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?
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