Pie Result/Home-Made Cheesecake/Radio Tubberovski!

YES! MY SHEPHERD'S PIE CAME OUT so lovely I had to be (self-)restrained from gobbling the lot of filling before it ever got mash-covered.

The method I used was this (bear in mind I was SUPPOSED to be making it chunky, with cubed meat rather than ground)...

About a pound and a third or 650g cubed mutton
About a pound or half a kilo potatoes
Three large non-Spanish onions
About half a pound or 250g mushrooms
Sprigs fresh sage and rosemary

Butter
Frying oil

Spices:
Paprika
Mr Brown's Jamaican curry powder
Chinese curry powder
Garam masala
"All purpose seasoning" (glorified celery salt: use celery salt if this non-available)
Lea & Perrins worcester sauce
Soy sauce
Dried thyme
Hot chili powder

Buy mutton in bite-sized cubes or cut by self at home (my cubes were about x3 too big so I had to spend 10 mins hacking to bits with a knife prior to cooking.

Oil the frying pan, fry the mutton bit by bit on high heat till thoroughly browned and "sealed-in"... then chuck into saucepan with a little (no more than 200mls) water on medium heat and allow to boil. Continue frying mutton and chucking into saucepan. Now chop and fry two of the three large onions. When glassy and done, chuck these atop your mutton. Add four large dashes Lee & Perrins (ie about 4 generous teaspoons to desertspoons-full), 3 generous teaspoons paprika, one teaspoon mild Jamaican curry powder, half teaspoon Chinese curry powder, quarter teaspoon garam masala (these do NOT make it taste AT ALL Indian or of curry, trust me: the resulting flavour is spicy but "North African" ie still homely to the European/Western palate. When I'd done this I panicked that I'd gone OTT but paprika aside (2 teaspoons would probably have done) this really was NOT an overdose of spices. And once the headiness of the worcester sauce had cooked off it didn't seem so bad. Wash and roughly chop the rosemary and sage. Add a flat teaspoon dried thyme. Add a flat or more generous (according to taste) teaspoon "season all"/celery salt. Add dark soy sauce to darken: 2 to 8 teaspoons as desired. Quarter the mushrooms and add directly to the pot. Cover, reduce heat to number 2 and simmer for a good hour and a half.

If you need to go out or leave this unattended I would suggest adding more water to ensure it cannot boil dry (too much good food to risk wasting!)... you can easily boil this off later simply by removing the lid...

After this time the lamb was delightfully tender, kind of melted almost in the mouth, despite being supposedly the cheapest, roughest cut (v lean no fat on cubes though)...

Peel and chop potatoes into small cubes. Boil for 30 mins until mashable.

Fry the last of your onions in a little all-purpose seasoninged oil with a little chili powder and paprika (to make delightfully tasty-looking and red)... fry until glassy and well done as these are going in the mash and won't get much more opportunity to properly cook...

Mash potatoes in a little butter and black pepper; add the fried onions and red oil. Melange together. Add some Red Leicester or cheddar cheese if desired, half to potato/onion mix; half to top.

Ensure no surplus gravy in lamb pie filling by upping heat and removing lid (if necessary).

Tip lamb-onion-mushroom pie base into a medium baking tin; smooth mash atop.

Cook in a pre-heated oven c 190C 350F gas mark 6 for 20 mins to half an hour.

And ta-DAAA! You're done! It turned out so lovely I ate the entire thing within an hour!!

***

I MADE HOME-MADE CHEESECAKE this afternoon!

Ingredients:
One x small low fat cream cheese tub
Sugar
1 x lemon; 1 x lime
Digestive biscuits

Ultra-simple recipe: take a 350g (ie small) tub Philadelphia-style (but buy own-brand: just as nice and far cheaper) low fat cream cheese. Low-fat is far more like proper cheesecake mix than high: trust me.

Don't do the entire tub at once until confident in the recipe. Take about a third: dollop out on a plate. Heap out about half as much in sugar beside this.

Cut the ends off the lemon and lime (or if already gone into cut a thick slice, about three times thicker than one for a drinks glass) ... drizzle atop the sugar; fold the entire lot in together, adding more cream cheese if necessary.

Don't bother bashing up the biscuit base: simply spread atop digestives and eat with English breakfast tea accompaniment... it's well yummy..!

***

MY TROTTEROVSKIES went on the radio last night! And made an impression all over London as about three hours later a neurotic-sounding woman phoned up mentioning my "gerbils"... and the host said "yeah I can't remember what they were called {Roborovskis} but he said they were the size of his thumb {which indeed they are: no more than 5cm/2in in length}... they sounded really cute"..!!

So all of London knows about my trotters now. Or the five thousand people or thereabouts who actually listen to graveyardshift radio...

***

I'VE BEEN DRAGGING MYSELF ABOUT half dead all the extended weekend long. It was public holiday on Monday and dismally wet, overcast and damp. How I longed for some mud-splishy herby bluebell woodland to ramble in. Instead I had only the textures of my past life to reminisce over. And to feel dead and wooden. Like a board full of wet-rot. And not even to have energy to drag myself out when I was gasping for a cigarette. Some idiot boy I don't like but ended up engaging in conversation the other day when I snapped at him "I'm ignoring you because last time I saw you you were trying to steal my mobile phone" (which he was) retorted "if I wanted your phone I'd just stab you for it" (yeah as if)... I felt like tracking him down and saying "you still want to stab me? stab me now. I'll pay you to kill me." It was that dismal a day.

Anyway I made that lemon and lime digestive cheesecake today so everything's okay now.

Antidepressants STILL not working even though I've cut down alcohol to bare minimum...