You're Friday Moment of Zen: The Magic Sandwich

Going through some old pics today, I found this: The definitive step-by-step guide to the Ruffle-Chip-Tortillia-Sour-Cream-Sandwich that The Magic invented whilst on holiday at the Tex-Mex Capital of the World Rovaniemi. THIS is a moment of deep fried zen. Yum.

Ingredient 1: Take Tortillia Chips (preferably from plate of chicken wings).

Ingredient 2: Get Ruffle Potato Chips (preferrably with ribs but for you veges out there, omit meat)

The Steps by Step Guide

Step 1: Break Ruffle Potato Chip to size to fit neatly ontop of the tortilla

Step 2: Top Tortilla Chip With Ruffle Potato Chip

Step 3: Add final layer of Tortilla Chip

Step 4: Dip sandwich into sour cream sauce from ribs. Again if vege, use regular sour cream that doesn't come from ribs.

Step 5: Finished product. It's not the prettiest sandwich in the world, but not everything has to be pretty in the world to be good.

Stage 6: AARRGGHH!! Eat Ruffle-Chip-Tortillia Sandwich. Yum. Fattening but yum

You're Friday Moment of Zen: The future of deep fried chicken, the Holy Grail of Deep Fried Chicken, the Cup of Wonder: The Col-Pop.

South Korean fast food joint BBQ Chicken (that's not Barbeque Chicken but "Best of the Best Quality Chicken") have invented the ultimate in fast time snacking that blows the Colonel's bucket o' chicken out of the water. The age old problem of "how do I walk along, eat my chicken nuggets, drink my drink AND scratch my arse at the same time when I've only got two hands??! TWO HANDS GOD DAMN YOU!" has been solved by BBQ Chicken by discovering probably the single most important invention in our life time: Ladies and Gentlemen, BBQ Chicken proudly presents the Col-Pop: The single cup that holds 32 ounces of fizzy goodness AND your deep fried chicken nuggets. IN ONE CUP! Now you can eat, drink, and scratch away!!


Those crazy South Koreans. I NEED TO TRY THIS! THIS is my holy grail.

The cup has a seperate container in the top to hold the nuggets and keep them hot, and the bottom is designed to keep your drinks cold, with the addition of two straw holes so you can hold it all in one hand. Genius!




The guys at serious eats have road tested this beauty, and I love the fact that they've also added this gratuitous graph showing the ease of snack portability through history:

BBQ Chicken is slowly and quietly working on it's world wide DOMINATION of the fast food industry, and hopefully will make an appearance in the UK. Until then, I might have to get my underscratched arse to Spain or South Korea to try one of these. If you are anywhere near a BBQ Chicken, I urge, no I beg you TRY ONE and let me know if it's the beacon of justice I know it can be.

Come to me Gordon

When C & I were on holiday in Italy (well St Moritz to be exact) recently, we shared the largest, smelliest, kirsch spiked, cheese fondue I've had in ages. In fact, the cheese fondue, much like many people's fashion taste in St Moritz, seemed like a good idea at the time but on execution was actually was pretty horrid.

I know that I say "cheese dreams" quite a bit, but I kid you not, cheese fondue causes me to have the bizarest, freakout, never-in-thousand-Sundays-will-come-true, Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds kind of dreams more than any other substance I've come across. After my fondue extravaganza, I had the weirdest dream that Gordon Ramsey was teaching me how to cook. Being Gordon Ramsey, he started yelling and screaming at me, telling me I was rubbish and what not, which pissed me off no end, so I yelled at him to go and sod off, threw my knife down and stormed out. The strange thing that happened was this: he ran after me, swept me into his arms, like his Rhett Butler to my Scarlett O'Hara, told me he wanted me to be his girlfriend(!), and couldn't bare to be without me.

Now this was a dream. A dream. If you can't fulfill your wildest fantasies with a world famous chef in a dream, then god knows when you're supposed to. Calv has accused me of being one of the most contrary people he's ever met, and maybe he's right. Cause rather than ripping Gordon Ramsey's clothes off, and saying "yes! yes please!", I said "um.. well, you're married aren't you? And you've got some really beautiful kids right? Yeah, I'm sorry about this Gordon, but there's no way I can possibly go out with you..". Yes. In my dream, where Gordon Ramsey was begging me to be his girl, all I could do was say mutter some prudish rubbish about him being married and say "no" (and no, I'm not saying that sleeping with a Michelin star chef whilst he's married is something that I condone. But come on - it was a dream!).

Well, today Gordon Ramsey on Channel 4 is doing a live cooking show where you are supposed to you cook along at the same time with him. He's making scallops with fresh salsa, steak with wedges, and chocolate mousse for afters. Here it is people. The dream was a sign! Now all I have to do is watch his show tonight, cook along with him, get mad, tell him to sod off, then calmly wait for him to rush from his live studio mid show, straight to my front door, confess his undying love, and see if I am as "good" in real life as I was in my dream...

I'll keep you posted with what happens... It's a sign.. Yup, defo.

Never say "and get yourself something nice" to me

Last week Dr D asked me to get him his lunch, and with his best "East End" geezer, I'm a cockney lad I am, voice, the threw me a tenner and said "er' you go luv treat yourself to something nice".

So I did. I bought myself some £99.50 per kilo, still on the bone, hand carved in front of me, Jamon. Aka ultra expensive, cured, beautiful, would eat this every day if I could afford it, ham from Brindisa.

And it was dead tasty. I love how it says on the label "Eat Within 3 days". I scoffed my 5 paper thin slices within 3 minutes. Flat.

Proof I eat things other than nutella and white bread!

It's nasty but I love it

On Monday, a very stressful day forced me to go the local shops near work so I could get my chocolate fix. In the store, whilst meandering around, trying to take as long as I possibly could, I noticed the holy grail of sugar fixes: a jar of nutella. Oh god how I love nutella. But it's the sort of thing I try to steer well away from, because it's a dirty, bad, nasty, in motel rooms kind of love, not a wholesome, meet your parents, sing you sonnets from afar sort of affair. Unfortunately, this day was bad, and like a junkie I found myself unable to walk away. I threw my £1.98 on the counter, before scurrying quickly away back.

Now, a jar of nutella at my work would not go down so well.. Why? Because everyone at work eats responsibly like an adult. I'm the one who owns the Kellogs Crunchy Nut. Everyone else has organic muesli, shredded wheat, cardboard cut into little squares with added fiber. It's all salads and bags of fruit, wholemeal, locally sourced, organic, with added nuts, ultra low fat. Naughty things like nutella have no right to an existent in our work kitchen.

Worse still, I only like my nutella, thickly spread, to the very edges, and folded in half, on nutrionally neglibable white bread. Oh yes - no wholemeal, whole wheat, whole boring brown bread with my ultra high in sugar, low in anything else, nutella. Like a criminal I have to sneak off to the kitchen, get my jar of sugar and cocoa out from the back of the top shelf of the cabinet (where I've hidden it behind all the jars of green tea that no one drinks), sneak my white bread out of the fridge (out from behind the salads and couscous). And I'm off: quickly and silently make myself up a sandwich that only 5 years old these days are eating. Once it's all put together, I only have to try to avoid any disaproving stares, appologise for the lack of fibre in the bread, and pass it off as an ultra thickly spread, zero fat marmite. Hurah! Am practically a resistence fighter. Though resistence to responsible eating doesn't quite have the same tone as covertly fighting an invading regime from taking over your country...

And you know what: my dirty, nasty love is even tastier knowing that everyone would shun me like a scarlet woman and disapprove.

Hoorah for the long weekend

It's T-Minus 2 hours until the start of the last bank holiday weekend in Britain. HOORAH!! I can't get out of here quick enough, since I've spent all week swearing at the bugs I'm trying to fix. I think if we are nice enough to give our clients NPE's then they should happily take these little gifts and live with it. Stupid software.

Anyway, I'm obsessed today with 2 things:


1. Thinking with my belly first
I stumbled across this from 101cookbooks (fabulous site) and I am seriously in love with these madelines. I love madelines in general, with their softness and their delicous buttery fattening goodness. The idea of a plate full of these delicious little cakes straight out of the oven is definitely making me want to rush home right now and make them. Unfortunately I first have to buy myself a proper madeline tin first, which is something I intend to do this weekend. YUM. For the recipe check it out here


2) Not getting fired at work
They've taken away our YouTube privaleges!!! It's a freaking disaster! How am I going to listen to "If I Could Turn Back Time" by Cher now? Where will I get my Roxette fix? WHERE?? This, my friends, is why god created the internet (well, not himself personally but you know what I mean), so when we get cravings for crap 80's music, we can go to one site, one search and 2 seconds later, be teleported back to days of bangs and scrunchies and bad, bad, rock ballads with guitars!! So now my account has been "super scouted" which means that management have been flagged to the fact I've looked at a website that I should be looking at. Unfortunately, I was super scouted the second time today when Calv sent us all a link to blacks.co.uk for hiking and outdoor gear for our next trip to the Artic circle. Unfortunately, he thought he sent us there, but instead sent us to another blacks site, which is not a camping store at all, but a site with explicit material, of a sexual nature. Super scout smacks me again. For inadvertedly looking up porn at work. Damn it.

Have a good long weekend if you're in Britain. Otherwise, see you on the otherside!

Your Friday Moment of Zen: Let them drive cake

I saw this ad last night on the tv and it is fantastic!! Not just because it's cake, but because I have always had a bit of thing for the "Sound of Music".. (I defy you to find anyone my age from Sydney who didn't love the Sound of Music.. or maybe that was just something wierd with the all girls school I went to. I think I could recite the entire movie, sing all the songs, and possibly do the dancing bits too. Captain Von Trappe. Grrr).

I can't find the youtube link so I'm afraid you'll have to actually go to here to watch it from the Skoda site. It's a brilliant ad, and since all I feel like I've done for ages now is eat cake, this is a perfect, Friday afternoon zen like piece. Feel like eating a bit of tyre now.

Egg-tastic

Li, from veganstore.co.uk fame (ethical food at very reasonable prices, shipped all over the world, for your guilt free pleasure), very kindly donated to our poor IT firm 13 delicious organic Green & Blacks easter eggs today! The squeel of delight that came out of us when we opened the box was deafening, and as you can see from these pics, that's alot of chocolate to get through.

Funnily though, of the 13 boxes that arrived 4 hours ago, only 5 seem to be left, meaning that there are going to be many people in our office who are about to contract type 2 diabetes.

Despite the amount of chub I've put on in China, that hasn't seemed to deter me from stuffing my face with chocolate today (not 8 boxes worth of chocolate mind you, I'm not an animal).

Obviously the empty boxes will soon join the "wall" between Dr D's desk and myself, to help keep the peace in the office...

Thanks Li! You truly are a superstar.

Farewell Sweet Ramen, And Thanks

The inventor of the instant ramen noodle, Momofuku Ando, passed away on the 5th of January 2007 from a heart attack. Faced with food shortages after WWII in Japan, Ando
developed his idea for a quick, convenient noodle product to help feed them masses. And feed them, and me, he most certainly has.

The 2 minute noodle, more commonly known as the "Pot Noodle" or the "Slag of Snacks" in Britain, has interwoven itself in my life as long as I can remember:

It was the 2 minute noodle that, as a 9 year old left at home during school holidays to fend for myself, was one of the first thing I remember trying to cook. I remember standing in the kitchen, with a bowl of noodles in cold tap water, trying to work out why they wouldn't soften. I'd prod them for ages, then give up, until my mum came home, and taught me how they were done. Then she started to cook me proper food to have for lunch, rather than "rubbish junk".

It was also the 2 minute noodle that got me through my final years in high school. Not because I couldn't afford to eat anything else, but because I was too lazy to find anything with more nutritonal value. It was directly due to eating a pack of these practially every day, that I got chunky, and developed a lovely stomach ulcer, which in turn led to the downfall of my guilty love affair for this most sinful of snacks.

So in memoriam of the Momofuku, whose fantastic invention has saved starving people in post war Asia, not to mention thousands of university students, I decided to lay aside the stigma that goes with having 2 minute noodles, and brazenly made one for lunch today, to the looks of disgust from my fellow co-workers. And here is my recipe for the best, most moreish, most delicious ways of 2 minute noodles. Try it once, and you'll be hooked.

• 1 pack, 2 minute beef flavoured noodles (don't get excited about any other flavour. BSE giving beef is the best, though if you must, then don't blame me if you don't like it).
  
• cheese, grated
• tabasco sauce
• 1/2 lemon (well, I like 1/2 a lemon, but that's probably a bit much)
  

1. Break noodles in half, place lovingly and delicately in a china bowl. No plastic cups here thank you very much.
2. Pour freshly boiled water over the noodles, and cover the bowl with plate, to keep as much heat in as possible.
3. Whilst waiting, grate some cheese. Extra mature cheddar is good, though if feeling guilty about having noodles in the first place, the low-fat pre-grated, feels-like-plastic, never -seen-a-cow-in-it's-life, stuff works fine too.
   
4. Fidget around until the 2 minutes is up. Don't be fooled, this is the most important step! Make sure that the noodles do not stand in the hot water too long, or else they'll turn into a soggy mush, which you might as well throw away, because then they are no good to man nor beast. You want nice, still slightly firm noodles.
5. Strain all the water from the bowl, and replace with freshly boiled water, until the noodles are just covered.
6. Stir in flavour sachet.
   
7. Liberally shake, like a British Nanny, the tabasco sauce over the noodles. When you think you've put too much, add another shake.
   
8. Squeeze liberally with lemon juice
9. Mix noodles
10. Add grated cheese to the noodles before each delicious mouthful, so that the cheese is just melting as you eat them.

Oh my god. This is soo good. It's not haute cuisine, but then again I'm not french. And everyone has to have a guilty secret snack, that they know is no good for them, but they can't resist anyway. This and pork scratchings are definitely mine. What's yours?

I'm hungry again just thinking about this, and it's almost 1am. Hmmm.. I wonder if we have any in the kitchen..

Bacon Caramel

This recipe from Eatin' and Drinkin' is so strange. My instincts say "YUCK" but something deep inside says "hmmmm.. but you do love pancakes with bacon, smothered maple syrup....". This recipe is just classical caramel (sugar, cream and butter), with some pre-cooked, crispy bacon added at the end. Apparently, according to slashfood.com, the non-traditional bacon uses have been around for a while, and this is just one of a long list: bacon cereal, bacon ice cream, bacon baklava ....

I'm not sure if I'm going to try this recipe... but I thought I'd throw it out there into cyberspace, seeing as I seem to have an obsession with all things piggy (like those healthy, delicous pork scratchings). So you decide: Bacon Caramel - delicious and a must try or plain disgusting?