STOP BURNING THE RICE CAKES

Mode: 2 Players
Hardware: Pan
Accessories: Orange Fanta

Today we have a shit load of defrosted cheap beef, and I dug out these weird 'rice cake' slices I got from chinatown manc a while back. Have you had these before? I've never even SEEN these before. What the hell are they? Fortunately for me though, they have some barely readable instructions on english to give me some idea of what to do with them. Stir fry, you say? Well you the boss man, engrishy graphic designer dude.

Here we have the beef frying with chopped onion, red pepper, and I decided to add WALNUTS because this is already probably going to be weird as shit, so why not?

After those cook for a while, I add the rice cakes, and add water. But I kept leaving it for a while and almost burning the rice cake things and I start prying them off the bottom of the pan. I got distracted by emails. :#c EVERYTHING SEEMS OKAY THOUGH!!! When they seeming vaguely edible I added some mixture of leftover sauces to flavor. A bit of hoi sin, some sweet chilli, some extra chilli flakes and ground pepper.

Post-Mortem: *** So like, I have no idea if these are supposed to be softer or if they are supposed to be weird and gelatinous. A lot of stuff in asian cuisine seems to be weird and gelatinous for no reason. Like those weird fish things. Overall its pretty nice, though if you ask me, hoi sin sauce, much like sweet and sour sauce gets a bit sickly after a while and you start to feel a slight sense of nauseous regret on your last few mouthfuls. Is that just me? Anyone else get that?

Sweet Chilli Prawn and Rice Salad

Mode: 2-3 Players
Hardware: Steamer
Accessories: Orange Juice

No pun in the title? You're slipping dude. Time to make a quick dinner before party. What better to leech the poison of sunday night hedonism with than something substantial, yet healthy? Leeches? Well, you do it your way, I'll do it mine.

Put some water in the steamer and a bowl of rice with more water in it. I'm using thai fragrant jasmine rice because I'M A FAIRY. Sushi or risotto rice are also good choices for this. I give the rice a 15 minute head start before adding the prawns and the hard vegetables to the steamer for another 15-20 mins

Here are the vegetables I'll be using. Carrot, green pepper, cucumber and a bit of lettuce to garnish.

When all the steamings done, throw it all together with the uncooked cucumber on top (because it's already fresh and delicate like your imaginary boyfriend corey justin jordanson) and mix it in with a sprinkle of paprika, and a heavy helping of thai sweet chilli sauce, and today I added some pad thai sauce I found at waitrose as well. Turns out it made no noticeable difference.

Then I put some lettuce on the base of the bowl, put the rice and vegetables in there and scatter the prawns on top.

Post-Mortem: **** I really like this dish, but thats because it's designed specifically to my tastes. It's sweet, spicy, wet and crunchy and it goes well with sunshine and women in flowery dresses eating yogurt from their purse. Flanders probably doesn't like it, because it tastes like pure healthy. Also as a bonus, it doubles up as a great dose of aromatherapy. Perfect if you're getting some of that early spring hay fever. Which I'm not, HA HA to you guys.

From the time machine: Sushi Sweets

Mode: Massive Multiplayer Office (MMO)
Hardware: Oven, knives, talented mum.
Accessories: Green tea and sugar coma.

Well I haven't really cooked anything of note in a while. Had a lot of parties and some unexciting bacon sandwich related dinners over the weekend. SO I should probably get around to telling you the story of what I did for office cakes last birthday.
I shopped around a lot of places on a kind of candy spree of sorts. Why? Because I had this urge. An urge to try making SUSHI THEMED CANDY. Like last year, my mum was around to help me make cakes that resembled awesome cakes instead of delicious melting tumours. I don't really have so much of a step by step for this one, so I'm just going to show you everything.

Starting with the most obvious, the classic sushi nori rolls. This is a chocolate muffin topped with plain white icing and desiccated coconut. I went on a rampage trying to find some orange flavoured millions to look like roe (fish eggs), as you can see I eventually succeeded. The other toppings are some jelly beans.

These next ones are meant to resemble nigiri sushi, on a wedge of rice krispies mixed in melted white chocolate, with the ever so popular and in my opinion slightly foul marshmallow bananas and prawns to look like omelette and ACTUAL prawns. Tied up with a licorice lace to look like the strip of seaweed. I recommend not doing that because its HARD AS SHIT to get those things to adhese together. I was starting to wonder whether anyone would notice if I slipped in a staple or some superglue.

These, in my opinion, are DIABOLICALLY BRILLIANT. I'm not sure who's idea these were, mine or mums? But ramen in a cup made with these Swedish toffee flavour laces my family somehow found, orange jelly, some mini chocolate ball cake sprinkles and some chocolate covered breadsticks (like pocky) as the chopsticks.

I had originally intended to make big thick discs of angel food cake to use as the main rolled sushi, but they ended up a little flat. So I kinda started just making a spiral pattern on them and sprinkling more sweet things on them. I had some star shaped cake toppings and a load of lime flavoured sweets make a perfect vegetable-esque garnish.

Here is where it gets a little hazy.. as I attempt to use up remaining bits and pieces, I make some squishy cones out of black dyed marzipan (like those cone sushi ones) and stacking the angel cake, wrapping it with some rainbow fizzy belts and just jamming together whatever else I could find. I was SO TIRED OF MAKING STUFF at this point. You can see it sortof falling apart like my brain.

LASTLY, funny story, my brilliant super great friend gifted me this LEGO minifig cake mould. So I made use of it the most obvious way: by making a LEGO minifig cake to supplement all the cakes. It's basic vanilla sponge with some yellow food dye, and then red and blue marzipan and a bit of chocolate icing. 'EAT ME'? Oh my you sassy confection you!

Here's how it all looked together.

And here's how my dining table looked with all the loot.

Retro Review: If I gave anyone in my office diabetes, I'm sorry. But you have to admit, it was worth it. *****

Special Thanks: Helena again for her mumtastic baking skillz.

Not a Kebab.

Mode: 1-4 player
Hardware: Pan
Accessories: Cola

Ah, the notorious doner kebab. Also known as the shawarma, or gyro. Known at least in this country as the #1 food for punishing your digestive system after a night on the bingewagon. But why does this eastern european entree have to be such a hater? Can't we all just get along? Well I looked up this food on wikipedia, and the fundimental thing that gets the kebab its name is the fact that the meat is taken from big rotisserie kebab pole. I don't have one of those. What I'm making is with made with beef or lamb mince. It's not a kebab I guess. But I don't know what to call it. Reply to me with naming suggestions.

I also made for you an onion chopping tutorial that I learned from Cooking Mama. Here you can see you halve the onion, and then chop thin slices ALMOST all the way to the top, but not quite. That way it holds together when you cut thin slices across on the other axis. making absolutely tiny little onion particles perfect for mince. GENIUS.

Lube up your finest wok, and apply the following: A pack of beef or lamb mince, 2 small (or 1 large) chopped onion, a chopped pepper, and some corn. This is not ready yet obviously because the meat is still pink.

Next I add some Moroccan spice mix I got from somewhere. Find something that claims to go well with red meat and add it.

I think most people would chop up lettuce and raw tomatoes to garnish this, but I don't really like raw tomatoes, so I nominate cucumber instead.

I also like to lightly toast my pita bread, but don't do what I did and toast it too much or else its really hard to jam food in there. Add a relish of your choosing now, I highly reccomend Branston's chilli and jalapeno relish, but ketchup or chutney are good too.

Post-Mortem: Flanders is a fool and seems to eat his without any relish or vegetables. He gets to suffer in dry mince purgatory while I enjoy my HEAVENLY ALTERNATIVE TO A KEBAB. It's healthy and light yet filling, and totally and utterly intestine friendly. If you're one of those aformentioned gyromasochists, consider making a batch of mince before a night out and then come home, microwave it up and stick it in some unleven bread. And then consider curbing your rampant alcoholism. ****

Semi-instant chicken noodle.

Mode: 1-2 player
Hardware: Pans
Accessories: Glass of Water

Got some leftover chicken from the roast, and a small rag-tag band of rogue vegetables to take care of. So we're going to make an absolute bottom of the barrel style student classic. That's right. The ol' chicken noodle broth. But don't give me that look, cooking mama. This ain't no chicken inspired 15p sachet. This is made with real REAL FOOD.

They say variety is the spice of life, but here on Arrakis, the spice is the spice of life. With that in mind, I've added to the noodles half a teaspoon of chicken stock powder, a pinch of sage, pepper and paprika. You could also put some mild curry powder in it if you wanted some curry flavour noodles. That's so northern.

Boiled up some water and applied it to the noodles, not too much cause we are making a sortof brothy thing here so we gonna be too lazy to drain it. Chopped up the onion, carrot and a couple cloves of garlic and fried them up a little bit. Deja vu. I wonder how many times this blog is going to feature images of me frying onions.

When thats fried and boiled a sufficient amount, only about 5-10 minutes should do the trick really, just haphazardly toss it all together.

Maintain a small level of liquid in the bottom of it all while you heat up the chicken and corn and spinach. I like to tear up chicken and leafy veges with my hands because it works way better. If you have a small child or useless flatmate who isnt good for anything but is at least willing to try to lend a hand (so not mine then) tearing up herbs or vegetables is the perfect job to get them to do.

Post-Mortem: *** Look down at your pot noodle. Now look up at this. Now look back down at your noodles. You're on a blog with the dinner your dinner could taste like.

Vaguely Oriental Style Roast Chicken.

Mode: 2-4 player
Hardware: Oven and Pans
Accessories: Chicken goes with EVERYTHING

Hello, beautiful! Looks like someone spent all morning cleaning you because SOME OTHER TWO FLATMATES can't clean anything in this house FOR SHIT because they are basically worthless and when society crumbles they will be the first to die and I would consider cannibalising them but they actually have no worthwhile nutrition and you couldn't even use their bones for a sweet necklace because they would crumble like biscuit.

Heat your ovens (the literal kind) up to 190, and peel some potatoes and put them on to boil.

Today we are making a somewhat nondescript asian-ish glaze to apply to our roast chicken. I picked olive oil, dark soy sauce, a tablespoon of honey, chinese 5 spice and ground ginger. If i had a lemon or orange I'd jam it in the chicken-hole (man you know what im talking about) but I don't so I put a sprig of parsley in there as some sort of pathetic desperate offering to the gods of roast chicken.

Now we get to paint the chicken. Myes you see we have an oil based paint with rather broad, expressive strokes. They emphasize a sentiment of hunger and the rich colours of burnt umber and sienna bring a warm aromatic atmosphere. The artist was clearly a genius. Hon Hon Hon.

To go with this chicken I make a simple potato and spinach stamppot (that is dutch for mash with veggies mixed in). It's a great way to jam in some healthiness with next to no effort.

An hour and a half later and lets have a peek in the oven! Oh my! Sorry ma'am I didn't notice you were in there. (I was going to say more things but it got a bit weird so I deleted. It's a dead chicken, after all.)

Post-Chickeny-Mortem: And there you have it. Simple and delicious. Not really wholesome though because towards the end of this review I started drafting words about hot chicken nudity like I have no respect for the dead. This chicken was Devonshire red, man, that's my home county. This chicken is like family. Thanks for being so delicious, chicken. You get 5 stars. *****

10 reasons why you should by a steamer

Today I am cooking burgers. No I'm not going to show you photos of my making BURGERS. Come on, man. Beef. Bun. Extras. I checked my reader stats and none of my audience is from A REMOTE CAVE ON THE MOON.

But instead of frying or grilling these burgers, I'm going to steam them. And so here's a list of reasons why you should seriously consider getting your nerdy earthling ass a STEAMER.

Here is a steamer. I am relatively sure that TEFAL will not mind me using their images in order to basically advertise their products for no reason. Could I be wrong?

1) You can cook basically anything that doesn't benefit from being dry. Meat, seafood, vegetables, rice, pasta, leftovers... etc.

2) YOU CAN'T RUIN ANYTHING. You literally can't burn your rice or turn your chicken fillets into a tiny chunk of chickeny rubber even if you got a new zelda game and 2 hours suddenly dissappeared into oblivion. If it runs out of water to steam the heating element will overheat and turn itself off, or something to that degree.

3) It's like £30. It's CHEAPER THAN A MICROWAVE. And basically all you need is that and a toaster and a set of knives and you have a kitchen.

4) It's easy to use. You just fill it up with water, assemble your magical tower of food and set the timer. The only pain in the ass bit is cleaning all the dissolved meat-water out of it afterwards, but you get that with every appliance.

5) You can cook everything at once. Most of these things come with like 3 or so 'tiers' as seen in the picture.

6) It takes as long as an oven to cook a thing, but without having to pre-heat (yeah ok I said pre-heat).

7) It bloats your food full of delicious minerals and water, which is good for you.

8) While you can get scalded from the hot steam if you are somehow a moron and feel like sticking your hand over the vent or opening the thing while its ON. But other than that, it doesnt constantly try to MURDER YOUR FINGERS like frying pans and ovens.

9) You can cook things straight from frozen. Given a little extra time, but you dont have to go through any other thawing process because the ice it's covered in is WATER and this thing cooks food evenly and with WATER.

10) I have one. So, y'know, it's cool.

Würst case scenario

Mode: 1-2 Player
Hardware: Oven and Pans
Accessories: Copious amounts of ketchup

So after that carbonara the other day, I had the other half of those really cheap sausages to use before they go off. So I thought.. how many (dairy free, flatmate is back) things can you do with cheap and nasty sausage meats anyway? Well, maybe sausage rolls?

To make a dairy free shortcrust pastry, you basically want to mix 2 parts flour to 1 part butter-like vegetable based spread (eg: margerine, soy spread) add a pinch of salt and mix together. And then just drizzle as little water as possible to knead it into a doughey mixture with a doughey texture.

You are supposed to ball it up and leave it for a while to 'settle' I don't know why. But look, I made a chicken! Meanwhile I turn the oven on to HEAT because 'pre-heating' is a linguistic redundancy. Personally I have found that 200°C is prettymuch the universal temperature for cooking everything ever.

Ok, I have a confession to make. I can't roll pastry. I don't understand pastry. WHY IS THIS SO HARD? And I'm hungry so I give up. This is good enough for me. Bad day.

Anyway while the oven was heating and the dough was 'settling' I got some onions and carrots, and I chopped those bitches up so small Dexter Morgan's gonna be after me. Then I fried them up 'till they were fried.

Post-Mortem: ** ZERO POINTS FOR PRESENTATION. But other than that, well, it was a sausage roll, what do you expect? At the best of times they are an acceptable stomach filler when bathed in enough condiments. The fried vegetables worked well with it though. Onions and Sausages are BFF like Paris Hilton and whatever other up-and-coming starlet she's latched onto for the next 3 months.

Can't-be-arsed Carbonara

Mode: Solo
Hardware: Pans
Accessories: Someone else's cola.

I always thought spagetti carbonara was more of a fancy pants italian cooking type gig, because it requires a shit ton of parmesan. That was until I saw a tub of 'BASICS GRATED HARD ITALIAN CHEESE' in the supermarket yesterday. Is this really a viable alternative to buying quality ingredients? Let's find out! It's time for a low budget production of pasta carbonara.

I like to put on the TV when i'm cooking, and Glee was on. I'm going to watch an episode of Glee because everyone loves that show, and I'm like, what's the deal? I put the pasta to boil in a pan, chopped up the pork-related ingredients and put them in another pan.

The sauce should be about 50/50 milk (or cream) and grated cheese. So that's like 1/2 a cup of each.1 egg, and a pinch or two of rosemary. Ah, rosemary. I knew you were good for something.

Now, the point of carbonara is that you cook the shit out of your meat. You practically set it on fire. But don't actually set it on fire because there's probably a smoke alarm in the building unless you are a terrible person. But it's cool because it makes the salami go all DELICIOUSSSS and salami is already delicious.

Argh, I stepped in some mysterious floor water! True story.

Then when everything is ready you throw it all together in a pan. That's right, it takes like 10 minutes of just combining the ingredients with eachother and adding heat. Also I think traditionally, you make carbonara with spaghetti or linguini. But tradition is for lesser beings who don't have the perfect amount of Spirali in their cupboard.

Conclusion: Yeah, I still don't get Glee. Maybe I just don't like highschool related television. Oh and the carbonara, let me put it this way, it's like macaroni cheese (mac and cheese for you wacky americans), but with MEAT. It's even prettymuch as easy to make as instant macaroni cheese. And like ten times less gross. Also, fancier ingredients will make a better pasta for sure, but it's Saturday and I'm alone in the flat, and I just invented a bachelor(ette) grade adaptation of an italian classic. ****

From the time machine: Pac Man Cakes.

Mode: Massive Multiplayer Office (MMO)
Hardware: Oven, Knives, Army of Minions.
Accessories: Office kitchen instant coffee/yorkshire tea

Ok so... The year was... 2009? And it's the LAW in my office of work is that one must provide cakes for the establishment upon the anniversary of one's birth. Now, I have a reputation to maintain as 'totally useful in this place of work and not an expendable junior bastard.' And hey, my family was coming over for the weekend of my birthday. So I have a free workforce. HEY MUM YOU LIKE BAKING CAKES, RIGHT?
Hint: She does

Ok I made 4 large cakes in total, they were all different flavours. Here is a link to a recipe for basic sponge cake. But instead of vanilla essence, you can basically put in anything you want to make a cake out of. In my case I made a classic victoria sponge (ok that ones vanilla), a chocolate cake, a coffee cake (made with instant coffee powder), and a strawberry (strawberry essence and red food colouring) chocolate chip cake. Because, what the hell.

Here is where it gets all crafty, some discarded pizza boxes are MAGICALLY cut up into the shape of ghosts and pacman measurements and wrapped in tin foil so that they can be used both as a template and a handy dandy cake plate. That weird pink porridge over there is some icing my sister made. And if you are really keen-eyed you might notice the huge bucket of warhammer stuff under the table. Yeah, that isn't mine.

Here is the vanilla cake, and also a batch of BLUEBERRY MUFFINS! They will be iced in melted white chocolate to become the iconic pacman 'dots'. If you want a blueberry muffin recipe, google is like, right there.

My mum cut bits off the cake to match the templates, and heres some strange mysterious hot lady whom I don't know who food dyed and rolled out some blue marzipan and carefully worked it into the corners with a knife.

You can prettymuch ice these in any way you want. Pac-man has some yellow buttercream frosting and that red one, pre-made icing from the store, I think? The eyes are made by rolling out some basic marzipan and cutting a disc of them with a cookie cutter, and then a cadbury's giant chocolate button on top of that.

And here are the lot of them in a box in the car. The orange one is made of citrus jelly. The pink one got a little er.. melty...

Here they are arrived at their destination. Phew! Still holding up well.

So yeah, me and my family made a lot of cakes that day. They basically rocked. I think theres even some sugar cookies on the side there, and a punnet of cherries.

Retro Review: Now, I really only consumed trimmings and that one big slice taken out of pac man's face before I iced him, but I think I can safely say ***** FIVE STAR. Because look at them. Damn.

Special Thanks to: Helena and Theresa, my baking gurus, and Ben H and Richard, our tea making, stuff-holding assistants.

And hey, if that was 2009, what did I do for 2010? Find out... later. This blog post took me AAAGES.