Cereal Killah

A trolley of tofu wieners

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:02:00 +0000

There are many reasons why health food stores offer a superior shopping experience. Here's one of them.

Grillside Angst (or 'How Magic Cheese Saved My Social Life')

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:15:00 +0000

Retrograde thinking make a strong link between meat and manliness. Hasn't this attitude reached its expiry date? Is there anything macho about flouncing down the meat aisle and plucking out a chicken kiev? You're hardly bringing down a wild boar.

Cereal Killah, naturally, has a stake in this debate. As regular readers will know, I am an agnostic vegetarian. When I report this dietary stance to my more traditional friends, they look at me as though expecting a series of follow-on revelations: “I'm giving my house a 'makeover'”... “I think Steps were underrated” et cetera.

How very queer, think my fellow diners. And with a wan smile they turn to their menus. They give it a contemptuous perusal before ordering the steak – “rare”. It has to be rare, of course. Real men always take their steak rare (except in Argentina, where they like it well-done, but that's another story).

There are some occasions when it's particularly difficult to command respect as a vegetarian:

One is when faced with a boorish carnivore who has read Simone de Beauoir's feminist-Marxist classic, The Second Sex. She argues that once homo sapiens understood the secrets of agriculture, women had no need for men. Their 'spear-now-ask-questions-later' mentality belonged to the unstable past of hunter-gathering. In shunning my greatest grandfather, Mammoth Killah, women started an evolutionary trend that led to Zac Efron being considered a sex symbol.

Small groups of unreformed hunter-gatherers broke away, refusing to put the seat down in their newly-decorated caves' shithouse. They returned to their old ways, presumably accompanied by a harem of bints who preferred “real cavemen”. In the remarkable words of de Beauvoir, the higher protein intake of hunter-gathering males led, over generations, to their growing “larger penises than their agricultural brothers”.

The feminist reports that agricultural womenfolk found this 'irresistible'. Homo tofumunchus was cast out, a cuckold in his own cave. Meatheads were back in the game.

This interesting anthropological theory presents few problems in reality. Rare is the meathead who has bottomed out feminist literature.

Besides, your own diet would not affect the dimensions of the marital limb. The size of my old fella, fittingly enough, would owe exclusively to the diet of my forefathers. And those boys must have been eating steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner – BOO-YAH!

The second challenge owes to a far more recent cultural trend – the Sunday roast.

During the industrial revolution, families in Yorkshire found that if they left a joint of meat in the oven en route to the church, it'd be cooked through by the time they delivered the final, numbing verse of Kumbaya. Bakers couldn't make bread on a Sunday, so they happily offered their ovens for the purpose.

A British tradition was born.

And thus, dearly beloved, we head to the pub of a Sunday; we eat meat, drink beer and desperately try to rekindle camaraderie with old acquaintances.

Or some of us do. Following a chorus of 'roast beefs' from his buddies, no vegetarian enjoys singing out a “nut roast” solo. It's humiliating. I am ashamed to say that when, last week, a waiter took my nut roast order without laughing out loud, I actually gave silent thanks for living in such a tolerant country.

The fact is, o veggie converts, there's no real way to get over your loss come Sunday lunch. All you can do is make some rock-and-roll trimmings. My cheesy-roast parsnips are something to behold.

The vegetable muncher faces but one social challenge meatier than a winter roast, and that is a summer barbecue.

This primal union of fire and flesh brings out absurd bravado across the world. And carnivores from BA to Baghdad would all argue the same point on quality: good meat is at its best off a barbecue. In short, one feels a little inadequate reaching over the flames to stretch out a couple of Linda McCartney veggie bangers.

Well this summer I conquered once and for all the grillside angst of an agnostic vegetarian.

Here's how:

Ingredients:

(serves two or three.)

An aubergine. If you live near a proper Turkish grocery, their native patlican is brilliant.

A lemon

A bag of halloumi. Have a second to hand just in case.

Some Lebanese flatbreads. Pittas will do.

'Chopped salad'. A bunch of tomatoes, peppers and onions diced in 3:2:1 proportions. I could call this ezme salatis, but then we'd have a whole 'nother recipe to look at.

Aubergine

Force your way through the meatheads standing round the barbecue like moths drawn to a flame.

He who equates meat to manliness will make sure that he has his face pretty much on the grill. You see ladies, only a man's interest in a barbecue can prove his passion for meat, his capacity to provide for his family, his ability to put up a shed etc

With a polite cough, lay your aubergine on the grill. I prefer to lay the little fella down across the bars rather than along them. But we're not eating the skin, so it's just an aesthetic thing. The idea is to barbecue the flesh within its skin, giving it a smoky juiciness.

Note the Neanderthals' smirks. They won't be smiling when their uncooked, bile-coated bangers come spurting back out of their mouth later tonight. It's physically impossible to smile when you're puking. Fact.

It is worth pricking the aubergine with a fork beforehand. Otherwise you risk the embarrassment of your vegetable exploding on the grill. To Nuts readers, this would be a 'hilarious' example of effeminate incompetence with matters of technology or fire – the kind of thing these morons send into lad mags as evidence of women's stupidity.

Anyway, the aubergine is half of our cooking – it takes about twenty minutes to half an hour on the grill.
Right, you'll know that the aubergine is done when it has the crumpled, devastated structure of a particularly well-abused X-Factor contestant.

Give it a slight prod. Done? Now get it off and let that bad boy cool down.
We're acting macho here, yeah? Well then don't try and peel the skin of this aubergine while it's still hot. It's not cool to recoil shrieking from a vegetable with burnt fingers.

Once you've stripped the skin off, you could lay the flesh in a colander in the sink. Let the excess moisture drain off.
Chop the aubergine as you fancy. There is latitude for taste here. Some like their barbie-gine coarse and chunky; others like it chopped fine.

To be honest, this is a minimalist take. You could mix through a crushed garlic clove; stud it with raisins; or even lace the puree with fines herbes. For now just toss some salt in.

It's ready. Put it to one side. It'll be better for every degree it drops. Swirl in some virgin olive oil just before serving, when it's cold. Good oil and heat don't go.

Halloumi

Ok, let's start on the halloumi. First slice it into discs about 2cm thick. Now lay it on a semi-hot part of the barbie. If you've never cooked halloumi before, the next ten minutes will be a serious test of your character.

Barbecuing halloumi is like bringing up a child. There is a constant urge to run and see if your halloumi is ok every few minutes. Turn your back for a minute and it'll be creamed Dairylea, right? Wrong. This cheese is made of sterner stuff.

As when browning meat, you need to leave your slices of halloumi in uninterrupted contact with the elements. This allows them to seal, to crisp, to develop. If you keep checking they're ok every thirty seconds, nothing will happen. Whether grilling halloumi or bringing up children, such mollycoddling delivers the same end result: a big pathetic lump.

Three minutes on each side and they're done. They should come away easily from the grill bars, their fatty exterior vulcanized. It's as good as meat, I kid you not.

Assembly

Right, toss your flatbreads on the barbecue. You're not crisping them; you're just heating them through. I also find that a little heat makes the bread more supple. For similar reasons, Julian Dicks – a West Ham legend famous for his shattered knee joints – used to wait in a hot bath whenever named as a substitute. Only then could he come on with a supple set of legs.

Don't flip the flatbreads - heat on one side only.
Flatbreads out. Aubergine on. Chopped salad over. Halloumi on top.

Wrap.

Eat.

Done.

Let's kick shapism out of foodhalls

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Look at me. What do you see?

A willy?

An obscenity?

Or a vegetable.

Is it ok to compost me, just because I'm unacceptable to a supermarket?

Some people say:

"Our vegetables must be a certain shape and a certain colour..."

Why?

I know that toxic chemicals are not acceptable on crops; so why should we accept fussiness on food?

Why argue about differences?

I'd rather be grated into a lovely salad.

(with thanks to Eric, Les and Nike for the advert below.)

But seriously, folks, apparently 25-50% of this country's produce is thrown away because it doesn't look right. Why?

By 2050, this planet will have 9 billion mouths and ever-less fertile land to feed them. Will we still be throwing away pears because they could give someone a horrible flashback to the Moomins? Who's responsible for this madness?

Government! Defra would have thrown out this carrot for having a second branch (never mind a pseudo-willy) despite this being a perfectly natural feature.

Unfortunately, as the homeboy Kilroy-Silk would surely point out, it's not Westminster that calls the shots in this green and fussy land...

EU! Bloody banana benders!

Actually, their stipulations on shape may be less demanding than those of big retailers. Michael Mann of the EC argues that "private standards are stricter than pubic standards and are responsible for the majority of 'out-grading'."

Supermarkets!

Perhaps. But their ideas of what consumers want are only reinforced by shoppers themselves. Asda's Head of Sustainable Sourcing, Chris Brown, reckons that if they stocked these mis-shapes, "customers won't buy them". So the problem is...

Us? Looks like it. We need to start campaigning for proper food. Not here, of course. But let's march in line with the likes of Jay Rayner and Tristram Stuart (whose book, Waste, supplied above facts) when they blow their bugels at big business.

Indeed let this Somerset carrot - fruit of my father's farm - be the standard borne by their marching army.

Courgette Episodes

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:57:00 +0000

My earliest food memory involves courgette - the young Cereal Killah choked on one as a classmate shat himself. It was a tough day at the nursery.

I still recall my pride, tottering up to the table and grabbing a slice of alien veg. The nursery's bosomy staff all coed their admiration – this courageous young lad would try any damned food he was offered!

Yee-ha! Whoopy-doo! Hair-ruffles all round! Then Timmy Brinkley pooped his pants, and Cereal Toddlah's moment of triumph turned to tragedy.

As I impishly slipped the courgette into my mouth, I had no idea of the semi-digested tragedy unfolding in my Brinkley's pants. But as his pathetic cries sirened behind me, the smell of two separate substances – my courgette and my classmate's milky shite – began to mingle.

They intertwined, like a name and a face that one can't quite put together. Their sweet, vegetal scents mingled closer, on the back of my palate, as I prepared to swallow. Then, as I bit down on the squidgy bolus, those two substances united as one in my mind. As I swallowed the courgette, I may as well have been eating poop.

I halted the poo-gette as it made for my stomach. It resisted arrest, and a struggle ensued around my oesophagus. By the time the renegade vegetable finally emerged, cuffed in phlegm and panic, even Brinkley had fallen silent.

Surrounded by helpers, I swore through bitter tears that I would never eat another courgette.

Fast forward thirteen years: the adolescent Cereal Killah has revised his courgette embargo. City living had broadened my horizons.

I had just moved down to London to live with my father and step-mother. My mother was left fretting in the country while her little boy hit the big smoke, with all its temptations. She warned the old man that young Cereal Killah would soon need to be told about the birds and the bees.

When I returned home from school that day, I was thinking nothing more frisky than giving my algebra homework a damned good seeing to. Imagine my shock when I entered my bedroom, and found my father lurking in its shadows. He turned to face me, but left his hands behind his back:

“It's time you and I had a little chat, son....”

That was as far as my father had planned our 'little chat'. After an awkward pause, he tossed a courgette onto my bed. It was swiftly followed by a strawberry-flavoured condom.

“Now put it on.”

My father probably thought he was performing a paternal duty. In reality, he had planted a major insecurity in the churning thoughts of his pubescent son. That courgette must have been twelve inches long. He probably worked his way though the fruit and veg box like Bruce Willis settling on his samurai sword in Pulp Fiction. Moving wide-eyed from from carrot to banana and, finally, to courgette.

To my young eyes, this auxiliary phallus looked an absolute whopper. Perhaps that's normal, thought Cereal Killah, terrified. I buried my alarm and set about the task with a cool nonchalance – pretty tricky when you're trying to wrap a johnny round the Incredible Hulk's wanger.

Do you put it between your own legs, as your father looks on? Most convenient, but humiliating.
Or do you prop it up beside you, holding the base as you roll down the rubber? Surely that looks like you're practising putting it on someone else!

My father watched stocially. After what seemed an eternity, I stepped away from the bed and the pair of us admired this bizarre piece of modern art.

“Good” said my father. “Good. Now can you tell me why you might put on a condom?”

Ten seconds later, it was over. Thank Christ. My father sloped off and I did some revision on Gladstone, but my mind was elsewhere. I was grateful to be called downstairs for dinner.

“What's cooking?” I asked my step-mother, acting as if nothing had happened.

“Courgette risotto.”

Now I'm 28. And I'm looking at one of the biggest courgette gluts this country has ever seen:

My farmers' market is full of them. My housemates have just unearthed a couple of monsters from our backyard. And my mother's partner has handed me a bagful of prize specimens. I'll be damned if they're going in the bin.

So I'll be trying a fair few courgette recipes in the next few weeks. I just wanted you to know. It's not going to be easy.

Food Files: Steve

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:47:00 +0000

In my hood, all beers lead to this boy.

Like anyone else in our corner of Hackney, I'd clocked Steve round the way. Truth is, I'd developed something of an obsession. With his amateur tats and flimsy vest, Steve is the quiff-crowned King of Dalston. This is the first Food File to be snapped with a long lens, and I promise it'll be the last.

O Steve! It's as though the spirit of Hackney fermented in Ridley Road Market's putrid morass, trickled down the drains of Kingsland Road, then rose through its beer-soaked floorboards to take Dalston's stage in your human form.

I found him on the playground of depravity that is London Fields. It was a blazing hot day and Dalston's pasty denizens lay strewn over the grass like tofu wieners on a barbecue. It was summertime alright – the living was easy and we were sucking back on the silly juice.

Your preferred location on London Fields reveals much about your social identity. It's the same on Rio's Ipanema beach. To a newcomer, those sandy-toed cariocas merge into one caramelised mass. To the insider, one look reveals where they belong:

Achingly hip, naturally beautiful and well aware of the fact? Posto 9.
A man too handsome and too well-dressed to be straight? Posto 8.
... and so on.

Here's how it works with London Fields. A more detailed map will follow:

Shady nooks east of the cricket pitch:

Yummy mummies and their cooing entourage. Chuck a frisbee at your peril.

Lush pasture south of the Lido:

Couples and cool things with careers. A nice range of rugs and throws. Balanced discussion of the week's news.

Outskirts of the central belt's running lanes:

Jocks, youths and office monkeys. These sporty types slurp sugary drinks, get all excited, then aim frisbees at sunbathers' gonads. The melon-balled Cereal Killah learnt this through painful experience.

Shadowed walkways from Middleton Road to Mare Street:

An odd kind of segregation becomes evident when taking this route through the Fields. Youths from the surrounding estates congregate around the benches and menace Daily Mail readers.

(Maybe this is where the stray bullets get fired. It's certainly where my good friend, now a special advisor in the Conservative government, was chased through the park by "a tracksuit with eyes".)

Dry patch just north west of Broadway market:

Off-duty labourers, barbecue guerrillas and assorted members of 'up-and-coming' bands. Typically, they'll be working on their new sound with some sick drum machine beats:

Hey-yo, hey-yo!
What you say... what you hear?
My name's Dave... and my mate Tim's here.

The debauch-scorched grass of this hipster's savannah is littered with fag butts and sad cases. They basically wanna be Steve.... and on the savannah is where I found him.

I picked my way through the beer cans and asked the King of Dalston that same question I pose to all Food Files:

"Who are you, and what do you eat?"

I realised that my voice had actually quivered in His presence. He's so rock and roll, I thought, he's so rock and roll....

Steve sent one of those spaghetti arms whirling out to a beer can. He took a long slug of Red Stripe. And then He answered:

"Eating is cheating."

Casareccia with Broccoli Arrabiata

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:15:00 +0000

If you believe the adverts, Italian mothers prepare their boy's favourite dish for his every visit.

Not so in the post-feminist scrum that is Britain.

I can barely drop my knapsack before mother points me to the kitchen. There, under a bombardment of dubious style tips and flying Kettle chips, I grind out her favourite dinner.

This is it.

Ingredients (serves a big strong boy and his ma)

250g of suitable pasta. We're looking for anything that would work with pesto really: trofie, orrechiette, casaraccia or even linguine.

One head of broccoli

Clove of garlic

Red chilli

Small splash of white wine

Sprinkle of toasted pine nuts

Pecorino

Make sure you've got some toasted pine nuts to hand. Toasting them really does make all the difference. Here's to pine nuts, people.
Chop the florets off the broccoli. This is broccoli a la Dubya.
Get the broccoli florets and the pasta into a boiling pot of water. As with the anelli recipe, this gives you a nice ten minutes to prepare the sauce. It's all you need.
Mash up the garlic with the back of your knife. Chop the chilli nice and fine. Scrape this pungent double act into the oil together. Turn it on low and coax out some flavour.
Give it a couple of minutes, then splosh in some white wine. No more than a giant gobful, preferably measured by eye.
Bring the wine to the boil. Soon the alcohol will have had enough of the wet heat and get out of there, leaving the wine and the oil to get together.
Heat down low. The wine should be on a very slow simmer. Over the next six minutes or so, the wine and the garlicky oil should emulsify into something like a hot dressing.
PASTA'S DONE!

Drain the pasta and the broccoli. Leave it a little wet though – those starchy green droplets play a crucial role in our sauce. Return it all to the pan. Take a look. Looks crap doesn't it? A load of over-boiled broccoli and some dry pasta.

Cover that shit up with the pan's lid. Next time you lift it up, you're eyes are gonna spin round your skull, your tongue's gonna come flapping out of your mouth, and you're not gonna believe what you just saw.
OK, find the campest oven gloves in your house and secure the pan lid to the pan. Ready? Now shake the bejeezus out of that pan and everything in it.

It's not so much about your arms as your core strength here. You should feel your midriff hit new heights of Peter Andre, Mysterious Girl, tightness. Alternatively, you could give yourself a hernia. That's another genetic weakness I've inherited.

Anyway, shake the pan for about a minute. Less if you feel your guts explode through a hole in your abdominal wall.
Right lift off the pan lid. What do you see? That's right – a glorious emerald slick, coating all your pasta.

Ok, I may have oversold this sight at Step 8, but I still love it. This is the perfect base for a sauce. The texture, the nutrition, the colour is all there. Now we just need to give it some oomph.
Return to your saucepan of emulsified oomph - wine, oil, chilli and garlic. Pour that delicious sauce all over the broccoli slick. Take about half of the toasted pine nuts and and imagine that they had been spreading rumours about you through the kitchen store cupboards at night:

"Cereal Killah ain't shit.... Cereal Killah doesn't know what he's doing anymore.... Cereal Killah took four goes to make an alioli..." - stuff like that.

Crush this little rebellion.with the back of a heavy knife. Make sure this is in full view of of every single ingredient that could have heard what these bitch-ass pine nuts were saying about you. You're making an example of them. Now toss their crushed bodies into the pot.
Stir the pots contents about – we are producing the final sauce here. Take care to mash up and lingering bits of stalk. Imagine President GW Bush was coming round. We all know how he feels about stalks....
Finally, once the sauce has reached something like homogeneity, put it into bowls. Grate some Pecorino on top, and throw a few pine nuts on as a garnish.
Interrupt your mother's favourite midweek soap by calling out the following line from Peter Andre's Mysterious Girl, originally delivered by the great Bubbla Ranks:

"Baby girl, I said tonight it your lucky night - broccoli spicey pasta's rada nice!"

Serve.

Watch mother's face as she tucks into her metrosexual son's cooking:
Pride and shame all at the same time.

The Bushies' Broccoli Beef

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:35:00 +0000

It's not often you'll catch me disagreeing with George Bush, but he got it wrong on broccoli.

In 1990, the president used a White House press conference to express his profound hatred for my favourite vegetable. Result? Big laughs. Six years years later, mad cow disease rocked America and Oprah Winfrey joked she would never eat another burger. In response, the Texan meat industry dragged her through the courts in a $12m defamation suit.

Those episodes reveal much about the US food industry. Nonetheless, the influence of America's food giants has expanded beyond their industries and into the realm of politics, like a chubby backside spilling into another passenger's seat.

The combined weight of corporate and political interest in an unhealthy food system partially explains why 34% of Americans are now obese. More on that in my new 'Rusty Butz' column.

The Nixon administration tightened those links between business and politics, and Bush Senior's fortunes were intertwined with those of Tricky Dicky. In 1970, Nixon persuaded the fresh-faced Bush to resign as a Congressman and target the Senate seat of a fierce Nixon critic. The plan backfired – Bush lost. Or did he?

Always the man of honour, Nixon made amends by appointing Bush as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. In a twist of fate, Bush worked his way up to Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and it was he who ultimately demanded Nixon's resignation as president in 1974.

Despite two years at the UN and a later stint as envoy to China, Bush never developed a taste for exotic food. Nothing changed during his presidency. In 1992, served the finest sushi in the world, Bush threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister. In Japan to this day, bushu-suru – 'to do the Bush thing' – is slang for throwing up in public.

What a calamitous episode that was. Scaling back after the detente with Russia, Bush's security team must have thought Japan would be a holiday. But with their president down, they sealed the area and talked fast:

“What was the President served?! 'Red snapper?' Red snapper?! God-dammit!”

Like the Ruskies would use raw fish to assassinate someone... oh.

If you watch carefully, you'll see the President actually spring up to face down his aquatic adversary. He even punches the air in defiance. This gesture is on page one of The Big Man's Political Manual, marked “You can't keep me down!” It's what Silvio Berlusconi did after his ambush in Milan. There however, the similarity ends. Berlusconi had taken a brutal blow to the face; Bush had just copped a tuna maki.

*

When George W took the White House, there was a feeling that he was settling old family business. But while Dubya tightened the noose on Saddam, he took a more diplomatic approach towards his father's true enemy – broccoli.

In 2000, the would-be president announced that whilst he would not eat the stalks, he would eat the florets. That meeting with Broccoli Man was Bush Jr's Malta Summit. Wariness toward an old enemy was still clear, but there was hope that a new era of mutual tolerance had dawned.

Perhaps this was because Bush had seen how processed foods were nudging his electorate – and his vice president – towards a slow death. Perhaps it was because one such food – a pretzel – darn near delivered him to a quick one.

Following years of feckless snack swallowing, Dubya became a born-again pretzel-chewer. “Listen to your mothers”, he preached. “Chew before you swallow”. The memory of Bush Senior, goading his mother at the gates of the White House, gloating at his constitutional power to refuse her servings of broccoli, seemed distant. Dubya even talked peace with the foe that had nearly killed his pa.

George Bush Jr was actually a keen crop-muncher. Sometimes there was simply no stopping him. Whilst campaigning in Iowa, he snatched up an ear of local corn and tore into it raw. The president mistook the photgraphers' silent awe for admiration:

“You don't even have to cook it!” he bellowed, beaming at farmers who served raw corn only to their lowliest mules.

Speechless, but ultimately Republican, they dutifully looked away as their retching president discarded his fibrous dildo. What a waste..

Still, with a $190 billion subsidy for corn-focused US farmers, there was always gonna be plenty more where that came from...

Sicilian Rings with a Moorish Medley

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:41:00 +0000

Good pasta's simple: drop it in the pot and wait ten minutes. Unless you lose yourself in the Archers or overdose on heroin (or both), dinner's ready.

That simplicity explains why so many of us thrive on the Italian staple. But it's also the texture. And texture's something you lose if you go cheap.

Too many people think pasta is a mere commodity, where low price is the only distinction. They're wrong. And as a rule of thumb, if it cooks in less than ten minutes, then it's probably pants. Joyless, gloopy pants.

No middle class Londoner lives more than ten minutes from an Italian deli. My favourite one is Gallo Nero, on Newington Green Road. It's actually a fifteen minutes walk, but when I think about its owner I start skipping like a schoolgirl.

Clock him down the pub and he's just another skinny bloke with a big nose. Meet him in the deli, and his sensual Italian makes even this butch bastard swoon. His banter flows in great muddy torrents of Cockney, but his blood trickles tricolata.

They stock good pasta. I won't be a snob about it – Sainsbury's Spaghetti a la Chitarra is fine stuff – but Italian delis, with Italian brands, have an edge. I picked up two bags on my last visit – Casareccia Molisana and Anelli Siciliani:

The casareccia I deployed in a propaganda counter-offensive against George Bush Sr. More on that later.
The anelli ('rings') I sacrificed to a dubious voyage through Sicily's culinary history.

In short, I prepared a sauce that contained virtually every ingredient introduced by the Moors to that benighted isle:

Ingredients:

(Serves 2)

250g of Sicilian Anelli - or any other pasta that works for you here.

Red chilli, finely chopped

Garlic bulb, brutally bludgeoned

Olive oil

Handful of chickpeas

Ten raisins, chopped.

Nip of saffron

Sprinkle of pine nuts

As many fennel fronds as you can pick off the fennel bulb

Lemon

Hard Italian cheese (optional)

Turn on the Archers. Get some pasta. Boil some water and whack it in.

I like these rings for this recipe, simply because they're a good fit with the chickpeas in the sauce. Shape really does matter – I surely don't need to tell you that bolognaise doesn't work with spaghetti. Or that it's not even called bolognaise.

If you don't know why all that is wrong, I'll let Nigel break it to you gently.

Right – you've a nice ten minute window to get the sauce ready...
Crumble a pinch of saffron into a thimble-sized cup. Infuse it with no more than two tablespoons of boiling water.
Before the oil is in the pan, get the heat on and wait for a slight heat to build. Toss the pine nuts in and rattle them around in the dry heat till they have the golden, good natured glow of all Italians. Heat off.
Now brutally bludgeon the garlic into a paste using the back of a knife, a wooden board and the bitter memory of some public humiliation that's been eating away at your soul.

Chop a red chilli into small specks – only you know how much you can handle, but I'll bet it's not as much as this maniac.

Scrape that shit into some olive oil and turn the heat on real low. We're not frying, we're coaxing out flavour.
Fling in some chickpeas. Just a fistful – if your pasta's any good, there's no need to swamp it with sauce. Get those chickpeas rolling around the pan to pick up the flavour.
Chuck in the chopped raisins. This is a crucial step if you want the sweet, sour and spicy effect that's so rare in European cookery.

I didn't have any raisins to hand, so raided my muesli and just tried to avoid the oats.
PASTA DONE!

Drain it and toss the pasta into the pan with the Moorish medley. Salt and pepper to taste. Now pour the saffron water on top. We're not done yet, so hold on.
Chop up the fennel fronds and throw them in the mix. Stir them about because their feathery strands do tend to flock together.

If you've no fennel, parsley will do. Coriander or basil? Maybe, but not in my name.
The pasta should now be steeped in the saffron dye. Two minutes cooking in the pan really makes a difference here. Heat off.

Lemon juice. I sometimes get too gung-ho at this point and end up squirting some pips in the mix, prompting a frenzied rescue mission.

If you want this dish a little richer, grate in some hard Italian cheese now and stir it about.
Pasta into a bowl. Get the toasted pine nuts. Toss them onto the pasta. Maybe put a stray fennel frond onto its very peak.

Swirl of virgin olive oil, a few crystals of Maldon sea salt and we're done here.
Eat, ideally with a chilled glass of Sicilian Grillo. Personally I washed it down with a murky glass of council pop.

Italy ain't all good

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:27:00 +0000

Shortly after Pavarotti branched out to the plebs, everything Italian was suddenly brilliant. Bland wines, flappy suits and shite films all won Joe Bloggs' heart simply because their producer's name rhymed with Gino Ginelli.

Inspired by Italian football – sorry, Gazzetto Italia – my friends and I even Italianised our conversations. We would wave our hands around whilst talking insistent bollocks – 'testiculating'.

There's a lot to love in that enigmatic peninsular, but our conception of Italy and the Italians is deeply flawed. Italy, as most people know it, is just a marketing strategy tailored to sun-starved, sexually-frustrated, status-anxious Anglo-Saxons. Rant over.

So here's what I do love about Italy. First, its groundbreaking television. Secondly, pasta. Everyone has their own carbohydrate league table and for me pasta sits at its summit:

1. Pasta

2. Bread

3. Potatoes

4. Rice

Stand by for some recipes....

Food Files: Gideon

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:35:00 +0000

Some people eat on the hoof. This guy just eats the hoof.

But this Food File is not really about Gideon. It's about the imps behind him who serve up the carnage. Introducing Ali and Momo - two paperless Afghans in a gore-strewn butcher shop.

Ali had a head like a pumpkin. It sat atop his slender neck like a prize-winning vegetable about to shatter the rickety village rostrum. He was 5”6' in his wellies but exuded a wry charisma.

Beside Ali stood his silent sidekick, Momo. Momo is a man who lets his meat cleaver do the talking. That much is clear from the state of his overall. Momo nodded intently at Ali's every serious point and giggled like a fool at his every joke. Everyone needs a Momo.

The pair accosted me at their shaded stall on Dalston's Ridley Road. I was perched over a macabre display of dismembered quadrupeds, wondering how on earth I used to digest this matter. Without warning, the sales pitch commenced.

Ali grabbed a hoof and waved it in my face. Drawing my eyes with the stump, he held it aloft like some torch of machismo. Even as a paid-up tofu-muncher, I was a captive audience. Momo pulled up beside him and Ali's voice called out in the rich, guttural tones of his native Pakhtunkhwa.

“Soup from this.... just one cup.... make you very, very strong....”

Momo raised an upright forearm, fist clenched, then jabbed it up and down repeatedly in the universal sign for “sweet loving”.

Ali's commentary went on:

“Your lady..... never let you go.”

Momo stopped the muff-uppercuts, and gave himself a big, long hug, his bearded face contorted in ecstasy.

“Your thing”, continued Ali, pointing respectfully at my groin, “will be like.... a cobra.”

Momo threw up his butcher's hood, stuck out his tongue, then started to sway in serpentine poise.

Ali came closer, and whispered in my ear as we both observed the man-snake:

“Always ready...”

Momo's eyes flitted from side to side....

“... and always hungry...”

At this point, Momo started flicking his tongue in and out with obscene rapidity....

Unfortunately, Momo's tongue caught the eye of a large Caribbean lady who had been buying plantains at a nearby stall. She stopped dead, stood straight and shot the man-snake a look of pure contempt. Momo snapped out of the cobra act and started toying nervously with a trayful of lungs.

Deprived of Momo's illustrations, Ali switched to a more literal tack.

His brutal anecdotes were less Mills & Boon than Taliban Hustler. The earthy Afghan was having fun trying to make the stuffy Englishman uncomfortable. I countered with a few stories of my own but it was a total mismatch. This guy rips balls off carcasses for a living.

“So how often do you eat this, Ali?” I asked cheerfully (tapping out).

Ali brought his hand to his heart and bowed slightly:

“I am vegetarian.”

“Well then who does eats this?”

“Black people” Ali replied matter-of-factly. “Why they are so big. So strong.”

I took a deep breath and prepared my standard middle-class briefing on racial stereotyping.

Bang on queue however, Gideon, 36, from Lagos, Nigeria, turned up and started rummaging through the hooves. Two caught his eye. He gave both a cursory foot massage before making his choice.

But how do you digest a cow's hoof? Here's Gideon's recipe:

Get the wife to simmer it for at least three hours. Sometimes she puts a few yams in there. Then she spices it with hot pepper and serves it as a soup.

That's a demanding recipe for Mrs G.

But then again, the lady doesn't go without reward.

Food Files: Charlie

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:59:00 +0000

I clocked Charlie's sporty silhouette en route to a guerrilla sports day on London Fields. Leap-frog relays, frisbee-discus, thumb-wrestling.... how does this kind of athlete maintain peak condition?

By the time I caught up with him, Charlie was already pretty focused on his first event - the polystyrene cup put. Frequently he would place his fingertips to his temples then throw them forwards as if creating his own telekinetic forcefield. Twice, without warning, he exploded into star-jumps that sent tremors down the pavement and onto the Fields – a statement of his intent.

It didn't take much to get his head out of the game however. Charlie it emerged, is a cook. He works for Sotheby's restaurant and will also be donning his toque at the Secret Garden Party festival.

Soon we were talking about whether showpiece restaurant fare could possibly be sustainable. Doesn't it promote meat, meat and more meat?

“To be honest, I could live without meat. I could go veggie like that, no problem...”

“Really?”

“But not fish. Absolutely not fish.”

“So... what's your favourite fish?”

“Skate”

“Oh yeah – I used to love skate. It's like you're eating a creature from another planet. That weird, cartilaginous wing... so how do you cook it?”

“With beurre noisette...”

“Good call.”

“... and fresh herbs."

"Oh baby..."

"And capers. Proper ones.”

“Salted, right? Not the bloated miseries that you dredge from brine.”

“Fucking right. Salted, mate. Always salted.”

I was getting too close to the Food File. So, like a bastard, I pointed out that skate is on the MSC's 'Fish to Avoid' list – boom! It was a real suckerpunch and the budding chef never saw it coming. How do you like me now, Ringo? He got a little defensive.

“Well we always try and serve sustainable fish where I cook.”
“So.... mackerel and pollack?”

“Colin.”

“Eh?”

“It's called Colin now.”

“What is?”

“Pollack. It was the worst branded fish in the ocean. Pollack. Sounds like a cross between pillock and bollock.”

“So they wanted to make it sound sexier...”

“Right.”

“So they called it Colin.”

“Errr... yeah.”

Food Files: Hector

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:02:00 +0000

Meet Hector.

I found this Spanish lad-about-town recoiled furtively on a curb in Old Compton Street. There was something outrageous about him... his piratical appearance... his pride in his socks... his decision to park that well-toned butt on a double-yellow line.

I liked it. I wanted to take a photo. And I wanted to know what he ate.

Hector protested and claimed that he was shy - surprising for a man who has a ring tattooed around his head. After some gentle pressure however he relented.

Hector eats brown rice and vegetables, sometimes chicken.

Sweet shoes.

Pea and Broad Bean Risotto with Goats' Cheese and Za'atar

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Making risotto for guests is sweaty, miserable and lonely. Like many people in late-capitalist society, that's how I feel most nights – I don't need it for a dinner party.

You know how it goes. Everyone likes risotto, right? So what better for a convivial supper? Here's the reality: the guests turn up; you palm them off with a beaker of vino; then it's back to the pot. As The Beatles once sung, I don't know why you say hello, I say goodbye.

For the next twenty minutes, your face hovers over a boiling mass of stodge. Your features contort in sweaty rancour as it stubbornly refuses to transmogrify into risotto. When you finally waddle through with the goods, your face resembles a gargoyle water-feature. And dinner party banter? Forget it. You've been in your own world for the last half hour. You're gonna be about as with it as Grandma.

Not this time, cholo.

This time I cheated. I nudged the risotto into a state of readiness two hours before the guests arrived. Get the first ladle of stock in, then turn off the heat. The risotto stands there, frozen in time, ready for its rescue - kind of like when Jabba the Hut merked Han Solo. That tip is from reluctantly right-on meat fanatic, Anthony Bourdain.

Unfortunately, there is another labour-intensive element to this dish... broad beans. Because you have to shell them. You really must. Their sallow, scrotal sacks have no place on a dinner plate. There may be a voice in your head that says “leave 'em on”. It may make some specious reference to 'roughage'. Ignore that voice.

And don't underestimate how long it takes to shell broad beans. At six thirty, I had plenty of time. Guest weren't due till seven thirty. An hour later, I was still tiddly-winking these little bastards all over my kitchen like a maniac. There is no technique to shelling a broad bean. Thank Christ the peas were frozen.

I don't really want to talk about it but I won't be cooking broad beans again.

Recipe – serves 3-4

Bag of broad beans

Munchkin's fistful of frozen peas

Four measures of risotto rice

One leek

Garlic

Shallot

Mature, firm goats' cheese

Za'atar (available from Middle Eastern delis or your local Mother Earth-style shop)

Butter

Three of four leaves of fresh mint, chopped.

Lemon zest

Sauté the shallots, the garlic and the leek in olive oil. That's right: I said leek. Normally it would be celery, but I saw some darling baby leeks in the London Fields farmers' market and this seemed a good time to use them.
Why? A logical chain: this dish has peas and broad beans... they go with mint... and a lot of dairy-rich Middle Eastern dishes pair leek and mint... and this dish has a Middle Eastern garnish. So in the leeks go and anyone who doesn't like it can jolly well go to blazes.

Once the alium medley is translucent, turn up the heat and toss in the risotto rice. At this point, imagine you're an old school police officer who's just taken custody of a pack of ruffians you suspect of kidnapping a local grandee. They're no good to you when they're all sticking together in a big, cocky mass. You've got to smack 'em about a little with a wooden implement. Don't let them settle. Soon they'll separate into individuals, each one out for himself. That's what we want from the rice: no stickiness; just individual grains.
Now throw in the dregs of the white wine you've been slurping. Do it with a Floyd-like flourish if at all possible. You're pouring some out for a dead homey. A boozy-smelling spirit will rise from the pot and ascend t'ward the heavens.

In goes your first ladleful of stock. When I say stock, I mean Marigold Bouillon. And when I say ladleful, I mean just slop a load of it into the pot. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the ladlefuls and the more frequent their addition, the better the performance of the chef. And the worse the performance of the host. So work out what you wanna do – have a chinwag with your buddies or gurn into a saucepan. Find a balance. Soon enough the risotto will be done.
When it gets there, act fast. Heat off. Lob in the broad beans – good riddance. Drop your payload of peas. Fling in some mint. Lemon zest. Salt. Then a John Holmes knob of butter. Without enough butter, your risotto has little chance of oozing across the plate. And that is the correct texture of risotto. With the final touches applied, put the lid on the pot and let the risotto sit. The ingredients get to know each other, and you should go re-acquaint yourself with your guests.
These are the most precious ten minutes of your dinner party – your hard work is all done and no-one yet knows if your risotto is actually gash. Relax. Be a host. If it's too late to plug into your guests' conversation, why not entertain them with a few hilarious armpit farts?
The ten minutes are up. Take the plates from the oven. Put a blob of risotto in the middle of each. Does it ooze? Tough shit. Carefully place a slice of your goats' cheese on top of the risotto. Now a little swirl of olive oil. And finally a sprinkling of za'atar* on the goats' cheese.

Serve with a Sancerre, Menetou-Salon or, preferably, a Pouilly-Fume.

*Za'atar is a Middle Eastern mix of wild thyme, toasted sesame and sumac. It tends to be made by people who are getting a raw deal in every other part of their life, so why not buy a pack? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall loves the stuff so who the hell are you to turn your nose up?

Griddled Asparagus with Truffled Balsamic and Old Winchester Cheese

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:11:00 +0000

Griddle me this, griddle me that

But the flesh needs colour

The chars bring black

- The Griddler

Do not attempt this recipe without the thickest, stickiest balsamic imaginable.

That shit's gotta be older than Sophia Loren. It just so happens that mine is also infused with white truffles – a lovely bequest from my landlady. Lucky old Cereal Killah, eh? If you don't have this to hand, just reduce some normal balsamic in a pan until it has the consistency of syrup.

Now when I plan to serve a dish with truffles, my thoughts turn immediately to something dirty and farmyardy. That means egg or cheese. Or forcing yourself upon a chicken.

Well after a week of slurping miserably through a grotesque alioli surplus, I had ordered an egg embargo. What I wanted now was a hard cheese to grate over my griddled spears and caramelise onto their charred skin.

Pecorino? Parmesan? No. There was, as so often, an under-appreciated English alternative. One of the many undervalued cheeses in our dairy canon is Old Winchester. It's halfway between the Italian showponies cited above. And it just feels better when serving something as English as asparagus. Waitrose have stocked it in the past, but you can also get it online from Lyburn Farm.

Ingredients:

Two bunches of English asparagus

Really old, thick balsamic vinegar

Old Winchester cheese (or Parmesan or Pecorino if you want to be an unpatriotic dog)

Pretty simple stuff really:

1. Prep the asparagus spears. You know the routine – bend them till they snap. This technique magically finds the natural cut-off between succulent flesh and chewy wood. Apparently. It's a bit like a ouija board though – your instinct manually guides the final result.

2. Parboil those boys. This means two or three minutes in a really big pan of water. The more water is boiling, the less impact a fistful of asparagus is going to have on its temperature; the less impact on temperature, the quicker the boil; and the quicker your greens boil, the more vivid their final emerald robes. Finally, freeze that colour in by water-boarding the asparagus in ice-cold H2O.

3. Get your plates ready. This means drizzling some kind of centrifugal pattern on the plate wit your balsamic (pre-prepped if it's a reduction.) It shouldn't be too perfect – this is not a restaurant and it shouldn't try to be. Clearly, the vinegar shouldn't run. It should hit the plate and stick.

4. Take the asparagus spears out of their cold bath. Dry 'em off, real nice and tender like. What these guys don't know is that you've got a griddle pan smoking hot and you're gonna toss them across its scorching bars - ha! There will be screams of protest, but that's what we're after here.

Two things on griddling:

The asparagus should criss-cross the contours of the griddle pan. In the words of Monica Geller, if they're not at a right angle, they're at a wrong angle.

You must leave them on the pan for a good few minutes without moving them. We want one or two black chars on the asparagus, not a series of dark green smudges. If need be, focus on one spear and see how he's getting on. Don't move the whole lot around until you know that fella's ready to roll. You're a stage performer focusing on one member of the audience.

Ok, shake the spears about till you see a lot of charred sides up, then let them cook for another two minutes or so. Heat off - the asparagus is done.

5. Visually enumerate the asparagus spears and divide this total by the number of diners, rounding down to the nearest unit. Use tongs to grab this number of spears, and lay them across the balsamic swirls on each plate in a London Underground formation.

Finish by grating a fine shower of Old Winchester onto the spears, quick while they're still hot. Wait a moment, then a little drizzle of olive oil. And crumble some Maldon seat salt on, naturally.

Serve.

This made a decent starter to my dinner party with the lovely Carolin and Anna.

The end of the asparagus season is nigh!

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:35:00 +0000

London Fields farmers' market greeted its patrons with an apocalyptic boarding:

"The end of the asparagus season is nigh!"

The asparagus woman stood at her sales altar in the usual state of grace, sheltered from the blazes by a steepling green tarpaulin. I drifted toward her as though she were my high priest and I had but moments to ready my soul for doomsday.

The main sin I had to confess was my pitiful intake of asparagus this season. There were kids about, so I kept schtum about the crack and the hookers.

She heard out my confession and suggested I buy two handfuls of her mis-shaped spears in repentance. At £3.50 for the pair, this was an indulgence I could afford. Before I could leave, the asparagus woman gave me a wistful tale of the harvest:

“'Tis a moooooon vegetable”, she told. “I plucked these boys at four o'clock this very morning. When the stars align, I'm picking four times a day. The optimal conditions for asparagus are a full moon on a midsomer's night.”

She cackled awhile on the glory that met her in the asparagus patch that night: rows upon rows of young priapic spears – her “boys”, standing to attention for her arrival in the twilight.

The phallic overtones of her story were making me feel queasy. I bagged the asparagus and ambled toward the cheese-wallah, who spends his working life manhandling teats.

Why I don't dig on flesh

noreply@blogger.com (Slim Bill) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:41:00 +0000

Why am I a vegetarian? How did I discover a carnivorous diet was not for me? The hard way, baby....

The story starts in 2006, when I embarked on a mission. My mission? To create the Ultimate Male Body (UMB).

Some background:

I've been in decent shape ever since my pre-teens at boarding school. This owes to a sadistic dorm prefect, known as “The Man”.

During our dormitory inspections each morning, The Man made it his business to find socks out of place, drawers peeping open and pillows at jaunty angles. Any such violation meant five pay-back push-ups. We did at least twenty every morning before breakfast - rumps straining to our prefect's rhythmic command as vapid sausage fat mingled with the mist and seeped over the horizon.

To this day, it would feel wrong for me to have breakfast without first dropping down and hitting some pay-back push-ups. That old boarding school ritual is part of my life now. By contrast, punishment buggery is just a bitter-sweet memory.

Fast forward to my early twenties:

Still in good, athletic shape. Periodically I target what Chairman Mao might call 'A Great Leap Forward'. For me, this meant concerted effort to achieve step-change in my physique. Weights increase, crunches slow and star jumps reach new heights of camp abandon. Pathetic, but that's how it was.

Looking back, Great Leaps Forward in my physique always followed Great Knocks Back in my love life. If a girl dumped me, I wouldn't hang around to be handed a box of Kleenex. Before she could even murmur something about staying friends, I would be upstairs in my room - Eye Of The Tiger blaring, dumb-bells pumping like glo-sticks at a rave.

Because when you're dumped, you feel inadequate. So what to do? You can't make yourself a different person. No-one in their right mind should attempt plastic surgery. And it's my sad duty to report that penis enhancements simply don't work. That leaves one route to being a better human being:

Increased muscular mass and definition.

2006: a Saharan dry patch in the love life of Cereal Killah.

Great Leap Forward follows Great Leap Forward with inexorable, marsupial rhythm. Soon I was in the shape of my life. Work-out endorphins became an addiction. But weights were only half the story. My unsustainable physique owed much to an unsustainable diet. We're talking meat... and lots of it. The UMB diet is simple: if it isn't protein, it isn't any good.

Though I stuck to higher welfare meat, my diet was an outrage to sustainability: chicken breasts at lunch... steak for supper... meat.... meat.... meat.... every day... for a year...

... until that night.

The great hero of Greek mythology was killed through his heel. This dupe of the Atkins diet was to be smighted in his toe. Following a razor clam and chorizo blow-out, I woke at 4am in agony. My big toe felt as though some rogue acupuncturist had stuffed it with needles as I slept. I couldn't walk on it for a week.

Diagnosis?

Gout.

The cause?

Too much meat.

A message?

A calling.