Chicken garlic chilli stir-fry

Bacofoil is the new black
What the conspiracy nutter is wearing this year (and any other year for that matter)
Source: https://www.perpetualkid.com/tin-foil-hat/

Conspiracy theories really piss me off. Actually, that's not true. They crack me up because they are ridiculously hilarious. No, people who fiercely believe conspiracy theories, and cling to them in the face of overwhelming evidence against them, are what really, really piss me off. "Lizards run the world" (as espoused by a famous British conspiracy fuckwit who I'm not going to give the oxygen of publicity by naming). No they fucking don't. I've been to countries where lizards literally run all over the walls, and they are ace. However, there is no way they could collude with the Rothchilds and comandeer the global finance market. What, human-sized and shaped lizards you mean? I've seen some fucking huge monitor lizards, but they aren't very smart. What, masquerading as world leaders? I've never seen Bill Clinton regenerate a limb, Bill Gates catch a fly with his tongue or anyone with the name Rothschild lay an egg. Actually, to be fair, I don't know what any of the Rothschilds look like, but given that I've not seen any person lay an egg, I can safely say I've not seen a Rothschild lay an egg. It's almost as if the word "lizard" is a cypher for "Jew" and it's all a form of twisted antisemitism.

That moment you're at an illuminati meeting and you see one of your buddies who is also a member of the British Royal Family and you've not seen one another since you took control of the IMF
Source: https://www.storytrender.com/77851/fighting-lizards-hug-it-out-after-playful-tussle/

The lizard thing is on the fringes of conspiracies, it has to be said, but there are less immediately outlandish myths. The Rothschilds (who aren't lizards in this iteration, but are still Jewish. Do you start to see a pattern?) run the world, and are planning the New World Order via the Illuminati or the Freemasons or, I don't know, the WI, which flaunt their symbolism everywhere, from buildings to actual currency to appearances by prominent popstars. I mean, they don't, but nice try. Again, no real evidence, apart from some badly spelt meme written by some racist 35 year old virgin who still lives with his mother and isn't allowed out on his own after 6pm following his prosecution for the contents of his hard drive in 2012. The theories claim that pop stars like Beyonce and Jay-Z (who aren't Jewish, but are black. Or are they? Of course they fucking are, see link below) promote the New World Order through the way they hold their hands in videos. No they don't.

Freemasons you say?
A  corking dance track by the act of the same name, a cover of an Alanis Morrisette song, The Uninvited

At the time of writing, under the spectre of Covid 19, it's like every conspiracy theorist's wank fantasy has come true all at once. Claims include it's man-made (it's not), it's got some connection to 5G (utter bollocks) and that Bill Gates is paying for a virus that contains nanobots to control people (oh, for fuck's sake). You can argue the point of the imperialistic and paternalistic implications of Gates' approach to philanthropy, and that, far from throwing money at their own pet interests, billionaires like him should contribute to countries by paying their full commitment of tax, so their wealth can be distributed more equitably, but this doesn't change the fact that he (via his Foundation) is putting large amounts of real money into things that do save people, like vaccinations and measures to prevent the spread of malaria. It's funny that many of the people criticising Gates as a do-gooder are the sort of people who say "charity begins at home" yet don't actually donate anything to charities at home either.

SARS-CoV2 the virus
The resemblance between this and a 5G mast is... non-existent as this is a computerised model of what the virus is supposed to look like. It is too small to actually have any colour
Source: https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2020-03-16_tackling-covid-19-at-the-francis-crick-institute

The thing with conspiracy theories are the ridiculous assumptions that have to be made to believe in them. They fall down with any sort of close scrutiny, but the thing over-ruling all these leaps of faith that ultimately indicates they are, in fact, bullshit is that they need to have been organised by the people in charge. Can you really believe someone who has been impeached, bankrupt 6 times and divorced twice, having had numerous affairs, could manage to hold together some huge global plot to subjugate the human race? Or that the same someone, who has bragged about pretty much every aspect of their lives (usually without anything to be proud of), could possible keep their part in such a massive global operation quiet, even during those long, dark toilet trips of the soul at 4am (a common ourcome of a diet based on fast food, showing they are as devoid in dietary fibre as they are in the moral variety) with nothing to keep you company apart from a Wi-fi-connected smartphone and a Twitter account? Or could a different someone, who lacks the foresight to plan contraception in numerous affairs, resulting in an untold number of children (apparently at least 6) by any number of women could play any part in something so meticulous to enslave the population? Really, could someone who has lost several jobs because they have been caught lying and have several abandoned pie-in-the-sky projects that have held their name, be trusted by the overlords to be a part of something of such scale? Honestly, if you do fall for these sorts of fables, would you be interested in buying some magic beans? They came as a topping on a pizza sold from the Pizzagate restaurant. Of course, I could be part of the conspiracy, writing a sweary cooking blog in the privacy of my own home that conspiracy theories are bollocks. Just follow the money, bearing in mind I get fuck all for writing this stuff. Wake up sheeple!

So where is all this going? Trust me, I'm dragging it back to the recipe in hand. The science suggests that Sars-Cov2 originates in a bat, but may also be found in pangolins which possibly act as a reservoir for the virus, though we're not sure (given that we only became aware of this virus about 9 months ago at the time of writing, this is hardly surprising). Both animals are sold as food in wet markets across China, including Wuhan, where the disease was first reported. so people are in close proximity to this and other viruses. While wet markets obviously present a possible route for transmission of animal diseases from animals to humans (zoonoses), they are in no way the only one (BSE anyone? Possibly HIV/aids, maybe? And how about looking up the derivation of the word "vaccine") All this adds to the myths surrounding the eating habits of people in other cultures, which further contribute to the "othering" of people from different cultures, giving ammunition to the sort of people who sit in their dimly lit bedrooms making up racist conspiracy theories, when they're not wanking over child sexual abuse images. 

Oriental food in general, and Chinese in particular, gets a bad rap ("rap", not "rat", but I'll be covering this in a soon to be published edition of this blog, once I've got some pictures), largely because of stories like this. However, to be so dismissive of the entire cuisine of over a billion people, incorporating numerous regional varieties, covering tropical coastline to inland tundra and all in between, is a culinary crime. One of the fundamental techniques involved in Chinese cookery is stir-frying, which is a very quick way to cook and uses relatively little oil. The technique orginates, apparently, because when you make fires using bamboo, they burn very hot, very fast, so you have to do quick cooking at high tempreature. The important thing to remember about stir-frying is that all the ingredients need to be prepared to be a similar shape and size, so they cook evenly, and though the actual act of cooking by stir-fry is actually pretty rapid, the preparation takes longer.

This recipe is something similar to what you might find in any Chinese takeaway, and chilli and garlic work very well together with chicken. You can of course buy ready-made sauces with similar ingredients, and they make a really quick dinner mid-week, but any homemade sauce has a much better flavour.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Sauce
1½ tbsp light soy sauce
2tbsp dry sherry
2tsp white wine vinegar
2tsp sugar
1tsp cornflour
½tbsp sriracha chilli sauce

A thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
2tbsp vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 small-medium sized carrot, cut into julienne strips
2 green chillies, finely sliced
3 spring onions, trimmmed and cut diagonally into 3cm batons
1 green pepper, seeded, cored and cut into thin strips
200g chicken fillet, cut into strips

RECIPE
Combine the sauce ingredients and mix well, ensuring there aren't any lumps of cornflour, and set aside.

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan until it's really hot, almost smoking.

Add the chicken and stir fry until cooked (about 7-10 minutes).

Remove with a slotted spoon, reserving the remaining oil.

Add the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a minute before adding the spring onion, chilli and green pepper for a further 5 minutes.

Mix up the sauce mixture and pour it into the wok, stirring contantly while it thickens.

 A wok full of joy

Serve it up with rice (ideally egg-fried). Feeds two easily.

NOTES
The basis of this recipe can be modified to make other Chinese style stir-fries. The meat can be changed to beef, pork or prawn. You can even make it vegetarian by just adding lots of different vegetables, or tofu. You can flavour it differently by omitting the chilli sauce, chilli and most of the garlic (it always need some garlic). the important factors are the soy sauce, wine/sherry and the cornflour. That by itself has a great flavour, but mess about with it, adding black pepper, lemon, or whatever is in your favourite Chinese takeaway.

Cornflour acts to thicken the sauce, and if you use too much it can become a bit too thick, so try not to overdo it. It gives the sauce a lovely, clear, gloss that you wouldn't get from regular flour.

Like most of these Chinese sauces, dry sherry is used in place of the more authhentic rice wine. I've never used rice wine in one of these dishes asit seems a bit overkill. Do use decent dry sherry, however, like a fino and not oversweetened shite like Harvey's Bristol Cream which tastes like alcoholic syrup.

Sriracha is the archetypal hot sauce of Asia, particulary in Thailand. It's rich and warm, but there are similar sauces that could be used. Thai sweet chilli sauce would work. In a lot of countries, (notably Malaysia and Singapore) there is a bottle of Maggi Chilli Sauce on tables in food centres everywhere, and this would also be a good alternative.

You generally don't have to scratch too deep below the surface of most conspiracy theories to find the true motive of the myth. More often than not there's a racist trope (very often in the form of antisemtisim) just sitting at the bottom, like that awkward turd in the toilet bowl that won't flush away. Many of these stories have their roots in Nazism or hate propaganda from even earlier.

The problem with most people who believe in conspiracy theories is that they add two and two and get a dirty weekend for two in Skegness. The X-Files and The Matrix have shit-loads to answer for. At least the first Matrix film ended on a banging anthem against the murder of black people in the USA by the police. There was a great cover of it made by New York protest collective, Brass Against, below.

Brass Against: Wake up
Cover of Rage Against the Machine's polemic railing against murder of black people in the US. This version is every bit as angry as the original and the song is more relevant now than when the original was released 28 years ago.

Black Lives Matter

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.

Jerk stewed chicken

Capsaicin
For what it's worth
Source: https://me-pedia.org/wiki/File:Capsaicin_peppers.png

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a big fan of the chilli. Probably more than half the recipes I've published in this blog contain chilli in some form or other. The substance in chillies that makes them hot is called capsaicin. There's some interesting biochemistry involved in how it works (to me, at any rate) which I won't go into. One thing I will say, however, is that capsaicin affects a receptor called TRPV1 in mammals, but not in birds. Mammals have great teeth at the back of their mouths to grind things like seeds, whereas birds swallow them whole, So, if you're a chilli plant, you want your seeds to pass through an animal unharmed so they can be deposited elsewhere, and not crushed up in the jaws of some milk-weaned twat. Therefore having some substance in your fruit that give mammals a burning sensation after eating them keeps them well away This means birds eat the chillies, poo the seeds and spread the plant far and wide. On the other hand it means that birds will never know the sweet pain of a really good, hot curry. They'll never experience that life-affirming feeling of a really searing chilli, and its accompanying endorphin high. Imagine that, you're a bird and can't get a really good, ring-stinging curry, which is truly one of the great pleasures in life. Saying that, most of the ring-stinging curries I've had contain birds, in the way of chicken, so that would be kind of cannibalism. Family Guy did address this in one of their episodes (see below). On the other hand, having seen the mess bird poo already makes on a car, it's probably not a bad thing that they aren't affected by chilli.

Taking a tern for the worse
The problems of eating chicken if you're a seagull, though, seagulls are probably as far removed , in evolutionary terms, from chickens as humans are from cows

Of course, there's a major flaw in the chilli plant's strategy to avoid being eaten by mammals, in that it didn't reckon on the masochistic tendencies of a certain great ape to derive pleasure from pain via endorphins. Hell, getting pleasure from pain is such a big thing in humans that some people actually part with large sums of money to prostitutes to sandpaper their testicles... apparently. There's even some suggestion that people who eat lots of spicy chilli may live longer, which means I might actually now be immortal. The effect of capsaicin, however, isn't restricted to the mouth. Anyone who's ever chopped a chilli then touched their eye will know what I'm talking about, or worse, if you've ever needed a wee after preparing chillies. The weirdest thing is having a wee after eating a lot of hot chilli gives a good simulation of a UTI as the capsaicin burns on the way out.

So, anyway, the amount of capsaicin and related compounds in a pepper determine how hot they are and there is a scale to determine that. the Scoville Scale. It was conceived by Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, diluting extract of chilli until it couldn't be tasted any more. Nowadays, of course, we do it by measuring actual capsaicin itself and adding a fiddle factor to give a Scoville heat unit, or SHU. The range in SHU is huge. A sweet pepper has a value up to 100, the jalapeño and chipotle 2.5-10K, the Thai bird's eye 50-100K, the Habanero (as used to make the famous Tabasco sauce) and Scotch bonnet (I'll come onto that in a bit) at 100-350K to the stupidly hot Bhut Jolokia (aka ghost pepper) and Trinidad Scorpion at 750K-1.5M or Carolina Reaper and sinisterly named Pepper X (the current world record holder as the hottest pepper) at 1.5 to 3M or greater, on a par with law enforcement pepper spray.

Chilli Peppers
They're not all red hot
Green pepper, Jalapeno, Chipotle, Birds eye, Habanero, Scotch bonnet, Bhut Jolokia, Trinidad scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Pepper X. They get more deformed, ugly and evil they look, the hotter they get
Sources: https://www.foodcity.com/product/0000000004065/, https://www.veritable-garden.co.uk/small-fruits-vegetables/140-jalapeno-hot-chili-lingot-3760262511665.html, https://www.spicesinc.com/p-84-chipotle-morita-chiles.aspx, https://www.nutrivaso.com/2016/05/, https://blog.sonoranspice.com/the-habanero-breaking-down-the-popular-pepper-with-extreme-heat/, https://www.shutterstock.com/search/scotch%2Bbonnet%2Bpeppers?page=2&section=1, https://www.friedas.com/products/ghost-chile/, https://mychilligarden.com/moruga-scorpion-red/, https://www.lazada.com.my/products/10-seeds-carolina-reaper-the-worlds-hottest-chilli-pepper-no-1-in-guinness-worlds-records-2013-2017-benih-cili-terpedas-i191107705.html , https://twitter.com/buypepperxseeds/status/929442732132716545

The Scotch bonnet is one of the hottest regular peppers you can get hold of fairly easily and cheaply in the UK, especially if you are privileged to live in an area with a large Afro-Caribbean population. It's got a wonderful fruity falvour besides the chilli heat and is a common ingredient in Carribean cuisine, especially that of Jamaica, which I've covered before. It's a major component of jerk seasoning, which is the basis of this dish. Jerk, in food terms, usually refers to marinated grilled meat of some sort, and is a great way to add some pep to your BBQ. However, we found this recipe years ago in an otherwise shit magazine (I think it was actually Take a Break, believe it or not) and have been making it ever since. It uses jerk seasoning, or paste, in a stew with pineapple, peppers and tomatoes. It's probably the hottest regular dish we cook, without adding any extra chilli, but it is really delicious.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 peppers, cored, seeded and cut into strips (any colour, though at least one of them should be red)
200-250g chicken fillet, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tin of tomatoes
1 small tin (230g) pineapple chunks in pineapple juice
1 tsp jerk paste
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp ground ginger
Pinch dried thyme
Salt and pepper

Ingredients
From top left, clocwise: tomatoes, pineapple, red and yellow peppers, onion, garlic and spices in the dish: ginger, allspice, thyme jerk paste.

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion for 5 minutes

Add the garlice and fry for another couple of minutes

Throw in the peppers and fry for 5 more minutes

Add the chicken and the whole tin of tomatoes and the pineapple, including the juice

Throw in the jerk paste, ginger, allspice and thyme, plus a good grind of black pepper and a bit of salt.

Pour in 100ml water, stir, bring to the boil

In da pan

Turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 30-60 minutes. Remove the lid for a bit if it's a bit wet

Serve up with something traditionally Caribbean like rice and peas or, as we usually do in our house, with oven-roasted diced potatoes. Roasted sweet potatoes work even better. 

Served up and ready to eat

NOTES
This would work well with pork or beef. Chicken on the bone, in the way of thighs or drumsticks, is also a good alternative, and a little cheaper.

A couple of different colours of pepper make it look really great, but you could swap in some sweet potato instead.

Adding the pineapple juice adds a nice sweetness to this dish which goes well with the chilli heat.

Jerk paste is available from supermarkets and is made from spring onions, Scotch bonnet chillies, thyme and allspice which give it a really distinctive Caribbean flavour. It's incredibly potent, so you really need to use it sparingly. It lasts ages in the fridge. The stuff we're using at the moment is from Dunn's River. It's great to marinate meat before barbecueing as well. I add a little extra allspice, thyme plus add ginger to pep up the spice flavour a little.

Jerk spice

Wilbur Scoville is not to be confused with Philip Schofield, though he is also responsible for more than his fair share of eyes watering after he broke the hearts of housewives across the nation when he came out as gay live on national TV recently. Of course, coming out as gay at his age is actually a tragedy, as he should have been able to expresshis sexuality throughout his life without fear of it affecting his career. He also announced he was a Tory at some point recently, so he does have something in his closet that he should have been ashamed about.

Now, I know what you're thinking "So, Iain, I suppose, given the discussion of chillies, you're going to sign this off with a video from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, aren't you?" and the ansewer is no. They're shite and also alleged sleazy sex pests, so, in appreciation of the Scotch Bonnet chilli, there's something way more in keeping with the nature of this blog. This is a song about the joys of the Highland wind whistling round your meat and two veg whilst wearing a kilt, something that would be a good thing to experience to ease the aforementioned ring-sting after an infernally hot dish such as this recipe. Never mind trying to find what's hiding Under the Bridge. What you need to ask is "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?"

Andy Stewart's biggest hit

Donald, where's your troosers?
I took them off because it makes dogging easier.

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