Gammon Aftermath 3: Grilled Gammon with Mash.

Mode: 2 player
Hardware: Pan, Oven
Accessories: Glass of water.

So this time im going to defrost and grill more of this leftover gammon just with some different sides. There's not really much to this at all, its more of a 'heating things up' sort of venture but I'm trying to update frequently.

Boiled some potatoes and put the frozen gammon on the grill at a really low setting for about half an hour. When the potatoes were cooked I added some soy spread and muches them straight into mash. I sometimes leave the potato skin on to make a sortof loose and more fibery mash which is good for you probably maybe I guess.



Once that stuff was about ready, put the beans in a bowl in the microwave for a minute and then served.

Post-mortem: *** I think the best way to do gammon is just straight, and with a bunch of other stuff. I think I grilled it a bit too long and dried it out but tough titties cause it was a real busy day yesterday.

Unimaginative Chicken Pasta

Mode: 2-3 player
Hardware: Pans
Accessories: Apple and blackcurrant juice

There are all sorts of things you can do with pasta dishes. Unless your flatmate is allergic to dairy, in which case, there aren't.
As an alternative to another gammon dish just another simple and frankly, boring recipe to tide us all over. Especially me, because yknow, it's my dinner.

Onions are an absolute bitch on my eyes. Especially THESE onions. When you get to the point where you're so teared up you can't see, and you've got to perform vegetable surgery around your left hand with a big sharp knife, you start thinking 'Hmm, I should probably not ignore the potential risks of this situation.' My solution: some 3d glasses. Those £3 ones from the cinema. I think I heard somewhere that it really helps just to have a shield against the onion-y vapour, and by Godrick Griffindor it works. So next time you're forced to watch a film in 3D because the industry is totally going forward with that shit regardless of what you think, just remember: this film is way too dark, but when I get home my onion problem is sorted.

I added some pickled garlic and some dried basil, and fried everything up until salmonella-free.

Then I added a jar of tomato pasta sauce. What's the difference between using pasta sauce and using pureed tomatoes? I'm honestly not really sure. probably about 50 pence is the main difference. But sometimes something is there on the shelves and it can go in your cupboard for how ever long it needs to. That's like your really terrible and unimaginative lesson for today. Horde crappy easy stuff for your convenience.

Post-Mortem: *** B+ for deliciousness, D- for creativity. I've started wondering how many times now I could basically recycle some of my photos from previous and see if anyone notices. Like TODAY I'M MAKING RED BLOBBY THING WITH PEAS AND CARROTS AND MEAT. Yknow, I guess in some ways that 'samey but different' scenario is not dissimilar to the spirit of video game industry. There, I managed to shoehorn in both relevance to my gimmicky sub-theme AND my brand of snarky remarks that keeps people coming back.

Gammon Aftermath 2: Stew

Mode: 2 player
Hardware: Pan.
Accessories: 3 and a half glasses of water.

I was on holiday last week, and nobody really asks for me to cook because everyone else in my family is like me but actually better. Also I am absolutely atrocious at writing this article its taking me like ten years. OK lets get on with it.

Today's a sunday so I have time to leave things cooking for like 2 hours so I'm gonna do exactly that and make a stew with some of the leftover gammon. Here's some water with vegetable stock, black pepper, sage, and a bay leaf.

In go the meat and some chopped potatoes. The meat is already cooked, but only partially defrosted so they go in for like, an hour or more on low/medium heat (below boiling) and then theres loads of time to tenderise. Oh I also added in carrots then but they are not pictured for some reason.

Later, I tasted the stock and DAMN was it salty. Gammon is so damn salty. Why did I ever buy this much in the first place? Anyway, I need to do the best I can to fix the flavour. I added ketchup, a splash of lemon juice, some sundried tomatoes, some worcester sauce... I think that's it. Also, frozen peas. Another half hour or so to reduce and by that time the meat was tender and the consistancy was perfect.

Post-Mortem: ** If this wasn't gammon this would have been the perfect stew. The consistancy was really good, the meat was super tender, and the flavours were good. Unfortunately, gammon is not awesome. The stew was not awesome. ANTI CLIMAX.

Prawn and Chickpea Rogan Josh

Mode: 2-4 player
Hardware: Pans, Steamer
Accessories: Big glass of.. whatever.

I decided to take a break from pork because that would be boring and it's in the freezer anyway, and come up with something relatively new. So I made prawn and chickpea curry. I started by putting some brown rice in the steamer to cook for a while.

Then I got this wadge of frozen prawns that have been in my freezer for ag-... huh... have I seen you somewhere before? Somewhere... Castlevania-y?

Holy shit!

Anyway.

Fried red onion, red pepper and carrots. This meal is going to be pretty red.

Once that was browned, I added the prawns, pre-cooked(?) chickpeas and some pre-made rogan josh curry sauce, because shut up I'm tired.

Here is what it looks like mixed together. WOWEE. Sorry, I'm writing this up at 10am.

Post-Mortem: **** Delicious! Go me. And also go patak's brand dairy free curry sauces, but mostly me.

Rainbow Cupcakes

Mode: Party Game!
Hardware: Cupcake Maker and a load of bowls.
Accessories: Undisclosed volumes of southern comfort and lemonade.

So on Saturday, I had the TTF COMPANY BBQ to attend, and I was bringing a dessert. An opportunity to experiment, and the test subjects: people I rely on to make a living.

So I began by making a basic cupcake batter. I'm not even sure I have any weighing scales anymore, so I just went by approximate cups. 1 cup of self raising flour, 1 cup of fine white sugar, 100g or so of butter, 2 eggs. (Generally the first 3 are equal parts, I guess) And also some vanilla essence. About 1 teaspoon.

Next, I separated the cake mix into SIX different bowls, and dye them each a different colour. At this point, I was like... man, what am I doing? This isn't going to be worth all this effort. This might be a bad idea.

I messily spooned a tiny splodge of each colour into a cupcake case, I held it in a little tray while I was doing this, but then I actually baked it in that funny cupcake maker (it's like a waffle iron or sandwich toaster but for cupcakes)

Holy shit it worked! As you can see, the batter managed to stay nicely separate so you don't just get brown cupcakes. RRRRRRRRAINBOWS.

Now, like a numpty, when I decorated these later with my flatmate/assistant whom I shall codename GREEN LEPRECHAUN, I forgot to take pictures. This was foolish. But hey, you saw the rainbow cupcakes.

Post-Mortem: ??? I didn't actually try one. But they look snazzy.

Gammon Aftermath 1: Pork Noodles.

Mode: 2-3 Player
Hardware: Pan
Accessories: Cuppa Tea

So this isn't very creative of me. But I have a life to live. I'm not your highly paid TV chef or your FRESH IDEAS grocerystore magazine. I'm just a hungry jerk on the internet. Also, this recipe was actually from like friday or something but I had a super busy weekend.

Sesame Oil, Carrots, Spring onions, Frozen Peas, pickled garlic.

A big tablespoon of honey, and a couple of soy sauce, and some chinese 5 spice.

After they are substantially thawed, I chopped up a couple big slices of the gammon joint from the previous entry and put in some cheapo ready-made egg noodles.

Post-Mortem: **** With pre-cooked meat, this can take like ten minutes. And it was better than the first time round! Still a little salty tasting so I added some ketchup. Really good.

Gammon fillet with fried beetroot and pine nuts.

Mode: Like, ten meals.
Hardware: Oven, Pan.
Accessories: Apple and Strawberry Squash

So, do you ever make those occasional life decisions where 20 minutes later you're like. 'Man, what was I even thinking?' Yesterday I did one of those. I was like, hey, it's a Sunday. You know what I haven't cooked for my blog in a while? A MASSIVE hunk of meat. Muslims, Jews and Vegetarians (you thought I'd forget you!) please avert your eyes.

It's an aporkcalypse.

This was about the maximum amount of food that I could possibly carry home with my crappy girl arms. Shame there's only me and Flanders to feed. I should have thought of that. And of the STARVING FOREIGN-COUNTRY CHILDREN THAT COULD HAVE BENEFITED IN SOME WAY IF I DIDN'T BUY THIS FOOD FROM THE GROCERIES. I actually kinda stared at it for a minute thinking... man, what should I even put on this? Would a marinade or glaze even be worth it? I just kinda gave up thinking and put it in the oven for three hours.

Slightly less than 3 hours later, I gathered the rest of necessary ingredients. Not a whole lot needed, really. I couldn't even find any un-pre-cooked beetroot, but this made it real easy for me.

I grated the beetroot and put it into fry with the pine nuts and some sesame oil. As I peered into the pan it occurred to me that it wasn't a whole lot of side-dish, so I put some oven chips in the oven as well. I'm not going to show you how to make oven chips. Come on, man.

Post-Mortem: ** You know what the really awful thing is? I don't think I even like gammon ham that much. It's so salty. It's just... really salty. I like to bathe it in ketchup.
As for the rest of the meat (pretty much most of it), it was real damn easy to carve up, and I've portioned it out into 4 separate bags that contain about a meal's worth that I can freeze and use for recipes in the future. Expect a bunch of various ham-related dishes in the near future. Also maybe next time I'll think to make some kind of sauce or gravy.