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:

Curry-osion Of Conformity

So I literally racked my brains for... I'm not gonna say hours, because that makes me sound like some sad loser who had nothing to do with his day but cook... uhhh, yeah, totally not the case at all. Either way, I couldn't come up with a decent pun title for this post, hence settling on the kinda lame title I did choose. I don't give a fuck, curry is awesome, and so are COC.

Anyhow, I've wanted to try my hand at preparing a curry from scratch for a long-ass while now, but laziness and other excuses prevented it from happening. My pa makes a pretty mean pot every now and again, so I decided to use his recipe as the basis for my own first attempt.
I think he bases his on a traditional Rogan Josh, which is usually made with lamb, but since I was cooking for four, and I'm the only one cool with eating supposedly 'cute' animals, I switched lamb for chicken.

So here's the obligatory ingredients shot. I'm missing a coupla things, like the basmati rice, and a lemon, but fuck it.

So, as ever, the first thing I did was the slicing and dicing. Blahblahblah dice your onions blahblahblah slice your garlic cloves. The fun part, which I've never had the chance to do before now, was preparing the root ginger. You don't need a whole lot, so don't use the ENTIRE root, just peel the outer layer off of one small part of the root, then slice this exposed section into veeeery thin slivers. The smell of this stuff is goddamn incredible, I would happily work for slave labour wages if it meant all I ever did was slice root ginger all day. Love the stuff.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, prepping the spices. First, light a low flame under a dry frying pan, and tip in 2 tsps of whole coriander seeds. Then tip in the same amount of cumin seeds. Give these just a couple of minutes to gently roast them, then empty your pan into your mortar. I've never used a mortar and pestle before, but since I'm kind of a nerd, I got a set from Annual Gift Man, and have been dying to use 'em since. Crush, grind, and generally pulverise your roasted seeds until they're basically delicious-smelling dust. Once that's done, add 1 tsp of red chilli powder to your mortar, and then the same amount of turmeric. Grind all of that together to produce a pretty consistent powder.

Once all that stuff... well, looks pretty much exactly as above, light a fire under a medium-sized pot, pour in a decent glug of sunflower oil, then chuck in all of your diced onions. Give those about...5-10 minutes, just to soften them up a little, before adding in the garlic and ginger. Tip in 3 tsps of garam masala powder, and then the rest of the spices from your mortar. I really like saying mortar. COVERING FIIIRE! ...ahem.

Once all of that is mixed together pretty nicely, until it seems like a dry paste, that's when you want to add in your tin of chopped tomatoes. Scrape every last drop from the tin, and stir that all together. It'll look pretty red and firey, so for a bit of colour correction (and for taste, obviously) you want to stir in 3 tbsps of organic yoghurt. This should give your sauce a rich, iron-y colour, and start to give it a pretty good texture too, just the right mix of chunkiness and smoothness. Quit yakking and move on already...

While your sauce is simmering away, it's meat mangling time! I'm no expert when it comes to handling chicken, I'm really not a white meat kinda guy, and obviously it's a little tricker to get juuust right, texture-wise, but the method I use for cutting it into chunks is perhaps a little different, and a lot more fun, than most people's. I think the phrase 'hung, drawn and quartered' just about says it all.
Impale the thickest end of your chicken breast with a fork or skewer, hang it high in the air, then get to work with your scissors/garden shears. Snip off bitesize chunks, starting from the bottom, and imagine you're trying someone for treason as ya do it.
I know, I know, "why can't he just cook ANYTHING without medieval references", but fuck you, get your own food blog if ya don't like it.

Anyhow, once all four breasts lie dissected in your bowl, light up your frying pan from before, splash in some more oil, and tip in your chicken. You don't want to completely cook it through in the pan, just enough to whiten the outside layer. This takes... maybe 5 minutes at most. Keep turning the chunks with a spatula until every surface of your meat is white. It won't be cooked through, not yet, so add your chicken chunks into your sauce pot.

I say this like fifty fucking times with every post, but... ONCE ALL OF THAT is mixed together nicely, cover your pot and leave to simmer for a while. While the chicken cooks through in the sauce, take a lemon, and a ZESTER (Such a fun word. Zester. Say it aloud. Shout it even. Repeatedly. Endless entertainment.), and scrape off the entire surface of the lemon.
Set your ZESTER aside, and turn your attention to the fresh coriander.
Rinse it off, cut off the root/stalk, and begin to dice the leaves into the tiniest sections that you possibly can. Split this into 2 portions, one half will be added to your sauce in the pot, the other is for garnishing your rice. Add your pot half... well, to the fucking pot, obviously.

Take a mug, and measure one cup basmati rice to two cups water, and add these to another pot. Light a high heat under this, cover, and bring to the boil. Both of your pots, should be covered, and left to simmer, with occaisional stirring, for around 10-15 minutes at this point.

With only around 5 minutes left before the sauce, chicken and rice are ready, heat your oven to around gas mark 4, and pop in your naan bread. I would have made a naan from scratch, but frankly I couldn't be fucking bothered.

In the final minutes, taste your sauce, and add in any additional spices, salt, lint, hair, whatever the fuck you want. Also, add in your lemon zest and remaining coriander to your pot of rice, and stir thoroughly.
Once your naans are browned, your rice has absorbed all the water, and your chicken is cooked through, serve it all up to your family, who will then complain that it's too spicey. Fucking wimps.

And to make the title self-fulfilling, here's something else with warm tones, and a kick to it. Vintage, fuzzed-out COC. Dig in.