"I'll have the lamb - rare and bloody"

I can't hold it in any longer. And the more I notice it the more frequently it haunts me. It - is the new Marco Pierre-White Knorr stock cubes advert. 

This series of ads have bothered me as all chefs in adverts do - they take away the believability in their passion for food. Jamie, Heston, Gordon - they're all guilty of selling out. But Marco? This one goes just a little further than the pure, simple selling-your-soul rabbit hole.

Marco's recent 'Steak Season' episode in the Knorr series, really disturbs my shudderbone. Think Buffalo Bill. Think Silence of the Lambs. Think "it rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

Marco's version of this spine-chilling quote? "I'd mash them into a paste with olive oil" (deathly pause) "and rub it in".

Maybe it's the odd past tense he uses but I get proper shudders when its on. See for yourself - now is it just me, or is that proper freaky stuff?

Now, I'm off for a niiiice Chiaaaanti....ff ff ff ff fff ff ff ff fff!

Nx

one of my five a day

Another quick one. I've been waiting to share this bad boy for a couple of weeks now. Beautiful, moist, sweet, nutty carrot cake from the Bocabar at the Paintworks, Bristol. This may spawn yet another top of the pops. Humana humana....

Nx

Baking for bacon

A bit of cross-blogging today. Find out what our double act have been up to at work at UWE Bristol to raise money for Cancer Research UK. 

Here's a little clue...

N x

The movies for foodies

Tonight I did a bad. It's not the first time it's happened in recent weeks. Congratulations to Cadbury who, despite the doom and gloom of the Kraft takeover, have managed to reinvent the wheel (so to speak) with a new edition to their snack bag family - the Caramel Nibbles. The fusion of giant chocolate buttons with the original caramel chunks is ingenious and yet dangerous for bloaters such as myself. The 'bad' i spoke of earlier, is my ability to fight through the dress size barrier and chow down on a whole bag of these things. So, if I were Carrie SATC (or Gok Wan for that fact) I might say - and I kinda got to thinking - this whole bag of Nibbles thing made me think about cinema sweets. Which is king? It's tricky. Tricky tricky tricky.

On Friday I'm off to a Wayne's World night at the Lanes in Bristol. Part of the lure lies with their promise of strawberry licquorice to complement the film. If I ever let myself loose with a scoop in the cinema,  I load up on them. I don't think Wayne and Garth's were as tampered with as the ones I favour: the red outer skin is purely a casing for white sugary chewiness - almost like some kind of strange bone marrow. Oh god, it's the pick n mix equivalent of a dog chew. This may hamper its chances of winning uber movie snack now... Time to move on.

Clear contenders are the pre-Nibbles chocolate bag options. The three M's primarily: Maltesers, Minstrels and M&Ms. And for those brave enough to take on the "noooooo, not the coffee one" chocolate roulette, Revels can add some sad strange excitement to movie night. The fear here is that despite the change in packaging over the years; the seal, the matt effect, the foil inside - nothing can prevent the inevitable sweaty hand/melty chocolate fusion. Before you know it, the heat of the cinema has transformed your perfectly crafted chocolate snacks into sticky brown blobs all over your fingers - not pretty. The likliehood is, whether through guilt for the amount you spent on them by buying them at the cinema, or through sheer determination, you'll battle on through and almost certainly end up with a feeling of bloated dehydration and slight sickness. It's not pleasant and it's certainly not one for date night. 

Savoury is out. Sorry. Rubber hotdogs and stale nachos only serve to stink out the cinema and leave you with more enemies than friends/successful dates at the end of all your chomping/ketchup spilling/cheese repeating burps under your breath. 

So, we're left with popcorn. Humble though it is, let's examine whether its merits can cause it to be a true movie snack contender.  Sweet or savoury? Either way, not being loaded with tomato sauce, mustard or jalapenos wins points here. The smell here will only serve to improve the experience for your neighbour, intensifying the cinema experience. Imagine going to your local Odeon and not being able to smell any popcorn - denied! Popcorn is made for cinema fights, sharing, flirting/feeding/wooing your date and a perfect prop for a horror flick JUMP. But the best thing of all is that a bucket of Popcorn feels endless. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have ourselves a winner.

Master-share

Just discovered this Radio Times blog via facebook with ideas for Masterchef spin-offs. Wonderful stuff. Any more ideas?

Nx

Nice Thai

This year I want to go on holiday again and last month I found a bargain 10-day holiday to a country I've always wanted to visit: Thailand. 

Currently, the political violence in Bangkok is so bad that holiday insurers won't cover anyone who willingly enters the country. So, as the combination of violence and volcano prevent me from experiencing the real thing, I must at least continue to enjoy its cuisine in the UK. 

So far I've managed to perfect just two humble dishes (three if you count the fragrant rice). Having sampled one particular dish in Bristol's Teohs and in Tampopo, I know its sticky, shrimpy, nuttiness is like gold dust for my tastebuds. So I'm grateful that on a sickly day at the beginning of this year I watched former Masterchef finalist (Digger) Dean Edwards (from here in Bristol nonetheless) cook a simple, healthy pad thai on This Morning. 

It's a recipe I've now mastered, and holds the crown as my fella's favourite. I've found tamarind paste hard to track down, so instead I use some block tamarind which I soak before use - the longer the better (around 6-8 hours) - then sieve into the recipe. This ingredient gives a definite unique sweetness to the recipe which it misses if the fruit is omitted. The key to pad thai however, I feel, is in the garnishes: plenty of dried red chilli flakes, finely chopped peanuts and luscious green coriander.

The second is a Thai green curry - but skinny. Collecting dust on my recipe book shelf is Cook Yourself Thin - with recipes taken from the Channel 4 series by a bunch of posh, albeit slim, girls with lots of neat ideas on how to eat well without feeling cheated. 

The secret of their recipe was to poach the prawns in (light) coconut milk and load it with green veg. This way, there's no oil in the recipe and the fat from the coconut milk is counterbalanced with about 3 of your 5-a-day. The real revelation from this recipe though, is that it taught me how to cook perfect fragrant rice. Who knew the trick would be to cook it so little? The magic is in the steam created from the initial boil, which then slowly cooks the rice to perfection as your curry bubbles away on the stove. The fluffy sticky (but not stodgy) rice is almost as satisfying as the incredible smell of lemongrass which wafts out of the pan as you lift the lid. It's been foolproof so far - I've never looked back.

Nx

Update: since writing this post, the recipe has been removed from the This Morning website. Here's my weathered, well used and well loved copy (click to enlarge).  

Buffet barf

First Great Western baffled me and westie on Saturday with their buffet cart menu tasters. What could possibly come after the dot dot dots...? 

- IBS?

- gaviscon?

- tena lady maxi?

...answers on a postcard.

Nx