Callum Scott - Chicken Curry - It's Really Not Difficult HONEST

This is a recipe of my own devising, so I've not called it anything more grand than chicken curry, but the flavours and sauce are redolent of a lot of South Indian dishes. It's really easy to make so if anyone says that making curry from scratch is complicated but worth it, tell them to fuck off. It is worth it, but it's not complicated. Seriously. Also, if anyone says they make curry from scratch and then uses a bought curry paste or curry powder, tell them to fuck even offer. This is objectively a piece of piss, and not too expensive after the initial outlay for all the spices.

Curry Paste Ingredients
- A red onion, roughtly chopped - this is quite a sweet curry, so it works well here
-2 cloves of garlic
-A thumb-sized piece of root ginger, sliced
-2-3 long thin green chillies
-2 tsp ground coriander
-1 and a half tsp cumin
-2tsp tomato puree
-1tsp ground cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper and paprika
-2tbsp oil

How to make the curry paste:

You know all that stuff? The stuff in the list up there. Put it all in a blender. Done. How fucking difficult is that? Seriously.

Chicken Curry Ingredients
-About 400g skinless boneless chicken thighs- Don't buy breasts you idiot.
- 5 or 6 cardamom pods
- 2 or 3 cloves
- A red and a green pepper, sliced into big chunks
- Half a head of cauliflower in fairly large bits
- Half a tin of chopped tomatoes
- 1 carton coconut cream
-Some salt

How to make the curry:

Start by frying off your curry paste with the cardamom and cloves until the onions are translucent and your kitchen smells fucking incredible.
Add the chicken (might need a bit more oil), turn up the heat slightly and brown it off.
Throw in your vegetables and liquid ingredients and simmer for about half an hour till the sauce is thick and the chicken's cooked through. If the sauce thickens too soon, just add a little more tomatoes or some water.
Your curry should be fairly bright orange.

Season it, and serve it with rice, naan, or whatever you eat curry with. Either take out the cloves and cardamom or just warn people to keep an eye out for them (probably easier)

I don't understand what's so difficult about that. If there's anything about it you do find difficult it's because I'm a shitty writer, so leave a comment and I'll try and clear it up.

Joby Mageean - Eggs Bandido

¡EGGS BANDIDO!

This is a recipe I invented this morning as I had some left over bolognese and I have always enjoyed spicy food, especially for breakfast. so this meal is a Mexican take on the famous New York dish Eggs Benedict. I have named it Eggs Bandido as it is the only Spanish word I know that sounds a bit like Benedict and I am a whore for cheap puns.

Ingredients

Left over bolognese (alternatively you can make from scratch although that is a lot of commitment for breakfast)

Chilli Powder 

2 Large eggs

Brown Bread

Butter

Oregano

Chilli sauce

Tobasco (other inferior hot sauces are available)

Black Pepper

Cheese (whatever your preference is, I used Camembert) 

Firstly mix in some chilli powder to the bolognese you can also add some kidney beans if you're into that, basically you are trying to make a sort of chilli. Now at this point you are probably thinking "why wouldn't you just use leftover chilli?" to which I say "HA! as if YOU would ever leave any chilli you naughty little piggy!"... seriously though you can do that as well if you like. Now take that Chilli and heat it in a way you seem fit, fry or saucepan would probably be best but I see no harm in a microwave.. I feel they have a stigma they have never earned. I mean I haven't done the scientific research, but they're probably fine. So heat up the Chilli and stick on some toast.

Poaching the eggs

So people poach eggs differently.. It's just one of those things that you are just going to have to get over. Like the fact that that girl you like with the funky hair from Manchester says plaster differently than you do, yes it's a tad strange but constantly telling her "that's not how it's pronounced, You speak wrong!" is not likely to change her decision to have sex with you so you might as well just stop it!...  I find Thom Milson's Recipe for Poached eggs pretty spot on, Personally though I just crack 2 eggs in boiling water for a few minutes then take them out. as for vinegar I have a vast selection of vinegar and can tell you that Cider Vinegar works really well, but any is fine, just splash a bit in the water. 

butter your toast and add large spoonfuls of the chilli, grate or slice some cheese on top and then place on the 2 eggs.. a bit of chilli sauce, Tobasco and some salt and pepper for seasoning and you're golden... add some oregano because it always makes food look more like food and serve. 

A lovely Mexican-style breakfast to enjoy!

¡Fresco Fiesta! (my spanish is very poor)

Joby x

Michael Sterrett - Stuffed Potato Skins

With a strangely fitting lack of ceremony the Leeds comedy club Mr Bens closed this month. I for one was sad to see it go. I have some great memories of the place. It was a club where both myself and many of my peers cut our teeth. The Monday night gong show was a real rite of passage for anyone coming up in the North of England comedy scene and Mark Hayden who booked the show is a genuine champion for both new talent and left field comedy. I met many funny people and forged good friendships in that odd red basement. There's chat that Mr Bens may return in some form but for the time being I'm going to lie on my side weeping quietly and repeating Sully O'Sullivan's incantation, "...some of these people have come from as far away as Beeston", until I remember how to be funny again. Long live Mr Bens.

Stuffed Potato Skins

This is a lovely recipe for the cold winter nights and if you can't manage all four potatoes they make a great snack that will keep in the fridge for ages. Don't scrimp on the cheese and salt or you will end up with a baked spud which could be accurately described as Bland-O-Rama. You can also substitute cream for the yogurt if you are feeling especially decadent darling. I also occasionally thrown in a bit of steamed cabbage.

4 medium sized potatoes

200g grated strong cheddar

3 scallions

100g butter

200g natural yogurt

Sea salt

Black pepper

Wash and prick your potatoes with a fork then rub the skin with a generous amount of sea salt. I tend to put a metal skewer through the potatoes which helps them cook quickly but it's not 100% necessary.

Chop your scallions finely, seperating the white and green shoots. Put the green shoots to one side and slowly sautee the white shoots in a little olive oil. Just before they begin to brown take them off the heat and leave them to cool.

After an hour in the oven at 220 degrees take out your spuds and cut them in half.

Get a big bowl and use a table spoon to scoop out the lovely soft potato. Add your butter, yogurt, fried scallions and half the cheese. When you have a nice coarse mash you can season the mixture with salt and black pepper to your taste.

Take the mixture and spoon it back into the potato skins before covering them with the rest of the cheese and the green scallion shoots. Bang the filled skins back in the oven for 5-10 minutes depending on how well done you like your cheese.

You're always advised to leave food to cool after being in the oven but I just eat it straight away because I have no sensitivity left in my body and I am a maverick who plays by his own rules.

Best consumed whilst listening to Madame George by Van Morrison.

@mjsterrett

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