Spaghetti Bolog-Nasum

This was kind of a last-minute idea, since I wasn't all that hungry, I didn't really plan on making anything for dinner. But I got bored and needed to do something to fill my night, so thought I may as well just cook for other people.

First off, as usual, gather all this shit together:

Before you light any fires or heat any metal, you gotta do all your prep work, which involves turning a couple of the raw ingredients above into this:

Boil up a pint of water to make your beef stock, as well as finely chop your onion, crush and slice your garlic, grate your block of parmesan, and of course, my favourite, tear apart your carefully sliced meat and re-assemble it into balls. The final result is a little-known delicacy known only as 'meatballs'. Don't say I never teach ya anything.
Since I didn't really plan this out very well, I didn't have any standard minced beef available, and had to make do with 4 slices of lorne sausage. I think I've said before that this is almost exclusive to Scotland, so you should probably just use the standard mince option.

Anyhow, light a fire under a saucepan, and another under a frying pan. Pour in two tbsps of olive oil into your saucepan, and place all your meatballs into your frying pan. Give the meatballs 5 minutes or so, turning them until the exteriors are all browned, and anything interior which isn't cooked through will be in the next step.

Dump all your onions into the saucepan, then drop your balls (insert Beavis and Butthead-esque snigger here) in too. Stir 'em around for a coupla minutes, then throw in a tbsp of plain flour to thicken it up, as well as adding your crushed garlic and tiny tin of tomato puree.
Now that your frying pan is empty, you may as well take advantage of all that lovely beef-fat-stock sloshing around in there. I poured half into my saucepan, and used the other half to fry up some bacon (for extra carnivore points, and because it needed used up).

Mix all of this together for another couple of minutes, then add in about a quarter-pint of your beef stock. Some recipes say you can use red wine in bolognese sauce, but fuck that, wine is for goths and housewives. If you do however feel like alchohol is just downright necessary for your recipe, than time-travel back to the start, and marinade that minced beef in some disgusting rotgut bourbon.

Ordinarily I would chop my own whole tomatoes for this next stage, taking great care to ensure not a single goddamn seed or single drop of green goop is left, but since it was a last minute thing I needed to use tinned tomatoes. You should really make the effort to always use fresh ingredients though.
Add in these chopped tomatoes, stir, cover, and bring to a boil.

A lot of recipes tell you to leave it at this stage for close to an hour, but fuck that, I was cooking for others, and they wouldn't shut the fuck up about how long it was taking, so I only gave it about 15 minutes.
During this 15 minutes fill another pan with water and bring it to a boil, then with around 10 minutes to go, chuck in your pasta.

Keep stirring both of these pots for ten minutes, until your tomato sauce reduces down a little and isn't quite so gloopy, and your pasta softens up nicely. Drain your spaghetti, and transfer your sauce into the spaghetti pot. Mix it all together and give it another coupla minutes over a flame before serving.

This amount should serve 3 people pretty well, so dish up 3 plates, ladel it on there, garnish with grated parmesan and basil leaves, and then enjoy the silence as your test subjects finally stop complaining about how long it took to make. I'm sorry not everything is a fucking ready meal that takes two minutes and a PING to make.

And now for some shinfo. The title of this post was (fucking obviously!) inspired by one of the greatest grindcore bands, the incredibly crushing NASUM.

Nasum were the first grind band I ever heard, on a free compilation CD about 10 years ago. Other bands on that comp were Discharge, Iron Monkey, The Birthday Party, Black Flag, Eyehategod, Turbonegro and Void. Safe to say, the instant my young(ish), innocent(ish) ears were exposed to these bands, my life changed forever.
Corrupted would be one way to put it. Musically set free would be another.

Enough of my boring-as-shit rambling, here's a song with an opening blast of a riff that I hear in my head at least once every day. In Grind we trust!

Pesto-lence

First of all, I apologise for the fact that my ingredient photo looks like a goddamn promo shot for Sainsburys. It also doesn't help that I used their spokesperson/corporate shill Jamie Oliver's basic pesto recipe, before mangling and bastardising it to make my own twisted creation. Anyhow, here's all the shit that goes in it:

I should probably mention that a couple of vital pieces of kit are not pictured, such as a giant-ass pestle and mortar, and  an electric food processor (or if you prefer, simply a blender).

Also if anyone ever actually uses my ridiculous attempts at cookery as guidelines (ha!), then that's all the stuff you need to cook pesto my own weird way. Due to my complete lack of photographic ability, some of that might not be so obvious what it is, like the block of parmesan cheese, or the sun-dried tomatoes.

First things first, get the usual boring shite outta the way, chop pepper and red onion, set aside.

Next, use about a third of a pack of pine nuts, pour 'em out onto a baking tray, stick them under the grill for a minute or two, you don't even want to brown them, just veeeery lightly roast 'em. Take those out, and set them aside too.

If your tastes are similar to mine, and you don't give a fuck how bad it makes your breath smell, take 2 whole cloves of garlic, peel and chop them, and throw 'em into your mortar. Sprinkle in some big-ass rocks of sea salt, and tear off a sparse amount of basil leaves. I don't like a whole lot of basil, so feel free to use a forest's worth, if that's your thing.
Grind it all up, really smash it until it becomes a pulverized paste, then scrape it into your blender.

Next, take your gently roasted pine nuts, chuck those into your freshly emptied mortar, and proceed to destroy those too. As anyone who has talked to me for even 5 minutes will know, I don't eat anything unless it has some sort of chilli or ridiculous spice in it, so I threw in a good few pinches of mixed dried chilli seeds, and ground those into the pine nut mush.
Once those are sufficiently obliterated, scrape them into the blender with your garlic/basil paste.

Here comes the part I was wary of, as most pesto recipes recommend using a liberal amount of parmesan cheese and olive oil, neither of which I am into in any way (seriously, the smell of oil makes me want to vomit out my entire digestive tract. I hope that mental image just ruined your appetite. you're welcome.).
Instead of just bitching out and substituting these ingredients for something more palatable to my... well, palate, I decided to face my food fear, and I grated that fucking parmesan like I was downright goddamn pissed off at it. Sprinkle about half of what you grate into the initial blender-ful, drizzle in some (BLURRRRGH) olive oil, stick a lid on it, and blend away.

At this point you can start adding in whatever ingredients you think will work, to supplement the basic pesto paste. I went for a coupla sun-dried tomatoes, which are salty as all hell, as well as a nice big splash of Louisiana Hotsauce, and just a few chunks of my sliced red pepper.

I know, that looks fucking revolting, but trust me, once it's all blended up to fine paste and added to all the other ingredients, aesthetics will be the last thing on your mind.

Blend all that yet again, splashing in more (but not too much!) olive oil as needed to give it a good sloppy consistency, and any additional parmesan if it gets TOO viscous.

Scrape it all out into an empty jar, with any luck you'll have enough to either feed four people, or to be eating nothing but pesto for a whole weekend.

Boil up a pot of water, and drop in your choice of pasta. Normally I'm a fusilli or penne man, but seeing as I used up all of that on my other dinners this week, I was left with tagliatelle.

Start a fire under your frying pan, and lay your bacon in it, making sure to cut off every sliver of excess fat. This is one of the rare occasions that I like my bacon burnt to a crisp, so... do that, and chuck in all of your red onion and red pepper, to lightly fry those too.

When your bacon is the consistency of a corpse's skin putrefying and crackling in the glare of the sun (apparently reading too much Stephen King will make you think of everything in terms of corpse metaphors), and your onions are starting to brown, scoop in a good 3 or four teaspoonfuls of your pesto mix, and stir it all together.
Drain your pasta, and add all of that into your frying pan too. Stir it around for a couple of minutes, so the pasta starts to burn slightly. This is a personal preference, you could also make this without the pasta going anywhere NEAR the frying pan.
Finally, get bored of stirring and feeling hungry as fuck, and serve it up!

While you gnash away hungrily at that, listen to something appropriately (and yes, connected to the post title, as fucking ever) technical and carnivorous sounding. Some prime late-80s death metal for ya:

Carniwhore Burgers

Okay, okay, so I completely stole this recipe idea, at least certain elements of it. If you fancy a SRS recipe, not just my fast-as-fuck 'snack' version, you can get your drool on here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookshark/sets/72157624856923391/

Now that my plagiarism has been exposed, I can get on with the usual bullshit. Heres what ya need:

Before I start, the only thing I didn't buy myself was the meat, because for some weird reason, we had... an entire slaughterhouse worth of minced beef in the fridge. I have no idea how much, weight-wise, I used, I just thrust my hand into the gigantic bowl of ungulate remains and pulled out a pawful.

I'm sure I've done a burger recipe before, so just... any prep involved in making burger patty, follow my old instructions. Be sure to use your hands to break up the meat and mix things into it, I can never stress that enough. Get bloody.

By now I'm goddamn sick of typing anything to do with chopping veg. Just fucking do it, right? Finely dice a red chilli if you fancy a dinner that's gonna kick your ass.
Also, cut off some pretty decent chunks of feta, for reasons that will become clear later/are already clear if you read the link above.

For something a bit weird, I decided it'd be a good idea to add a pretty serious amount of chilli powder, as well as powdered ginger, into my pattys. I know, ginger, I'm weird, I get it. It wasn't through any real desire to taste it in the burger (I couldn't in the end), just another excuse to experience the smell. Goddamn, that smell...

Anyway, where was I? So your meat is seasoned and mixed, your veg is chopped, your feta is primed.

Fire up your frying pan, splash in your oil, and seperate your meat into two decent sized pattys. Smash it flat with your fists, if you've had a particularly stressful day, or even if you haven't because pounding dead flesh is always fun. And surprisingly no, that's not a necrophilia joke, you sick fuck.

Once the meat is good and spread out, take your chunks of feta, place them on one side of the flattened patty and sprinkle in your red pepper and add in a fucktonne more chillis, powder and general spiciness, and fold the other side of the patty over on top of all of that, to seal it within. If you're worried the meat will just crumble and all your ingredients will spill out, lightly coat it with a mixture of a single whisked egg, milk and flour.

Lift these meaty beautys into your frying pan, and... well, just wait for 'em to fry, dumbass. They might take a little longer than your average burger because they're thicker, what with having 'layers' and all. So leave them in a good long while, and cut one through the middle to check it's all thoroughly cooked before serving.

The feta melts and gets all gorgeously gooey in the centre, it's honestly fucking amazing. I bought enough of it, and we have enough mince to ensure this is gonna be the only meal I eat for a week. Funnily enough, I am more than okay with that.

Since for once I didn't come up with my OWN clever post title, I'll settle for a clip vaguely related to it, in name alone.

Carnivore were a thrash band outta Brooklyn, featuring the late, great Peter Steele.
I know this is a food blog, but just listen to this track! The segue from all-out thrash, to the gloomy gothic doom mid-section, back through to thrash with an almost-crust-like vocal delivery... most bands still can't touch this prime late-80's stuff. RIP Pete.

Whisky Leech

I've had the idea for this particularly night of amber alchemy for months now, the bottles have been sitting on top of my speakers for just as long, and for some reason it's taken me this long to get around to drinking 'em. I'm almost ashamed of myself. Yeah, you read that right, I'm ashamed because I'm not ENOUGH of a drunken useless wreck.

I bought these four miniatures all the way back in summer last year from one of Glasgow's whisky specialist shops, while out hunting for a bottle of Makers Mark at a price that wouldn't bankrupt me.

I don't pretend to actually KNOW anything about whisky, except that I really like it, and that it keeps my voice in good (for that read 'broken, hoarse and scratchy') shape. Therefore, my purchasing decisions were based on aesthetics alone. Yeah, I'm the kind of shallow cunt that fancy packaging was made for. I liked the labels of three of the bottles, and the tiny bottle of Dalmore was an impulse buy due to it's status as the smallest bottle of whisky in the world.

I may as well start with the Dalmore, as there's not really enough in there to 'appreciate the taste' once I've worked my way through the other bottles and gotten slightly sloppy in my judgement. Here's a picture to give you an idea of just how tiny this bottle is:

So when poured, or rather, dripped into my glass, the amount of whisky barely even covers the surface of the bottom of the glass. When I tried to carefully sip it, I drank the whole damn bottle in less than a sip. Hmmm. Definitely more of a novelty item than something bought for the actual contents. It was a pretty standard single malt, not as dry as most that i've tried, I'd really need to slug back a decent sized glass to get a real idea though.

Next I'll try... the Sheep Dip. Sniffing this before tasting is a weird one, it has a real grassy smell, y'know, like actual freshly cut grass. Maybe it's just my screwy sense of smell, but I'm kinda hesitant to try a whisky that might aggravate my hayfever, as opposed to make my eyes water with the flare of burning nostrils. Ah well, here goes nothin'!
...There it is! The smell is goddamn deceptive, this definitely has a good warm kick to it. Again, not very different to most other scotch single malts, but my inability to taste any huge difference is probably down to my own philistine tastebuds, rather than any fault on the part of whisky itself.
Hmmm... the more I have of this, the smoother it goes down. I know, I know, fuckin' duh, right? But I've had nowhere near enough to dull my senses. Not yet, anyway.

My mistrust of green-bottled alchohol is a mystery even to myself, but still, it's with a slight sense of foreboding that I break the seal of the terribly-titled 'Black Bottle'. Come on, you can fucking SEE it's not really a black bottle! Fucks sake.
Anyhow, yet again the odour of the booze is absolutely NO clue as to how it might taste. I kinda like the warning sign when you raise a glass to your lips, that tingle you feel, the need to close your eyes and brace for contact. Upon first sip this definitely has more of that familiar warmth, and a slight sting in it's tail. Definitely better than I expected, considering the secondary-colour involved in it's packaging.
A few sips later, I still dig it. Damn good whisky!

Last, but... well, I don't know if it's least, I ain't tried it yet. That good ol' warmth in my throat might be slightly affecting my brain by this point. Just slightly.
I bought this bottle, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, mainly because it resembles like... some sort of medical label, it's far from your stereotypical whisky bottle in appearance at least, it looks almost like something you would find on an apothecaries' shelf. Which as regular readers may notice, fulfils my traditional 'refer to something medieval or historical within every fucking post' quotient.
Anyway, I'm actually pretty excited to try this one, if only to see if it fulfils the high hopes this packaging nerd has placed upon it. Moment of truth...

Oh fuck yes! One of the rare occaisions in life where my built-up hopes are not dashed all to hell. This totally lives up to ...well, the self-imposed hype.
It has it all, the sting as it touches my lips, the smooth warmth when swallowed, a real... would firey be a word you'd use to describe whisky? Fuck it, I'm gonna go with firey. If I can get a decent sized bottle of this, I'll be a very happy man.

Because I'm a fucking wimp, I've not finished any of these bottles, not tonight at least, but I think the Bailie Nicol Jarvie may not last much longer... definitely a new favourite.

Warning: drinking too much whisky makes your voice sound like this...

I like beer. It is good.

For complete lack of a clever post title, that will have to do. I mean, it is true and all, it says everything that ever needs be said about my relationship with the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

Enough horseshit, here are the beers:

There was no great process behind the selection of these particular bottles, other than I couldn't make it to Peckham's in Glasgow, my usual source of undiscovered alchoholic delights. So these were just about the only drinks I hadn't tried out of the shitty supermarket selection.

First up, or should that be furst up (yeah, I want to punch me too) is the Fursty Ferret. Ferrets kinda freak me out, I don't know why, they seem way too over-excitable and... burrow-y. Like they'd get up the leg of your jeans somehow and cause all sorts of havoc up there... anyway, what the fuck am I on about? Oh yeah, beer review. On first sip, I thought this was pretty... nothing-y. It says on the neck 'full of character' but there's really nothing here to distinguish it from any other ale, really.
Nearing the end of the bottle, and that opinion just ain't gonna change I guess. Not bad, but nothin special either.


Right, onto another 500ml-er next. Gentleman Jack? sounds a little too close to Jack Daniels for my liking, definitely not a fan of THAT particular bourbon, so here's hoping the two are entirely unconnected.
Okay, first swig... YEAH. I like this. it fizzes. it has tang, kick. heft. A real flavour to it. It's not too heavy either, like some ales, this is something I can easily see myself working through a few off in a night without feeling like it was about to start seeping out of... whatever, I'm gonna stop that right there before this gets disgusting and puts me off my booze. This is a damn good ale. Would drink again. and again. and again. until I fell over.

Next up: Savanna Dry! First impression is the smell as I pry off the bottlecap. It hits like a serious fucking gust of appley goodness. First sip? Whoah. Appley. South African apples are as potent as a fucking nuke, I;d imagine. What does that even mean? Fucked if I know. I'd just like to point out at this stage that these beers/ciders/ales, whatever, are not the first drinks I've consumed today. Yeah, again, I know, but it's a saturday and I got everything I needed to done by midday, so yeah, from about 1pm I've been steadily knocking back cheap shitty beers as an almmost warm up for these beauties.
Back to the Savanna Dry. This is quite... pungent, but not as unpleasant as that word is. It has a real odour to it, but in a nice way.

Last, but in no way least, is something I've been looking forward to... well for about 12hrs since I bought it: 1488 Whisky Beer. Whisky Beer. just LOOK at those two beautiful words, juxtaposed. Ahhh, his truly has gotta be the pinnacle of human achievement, in a bottle.
First sip: WOOOOO does that ever have a fucking kick to it! What's the percentage? ONLY 7? nofuckingway. I'm not even sure if I like this as a beer, theres no way you just sit and casually swig one of these. It does delivery on a good, strong, whisky-tinged taste though, there ain't no denying that. Urgh, there is no fucking way I'm finishing this, it's like 3am. I'm such a fucking lightweight in my old age. Moral of the story is: this beer rules, but I cannot fucking handle it right now.

Here's a song about a situation I find myself in all too often