Pork adobo

The Filipino flag
Source: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Philippines-Flag/18868.html

There is a quote about Mexico attributed to its former president, Porfirio Diaz, which is "¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" which means "Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!" Obviously, the country of Mexico is literally nextdoor to the United States, geographically and it is something of the bitch to the US, providing cheap labour and a destination for cheap healthcare but also lending them some great genuine cuisine from the New World (and probably providing a lot of drugs for them too). The country isn't the only one that has been culturally overwhelmed by the USA. Another more geographically remote and recent addition to this list is the Philippines. 

The Philippines
So many islands
Source: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/philippines

The Philippines is a huge archipelago of 7641 beautiful tropical islands in the South China Sea. It's an interesting country in that it's the only Christian country in Asia, thanks to being a former Spanish colony (to be fair, pretty much every country in the region, with the exception of Thailand, was colonised by Christian European powers, but retained their culture and religion largely intact. However, no-on expects the Spanish Inquisition). It came under the influence of the US after it became a prize in a war between Spain and the US and, later, as a place from which the Americans would launch attacks on Japan in WWII. It's also a very poor country, which is why Filipino nurses staff hospitals the world over, Filippino sailors man ships traversing the world and Filipino bands play in bars across SE Asia. The other reason for this is because English is so widely spoken (again, relating to the American influence). As much as I dislike sweeping generalisations and at the risk of being patronisingly colonial, the Filipino people are actually lovely: friendly, fun and happy, like those of many other countries in the region. Sweeping generlisations are seldom universally correct, and this is true of the Filipino people. As well as being ruled as a colony, they've had more than their fair share of in-house despots, such as Ferdinand Marcos and current populist "hard man" Rodrigo Duterte. Both Filipino, both tossers, along with their cronies who have enabled them to gain and retain power.

The Terminator has let itself go
Roberto Duterte, Self-styled hardman and wannabe dictator president of the Philippines

As much of a tropical paradise and as wonderful the Filipino people are, unlike many other countries in the region, the Philippines are not renowned for their cuisine. If you think of the food of SE Asia, you think Thai curries, you think Malaysian satay, you think Singaporean noodles (or chicken rice, truly one of the pinnacles of world cuisine, for that matter), but nothing from Manila. I know a little about Filipino food. I visited Manila once (I mentioned it here), and, as great as it was, I don't recall any outstanding food I ate (pork scratchings aside). It's not too surprising as the capital, at least, is swamped with US fast food restaurants

As far as we ignorant Westerners are concerned, Filipino food is probably noteworthy for three dishes: balut, pagpag and adobo. Balut is a steamed, fertilised duck egg, so basically a boiled egg with little-biddy chick inside it. Pagpag is the shit McDonalds and KFC, or any food outlet, throw out after its best before date, reheated and served to the poor; and then there's adobo, a rich stew that is unctuous and comforting, giving lie to this idea that the Philippines don't have any decent food (which makes them the Britain of Asia in that respect, because our food is laregly crap, but we have our moments). 

Adobo is a pretty simple dish, without any fancy spices or obscure ingredients. However, it's got a lot of the elements that are common in Thai, Chinese and other cuisines with simultaneously being sour, sweet, salty and umami

TIMING
Preparation: 10-15 minutes plus marination
Cooking: 3½ hours

INGREDIENTS
4tbsp dark soy sauce
6 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1tsp whole black peppercorns
5 bay leaves
250-300g belly pork, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 medium onion, sliced
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into 2cm chunks
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp ground white pepper

RECIPE
Put the soy, vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns and bay leaves into a dish and add the pork, tossing to ensure it's well covered.

Marinating away

Cover and marinate in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, or, ideally, overnight.

Heat the oil in a heavy pan and, using a slotted spoon, remove the pork from the marinade and fry for a few minutes until browned, about 10 minutes.

Remove the pork from the pan using the same slotted spoon

Add the onions to the pan and gently fry the onion until soft, about 5-10 minutes.

Add the sweet potato and cook for a further five minutes

Return the pork, pour in the remaining marinade to the pan plus 150 ml water, the sugar and white pepper and bring to the boil

In the pot

Pour into the slow cooker dish, cover and set to medium for 3-4 hours. Alternatively, you can do this on the hob for an hour or two

Serve up with plain boiled or steamed rice

A bowlful of satisfying, meaty, Filipino goodness

NOTES
You could add some chilli, as either a pinch of dried chilli flakes and a chopped fresh chilli if you want add a bit of a kick to this.

Belly pork is nice and moist, thanks to the large amount of fat it contains. You could use pork tender loin instead which is leaner and takes less cooking, so you can reduce the cooking time. The dish would also work with chicken, in which case I'd suggest skinless, bone-in thighs which have a bit more flavour than breast fillet. Beef would also work.

Sweet potato works quite well, though if cooked too long can go quite soft. Like many of these slow-cooked stews, root vegetables stand up to long cooking, so carrots work well, regular potatoes would also be good. Otherwise, that old standby of squash or something like celeriac perhaps would work.

As I mentioned above, I have visited Manila. As much as the American influence in the Philippines is all permeating, but they have found some great ways to subvert it. Take, for example, the Jeepney. A surplus of WWII Jeeps were taken and converted into small buses which have been a vital form of public transportever since. They are usually colourfully decorated, and as individual as their drivers. They are the Philippines' answer to Thailand's tuktuks or India's bicycle rickshaws. Given the horrendous traffic in Manila (the 2nd worst in the world), there is no better way to experience heavy air pollution than in the back of a pimped out former wartime military vehicle.

Jeepneys
Source: http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/riding-a-filipino-jeepney-101

When I was visiting Manila, we were sat in a bar enjoying a beer, and there were hawkers coming round to sell all sorts of things such as pork scratchings (awesome), other snacks, eggs, live snakes and knock-off viagra. How could I tell it was counterfeit Viagra? It wasn't hard.

Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/drum-tsss-badum-kPIswn0RfPTGxOvDj5

This is another of those amazing, comforting stews that I've done a few of (here, here and here, for example), that are from Asia, based around some sort of fermented soy beans. It's interesting that such food that we might consider as being winter staples are so common in a lot of countries that are actually warmer than our own.

I mention that the Philippines is the only predominantly Christian country in Asia, but they have their very own style of Catholicism, analagous to the Thaipusam festival celebrated in the Hindu faith, where, on Good Friday every year, some people are so taken in their religious ecstasy that they actually have themselves crucified. Personally I prefer the Easter Bunny as a way to celebrate Easter. Anyway, this is my in for the obliquely relevant music video that has become a feature of this blog. Get a load of this slice if camp 90s Europop from Swedes Army of Lovers which was written about this practice in The Philippines.

I'm crucified
Army of Lovers

I'm obviously doing a major disservice to the country. With a huge number of islands, covering huge metropololises of Manila, Quezon and Davao to relatively unspoilt jungle and untold kilometres of coastline populated by a huge variety of indiginous peoples, there is a rich and diverse culinary culture to be explored, so if anyone wants to fund me a trip to go over and discover this, all donations will be gratefully received. You can guarantee the resulting TV series would be more entertaining and a damnsight funnier than anything that Rick Stein has come up with, but you might not want to watch it with your Mum.

Chicken saag

So how am I going to start this entry off, given that the recipe is a spinach curry, and many of my blog entry intros have focused on childhood TV memories? If only there was a connection between spinach and some children's TV character...

Hello sailor!
Source: https://popeye.fandom.com/wiki/Popeye

So, I mentioned Captain Haddock from Tintin in a recent recipe as being the ultimate in matelot cliche, but really, in terms of sailor-based cartoon characters, there can be only one: Popeye. He is a dying breed, the salty seadog with his one good eye, his over-developed forearms and his very idiosyncratic way of talking (is it an accent or is it a speech impediment? I need to know!). Don't get me wrong, someone who can achieve what he achieves as a disabled man is an inspiration, but those forearms are a bit odd. I mean, you only get muscles that big if you're training them. To get to that unnatural size, you need some serious external stimulus, like steroids or lots of exercise, or a combination of the two. It's obvious he's been doing lots of work on his grip strength. Now, if you're familiar with this blog, you'll have some idea where you think I'm going with this, but you'd be wrong. I'm obviously talking about weight training, where he's clearly working on this aspect of his musculature. Saying that, and looking at his physique, it's clear he regularly skips leg day, probably because he's too occupied with the monumental amount of wanking he was doing to continue to develop his forearms to that extent on the days it's not arm-day. OK, I did go there, but at least I didn't do a pun on the word "seamen".

He's not the only character that appears in his adventures, though. Olive Oyl, his on/off girlfriend was actually created first (in 1919, so she's looking pretty good for a centenarian) and managed 10 years before Popeye popped onto the scene and promptly took over her strip to make it his own. Fuck the patriarchy. The poor girl looks like she needs a good meal inside her, which is ironic for someone who's name is a form of cooking fat. Then there's his arch nemesis, Bluto. Bluto is clearly a troubled man. Troubled mainly by morbid obesity and 'roid rage it seems. I'm sure he's the role model for many blokes, as he is the epitome of toxic masculinity. However, you just know that behind closed doors he bawls his eyes out whilst furiously masturbating because his Mum didn't hug him enough, rendering him unable to share his feelings. There's probably also some closet homosexuality in there somewhere, given his bear-like characteristics.

Beauty and the Beast
Olive Oyl and Bluto
Sources of images: https://heroes-and-villians.fandom.com/wiki/Olive_Oyl and https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bluto/4005-12754/

Obviously, as anyone knows, Popeye himself doesn't indulge in steroids. No, he follows a more natural, holistic approach to performance enhancing substances.You know what I'm talking about. He's addicted to the "superfood", spinach, long before some hipster twat with a beard and an ironic pair of plus-fours invented the term . I mean, it has a reputation for being a superfood in modern parlance, because of its trace nutrients, particularly iron. There is some mythology behind this. Modern folklore states that there was an error in reporting the iron content in spinach when the German chemist responsible, Emil von Wolff, purportedly put a decimal place in the wrong place, suggesting spinach contained 10x more iron than it actually had. More recently this myth has itself been debunked, and, rather than a transcription error related to the decimal point, the amount of iron was over-estimated because of poor science and contamination from the experimental aparatus used. This widely-held belief in the erroneously high iron content at the time was supposedly the reason spinach was favoured by our hero, though a little thumbnail calculation would have suggested this to be bollocks. To put it another way, the amount of iron reported to be present in a 100g portion of spinach was 35mg when the actual amount is 3.5mg/100g. 35mg of iron amounts to about about 1% of the total amount in an adult human or 3.5mm of a standard paperclip.

A paperclip
Tastes better than a tin of spinach. Eat this and you too could be Iron Man
Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/paperclip

From a personal point of view, and because of the apparent potency of spinach in Popeye cartoons, as a child I mithered my parents to buy a tin of spinach for years. Finally they relented and we had it. It was disgusting. The paperclip is actually a more appetisng prospect.

Anyway, coming back to the recipe in hand, saag is yet another one of the standard curries you get from your local Indian takeaway. Because of my early traumatic exposure to spinach mentioned above, I was hesitant about trying it. However, the fresh leaves work really well in a curry, the vague bitterness enhancing the spiciness of the dish. It's a fairly easy to make dish and makes a satisfying, quick midweek dinner.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS
300g chicken fillet cut into bite-sized pieces
2tsp tandoori spice
3tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, crushed
A piece of ginger, finely grated (about the size of your thumb)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½tsp fenugreek seeds
½tsp fennel seeds
½tsp ground black pepper
½tsp ground turmeric
½tsp salt
3 cloves
2 whole green cardamom
4cm piece of cinnamon
1 bayleaf
2 green chillies, finely chopped
250g fresh tomatoes, blended to a puree
125g bag of fresh spinach

The main ingredients
Clockwise from bottom left: spinach, tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, chilli

I do love a nice spice picture
Clockwise from 9 o;clock: fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, coriander, cumin, turmeric, salt, black pepper then i nthe centre from 6 o'clock: bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom. cloves

RECIPE
Pour 1 tbsp of the oil into a pan and heat.

Add the tandoori powder and allow to sizzle for a few seconds before adding the chicken. 

Stir-fry the chicken in the spice until cooked through (about 10 minutes).

Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon then add the remaining oil to the pan before adding the ginger and garlic

Fry these for a minute or two before adding the onion.

Turn down the heat slightly and slowly cook the onion until soft, about 15 minutes.

Pour in the pureed tomatoes plus 150 ml water and the chillies.

Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes.

Return the cooked chicken to the pan then add the spinach and stir in.

Allow the spinach to wilt into the sauce over about 10 minutes

In the pan

Serve up with rice and/or naan bread

NOTES
As with most recipes I've done for curries, you could use lamb instead of chicken, or substitute potatoes to give a filling, satisfying vegan dinner

I recently dabbled with using standard curry powder (actually a Madras blend) to streamline the cooking of dish and make it that much quicker to knock up. It won't make a huge time difference, but selecting the various spices and measuring them out can take a bit of effort. It turned out OK, though without the depth of flavour you get with individual spices. It's also less faff and expense than getting the various individual spices.

You could alter the dish, replace spinach with, for example tomato, to give a rogan josh (technically, as rogan josh is lamb with tomato, it would really be a rogan murgh).

I used fresh baby spinach leaves in this recipe, but frozen or tinned would also work. Frozen spinach is a useful stand-by to have at a pinch.

Even if the amount of iron in spinach was as high as initially thought, it would have been rendered useless as it would most likely combine with the relatively large amount of oxalic acid in the leaves to make insoluble ferric oxalate and be lost next time you went for a poo. Because of this, spinach is actually, quite literally, a crap source of iron.

Spinach is, however, a very good source of vitamin A and other carotenes, so Popeye wasn't too far from the mark as a fan and he could see really well in the dark from his one good eye.

Back in the olden days, when colour TV was something of a luxury item, and a lot of people had black and white sets (because they used to be called "television sets"), I remember getting our first colour telly (rental, because many people didn't buy a TV, but rented one by the month). I came home from school for lunch and walked into the living room where the new telly was and there, in glorious technicolour, was a Popeye cartoon.

Speaking of iron...

As much as a Marvel fan as I am, there's only one true Iron Man
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill in their pomp

Keralan prawn curry

It's got coconut in
Annie I'm Not Your Daddy by Kid Creole and the Coconuts

Imagine you're Dr Who and you've jumped in the TARDIS and you're going back... back... back.... It's the 1970s. You step out of the TARDIS and head off for a posh dinner. You end up packed into a heaving working men's club for your meal, before a bitter, racist comedian in a frilly shirt starts making jokes with an oh, so funny cod-Jamaican accent (see example below). You know your main course can be only one thing. You know it's going to be chicken... in a basket! Yes, it's a roast or fried chicken portion with chips and possibly peas, but you know it's posh because it's not on a plate. It's only in a basket! I mean, it's a piece of bland, factory-farmed, sub-KFC hen (though KFC wasn't about much in the 70s, even in it's original incarnation of Kentucky Fried Chicken, at least not where I lived), it's a frozen chicken portion with frozen chips and frozen peas, but it's OK, because it's IN A FUCKING BASKET! Still, I suppose it could be worse. It could be cooked in hay, for fuck's sake. Yes, hay. Some well known, expensive, Michelin-starred chefs serve up food that's cooked in dry grass, because, like, it's really rustic. Why stop there? Stick in a bit of cowshit to give it that just made in the field flavour? Maybe serve it with a side of freshly culled, organic badger chips and a drizzle of incest jus for true authenticity.

Top club comic from back in the day, Bobby Chariot
(or alter-ego of Alexei Sayle)

Obviously, that's your main course. Your dessert will have to be Black Forest Gateau. It's like the worst dilemma for your average Europhobic gammon. I mean, it's a cake that originated in Germany, has a French name, and yet, it's the nostalgia crack cocaine that was the "classy" dessert of their youth, even if it's basically just a chocolate cake with cherry jam and whipped cream.

So we've covered main course and dessert, what's the starter going to be? Well, there can be only one. It's got to be prawn cocktail. A handful of tiny prawns embedded in a turd of cloying, pink seafood sauce shat upon a few scabby lettuce leaves, half a forced tomato (with all the flavour of a raw potato), and a couple of slices of cucumber. This was most people's only exposure to the prawn or shrimp when I grew up. I mean, you could get prawn balls at your local Chinese takeaway, but that was foreign muck again. Besides, who wants to eat them weird pink cockroachy things from the sea?

The Three Horsemen of the 70s Food Apocalypse
(All that's missing is Famine, though after looking at this lot, Famine is probably not sounding too bad)
Sources: https://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/classic_recipes/prawn_cocktail.html
https://violetbakes.wordpress.com/category/chicken-in-a-basket-recipe/
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/if-you-grew-70s-you-ll-definitely-remember-these-foods-slideshow/slide-2

We're much more urbane now, though. You can even buy raw, frozen prawns from Farmfoods, which is a retailer only one step up from a shop selling secondhand food. Indeed, it was raw, frozen prawns I used for this dish, allowing them to defrost before cooking them then giving them a rinse under the tap. Because it's from the southern part of the Sub-Continent, this curry is quite different to the other Indian dishes I've posted before as it's missing most of the spice you'd normally associate with curry (particularly cumin and coriander), but the fenugreek gives it a proper curry flavour, as do the curry leaves. I muse on what does and doesn't make a curry here. This version of a curry is very much Indian, but with a tropical twist from the coconut, gaining something from Malaysian or Thai cuisine in character.

In researching this recipe I discovered that there are two main types of eating prawns: large, warm water prawns (or king prawns) and cold water prawns. Cold water, Atlantic prawns are caught by trawling and are cooked on landing which means they can't usually be bought raw. They taste quite good, but their flavour is quite strong (and they hold a lot of water) which means that they don't really work in a lot of recipes where you have to cook the prawns . This is the type of prawn usually used in prawn cocktail. On the other hand, warm water prawns are farmed, mainly in tropical Asia, and can be bought raw so are much better for cooking with. They taste good too, and don't get too mushy from added water, so tend to be plump, firm and juicy when cooked.There are arguments about the impact of prawn farming on the environment but if managed properly this can be minimised.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 shallots, roughly chopped
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 piece of ginger (approximately thumb-sized)
2 fat cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
Small piece of fresh turmeric, roughly chopped (around 2 cm in length)
Juice of a lime
1 tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
2 cloves
2 green cardamom pods
½ star anise
½ tsp ground black pepper
½tsp salt
Handful of curry leaves (around 20)
200ml coconut milk (half a 400ml can)
100g green beans, topped, tailed and cut into 4cm pieces
120g fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1tsp sugar
250g raw peeled prawns

L

Spices
clockwise from top: salt, turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, anise, mustrad seeds, fenugreek seeds with curry leaves in teh centre

RECIPE
Put the shallots, chillies, ginger, garlic, turmeric and lime juice into a hand blender and make into a paste.

Heat the vegetable oil to a heavy based pan and add the spices, including the curry leaves and fry for a minute or so. The seeds and leaves should start to pop.

Spoon in the paste and cook through, stirring constantly so it doesn't catch on the base of the pan (about 10-15 minutes, when the paste starts to take on some colour).

Pour in the coconut milk and add the tomatoes and sugar, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until the beans are tender.

Add the prawns and allow them to braise in the coconut sauce until cooked (they will change colour from grey to reddish when cooked and shouldn't take much more than a couple of minutes)

In the pot

Serve up with rice and maybe a vegetable curry on the side.

Served up with plain boiled rice and a squash curry

NOTES
It's rare I can cook a dish with coconut as part of the base because Mrs Sweary is not a fan of coconutty sauces. This example, however, has a relatively small amount of coconut milk, so the flavour is not overwhelming. Mrs Sweary actually liked this.

When I was cooking the sauce, I tasted it and couldn't help thinking something was missing. I added the prawns and it turned out that they actually were the missing ingredient. 

Fresh turmeric (haldi) looks like ginger, but is a vivid yellow colour when you cut into it. You can find it in Asian grocers, but if you can't get it, use a teaspoon of dried turmeric.

Curry leaves are quite unique and you can't really substitute their distinctive flavour. If you can't find them, add a bay leaf and more fenugreek seeds.

That sickly prawn cocktail was the only exposure to prawns that the majority of the British public had in those dim and distant times, when they can be a lovely ingredient, is a tragedy. Plump, juicy and sweet and they work really well in spicy dishes, like some Chinese or curries like this one, or Mediterranean cuisine like Spanish gambas pil pil or paella.

There aren't many references to prawns in popular culture. The only one I could think about was Scampi the Prawn in the 79s kids' programme, Fingerbobs. I didn't mention it because, well, I've done way too many references to 50 year old TV shows of late, so I'll keep that one for another time I do a prawn recipe. Do remember, however, if you are going to Fingerbobs, get their consent first.

Whilst prawn reference are pretty thin on the geround, I could get a few references to coconut, such as Kide Creole's at the top of the page and this little gem from the Avalanches. This boy certainly needs therapy.

More Coconut references, but a better song
Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches

Korea advice 2: Yang. Doenjang beef stew

How much is that Doggie in the window,

The one with the fine marbling through its rump?

OK, so it's time to address the elephant in the room when it comes to Korean cuisine. And the elephant I'm referring to is furry, has a waggly tail and pisses on lamposts. As regular readers of this blog know, I'm not afraid to approach some of the more unsavoury subjects related to food so, yes, I'm going there: the eating of dogs. This is something of a custom in Korea, at least according to good old Wikipedia, though it's now banned to slaughter dogs for food, yet it's still legal to eat them. Where are they going to get them from? I mean, it's not like they've got a family pack of St Bernard mince or a four-pack of Labrador burgers in Aldi, or whatever the equivalent is in downtown Seoul. I've covered cultural differences in food before, and we can't be at all judgemental about what people consume in other cultures. While we in the west think eating dogs is barbaric, Koreans probably regard putting a piece of mouldy, rotten milk in your mouth utterly disgusting. These things are very much relative, and, to coin a phrase, in the belly of the devourer. Having said that, given the current situation the human world finds itself in at the time of writing, the bats were probably a bad thing to eat.

I suppose it's not just the revulsion at the act of eating the meat of dogs, though. It's the fact that we're a nation of dog lovers and have trouble seeing them even as animals, much less food. We love our pooches. They're part of the family. True, a part of our family that licks its own arsehole and requires you to follow it around in order to pick up any crap that emanates from that same arsehole, but a part of the family none the less. Total dog lovers. Just don't mention dog fighting, puppy farms or severe in-breeding in pure-bred dogs giving them a shallower gene pool that the British Royal Family and leading to massive health problems, pain and suffering. Anyway, consumption of dog meat in Korea is apparently on the wain, whereas the UK will soon be feasting on a diet of rat tikka masala, mouse fricassee and cow pat soup when the food shortages hit following Brexit, or the North Korean Weight Loss Plan, as it could be called.

I'm sure all you readers will appreciate that the recipe, as written, has no canine content whatsoever. On the other hand, it's probably the meatiest dish you can make. Beef, mushrooms, soya bean paste. It's like the world festival of umami and is incredibly filling and satisfying. It's just like Mum used to make, if Mum was born in Pyongyang and was part of the ruling elite, as most North Koreans probably couldn't buy beef. Indeed, if news reports are to be believed, they can't buy much of anything since there are massive food shortages, as I alluded to above.

Glutamic acid

The source of umami

So, it's another long, slow cooked stew, suitable for the slow cooker. Doenjang is a fermented soya bean paste, like gochujang, but without the chilli (see my recipe for pork gochujang, the Yin to this recipe's Yang). I suppose its closest relative you can buy fairly easily on the UK high street or supermarket is probably Chinese yellow bean sauce, though they do taste distinctly different.

TIMING

Preparation: 20 minutes, plus soaking for the shitake mushrooms

Cooking: Six hours plus in the slow cooker. Three hours or more on the hob

INGREDIENTS

Flavourings

Clockwise from top left: doenjang paste, chilli, garlic, ginger

2tbsp vegetable oil (not olive)
400g cubed stewing beef

1 leek, trimmed, tailed, and cut into 1cm slices

1 thumbsized chunk of ginger, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

250g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm chunks

4 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in a mug of water for at least 20 minutes then sliced, water reserved

225g tin sliced bamboo shoots, drained

150g fresh mushrooms, sliced

100g baby sweetcorn, cut into 2cm chunk

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 tbsp doenjang paste

2 tbsp mirin

Vegetables ready to go

RECIPE

Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the meat, and fry it until it has some colour, around 10 minutes.

Remove the beef with a slotted spoon then add the leek.

Fry for 5 minutes to soften, then add the ginger and garlic and fry for another 5.

Add the potatoes, mushrooms (both types) and bamboo shoots and baby corn and contiue to stir for a few minutes more.

Add the water from soaking the shitake mushrooms and mirin.

Return the meat to the pan, along with the chilli and doenjang paste.

Stir well and put in the slow cooker on medium for 6 hours or more, or else cover and leave on a low heat on the hob.

Check the post intermittently and add the odd splash of water if it looks to be getting too thick or dry

Makes more than enough for two people, served with boiled, steamed or egg-fried rice.

NOTES

Beef is the best meat for this dish, but it may work with pork or lamb. You could even get away with chicken, but might have to use a little less doenjang. In fact, add more potato, leave out the beef and you would have a very hearty vegetarian version and it could be the meatiest vegan dish you could imagine. 

This works well with plenty of vegetables. Potato really absorbs the flavour of the sauce fantastically, so you need to keep this in. Otherwise, mess about with the vegies to your heart's content. Water chestnuts would work well, as would courgette (add towards the end of cooking or it will disintegrate in the slow cooker), cauliflower should stand up to the flavour or green pepper would also work

Dried shitake mushrooms add another dimension, over and above regular mushrooms, and the water you rehydrate them in adds further depth to the stew. You could omit them if you can't get hold of them, and maybe add a vegetable stock cube plus 200ml water.

Mirin is essentially rice wine. Replace with the same amount of dry white wine or dry sherry if you can't get hold of it.

I know the whole thing about eating dogs is often used as a racist trope directed at anyone who is a member of any Far Eastern ethnic minority in the UK. It's just a short hop from this to urban legends of cats going missing around Chinese takeaways which, as well as being offensively racist, quite frankly don't make sense. Given your average takeaway probably gets through a good couple of dozen chickens on a good night, the odd cat isn't really going to save an awful lot of money, and the risk of being caught and losing business too great. Snopes has a good discussion of this urban legend here  an article that is now over 20 years old and refers to these stories from the mid twentieth century, so it's hardly new, and is just as much a load of bullshit now as it was then.

Adam and the Ants addressed eating dogs way back in the early 80s. Well, they didn't, not literally, but it was still a decent song.

It would be remiss of me not to post this track

Murgh Methi (chicken curry with fenugreek leaf)

Paddington: One Bear to rule them all
You're a bear! Lay off the marmalade sandwich and just eat the fucking chicken!
Source: https://www.britishclassiccomedy.co.uk/paddington

Thanks to one of my Aunties who bought me a box-set of his books, Paddington Bear was a prominent figure in my earlier life. Let's face it, out of all the celebrity bears of the time, Paddington was the king. I mean, there weren't THAT many in the public eye, to be fair. Teddy Edward was OK, but pretty dull. Issi Noho was a panda, so only scrapes in on a technicality, and was shite anyway. Rupert the Bear was the worst though. Not only was he the most boring, self-righteous cunt ever portrayed on children's telly, but he was originally from a cartoon in the Daily Express, for fuck's sake, which is basically the Sun with delusions of fucking grandeur. I mean his programmes were so fucking long, and he has a history of casual racism (it's the Express, so he's hardly going to be feel out of place there). So, yes, Paddington was the man... bear (not to be confused with ManBearPig, see notes), despite being (or possibly because he was) an illegal immigrant. 

Don't have nightmares
Bears of my TV childhood (Teddy Edward, Issi Noho and Rupert. The stupid twat can't even do the actions to YMCA properly)
Sources: https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/teddy-edward
https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/issi-noho/
http://www.jedisparadise.com/3/Rupert_Bear.htm

As great as Paddington was, however, he was crap from a culinary point of view. All he ate were marmalade sandwiches. I tried marmalade sandwiches when I was under the thrall of the Peruvian ursinoid, and they were fucking awful, so it's a definite no-no. So, what has Paddington got to do with this recipe?

Parsley the Lion
 Source: https://alchetron.com/Parsley-the-Lion

The author of Paddington, Michael Bond, I discovered, also wrote the kids' programme that was the first exposure children of a certain generation got to any sort of cooking reference, The Herbs. The Herbs was a puppet show whose characters were the personification of actual herbs. There was Parsley the Lion (a lion with a green mane, who looks like the outcome of the Jolly Green Giant fucking a cat, see picture above), Dill the Dog (who looked like Su Pollard) and others who are a bit more foggy in my middle-aged mind. I remember some older lady character called Rosemary and something about a character called Bayleaf. So, in this age of instant access to pretty much all the accumulated knowledge of the human race (and yet people are still thick as pig shit. Go figure), I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this confirmed that there was indeed an aristocratic Lady Rosemary, along with her husband, Sir Basil, and Bayleaf was their gardener. There's nothing like reinforcing the British class system to kids at the earliest possible age so they know their place in society. They also had an Indian character who appeared once or twice, so you might wonder which herb they were named after. Well, it transpires that he was called pashana bedhi which, apparently, is another name for coleus amboinicus. This cooking blog has approaching 60 recipes, many of which being some sort of curry, but I've not heard of this particular herb (not that the name exactly rolls off the tongue). It's apparently some sort of fragrant plant otherwise known as Mexican mint, Indian mint and Cuban oregano. It's certainly not a common ingredient in anything I've come across, though I'm quite limited in exposure to exotic herbs, being a resident of grim and grey Northern England. So, why wasn't he called coriander, for example? That's the herb we usually find scattered on Indian food in the UK. Now, I love the flavour coriander it adds to Indian (and other cuisine, like Mexican for example), but it's an unusual ingredient in that it contains a certain substance that is tasteless to most people but tastes bad to a small minority. Mrs Sweary is one of those people, so I can't use it in dinner I cook for both of us. There's some really interesting science behind this and I could go off on another biochemical tangent on the physiology and genetics of taste, but don't worry, I'll leave that for another post.

Dill the Dog                              Su Pollard
How can you tell them apart?
Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/su-pollard-last-hi-de-hi-royalty-cheque-1120/
https://parody.fandom.com/wiki/Dill_the_Dog

The other major herb you might find in British High Street Indian cuisine is fenugreek, otherwise known as methi. Like coriander, it's the leafy part of the same plant as the spice seed of the same name used in curries. It's got an earthy flavour, not that dissimilar to its seeds (which in my opinion are THE component of curry spice that makes it taste of "curry"), but fresher and works so well in this recipe. Also, there's enough of the herb used that it almost becomes a vegetable in its own right. Not quite as much as, say, the spinach in a saag, but certainly a significant amount. It's a great, slightly different twist on the usual suspects from British Indian restaurants, though it is on the menu of a lot of curry houses.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes plus marination
Cooking: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS
Marinade paste:
3-4 garlic cloves (medium), coarsely chopped
1 thumb-sized chunk of ginger, roughly chopped
1 shallot, roughly chopped
½ tsp salt
2 green chillies, roughly chopped

400g chicken meat (breast fillet or boneless thighs), cut into bite-sized chunks
2tbsp vegetable oil (a neutrally flavoured oil, like rapeseed)
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground turmeric
3 whole green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
small piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 small onions, 1 sliced and the other roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small piece of ginger (about 2cm cubed)
2 medium to large fresh tomatoes (about 200g in total weight). peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 green pepper, cored and cut into 2cm pieces
50g bunch fresh methi leaf, coarsely chopped

The ingredients
Clockwise from top left: methi leaf, ginger, garlic, spices, green pepper, tomatoes, onions, topped by one of my favourite knives

RECIPE
Pound the marinade ingredients into a paste using a pestle and mortar, or using a food processor.

Put into a dish with the chicken and mix well so that the chicken is well covered.

Cover the dish and put in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or so.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan and fry the spices for about a minute.

Add the ginger, the chopped onion and garlic, and fry until the onion is soft (add a splash of water if the spices start to catch on the pan, just enough to keep the mixture moist).

Add the tomatoes and the tomato puree plus 100ml water.

Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes breakdown.

Allow this to cool and blend up into a smooth sauce.

In a clean pan, heat another tablespoon of oil and fry the chicken until cooked, adding any excess marinade. This should take about 15 minutes.

Remove the cooked chicken with a slotted spoon.

To the oil add the sliced onion and fry until soft.

Add the green pepper and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the methi leaves and allow them to wilt for about a minute.

Return the chicken to the pan, add the sauce and gently warm up.

Allow to the chicken to heat through and serve with rice and/or naan bread. Feeds two easily.

In the pan

Served up with plain rice and an aloo gobi

NOTES
Fresh methi or fenugreek leaf should be available from Asian grocers in big bunches. It freezes quite well, so use as much as you need for this then wrap the excess in foil (ideally in portions ready weighed out for recipes like this) and put in a freezer bag for use at later date.

This is another recipe where you marinate chicken in a paste made of onion, garlic and ginger (like this one). It does impart a deep, rich flavour to the dish, You could cut down the time in making this by coating the chicken with the marinade and cooking straight away.

Green pepper is a great addition to most curries as it's not too sweet and the taste is perfect for spicy food. Red pepper might work OK too, as would potato or something like aubergine or squash.

ManBearPig made a few appearances in South Park as a monster pursued by former Vice President Al Gore

I'm totally cereal
ManBearPig in action

Again, I think I've broken yet more new ground as the first cooking blog to drop the "c" bomb in the context of a well-loved childhood character. Now I've beaten that path, I look forward to hearing regular guest star, Rick Stein, calling Scooby Doo "a twat", Tom Kerridge naming Big Bird "a tosser" or Nadiya Hussain of accusing Peter Pan of being "a massive fucking nonce".