MEAN MUNCHER

Feelings and Veganism

2014-08-11T10:55:00.002+01:00

So anyway, here I am; back again and today, I want to talk about feelings. I used to be afraid to think what I actually thought because the culture that I surrounded myself with made me believe that my feelings were stupid and infantile. This was probably due to the fact that as a teenager, my heroes tended to be middle-aged men as opposed to women – let alone teenage girls.

As I pushed all my genuine feelings, like crushing, liking pop music, fashion, make-up and Coronation Street to the back of my mind, I forced-fed myself a diet of thoughts and feelings less relevant to a life of living in Rotherham and eating Hula Hoops.

Instead, I fantasised about ‘finding myself’ during a road trip around America (Kerouac), being an alcoholic-writer-womaniser-post officer worker (Bukowski), balancing the act of either being an amazing artist or fooling people that I am one in order to get others to act out my fantasies (Von Trier) and taking the best heroin in all of the land, not giving a fuck but then finding myself to be the biggest rockstar that ever did live (Keith Richards).

So, while all this was going around in my head, I was actually missing out on the thoughts and feelings that were relevant to my life. And what I want to say here is that no feeling or thought is irrelevant. In fact, the feelings that you naturally have are the ones that you should be assessing and learning from.

Despite learning this lesson a few years ago, I still sometimes catch myself doing things that aren’t genuine. For example, earlier this year I became vegan. I ‘know’ that veganism is the right thing to do. The thing is though, no matter what I ‘know’ to be ‘right’, I still can’t follow through with it if my feelings don’t align strongly enough.

I read about people who became vegan and I envied their strength and sought to emulate them. One of my deepest ever fears has always been that I might be deemed by others as a hypocrite. It’s a trait that I despise in others and so…by virtue of that, any sense of me being hypocritical automatically makes me a hypocrite.

In my mind, all my reasons for being a vegetarian logically follow on to justify veganism. The problem is, a logical argument must align with an emotional feeling to ensure that you can follow through with action. All too often, my ‘knowing’ doesn’t align with my ‘feeling’ which results in a kind of internal battle where I always leave feeling defeated because for me, at least, my rational need to avoid hypocrisy always loses out to my emotional ‘self’.

This is a long way of saying that I tried to be vegan for about 3 months. I still think that vegans are right but that I am not ready to fully become one. Hopefully my realisation of this and the fact that I am acknowledging it here in writing will go some way to assuage my hypocrisy, ha! Maybe in order to avoid being a hypocrite, one needs to back up logic with experience. Once you have experience, you can change the way you feel emotionally about something.

I was going to put a vegan recipe on this post (there are many fantastic ones) but I think this deserves to be on its own for now.

Cya! x

Pizza, pesto and ciao to 2013!

2013-12-31T00:31:00.000+00:00

I was ACTUALLY playing (read: losing) Scrabble when this was taken aka it wasn't set up for kitsch blogger photos

As I touched on in my last post, 2013 has been good to me. I feel more settled now than I ever have done as an adult and during a walk to Lidl to buy some yeast and strong bread flour for this recipe, I had a good think about why.

I think happiness has a lot to do with what age you feel. I never enjoyed the “young person” thing and up until now, being an adult has been the shittiest crawl through a sewer I have ever experienced. A lot of this has been down to me and how I have approached my life – laziness, being a coward, selfishness and self-pity – but some of it has been down to the STUPID things we are expected to do in this ridiculous, horrible young adult path that is meant to be enjoyable.

Between the ages of 18 and 24, I felt like I was forced to sit on a rollercoaster with a hangover every day. The idea that we are meant to enjoy going out in heels and small dresses and drinking stupid amounts of alcohol. The idea of meeting strangers in grotty, sweaty cavernous rooms with migraine-inducing music and GETTING ON WITH THEM when in reality, the majority of people I meet, I would be happy never to see again. The amount of times I have sat alone in a club, surrounded by hundreds of people but feeling as lonely as hell.

The shared living and the poverty-with-iPhones BECAUSE WE SPENT ALL OUR MONEY ON BOOZE BUT OMG WHY ARE WE SO POOR, the confusion of wrong relationships and strained friendships. The stupid pseudo-intellectual-babble debates that we have again and again and again. Religion, politics, current affairs, charity, war, poverty, the press. All these fucking ISSUES that we argue about like a bunch of car tyres stuck in the mud…as if our arrogant opinions expressed loudly in a middle class hippy pub are suddenly going to change everything. As if we are going to go out into the night half-sloshed and build some new affordable housing.

This is what my brain was like from about 2006 – 2012. Six years of anxiety-ridden hell.

But this year, I changed. I think that I have finally become the age and the person that I was so desperately frustrated to be. It’s in no small part thanks to some kind-hearted, beautiful friends I found again. It’s not that these people have DONE anything exactly. More that…everything just feels right and because it all feels so right, I feel right too and I want to do right.

And that feeling is so refreshing, so carefree and so precious that I want to breathe it forever and ever.

In reality, there are still loads of things I will do wrong and even if I don’t, most people fuck up this Zen-thing by having children and replacing all the contentment with perpetual anxiety, guilt and tiredness. So yeah, things will probably go wrong again and I don’t expect to live in this dream-state forever (just in case people think I am boasting or naïve, I’m not, I’m not!)

Anyway, I’ll be quiet about everything that might go wrong in the future because seize the day and all that shit.

Another thing that makes me super, super happy is pizza. The closest I have ever come to making a pizza is grating extra cheese onto a gourmet Co-Op Margareta. So this is pretty big.

I got the recipe from Rose and the highlight, for me, is the pesto which is soo tasty and so satisfying to blitz up.

Start by making your dough. This recipe will make enough for 4 medium, super thin pizzas.

500g strong white flour (and a bit extra for kneading)

1 tbsp salt

A 7g sachet of dried yeast

A sprinkle of caster sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

330ml tepid water (or the same amount of grams if you’re weighing it all)

Put the flour and salt in a bowl. In a separate jug, mix up the rest of the ingredients and leave for one minute. Whilst you’re waiting, pre-heat your oven to a tiny temperature (like 100c for about 3 minutes or some shit…unless you have the heating on or it is summer – in which case, don’t worry about this step).

Pour the wet stuff into a little well in the middle of the dry stuff. Use a metal spoon to gently incorporate the whole lot together. Persevere: I thought that I had used way too much flour but after a few minutes, it all comes together to make a sticky dough.

By now, you can turn your oven off if you decided to put it on.

Flour a work surface and tip your dough out. It’s time to knead! I have always failed at this – never, ever have I had dough DOUBLE in size – the thought was laughable. But this time, I had a nice warm area (the pre-heated oven) and I kneaded my ass off.

Spend about 5-6 minutes or maybe even 7-8, pulling the dough, like stretching it and then putting it back together. Also knead it in a massage-y way. Basically, just keep that shit moving until it’s smooth and slightly less sticky. You can use quite a bit of flour without it being a disaster.

Now, lightly flour a bowl and put your dough in it. Sprinkle with a little more flour and cover with a damp tea towel. Put it in your nice warm oven and shut the door. Seriously, the oven needs to be warm…and no more than warm….for this to work.

Leave for an hour. While you wait for the magic to happen (seriously, it’s actually magic!), get making your pesto. It doesn’t take THAT long to whip up and it is amazingly tasty – properly beautiful.

A basil plant (99p from Lidl)

50g raw pine nuts

88g grated parmesan (the stuff I had was veggie friendly so any kinda hard cheese will do)

2 cloves of garlic

110g or ml of olive oil (seems a lot but this makes quite a lot of pesto)

A large pinch of salt

Tear off all the leaves from the basil plant and chuck them in a blender (or a bowl if you’re using a hand blender). It’s fine if a few stems go in there too. Add all the other stuff – whizz – hey presto! Store it in the fridge, perhaps in a little jar.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Okay, after an hour, take your dough out. I really am still in shock that this stuff doubled in size. Break the dough into half and half again. I made two pizzas so am storing half of the dough in the fridge for later this week (it’ll be fine for up to a week).

Put two (or how ever many pizzas you are making) baking trays into your oven, upside down. Now, pre-heat that oven again. 200 fan, 220 no fan.

Roll out your pizzas. I used a wine bottle (thoroughly washed, label scoured off) as I don’t own a rolling pin. Worked FINE. Make it super-duper thin – like if I was a person and I had gone through a breakup and lost LOADS of weight from never eating because every time I ate something, I cried NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE – that thin. Put each pizza base onto a sheet of tin foil.

Now, OMG, there is so much to do. Top your pizza.

A box of passata

Dried oregano

Mozzarella

Whatever else you like – sundried tomatoes, artichokes etc. etc.

Pour on a bit of passata and spread it around with a spoon. Sprinkle the oregano over your base and swirl on some of the pesto. Top with a few slices of mozzarella.

Take an upside-down baking tray out of the oven and sliiiiide the tin foil onto it. Place in the over. Repeat for additional pizzas. I waited about 10-12 minutes and although the cheese was bubbling, the middle was still quite doughy. I guess just wait until the middle looks firm. I wouldn’t have thought it would be more than 15 minutes.

Serve with sweet potato chips, a crème fraiche dip and a leafy salad.

Satisfying, healthy and messy. MY FAVOURITE.

East & West - Review

2013-12-29T13:33:00.000+00:00

Oh, well. And if this ISN'T a Christmas miracle then I don't know what is. I found this old review in my drafts and while some of you may have read it before, some of you definitely won't have! Wow, oh wow.

Anyway, this was the last review I ever did as the official Food Reviewer for this lil newspaper. The end came thanks to what SOME people would regard as "a series of fuck ups". Actually, these fuck ups have ended up making 2013 one of the most fulfilling and fantastic years I've had as an adult on this planet.

So, RIP food column but hello to becoming a better, happier human.

Love and best wishes from the meanest muncher in town xxx

SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT

Food Review: East & West

Address: 227 Abbeydale Road, Sheffield S7 1FJ

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

Nothing is new; it’s all been done before. The Rolling Stones were the best rock ‘n’ roll band, the 1920s/50s/60s had the best fashion and Nokia phones are basically as good as technology is ever going to get. Sadly, the same can be said for the world of food: an Indian restaurant usually means a pickle tray to start, some curry and a side; an Italian means a thin-crust pizza or lasagne and a Chinese means chicken coloured in with a luminous orange highlighter.

So, when you come across something a bit different, something that you don’t quite understand, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. East and West is a tiny, inconspicuous South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant squeezed onto Abbeydale Road and is exactly that: a cuisine that until now, I was virtually unaware of.

The neon sign à la ‘local takeaway’, the no-frills interior spotted with wonky tables, the toilet located outside, down an alleyway, and the metal school-dinner trays that each course is served upon might cause the typical restaurant-seeker to do a Dionne Warwick (walk on by, for the uncultured). However, if you’re feeling a little adventurous then East and West is just the ticket.

I still don’t fully understand the menu – what is a starter and what is a main? Do these things even exist? Why do we eat three times a day? I don’t know! Stop asking me questions! To ‘start’ I had the Chilli Paneer (£4.25), which was a total dream and highly, utterly recommended: chunky peppers, onions, and this un-meltable cheese all smothered in the greatest sharp, zingy sauce.

We then moved onto a Dosa, which is basically a large crepe, filled with whatever you like. It’s not quite a main and it’s not quite a starter – reflected in the price (£3.50 - £5.95) but it’s worth a try. We tried grated paneer and masala dosa, both of which were nice and tasty but could have done with a bit more filling to warrant the Sahara-esque expanse of pancake.

The brilliantly-titled Chicken Devilled (£5.50) for me, at least, conjures up terrific images of a world taken over by chickens, all led by a possessed rooster despot. Back in Sheffield though, this translates into chilli chicken and is a joy.

I must point out that East and West is no longer a BYOB establishment and they enforce this new licensing very strictly (a woman left the restaurant because she was not permitted to drink her bottle of red onsite). Alcohol is for sale though and the bottle of wine we shared did the job nicely, so much so that my recollection of how the food tasted from this point onwards is slightly hazy.

To finish, I ordered the Mixed Veg Uttappam (£4.95), which is described as a thick crepe. For me, it felt more like a solid omelette, full of chunky tomato slices and a few peppers but garnished superbly with herbs and a choice of three sauces to dip into.

The gratification of eating out and being able to pick something like an Uttappam, in complete ignorance, is something I miss. This new world of guessing and road-testing unfamiliar dishes and liking them or not liking them is something that we so rarely see now. This owes to the authenticity of the food at East and West, marking it on the map as a must for any food lover.

An Essay: Rethinking Cannibalism

2013-12-26T12:22:00.000+00:00

Carving up an old enemy

And so. Is it really that bad? I’ve become obsessed with the idea of eating a placenta. I don’t particularly ever want to eat one and I have no desire to offer any future placenta I may or may not produce to anyone (unless they really WANTED to eat it, in which case, who am I to stand in their way?)

What I think about is – wow, you can eat what is basically some human without breaking any laws. I don’t really know whether eating a placenta counts as cannibalism though. It’s probably more like eating a yolk in a chicken egg; one big ball of nutrients.

So, putting placentas to one side, which I imagine is what happens to the majority of them, what about lipo and unfortunate accidents? A finger chopped off here, a head chopped off there.

It’s a confusing area and so I’ve started to begin categorising things in my head:

A fingernail? NO – it’s dead
A bogie? NO – it’s not part of the body
A kitten? NO – it’s an animal

That’s as far as I have got but any ‘moot points’ you can think of, please let me know and we can discuss them!

Anyway, vegetarians generally don’t eat goose fat etc. and so let’s just SAY that you decided to have some post-Christmas liposuction and then you took a pot of it home to make some crispy roast potatoes. I bet you all recoiled – eeeewwwwwww, that’s disgusting… but calm, calm, calm – get all your reactionary shit out of the way and thiiiink.

You have probably had a better life than a goose. You know what you’ve eaten (and after all, you’ve EATEN it so it can’t be that bad) and you know that you haven’t been rolling around in your mate’s shit (hopefully). So eat your fat! It’s free (minus the lipo costs), it’s easy (okay, well it is serious surgery but after that, it’s a breeze!), it saves an animal (you’re still alive!) and it’s excellent recycling.

And now for a thought in my head that should never have made it out: to all you people out there who eat very bloody, very rare steaks…..is this really SO bad?

I think we need to start a movement and I as the Mean Muncher want to be the movement’s birth mother (placenta for sale!)

Amputees and those who have recently died of natural causes - this blog needs you!!

Fusion Organic Café - Review

2013-12-25T16:29:00.000+00:00

UNRELATED: missing my bro this Christmas (he is on an oil rig)

I wanted to do a post on ‘how to have a vegetarian Christmas’ (above) but I couldn’t be bothered to take any photos and my mum has done all the cooking which means it would be a bit of a cheat. Next year, huh?

Anyway, I wanted to bring to you a little story. When I was about 8 or 9, my parents took me to Spain for a summer holiday and it was the first trip on a plane I had ever had!

We flew with British Airways and apart from the whole getting a metal lump filled with people into the air and actually managing to steer it to a specific location, the most fascinating thing for me was the sick bag.

I wondered if I should start collecting them from all the different airlines. The one (overwhelming and ultimately fatal) worry I had was that most of my friends had already flown before. What was the point in collecting them when everyone else already had TEN sick bags? I was on the back foot and instead of fighting against adversity, I gave up.

Over the next few years, I had the good fortune to fly with Aeroflot (you shared a recycled one), Emirates (a 24-carat gold sack for one’s pukes), JAL (a cute Hello Kitty bag), American Airlines (supersize), Virgin (you puke into a sexy cabin crew member’s hand) and so on and so forth.

And each time I flew, I thought “you stupid, stupid idiot – why didn’t you start collecting them when you first thought about it” but NOW, I can’t start collecting them because I have missed all these opportunities already and so there is absolutely no point…even if I manage to fly on a million more airlines, there is still no point because I have missed all these opportunities.

And this is how I feel about Fusion Organic Café in Sheffield. It’s always a worry to review a restaurant when you have spoken at length about sick. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here so let me be explicit:

I ONLY WISH THAT I HAD TAKEN A PHOTOGRAPH OF EVERY SALAD I HAVE EVER EATEN THERE BECAUSE THEY VARY EVERYDAY, THEY ARE MORE INVENTIVE THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE AND THE PEOPLE THERE PRODUCE SIX SALADS EVERY DAY. I STOPPED TAKING PHOTOS BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED SO MANY AND NOW THE TASK FEELS OVERWHELMING. THE SALADS ARE DELICIOUS AND THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE LINKED TO SICK IS BECAUSE I SHOULD HAVE STARTED TAKING PHOTOS OF THEM WHEN I FIRST THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

And so, this is (to eliminate any remaining confusion) a positive review.

The salads cost £3.70. You get to choose 3/6 salads and when I say salad, I mean lentils and sweet potato and bulgur wheat and purple sprouting broccoli, olives, courgette ribbons, coconut rice….basically all the stuff that you can’t be arsed to cook! For all the veggies out there – this place is as good as it gets for a work lunch. It’s almost all veggie and loads of gluten-free, dairy-free stuff. OMG I can’t shut up about this place and OMG it does meat too for all you cute-baby-animal eaters (lol lol).

Oh and one final thing. The café is a training café linked to Freeman College so that young people with learning difficulties or behavioural problems can train and work in a great environment. The staff there – especially Moo, who is perhaps the most enthusiastic cashier I have ever met – are wonderful. It’s a great business and a producer of ultra-healthy food that we are lucky to have in Sheffield.

Butcher Works, 74 Arundel Street, Sheffield S1 2NS – I think they close at about 3pm and they are also shut in school holidays. Take out or eat in.

Disatrous Salted Butter Caramel Cake

2013-11-16T11:06:00.001+00:00

** Strangely, this post contains BREAKING BAD SPOILERS so if you haven't watched it to the end and plan on doing so, this one ain't for you **

Did you watch Breaking Bad? I had tried to watch it and in the way that I do with anything that requires more than 5 minutes of my attention, I gave up. Not because it was bad – because it was great! No, just because I had SO much to catch up on and it was SO overwhelming and so I gave up.

But then, everyone started to talk about “the ending” and people were all excited and saying things like “TV WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN” and so I watched and watched and WATCHED. One day, I watched 13 hours of the stuff.

And what I discovered was this: in the end, it all revolved around bowel movements; that one fateful shit.

Maybe Skylar had brewed some very strong coffee for after the meal. Maybe the cartel had slipped some laxative into Hank’s morning cuppa, mistaking it for ricin. Or maybe, Hank was on some new Hollywood diet pills; just shitting out all the fat from Sky’s cooking.

I don’t know.

But what I DO know is that had Hank not needed to drop a load at the dinner party then Walt & Co would probably be on their way flying first class to the Czech Republic to open up a new car wash. Him and Sky would bathe in methylamine, snort lines of homemade pink cocaine and wife swap with Jesse and Andrea.

While we’re talking about crap, my housemate has bought some wet wipes that sit next to the toilet. We’re rationed to one per poo but MY WORD it feels as if I have suddenly become a billionaire.

So, let’s bring it away from shit and back onto chemistry.

Cooking caramel for this cake made me feel like I was cooking meth, as can all baking because well, um, it is CHEMISTRY. I remember one guy on the Great British Bake Off who was very into manipulating ingredients with clever boffin techniques and I think he won so WOW, this is chemistry: call me Walter White Chocolate Chip or Jesse Pink Cupcake coz this chemistry chick is here to stay!

Please see above a photo of the making of caramel, which was just one of the many things that went wrong with this recipe.

The final DISASTER was when I followed the instructions to "turn out the cake", which was MEANT to be slightly uncooked. So the top photo illustrates what happened and is also the reason why I am going to be a responsible blogger and not post the recipe, ever.

Turkish Eggs

2013-11-12T10:42:00.001+00:00

And sometimes blogging can seem like such an IMPOSITION. The thinking, the writing, the re-writing, the eating in different places even though you KNOW which curry is best and which vegetarian café near the Cathedral forces you to buy a salad you don’t want. It’s the taking of photos, the taking of photos again because the cheesecake just DOESN’T REALLY LOOK RIGHT in that one. The uploading, the “um, that one is slightly better than that one because on that one I look like I am mid-stroke but oh, um that one, oh GOD look at my chins, shall we re-shoot?” The editing of photos when you have time on your hands and the panic of OH SHIT I don’t have time to edit all the photos for THIS post but now I’ve made expectations and doesn’t it always pay to be average?

If I was a member of the upper class or a psychopath of any class, I would certainly hire an intern. What a splendid way to really give yourself a self-assured pat on the back: I’m so great that people want to do the SHIT parts of my life FOR FREE!!! What a ball!

Anyway, that explains the hiatus. I can’t promise that I will get any better at this but in the meantime, let me tell you about the time the local paper (The Sheffield Star) asked me to write a recipe for them.

“Write” is funny because yeah. So, instead, I regurgitated one from BBC Good Food and wrote this long drawl about what was in my head at that moment. I sent it off, waited, had a photographer come round to my house and had to cook the friggin meal again. Then I had to ask a friend to ‘test’ the meal, which meant I had to eat it again. By this time, I’m thinking, Jesus, this is DISGUSTING.

Anyway, the paper didn’t print everything I wrote. In fact, they printed perhaps one sentence and I got to be a musician or a celebrity or a politician and complain loads:

ME: “I’ve been misquoted!”

FRIEND: “But that is what you said – exactly! Look, it’s written in this Word document that you sent to them.”

ME: “But it was taken out of context!”

That was it, really. Most of the page was taken up with a picture of my big, pale, make-up free, frizzy-haired face.

So, here, for my real fans, I will post the unabridged version:

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a princess and dinner like a pauper” said someone with no children, no job and a vegetable patch in the back garden.

In reality, I tend to do the whole shebang in reverse order. Occasionally, I will almost get it right by eating a large lunch. Unfortunately though, those days tend to conclude with less of a pauper dinner and more of a family-sized bag of Maltesers with no hope of utilising the “seal up and save some for later” sticker (does anyone actually use those?)

And so, when I got some time off work the other day, I decided to make a hearty, healthy breakfast (or brunch – after all, I was off work) to see if the pauper dinner naturally followed on.

Scanning through the BBC Good Food website (the Holy Grail for all my cooking), I came across a Turkish recipe called Menemen. It’s basically like Nigella’s ‘Eggs In Purgatory’ but without the doomsday name.

There are different variations of Menemen. Some choose to leave the eggs whole, frying them into the mixture and others prefer to scramble the whole lot together. Seasoning is also a bit of a free-for-all, meaning that oregano, thyme and parsley are all welcome in the frying pan.

The eggs, vegetables and pita bread in this dish mean that you’re getting vitamins, protein and carbs before you’ve even left the house. If you’re fussy about your carb intake then a) does your breath smell a bit dodgy? BUT b) the morning is obviously the best time to enjoy them.

Did the motto serve me well? Yes! The meal was delicious and I definitely wasn’t hungry until around 2pm. I then whipped up some brownies and ate quite a bit of the raw batter but thankfully redeemed myself in the evening with a Greek salad.

All I need now is some motivation to get up at sunrise and to be blessed with non-blurry morning vision for chopping chillis as opposed to fingers. Hm. Looks like it’s back to toast and Marmite until further notice then.

This is my housemate, Rachel, testing the recipe. This photo is mainly included to show off my hologram of a cat and dog (behind).

The article is here.

Serves 2, Vegetarian

Prep: 10 mins

Cook: 25 mins

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1-2 chillis, chopped (and de-seeded if you’re a wimp!)

2 large red onions

1 red pepper

1 400g tin chopped tomatoes

A sprinkle of caster sugar

4 eggs

A handful of parsley

2 pita bread

Method

1. Heat up your oil in a large heavy-based frying pan and add your garlic, chilli, onion and pepper. Cook on a medium heat until the vegetables soften.

2. Pour in the tomatoes and sprinkle with roughly a teaspoon of sugar to take away the sharp taste of the tomatoes. Cook until tomatoes have reduced, about 5 minutes.

3. Make four ‘wells’ in the mixture and crack eggs into each one.

4. Cover the pan with a lid or a chopping board (keep an eye out as the latter is almost certainly a fire risk).

5. Warm up the pitas under the grill.

6. When the eggs are firm and cooked (but still wobbly), take the pan off the heat and sprinkle with parsley.

7. Serve with pita on the side to dip into the runny yolks.

No-fry jam doughnuts

2013-04-01T19:29:00.000+01:00

A few years ago, I became aware of one of my many personality flaws: obsessiveness. These are obsessions that sometimes become so frenzied and dogmatic that I could easily be mistaken for a corporate sponsor of the product I'm hooked on.

In my defence, some of the obsessions do go on to form life-long habits and endure the test of time: the Tudors, drinking Americanos, The Smiths, Jay-Z, Disney mugs, books (NB: change some of these interests to look less douchey b4 publishing blog).

But I cannot escape my much longer list of lapsed obsessions: Fruit Pastille ice lollies, drinking espressos, the idea of learning French and moving to Paris for a year, Starbucks, Cadbury's fudge bars, cupcakes, Lord of the Rings, Crunchies, Moulin Rouge, Metallica, the Israel/Palestine debate, graffiti, working in music, deviantART, writing blogs and so on and so forth; an obsessions graveyard.

One enduring fixation that I have gracefully accepted into the hall of fame (the VERY exclusive club) is the jam doughnut. I regard myself as something of a doughnut connoisseur. Tesco's is too doughy and not deep-fried enough. Krispy Kreme is, as I have previously mentioned, not even close to living up to the hype, M&S's are good but a bit small and not covered in enough sugar. Sainsbury's though, they are DIVINE and so, so cheap - a generous dollop of raspberry jam, golden deep-fried crispiness, rolled in sugar and not too bready.

In the past, I have justified eating jam doughnuts for breakfast ("Raspberry jam on toast for me this morning!") and my record thus far, has been four doughnuts in one day. So it seems only right that I write this little homage and attempt to make them for myself.

There is one problem though, the big old stick in the mud that is deep-fat frying. It fills me with terror: the smell, the waste of oil, the DANGER, the fat. These are all factors that I can put to the back of my mind when I just pick them up in the supermarket, all first-world consumer-like. But doing it myself? Absolutely not. That is what professionals/machines/deep-fat fryers are for.

So when my Mum showed me these doughnuts that were baked! In an oven! Well, I set about making them straight away.

Taken from Issue 59 of Easy Cook, makes 12.

Turn oven to fan 170c/conventional 190c (our fan oven has recently had a bit of a mental breakdown and is now sort of a hybrid of fan and conventional – if you have a similar problem, 180c is advisable).

Grease a 12-hole muffin tin (not a bun tin – these are too shallow). Put 140g caster sugar, 200g plain flour and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and mix well.

In a jug, whisk together 100ml natural yogurt, 2 large eggs and 1 tsp vanilla essence. Tip the jug contents and 140g melted butter into the dry ingredients then fold in with a wooden spoon to combine.

Divide two-thirds (or a bit less, as I struggled for enough mixture to put on top) of the mixture between the muffin holes. Put 1 tsp raspberry jam into the centre of each then cover with the remaining mixture.

Bake for 16 – 18 minutes or until risen, golden and springy to the touch. Leave to cool for 5 minutes before lifting out of the tin and rolling in extra caster sugar.

A bit of leakage...

But wipe it up and keep smiling (use a little less jam next time!)

These are amamamamzzzzing. So tender, so bun-like, so jammy, so light. AH, A DREAM.

The Wick At Both Ends - Review

2013-03-31T16:26:00.002+01:00

Sadly, an orb floated over the "Ends" bit.

I'm perilously close to falling off the wagon with this food blogging malarkey. The horse is racing away and I'm hanging onto the back of my clunky wagon, perhaps with both hands but possibly only one. My legs are certainly flailing though.

I've had an awful cold, a super new job (hello any bosses reading this!), the search for a new flat and it's all meant that I've become a bit more relaxed about writing and cooking.

What am I still doing though? EATING OUT, that's what.

Anyway, don't panic because I'm far too greedy to ever stop eating and as soon as I get my mind back, I'll be on at you all again. In the meantime, you may now read about the time I was invited to road-test the new Spring menu at the Wick At Both Ends on West Street.

GOING UP WEST TO THE WICK

Food Review: The Wick at Both Ends

Address: 151 West Street, Sheffield S1 4EW

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

It really is refreshing to visit The Wick At Both Ends (henceforth TWABE, for the sake of my word count) with a clear head. The last time I was here, I was treated to a flambéed lemon cheesecake shot which also doubled up as a Men in Black ‘Neuralyzer’, causing me to lose all memory between the hours of 11pm and 6.30am.

This time though, sober and strained from work, I stumbled into TWABE to sample the new menu and was immediately tranquilized - not by the alcohol – but by the dreamy low-ceiling, the nooks and crannies strewn with entwined fairy lights and ivy, the muted candles and dark wood flooring. I thought to myself “Wow, it’s good at night and it’s great in the day…I wonder where they get the name from?”

TWABE is more Division Street than West Street but I’m glad it’s chosen the latter as its home. It’s a bit like Caitlin Moran writing for the Times: she doesn’t just take the easy Grauniad route and preach to the converted. TWABE is the same sort of thing and West Street is all the better for it.

My guest ordered a selection of 3 small plates for £10: welsh cockle pies, mini cottage pies and a carpaccio of duck. I decided to gallantly sample the mushroom burger (£6.95) with an extra helping of Y-Fenni mustard and ale cheese.

Now, I don’t want to get too brown-nosey about the burger but this one does beat almost all of the offerings from dedicated burger restaurants. I’ll try to tell you why because after all, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? It’s the bun – which is so soft and brioche-like, it’s the chips which – shock horror – are included in the price and it’s the piece of information, underneath the burger selection, that doesn’t just say “add cheddar” but permits you to add ANY cheese from the cheeseboard to your burger.

We were similarly impressed by the Welsh cockle pies which, once you broke through the delightful crispy pastry on top, were full of creamy sauce, bacon, leeks and fairly obviously, cockles. These were the pinnacle of the show and are highly recommended. The cottage pie was, well, a cottage pie and it would be silly to expect anything other than a homemade-tasting pot of beef and peas in a gravy sauce (the rich, red wine element being slightly lost) topped with mash. Nothing bad about that though and certainly a safe choice.

And finally was the carpaccio of duck, which was delightful in itself with the port and cherry reduction but - and now I’m being really picky - didn’t need the extra garnish of glacé cherries; a bit like a supremely good-looking bloke wearing too much expensive aftershave.

To finish off, we took 2 of the 3 desserts (which can cleverly be used as 1 of your 3 small plates for £10): cheesecake with a raspberry coulis and freshly baked cookies with ice cream. The other option is baked chocolate fondant served in a teacup, which for me completes perhaps the most faultless trio of desserts on offer in any restaurant, any where.

The fair prices, the quiet, the warmth, the good music, the service and the quality and choice of the food mean that, for me, TWABE is a Sheffield meal you can’t afford to miss out on.

Wagamamas - Review

2013-03-23T15:14:00.002+00:00

Itame Yasai - £8.65

I don't really think there is any point in writing introductions to my Mercury reviews anymore. First of all, my reviews introduce themselves and second of all, posting them on here, a few days after they have been published on the site is such a, well, routine. And routines exist, I suppose, so pointless explanations like this don't have to.

FULL OF EASTERN DELIGHT

Food Review: Wagamama

Address: 2 Leopold Square, Sheffield S1

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

As much as I try to concentrate on local, independent operations in Sheffield, you sometimes just want to sack off all the risk-taking and run along to the old-faithful. It’s a bit like Sunita’s affair on Coronation Street – in the end, she just wanted to be back with solid and dependable Dev. Sometimes familiarity is the nicest thing.

After being seated at one of the large canteen-style benches at the Leopold Sqaure branch, a friendly waiter came over to ask whether we had been to Wagamamas before.

Now, if the restaurant worked in an unconventional way like, I don’t know, you had to write your menu choices on your forehead and recite the lyrics of Food Glorious Food for someone to come and take your order then it might make sense to explain it. Wagamamas just works like any other restaurant though and so I think what they’re trying to say here is that it’s possible that not all your dishes will arrive at the same time.

If you’re a bit wary about Japanese food, thinking it’s all uncooked fish and weird, salty tasting sauces, you should definitely order a katsu curry. You will be fed either healthy chicken or obese chicken (the chickens are, as far as I know, uniformly farmed but the fried stuff will make you obese and the grilled stuff might make you thin) covered in chip shop curry sauce (£9.40). There is also a deep-fried veggie option (obese) which I ordered (£8.45). Katsu curry is so cutting edge that I don’t think the Japanese have even discovered it yet. The fools!

The traditional Japanese dish: Yasai Katsu Curry - £8.45

My fellow diner ordered Itame Yasai (£8.65), which is also newly available with prawns (£10.85) or chicken (£9.75). The itame contains a ton of fresh ingredients for the price you pay: beansprouts, chillies, red and spring onions, bok choi, pepper and mushrooms.

Wagamamas are perhaps the only company I know to suffer from reverse Creme Egg syndrome. What I mean by this is that usually, everyone complains that manufacturers make their products smaller (whilst simultaneously increasing the price “to take account of inflation” aka to buy a new company car).

Now, ruling out the fact that I have unwittingly become Benjamin Button, I believe that over the years, the portions have expanded. This is a company policy that should be applauded and applied to boobs, wine bottles and Jammy Dodgers; wouldn’t THAT be a party you’d want to be invited to?Having said all that, when you go to these chains you do hope that the economies of scale are paying off. In return for sacrificing any hint of passion or individuality, you should expect to pay less than, say, a family-run noodle bar.

What makes me sad about Wagamamas is the price of the desserts. A slice of (admittedly, very tasty) white chocolate and ginger cheesecake costs a whopping £5.10. They’re just pushing their luck a bit, aren’t they? Let’s conservatively assume that there are 12 slices per 1 mass-produced cheesecake. Do a bit of maths and you will soon discover that this cheesecake is worth £61.20.

A 'taster' dessert (white chocolate and ginger cheesecake) with a double espresso. This is a new thing they do that I didn't mention in the review because I ran out of words. Very good though.

Shave a quid off the desserts, keep making the portions bigger and I’m yours, Wagas.

The Rainbow Cake

2013-03-17T11:39:00.001+00:00

One of the greatest annoyances I bestow on anyone who knows me is that I never live in the present. I either wallow in the past or worry about the future. If we go on holiday, instead of being excited on my last day at work, I worry about how shit I’ll feel when I get back in the office after the holiday.

It’s very annoying for everyone concerned because it means that even the most exciting parts of life are made ordinary; I suppose I am the John Coffey of happiness.

Anyway, this personality deformity obviously applies acutely to birthdays and it was my birthday the other day. I didn’t want to have the annual farce of dreading the feeling of having had the birthday and therefore not looking forward to the birthday, even though the birthday hadn’t happened and I never properly looked forward to it in the first place because I was too sad about it being over.

And so I thought that in the two weeks leading up to my birthday, I would make a terrific song and dance about it. I don’t like imposing songs and dances on other people because sometimes, when certain people insist that I attend a song/dance on behalf of them, I dread going. And I would hate to think that someone was dreading attending something I’d got myself into such a frenzy about organising (so much so that I’d briefly considered getting sectioned).

So yes, I decided to make my own personal song and dance and then tell everyone about it so they could pretend they were there. And if they were dreading being there, they could, like, not read this post.

I decided to make the most labour-intensive, disgustingly sweet, embarrassingly kitsch, fashion-foody cake I could find: The Rainbow Cake. YUCK. I am a total hypocrite, by the way; if you admit to that, does it assuage the hypocrisy?

So, happy bloody birthday to me. The weeks of planning and eBay ordering and visits to Tesco and sourcing of egg whites and researching how to do this and how to do that have meant that for me, at least, my birthday has been SUCH an event (briefly scuppered when I saw a magazine in the newsagents telling the world how to do a much easier and probably better-tasting version of this cake but whatever, I was too far down the line to change).

I got the original recipe from Whisk Kid who, as far as I can tell, invented this cake. It’s not for the fainthearted: 19 egg whites (NO YOLKS!), just under a kilogram of butter, too much sugar to comprehend, enough e-numbers to see you safely off to the ozone layer and the most ridiculous, notoriously temperamental icing (Swiss Meringue Buttercream).

The lazy-man's alternative to a life-sentence of egg separation.

Surprisingly, everything went….well….okay. If my kitchen was a person, it would have been packing its bags and making its way down to the Priory for a long stay. Thankfully though, it’s a room in a house.

I won’t go into the ins and outs of this but I found this tutorial very useful, the food colourings were bought from this ebay seller, which was recommended to me by Alice. Alice’s post was also extremely useful…with a cautionary tale that saved my bacon!

Luckily, I found a lot of helpers to eat the cake for me. This is not my kind of cake…it’s too sweet and Amercian-y tasting. I also didn’t really like the flavour of the buttercream, which was flavoured with lemon extract….and I love lemon! This was made purely for the challenge and the photos! Enjoy!

This is ME! On my BIRTHDAY!

Silversmiths - Review

2013-03-16T15:24:00.001+00:00

Here I am! Better late than never! Or maybe that isn't true. Some things would be better if they never happened. Anyway, here is my review of Silversmiths:

WORTHY OF MORE THAN SILVER

Food Review: Silversmiths

Address: 111 Arundel Street, Sheffield S1

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

After last week’s little jolly into the world of takeaway, I’m now back in the zone and perhaps most crucially of all, back in a restaurant. I wanted the best: service, ambience, food and company and so I plumped for what can only be described as a celebrity restaurant. Silversmiths is a celebrity because it once played host to a celebrity chef (the sweary one, not the school dinner one), who shouted a lot and told them what to do.

I had booked my table earlier in the day and toyed with the idea of giving myself a pseudonym. This is what restaurant critics sometimes do, you see, so they don’t get superior treatment when the restaurant works out who they are.

Now, unlike those idiots, I would actually love to get preferential treatment and so I considered such false names as “Beyonce” and (to make it a bit more realistic) “Sean Bean”. However, my friend wisely reminded me that I had a duty of care as a reviewer and that I should therefore retain my own name to ensure total anonymity.

Silversmiths is located just behind the Sheffield Hallam students’ union and very near to the train station. The restaurant itself is unusual. There is a long, lone bench, split up into black leather sofas. This means that you dine very publically and very close to others. A man next to me, having just been shown to his seat, exclaimed “This isn’t what I imagined at all! I don’t like it...”

I do like it though. Too many times, I have wrongly assumed restaurant booths to be soundproofed, private chambers where unremitting gossip cannot be overheard by others. Too often, this has not been the case and I would say that restaurant booths are almost entirely responsible for my depleted social circle.

We chose to sample 2 courses for £14.90, which is a deal available on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Both of us decided on mains and desserts - not because there was anything wrong with the starters - but simply because we love a cake.

I went for the cauliflower pie and my friend enjoyed some ‘loose birds’ (I’m too into womens’ lib for the joke in your head). This dish consisted of free-range chicken terrine and Wentworth pheasant terrine, sticky cabbage and creamed leeks. We were both impressed with our mains, although you will need a side or two to share (£2.95 each) to pad it out.

The pie! And peas!

Lads! Loose birds just 4 U!!!

I then had a bit of a Sliding Doors fiasco with the desserts. After spending an age debating between baked vanilla cheesecake and flourless dark chocolate cake, I decided on the chocolate. As if there was some mighty force laughing at my gaffe, the waitress mistakenly brought out the cheesecake and I wish I had accepted it. There was nothing wrong per se with the chocolate cake (apart from the beetroot sorbet, which I think I am too much of a barbarian to ‘get’) but the cheesecake had looked incredible. My friend took a honey and lemon panna cotta and we both agreed that this was a perfect palette-cleanser, wonderfully textured and a sure fire winner.

I would have happily settled for raspberry sorbet but this stuff is BEETROOT!

An Italian dinner party in York

2013-03-11T16:02:00.000+00:00

An amuse-bouche // hors d'œuvres (I can never remember the difference) of artichokes, peppers, these delicious cheesy bite things, olives and riiight over there in the distance, sundried tomatoes.

York has always been a weird one for me. I have tried to live there twice now but it just never works out. The first time round, I lived at the university, in accommodation that was so dilapidated and awful-looking that it was nicknamed “Cell Block C”. It has since been demolished and rebuilt.

Here is a quote from “Barny” on the Student Room forum: “Yep, theres (sic) no denying cell block c is a hell-hole, its (sic) called cell block for a reason. Was voted worst uni accommodation (sic) for 3 years in a row I think!?”

Anyway, that’s enough from you, Barny. I stayed there for 10 weeks and then decided mid-Christmas holiday that I was done. So my mum, brother and I drove furiously up to York and packed everything up into bin bags. Belongings included my duvet, which was covered in sick because I’d puked up a few days before we broke up for Christmas and hadn’t bothered to wash the sheets and a 4-way plug also covered in sick (in hindsight, a very vomity hazard). We drove home, relieved.

I think the problem with York is that it’s not a city. I mean, it IS a city but it shouldn’t be. The mentality of a lot of the people there is one of small-town. Why did the Vikings settle there? I have no idea; maybe they didn’t care about being cosmopolitan, decent nights out and having a cool youth culture. I mean, it can’t be a city just by virtue of having a Minster because Rotherham has a Minster and well, yeah – I needn’t say anything more.

But now – now I don’t live there – I’ve started to like it a bit more. I go up there every now and then because one of my most wonderful friends lives there (the Italian). She is the most talented chef (she will deny this) and she knows exactly where in York to go to buy the most wonderful ingredients. Perhaps she is the love child of Antonio Carluccio and that other famous Italian chef Nigellissima. She almost MAKES me want to live in York again – third time lucky?

So last Friday evening, I popped up for a night of sophistication, deliciousness, good company and astonishing generosity from the Italian. I might bully her into writing out one of these recipes for the blog because when I ask “HOW DID YOU DOOOO THIS?” she names a cheese I have never heard of and then says: “I made it into a quiche!”

Starter #1 - a homemade mushroom (and loads of other nice stuff) sort of pate wrapped in filo pastry.

Starter #2: Asparagus and burrata quiches (sooooo good).

Starter #3: Brie on bread, drizzled in truffle oil, mmmmm.

Main course: Homemade saffron gnocchi (sooo good, never eaten properly-made gnocchi before) and a creamy sauce with some nice herbs, I forget which.

And then....a TRIO, yes a TRIO of desserts! L-R: white chocolate and caramelised walnut semifreddo (WOW), a chocolate brownie recipe ("which I just adapted") with cherries and finally, a superb pistachio cheesecake.

And then, the morning after, I was treated to a special edition hazelnut espresso. For me, a weekend doesn't really get much better.

Chocolate fondant pudding

2013-03-10T18:00:00.000+00:00

Back in the 15th Century, we were ‘treated’ to the War of the Roses - where Richard was dumped in a car park and Henry gave birth to a psychopath (well, his wife did – he waited outside the room praying for a knob) who ingeniously created his own church. Or did Cromwell do that? Or Anne? I’m not sure but whatever happened, the Pope was very pissed off.

More recently, though, we have enjoyed such delights as the Lord of the Flies, Stig of the Dump, Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead.

Keeping well within that dynasty, I am now proud to present my own offering: Steak of the Puddings.

It’s not that this pudding is made out of steak or anything; that would be silly, wouldn’t it? Although there is steak and kidney pudding but that’s not ACTUALLY a pudding is it? It’s all very confusing, this pudding malarkey.

So, here is my guide to the Steak of the Puddings:

Steak tartare

I’m not into tartare but my mum is a big advocate, so I thought I should include it. This is where you don’t even consider heating up, let alone cooking, the cake mixture. Instead, you take a spatula and shovel (all of) the raw mixture into your mouth.

Verdict: An acquired taste but this method does have a small group of staunch devotees. Perfect for a break-up.

Blue

Blue is something that, for me, is still a bit extreme. You cook the chocolate only until the outside (the top of the cake) has formed a thin crust. Underneath this crust will lie luke-warm/cool chocolatey mixture.

Verdict: Yum. It’s good – it’s real good but it’s not hot enough and you feel like you might be on the verge of food poisoning.

Rare

Now. NOW. This is where it starts to get good. We’re still not talking about much cake – maybe 2 tablespoons of cake? The rest is a combination of warm chocolate sauce and warm cake mixture. This is my mum’s favourite.

Verdict: You would still look weird if you served this on Come Dine With Me.

Medium

We’re now getting to the point that, when you tip your cake out of the ramekin, there is a sort of cake. It collapses (because there is still too much hot chocolate sauce) but there IS the outline of a cake there. This is where it all starts getting a bit too ‘done’ for my liking.

Verdict: Most people will probably favour this stage because it’s cakey enough to be called a cake. If you’re serving this in public eg: not sitting on your sofa watching back-to-back episodes of Girls, you should perhaps serve it in the ramekin to avoid the splodge.

Well-done

If you tip your cake out and it stands tall, containing its sauce (think M&S advert), you’ve cooked it for too long in my opinion. Your cake to sauce ratio will be all out, resulting in a dry, chewy fondant pudding. No fun at all.

Verdict: Some people insist on having it well-done but only because they’re scared of dying and stupid stuff like that.

I would say that the optimum line of attack with this pudding is medium-rare (see picture).

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where this recipe was from. If any chefs and stuff read my blog (HA HA HA) and this is their recipe, please let me know, ta.

Serves 2

50g butter

A bit of butter, to grease

2 tsp cocoa powder, to dust

50g dark chocolate (you should use dark but I didn’t have any so used milk, which doesn’t give it such a choccy taste or look)

1 egg

1 yolk (massive pain, I know)

50g caster sugar

50g plain flour OR 25g/25g plain/self-raising works well too

Preheat your oven to 160c fan or if your oven is very efficient, perhaps 150c fan. If you don’t have a fan oven, add on 20c to each of these temperatures.

Butter 2 large ramekins (10cm diameter) and dust liberally with cocoa.

Melt chocolate and butter in a bain-marie (or to be honest, the microwave would probably be fine too). Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Whisk egg, yolk and sugar until pale, thick and able to hold a trail.

Fold in the chocolate mixture.

Sift the flour over the mixture and fold in.

Divide the mixture between the ramekins.

Bake for 7 minutes (blue), 10 minutes (rare), 12 minutes (medium rare), 14 minutes (medium) – although all times vary according to ovens, so experiment plenty of times to find your optimum style.

Turn out into warm bowls and serve immediately.

Chico-Chile - Review

2013-03-07T20:43:00.000+00:00

IT'S CHICO (-CHILE) TIME

Food Review: Chico Chile

Address: 1 Orchard Square, Sheffield S1 2FB

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

This week, I went rogue, becoming a bit like a gastronomic Jack Bauer: I took the brief (“to review restaurants”), spat on it, trod on it and brutally hurled it into the green recycling paper and cardboard compartment at work. Yep, I went wild.

You see, instead of sauntering out one evening to a restaurant, to take pleasure in the service and the vibes, I decided to review Chico-Chile, a takeaway counter located at the bottom end of Orchard Square.

This place has been around for ages; first called Pirates Pastys and presumably selling pasties, then called Pirates Pastys but selling Mexican chillis and wraps and finally, the owner told me to come back this week for the latest renaissance, where the name finally bears some resemblance to the product. You might call this place the Snoop Lion of the culinary world.

I plumped for the Quorn chilli fajita (£4) and my friend took a diablo chicken burrito (£5). Now, Mexican purists might take issue with these dishes because ‘fajita’ generally refers to grilled slices of meat, served with cheese, onions and peppers, while burritos generally contain refried beans.

However, my chilli fajita (wonderfully outlandish in itself) was stuffed with lovely fresh lettuce and wonderful crunchy pieces of tortilla chip - not traditional, exactly, but both welcome additions.

The burrito was huge and was filled up with rice and (un-fried) kidney beans. We were so bewildered by the size of this wrap that we decided to place it on some postal scales, just to see how much weight we could expect to put on post-consumption. Impressively, it weighed in at just under three quarters of a kilogram.

Just to put that into perspective, 750g is (possibly, sort of) the same weight as a 6-month-old unborn baby and using Royal Mail, it would cost £2.70 to post first class within the UK. Don’t do that though because I’ve heard that posting foetuses is not regarded as particularly PC.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, at the takeaway counter. If you listen carefully, whilst waiting for your order, you will be sure to hear a gentle hum, followed by a distinctive "PING!" I feel I should mention this because some people will immediately and perhaps slightly snobbishly, dismiss these burritos as Subway-in-a-sombrero.

You know what though? Even Heston has claimed that microwaves are the best way to cook some foods (fennel) and if you want your hot food in a matter of minutes, then short of a blowtorch, you're going to have to suck it up. Just make sure you wait for 45 minutes before consuming, to let all the radiation settle down.

Is £5 is a bit steep for a takeaway wrap in Sheffield? Not really. Because as you start to munch on this beast, you begin to wonder - much like the re-paving of the Moor - whether it will ever end. Unlike the re-paving of the Moor though, you really don't want it to.

Guacamole and tortilla chips

2013-03-03T15:32:00.000+00:00

In 2010, when I graduated* from university with a degree in arguing hypothetical points without coming to any discernible conclusion, I thought that the world was my oyster! Three years of studying and pretending to enjoy going out meant that I was definitely owed a high-powered, thinking man's role with a generous salary and bountiful benefits in an ethical, forward-thinking and trendy but established and well-respected firm.

I fired off the job applications and refused to sign on at the JobCentre ("It'll just be a massive hassle when I have to sign off again in a few days, so I won't bother!")

After a few weeks of silence, I called my mobile phone network and asked my mum to send a couple of "test emails" to my email address, just to make sure that everything was in working order. I carped on about the recession a lot and angrily complained that I wouldn't be able to get any experience if no one would give me a job. But then someone did see my potential and after a depressing interview, they decided to give me a job. In a call centre, selling gas and electricity.

Selling is something that I'm not very good at. It's not that I can't sell...I'm sure, if you do everything correctly and act a bit cheeky, you'll get sales. The problem I had was that it required effort and if you sounded like you didn't care about the dual fuel saving and the direct debit discount, the customers wouldn't care either (not all of those propaganda-laden training sessions were a waste!). And I didn't care.

Laziness, though, is never very well respected at work and so I cleverly devised a little disguise by exaggerating my leftie views and embarking on a Marxist moral crusade.

"If people don't want to switch providers then I'm not going to force them into it just so I can line my pockets"

"I'm not gonna kill myself working just so those fat cats at the top can give me a couple of extra quid whilst they compensate for their tiny dicks with Bentleys"

And all these sentiments were based on thoughts that I did actually have but this agenda also suited my comatose state perfectly. It allowed me to become possibly the least successful employee at the company (an accolade I was awarded at a couple of other jobs too) until I was eventually and unceremoniously forced to hand my notice in after receiving a tip off that I was about to be sacked.

A lot of my colleagues sold hard. They said that whilst they were sitting in this hell hole for 8 hours a day, well into the evening, they might as well make some money out of it. And they did. Their productivity was rewarded when they received significantly fatter pay packets than I did.

And although I couldn't be one of them, I did sort of admire their attitude; financially, at least, it made sense not to toss it off.

In cooking, it also sometimes makes sense not to toss it off. Some things are worth that little bit of extra effort. Guacamole is a dip that most people don’t consider making because it’s so available in its little plastic tubs in the hummus department and so why would you?

It’s really easy though and by making it yourself you a) know what has gone into it and b) can make it superbly chunky.

You will need…

2 ripe avocados

Half a red onion, chopped fairly small

5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, chopped into quarters

The juice of half a lime

Small handful of coriander

A pinch of salt

1. Scoop out your avocados and tip the flesh into a bowl. Don’t discard the stones just yet.

2. Using a fork, mash the avocados. This can be tricky as they are slippery little buggers. Use another utensil to hold them in place if necessary. Don’t mash too much – you don’t want your guac to be smooth. Or maybe you do!

3. Mix in everything else!

I also made some oven-roasted tortilla chips. You get some tortillas and cut them into triangles. Lay them out flat on a greased baking tray and sprinkle a bit of salt, chilli flakes or whatever over them. Place in an oven at fan 160c for 5 minutes and hey presto! Leave them to cool so they go crunchier.

TOP TIP: To keep your guacamole from going brown, you can pop the stone in and this should do the trick.

* I did get a degree but never actually graduated due to my aforementioned breakdown, which resulted in me having to take an exam after everyone else had graduated. All very embarrassing. Here is a photo on the day of my supposed graduation.

Bragazzis - Review

2013-03-01T21:33:00.001+00:00

This week I've gone all continental. Yep - here I am, reviewing good old Bragazzis in the Mercury Newspaper (available in print from many outlets across South Yorkshire).

This is an orange and hazelnut cake.

BRAGAZZI'S - STYLE WITH SUBSTANCE

Food Review: Bragazzi's Deli

Address: 220 Abbeydale Road, Sheffield S7

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

Bragazzis, a popular and independent little café-cum-deli, is located on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield’s very own up-and-coming ‘in vogue’ area.

Some may say that the London Road stretch is the Sheffield equivalent of Dalston, despite the fact that Dalstonites are currently amidst an identity crisis after Harry Styles was spotted in the area, thereby instantly transforming the neighbourhood from one of unwashed hair and laddered tights to clean-living, bubblegum pop and colossal, veneered smiles.

Barring any appearances from One Direction, Bragazzis retains its cool and serves very nice food and coffee too. The mouth-watering sandwiches – made with bread thicker than me in Science class (circa 2003) - served heated or cold, your choice (£3.85) and selection of freshly-made, routinely innovative cakes (£2.50) are certainly the highlights. With fillings and flavours varying each day, you’ll have to frequent the place more habitually than Katie Price swings by the OK! Magazine HQ before you need have the same one twice.

To describe the food adequately, I feel that it is necessary to call in the help of pretend-Dr Gillian McKeith and her silly adage “you are what you eat”.

When in Bragazzis, I am a beautiful Italian supermodel, dressed from head-to-toe in the best quality designer clothing. I am deep, complex and memorable for all the right reasons and I’m the kind of woman that Berlusconi wishes he could go out with but I certainly wouldn’t waste my time on him.

And so, there is a reason why McKeith is as qualified as Homer Simpson to dole out advice about food. As I sit here, a mundane, quarter-Pole and non-model from Rotherham, I can begin to see why. This takes nothing away from the food though.

I had a large Americano (£2.10) and my date had a small mocha (£2). Bragazzis have developed their own blend of coffee, which you can buy from the deli department, if you so choose (£4.50). Also available at the deli is a selection of anti pasti: grilled artichokes, plump marinated olives (both £2.20 per 100g) and three types of thick, authentic pesto (£2.75 per 100g).

The piles of sandwiches, stacks of jars and abundance of produce provide the perfect example of “good clutter” and if I had known about Bragazzis a few years ago as a teenager, I would have taken my parents there to show them how stylish organised-disorganisation can look. The tables and chairs are delightfully mismatched, presumably having been sourced from jumble sales and generous grandmas alike.

You don’t pay your bill until you’re ready to leave and instead of being presented with an itemised list, you simply cobble together what you’ve consumed with the help of the person that served you. The day’s selection of cakes will be scrawled across the blackboard in the corner and there isn’t an American soft-drink in sight.

This is the kind of place that the big corporate coffee bores wish they were; they will try desperately to imitate such panache and they will inevitably fail. So make sure you enjoy the perfect antidote to all those cardboard cakes, flat-pack interiors and seasonally-coloured cups and give this joint a whirl.

Squash & barley salad with balsamic vinaigrette

2013-02-25T16:41:00.001+00:00

Last week was mainly formed of intense yet unwanted debates about Oscar Pistorius. My colleague became incredibly absorbed in the trial and as a devoted Oscar fan, she took it upon herself to become his Sheffield-based chief defence lawyer ("I love Oscar, me! He's the only reason I went to the Paralympics!"). After repeated "What do you think? What do you think?" type pestering, I wearily took my place as the reluctant prosecution.

My colleague read, verbatim, the Twitter feed of the bail hearing. The nature of Twitter, of course, is that the information comes from various different sources, meaning that it repeats itself. Constantly.

"A cricket bat was found and testosterone tablets have been found. Testosterone tablets have been found on the premises. A cricket bat was used to break down the door. A cricket bat is reported to have been found. Testosterone tablets have been found in the bedside cabinet.”

All day. Every day. Until the court adjourned and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. And then they reconvened and I had the Pistorius bathroom described to me in minute detail; wall by wall, window measurements to the millimetre and the precise position of toilet bowl. Oh and the condition of Reeva's bladder (it was empty by the way, which, surprisingly, is consistent with having just had a piss).

If there is one good thing to come out of all this though, it is that my colleague has had a sort of philosophical overhaul. Normally a hang-draw-n-quarter them type justice seeker (whether the trial has happened or not; a police charge is enough to begin the execution process), she now seems to have mellowed.

"They might not let him take his legs to prison!" she tells me, outraged.

And that, for me, is a humanitarian triumph.

Anyway, in the event that this week requires such high levels of endurance, I have (with the help of the trusty BBC Good Food) made myself a Sanity Salad to take with me to work each day.

I have varied the amounts slightly, based on what I had but follow the link above for the original recipe.

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into long chunks

1 tbsp olive oil

250g pearl barley

280g Tenderstem broccoli

A handful of sundried tomatoes, sliced

1 red onion, diced

2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

1 tbsp capers, rinsed

15 black olives, pitted

20g basil, torn

5 tbsp balsamic vinegar

6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Place the squash on a baking tray and toss with olive oil. Roast for 20 mins.

Meanwhile, boil the barley for about 25 mins in salted water until tender, but al dente.

While this is happening, whisk the dressing ingredients in a small bowl, then season with salt and pepper.

Drain the barley, then tip it into a bowl and pour over the dressing. Mix well and let it cool.

Boil the broccoli in salted water until just tender, then drain and rinse in cold water. Drain and pat dry.

Add the broccoli and remaining ingredients to the barley and mix well.

This will keep for 3 days in the fridge and is delicious warm or cold.

Vegetarian, vegan and dairy-free! A perfect, healthy lunch. Serves 8 but I'm hoping to finish it in 5 large portions to myself. YES!

Imran's Takeaway and Diner

2013-02-24T14:24:00.001+00:00

Calling all omnivores and carnivores!

The other day, I received a wonderful email from a young gentleman called Gulshan Mehboob.

Although both food lovers, Gulshan and I have very different tastes. So, in the interest of diversity, I thought it would be a good idea for Mean Muncher to enlist its very own 'guest blogger'.

Take it away Master Mehboob...

Dear Mrs.Muncher,

I am Gulshan Mehboob. I am 19 years old and am currently working as a part-time Potato Rumbler at Fat Sam's Burger Van whilst undertaking my Apprenticeship in Catering and Bakery from Barnsley College. You might think that I have a lot on my plate (pardon the pun) for such a young man. I do.

I stumbled upon your blog by accident whilst searching for Meat Muncher, one of my fave online publications. It has been a big month in the world of meat so you could see why I would want the MM P.O.V. on things.

However in your blog I was delighted to find a fellow creative and culinary enthusiast and you have inspired me to write my very own food review. I apologise in advance if my writing seems naive and uncrafted - I'm used to expressing my feeling through food not words but you have shown me a way to combine both. Thank You Mrs Muncher and I hope you enjoy reading my review.

Imran's Takeaway by Gulshan Mehboob

The name Imran's immediately conjures up a thousand exotic images in my mind and maybe that is why this establishment sits so comfortably in the culturally rich surroundings of the Wicker in Sheffield. As you walk along the picturesque canalside taking deep into your lungs the smell of Southern Fried Chicken and Istanbul Donner, you feel drenched in the history that surrounds you.

Just metres away is Just Halal Donner, the first place to sell donner meat legally in Sheffield. Before Just Halal Donner, or BJHD as it's commonly known, you would have to meet men on the barges by the canalside, unsure of what was exactly in the meat. I'm glad we've come a long way since then.

Up the road is Mangla restaurant which some people call the Mumtaz of Sheffield but I could write a thesis on why Mumtaz is the Mangla of Bradford. Then there's Kebabish: as famous for its Mixed Grill platter as its scene-stealing appearance in Four Lions, for me the only time since the Towering Inferno where the venue has upstaged the actors.

Beyond the bright neon lights of Hollywood-haunt Kebabish stands the true star of this picture. Imran's is not a leading man like Kebabish, the household name that gets all the attention - the Kevin Costner or Michael Bolton. Imran's is more the Danny Devito, the little guy that you love that will give you what you want. Imran's is The Jewel of the (takeaway) Mile.

I don't know if 'O Holy Night' actually plays when the doors of Imran's open or whether it's in my imagination but once you enter the golden gates you know you have entered culinary paradise. I am also the first to admit that it can sometimes feel like a market scene off Indiana Jones and the meek can get lost amongst the crowd but those adventurers determined to get their hands on the fine exotic delicacies on offer will no doubt be rewarded with the tastiest of tresure...The Imran's Meal Box.

This treasure chest contains healthy shavings of both lamb and chicken donner meat and what some may consider an ample portion of fries (though ordering an extra portion as a side might be recommended for the mightier gentleman).

Then there's the world famous Imran's Chicken. It is rumoured that the colonel himself offered Imran a small fortune for the recipe but he was unwilling to give it up. I dread to think what Ghadaffi wanted with a spicy chicken recipe but I imagine he could have controlled the world if he had something so deadly delicious at his disposal.

The box contains three pieces of this culinary gold and I opt for leg, breast and wing so as to have the full gastro experience. The box in which it arrives has also become a bone, pardon the pun, of contention. Imran's served the original Meal One in a cardboard box. It was rustic and simple and the cardboard absorbed the flavour, almost becoming a part of the meal. The new polystyrene boxes fail to do this and often by the time you arrive at eating your second box it has become quite damp and stodgy as it has not been allowed to breathe as it would have in a vessel made from cardboard.

Finally we have the arch de triumph, the Nelson on their Coloumn, their 'I Am the One and Only". God gave us taste buds and we gave them the greatest gift we could: Imran's Spicy Potato wedges. A treat so rich it should be wearing Pierre Cardin shoes. The potatoes are so fluffy they could be made from clouds or even poodles and they are coated in a sheath of Imran's spicy breadcrumbs.

All this for a mere £3.30 and for an extra 60p you can have any flavour from the entire Rubicon range, even pomegranate for all you health nuts.

Usually two meal boxes are enough for even the heartiest of appetites but if you are like me then you might also be interested in the Chicken Fillet Burger which is altogether a more gourmet experience. The chicken here is of the highest quality, beyond free range to maybe even wild, farmed from the hills of the Yorkshire Moors and plucked by the hands of Imran himself.

It may not be as polished as McDonalds or as refined as Burger King but Imran's has heart and character and that's been enough to get me through life and it should be enough to make you want to go to Imran's. I've been Gulshan Mehboob, reporting for Mean Muncher, happy eating everbody.

Follow Gulshan on Twitter

Become friends with Gulshan on Facebook

Kashmiri Aroma - Review

2013-02-21T21:08:00.002+00:00

The wonderful Mercury Newspaper had me back to do a second review. Hurrah! Here I am talking about fireworks, gameshows and maiden names:

SWEET, SWEET AROMA

Food Review: Kashmiri Aroma

Address: 798 Chesterfield Road, Woodseats

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

I bring good news to those readers who happen to live in Meersbrook, Woodseats or Greenhill because you can legitimately call this curry haven your “local”. For those of us who live a little further afield, atop one of the other seven hills that make Sheffield the British equivalent of Rome, you may need to call a taxi. Call it you should because this little gem is worth a visit.

Now I don’t wish to over sell Kashmiri Aroma but in my very humble (and often flawed) opinion, this is the best curry in Sheffield. Or maybe even the world. Okay, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves because I have not tasted every curry in the world. However, I probably have tasted nearly every curry in Sheffield.

There’s nothing here that you wouldn’t expect in other curry houses: friendly staff, pleasant interior, beautiful food, an extensive menu and a recorded version of happy birthday that will, without doubt, be blasted out for some poor soul who will be presented with a chocolate “bombe”, garnished with genuine firework.
The thing, though, that makes Kashmiri Aroma different is that it’s consistently good. They don’t rest on their laurels after you’ve been a few times, they’re not lazy with their service when they work out, after your fifth visit that week, that you’re addicted to their food. They always want you to have a great night and they will never take your business for granted.

The building itself is a huge white block containing roughly 60% call centre and 40% lovely restaurant. The restaurant is on the lowest level and elicits no thoughts of “but WHY is it you feel you don’t want to change supplier?” (except for me, as I used to work there selling gas and electricity).

If you once worked at the call centre too then don’t panic because as soon as you sit down to enjoy the hastily presented and wonderfully tasty pickles, you’ll be transported off to another world. Apparently, there are indeed other worlds out there and many are rumoured to contain parallel steel cities; so this is definitely not just a flippant metaphor an amateur food reviewer might write down when stuck for descriptive words.

The starters menu provides more dishes to choose from than many restaurants manage on their whole menu: soups, sizzlers, kebabs, tikkas, seafood and veggie galore! If you are as ham-fisted as I am when it comes to making decisions, my best advice is to blindfold yourself with a napkin, spin around three times, divide your mother’s maiden name by 27 and take the dish that comes. It’ll be delicious anyway.

When it comes to the mains, if you want to enjoy a good old can’t-go-wrong curry, I urge you to order the lamb karahi. Those succulent pieces of tender lamb are like butter in your mouth. Whichever curry you order, you will be guaranteed numerous pieces of meat and you won’t be forced to become some sort of biryani game show contestant, charged with finding the elusive chunk of winning protein.

Veggies, fish lovers and philistines alike are all amply catered for here (yes, they even serve chicken nuggets), so book a table and make your way there for this is a curry you don’t want to miss out on.

Visit them online at www.kashmiriaroma.com

Just FYI: I used to eat the lamb karahi but of course I do not now. This dish is the paneer and mushroom curry, which is a real scrummy veggie choice.

Cauliflower, Mustard and Gorgonzola soup

2013-02-16T10:02:00.000+00:00

Really thick soup - felt as if I was starring in 15-Stone Babies on Channel 4.

Now, I don't mean to boast (ha, ha, ha) but this is not the first time my writing has been published. I have, in the past, written an obituary for a local newspaper AND I was also erroneously given the position of Deputy Style Editor at a university newspaper.

I was awarded this position because I successfully gave a complete bullshitery of a pitch, where I acted as if I was motivated, proactive, a practised writer and (crucially) VERY into style.

In reality, I am none of the above and, unless I have a special occasion to go to, I am so not into style that I actually have a self-imposed uniform. The uniform changes from time to time but for the past three years or so it has consisted of the following: black Topshop Baxter jeans, an American Apparel t-shirt and hoodie and black Vans slip-ons complete with identical holes (where my big toenails grew too long a few months ago).

My first assignment as Deputy Style Editor was to write an article about 'winter campus style' and then recommend some scarves and hats and stuff. So, I started walking around campus looking like a bit of a sex pest. No, no, I'm not looking at your boobs but ooh what an interesting scarf you've got there!

I was cold and bored of asking people where they had got their hats from and they were sick of me asking so I decided to just make it all up and find out what was fashionable on the internet.

When I sent my first draft to the Style Editor, she complained that I hadn’t really tailored the article to ‘university life’. I lazily changed a few words and tried to make it sound more relevant ("a perfect hat to wear when one is out nicking traffic cones") and sent it back to her. It didn't go down well and although my name was printed below the article, none of the words were mine. I quit uni and got a job in Blockbuster.

Even though, this time, my article actually made it to print in my own words, I must assure my blog readers that they will not be neglected.

Despite now being a legendary critic, I'll still be here, slaving away over the stove just so you can look at fabulous pictures and receive free tips and recipes. It's with this in mind that I bring to you a gourmet version of a good old classic, whizzed up into baby food: Cauliflower, Mustard and Gorgonzola soup.

The recipe is taken from the New Covent Garden Food Co.’s “A Soup for Every Day” book. I've changed a quantity or two in my version...mainly cutting down on the cheese.

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp plain flour

284ml vegetable stock

284ml milk – these are ridiculous quantities, just do what you can…UPDATE: after a quick google, 284ml appears to be just about half a pint.

1 medium cauliflower, cut into small florets

125g Gorgonzola cheese, cubed

1 tsp wholegrain mustard

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onion and then cook until softened but not browned. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute.

Gradually add the stock and milk, stirring as you do. Add the cauliflower, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes until the cauliflower is tender.

Remove from the heat, add the Gorgonzola and stir until melted.

Blend until it’s smooth or leave in a bit of chunk if you prefer. Return to the pan and season to taste.

Reheat on the hob for about 3 minutes and then stir in the mustard.

The Greedy Greek - Review

2013-02-14T21:03:00.001+00:00

This is not me at the Greedy Greek in Sheffield. It is me at a completely different restaurant, which is completely unrelated.

It’s Valentine’s Day and to celebrate this festival, I have placed a ‘heart filter’ over a photograph of myself so that my readers may see what I would look like with an unfortunate rash. I’m too good to you!!

No, the real reason I am posting on this day is to alert you to something quite monumental that has recently happened to me; I have had a restaurant review published in the Mercury Newspaper!

IT'S ALL GREEK TO US...

Food Review: The Greedy Greek

Address: 48 Sharrow Vale Road

Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

The Greedy Greek Deli couldn't really be better placed. Made famous thanks to those Sheffield Monkeys, Hunters Bar is far enough away from town to make a food joint decent and affordable but not in the middle of nowhere so as to make the journey there more longwinded and eventful than the Pilgrim’s Progress.

What’s more, if you're not a complete bore, you can skip (or waddle, depending on how many gyros you devour) down to the lovely bars and pubs in the area.

This unique little deli doesn't pretend to be a posh restaurant and if it did, it would lose some of its delightfully shabby charm. With a huge stretch of the imagination, you can almost believe that you are in Greece. A deli-style counter greets you as you walk in, the staff all look vaguely Greek and after careful observation of accents (all part of my service), I have deduced that some of them genuinely are!

Anyway, that is enough about the boring stuff; my keyboard is standing by, ready to be covered in drool, making it all damp and hazardous. Who am I to make it wait?

On my first visit to the Greedy Greek, I went with a few friends who had been there before. We went armed with bottles of wine and cans of beer to take full advantage of the “bring your own” policy. I greedily ordered three main courses for myself but immediately started to worry when they arrived: "Uh oh, I've over-ordered here, the portions are quite generous...will they be offended if I leave some? My mum always said my eyes are bigger than my tummy!"

Whilst I was busy panicking about how I was going to polish it all off, I suddenly noticed that the food had miraculously disappeared. Had someone stolen it? Was I still waiting and had actually imagined the food like a gastronomic mirage?
No, no, no – this is Hunters Bar and things like that don’t happen around here. Instead, I had wolfed down the food without taking a breath and my brain was only just catching up with the joy my stomach was experiencing. My love affair with the Greedy Greek had begun; this was my type of place.

After that, I hurried back, this time ordering just the halloumi wrap. The wrap comes in many forms - some meat (beef, chicken, pork) and some veggie (falafel, halloumi). You will receive an ample portion of your chosen filling wrapped up in a divine pitta bread/flatbread. Joining your filling will be a whole host of sauces and pâtés, salad leaves and vegetables and beautiful creamy hummus. The combination of flavours and textures will blow your mind but thankfully, not your bank balance.

It gets better! The next time I popped along to the Greek (by now, I'm looking a bit weird - did I mention these visits all happened within the same week?), I took up the offer of the "wrap meal deal". It costs very little extra and you are treated to the notorious meal deal comrades: chips and a fizzy drink.

Characterising these chunks of potato as "chips" is a little bit unkind of me. What I mean to describe them as is “perfectly-cut-beautifully-cooked- wonderfully-seasoned-bites-of-spud”. And a can of fizzy pop (there's no jazzing that up).

The Gypsy Kings ring out of the CD player and the fizzy drinks are accompanied by plastic cups that make you feel all wistful and nostalgic about your 9th birthday party. There is nothing about this novel and charming little deli that I would want to change. Go here with friends, lovers or just be brave and go on your own. Dress down, relax and enjoy.

The Greedy Greek is located at 418-420 Sharrow Vale Rd and is open 7 days a week from 10am – 10pm.

www.thegreedygreekdeli.co.uk

Great British Bake Off: Cottage Loaf

2013-02-13T21:41:00.000+00:00

Recently, and perhaps because I am now burdened with the millstone-like new year’s resolution to “update this blog regularly”, I have become the baking equivalent of a new person at work.

I arrive on my first day at the new office, feeling all positive and breezy (“Morning guys! Would you like a coffee? I’ll photocopy that enormous file for you! No, of course I don’t mind! Walking 2 miles in the rain to collect your bespoke £5 hot chocolate? Absolutely! I love walking!") because compared to the last shithole I worked at, this can't possibly be as bad!

Meanwhile, the existing, disenfranchised employees all roll their eyes and patronise me. They’ve been here before but are too polite to spoil it for me and of course they know that I'll soon realise for myself that the job is shit and all the bosses are bastards.

But here I am, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed dough puncher, at the beginning of my breadmaking career! My mum, you see, is the disenfranchised current employee because she knows that it’s not worth the effort and she knows that you may as well just buy a loaf or use the breadmaker. It comes out much better, so just give up right now and admit defeat.

However, because she isn’t a massive bitch like I would be in her situation (“STOP FUCKING AROUND AND BUY A TIGER LOAF”, I say to my future daughter) she humours me and sits patiently, answering my idiotic questions and demands: "I need a damp tea towel! A clean one! Quickly! It’s time-sensitive!” and nurtures my new-found sense of enthusiasm for something new.

Interestingly enough, the highlight of this bread was the crust and that, I think, is a huge accolade for the crust community because usually crusts are treated with nothing but contempt. They’re repeatedly slagged off, cut off and blitzed into a void to make way for their much more highly respected brothers, the breadcrumbs.

The trick to having the best crust in the world is a simple one. Firstly, don’t be too penny-wise by brushing a thimble-full of milk over your dough prior to baking; instead, fork out for an egg. You might even have a little left to make a tablespoon-full of scrambled egg like I did!

Secondly, heat an empty roasting tray in the oven, before putting your bread in. As soon as you do come to put your bread in, fill the tray up with cold water and WATCH the steam rise. Close the oven door as soon as possible. These are both tips taken from the Great British Book of Baking but I dutifully employed them and they worked a treat.

I have written out these instructions for those of us who have access to a mixing machine and dough hook (thanks mum!). I would have written the by-hand instructions too but I’m just too lazy.

You will need…

675g strong white bread flour

1 ½ teaspoons sea salt

1 x 7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast

400ml water, at room temperature

1 egg, beaten, for brushing

Mix the flour, salt and yeast in your food mixer bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the water. Use the dough hook attachment to gradually work into a firm dough.

‘Knead’ for a further 4 minutes in the bread mixer, on the lowest possible speed. The dough should be very smooth and workable.

Take the bowl (with the dough in) to a warmish place and cover with a damp tea towel. It needs to double in size, which takes about 1 ½ hours. However, mine didn’t double in this time at all. It barely even changed!

Punch out all the air from the dough (if there is any) and knead by hand for another minute. Chop off one third of the dough and shape both parts into balls. Place them onto a greased (with butter) baking tray.

Cover the tray with a damp tea towel and put in a warmish place for about 40 minutes, so they double in size again. Mine did double in size at this point, hurrah!

Preheat the oven to 230c. You can put your empty roasting tin into the oven at this point.

Uncover your dough and gently flatten each ball. Put the smaller one on top of the larger one and use your index and third (what is that one called?) fingers to poke down in the top, to join the layers together. Leave for another 10 minutes.

Brush with milk and score around the edge of each loaf, using a sharp knife. Quickly put the bread in the oven and fill up the roasting tin with cold water. Shut the oven door ASAP.

Bake for 15 minutes before reducing the temperature to 200c and bake for 20-25 minutes more. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool your loaf on a wire rack. Hey presto!

Look at that STRUCTURE!

Pancakes - crêpe style

2013-02-11T16:00:00.000+00:00

Unless you’re a bona fide half-wit, you don't really need a recipe in order to make a pancake; you just get all the leftovers out of your kitchen cupboards, mix them together and fry them. It's EASY. Even for the likes of me.

I usually begin by mixing together some black-eyed peas. I often buy them for fancy vegetarian recipes I see in library books but then never really have the need to use them again. Not wanting to waste food (I'm very ethical, you see), I dig them out and chuck them in.

Next up is red wine vinegar. Red wine vinegar is occasionally found in recipes - a teaspoon here, a tablespoon there - but because "500ml red wine vinegar" is never required in recipes, it's typically left in your cupboard for years. The one saving grace is that no matter how long you leave it there, it doesn’t seem to go “bad” but with time it DOES become overly pungent...too pungent, so I pour it in.

My final ingredient can vary but recently, I have been using caraway seeds. I'd bought them for the carrot and hummus sandwich, thinking that they would cause me to cry out with desire. As it happens, I don't think they really did all that much to the flavour. They were still sitting in the cupboard, looking all sullen and repentant, so I decided to put them out of their misery and whisk them into my mixture.

If you're crying out at your computer screen: "IT'S NOT WHAT LEFTOVERS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE! IT'S THE LEFTOVERS YOU WOULD HAVE HAD WHEN ALL EGGS WERE FREE RANGE AND THE WORLD WARS HADN’T HAPPENED YET!" then give yourself a pat on the back, if your agility permits it.

Yes, of course this is a joke but I'm not the only one who might need a lesson or two in making pancakes. You only need to toddle down to your local Tesco to see the rows of HALF PRICE "Betty Crocker" pancake mix in a bottle.

Two giraffes I slaughtered earlier...kidding, I'm a veggie!

So gather round and read this quickly because it'll be Shrove Tuesday before you know it (IT’S TOMORROW!!!!).

This recipe is from an ancient copy of the Good Housekeeping New Basic Cookery book. I know it’s ancient because the RRP on the back is £3.95 and you’d be hard pushed to find any cooking book for less than a tenner these days. I’ve just checked the publishing information and it’s actually a “completely revised” edition printed in 1984.

So yes, sorry, the pancakes. Serves 4, probably a couple each.

You will need…

125g plain flour

A pinch of salt

1 egg

300ml milk and water, mixed half and half

A little butter or oil, for frying

Mix the flour and salt. I would sift the flour but the recipe doesn't expressly say to do so.

Make a well in the centre and break in the egg.

Add half the liquid, gradually work in the flour using a wooden spoon and beat until the mixture is smooth.

It looks like a Cadbury's creme egg!

Add the remaining liquid gradually and beat until well mixed and the surface is covered with tiny bubbles. You might want to use a whisk here. I did just because I didn’t add the rest of the water as gradually as you’re meant to. Wooden or whisk, it’ll be fine.

Melt enough butter in a frying pan to coat the bottom or heat up a similar amount of oil. Pour off any surplus fat (says the recipe but I didn’t do this because pouring fat away is a hassle). When the fat is hot, pour or ladle in a little batter or why not be a smart arse? However you choose to pour the mixture in, make sure you have just enough to cover the bottom of the pan, as thin as possible.

Cook the pancake until it is golden brown on the underside, then toss or turn it over and cook the other side.

May I say that I did manage to successfully toss a pancake but try photographing that shit when you're on your own.

Turn it out on a plate.

Enjoy them with the traditional lemon juice and sugar or if you’re feeling childish, slobber on some strawberry jam. If you’re a bit pretentious, go French and spread Nutella (very authentic) and banana and create yourself a crêpe.

Look at those crispy edges!

They're magical, they're versatile and best of all, they're easy! I had one traditional and one childish but I'm not pretentious (read: we had no Nutella in the house).

The Leon Superfood Salad and Original Wrap

2013-02-07T19:37:00.000+00:00

To make the wrap, simply wrap some salad in a tortilla or flatbread.

Sometimes people get very mad about things that hardly affect them at all. For example, there was a bit of a moral panic when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West announced that they had created a foetus and as ever, outrage relating to trivial matters is never better demonstrated than in the Daily Mail.

Instead of wasting our breath complaining, we should celebrate that the world's most successful porn star (progeny of the world's most successful female pimp) and a rapper who’s too-big dick is (at least partially) all over the internet ("You can't imagine how disappointed I was that I gotcut off") have unified.

Celebrate? Are you mad? Yes, I am but that is a result of various other non-celebrity factors and none of your business. Please, give me a chance to explain. First, take a moment to consider the alternative: Kim is currently pregnant with a civilian’s baby. The normal person's genes, honed through years of careful reproductive selection (ie: not shagging celebrities) have been, to the disappointment of his ancestors, obliterated thanks to a drunken split-second/loving 15 minutes.

As if that is not sickening enough, take it a step further and assume that Kanye has done the same. A female member of the general public is waddling around, trying not to drink whilst growing an all-rapping, all-dancing human inside of her.

If it happened, this situation would be disastrous for humanity primarily because it would produce two broods of half-slebs (a species often as annoying and self-obsessed as the full version).

Another common and dreadful side-effect of this cross-breeding is that the very contagious "celebrity" condition often transmits to the civilian mother or father, causing them to become infected as well.

Appallingly, this plague doubles the amount of wazzock-celebrities the world has to endure and to illustrate this point I have helpfully compiled a non-exhaustive list of celebrity-world denizens: Britney's K-Fed, Jordan's Alex Reid and Sting's Trudie. See?

So come together and say a great big thank you to K and K for limiting their number of offspring by coming together in this beautiful way. With any luck Baby K, will have the good sense and compassion to marry an Andre-Price.

Other things that should be applauded for being together are the ingredients in this Leon Superfood Salad. You might think that broccoli, peas and cucumber are boring and non-cool veggies but jazz them up with some feta, mint and avocado and bob’s your uncle, you have a winner.

I missed out the peas and probably some other ingredients too, so don't use this picture as a shopping list.

I used to eat this salad straight from the Leon outlets at Spitalfields and Kings Cross Station. I’d have it in a wrap and boy, it was good! I’m not really sure what superfoods do and I think that they are probably a bit of a myth (a bit like “negative-calories-in-celery-gate”) but don’t let that put you off because super or not, it’s healthy and tasty!

The original recipe only serves 2 but as I wanted this to last me for the week, I doubled the quantities in the recipe below.

Serves 4

400g broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets

240g peas, fresh or frozen

200g cucumber, cut into smallish pieces

200g feta cheese, crumbled

40g alfalfa sprouts (et al)

40g toasted seeds (I used sesame, sunflower and pumpkin)

100g avocado, cut into pieces

60g quinoa,

Handful flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped

Handful mint, rough chopped

4 dessert spoons lemon juice (I didn’t use this amount but add the juice to your taste)

8 dessert spoons extra virgin olive oil (I didn’t use this amount either but add the oil to your taste)

Put the quinoa in a medium pan. Cover with cold water plus about an inch then let it gently simmer until the water's gone - about 25 minutes. Spread it on a tray to cool to room temperature. Spreading on a tray is a revelation! It avoids the sticky mess you often end up with, as demonstrated by my quinoa, feta and courgette salad debacle.

Put an inch of hot water into a large saucepan with a pinch of salt and cover it. Once boiling, drop in the broccoli and peas and put the lid back on. Drain after three minutes and run the veg under cold water to take all the heat out and keep them good and green.

Now build your salad in layers, starting with the first ingredient on the list and ending up with the dressing (but only dress it just before you eat it).

Here are a few notes on various stumbling blocks:

1. Where do I get alfalfa from? I searched everywhere for this and had no luck until I stumbled across this little package in Tesco. It contains alfalfa but not exclusively. However, it seemed to work and although you feel like a first-world wanker by buying ‘sprouts’ in such elaborate packaging, you should just go with it.

2. Toasting seeds? What a palava! Don’t panic: you can combat this with a microwave. Scatter your seeds onto a microwavable surface in a single layer. Drizzle with a LITTLE oil (I did too much and had to drain it away halfway though cooking) and put in the microwave on high. Monitor minute by minute until the seeds start to go a bit brown. Then take them out, allow to cool and proceed as normal.