, chorizo, chorizo!

Anyhow... load up your chorizo and feta onto half of your pastry bases, making sure to keep the filling away from the edges, and use the other half to cover the filling, pinching the edges of both parts of your pastry to form little delicious parcels. Baste these with one single whisked egg to seal them, and glaze them with a thin layer of the egg to give them a good golden glow once they're cooked.

Lay them out on a baking tray, and pop them in the oven for around 15 minutes, turning occasionally to make sure they don't burn.

And that's pretty much it! Half an hour and you have a pretty decent portion of delicious snacks that can be kept refrigerated for days, eaten hot or cold.
I recommend hot, the gooey melted feta is just tooooo fuckin' good!