Dave Rivers - Pizza

Dave Rivers is a Leeds comic who runs a regular night at Bierkeller on the last Monday of every month.

I base a lot of my act on my addiction to junk food. It’s all based in truth – I’m a terrible human being. I enjoy cooking but I can’t make anything as tasty as a KFC Chicken zinger Tower Burger, MacDonald’s Chicken Nuggets or a Burger King Steakhouse Angus Burger (my ultimate favourite). But the idea of being a good cook vaguely, and I mean vaguely, interests me.

I spent New Year’s in Naples with my Girlfriend’s family, she’s half a pasta face, celebrating her parent’s 40 wedding anniversary. Their food is amazing, the pasta, anti pasti and even the salads. But it was the thin crust pizzas that really turned me on. It seemed so simple and easy do – and not totally unhealthy.

So, having been inspired by Italy’s beautiful flavours and my local Dominos Pizza’s recent price hike, I decided to teach myself how to make my own pizza. £17.99 for a large pizza? They’re putting themselves out of business…

On a side note, a Margarita pizza costs less than a pound to make (when you have all the ingredients from the first time).

The Pizza Base

            Step one, pre heat your oven as high as it will go.

Ingredients

2 cups water from the hot tap
1 packet of instant yeast
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon of sugar

This bit’s going to get sticky. I just thought I would give you a heads up. If you have a long sleeve anything on, take it off. Don’t roll the sleeves up, they’ll just fall down. I miss my cardigan.

In a large bowl, mix your water and yeast together. Yeast’s weird isn’t it?

Add flour, salt and sugar and mix with your hands until it because a big malleable dough.

Add more flour if it’s really sticky. You may have to add a lot depending on how much the dough absorbs. Don’t worry through, it will still be delicious!

Scatter flour over a clean surface in your kitchen. Not loads, just like a frosting. Like it’s snowed, but it’s crap and hasn’t really laid. Have fun later cleaning this. Move your dough onto this surface.

Roll the dough around in the flour. Add more to the surface if it starts sticking. When it’s stopped sticking, roll it out into a circle. N.B. I made my first pizza in a roasting pan, it doesn’t have to be a circle. Best tip: Find something you can bake it in, and mould it into that shape.

For me, the thinner the base, the better – but do what you prefer – do a stuffed bloody crust if you’re feeling fancy! You’ll probably have some left over. Good news, it lasts for a week in the fridge! I see more pizza in your future!

That was easy! If you haven’t ordered take away yet, you should’ve. Leave your base to the side for the moment, it’s toppings making time.

The Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Tin of chopped tomatoes

2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
A few leaves fresh basil
Dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Little squeeze of ketchup

            Step one, blend it all together. Done.

This is also a great pasta sauce. To use as a pasta sauce, I suggest cooking some mince and letting it reduce in the pan before adding pasta. It’s proper nice though.

Pour it onto your pizza base. If you like it saucy, pour loads on. If you like it dry, pour loads on because you’ll probably like that better. You tosser.

Toppings for my favourite pizza

There’s no guidelines on amounts here because it’s kinda up to you.

Ingredients

Mozzarella ball

Ricotta cheese

Pepperoni/Napolitano Sausage/Chorizo

Chicken.

Spinach

With your hands, tear the Mozzarella up onto the pizza. You can slice it in circles if you want it to look like an Aldi pizza. Distribute the ricotta in blobs over the pizza. Put it in the oven (oh wow it’s hot! Bet you’re glad you preheated it now!) for about 10 minutes.

Take it out and add your toppings (except the spinach). Then stick it back in for approx. 10 minutes or until it starts burning around the edge. A couple of minutes before the end, add your spinach.

            And you’re done! Congrats, you can now apply for an Italian passport.

            …I’m off to Burger King Drive Thru.

@DaveRiversUK

www.facebook.com/daveriverscomedy

Callum Scott - Spicy Winter Soup

I was bored, and just made some pretty fucking great soup. Thought I'd share it here.

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped
1 leek, halved lengthways and chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 clove garlic and half a red chilli, finely chopped
1tsb olive oil
Small handful of mixed pulses for soup (the kind with pasta in that only takes 10 minutes)
100g cooked chicken, chopped
2 chicken stock cubes
1l boiling water
1tbsp tomato puree
1tsp dried oregano

This is kind of minestrone-like, but I didn't follow a recipe so the fucker's mine and entirely of my creation.

Gently soften the veg, garlic and chilli in the oil for about 5-10mins on a low heat.
Add the water, stock cubes, oregano and tomato puree and simmer for 10mins, covered
Add the pulses and chicken and cook till everything's done
Serve with bread and that.

Kev Eadie - XXX Jalapeno, Chilli & Mozzarella Omelette

Kev Eadie is a Leeds-based comic and dangerous recluse. This is the chilling photo of himself he sent me. The rest of the recipe speaks for itself.

If you only perform one ritual which involves sharp knives and fire over the next few days, I’d like to strongly recommend you make it this one. There’s a song by The Black Crowes entitled ‘Come On’, which I find is ideal for bringing some vim and gusto to the execution of most culinary wrist-based activities. This recipe has a sizeable amount of such things. Namely: chopping, beating, bottle-shaking, frying pan and spatula control. If your ‘housemate’ hasn’t changed the bin in a while and your kitchen is turning into a landfill, you might even get the chance to swat a fly or two. Or if it’s getting really bad, spank a vagrant goat. Either that or you could stop masking your procrastination with principles, grab a bottle of bleach and purge the putridity out of that festering, filthy hovel you call a house.

So, I recommend The Black Crowes, or perhaps ‘Custard’s Last Stand’ by Ugly Custard, as the soundtrack whilst cooking.

The ingestion of these goods could make your eyes water. If this is the case, why not try eating in-front of a mirror? I like to do this, as it allows me to imagine I am having an emotional break up with myself, over breakfast. More specifically, that I am my intellect, breaking up with my physical self.

Whilst initially this creates a profoundly painful sense of imminent loss, towards the final mouthfuls you will get a glimpse of a brighter future – one in which you will no longer have your body pestering you all day long to help feed, clothe and bathe it. Just think, at last you will be able to live a life entirely devoted to intellectual pursuits! Then at the crucial moment, you realise how difficult it must be for a disembodied intellect to turn book pages or fill in crosswords and you immediately apologise to your flesh and bone. You need each other after all. Now is a good moment to offer your body a sexual favour before it packs and leaves. Yes, as an intellect, I’m sure you would prefer to write your body a letter explaining your thoughts and feelings. But as all bodies are illiterate, this act would probably just come across as insensitive. Just buck up, put some erotica on the cerebral silver screen and let your body look on and pleasure itself like the animal it is.

Finally, if getting your ingredients from Tesco, consider spicing up a mundane outing with a sprinkle of honour and see how many items you can obtain through the art of petty theft. Loose chilli peppers. Self-service checkouts. You know. Every little helps.

Contents

A tablespoon of butter/margarine

3 eggs (this is why it’s called ‘XXX’, not because it’s spicy, could feed 30 Romans or is ‘very cross’)

25 drops of Tabasco pepper sauce

Lots of peppers

A jalapeno pepper, chopped (knife or karate, either method is fine)

A red chilli pepper, chopped (“)

A ball of Mozzarella, chopped (“)

¬) Wash your hands thoroughly (front, back, palms, knuckles, in-between fingers, wrists) and pat them dry to avoid erosion of the skin. Ensure the kitchen is so clean that it would strike concern for your psychological well-being in the mind of a caring and/or intrusive friend.

!) Heat the frying pan with fire and flick (yes, flick: remember that this recipe is as wrist-heavy as a rampant badminton match) the grill to ‘on’.

“) Fling the butter/margarine into the pan and allow it to melt whilst you crack the eggs into a bowl.

£) Add the Tabasco and lots of pepper to the egg and give it all a good beating with a fork.

$) Once the butter/margarine is bubbling and popping furiously, empty the capsicum-cum-egg (yep, there’s ‘cum’ in the recipe - titters (now there’s ‘tit’ in the recipe – cachinnates (in the futile hope that an affected use of vocabulary can divert attention from the unrefined humour it led to in the first place))) mixture on top of it and ensure it spreads evenly around the pan.

%) Once you can see that a ‘base’ to the omelette has formed, but the top part is still runny, sling in the jalapeno and other chilli pepper and top with a few slices of the cheese.

^) Get it under the grill and allow it to rise. This can take a few minutes. What you may like to do at this point is to see how much saliva you can produce by slipping into a vivid reverie in which you concoct abstract flavours in your head. For example: What would the bark of a willow tree taste like, if a willow tree could smile? And what would an August in Tuscany taste like, if it were plaited?

&) Okay, your omelette should be risen and lightly browned. It should look like an off-cut of Humpty Dumpty’s cellulite in a shallow puddle of buttery rain. If it just looks like an omelette though, don’t be alarmed, that is fine also. Glide it over from frying pan to plate, assisting with a spatula as necessary and bung it in your gob.

*) After consumption, get on your knees and clean your kitchen. And do it properly this time.

Callum Scott - Christmas Chutney and Coffee Syrup

I'm a Leeds comic who runs this blog. I also run Pigeon Hole Comedy.

Like this post wasn't mawkish enough already...

It's getting cold. Everyone's grumpy. We all need cheering up. Apparently, Christmas isn't enough to cheer some people up. I've even heard that Christmas makes some people even more grumpy. What a load of shit.  I'm personally a big fan of Christmas, and see it as an excuse to abandon my natural cynicism rather than amplify it. We all know Christmas is commercial. So is every other day, but no-one seems to care about this. Well, if you're sick of contributing to the Christmas gift industry, why not make your own Christmas presents? It's cheaper and more heartfelt. Plus, it's a lot easier than people think. These are two Christmassy recipes that, due to their long shelf life, make excellent presents.

The first one is Christmas Chutney. This will keep until March at the earliest if you make it right, and goes well with cold meats, cheese, and poppadoms. It's very rich and looks like something a medieval king would have at Christmas. It's a nice present to give, and people will be grateful for it when every meal includes cold, dry turkey.

Ingredients:

500g mixture of dried fruits (e.g. any number of dried apples, pears, apricots, dates, raisins, prunes, figs, cranberries, sultanas, etc.)
500ml boiling water
250ml red wine vinegar
220g brown sugar
Half a teaspoon of turmeric, chilli powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger (all ground)
Half a clove crushed garlic
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper

Chop the fruit up into little bits
Boil the dried fruit in the water until it's soft (timing will vary between completely dried and 'ready to eat' dried fruit, but this doesn't matter too much).
Add in all the other ingredients and simmer for about an hour until it's reduced to about the right consistency.
At this point you can leave it as it is, or go in with a potato masher if you want a jammier texture.
Transfer into 2 sterilised jam jars*
They will keep for ages unopened, but it's best to leave it a week or so before consuming to let the flavours infuse more.

*To sterilise a jar, either use a diswasher, or if you don't have one, wash them out with hot water and antibacterial washing up liquid, rinse, and dry in an oven at gas mark 1.

See? That wasn't too hard, was it? This next one's even easier. It's a syrup to put in coffee, like the ones in coffee shops, but Christmas flavour. By which I mean if you put a dash of it in a cup of coffee, that coffee will taste AMAZING AND JUST LIKE CHRISTMAS. Just try it, you'll see what I mean. This is not my recipe, it's from here, but I thought I'd include it because it's brilliant. Not only does it make coffee AMAZING, but you can also use it to make individual glasses of mulled wine. Just pop a dash of it into a glass of wine and heat it on the stove until it's warm. I tried adding this to tea, but the result wasn't as good, to be honest.

Ingredients

500g sugar
500ml water
2 cinnamon sticks
thumb-sized piece of root ginger, peeled and sliced
2-3 cloves
10 allspice berries

Slowly heat the sugar and water together until all the sugar has dissolved.
Add your spices and simmer SLOWLY for half an hour until the mixture has thickened and taken on a red-brown colour.
When you're happy with it, put it in a sterilised bottle, spices and all and leave for 3-5 days (the original recipe said up to 2 weeks, but the ginger will start to get a bit gross).
Strain the ingredients and re-bottle the syrup. As you can see in the picture, I left a cinnamon stick in for aesthetic purposes.

Happy Holidays!

@callumformetal
@the_pigeon_hole
@CookingComics

Jon Whiteley: Barbecue Sauce

Jon Whiteley is a Manchester-based comedian who runs the terminally unpopular Jokewood Comedy and co-runs new act night Quip.

This is the picture Jon sent me. I'm not one to question these things.

I can't cook. I've never been able to cook. I haven't the patience to rigidly follow a recipe – nor the flair to go off-script and fashion my own dishes freeform like a culinary Miles Davis (that's the name of a jazz musician, right? Did he improvise much? I can't be arsed opening Wikipedia – just substitute that for John Coltrane if you don't think the simile works).

Education couldn't save me. I was terrible at Home Economics: One time, I made a batch of cheese scones in class that were, on the face of it, fairly successful. The only problem was... I drooled in the scone mix. It wasn't deliberate – I don't usually have this problem. I certainly wasn't sexually aroused by the scone mix. All I know is that I was stirring the mix and a large gob of spit slid from between my lips, plopping gently into the middle of the bowl.

What do you do in that situation? I was too embarrassed to say anything, so I did what any good coward would: I stirred it in to the mix, baked the scones and brought them home to my family, who devoured them gladly.

I can't cook. I'm bad at cooking. I feel it's best to get this out of the way early on.

The recipe I've chosen is one for BBQ sauce, and it's a recipe I've pilfered off my dad. My dad also can't cook. As a younger man, he used to keep MSG in a salt cellar and put it on every meal – you can't buy it from the supermarket any more because loads of people died from abusing it in this way.

I like it because it's flexible. It goes well with any meat and most vegetables, and it's incredibly sweet. And I like sweet things. I'm a pudding man. Fuck savoury.

The Ingredients:

• 1 Carton Tomato Passata (your favourite brand)

• Red Wine (your favourite brand)
• Vinegar

• ½ Beef stock cube
• 2 Tbsp. Black Treacle/Fuck Load of Brown Sugar

• Salt (pinch)
• Pepper (punch)
• Paprika (first of the month)

1. Heat up the Passata in a pan and then put everything else in when it's hot.
2. I used to use black treacle for this, but you can't get it for love nor money round here (and I've tried both). Brown sugar is an adequate substitute – although it doesn't have quite the same nostalgic flavour and you have to stir it in loads, which is boooooooorring. How much sugar should you use? Enough to even out the red wine and the vinegar (you put too much in, sorry).
3. Drink the rest of the wine, it's your favourite brand.

There you go – BBQ sauce. Now you've got something to drown your dish of choice in (perhaps another dish from this very blog). Alternatively, why not flop some raw meat about in it – 'marinating' – before cooking and eating it.

Better still, why not go and find another recipe for BBQ sauce. Because like I said at the start – I can't cook.

@whiteleyjon

@jokewoodcomedy

@QuippoFuel

Thom Milson: Poached Eggs on Muffins

Thom Milson is a Leeds-based comic who runs a night called HOWL. Details here. 

Ingredients:

1 Breakfast Muffin

2 Eggs

2 Rashers of Bacon

1 Clove of Garlic

Salt

Chili Flakes

250g of Softened* Butter

 *leave it out (covered) for a few hours

Okay, so I’m essentially telling you how to cook Eggs Benedict without the Hollandaise Sauce. Hollandaise Sauce is, in my opinion, the epitome of white people food: light, rich and very pretentious. I prefer the simplicity of just egg and bacon. It’s down to earth, and you can eat it differently. Instead of a dainty knife and fork, you pick it up, fold it in half, and let the yolk run down your chin like warm cum. Plus, everytime I try to make Hollandaise sauce I fuck it up.

Before I get started, I want to lay down a couple of ground rules: 1: no cutting corners, 2: no half-arse-ed-ness(?), and 3: no light versions. That is not how you enjoy food. You do it properly or not at all. It’s full-fat-cake or nothing, okay? No diet versions; no sugar free. If you don’t want to get fat or lose your teeth, don’t eat cake. If you don’t like post-meal shame and regret, eat salad.

Anyway, time for the damn recipe.

Directions:

Muffin:

Place the muffin under a grill until golden brown. Turn so that both sides are equal. It helps to put one half face up and the other face down.

Butter the muffin while it is still warm.

Let the butter melt into the muffin while you poach the eggs and fry the bacon.

Bacon:

I like to fry my bacon is a non-stick frying pan in a little butter*, on a medium heat.

Turn over occasionally until golden brown.

*if you’re judging me for using butter to fry bacon, you haven’t lived (and in no way ironic, at all, it will probably kill me).

Eggs:

There is a lot of endless debate over how you should poach an egg, which is a great example of  the human race’s ability to start, and maintain pointless arguments. When the world has fallen apart, two wasteland survivors will be sat in their rags, with beards, and six fingers, arguing over how to poach the last remaining egg.

I like to use a pan with about an inch, inch and half depth of water.

Add a drop or two of vinegar.

Have the water simmering slightly.

Crack one egg into a small glass.

Pour it into your simmering water. Get as close to the water as you can.

Some people pour it into a vortex. I don’t. I just pour it in.

Cook for about 3 minutes, or until the white looks cook and the yolk is still totally runny.

Repeat for your second egg.

Remove and place on a plate to one slide.

Putting the whole thing together:

Take one half of your muffin.

Place one rasher of bacon on it.

Place one of your poached eggs on top.

Chop up a small clove of garlic.

Sprinkle about half of the garlic onto the yolk with some chili flakes.

Split the yolk.

Repeat for the second muffin/bacon/egg pile of awesomeness.

Now eat the damn thing.

@thommilson

@HOWLComedyNight

Rich Hodkin - Carrot and Lentil Soup

The Lentil. 

Striking fear into the heart of the carnivore since its inception in the olden days. The connotations associated with serial lentil eaters: translucent skin, weak limbs, chronic halitosis and some sort of vitamin deficiency, are not without merit. I am certainly walking proof of this. But, this soup is super (soup-er?...sorry...) nutritious and very filling. Also, it’s easy to make and serves about twenty seven, so it has good store-and-reheat value.

Here’s what to do:

1. Get a load of carrots and grate them all up.

2. Put some herbs and spices¹ in a big pan with some olive oil on a gentle heat.

3. Pour in a litre of vegetable stock.

4. Add 300g of split red lentils² and the grated carrot.

5. Tricky bit, leave it for 20 minutes.

6. Put it all into a food processor or better still, use a hand blender if you live in a Jetsons style fantasy future cottage.

7. Eat it with some bread.

You will be a much healthier and better person if you eat this instead of McDonalds or any other processed meat. Also, no animals were harmed in the making of this meal.³

1 Whatever you have, but so much the better if you have chilli flakes, tarragon or coriander as these go nicely.

2 Other lentils are available.

3 Except for the kitten I kicked to death.

@Rich_Hodkin