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

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

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

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.