The Stew Catastrophe!

LAST WEEK I made a wonderful stew with lamb and noodles {not noodles ~ DUMPLINGS; Knödel!} (I translated this post from German) and delicious spices. The ingredients were: 1kg (2.2lbs) neck of lamb; 2 large red onions; half a bulb (about 5 cloves) fresh garlic; a double handful mushrooms; a double handful okra/gumbo/ladies' fingers; 2 huge carrots; one tin black beans; one can chopped tomatoes.

The herbs and spices were:
Half teespoon ginger
Half teespoon garam masala
Half teespoon each: Tescos Value, Chinese and Jamaican (Mr Brown's) currypowder
2 tablespoons Lea & Perrins Worcester Sauce
About a third of a teaspoon Chinese five spice seasoning
About three teaspoons "chicken seasoning" (salt, 30% paprika, celery... etc)
Home-dried mint leaves
Mixed herbs
Half teaspoon Colmans English Mustard

I cooked it slowly for at least three hours, after which time the lamb was so tender it was literally falling off the bone. It did taste slightly burnt, which I blamed on the new pan...

The next day I reheated it to add my dumplings. Catastrophe! It came back all burnt! Like a liquid barbecue. Ugh. I could only eat the meat (I quite like incinerated meat). But carbonized vegetables are not to my taste.

It wasn't like everything went black or anything like that. Just this horrible burnt flavour pervaded everything. Not nice. And such a shame as otherwise the spicing, the dumplings... everything was perfect.

Where did I go wrong? Was my new pan too thin? Did I reheat too rapidly?

Or did a goblin sneak into my kitchen when I was too busy losing my old broadband down the loo and mess everything up..??!?


PS- You don't think excessive stirring (well, only once every 20 mins - is that excessive??)... you don't think that might have messed it up, do you...??

Vegetarian Vomit

ME MUM had high tea but I was starving so I had vegetable lasagne. I don't usually go for vegetarian options these days but used to when I was younger. I have found in general that vegetarian cooking is of a higher standard that non-veggie ~ and with a less-inspiring ingredients-list, let's face it, it has to be!

The lasagna was OK. I'm no expert on cooking but if I'd made that myself I'd have labelled the flavour "empty" and poured far more tomatoes and seasoning into it. I don't know whether this place was having boiler trouble but oh my days! It was Vesuvian in there!! Conkers of sweat dripping off patrons and increasingly bedraggled waiting staff alike. (OK slight exaggeration but I was feeling increasingly queasy.)

Then when I got outside I was sick EVERYWHERE... thankfully Mumzy and I had gone separate ways by then.

These are the Siberian hamsters I was talking about yesterday. I had two about six years ago, but one died after about three months ~ and I suspect through old age. The other ESCAPED and never came back ~ the only one of seven hamsters I have ever lost that way.

If you look closely at the weary swine here, you might just be able to see the furry soles to his feet.

On a lighter note the vomiting had gone by just three outbursts (next to but sadly unable to aim IN the tiny opening on London's bomb-proof rubbish-bins)... And by this morning my appetite had come back with great avengance. I trotted down to Sainsbury's where I got a huge selection of own brand falvoured whip-ip-up desserts. Chocolate and strawberry are just 8p each. Butterscotch is always the best and costs 30p against Angel Delight (the market leader)'s 38p. I shake it up in a special disused coffee jar. My top tip to avoid lumps is add powder a bit at a time...

And I can't believe this, but having start-stopped "learning" Japanese several times (for learning, read glancing idly over books and dictionaries, thinking, "I wonder how you say such-&-such" and brainlessly transcribing roman-lettered Japanese sentences into proper script, which is a by no means straightforward occupation... I actually seem to be getting somewhere!

When I was irritatedly waiting for a bus the other day I went through the list of Japanese animals I know in my mind and it's more than ten. Including the words for bee, wasp and hornet. That's not bad for a beginner.

The rate I'm going I might be semi-fluent by 2026!

Here is a really good Japanese "cultural link" www.japandemic.com (it's not academic at all)...

Huge Food Shopping Expedition

I JUST BOUGHT A WEEK's dindins from my favourite shop, Iceland ~ where you can get all the components of a roastbeef dinner frozen ready to slam in the oven and take out ready with crispy battered diddly potatoes, gravy and all the trimmings, including cauliflower-and-broccoli cheese and Yorshire puddings within 40 minutes. Wonderful!

Provided you're no better than an average cook, the Iceland stuff actually comes out better than most people's from-scratch. It's the standard you'd expect from a pub lunch ~ right down to the thin-sliced roast beef that no-one ever serves at home (how'd you cut it that thin?)

Don't worry y'all I'm not back on the crack. I did have the urge to score more "just a £10 'rock'" this morning... but the memory of my head being full of so much noise put me off sufficiently... And crack is highly habituational, like druggie chocolate and I was glad to be rid of it (apart from just three occasions this year). It took nearly two years from properly trying to actually give it up, so I'm not undoing that in a hurry... Anyway I was so exhausted I didn't really get up till past midday. I do like the person I was with yesterday (he has a good heart). He can be "slightly" stressful, that's all... (ahem!)

And apart from that all is fine and I've an Italian stonebaked garlick chicken pizza ready to be slammed in the oven ~ yumm yummmmeeee!

Illustrated: Kerry "cokenose" Katona (former "face" of Iceland stores ~ sacked for being filmed snorting a line in her own bathroom); cheesy potato slices (I got these for the first time today ~ haven't tried 'em yet ~ these are what I consider trimmings to my RBD); cauliflower cheese ~ I go for the cauliflower and broccoli variety but couldn't find a pic of the pack; they do lovely chocolate caramel slices like this "2 slices extra free" at £1 a pack; cauliflower-broccoli cheese as it's meant to look (ie when I haven't burnt it!); and last but not least the whole shebang put together; prefilled black pepper grater ~ used to be £5 in Sainsbury's! I got mine for £1 from Iceland...

Fire Chaos

NO FIRE ~ but a great deal of chaos.

I slammed in a pair of Morrison's own quarter pounder beefburgers in the middle shelf under high heat fan oven-grill combi with drip-tray to catch the slimy expectorations.

Within three minutes so much smoke was seeping from the sides of the door you'd think my own secret Bonfire Night was smouldering away in there. A minute later, predictably, the smoke alarm went off, but I was ready underneath with a broomhandle to poke it quiet.

This technique was successful for a while, but five minutes and a couple more pokes later so much smoke was pouring into the room that the alarm in the hall went off to earsplitting, lights flashing, bellringing psychotronic hullabaloo. Basically my "fire" had set the house's compulsory Health & Safety state-of-the-art alarm system into the biggest techno-tizz I've ever experienced.

I nearly fell down the stairs trying to get the control box to quell this unearthly commotion. Even then it took two minutes of random key-stabbing till I eventually hit on the right sequence of key-turning and button-pressing to restore peace and sanity.

Thankfully all my housemates seemed to be out ~ or hiding behind their doors.

I barely had time for ten seconds' leaning against the front door panting with exhaustion and to clamber up the stairs to try and air the intractable grey fumes via my tiny casement windows. The oven was off and extractor hood on full blast already. And a woman blaring in Japanese about her trip to London. I always try to combine cookery with education when possible.

But I'd barely a second to notice any of this when the main alarm was off again ~ like a sonic drill to both ears. I charged downstairs. Key-turn. Press press press. The red light signifying a blaze in "zone two" vanished. Peace again.

I had barely got upstairs when the alarm went off yet again. By this time I was panicking that the neighbours ~ or worse the alarm box itself ~ would send the emergency services piling round.

Back upstairs I wiped by glasses, convinced the fog I witnessed everywhere was down to burger-greasy lenses. But no amount of spectacle-buffing would clear it.

The terrible racket went off again and again and again. By the fifth time I knew the silencing procedure by heart. But the control box was mains-powered with battery backup. There was no way of just switching the whole thing off until the smoke cleared. And with my tiny windows (the big ones painted shut long ago ~ thanks landlord) this was going to take a long, long time. I was on the verge of despair.

The cause of all the trouble, so it transpired, was a red-glowing water-filter-shaped gizmo I hadn't even noticed before on the ceiling by my door ~ quite separate from and independent of the poke-outable smoke detector in the next room. No amount of determined broom action would silence this baby.

Eventually with a prayer to God our ridiculously over-zealous alarm system did chill out and shut up for good but not before my nerves were totally frazzled.

No smoke without fire?!?
Not on your nellie!

All that and my burgers were still only half cooked through ~ I had to finish them off in a frying pan!

AND HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND..??!!?!

Porkshire Trotettes Recipe and a Disney Dog

I REALLY WANT A DISNEY DOG LIKE "PEANUT" FROM THE KINGSMILL ADVERT:

Can you believe NOBODY has put Peanut the dog on Youtube? You have to click here, and you can see him in all his Disney cuteness ... scrabbling at the window because his cruel owers have blamed sandwich theft upon him ... poor swine ...

But if you're too lazy to click, here's a doggie just like Peanut the Kingsmill dog being tormented by a nasty biscuit-eating child:



HERE'S THE RECIPE FOR MY YORKSHIRE TROTETTES:

Trotettes are simple: get Iceland's own precooked Yorkshire puddings (the type with batter already risen).

Cook beef/lamb, cauliflower/broccoli cheese, vegetables, gravy.

Slam in Yorkshire puddings for last 5 mins.



FROM GERMANY'S BILDZEITUNG:

Hornissen attackieren Schulklasse

Haßloch ~ Eine Schulklasse unternahm in Hassloch (Rheinland-Pfalz) einen Ausflug, ging in einen Wald. Plötzlich fiel dort ein Schwarm aufgeregter Hornissen über die Kinder her ~ offenbar waren sie dem Bau zu nahe gekommen. Drei Schüler, die Lehrerin (30) und ein Jogger (51) wurden durch Stiche verletzt, mußten ins Krankenhaus. Der Förster schaffte den Hornissenbau vom Waldweg fort.

German tabloid style is a little different from the English, so I cleared it up as best I could without straying too far from a literal translation:

HORNETS ATTACK SCHOOLCHILDREN

Hassloch ~ a school class went on a woodland walk in Hassloch (Rheinland-Pfalz). Suddenly a swarm of angry hornets attacked the children, who had obviously strayed too near the insects' nest. Three pupils, the teacher (30) and a passing jogger (51) have been treated in hospital for stings. Forest management removed the nest.

From Bild.de: Horror-Wespen-Report

More from Bild: Wespen-Invasion: Gefahr für Millionen

ä Ä ö Ö ü Ü ß ... How to type German umlauts ...

Yorkshire Trotettes in Oven

MY YORKSHIRE TROTETTES are in the oven, I am on page 75 of my book, meaning I have now have over 1050 words listed in my notebook (though my vocabulary is so retarted I had to look up many of them 5 or more times ...) I had a good flick through the medium wave band last night and was surprised to find half the stations broadcasting in German and Dutch (Brits don't listen to AM radio any more). A station called NDR has been reading me the news etc.

Things are going from bad to worse with Maple Syrup my druggieworker. She still appears to believe I can be bullied into doing things. I deal with her by saying yes yes and agreeing to whatever she's banging on about ~ so I can get out of there as quickly as possible. Then doing absolutely nothing about it. I really want to change worker.

And that's about it. I'm sending off for the Free University Berlin prospectus. Surely the EU has funds for waster old drug addict would-be international students like me..? Well you gotta have some goal, even if it is totally half-baked ...

Illustrated: Yorkshire (batter) puddings. Stuffed, these are turned into my own special "Yorkshire Trotettes" ...

Here's the link for students wishing to "major" in German language and literature in German at Berlin Free Uni (wouldn't want to be outside Berlin, would you??)

Japanese Studies ("Japanologie") at the same institution ...

PS re "philology"/Philologie I stand corrected. Philology does indeed mean the study of language and literature in English as well as German. I had believed "philology" was just an oldfashioned word for linguistics, having been thrown off course by a fascinating tome on comparative linguistics entitled Comparative Philology ~ that I found on the shelves of a Welsh holiday cottage in Amroth, of all places ...

A Very Pleasant "Repast"... And More Cockroaches

I HAVE JUST SPENT £4.50 on the strongest cockroach spray I could find. Yes I am (of necessity) an expert on the various domestic insecticides and their relative dosages and potencies. Yes: the plague has come back. In fact I have a horrible suspicion I have now encountered a third species of roach (under my fridge) ~ the beetle-sized oriental cockroach! Horrible things. The last lot of ant powder just lays around looking grey and ashy, but does not seem to exterminate, even when they're covered in it. My two cans of tropical-strength Raid have run out so I had to buy Rentokill Insectrol which at 0.46% permethrin is more than double the strength of ordinary (UK-strength) Raid. And I should think so too at £4.50 a not-very-big can!

The "repast" was really nice. I've conjured up a new dish called Yorkshire trotettes. I'ts basically industrial style yorkshire puddings stuffed with roast lamb or beef and seasonable vegetables and it's very nice especially when you made six of them that you only remember at 4:30am. They make a brilliant midnight feast.

Maple Syrup my druggieworker, who says I should go on a proper language course (for Spanish) was even suggesting I do a DEGREE. I'm not so sure of that. But I did start looking into studying German IN Germany (why on earth do a course in German in LONDON? Makes no sense to me, not if you are free to travel... I spent a lot of the afternoon pouring over the Freie Universität Berlin's online "startseite". See my German ain't that good: for I thought Deutsche Philologie meant German linguistics. Apparently Philologie doesn't just mean "philology" it means "the study of language and literature" ... They even do Japanese there ... hmmm.

And just to lower the tone I had a poke through a selection of hens' teeth ~ sorry foreign language periodicals ~ you can't get them round here. And walked off with Bild ~ Europe's biggest-selling newspaper (apparently). With a 5,000,000-a-day circulation in the 1980s and 4,000,000 a day until 2002, it now sells a shamefull 3.8 million examplares pro jour... Have a click here and see why.

Sorry for such a boring post... even I'm bored today ...

Illustrated: Rentokil Insectrol; Freie Universität Berlin's 1960s-style main entrance ...

Nonindustrial Beef (and Lamb) ...

OK, having been inspired by Iceland's "industrial" version, I finally got inspired to do my own roast beef dinner at the weekend. I say "roast": it was pie-steak cooked in covered pan on hob. Basically beef hotpot with only mushrooms and onions. The dumplings I put in last thickened the juices into gravy very nicely. To season I used about 1 teaspoon Chinese curry powder; 1 teaspoon Jamaican jerk seasoning; 4 teaspoons paprika; 1 teaspoon thyme; 1 teaspoon honey-mustard (which is annoyingly nearly empty as I ate nearly an entire jar one night when I was bored ...). Seal in beef cubes by frying. Add boiling water. Chop up and chuck on two very large mushrooms (priced the same as cheapie button ones for some reason by Morrisons express checkout) plus half a giant onion. Add all seasoning at once. Boil for about 20 mins. Reduce heat to minimum. Cover pan. Let simmer for another two hours. Then the beef, which was "edible" in 20 mins but with the texture of old shoes, has turned into an olde English feast. Serve with Iceland industrial cauliflower and broccoli cheese, peas, beans and potato croquettes. Yummy.

I bought about an "lb" (or 450g) of lamb necks ~ some poor dear furry's been slaughtered and I'm buying cross-sections of the poor swine's neck!! Except if it literally was a swine I wouldn't touch it in a million years. Pork is utterly unclean.

Anyway, I fried this up in a wok to seal in, chucked in a pan of boiling water to which I added about half the same spices as yesterday but far more herbs: 1 tsp standard mixed herbs and about five sprigs of fresh mint, stripped off the stalk with a sharp knife and roughly chopped. I also threw in about 1 teaspoon of brown sauce (which is like tomato ketchup with Lea & Perrins ~ full of tamarinds) and 1 teaspoon honey-mustard. In the wok I meanwhile fried up two handsful of baby button mushrooms (got 'em from a different shop where they were cheaper) and the other half of that giant Spanish onion.

Then I took two enormous bags of clothes to the launderette, where they would only fit in the £3.60 machine and cost £1.20 to get even half dry. They're now finishing off on my luxury Ikea hanger...

... anyway I got back after midday and my kitchen smelled like Nanny's used to (and she was just like Mrs Bridges off Upstairs Downstairs ~ and she had been "in service" as a girl ...) on Sunday afternoons... I've not had nowt to eat yet, but on tasting, the water the lamb was cooking in was very nice indeed ...

Another Upstairs Downstairs link

Did you know in the early 1970s Upstairs Downstairs was said to be the Queen's favourite television programme, and Mrs Bridges (my Nan) her favourite character ...

Industrial Roast Beef Dinner

NO NEWS except I've been irritatedly dragging myself to and from counselling sessions, trips into hospital to see sick friends, daily trips to the chemist (thanks to bitch druggieworker who put me back on daily pickup some months ago ~ she does that. Fine. But she ain't gettin' no favours off me. Or insights. Or revelations. I don't trust her.) In other words I've been running thanklessly to and fro when all I want to do is stay in alone with my book with doors locked and the phone switched to silent.

I've been having pub-lunch style roast beef dinners nearly every day courtesy of Iceland, the wondrous frozen food store. They sell Sliced Beef in Gravy 200g for £1; Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese 680g (3 big portions) for £1.50. It's 30% cauliflower, 30% brocooli; 60% creamy cheese sauce. The creamy cheese sauce is yummy and melts all over the plate. Despite instructions claiming 45 mins is required the whole lot's done in half an hour in a non-preheated oven at 225C.

This I put in with Potato Croquettes, which in case you're not working class British are tubular mashed potato shapes covered in a delightful crispy crumb coating. With these I put in a couple of industrially pre-done Yorkshire Puddings. You fork in some of the industrially cheeserunny broccoli and some industrially thin-cut roast beef (sliced in the manner only large canteens manage to do ~ no-one ever naturally gnashes roast beef like that at home.

All in all it's very lovely with a cyder-passionfruit cocktail "of" an evening... In fact ~ surprise, surprise! ~ I think I might have it again tonight!

Here's a clubbed-up mix of Madonna's Celebration:~

Cajun Chicken & A Real Ink Pen

I MISSED MORRISONS' special deal roast chicken legs yesterday lunchtime so I bought two raw drumsticks from the butchers by the MSG-chipshop (they have some secret recipe thing going on and I suspect MSG in the frying oil is surely it). These drumsticks were so enormous they looked like they'd come from a turkey. If not a swan. Anyway, rather than bang them in the oven 200C for 40 mins plain, I did a home-rapid-marinade consisting of Schwarz Cajun Seasoning in Value rapeseed oil Rapeseed's normally 10p a litre cheaper than sunflower or soya, is homegrown and lower in baddie-fats than either of the other two. Anyway I was quite liberal with the spicing and slavered on at least a flat teaspoonload on the two megalegs. These went in for the appointed time, after which I turned off the oven and let them cook inside as it cooled. Imagine my disappointment when, a full hour later, I knifed one open only to find a suspiciously pink interior. Unwilling to touch chicken that's even slightly underdone (and it would have been slightly undercooked if at all) I sliced the chicken off the bones, spread it out on the plate and oven-cooked for a further quarter hour.

This time, if anything, it was over done! But the cajun spicing and the skin came out amazingly crackly and gorgeous.

I will have to try this recipe again. for next time I have another lot of spices hardcore marinating in my cupboard (or should I slam it in the fridge?)

I was thinking of mixing this amazing cajun seasoning ~ which is quite similar to tikka masala, if you know that ~ in with flour to do home-made KFC. Can you do KFC in the oven? I don't really want to deep-fry because of the fire risk.

***

Sorry about yesterday's post. I was so down and tired and empty nothing came to mind. bar what I'd seen on the previous night's Big Brother...

***

I FOUND a fountain pen on the street outside a public toilet. A real live fountain pen! Yes: it was running around on its little legs, then stopped, peered up at me with sad eyes and implored, "Please help me find my owner. Pretty please!"

And it is quite pretty and girlie. Covered in rainbow stripes and stars. But it's made by Parker and they're the best (after the Swiss brand Lamy). Lamy nibs write as smoothly as if broken in 10 years ago ~ right from the day of purchase.

When I was younger (and pretentious enough) I wrote in real ink all the time. I was thinking, maybe I ought to take up that habit again. It might inspire me to pen a mighty work of Great Literature..(!)... (Or something)...

***

AMY WINEHOUSE has been found not guilty of common assault after she gave a black eye to a "burlesque dancer" (stripper) who "shoved a camera" in her face without even asking...

***


And how was your day?

***

Illustrations: top ~ my chicken legs came out just like this. And I roasted them in a thing that looked exactly the same... Yellow pen by Lamy. Best fountain pens in the world. Amy Winehouse... looked far more sober than this at court today...

Free Salad Tomatoes!

WILL MY AMAZING FINDS never cease? Now it's free "salad tomatoes" from Morrisons supermarket. I found so many my fridge is groaning under the weight. I bought a cheap but not horrible margherita pizza reduced to £1 and pizzazzed it up with these and red pepper shards. It came out very nice indeed.

Clearblue pregnancy tests cost £11.99 from my methadone chemists; so I was thinking of starting a carboot stall selling all the various crap I've collected over the months. I have lantern-style candle holders. A Scrabble-like game in French. Lots and lots of granny-style faux cut glass ashtrays (actually I need all those). And a joblot of dreadful but nearly brand new chicklit novels about "my best friend's hilariously disastrous marriage" and other subjects I cannot stand.

Spherical says hello. She is about to get cleaned out tonight, which I was putting off doing as she made herself a mega-cosy nest she will be incredibly annoyed to see bulldozed... (poor Spherical) ~ only it reeks of old chicken bones etc etc...

PS QUIZTIME: WHAT is the connexion between these 2 pictures?...:

Cooking Chicken...

... MY KITCHEN QUEST IS FAR FROM DONE!

Only last week I was in utter bemusement in a butcher's while purchasing raw chicken legs about what setting to oven cook them on. Iceland's own Chinese Chicken Drumsticks and Barbecue Thighs had cooking time and temp on the packet (and it was absolutely bang-on correct) but I'd clean forgotten it. The time was half an hour. But the heat setting? God only knew...

So I said to the man, "Do you think it is half an hour at 200C?" and he said, "Oo-aargh! No, boy! That would incinerate 'em good an' proper! Try half that."

I wandered sceptically off and decided to try half an hour at 175 and they came out barely done. So in desperation I stalked outside and rifled my own bins (to some vulgarizing looks by the neighbours, which perversely seemed to make it all worthwhile) and found out my original instincts had been correct ~ the cooking temp for chicken pieces is indeed 200C in an open casserole dish in the middle of a preheated oven for half an hour; and for good measure turn off heat after this time and leave chicken bits to cook-as-they-cool. This gets them really nicely done. Alternatively, you could do them for 35 mins full blast, then remove them.

Cooking my own chicken bits has saved me a fortune at the local chippy, which charges £2.25 for a chicken quarter (actually that's not bad value come to think of it). But Iceland do 600g of pre-marinaded bits ~ that's six drumsticks or thighs per packet ~ for £2.50. And Tescos were doing an entire uncooked fairly large chicken for £2 (until I moved too far from Tescos to be practicable) and £3.50 for a medium-small cooked one.

At my house-before-last I cooked an entire chicken from scratch in the landlord's miniature tinpot oven (it was like a mobile toast-grilling device ~ not much more; my naive friends assumed it was an olden microwave for it wasn't much bigger...) anyway this device cooked a whole halal chicken absolutely perfectly. I used the meat in stir-fries and Chinese takeaway MSG-flavour curries.

I found if you're going to use it in stir-fries and the like, it is far more practical to pre-roast a chicken whole and re-flashfry as desired than to dodder about with raw meat and giblets. There's no worries about food poisoning and no need to neurotically keep checking the meat and cutting sections in half ensure it's not pinky-translucent in the middle...

Here endeth today's post. If anybody knows any better chicken tips, you know where to answer... many thanks and goodbye for now ;->...

PS: pictures are surely self-explanatory; except maybe the bottom one ~ doncha just luurve a plate of British-tandoori over-coloured chicken tikka?... Yumm!

Dealers Dealers Dealers (Rant) & Peas Pobble Piri Piri

SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOWL OF STEW FOR PIRI PIRIS.
DRUGS BIT COMES FIRST:
SO IT IS quarter to eight pm on Sunday. NOBODY has any heroin. Those that do cannot get it together to sort out cars. I got so wound up I bashed away at every phone number I had (bar one or two). I have quite a lot of numbers representing 10 different businesses. And not one of these people can get it together to either be somewhere when I come or deliver!

The most businesslike tale of drug dealing I ever heard comes allegedly from New York City. Of course New York has been a homeland of hard drugs longer than practically anywhere else in the Western World. Heroin didn't come to London till the 1960s ~ up till then Paris was the major hub of European narcotics distribution ~ not Amsterdam, as today.

Anyway this was the story. You went up to a certain apartment building where you encountered an empty bucket dangling by a long long string. Into this bucket you put your money and yanked it (I expect ~ so the folks on the other end knew they had a customer) then up up up the bucket would go, presently to come down again bearing the exact quantity of heroin paid for.

I can just imagine what the neighbours might have said "Did you see that bucket going up every day full of money?"

"No! But did you see that one going down full of drugs?"

IT'S MONDAY AFTERNOON and by now I'm feeling better. I didn't even put down yesterdays morosity to Unsacred Sundays ...

Today I got paid and as well before visiting my dealer I went to the butchers and Morrisons (formerly Safeways) the supermarket. I had assumed the halal one on the corner would be cheapest for diced meat. Wrong! Today I got beef cubes, £3 worth at £2.10 a LB. With it I made a very pleasant peas pobble piri piri stew with dumplings; (serves 2) here's how:

There are three ways of making a stew in my opinion. Three textures. When I told a certain friend I was "learning to make stew" I got back the reply: "Anyone can do that," and maybe they can, but mine are a million miles from dead bits of lamb floating in leek-and-potato gruel. I learned to cook vegetarian before I ever handled meat, so mine's properly spiced. I don't bother adding potatoes as I far prefer bready-carby dumplings. Yumm...

Texture is really important in cookery. Industrial manufacturers of prepackaged food call it "mouth feel". In a stew with baby potatoes a nice point of contrast can be established by the addition of tinned water chestnuts and halved button mushrooms along with tiny dumplings. All four have a similar white appearance but ever so different "mouth feel" ...

A standard beef or lamb stew would be all cubed, ideally with the meat cubes slightly larger and more prominent than the veg.
Or you can do one with meat cubes contrasting against a background mush. This is really nice if you want lots of dumplings
The third way if peas-n-pulse pobble-bobble. A really nice consistency as below:

BEEF & PEAS POBBLE PIRI PIRI HOTPOT
Serves 2-3

Fry:
~300g cubed beef. I cut the cubes myself into 8 or 10 bits the size of board games dice
~1 large onion, diced
~1 tsp garlic paste
~5 or 6 closed cap mushrooms cut into 6es

I fried in a wok; transferred to med/large saucepan for part 2:

After about ten minutes boil by adding
~1/2 can chopped tomatoes
~about 1/6th of a 500g jar Ragu original. I always used to assume the ultra-tomatoey flavour of Ragu and the like came from dodgy industrial process, until I realized each jar contains something like "150g tomatoes per 100g" ie to make yourself you'd need to bake several cans of chopped tomatoes in an open casserole dish for several hours. And you still wouldn't save any money at min. 35p a tin tomatoes and £1 a jar Ragu so I buy it predone. But if you're against this I understand your opposition. It makes a far nicer tomato additive though than plain old tomato paste. Now add:
~half a tin Dunns River mixed beans/peas: red kidney, black eye, gungo
~1-1.5 tsp mixed MILD curry powders, jerk and cajun seasonings: turmeric, mustard, fenugreek, chili, cumin, cayenne, ginger, allspice, cardamom, pimento, cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, cloves, oregano, sage, thyme, marjoram, bay...
~2-3 tsp paprika
~1 tsp mixed herbs: parsley, sage, marjoram, thyme, oregano, basil
~0.5 tsp extra thyme
~0.5 tsp honey mustard
~1 tsp tomato ketchup

~1 tiny carrot, diced and fiercely boiled with water added in last hour (coz I 4got to put it in far earlier!)

Cook in a covered pan, stirring occasionally. Add fresh boiling water as/when necessary. Verge towards too much water rather than not enough. Dumplings need it. Uncover pan and boil off any excess after dumplings done.

Dumplings: 2 parts selfraising flour to 1 part vegetable suet. Add pepper to taste.
Ensure a good 2 inches hubblebubbling water clear for dumplings to form in lovely baroque bready crags

In last 15 minutes add 2 handsful or about 2/3 coffee mug full of frozen peas and ensure they boil up nicely. The peas add a lovely flavour.

The extra flour from the dumplings usually thickens what surplus juice remains, but if your stew's still too watery, boil off any excess by removing the lid. Stir well to prevent subterranean sticking...

PS: My robos really like frozen veg straight from the freezer. Of my Hamsta MCs, Trotter Donkey seized on a frozen pea just now and scuttled off gleefully like an ecstatic furry hippo ...

FILM: Cockatiel Jailbreak ~ The Squarkshank Redemption
I got this from the blog Cute Overload that I follow...



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MAN WOBBLING COCONUTS TO MARKET IN INDIA...