Thursday 18 October 2012

Michael Sterrett - Cauliflower Cheese


Michael Sterrett is a Leeds comedian involved in the running of HOWL alternative comedy night. Details can be found here.




Last week was my one year anniversary in comedy. What a year it has been since I got on stage and told some jokes about Back To The Future, the porn magazine Barely Legal and the unpleasant physical side effects of alcoholism. As I stepped off stage feeling odd and elated an audience member said to me without a hint of aggression, "I think you need to see a psychologist". I couldn't agree more but I can't afford it and frankly I'm worried that if I actually deal with my problems I will stop being funny.

In the one year I have been doing stand-up I broke up with my longtime girlfriend, quit my job and am currently homeless. Yet I feel a restless sense of momentum that was sadly absent in my previous life as a boyfriend, employee and non-vagrant. I feel inspired and lucky to be surrounded by a genuinely exciting ground swell of comedic talent, all pushing each other to be better, write more material and explore the boundaries of what we're trying to do. I'm seeing acts that I love and respect dropping gold on the heads of the unsuspecting public and it couldn't make me happier. Comedy has, much like most of the women I've ever loved, simultaneously ruined my life and made it worth living.

This is a nice autumnal recipe to make whilst listening to Lambchop and dreaming of your enemies getting some kind of arse cancer, or a new strain of AIDS that only affects the eyes.

CAULIFLOWER CHEESE
1 large head of cauliflower
350g mature cheddar
150g hard sheep's cheese
80g butter
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
1 pint of milk
½ tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 finely chopped scallions (spring onions)

Start by separating the cauliflower into lovely big florets and pop them in a steamer above some boiling water. They should only take 5-10 minutes to become tender. Once they're done put them to one side and put the oven on to 180 degrees.

Get a nice wide pan on a medium heat and add the butter. When it has just melted add the flour and stir vigorously until the butter and flour have made a paste. Take the pan off the heat and start to slowly add the milk. It helps if you warm the milk a little. The paste will absorb the milk quickly so just keep working the mixture until you have a good smooth consistency. Now add the grated cheddar and the mustard. If the sauce becomes too thick adjust it with more milk, getting it as thick or as light as you like. I like to keep it quite light as while it bubbles away in the oven it will thicken a bit.

Add the cooked cauliflower florets to the sauce and mix thoroughly along with the finely chopped scallions. Save a handful of scallions to garnish.

Grab a good heavy baking pan and add the cauliflower cheese. Sprinkle the hard sheep's cheese over the top along with the rest of the scallions. Let this cook on the bottom shelf of the oven for fifteen minutes or until the cheese has turned a lovely golden brown.

@mjsterrett
@howlcomedygroup

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Sean Morley: Stilton and Mushroom Pie


Sean Morley is a Sheffield-based comedian who runs Alt.Com.Cab (information here and here), and Speakers' Corner (information here) in the city. 



Ingredients:

For The Pastry
225g plain flour
100g butter
1 egg
Milk (if needed)
1 egg, beaten (for glaze)

The Filling
1 onion
500g of button mushrooms (halved)
2tbsp vegetable oil
1tbsp tomato puree
1tbsp soy sauce
250ml veg stock
200g stilton, crumbled
salt and pepper


Right. You're going to make a pie that is too rich. Keep that in mind to begin with. If halfway through making it you find yourself going "wait, but what if it's too rich?" then abort. That is not the attitude necessary for The Pie. I call it The Pie because it's the only pie you'll ever need. Knowing the names of descriptions of other pies will quickly become superfluous. This pie contains no meat because eating meat is wrong. 

FIRST YOU MUST MAKE SOME DOUGH. 
Mix the pastry ingredients together in a thing until it feels right
Squidge it up and. Cling film it and leave it in the fridge for either half an hour or until you've finished doing the other stuff I'm about to talk about. 

Chop and fry up an onion. Leaving that frying while you chop up 500 grams of button mushrooms and add them in too then let them all keep going until they turn brown andmiserable. When that happens add a tablespoon of tomato puree and fry for 3-5 more minutes. While you're waiting for those 3-5 minutes, mix up some stock and a dash of soy sauce in a little bit of water and then hurl that in too. Hurl it in violently.
Let that simmer for a minute or two then take it off the heat. 

USE THE DOUGH 
You must force the dough to have an unreasonably large surface area until it can cover the thing in which you intend to bake it (The Pie). 
I did this by rolling it with a wine bottle, but my capacity for inference tells me that a rolling pin would be better. 
When achieved put the stuff in the thing

Into the thing which contains the stuff place the filling (items from the frying pan). 
Crumble in the Stilton. 
Seal it. 
Glaze with egg. 
Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Eat The Pie

@SeanMorleyIV

@AltComCab

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Callum Scott: Turkey Chilli

Callum runs this blog. He is a Leeds-based comedian and feels weird about writing about himself in the first person. His recipe for Spicy Vegetable Soup can be found here.



Hello. This is my recipe for turkey chilli. It's a bit lighter than the traditional cow flesh chilli, as well as being more Hindu-friendly. What more could you wish for? It's good in enchiladas, with rice, basically anything you'd use chilli for. It also makes fucking amazing nachos.

Ingredients:
500g turkey mince (Unlike beef mince, all turkey mince is basically OK no matter how cheap)
1 medium onion, chopped as much as your manly overly sensitive tear ducts can take
Half tsp paprika - smoked, sweet or hot, depending on your taste or realistically, what's in your house
Half tsp cumin
1tsp dried oregano - no-one uses fresh oregano, if someone tells you they do, don't trust them
A bay leaf.
2 cloves garlic, I use 2tsp garlic puree because I'm a lazy shit
1 scotch bonnet chilli - use anything from one third (considerable afterburn) to all of it (I want to die)
1 small pack button mushrooms - you know, usually about 80p, that one.
1 tin tomatoes
250ml chicken or vegetable stock - use veg stock if you're making this vegetarian with Quorn, or it won't be vegetarian.
1 tin butter beans - this may be considered blasphemous, just try it, they work better than kidney beans in this.
Some oil
Salt and Pepper.

Soften the onions and herbs with the oil on a medium heat until the onions are translucent but not brown. If they go brown, carry on, literally no-one will give a fuck.
Add the garlic, chilli and spices and cook for about one minute before putting the mince in.
Turn the heat up a wee bit, then brown the turkey mince while smashing it up with a spatula. If you prefer, use chicken mince instead of turkey. It will not impact on the universe one iota. Use Quorn mince if you want. Basically use any kind of mince. Use Spam! See if I care.
When the mince is browned, add the tomatoes and stock, and simmer until the mince is cooked and you're just off the consistency you want. Which is any consistency, stop bothering me, I'm not even your real Dad.
Throw in the mushrooms. Not a mushroom fan? Use another fucking vegetable. It honestly doesn't matter. Use more Spam. You know what? Don't fucking bother making this at all. Just sit in the dark eating cold Spam from the tin. It honestly won't impact my life in the slightest.
After five minutes, add the drained beans. If you really want to use kidney beans instead of butter beans, do it. You're dead to me. No, go ahead, I'm sure kidney beans will be lovely in it.
After another five minutes, season it, take the bay leaf out, and serve however the fuck you want.

@callumformetal

Ashley Butterfield - A Banana Cut In Half With Rum And Raisin Ice Cream In It


"This was performed at Sheffield's 'Speaker's Corner' on the 26th of Septmber, 'Speaker's Corner' is Sheffield's best room to try out new material."



This is a public apology.

My name is Ashley Butterfield. I am a chef, I’m 28 years old, I own my own restaurant, I’m a keen cyclist, I’m a libra and I recently poisoned several members of the public due to a salt/daz washing up powder related mix-up.

I will begin by saying that it was wrong for us to have ever claimed that our dishes would only contain food when we weren’t 100% certain that we could provide soapless meals.

I also would like to apologise for our tagline ‘the soup you can believe in’ which in retrospect seems ironic and tasteless. The tagline that is, the soup wasn’t tasteless; because it tasted like soap.

Now, as a trained professional chef, I can tell you that the only reason this mistake was caused was due to an overwhelming lack of potassium in my diet. More on this later.

Soon after what became known in the Retford chronicle as ‘Daz-gate’, my health began to deteriorate. My restaurant was closed down, I was receiving threats and I had also consumed a fair amount of Daz myself in a futile effort to prove it wasn’t lethal.

I had nearly given up all hope when I remembered something my cooking teacher used to say to me in school: ‘Ashley, you look upset, but don’t worry I’ve got a surprise for you – now close your eyes’, at this point I would close my eyes as tight as I possibly could and I would hold out my right hand, he would place an object in my hand and as I felt it’s cylindrical shape caress my palm I would be ecstatic with excitement. For I knew that in my hand, there was a banana!

These potassium rich parcels from god are the only thing that has kept me going through this hardship, they also came in pretty handy whenever I caught mother kissing the postman. That’s right one bite of a banana can provide enough sustenance to swallow even the most troubling psychological issues.

It was several weeks later, while on a plantain high, that I had a eureka moment. I would invent a dish which would cure people of all their psychological problems. Now, with the hardest part out of the way, I set about finding the ingredients which would help make the dish.

After a lot of research in Tescos one evening I returned home with the recipe that would change the world and I am now going to share the recipe with you and I hope this goes some way to apologising for poisoning those children.

You will need:
1 bananas,
1 vanilla ice cream,
1 bottle of rum, and
1 pack of raisins.

I call this dish ‘a banana cut in half with rum and raisin ice cream in it’ (tm).
Here is how to prepare the dish:

You must begin by cutting the banana in half, shortly after doing that feel free to drink some of the rum. You must then open the tub of ice cream and spoon some of the ice cream on top of the banana, at this point there is no harm in having another drink, so feel free to do so. Open the raisins, put those on top of the ice cream, drink some rum and then pour some rum onto the pile of banana, ice cream and raisins. This dish is best served at a freezing cold temperature and if you are looking for a drink to accompany the meal, we recommend rum.

This dish has never failed to put a smile on my face, so much so that I sometimes make it upwards of five times a day.

It is also great for special occasions, be it a funeral or a rehabilitation meeting or even when you’re watching old footage of your failed marriage.

That’s right. Next time you’re in the supermarket why not treat yourself to ‘a banana cut in half with rum and raisin ice cream in it’ (tm).

I thank you.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Jacob Rawcliffe - Paella


Sorry about the delay everyone. Will hopefully get back to being a bit more regular. Jacob Rawcliffe is a Leeds-based act who recently came second in the national finals of Tickled Pig.




I'm not a cooker. In any way. I don't really know what they're meant to be called. As such, I can't make any useful or practical foods – but I can make paella. Paella is massively lovely, but for a poor, bewildered student like myself, it often feels like a debauched extravagance. As such, it is best enjoyed by smearing it all over your face, pouring on some “wine” and weeping (this is my only culinary technique – tears are an adequate substitute for salt).

N.B. Some terminology may not be accurate.

Making-Bits (serves 4ish)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
1 chopped and empty red pepper
3 tabs oil (vegetable, I suspect. Virgin if there's one to hand; crude if nothing else)
8oz (225g) long grain rice (or paella rice if you're feeling special, just shit rice if not. It doesn't really matter)
A pinch of turmeric
1 pint chicken stock
Salt and pepper
8oz (225g) cooked chicken cut into strips (I recommend actually cooking some chicken yourself as the pre-cooked stuff is a bit shit in this tasty dish)
4 oz ham, sliced and chopped (this is the only time breaded ham is bad, so anything but that)
Some chorizo - depends on size, a few slices if sliced, a rough-hewn hunk if you're using the real deal.
4oz (100g) frozen peas
2 tomatoes, peeled and quartered (dip whole in boiling water then cold water to loosen skin, then chop)
4oz (100g) cooked peeled prawns
Chopped fresh parsley to garnish (optional)

To be honest, almost all of the veg/meat is optional. You can pretty much throw anything you want in there, but through various tinkerings I've found the above to be the nicest combination.

Method:
In a large frying pan, fry the onion, garlic and pepper in the oil for a few minutes until soft. The pan is surprisingly important. Depending on how many people you're making it for, you can end up with a hell of a lot of stuff in that pan, so much sure it's a big 'un!

Add the rice, and stir until lightly fried and grains are transparent (a couple of minutes). This is the risky stage – there is a very fine line between lovely, soft, see-through rice and a hideous, charred mess. Pay attention!

Stir in the turmeric, stock, salt and pepper and simmer, covered for 15 minutes. Cover with a pan lid or similar and just give it a cursory stir every now and then (remember the rice crimes).

Add all the remaining ingredients and cook, covered for a further 5 to 10 minutes until most of the liquid has been absorbed. If it's looking a bit barren, top it up with a little bit more water – again, not massively important.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley (N.B. This makes literally no difference) and serve. Bon apetit!

@CobyRawcliffe

Monday 1 October 2012

Edy Hurst - Bacon, Cheese, Mushroom and Onion Omelette


Edy Hurst is a Leeds-based comedian who runs Latent Mutant Comedy, details of which can be found here.



How to cook a Bacon, Cheese, mushroom and onion omelette whilst entertaining a guest in your shared house you’re not entirely comfortable with.

Ingredients:
For One:
2 eggs
3 rashers of bacon
Sun Flowers oil mixed with Olive Oil (oil type optional)
Half a medium sized red onion
Enough grated cheese
A few mushrooms (play it by ear)
A single Bell Pepper (play it by heart)
2 – 3 house mates in the kitchen (or a singular one you have a mediocre relationship with
1 Person invited into the house whom you know little about or nothing at all.
(House Strangers can be brought from anywhere providing they know the majority of the people in room very well, but not you).

Equipment:
Mixing bowl,
Knife,
Chopping board,
Cheese Grater,
Frying Pan,
Neurosis

Let us begin.
1.      Walk into the kitchen and be slightly surprised, followed by embarrassment, passing through into alienation and then resentment by the Person invited into the house whom you know little or nothing about. Many people ask me is it important the type of person you don’t know, and to that I would recommend a same gender agent, who at least appears superior to you. The more on your toes and heady it makes you, the better.
2.      Whilst being careful to move around each and every house member at the kitchen table, awkwardly knocking the House Stranger, collect your ingredients and place them in the workspace. Put the frying pan on the heat, then place the rashers of bacon in there to – unsurprisingly – fry.
3.      Attempt small talk with House Stranger, making sure to either get locked out of the conversation by a private joke with the others or by saying something that makes you appear simple.
4.      Realising you do not have any tongues to flip the bacon, use your fingers. This makes you appear more of an idiot therefore adding to the important flavour of shame you’re trying to infuse in the dish.
5.      Take out the bacon, pour in some oil for frying and flavour, place in the diced onions and mushrooms, shaking them to move the across the pan.
6.      Having left the glass bowl on the opposite side of the room, bumble over like the useless, incompetent waste of space I am and take the eggs, because that’s the most efficient thing to have done then whisk all the eggs together. But oh, you don’t have a whisk; because you’re such a genius to remember you inventory you’ll just have to use a fork. Season with salt, pepper and disappointment in yourself. Its worth noting that the House Stranger heightens the insecurities, as does cooking to a judgemental audience that knows you forgot to flush the toilet last night. This is significant for the process, for what’s food if not an experience? A slow, depressing, soul crushing experience!
7.      Now that the onion and mushrooms are slightly more burnt than you intended, knock over a chair trying to rush back to them, pretend you were being funny on purpose and pour them in the egg mixture, then pour the whole mixture into the frying pan at a lower heat than before.
8.      Cut up the bacon, and get the Cheese out of the fridge and spread both over the inside of omelette. The cheese must go on top as it will act as glue for flipping the Omelette.
9.      Stare at the House Stranger, not how they’re more attractive and talented than you, but more importantly realise the black hole of silence that is now the room as the house stranger and yourself realise you have little to nothing in common. Pathos is everything.
10.  Forgetting that you had a bell pepper to use, rush to cut that, making sure it’s in too big a chunks and place into the omelette, which should be a dark brown. This is unplanned serendipity that will actually work in your favour. As just when you think the world’s eternally against you you will experience luck in your favour, and this will make you hate the world even more.
11.  Flip the Omelette a bunch, pressing the cheese together. It is eat immediately.
12.  Place your tail firmly between your legs and walk out of the kitchen with your omelette, be sure to hear laughs from your house mates about you uselessness in life
13.  Return in between sentence about you as you forgot a fork, and embrace the fact that regardless of how well you made your food, all you can taste is self-hatred, shame and humiliation with each mouthful.


By Edy Hurst
Edyhurst.tumblr.com
@Edyhurst
facebook.com/latentmutantcomedy
latentmutantcomedy.tumblr.com