Noisily Festival of Music and Arts

I have an apology to make to all you Gloopers (as you have become affectionately known, to me at least); I have been off the map in a culinary sense for sometime now. In March my posts were thin on the ground with a solitary entry in the form of a lonely cheese and leek quiche; April wasn't much better as I covered Paul's chilli and my chicken and brandy broth, which I took the time to cook twice in an attempt to flesh out the literary content within. 

For those of you who know me first hand or have been subject to the... I don't want to say barrage... "steady flow" of online fodder I've been pumping out through the ever personal realm of Facebook, you will already know why I haven't been slaving away in front of the grill as much as I was when Augustus first entered the digital kitchen circa September 2011. However I feel like I should clear the air for the benefit of my fans in the US, my second biggest audience accounting for at least 15% of the 6000+ hits I've had, and also to the 300+ Russians that drop in on a regular basis. As for the 9 people in Pakistan, I think I may have lost their support after my pork wrapped in bacon back in December last year. 

 The poster above should give you a pretty good idea of what it is myself and three of my friends and subsequent colleagues have been brewing over the past six months, and which over the previous three has been taking up an enormous chunk of my time; time that would otherwise be dedicated to you, the glorious people who read my blog.

Noisily was an idea that two of us had spoken about a few years ago, it didn’t have a name, there was no concept, no plan of action, and at the time it seemed like a passing fantasy hatched between minds in a state of inebriation in the back room of a boozer. It came to pass last that September the topic was once again raised, hops were involved. However this time it picked up speed and before we knew it ‘The Fellowship of the Noise’ had been forged, and henceforth and forthwith it was our destiny to cast the quiet back into the library from whence it came.

At this point what I want to make absolutely clear is that Noisily isn’t just about the beats, or the volume at which they’re played, although both these elements will play a huge part in the proceedings. Noisily is about the natural surroundings and the organic nature of the site; we didn’t want to simply hire in a load of equipment and book a load of DJs, sling in a burger van and some misplaced inflatables whilst a converted bendy bus sells overpriced cider that tastes like sweet and sour sauce. The land itself decided this for us; far from the open expansive fields at many festivals where you can see everything and know exactly how long it will take you to get there, at Noisily the area is large enough to get lost in but intimate enough to not care when you are. We realise that it’s not just about who is playing at point A and B, but what happens to you on your journey between the two.

Tree-houses, brooks and bars; acrobats on silks, poetry from up on high; smoke on the water, bridges over the top, pink flamingos, venison and wild boar burgers. Mexican Bedouin and 80s arcades, Thai massage parlours and vintage snap back parades. All of this and much, much more will be at Noisily in 2 weeks today.

I would like to take this opportunity to cordially invite you all to Leicestershire on the 25^th May to see exactly why I have taken a temporary leave of absence from my duties as Augustus Gloop, and also because I think you may just enjoy yourselves. A lot.  

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Twice Cooked Chicken in Brandy Wine Broth

Last weekend I spent the best part of five days chugging up the Trent & Mersey and Cauldon canals in the county of Staffordshire, in the company of my three sisters, my mother and father, our Jack Russell Archie and Labrador Digger. The holiday could frankly have gone one of two ways; I’m sure there are few families, however loving, that could spend a prolonged amount of time crammed into a narrow boat travelling at 3 miles an hour through the pissing rain that plagues the West Midlands 366 days a year, without at least one member being lynched or thrown overboard. The ambiance in our shared births was worsened still by the food served up in the spit and sawdust establishments that lined the banks, with everything on the menu turning out either yellow or brown and in gargantuan proportions, the flatulence on board was so widespread that even the dogs were getting in on the act.

Regardless of the wind and rain and wind, the beige lunches, the depressing industrial decay you experience when motoring through Stoke – relics of a bygone era of pottery forges and affluent productivity – and the occasional dead dog floating arse upwards in the locks; I felt like we not so much as bonded as got through the journey together in avoidance of a full scale blow out and / or murder. We were all in the same boat.

Something that struck me immediately on the canal was the shocking amount of litter simply dumped along the tow paths and into the water itself, in the space of two miles I saw more refuse than in the entire river Thames between Tower Bridge and Kew, and although I am partial to a hyperbolic notion this observation may be a reserved understatement. It was absolutely disgusting.

I will never understand people who feel the urge to simply drop rubbish wherever they go; even when there is a litter bin in plain sight you witness mindless twerps discarding their unwanted wrappers as they walk. We live in an educated society, we are all perfectly aware of the detrimental effects that littering can have on the environment, we have been shown countless videos and images of how it effects wildlife, how seals and seabirds get caught in plastic bags, and ducks are suffocated by the rings that hold your six pack of special brew together. Beyond this it looks horrible as well.

So it was as we boated into the North end of Stoke on Trent that a couple of hooded youths dropped an empty crisp packet on the tow path; I slammed our vessel into reverse (an action that doesn’t immediately get a response in a seventy foot barge), and jumped from the helm onto the bank, picked up the packet and asked if this pustule ridden oik would be taking his used bag of Golden Wonder with him to deposit it in the nearest receptacle dedicated to detritus. He replied in a surly manner that indirectly insinuated he had a tiny penis, and began lurching away up the canal as though someone had made way for an enema by means of a particularly large carrot, as only a mentally challenged fifteen year old can. My father put it in words that he could understand: “you little knob head” he shouted from his position on the bridge.

After jumping back on and grabbing the tiller I seethed quietly for a while and thought about how I could vent my frustrations; whilst dreaming up ways to belittle this oaf of tomorrow I was reminded of a bus journey I took between McLeod Gang, the home of the Tibetan government in exile, and Amritsar, site of the Golden Temple and Sikhism’s holiest shrine. At the first loo stop of the journey a Dutch guy called Danni approached me as a fellow Westerner and struck up a conversation, he lived in a small town near Rotterdam with a name of no consequence, he had been volunteering in Nepal for three months, but more importantly; he was a cock. All he talked about were his experiences which he then somehow managed to turn into advice that was both unwanted and uninvited; he had something to say about absolutely everything. For instance: I bought a potato burger from a street vendor

“Have you been ill yet?” the Dutchman asked, “you will be, everyone is”.

I wasn’t aware that the first part of this question was rhetoric however his answering for me made it so. He then enquired as to whether “they” had told me to bring earplugs for the bus journeys to drown out the incessant horns that are synonymous with Indian roads. Now I don’t know you the hell “they” are, but nowhere have I read or heard this nugget of information with which he so readily interjected as I tried my best to ignore him. Above all it was the tone of arrogant condescension in his voice that I cannot convey effectively in my writing that really got on my wick; he was a wanker, no two ways about it. The barrage continued.

He asked me what I was doing when I returned home so I politely told him I was off to France for my mother’s birthday.

“Why would you go to France?” he spat out the words disgusted.

“Because my grandfather bought a house there in the 70s, we go every year”.

“Why would anyone buy a house in France?” he smiled disdainfully.

  There is a reason that France is the most visited country on earth that perhaps a baboon from a postage stamp sized country associated with windmills, weed, tulips and clogs can’t comprehend. It is a country overflowing with culture and steeped in history; a country of Camembert and Saint Emillion, Paris and the Riviera, Napoleon and Joan of Arc, Bordeaux and Brest. Van Gogh was Dutch and he moved there, he loved it so much he even chopped his ear off! So next time you’re shat shtoned in your room in a country that will be underwater in twenty years by all accounts, think twice before slating a country far greater than your own. Oh, and another thing, you cheated in the World Cup and still lost, nice one. Vive la France!

When I thought he couldn’t get any worse he proceeded to throw a plastic wrapper out of the window, I glared at him and he told me he had “given up binning his rubbish as no one else did”, but that he would “never do it in Holland”. Firstly I thought how hard it must be to “give up” not littering; somewhere between heroin addiction and chocolate for lent perhaps? Secondly, if you are a guest in someone else’s country you treat it with the respect it deserves, irrespective of whether its inhabitants have been educated in matters of the environment or not, you can’t simply resign yourself to the ‘needle in a haystack’ ‘won’t even scratch the surface’ philosophy, as ultimately you will and it’s the only surface we have. I minced words with him and ended all conversation thereafter.

I have come up with a theory based on my detailed scientific research then: the amount of litter someone decides to drop is directly and adversely linked to the size of the penis. More litter, smaller cock. End of.

After I got off the boat I needed something to warm me up, this did the job just brilliantly.  

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

1 medium sized chicken

Small bunch of thyme

½ a lemon

50g salted English butter

1 white onion, roughly chopped

1 whole bulb of garlic

2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 small cabbage, roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery, chopped into 1cm bits

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

3 bay leaves

1 large white onion, quartered

8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

1 tablespoon of white sugar

300ml chicken stock

1 tablespoon tomato purée

2 tablespoons brandy or cognac

150ml of dry white wine

5 potatoes for mashing

2 tablespoons crème fraiche

1 egg

100g of salted English butter

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

Method:

1. After watching one of Heston’s programmes recently about how to cook chicken properly I was amazed at the difference in the meat; un-truss the bird and spread the legs apart before smothering it in butter. Stuff the bunch of thyme and ½ a lemon up its arse; whack it in a roasting dish with a couple of bay leaves, a few chunks of onion and a bulb of garlic cut across the middle. Put it in the oven at a temperature of 90°C and slow roast it till the inside temperature of the breast hit around 50°C, the time will depend on the size of the bird but it should take at least 2 hours.

2. When the breasts reach 50°C take the bird out of the oven. Get a large casserole and chuck in a couple of slugs of olive oil a brown the bird on all sides using a couple of wooden spoons to clumsily turn it around; when this is done take it out and let it stand on the side.

3. Chuck the quartered onions, celery, crushed garlic and carrots and stir them around in the juices, then add the cabbage, wine, tomato purée and brandy and stir it around until the alcohol burns off. Now pour in the stock and tablespoon of sugar, along with a couple more bay leaves and simmer for 10 minutes to reduce and infuse.

4. Now it’s time to return the bird to the casserole, I ended up transferring most (but not all) of the sauce to another pan, lowering the chicken in breasts up, and return the sauce to the casserole all over the top of the bird. Then lay out the streaky bacon over the breasts, cover, and simmer for one hour.

5. While the casserole is stewing boil the potatoes, strain them, then mash them with the crème fraiche, raw egg, 100g of salted butter and some seasoning.

6. After an hour take the casserole off and remove the bird once more; chop the meat off the bones and return it to the sauce in chunks and stir it thoroughly. Serve up on mash and feel amazing.

Paul's Chilli

Three years and three months ago I was in the throws of my second year at University, fighting the increasingly difficult battle between booze and the books, the former of which had a tendancy to emerge the victor. On a January night much like any other I found myself on 'Call Lane' in Leeds; which for those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting West Yorkshire's hub of further education, is a road of trendy bars, trendy people, and eekingly trendy music where students can go to quoff cocktails before heading out to any of the city's legendary nightclubs. On the evening in question I was with a relatively new group of friends that I'd stumbled across whilst doing the rounds in Leeds' student ghetto; Hyde Park, and like a rose betwixt the pansies in a bed made of dreams (a sticky sambuca covered table in a bar) there sat an incredibly pretty girl. 

Photo taken by the pretty girl in the bar.

To cut a very long story a considerable amount shorter; after a week or two of being sworn to secrecy under the cloak and danger of uncertainty, we finally "stepped out" together (the mix tape did it) on a romantic and heavily homosexual holiday for 16 in the techno underbelly of Berlin; and the rest as they say, is history.

A few months down the road and it was time to meet the parents; a milestone in any relationship, however I've always prided myself to the point of extreme enjoyment with my ability to shmooze the older generation with a montage of carefully gauged banter, home cooked meals, tried and tested anecdotes, and a carefully honed version of Enrique Inglesias' "Hero", in Spanish, which melts the heart of even the most sceptical of matriarchs.

Things were going well, swimmingly in fact, but then a very strange thing happened; Paul, the man of El Casa, beat me at my own game. It wasn't his admittedly great banter; nor was any one the fanscinating yarns he spun of his time in South America, pinoeering into the jungle with his copy of the "South America Guide Book" circa 1928, complete with instruction on which dinner jacket to wear when liasing with the savages. His guitar playing, I have to say, very nearly sealed the deal.

The crux though, and inline with the old saying - "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" - was his Chilli Con Carne. It was love at first taste and we haven't looked back since, bounding off into the fields of Chillyseum together.


Ingredients: (Serves 6, or 1 large Australian)

2 large onions
3 large green peppers
1 kg lean ground beef (5% - 10% fat)
Tomato puree
3 cans whole tomatoes in own juices
3 cans red kidney beans in chilli sauce
Hot Chilli powder

Method:

1. Lightly brown meat in pan with a little oil. Stir in some tomato pure and put into a large saucepan.2. Cut onions into thick slices, then cut slices into 4. Gently fry in pan with a little oil until translucent. Add to lthe arge saucepan.

2.Cut peppers into strips, then cut strips into 4. Gently fry in pan with a little oil for 5 minutes. Add to large saucepan.

3. Place large saucepan on low heat. Add tomatoes. Break up whole tomatoes using spatula.

4. Drain chilli sauce out of 2 cans of beans, (leave one can undrained). Add all 3 cans to large saucepan. 
Stir mixture thoroughly. Heat until simmering gently.

5. Add two teaspoons of hot chilli powder (or to taste). Simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Serve with rice or nachos. 

Chilli really tastes best when left overnight to soak in its own juices, then reheated.

A Mature Leek and Cheese Quiche

For the past 6 months I’ve been busier ‘actually trying’ than in any other part of my life to date. Kindergarten was really just a lot of fun, the work was painfully easy and the almost excessive awarding of red ticks and gold stars, I think, contributed to my tendency to resign later on in the course of my education when my grades began to slip. This didn’t happen immediately though and I continued to maintain a high standard and hold onto my spot in the top set until my common entrance exams, through which I gained a place at a proper old fashioned English boarding school.

I can’t remember whether it was being away from my parents for the first time in my life or the prospect of plentiful beatings and buggery, but for the first 24 hours I did very little other than lock myself away in the loo and wonder if my parents loved me after all. The high ceilings, long corridors and single glazed windows made the house cold and foreboding; centuries of names were carved into oak panels lining the walls, memories of old boys lost in The Great War wandered the boards like the lost souls of a Wilfred Owen poem, and the History of a thousand lives begun seeped and groaned from every dormitory as though their legacies remained.

Before long I had changed through necessity from a dependent yet outgoing child into a brash and independent boy; I was subjected to more beatings than most of my year in house, I recall one Saturday night being made to stay in by one of the top year because he’d been gated and wanted some amusement. Subsequently he tied me to a radiator and proceeded to rhythmically bash my head into it for the best part of an hour; the bumps became Rugby injuries of course and I gained some respect for keeping my mouth shut. Although this may sound a little psychotic, and actually looking back it really does, the frequent run ins I had in my first year went a long way into building a character in which today, after several years of adolescent experimentation, I feel truly comfortable.

I can’t, however, credit the “snooker balls in pillow fights” or “radiator bashing” for my newly found application to progress entirely; the years of deviance must count for something. The good friends, the bad friends, the best friends and the worst friends; the alcohol and the cigarettes, lads holidays and stupid bets. Doner kebabs, washboard abs, several diseases, although never crabs. Joy ridden cars, countless bars, plenty of fights and seeing stars. I always used to think the phrase “It’s just a phase” was riddled with condescension, as anyone going through the phase naturally would. However I also think that as long as you come out the other side stronger, wiser and more informed, that for some of us at least it’s important to go through it in order to learn a great deal about ourselves, that perhaps we don’t like, but can use to shape the future in a positive way, however small.

So it is with excitement that I look to the unknown ahead, not fear or apprehension; and I would like to share a poem with you that my oldest friend chose for his Grandfather’s funeral. A man who truly lived life to the fullest, left no stone of opportunity unturned, and whose dedication to those around him and zest for life was as infectious as it was admirable. 

To laugh often and much
to win the respect of intelligent people 
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics 
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch 
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier 
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ingredients: (Serves 6) – Cooked by my little sister Alice

¾ of a pack of short crust pastry

4 large leeks, chopped

8 mini leeks, chopped

3 large onions, sliced

½ pint double cream

4 egg yolks

3 slices of gruyere cheese

½ pack of extra mature cheddar, grated

1 sheet of baking paper the large than the quiche dish

1 bag of rice for blind baking

Method:

1. Roll out pastry and press it into a shallow baking dish, put the baking paper on top of the pastry and pour in the rice. Bake blind for 15 minutes at 220°C.

2. Whilst the pastry is baking fry the onions and leeks until softened and slightly browned.

3. Mix the egg yolks, cream and cheddar together in a bowl.

4. Take the pastry out of the oven and carefully pour the rice back into it’s bag when it’s cold enough. Layer onions on pastry base, then the slices of gruyere cheese, then add the onions and leeks, and finally pour the egg/cream/cheddar mixture over bake at 180° for 25-30 minutes.

5. Take it out of the leave to cool and then serve with some salad. 

Beetroot, Potato and Thyme Gratin atop a Smoked Kipper, Mustard and Celeriac Fritter with a Grilled Béchamel Stuffed Paprika Portobello and a Romanesco Cauliflower, a Serious Mouthful

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone on February 29^th 1876; Ja Rule was born on the 29^th February 1976. These two events have nothing in common except the date they took place on, exactly a century apart. With this in mind (rather strangely), I marched off to Waitrose to find a completely random collection of ingredients with no immediate thought as to what would come together in the kitchen. Now you may say that it’s impossible to select completely at random because to a degree everything you do has to be pre-meditated, and I agree; so let me rephrase. I marched off to Waitrose to find a collection of ingredients that I hadn’t used, or at least used together before, to make the evening’s meal more of an adventure to prepare.

Smoked Kipper: I don’t think I’ve ever eaten one of these, my lasting memories are of my father having them for breakfast a lot when I was a child, most probably a straight fortnight after a visit from the mobile monger.

Beetroot: Pretty colours, rich in flavour.

Celeriac: People are always waffling on about celeriac purée on Masterchef, for some reason they’ve become rather popular. I’ve only ever cooked one once so it seemed like a fresh choice.

Portobello: Sounds trendy, is trendy.

Romanesco Cauliflower: This is a beautiful looking thing that is half way between broccoli and cauliflower in taste, with a gloriously nutty edge.

I’m not the cleanest of cooks at the best of times, when I know what I’m doing that is. So when I’d finished this evening the kitchen looked like some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland that would have Thomas Stearns Eliot reaching for his quill. However this didn’t bother me in the slightest, there are ‘thems who cooks and thems who cleans’. I am the former.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

The ingredients are grouped into their respective components

2 smoked kipper filets

1 large potato, desiree will do, peeled and chopped into 2” cubes

1 celeriac, peeled and chopped into 2” cubes

3 rashers of oak smoked bacon

Handful of fresh chives, finely chopped

4 shallots, finely chopped

1 tablespoon of English mustard

40g salted butter

1 tablespoon crème fraiche

3 large potatoes, desiree again, peeled and very finely sliced

6 fresh red beetroots, peeled and finely sliced

2 tspns fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped

1 large pot double cream

Butter for greasing

4 Portobello mushrooms, stalks removed

Butter for grilling

1 heaped tablespoon of plain flour

50g butter

Semi-skimmed milk

100g Wookey Hole cheddar, grated

Smoked Paprika

Grated Nutmeg

1 Romanesco cauliflower

Salt and pepper for whatever needs it.

Method: (Pre-heat the oven to 180°C)

1. Grease a medium sized baking dish, 3” deep, with butter. Place a layer of thinly sliced potato on the bottom and then a layer of thinly sliced beetroot on top, sprinkle with a pinch of thyme, a pinch of salt, and a couple of turns of freshly ground black pepper. Repeat this till you have 3 layers, then finish with a final layer of potato on top, season with salt, pepper and a little thyme, then pour over the whole pot of cream, slowly, so that it seeps down through the layers. Put in the oven for an hour.

2. Put the bacon under the grill till crispy, take out and chopped into bits.

3. Whilst the gratin is cooking in the oven, put the potato and celeriac chunks into cold salted water and bring to the boil. Cook them until soft, take them off, add 40g butter, a tablespoon of crème fraiche and some seasoning and mash it roughly. Spoon it into a blender and add the smoked kipper before pulsing a few times so the fish breaks up into the mixture.

4. Spoon the mix into a bowl and add the chives, mustard, uncooked shallots and bacon bits and stir it all through. You will need to be fairly liberal with the seasoning and in particular the salt; there are some very strong flavours that need to be brought together and Salt, the most important ingredient in the kitchen, is the thing for the job.

5. Make a béchamel now by melting 50g of butter in a saucepan and adding a heaped tablespoon of plain flour and stirring it in till it gets lumpy. Add a little milk at a time stirring it in with a whisk till it thickens, keep doing this until you have a relatively thick sauce. Melt the Wookey Hole cheddar into the sauce, season with plenty of pepper and a little nutmeg, and take off the heat.

6. In a griddle pan (frying pan if you don’t have one) chuck a knob of butter in over a high heat, cook the mushrooms on both sides till they get a nice colour, a couple of minutes should do it. Take them out of the pan and chuck them on a baking tray bottom side up so they make a little shroom bowl, now scoop some of the cheddar béchamel into the mushroom and sprinkle some paprika over the top, before sliding them under the grill for 5 minutes so the spices infuse into the sauce.

7. Cook the Romanescos in boiling water for 5 minutes until tender, strain.

8. The final thing to do whilst the cauliflowers are cooking is to make small patties of the celeriac mix and fry them on both sides for a couple of minutes so they brown a little. Serve up the fritter with a slice of the beetroot and potato gratin on top, with the mushroom on one side with the beautiful Romanesco sat proudly on the other. You could dollop a little extra béchamel on for extra sauce, however the flavours of the creamy beetroot and sharper celeriac, along with the spectacular combination of smoky kipper and bacon, the nutty cauliflower, and rich mushroom covered in mature cheese, are plenty enough for your pallet. A success. RULE BABAAY! 

A Southern Scotch Egg

In 1954 West Germany defeated the Swiss in the football World Cup; in Morocco a swarm of locusts destroyed £10 million worth of citrus fruits in just six weeks, and on home turf in Blighty Roger Bannister ran the first ever mile in under four minutes. But even closer to home (for me anyway), in a small village just off the Great Cambridge road, a stone’s throw from the house where I grew up, a butcher named Douglas White and his wife Anna created a humble masterpiece – The Braughing Sausage.

For over five decades the people of East Hertfordshire have paid allegiance to ‘D.White Butchers’, and while many things have changed in the local area; the development of Stansted Airport, yours truly moving into town in October 1994, and more recently the welcome invasion of ‘Standon Calling’ festival less than one mile from the shop. The recipe for the sausages has remained the same. Unlike it’s bullying cousin the Lincolnshire Sausage, steeped in it’s history and aggressive in taste, the Braughing banger has a much smoother and more rounded flavour; versatile without being apathetic, chivalrous but not arrogant, strong and silent. By which I mean that it holds it’s own as a stand alone, but at the same time gets on with everything.

A while ago I read an article in one of the fall-out-sections of the Sunday paper about a man in the North West whose love of the equally humble Scotch egg had led him to repeatedly experiment in the kitchen to create the ultimate hybrid of the classic snack. ‘The Manchester Egg’ was born and has gone from strength to strength, and ever since I read the article I’ve been desperate to try one. It consists of a pickled egg, wrapped in spiced black pudding and coated with Japanese panko breadcrumbs, and is accompanied by the tagline – “A hearty commodity worthy of a gentlemen”. The words sold it to me and the pictures sealed the deal, yet although the Manchester Egg is on the up, it really needs to be eaten fresh, and East Herts is quite a way from Old Trafford. So it was up to me then, to make my own version of the savoury snack, with a little sweet chucked in for good measure.

So without further ado, I present ‘The Southern Scotch Egg’.

Ingredients: (Makes 9)

700g Braughing Sausages, skins removed

1 tspn thyme leaves, finely chopped

2 tspns fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped

1 tablespoon runny honey

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

100ml water

Salt and Pepper

11 large free range eggs

150g plain flour

2 tablespoons hot chilli powder

200g fine white breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for deep frying (1.5 litres)

Method:

1. Put 9 of the 11 eggs into a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. When the water starts to bubble time for exactly 2 minutes, take the eggs off, pour out the boiling water and run the eggs under a cold tap in the colander for a few minutes. Leave them to cool down for a bit.

2. In a blender add the sausage meat and water and pulse until the meat is fairly smooth, remove and chuck it into a bowl. Add the chopped herbs, honey, the mustard and a pinch or two of salt and pepper. Mix it well until it’s evenly combined. Get a long piece of Clingfilm out onto the work surface and make 3 balls of the meat mixture about the same size as a snooker ball and put them onto the Clingfilm set apart about 8 inches, put another sheet of Clingfilm on top and push the meat out into disks about 5-6 inches across.

3. Take care to peel the eggs very carefully as they are only soft boiled and very delicate; when you got all 9 shells off pull up the top layer of Clingfilm and pick up the meat disks, one at a time, and wrap them around the eggs evenly so they make perfect spheres and none of the egg underneath is showing. Repeat this 9 times until you have nine meatballs with eggs hiding inside.

4. Get 3 bowls, in the first put the flour and chilli powder in and mix them together with a little salt and pepper. In the second crack and beat the remaining 2 eggs. In the third put the breadcrumbs.

5. Heat the oil in a deep pan till it pushes the 200°C mark, seriously hot basically. Roll the balls through the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. Deep fry them in batches of three until they’re golden brown, get them out with a slotted spoon and leave them to drain on kitchen towel. Serve with salad and Mary Berry’s ‘Special Mustard Dressing’ from Waitrose, the best dressing in town. 

Chicken Satay Momos

In June last year I had a near death experience; several near death experiences actually. All of which happened whilst travelling around the mountainous Northern echelons of the sub-continent in the back of a more than questionable bus, driven, or perhaps more aptly – hurtled, around the most indescribably terrifying passes on earth. They say that Bolivia is home to the world’s most dangerous road, they call it ‘El Camino del Muerte’; the road of death. Around 26 busses packed with tourists and locals alike plunge over the edge every year into the precipice of doom, not to mention the droves of thrill seeking cyclists who over shoot on any one of the 130km of unforgiving bends. It is a truly bone chilling experience that would have even the most hardened of atheistic nut cases reaching for the nearest edition of the King James. I know as I spent the best part of 50 hours stuck between two landslides on the very same road whilst journeying towards the Amazon basin.

The statistics speak for themselves; however I believe the title of ‘World’s Most Dangerous Road’ only applies because the Bolivians are actually keeping count of the lives claimed every year. The road, if you can call it that, between Leh, India’s Northern most town and final outpost before Tibet and Manali deep in the heart of the Parvati Valley, claims as many lives in a month as ‘El Camino del Muerte’ does in a whole year. The reason the deaths aren’t documented is because the Himalayas are so high that when a bus disappears over the edge, it is lost forever along with the doomed souls within.

Having stopped for a yaks milk hot chocolate at the highest service station on earth; no more than a handful of Tibetan yurts at well over 5000 metres above sea level, I climbed back into the bus and held on for dear life as we climbed further still to the world’s highest drivable pass at nearly 5600 metres, 1000 metres higher than anywhere in continental Europe. Even when we’d reached our highest point the mighty Himalayas loomed dramatically above us pushing well past the 7000 metre mark; nowhere on earth does one get such a humbling feeling of perceptive enormity.

We began our descent out of the sub zero summer temperatures into more temporal climbs, dramatic waterfalls cascaded out of the clouds down the valley walls and out of sight into the caverns below. We passed a large group of motorcyclists roaring up the gravel track astride their Enfield 500s, bellowing as they tore up on the inside line. The final biker misjudged the corner and flew past in front of our bus; as if in slow motion I panned across and watched in dumb founded horror as he disappeared over the edge drifting weightlessly away from his saddle and out of sight.

“Stop the bus”, I screamed.

The driver who hadn’t quite registered what had happened slowed down and drove aimlessly toward the edge.

“Stop the fucking bus”, I shouted even louder.

I pulled back the door and jumped out, running towards the edge and looking down into a ravine with a fast flowing stream gushing over sharp glacial rocks. It took me a few moments to focus on him, but when I did I saw two leather clad legs protruding from underneath a 200kg motorcycle; he was face down in the water with the bike lying on top of him.

With the adrenaline coursing through my veins I jumped off the edge into two feet of scree and slid manically down the fifty or so feet to the water’s edge, before clambering up the steep incline through the gushing torrent to where the bike lay with the man beneath it. The machine weighed next to nothing as I picked it up and threw it off him; by this time two of his riding partners had descended down the other side of the gorge and together we pulled him out of the water and onto his back. His eyes were in the back of his head, blood was pouring down his forehead and there was white froth coming from his mouth.

Did the froth mean he was breathing? Was it his last breath leaving his lifeless body? Had I just seen someone die right in front of me?

His eyes rolled forward and water spluttered from his mouth, he was delirious, but he was alive. I stepped back to give him some space and let his friends take care of him. They thanked me for reacting so quickly and I clambered back up the slope to where my terrified girlfriend stood next to the bus; by this time a hoard of apathetic locals had gathered to look on, some with apparent amusement, at the scene which had unfolded below.

Back on the bus we drove for another 20 minutes till we reached a plateau with a Chai shop, I sat down with a cup of tea and unashamedly shed a few tears. I’ve never felt so shaken in my life.

When we finally arrived in Manali another 20 hours and several peaks later I slept like a baby, never have I felt so happy to have my own two feet on the ground. The next day we sat in a café all day writing about our experiences, gazing out across the misty river valley, and eating some of the most delicious Tibetan food in town. Which brings me round, finally, to the Chicken Satay Momos.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

You’ll need a Chinese bamboo steamer for this, or a vegetable steamer

1 cooked rotisserie chicken, all the meat shredded

1 large red onion, finely chopped

3cm root ginger, crushed

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

6 spring onions, chopped into 3cm lengths

2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter

2 tablespoons light soy sauce

3 cups plain flour

1 - 2 cups of water

4 tablespoons Sweet chilli sauce

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

Ground nut oil for frying

 Method:

1. In a bowl make a well in the flour and pour in the water, mix well into a dough (as for bread making), knead for 5/10 minutes until not sticky any more. You will need to dust your work surface with flour so your dough doesn’t stick. When you’ve done kneading it whack it in a bowl and cover it with a wet tea towel and set aside for half an hour.

2. In a frying pan add a slug of ground nut oil and fry the onions, garlic, chilli and ginger for a few minutes till the onions soften. Chuck in the chicken and mix well, then add the peanut butter and melt it through. Finally add the soy sauce and stir well, fry for another couple of minutes and take off the heat.

3. Now get the dough and roll it into a long sausage about 3cm thick, cut this into lengths about half the size of your index finger and roll each segment out into a thin circle about 10cm across, making sure that the dough is thinner at the edges. This is because when you come to twist them together they aren’t too thick and doughy on top.

4. Place a heaped dollop of the chicken satay mix into the middle of each dough circle, and pull up the edge over the top in a clockwise direction till the mix is covered, twist them closed. Do this to all of them and put them in the top segment of the Chinese / vegetable steamer. Pour a couple of inches of water into a wok and put the steamer on top. Cook them for 10 – 15 minutes or until the dough is dry to touch and not sticky. Then chuck in the chopped spring onions and drizzle a little soy over the momos, steam for a further 2 minutes and take off the heat.

5. Serve with the dip made from the sesame, sweet chilli and dark soy.