Risotto-n Sound

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.

Orange Goblin Ale Tasting

I believe the term is 'relevant to my interests'?

Anyway, here's a 10 minute clip of Orange Goblin reviewing a bunch of beer and ale in a far more entertaining way than I ever could. Enjoy!

Schnit-system

I don't get many chances to be taught new dishes first hand, since I only know one other person who has an interest in food to the degree I do. So when the opportunity arises to have her teach me some new tricks, I jump at the chance. A few nights ago we spent about 4hrs in my kitchen making all sorts of mess as we threw together a schnitzel main course, as well as a dessert at the same time.
Total fucking chaos.

Since this time I was flying solo, and foregoing the dessert aspect, I wasn't sure if it would take more or less time. I was kinda hoping for less. Here's what ya need:

In hindsight, I now know that is FAR too many potatoes and mushrooms, so don't use as many as shown in that photo. I was cooking for two, so adapt your ingredients according to what kinda portion you want.

First off, clean and chop your potatoes, fill a put of water, and bring it to the boil. Dump your wedge-shaped taters in the water and let them boil for a while.

While they're simmering, prep your sauce ingredients. Chop a whole red onion, and slice a few mushrooms, and set those aside for now.

 

Around this time you can drain your part-boiled taters and start prepping them for roasting. I'm not sure if this type of potato has a name or anything, but basically you're gonna coat them in generous amounts of rosemary and thyme before roasting them in the oven.

Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 6, and grab a coupla small plates. Cover one in sunflower oil and the other in a herby coating of rosemary and thyme.

Start spearing your potatoes with a fork, dunking them on the plate of oil, then smearing them around the plate of herbs so they get a good thick covering. Once they look like a whole herd of pungent little chia pets, put them to death by roasting them alive [insert evil genius laugh here].

Okay, so that photo is misleadingly lame, since all the potatoes in the foreground are bald as coots, but it's only because... well to be honest doing the whole herb thing takes fucking ages and I couldn't be arsed after getting about halfway through. So I cheated and just sprinkled the whole tray with herbs after I'd dunked 'em all out onto it. Lazy fucker that I am.

Leave them to roast and move on to the fun part: THE MEAT!
Lay your pork escallopes out on a chopping board or whatever clean work surface you have, and then dump a fucktonne of plain flour over the top, smoothing it all down into even consistency with your hands. Any excuse to touch dead flesh, right? Hey, saves me from resorting to necrophilia on those lonely nights when I don't have anyone to cook with...
Anyway, flip them over and do the same to the other side too.

Once they're well coated in flour, crack an egg onto a plate, and whisk it up into a consistent consistency. My usual verbosity eludes me at this moment in time.

So yeah, that looks fucking revolting. But it's not like thats what you're gonna be eating, it's just a base coat to ensure that your breadcrumbs (lurking in the background of the above photo) stick to your pork. I would have liked to get some more interesting breadcrumbs with other things through 'em, or to even have prepared my own, but laziness struck again, and I wound up just using the leftovers from last time.
Coat each of your sections of deceased pig in egg, then roll them around in the breadcrumbs until they're completely covered, then throw them into the frying pan. Oh yeah, should've mentioned that earlier, pre-heat your pan, and throw in some sunflower oil and a little butter.

 

While those are crisping up, check on your potatoes, and turn them if necessary, making sure they're nice and browned all over and the herbs are sticking to them. Well, thats what SHOULD happen anyway. Turn your oven down a few notches and pop a plate in.
Flip your schnitzel over and add a little more oil in to ensure they don't burn on one side. Cut on to make damn sure they're cooked through, then put them onto that plate you have heating in the oven.

Sauce time! After a little preliminary research online, I discovered that the sauce we had prepared last time was commonly used in a varation of schnitzel called Rahmschnitzel. The sauce is basically just fried onion, mushrooms, and cream.
Dump your diced onion in your now vacant frying pan, shortly followed by the mushrooms, and let them sit browning and shrinking for a little while before you splash in the cream. For the hell of it, I added a little bisto powder to the mix to try and thicken up the cream and give it a little extra flavour.

Remove your potatoes and schnitzel from the oven, plate it all up, and finally fucking eat the damn meal!

Here's some d-beat greatness from a country who don't really have anything to do with this dish. Fuckit, I present to you Sweden's finest; SKITSYSTEM

Massacre-pone

So last night my pa announces, out of the blue, for no reason at all:
"I bought a whole lot of couscous. Do you like couscous?"
"Uhhh, yeah, sure...?"
"Okay."
And then he got up and left the room. He's an unusual man. I'm starting to see where I get it from.

So with that incident in my mind as I wandered around the supermarket aimlessly, I decided to get some appropriately light and healthy (!) accompaniments to a nice bed of couscous. Here's what I picked up.

Okay, okay, so I put in a COUPLE of concessions to my usual dietary habits, namely the big tub of mascarpone cream cheese, because I really wanted to try it, as well as a big pack of streaky bacon, which isn't pictured. Otherwise this might have been... he... hea... heal-thy? Am I saying that right?

There's quite a bit of time involved in this meal because your veg are gonna get roasted, as opposed to my usual quick-fix methods of just grilling or frying everything. Also, the ingredients I used serve two big-ass plated portions, so divide everything in half if you're eating alone.

Anyway, crank your oven up to gas mark 6 (200C), and get chopping! The courgette is cut LENGTHWAYS, and hollowed out using a spoon, and if you have any sense at all, you'll de-seed everything, ESPECIALLY THE TOMATOES. Hack, sever and disembowel your veg so they look like this.

Once that's done, pile your courgettes, peppers and garlic into a deep grill tray, and splash with a tbsp of olive oil. Season using whatever herbs and spices take your fancy, I went for standard staples like oregano, thyme, parsley... and some Cayenne pepper. Just to give it the slightest kick.
Give that about 20 minutes in your oven, turning halfway through to make sure everything cooks evenly. Remove the tray after the 20 mins, and add your tomatoes and chopped chilli pepper, and any more seasoning you fancy. Pop it back in your oven for around another 20 minutes, then boil up your kettle!

You'll need the boiled water for your main filler ingredients, which are about 150g couscous, and 200g chickpeas.

 

When your veg has about 10 minutes left to go, mix your couscous, chickpeas, and 200ml boiling water together in a bowl until the water JUST covers the other stuff, and cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave to stand for ten minutes.

During this time, you can fry up your bacon if you want to make this dish slightly more carnivorous, which of fucking course I do. Scissor it up into smaller chunks of flesh, and fry on a high heat so it crisps up pretty quick. Once it's cooked, pop it into a bowl in the oven for a couple of minutes just to dry it out and make it uber-crispy.

Once your veg have reached their final countdown, take 'em out the oven and spoon a couple of serious dollops (technical term) of mascarpone into the roasted mix, and swirl it all together. Uncover your clingfilmed bowl of couscous, and fluff it up with a fork, adding more water if you think the texture is a little too dry (duh!). Remove your bacon from the oven too.

Cover your plates with the couscous as a base, then dump all your creamy veg mix on top of it, and sprinkle with any leftover chilli peppers you have, as well as throwing a handful of crispy bacon pieces over the whole thing. Serve to your slightly deranged father, to prove that you really DO like couscous.

Also, this, because if you don't like Thin Lizzy, then... well, fuck you, thats what.

His Beer-o Is Gone

Yeah, I know, that's the worst pun title I've come up with yet, but fuck it, I'm sure there are undoubtedly many worse ones to come.

Payday, boredom, and a complete lack of social life are a dangerous combination when you have idle hands. So with no alternative plans for friday night other than staring at the walls, I decided to... stare at them drunk instead. Awesome.

My initial plan was to try and get four different pils beers, but I could only find three in my shitty local supermarket, so I rounded it up with an ale, I think, purely based on the fact it was called Berserker-something-or-other. Metal as fuck.

The Holsten was bought based on a stunning recommendation ("it's one of the slightly less shitty German pils beers") but I could only get a 4 pack, so I guess I better like it!
I'll find out soon enough, seeing as it's first up.
Cracking open a can is something I rarely do with beer anymore, at least since my tastes, and drinking environment, have long since graduated from a shitty warm 4-pack of Budweiser swigged while huddled on a someone else's floor, so it's a little weird to see the froth bubble out of the top of the can and down the side. My first swig is a necessity more than enjoyment, to stop this stuff soaking me.
But that first swig? Not too bad. Not too bad at all.

Seeing as it's the first beer of the evening, and I'm taking the first pull about 10 minutes after I bought it, it's unchilled, so I don't really get any sense of refreshment out of it, but it's wet and I'm thirsty, so it does the trick. I'll stick the others in the fridge and try 'em later, see if it can rise above tolerable when chilled.

Next up is the Belgian Premium Pils. Now this one was given a while in the ol' cooler, so my first pull is teeth-tinglingly refreshing. This is a really fucking tiny bottle, so I get through it in about 10 minutes. That might also have something to do with the fact that it's a really light, crisp beer, one of the myriad brews I describe as 'real good, I could drink ten of 'em!'. Although anyone that knows me or has drank with me knows after about three beers I'm as many sheets to the wind.
That reputation we Scots have for being able to hold our booze? Yeah, well I'm the exception that proves the rule. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy necking as many beers as I can until standing up becomes an issue. And these Premium Pils? I could drink ten of 'em.

Third of the evening is the big bastard bottle of Czech goodness, the Pilsner Urquell.
I'm a little intimidated by the size of this one. Also, the fact it's in a green bottle leaves me sceptical, but in the name of beer, I persevere (say that aloud, then compliment me on my hyming skillz, thanks)!
I'm glad I do. This is more like what I expect of a Pils, a really crisp fizziness, a tang, a kick, a little bitter, a little unpleasant at first, but after I get over the first impression, I warm up to it's cold goodness. There ain't a whole lot to say about it except that based on the fact it's Czech, and I plan on spending a whole lot of time over there next summer, that it bodes well for spending many nights (or days, if I'm feeling decadent/like a drunken loser) sipping on a few of these 500ml bad boys.
If I actually make it there, and you see me, come buy me a Pilsner Urquell or two at Obscene Extreme, Fluff Fest or Brutal Assault Fest. I'll be the lightweight Scotsman grinning madly at whatever grind-y goodness is on stage.

Do I have it in me to tackle the last beer, to get my Berserker on? Of fucking course I do. In thename of ...something. Reviewiness? Journalism? HA! Who am I kidding, no-one reads this shit except me when I proof-read it. And even then I do a shitty half-assed job of it. ANYWAY. BEER.
This is brewed a little closer to home, seeing as it's described as a Hebridean Pale Ale, so it'll be a welcome break from the pils-overload of the past couple of drinks.
The smell alone as I raise the bottle to my mouth is great, a rich, dark, sweet PUNGEANCE! I've no idea if thats a word, or if it is, if that's the correct spelling, but it covers what I want to say, so fuckit.

First gulp: URGH! Okay, I'm not even giving this another chance, that was actually fucking disgusting. Pale ale? It's like fucking rotten treacle! No. Not even drinking that out of morbid curiosity. Fucking foul.

Here's some sounds that tie in with the title, and are just as thick and foul as the last beer...
full credit to  KILLTHATCAT.COM for this footage