Haddock baked with tomatoes, capers and chorizo

Summer holiday morning TV for kids in the 70s and 80s was great. Well, some of it was. Actually, no, most of it was crap. I mean there was an inordinate amount of cheaply bought in stuff from the near continent and Eastern Europe, usually in black and white and badly dubbed. These included things like White Horses, The Flashing Blade, Belle and Sebastian. They were fucking diabolical, if I'm telling the truth. Why Don't You? was OK, I suppose, but gets a black mark against its name for bestowing Ant from off of Ant and Dec onto the viewing British public. I think the biggest problem was there weren't enough cartoons. I longed for a bit of Hanna-Barbera animation. Scooby Doo, Hong Kong Fooey or Wacky Races were always worth watching, but it was the other dross you had to wade through while you waited for these gems to come on. Bear in mind this was the time when there were a mere three channels available and TV didn't start broadcasting until about 9am after taking the night off. There was none of this 24/7 Cartoon Network/Boomerang/CITV/CBBC nonsense that you have nowadays So, knowing that British kids liked cartoons, they bought in some cartoons, but not as we knew them. They gave us Tintin.

 Tintin.
You really couldn't tire of punching that smug fucking face with it's smug fucking "Something About Mary" hairstyle
 Sourve: http://en.tintin.com/news/index/rub/0/id/4465/0/welcome-to-the-new-tintin-boutique

I fucking hated Tintin. It was just so boring and he wore plus fours, for fuck's sake. The programme started OK with the announcer excitedly proclaiming "Hergé's Adventures ot Tintin!", but went rapidly downhill from there. Maybe it was the dreadful dubbing, but I just couldn't connect with the characters and didn't get any sense of adventure from the stories. If the characters were in a rowing boat and it got attacked by a big shark, I was chanting "Go Jaws!". Later in life, I discovered that Tintin is quite a big thing in certain sections of British popular culture, mainly in book form. The books were originally written in the late 1920s, but a translation into English from the original French was popular in middle class families even recently. What can't be denied is the effect of Tintin on British popular culture, particularly music. Acts Stephen "Tintin" Duffy and the Thompson Twins took their name from Tintin, and there is even a former Thin Lizzy guitarist called Snowy White who had a solo hit. (though his name probably has nothing to do with Tintin or his dog of the same name ). Tintin is even referred to in The Beach (the book version, which itself is a middle-class, late GenX, travel wank fantasy, and the film was worse).

Killer on the Loose by Thin Lizzy
Featuring Snowy White on guitar.
I was never going to have somethnig like Tintin Duffy or the Thompson Twins, was I?

So, what the fuck has Tintin got to do with this blog entry? Well, one of Tintin's companions is the sailor, Captain Haddock. He was to the maritime community what the Black and White Minstrels were to the Afro-Carribean community. To say he was a cliché is understating things. The alcoholism, the gruff demeanor, the bushy beard, the knitted sweater, it's all there. To make him any more of a cartoon sailor they would have to have removed his leg, perched a parrot on his shoulder and infected him with a strain of antibiotic-resistant syphilis found only in Jakarta. That he was the foundation for Captain Birdseye is almost certain and a sad indictment of the minds of advertisers in the UK. Even less so in this age of Operation Yewtree. The trope of a grizzled old salt merrily taking a bunch of children away on his boat lost its allure as an advertising premise faster than you can say Edward Heath.

Anyway, back to haddock. It's one of the most popular fishes consumed in the UK, along with cod. As I've mentioned previously, we're shit at eating fish in the UK, especially as we're surrounded by water, and most people will only eat fish if it's deep fried in batter. That fish is usually cod or haddock which are not the most flavourful piscine offerings in the fish mongers, though, given a choice, I do prefer haddock as it has a little more flavour than cod. There are other similar types of fish which are probably cheaper, like hake (great) or coley (grey and dire), or even fish exported from other parts of the world, like hoki. These latter examples were gaining more popularity in the UK up to a few years back due to the crash in popultion of gadidae in the North Atlantic as a result of industrial-scale trawling. More recently they had seemed to have made something of a recovery, but numbers are still on the brink. As a relatively tasteless fish, it does work with a piquant sauce, such as this. The capers really add a great tanginess and pretty much any dish can be improved through the addition of chorizo. 

TIMING
Preparation 10 minutes
Sauce cooking: 30 minutes
Baking: 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
100g mushrooms, sliced
50g chorizo, chopped
150g tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
1tbsp drained pickled capers, chopped
2tbsp dry white wine
1tbsp lemon juice (about half a lemon's worth)
2 frozen fillets of haddock (about 100g each)

 Sauce ingredients
Clockwise from top left: tomatoes, chorizo, capers, mushrooms, garlic, onion

RECIPE
Preheat the oven to 170°C/

Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion to fry gently for about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and fry for another couple of minute/

Add the mushrooms and fry until they look cooked, about 5 minutes.

Throw in the chorizo and fry for another 5 minutes/

Add the tomatoes, capers, white wine and lemon juice then stir.

Add plenty of black pepper, cover and turn down the heat to a gentle simmer for about 20 minutes, long wnough to brak down the tomatoes.

In the pan

Prepare an oven proof dish by greasing it with a bit of oil.

Place the fish fillets on the dish then pour over the tomato and caper sauce, sufficient to cover both fillets as best as possible.

Put into the hot oven to bake for 30 minutes (or 20 minutes if you're using fresh fillets)

Serve up with oven-roasted potatoes.

Ready to eat
Served with roasted new potatoes and roasted cauliflower

NOTES
I used frozen haddock fillets in this recipe which you use strainght from the freezer without defrosting. Paradoxically, frozen fillets are usually fresher than "fresh" fillets as they are frozen almost immediately after being caught. and not having to hang around in a supermarket fish counter for a couple of days. The instructions on the packaging suggested you can cook them in 20 minutes, but I found the fish was still raw, so made the time 30 minutes. If you used fresh fish portions, 20 minutes would be plenty of time, so adjust accordingly.

Haddock and cod are essentially interchangeable in cooking, so you just as easily use cod, You could also substitute the other fish I mentioned in the preamble, such as hake.

The preamble to this entry may sound like notalgia for a bygone day, but it's nothing of the sort. It was shite. The TV in the summer when I was growing up was there for one reason: to keep the kids occupied. This may have been so Mum could sneak in a large gin in the kitchen in peace, or could have been so kids that had been left to their own devices didn't set fire to the house while parents were out at work.

One interesting thing that I discovered when working on this was that Hong Kong Fooey was voiced by Scatman Crothers who also appeared in The Shining.

Captain Birdseye has been in the news lately as Birdseye have decided to revamp the image of the character and he is now a 24 year old woman. This has caused a major meltdown amongst the sort of person who accuse other people of being snowflakes.

Pork in cider

Cider in rock
The Worzels

Traditionally, cider has the reputation as being something associated with country bumpkins in the West Country. The Worzels even did a song about it, parodying Una Paloma Blanco (see above). More recently, however, its image is very much Janus-faced. At its best, it's a wonderfully refreshing drink, catching the best of the British summer in a glass, and can have depth and complexity similar to wine. At its, worst it's diabolical, mass-produced. massively over-strong and is directly responsible for a torrent of tramp piss in public spaces across the country. As booze goes, cheap white cider offers the very most bang for the buck, being able to buy a big bottle of a couple of litres of 5% cider for about £2 which is why it's the tipple of choice for the itinerant and teenagers alike. No park is complete without an empty plastic bottle of White Lightning, along with the dog ends of a couple of spliffs. It's a scene that, were they alive today, JMW Turner or especially John Constable would have immortalised in oil on canvas.

Wivenhoe Park by John Constable (1816)

If you look closely, you can see the two guys in the boat are getting wankered on cheap cider

Source: https://www.atlasofplaces.com/painting/landscape-and-place/

It's fair to say that, in the UK at least, many people's first exposure to alcohol is with a cheeky sip of Woodpecker Cider when they're a teenager (or, heaven forbid, Babycham, which is not actually cheap champagne, but is in fact cider's pear cousin, perry). Woodpecker is dreadful. It's largely tasteless, but sweet enough to give you a molar cavity by just thinking about it. Couple this to the myriad of sweet fruit ciders that abound today, it's like the alcopop explosion of the 90s all over again. Those were the days. Hooper's Hooch, Metz, Bacardi Breezers. Many a teenager will have woken up with a splitting headache and the flavour of one of these aberrations in their mouth from the night before (usually mixed with the taste of vomit), and mushrooms growing on their teeth because of the sugar content. What goes around, comes around, but with a slicker marketing spin on it. Just don't get me started on Snakebite and Black

Cooking with booze is a great thing. If I'd bothered to do any research, I'm sure I'd find it's to do with the huge variety of chemicals produced during fermentation and the same thing could be said of recipes with other fermented ingredients, like gochujang soya bean paste as used here, for example. I've already featured a few dishes that include some sort of alcohol, by way of beer, wine or even rum and I've previously used cider in pulled pork. Like that recipe, it works so well in this dish as apples are a natural partner to pork, hence apple sauce with roast pork. Couple this to the aromatic herbs of thyme, bay and especially sage (again, think sage and onion stuffing), this stew is a wonderful, easy to make weekday dinner

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp olive oil

1 leek, trimmed and cleaned then cut into 1cm slices

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 stick celery, finely shopped

200g mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled, topped, tailed and cut into rounds

250g pork tenderloin fillet

200ml decent dry cider

1 vegetable stock cube

Large sprig of fresh sage leaves, finely chopped (about a tablespoon when chopped), or 1 tsp dried sage

Small sprig fresh thyme, leaves stripped from stems and chopped (or a pinch of dried thyme)

1 bay leaf

1 large tsp Dijon mustard

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped (I used two small Gala, but traditionally it would be a Bramley)

1 large tsp cornflour, mixed with a little water

Salt and pepper

Herbs

Sage and thyme

And, yes, I'm one of those foodie wankers that has a mezzaluna to chop herbs

RECIPE

Heat the oil in a pan and add the leeks, stirring until soft (10 minutes).

Add the garlic and celery and continue to fry for 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and continue to fry for a further 5 minutes.

Add the carrot, cider, herbs, stock cube and 200 ml water then gently bring to a boil.

Add the pork and stir.

Stir in the Dijon mustard.

Mix up the cornflour in water and pour into the pan.

Stir well, turn down to low, cover, and simmer for an hour and a half or so (long enough for the carrots to become tender).

Serve it up. Serves two easily and works really well with mashed potato.

NOTES

The leek adds a subtlety that is missing with onion. but you could use an onion instead if you don't have a leek. Likewise, you could use a different form of pork or even braise pork chops in this sauce

Add a splash of cream to make the sauce more rich. Not an option in our house as Mrs Sweary is not a big fan of creamy sauces, but really, it would elevate this dish to something that bit more special

I recall something Delia Smith had written about how pork goes well with apples because they come from the same sort of terrain. Your wild boar, where pigs come from, are very much at home in the old orchard.

Choose a good quality cider for this. Nothing too fancy or expensive, but not Woodpecker or, heaven forbid, some cheap white cider. The offerings from Westons would be good, like the example below. Hell, Strongbow might even work as a budget option, just nothing that's got other fruit in it as it would be too sweet.

Henry Weston's Vintage Cider

A good cider for this recipe

Leek, mushrooms, carrot, pork and cider. This dish couldn't be any more rustic if its parents were first cousins and it was caught fucking a sheep. That's not a bad thing (I mean the rustic thing, not the near incest or the sheep worrying, obviously) as this is good, honest food with no pretence. Indeed, it's a very good thing and adds yet another great recipe to make a lie of my scoffing at the awful cuisine of England which I've mentioned on a few occasions.

I have to do a Rick Stein and twat on about the Constable picture I posted above. This is Wivenhoe Park which is now the site of the University of Essex, where I studied. This was where I spent many years, through two degrees  (and quite a few Snakebites and Black, especially early on), and where I met my wife. I had a postcard of that very paintings on my wall throughout my student days. I did get wankered by the side of that lake on many occasions, though not usually on cider.

Korea advice 1: Yin. Slow cooker pork gochujang stew.

South Korean flag
I kind of like it

It takes a lot to become an expert on a particular topic, especially if you're talking about an entire country. Take knowledge of Korea, for example. I recently got rid of a Hyundai car that I'd had for for 8 years, so that pretty much makes me an expert on Korea. Basically, I'm Kim Jong Un. To be honest, he's probably not the best person to compare yourself to as he's a brutal dictator who's as mad as a hatter, and he's got nuclear weapons. He's basically an oriental, slightly more agreeable version of Donald Trump, with better hair (which is saying something as, let's face it, KJU's hair is fucking terrible) though is less likely to be in jail come the start of 2021 (this prophecy might not age well, so ignore it if I'm wrong). Saying all this, to an ignorant Westerner like me, there's not a lot of choice in well known Koreans in the Western public sphere. Apart from him, there's Psy, who sang Gangnam Style; and there's Oddjob from Bond movie, Goldfinger; and the bloke who created the Moonies, Sun Myung Moon. Oh, and speaking of Moons, there's also Ban Ki-Moon, former UN Secretary General. This is more of a yardstick of my general ignorance of Korean culture, and not of the fact that there aren't large numbers of famous Koreans. I mean, K-Pop alone has probably hundreds of well known people, but I'm not really an afficianado and couldn't name any of them, apart from Psy, if he counts. We do owe K-Pop fans a debt, however, as it was a group of K-Pop fans that sabotaged a Trump election rally to ensure it was less than half full. thus rendering the massive stadium booked for the event looking pitfiully empty

Famous Koreans

(clockwise from top left: Bond baddie, Oddjob (the character is Korean, but the actor is actually Japanese-American wrestler Harold Sakata); Cult leader and self-proclaimed Messiah, Rev Sun Myung Moon; Gangnam Stylist, Psy and former UN Director General, Ban-Ki Moon.

(sources of images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddjob, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0600671/  https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/11/u-n-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon-honored/, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20483087

Oppan Gangnam Style!
Apparently it's a satirical song about rich people in Seoul

What else do I know about Korea? Well, obviously, it's not one, but two Koreas following the war in the 50s, or, to use a football cliche, a country of two halves. It's got a lot of contradictions. It's a country that was literally torn apart by conflict, but has given the world a sport that's so violent, its aim is to try and kick an opponent's arsehole out through their mouth, taekwondo. It's a modern, high-tech country that clings onto traditional values, despite having American culture rammed down its throat. Hell, even the flag of S Korea features the yin-yang symbol (see above)

So, this is a cooking blog, where's the recipe? Well, I've covered dishes from at least three corners of the world, if not four, but so far not Korea. To be honest I didn't know much about Korean food, apart from the offerings from a great Korean restaurant in Manchester called Koreana, which I went to a few times and does great food. To my shame, I can't remember much about it (mainly because I was usually pissed by the time I got there), but the barbecued beef ribs were sublime, and Korean BBQ is probably the most well known contribution of Korea to world cuisine. Otherwise the most famous dish of Korea is probably the fermented cabbage of kimchi. The third most famous foodstuff of Korea is probably gochujang, a fermented soya bean paste with chilli. As soya bean products go, it probably just scrapes into the top 10 in terms of international recognition, after soy sauce, hoisin sauce, tofu, black bean sauce, yellow bean sauce etc. Don't be fooled by the fact you might not have heard about it before, it's a fantastic ingredient, with the rich flavour of fermented beans and a deep, but subtle, chilli heat which makes for wonderfully warming and filling stews like this. This is another of those recipes that you try once and know it's a keeper, and that you'll make again and again.

TIMING

Preparation: 15 minutes

Cooking: 30 minutes or so on the hob plus 4 or more in the slow cooker (see notes for alternative timings using hob or oven)

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 leek, trimmed, tailed, cleaned and sliced into 1cm discs
2 garlic cloves, crushed
A thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
200g pork loin fillet, cut into bite-sized chunks

250g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

150g mushrooms, chopped

1 red or green chilli, finely sliced (or pinch of dried chilli flakes)
2 tbsp gochujang paste
1 tbsp sesame oil

The main flavours
(from left, clockwise: garlic, ginger, gochujang paste, chilli flakes)

RECIPE
Heat up the oil in a heavy pan and add the leeks, frying to soften for a couple of minutes

Add the ginger and garlic and continue to fry

Throw in the potatoes and mushrooms and continue to sautee for a couple of minutes.

Stir in the gochujang paste and chilli

Pour in 200 ml of water and the sesame oil.

Stir well and bring to a gentle simmer.

Transfer to the slow cooker, if you're using it, cover, and set to medium for four hours or more.

In the pan before putting in the slow cooker

Serve with rice (either plain or egg-fried) to soak up the rich, red sauce.

Makes enough for 2 people easily, with some left over for lunch the next day.

NOTES
I couldn't get hold of actual gochujang paste the first few times I made this recipe, so had to rely on this bastardised version from Blue Dragon. It worked quite well and had the right flavour, but was a bit sweet and didn't have the depth of taste you get with actual gochujang paste. Next time I tried to get it, the supermarket brought sriracha instead of gochujang which is the equivalent of, when you're fixing a bike, asking some one to pass you a particular spanner and them giving you a kick in the bollocks. I did order the real deal from an online Asian food shop and the difference is immense. This BD version still makes a decent version of this stew, mind, and is easier to get hold of.

Possibly your best chance of GCJ
It's not too bad and is available in supermarkets

The original recipe suggests courgette in this dish, and it is a good match, but for the purposes of slow cooking, mushrooms work better as they stand up to long, slow cooking, as would carrots. I've also tried this green beans but add them (or courgettes) later in the cooking so they don't disintegrate. The potatoes are essential though, because they really absorb the flavour of the sauce. Leeks make a nice, subtle change from onion that is in almost every other dish I make. I've not tried it, but you might be able to get away with a good vegetarian version by omitting the pork and upping the potato content or adding a pulse, like chickpeas. Also, feel free to omit the green chilli. Gochujang is not very hot, but it does have some kick if you're not used to spicy food.

In tribute to the South Korean flag, I'm making this dish one of a series of two, designated "Yin", to go with the similar recipe to follow soon, which I'll call "Yang".

I adapted this from a recipe in a cook book I've had for a while of Japanese and Korean dishes. I've tweaked it for making in a slow cooker, and messed with the ingredients a bit.

You can do this on the hob or as a casserole in the oven. On the hob, given it's made with tenderloin fillet, it shouldn't take more than an hour or two. Allow a couple of hours if you're doing it in the oven in an oven proof casserole dish, though make up in a pan (unless your casserole dish is OK for use on the hob).

So, apart fron Psy's opus above, where's the tenuously linked music video that's become something of a regular feature on these recipes? Well, you know me, I'm a Seoul man.

S(e)oul man by Sam and Dave

When I say I'm an expert on Korea, I'm obviously being ironic. However, I did have a job interview some time ago where the interviewer rather pompously stated he was a world expert on the Japanese healthcare system. I popped his ego by saying that he was, apart from a few million Japanese people. Not for the first time, I smart-mouthed myself out of a job, but, call it sour grapes if you like, he was a wanker and I wouldn't have lasted very long with that comany. See, you might get anecdotes from Rick Stein, but not a single one of them ends with him calling the person in the ancedote a wanker

Slow cooker lamb dhansak

 Bart Simpson

The bard of farting

Beans, beans, the musical fruit. You've got to love your legumes. I've already done a few dishes containing beans and they really make a hearty dish all the more hearty. Of course, the undigestible complex carbohydrates they contain make a good food source for the bugs that live up your arse. And when they get fed, they celebrate by making methane and hydrogen. This is when the brass section gets cued into the performance and Le Petomaine makes an appearance.

 French professional farter, Le Petomaine from the late 1800s

So we have beans, peas and other pulses which make up a substantial source of protein for a huge part of the human population. The soya bean alone feeds vast swathes of the far eastern portion of the Asian continent, especially as bean curd, not to mention being a fundamental component of the cuisine of literally billions of people when fermented in various ways in the shape of soy sauce, black bean sauce or the myriad of coloured pastes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes (yellow bean, red bean, black bean, gochujang etc). Further west, the legume of choice becomes the lentil. Given the number of devout Hindus in India, they consume huge amounts of lentils as a good source of protein. So much so that there are numerous forms of these titchy little pea things available. This page lists 12 types of the flatulent little fuckers.

Lentils were something of a joke when I was growing up, being the relatively affluent, privileged Western European with a diet containing meat that I am (certainly compared to your average Indian of the time, anyway). Lentils were the staple of weirdo vegetarians, we didn't eat that sort of thing. Well, apart from when money got a bit tight (as I say, relatively affluent, compared to truly impoverished people in the Sub-Continent), so there was a trip to the butchers to get a batch of bacon bones and a thick, hearty broth was made up with these, with scraps of meat on them, and yellow split peas, a form of lentil. It lasted for days, and it was my first actual exposure to the lentil.

Anyway, back to the recipe in hand. Dhansak, though a popular dish in UK curry houses, is actually a recipe brought to India by Parsis, an ethnic group originating in Persia. It's a very tasty take on a curry, with the lentils bulking up the whole thing, and giving a nutty taste and adding richness to a sweet and tangy flavoured sauce.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20-30 minutes on the pre-ccoking hob, 5 hours in the slow cooker
(You could do this on the hob or in the oven, though cooking time would be shorter.  See notes for more details)

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
chunk of fresh ginger, finely chopped (aboout the size of a thumb, about 3cm by 2cm)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
1 bayleaf
1 star anise
3 green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
A pinch of onion seeds
1.2 tsp salt
1-2 fresh green chillies, finely chopped (depends on heat)
200g diced lamb
150g tomatoes blended up, or peeled and chopped
Juice of half a lemon
2 tsp sugar
Half a butternut squash, peeled, cored and chopped into bite-sized chunks
75g dried chana dhal

The all important spices

(from the top and clockwise: ground corander, star anise, cardamom pods, cloves, cround cumin, ground turmeric, salt, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds, bay leaf, cinnamon stick)

 

Ginger, garlic and onion

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the onions, garlic and ginger.

Fry for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft, then add the spices and salt.

Continue stirring so it doesn't stick, adding a splash of water if it looks a bit dry.

Add the lamb and keep sauteing for about 5 more minutes, until the meat is browned.

Throw in the tomatoes, lemon juice, sugar, chana dhal and squash and stir wel.

Add 300ml water and bring to a gentle boil.

Pour the lot into your slow cooker, set it to medium, cover, and leave it for a few hours (at least 5 in a slow cooker, but see notes for alernative methods).

Allow the amazing aroma permeate your house, then serve with pilau rice,and naan bread or add a vegetable side dish if you're hungry.

Served up, ready to eat

NOTES
This is made with lamb, but I've also made it with chicken (bone-in thighs, skinless), though you could cook it for less time, or would also work with beef.

I used chana dhal, which is a fairly large lentil, almost as big as a chickpea, which holds its shape well, becoming tender but still quite firm after a long, slow cook. Regular red lentils have a tendency to disintegrate, which would also work, though will add a different texture to the dish

Other vegetables would work in this, but sturdy root vegetables stand up to long cooking. Mushrooms would also work, espeicaly if you did this with beef instead of lamb. Pumpkins, like squashes, work so well in a curry, however.

You could  make this on the hob or even in a casserole dish in the oven. You could probably get away with a couple of hours on the stove, and maybe three in the oven. The joy of the slow cooker is the fact that the dish is you can stick it on, forget about it until you're ready to eat it

This blog entry sees me return to a subject I've touched on before in this blog, the act of farting. Farting is, and always will be, hilariously funny. Don't take my word for it, ask my son (9 years old at the time of writing). He'll agree.

Why were lentils regarded as something of a joke food when I was growing up? This is part of the reason why:

The Young Ones and the wonder of lentils, as long as they're not South African

Bean and potato hotpot

Northern stereotypes

(at least Micahel Palin is an actual Yorkshireman)

Whippets, cloth caps and coronary heart disease, but we do talk to people on buses and don't wear coats in the depths of winter. We Northerners have had to put up with all sorts of lazy stereotypes. I mean, don't get me wrong, at least we're not Scottish, but, as far as England goes, we get the shitty end of the stick most of the time. Shat upon by the London-centric ruling elite through under-resourced transport and other infrastructure and the arts, we are the former industrial heart of the country given lip service in the modern, service-industry UK. The current government has set up the "Northern Powerhouse" initiative to promote the north of England. It is, of course, a load of hollow-sounding bollocks, in the light of the disparity in funding for transport for London being £708 per capita compared to £289 in the north of England. All that money so people in London can continue to avoid eye-contact with their fellow commuters on better, more frequent trains. Like I say, lip service.

All the same we are fiercely proud of our identity, though. Geordies, Yorkshiremen, Scousers, Mancs, people have a pride of where they are from. A component of this is culinary heritage. Pies are a big thing across the North, especially in the capital of all that is pastry-encased, Wigan. Fish and chips is another, saveloys in the Northeast. Don't even get me started on the regional variation of names for bread rolls. That just boggles the fucking mind. Go into a bakers in any Northern town and ask for a bread bun by the local name and there's no problem. Wander a mile down the road and you ask for a bread roll by the same name and they look at you like you're just regaining the power of speech after suffering a stroke.

One local delicacy that is synonymous with the part of the North is Lancashire hotpot. Basically this is a lamb stew topped with sliced potato, so the potatoes become crispy. It's shepherd's pie for lazy people who can't be arsed to mash their potato.

I don't know why I chose to call this recipe a hotpot as it has fuck all to do with Lancashire hotpot, other than it's got potatoes in it, but the name seems to fit. Like most of my recipes, it's quite spicy hot and made in a pot. It's another meat-free Monday recipe (it's actually vegan, in fact) that I fancied flinging together with beans to give it a bit of extra protein. It's very substantial and tastes great, very much a comfort food type of dish. I've written the recipe for the hob, but I actually made this in a slow cooker, so I've included a timing for doing it by that method.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking:  1½ hours on the hob, 6 hours in the slow cooker

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
200g mushrooms, chopped
1 large courgette, topped, tailed and sliced
2-3 small potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces 
4 medium fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 tin mixed beans (the one I used said it was 290g)
½ tsp dried mixed herbs
½ tsp smoked paprika
Pinch chilli flakes
Good dash of Tabasco sauce
1 bay leaf
Small stick of cinnamon
1 vegetable stock cube
Black pepper to taste

All chopped up and ready to go

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion and garlic until soft.

Add the courgette and mushroom and allow to sweat for 10 minutes or so.

Chuck in the potatoes, tomatoes and beans.

Top up the volume with 500ml water and add the rest of the ingredients.

Stir well, turn down the heat, and allow to stew until the potatoes are soft, may be 45 minutes or so.

 In the pot

Serve it up with some fresh bread to mop up the sauce

Ready to eat

NOTES
The beans I used in this came in a spicy, tomatoey sauce (I think they were sold by the supermarket under the name "taco beans"). The sauce added a little extra oomph to the flavour. You could use plain beans, or even use dried mixed beans, but maybe add some ketchup to pep up the flavour. Mixed beans add a nice variety, but you could use kidney or borlotti beans, or even (God forbid) baked beans at a pinch.

Many of the recipes that are traditionally Northern originate from other parts of the world entirely. Liverpool's signature dish, scouse, a meat stew, is derived from a similar dish made around the Baltic ports of northern Europe. Saveloys are originally a type of sausage from Switzerland (the name derived, apparently, from the Latin "cerebrus", for brain, as they were originally made from pig brains), possibly arriving in the UK with Jewish immigrants. Jewish immigrants/refugees from Spain and Portugal are also purportedly the original creators of that most British of dishes, fish and chips.

The slow cooker I got is fucking amazing. I've been doing shitloads of recipes in it. Chuck the ingredients in and fuck off for a few hours. When you come back, supper's ready. Speaking of which, and if you have a half hour to spare, get a load of this turgid slice of prog rock

Supper's ready!
You could watch this at least twice while the dish is cooking

For the slow cooker version, do the frying of the onions, garlic, etc on the hob then transfer to the slow cooker for the main cooking part.

Pasta with aubergine, basil, chilli and pine nuts

Pasta is funny stuff. On the one hand, it's been the staple of student diets, in one form or another, for years. Often just served with grated cheese as it's cheap, filling and quick. At the other extreme, it's the lynchpin of the cuisine of an entire country where it can be covered in all sorts of over-priced shit, like truffles or caviar for fuck's sake. Yet another example of the gentrification of what has been a peasant food for centuries, a subject I've already ranted about.

Let's face it, pasta is usually nothing more than wheat and water, pressed into some fancy shapes. Obviously this belies the long culinary history of pasta. all the way from Italy. There are estimated to be over 350 varieties of pasta, many of which named after a dizzying array of things. Body parts seem a common theme with ears (orecchiette), tongues (linguine), moustaches (mostaccioli, another name for penne) all having pasta shapes named after them. Invertebrates get a bit of a look in too, with snails (lumache), squid (calamarata), worms (vermicelli) and butterflies (farfalle) all having a starring role. Then there is the really odd like bibs (bavette), cooking pots (lasagne) and thimbles (ditalini). Sadly there aren't any obviously rude official regional pasta varieties, as would fit the nature of this blog, though, as I pointed out previously, the word penne is just one "n" too many away from meaning penis. Then, I consulted everybody's friend Google and found that there is actually a dick-shaped pasta variety.

Al dente

 Picture from http://brokenoakranch.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/pornographic-pasta.html

Anyway, moving back to the recipe in hand, when considering vegetarian dishes, pasta is a perfect base and the Italian love of fresh vegetables make for some delicious possibilities. This concoction is no exception and really is a cracking little recipe. Aubergines, garlic, chilli, basil and a few crunchy pine nuts mean it's stupidly simple and quick to put together. 

TIMING
Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp olive oil plus additional for pouring on
2 tbsp pine nuts
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large aubergine (around 300g in size), chopped into 2cm dice
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
Salt and black pepper to taste
Handful of fresh basil leaves
150-200g dried pasta (penne or fusilli work)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a large pan and throw in the pine nuts

Fry them for a couple of minutes, until they are golden brown before removing them with a slotted spoon

Add the garlic to the hot oil and fry for 2 minutes before adding the aubergine.

Fry for another 10-15 minutes until the aubergine pieces start to colour

Add the tomato puree, black pepper and salt to taste and continue to cook for another 10-15 minutes, adding the odd tablespoon of water if it gets too dry

Meanwhile, cook the pasta and drain.

Turn the pasta into the pan with the cooked aubergine, mix, and add the pine nuts.

Finally, tear the basil leaves and add to the pasta and aubergines and stir, adding additional olive oil to give the dish a glossy look.

Serve up with some nice crusty bread.

NOTES
Probably because my pedigree is more factory-made by Clarks in northern England than hand-made in Milan, I don't have much time for the whole idea that a certain shape of pasta must be served with a certain type of sauce. In this instance, the dried penne and fusilli I used (there was half a portion of fusilli left so had to add some penne from a new packet) held onto the sauce well. I've also served this with fresh tagliatelli and it works just as good.

The basil and pine nuts really make this dish. Dried basil is not a substitute for fresh leaves as the taste is very different. Pine nuts could possibly be swapped for other nuts, perhaps peanuts or cashews, but the dish will be missing the subtle coniferous fragrance that they impart.

One rare problem with pine nuts is pine mouth syndrome. This can happen after eating some pine nuts when, as I found out one time, you end up with a bitter taste in your mouth for a few days after eating the kernel. It does fade, but you don't enjoy your dinners for a few days as a result.

Contrary to urban myth, pasta was not brought to Italy by Marco Polo coming back from China, but by Arabs from North Africa. Is nothing sacred? Next thing you know they'll be claiming Arabs gave the world mathematics like algebra or made early advances in astronomy. Oh, wait, they did.

Aromatic courgette curry

So it's another recipe for meat-free days. I went into some of the environmental arguments for going vegetarian in my last blog entry but one real advantage for eating vegie is that it's just much cheaper than meat. It's not that I'm pleading poverty, and I've no intention of giving up meat any time soon, but there is something great about knocking up something like this which costs next to fuck all and takes little more than an hour.

I've twatted on about courgetttes and how great they are in a previous post, but what I was unaware of is that this humble vegetable is another import from the Americas. So, along with peppers, chillies and tomatoes, which were also brought over from the New World, European and Asian cuisine would have been so fucking dull before the Conquistadors made it to America. They also brought back syphilis, so, I guess that's a case of swings and roundabouts. And let's not forget that chocolate also came from the New World, so, on balance, it's a win for white Europeans, in addition to the devastation they wreaked on the native civilisations and the population as a whole on the other side of the Atlantic. We got a whole new pantry full of ingredients, they got genocide.

Conquistadors
OK, we'll swap you horses, the wheel and Catholicism for the contents of your gardens

picture from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/10/conquistadors-sacrificed-eaten-aztec-acolhuas

TIMING
Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 50 minutes

INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ground tumeric
1 whole star anise
1 tsp ground coriander
3 cloves
4 whole green cardamom pods
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp whole fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
1 10cm piece cinnamon stick
pinch ground black pepper
pinch  dried chilli flakes
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large courgette, topped, tailed and sliced
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
100ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
Salt

More spices
(clockwise from 12 o'clock: ground cumin, bay leaf, tumeric, cinnamon stick, ground coriander, star anise, cloves, chilli flakes, black pepper, cardamom pods with fennel seeds in the middle)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and add the spices for 2 minutes.

Throw in the onion, ginger and garlic, and fry gently for 10 minutes.

Add the courgette and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and water, stir then add salt to taste.

Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes

Serve with rice

Ready to eat 

(on right of plate with aloo gobi on left on a bed of plain, boiled basmati rice)

NOTES
 This is a great dish to serve with aloo gobi that I posted a recipe for recently. This uses more earthy flavoured spices which contrast well with the richly fragrant nature of this courgette curry.

Courgettes are members of the pumpkin/squash family, the cucurbit. It's not all about versatile vegetables, mind. This family also contains the penis gourd which has made an appearance in this blog in a previous post.I'm not sure who dreamed up the idea, but they must have had a pretty eccentric outlook.
"That's a funny looking vegetable. Does it taste nice?"
"Not really. Not sure what to do with it"
"Well, if you dry it out it would make a great cover for your cock"

A decorative penis gourd from Papua New Guinea

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koteka

Aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower curry)

I have mentioned vegetarianism in previous posts, how I even tried being a vegetarian as a pretentious student. What I didn't mention then was that the reason for this was, in part, to get on the good side of a girl who was in the same student hall as me that I quite fancied. It's a scientifically proven fact* that most guys who perform a coup de theatre in terms of lifestyle in their late teens, like turning away from meat for instance, are generally doing it to get into the pants of someone they like. Anyway, at the time, my justification was the poor yield of protein per hectare from raising livestock for food compared to arable farming which was morally wrong when people were starving in the world. Using this justification I could then allow eating lamb doner kebabs as sheep were raised on scrubby hills that had no use in growing vegetables, and fish, since this was mainly gotten from out of water.The spell of vegetarianism lasted for a few weeks before I lapsed back into eating meat properly. A legacy of this time is the fact that I have absolutely no qualms about eating vegetarian food on a regular basis.

More recently, it has become well publicised that meat production leaves a far larger carbon footprint than growing vegetables alone. While it's true that most people in the west have larger carbon footprints than a sasquatch in snow shoes that are five sizes too big, and any change in diet would have a pretty minute effect on this, it still gives a chance to prevent the liberation of a tiny amount of additional carbon into the atmosphere. There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint, like not flying, having children, having pets or driving a car, but who wants to stop doing any of that?

One of the main causes of the increased carbon emission through raising livestock is the effect of intestinal gas from cattle. Cow farts are making the world a warmer place as they release methane which is 23 times worse at causing atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide. One possibility to offset this might be to stop the cows farting in the first place and one way of doing this is using charcoal. Perhaps giving Ermintrude a load of charcoal tablets might help alleviate this source of pollution. It may even have the added bonus of the cows shitting ready-formed BBQ briquettes, so everyone's a winner. Well, apart from the cows, who would be producing the fuel by which they would be cooked of a nice summer evening.

Charcoal tablets

A possible solution to global warming

from http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/lifeplan-windaway-activated-charcoal-capsules-60002792?skuid=002792&&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_adid=185747624549&utm_adgID=58700002241441623&gclid=CMC26Z3xjtUCFYIaGwodisEPAw

So where am I going with this? Well, it's another vegetarian recipe as I am planning a regular meat free dinner every week. India has more vegetarians than the population of most countries, so it's not surprising that some of the very best vegetarian cuisine comes from the subcontinent.

I have done a recipe for another potato curry previously, but this is a take on an aloo gobi, where the spud is partnered with cauliflower in one of the tastiest vegetable curries found on the menu of an Indian takeaway. As I mentioned before, potatoes have enough substance to them to make a decent main course in their own right, plus the lentils add extra protein and make for an even more substantial meal.

*It probably isn't scientifically proven, but I've not looked at the literature so it might be.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 70 minutes

INGREDIENTS
150g dried red lentils
200g cauliflower florets broken into bite-sized pieces
450g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-3cm cubes
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin seeds
½ tsp whole fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp onion seeds
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground tumeric
pinch of chilli flakes
Salt

It's another spice picture
(from 10 o'clock: coriander, black pepper, mustard seeds, chilli flakes, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds with paprika in the middle)

RECIPE
Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, strain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a good, heavy pan and add the spices, onion and garlic and gently fry for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the cauliflower and keep stirring for another 5 minutes.

Add the lentils to the pan and add 200ml water and salt according to taste.

Bring to the boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes (until the potatoes become tender).

Serve with rice and/or naan bread, on its own or with another curry or two
.

 Aloo gobi 

(on the left, with a courgette curry on a bed of plain boiled rice)

NOTES
In contrast to most of my previous curry recipes, this dish uses lots of earthy rather than the more aromatic spice flavours and doesn't have a tomato base. It is a good contrast to these if you are serving more than one dish

I used floury old potatoes in this recipe as the texture works better than new potatoes.

A cow farts aren't the only trump that cause a stink and fucks up the world.

Traditionally, cauliflower has been a fairly unassuming vegetable, being boiled on its own or perhaps upping the ante a little with cauliflower cheese, the vegetarian staple of the 70s. However, cauliflower is currently having a bit of a surge in popularity as a "low carb" food and is finding uses as a substitute for rice, pizza base or even steak. Why stop there? How about cauliflower chocolate brownies, cauliflower yoghurt, cauliflower flavoured condoms? It's fucking cauliflower for Christ's sake. It's a lovely vegetable in its own right and doesn't need to be given superpowers. However, if you are using it in some other dish, I would say that aloo gobi is as good as it gets.

There aren't a huge number of songs that mention curries in general, let alone aloo gobi in particular. One that does, however, is this spoof of Kula Shaker's Govinda, by former Radio 1 DJs Mark and Lard performing as their band the Shire Horses.

Toad in the hole with red onion gravy

Baron Silas Greenback
Famous toad and nemesis of Dangermouse and not featured in this recipe whatsoever
from https://comicvine.gamespot.com/baron-greenback/4005-85373/

Lying bastards, the lot of them. Recipe writers I mean. Shepherds' pie is not made from actual shepherds, hamburgers don't contain ham and devils on horseback are no more infernal than a stroll in the park. Likewise, toad in the hole. It's just sausages in Yorkshire pudding and has no actual amphibian content at all. Well, unless you manage to get hold of some toad sausages. This isn't as unlikely as you might think as sausages can be made from representatives of most of the animal kingdom. Personally, for example, I've eaten sausages made from squirrel and zebra, besides the usual domestic livestock. In fact, someone in Australia does make sausages from cane toads but they weren't actually for human consumption but to distribute around the environment as a form of aversion therapy in order to make other animals puke and stop eating the toxic toads.

In fact, a lot of amphibians have some truly interesting stuff weeping out of their warts. Cane toads are part of urban legend because of their supposedly hallucinogenic secretions. People have been actively looking for these little fellas and giving them a lick in an attempt to get high. Thing is, as well as having hallucinogenic qualities, the secretions are also actually quite toxic and this has made the toad lickers keel over, getting them less tripping off their tits and more shuffling off this mortal coil.

I've posted a few recipes for British dishes in the past but I have generally been pretty scathing about what passes for British (or, more specifically, English) cuisine. However, this is another rare example of a truly great dish that hails from this sceptered isle. 

INGREDIENTS
Gravy
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp plain flour 
1 vegetable stock cube
½ tbsp Worcester sauce
½ tbsp dark soy sauce
150 ml red wine
350 ml water

Toad in the hole
2 medium eggs poured into a mug
an equal volume of plain flour
an equal volume of milk
salt and pepper
1tsp coarse grain mustard
6 good quality pork sausages (enough for 2 or 3 per adult)
2 tbsp oil (not olive, something like rapeseed)

RECIPE
Make the gravy by first heating the oil in a medium-sized pan

Fry the onion and celery in the hot oil, gently, over about 15-20 minutes so it becomes soft and lightly caramelised

Add the flour and mix well, scraping any thing that catches on the pan bottom so it doesn't stick before adding the rest of the ingredients and stirring well.

Bring to a gentle boil and very simmer for 20 minutes or so, and keep warm ready for serving with the toad in the hole

Make the Yorkshire pudding batter by breaking the eggs into a mug, then adding the same volume of flour in a similar mug.

Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl to remove any lumps

In the same mug that was used to measure the flour, add milk to the same volume as the eggs in the other mug.

Make a well in the middle of the flour in the mixing bowl and pour in the eggs.

Add plenty of salt and pepper and the teaspoon of mustard and, using a fork, start to beat the eggs, gradually incorporating flour from the edges of the well

Begin adding the milk, a little at a time, again incorporating the flour from the edges of the flour

When all combined, keep beating the batter to remove lumps, ideally by switching to a whisk

Heat the oven to 220°C

To an oven-proof dish, add the vegetable oil and the sausages and put in the oven for 10 minutes

Remove the dish,  pour in the batter and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with the gravy over a big mound of creamy mashed potato

NOTES
This recipe for Yorkshire pudding batter is one recommended by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or, as I refer to him, Hugh Fearnley-Poshbloke) and also works for individual puddings to accompany a Sunday roast.

While I may poke fun at him for his Eton background, I do have a lot of respect for HFW as a cook, and do like his approach to quality food.

The better the sausages, the better this dish will be. Good, meaty ones work best.

Leftover symphonies 4: Goose Goan Vindaloo (which also works with chicken)

A bucket of vindaloo
Somehow it seem appropriate to include this shouty football song

Misappropriation was one of the buzzwords of 2016. It usually referred to things like white people wearing dreadlocks, white people wearing a bindi or white people doing yoga, apparently. I agree to a certain degree. Why do you need to wear a bindi? It's a mark of religious significance in the Hindu faith. You wear one as a fashion statement, you're a twat. Yoga is a great way to improve flexibility and can lead to a generally improved sense of well-being, but if you subscribe to the pseudo-mystical bullshit that accompanies it, you're a twat and you can stick your chakra up your kundalini . If you have ginger hair and wear dreadlocks, not only do you look like a twat, you probably act like a twat (go on, off you fuck. Those gaudily coloured fucking balls won't juggle themselves, you fucking waster) and almost certainly smell like an unhygienic twat.

The question, though, is when does the sharing and enjoying of other cultures become misappropriation? I've mentioned the fusion and adaption (or bastardisation if you prefer) of certain cuisines in previous posts (notably this one) and if it tastes good, do it. I mean it's not like you're taking something of deep cultural significance and shitting on it. You're not dropping off the kids at the pool in a font for example, it's only food. Besides, a lot of the time you can't make a truly authentic meal according to the recipe because the ingredients have never been seen within 100 miles of your town. You know, like that Yottam Ottolenghi recipe for veal that he insists only tastes authentic if you use the pickled foreskins of virgin aardvarks in the sauce. Thing is, whilst using lime juice instead of tamarind paste might not give the same authentic flavour you get from a street vendor in Kuala Lumpur, it will still taste great, so do it!, Fuck authenticity, it's dinner. Even more importantly, where would the cuisines of the old world be without integrating the things brought over from the newly discovered Americas - things like chilli, tomato, potato - 500 years ago?

This dish is more of a double-reverse cultural assimilation/misappropriation though. In the UK, vindaloo curries are generally renowned as the hottest of the dishes in your regular curry house (apart from the notoriously legendary phaal). There is a potato element (the "aloo") in a lot of versions. In my experience, however, they tend to have sacrificed all the delicate flavour you expect in a curry to produce something that is merely "hot", mainly so that pissed dickheads can show their mates how tough they are at 4am after a skinful. A UK curry house vindaloo is not usually a great option for a curry. But, is this a culturally accurate version of vindaloo? Is it bollocks! It shares its name with the original vindaloo, but little else. This is the second occasion of cultural (mis)appropriation for the vindaloo.

Your typical UK restaurant vindaloo
 (apparently, anyway. These curries all look the same)
Image taken from http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/vindaloo.htm

The dish in this entry is a more authentic version of vindaloo, a curry originating from Goa during the time it was under Portuguese control. Its name does not come from the Hindi or Urdu word for potato, "aloo", but from the Portuguese for wine and garlic, carne de vinha d'alhos (literally "meat in garlic and wine") as this was a way of helping preserve meat, mainly pork, for long trips at sea. This Portuguese dish evolved further in the colony to use locally produced vinegar and spices to make this dish and the name became "vindaloo". So here's the first cultural appropriation of vindaloo and it's an example of a western idea being assimilated into eastern cuisine.

Anyway, onto the recipe in hand. Christmas has been and gone. In the sweary household we alternate year-on-year between turkey and goose for Christmas dinner. This year it was goose, but what the fuck to do with the leftovers? It had to be yet another curry.The problem with reheating roast meat still exists, but this is overcome by using vinegar to cut through the vaguely wet doggy smell and the inherent fattiness of the meat.

As I noted in the title, this also works for other birds, so is a great way to use leftover roast chicken

TIMING
Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 1 hour 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil (eg rapeseed)
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp ground tumeric
½ tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
3 green cardamom
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
4-500g cold roast goose (or chicken!) meat, no skin, chopped into 2cm chunks
200 ml white wine vinegar
400 ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp garam masala

 More spices than you can shake a stick at!
(From top left, 11 o'clock: fennel seeds, cloves, paprika, cardmom, onion seeds, tumeric, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, cumin, chilli flakes, coriander, salt, pepper and a bay leaf in the middle)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the onion and fry gently for a good 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 5 minutes

Throw in the spices (except the garam masala) and fry gently for another 5 minutes to allow the flavour to develop.

Add the green pepper and tomatoes, mix and allow to stew for 10 minutes to soften the peppers.

Throw in the goose meat, gently stir then pour in the tomato puree, vinegar and water.

Stir well and leave to stew for 30 minutes, stirring in the garam masala at around the 25 minute mark.

A panful of joy

Fill yer boots!
I don't actually know why you'd want to fill your boots with anything other than your feet, so it's a ridiculous phrase

Serve with rice or an Indian-style bread like naan.

NOTES
Only pretentious foodie wankers like me end up with leftover roast goose. This is why I need to stress that this dish works just as well with chicken but you could also use roast duck if you have any, as unlikely as that may be. I think I have also tried something similar to this with leftover roast pork so that would also work

I have tried a phaal curry on a couple of occasions. Once was an attempt at a prank, the other time was as a bet. The prank failed as I ate the curry without any problem and I also won the bet because I ate the curry without any problem. I did find, however, that on at least one of theses times I did need to spend most of the next day within close reach of a flushing toilet.

The use of vinegar means it's kind of a pickled curry. This is not the same as pickling your knees, and you're using vinegar rather than cheese. What the fuck am I on about? I refer you to the wonderful song below from the late Ivor Cutler on the subject:

This has some similarities to the recipe I posted for Hyderbadi chicken, which also uses vinegar.