Steve Goodall - Beer Can 'Bacon' Chicken

This is how Steve Goodall tricks bacon into his lair.

I’ve tried roasting chickens to get crispy skin before but I always ended up with a soggy bottomed bird, but any port in a storm, eh?

So when I saw a short advert in between programs on The Food Network Channel showing two of my fave things, meat and beer, well I nearly shit a brick!

The idea was simple, stick a chicken on a can of beer of your choice, I used Stella Artois, so the whole chicken gets elevated off the tray so cooks all the way round, and the beer steams through the meat from the inside.

You need…

1 whole chicken, as cheap as you like, nothing wrong with roasting a cheap bird now and then then, we’ve all been there. No point buying one of these ‘Higher Welfare’ jobbies, after all, you’re only going to shove a metal tin up its arse!

1 can of premium wife beater (optional), opened.

8 rashers of smoked, streaky bacon, I used pancetta, cos life’s good right now…

Just a bit of oil (This is clearly not a Jamie ‘Lets Soak The Bleeding Thing In Extra Virgin’ Oliver recipe!)

Some salt and pepper

A metal roasting tin

How to…

1.       Set your oven to 190°C  (at this point, a proper chef waffles on about fan assisted stuff, but hey-ho!)

2.       Put just one oven shelf in, put it on the bottom rung, this is a tall tray full, you need the headroom!

3.       Take the stupid string off the chicken, it’s not bondage ffs!

4.       With a sharp knife, cut into the thighs and legs, this helps them cook at the same speed as the more delicate breast meat <insert your own pun here>

5.       Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the chicken, then drizzle in the oil and rub it in…’Oi, Chicken, you’ve lived a shitty life, and now I’m going to ram a can up yer ass!’ (Oh, not that kind of ‘rub it in’!)

6.       OPEN THE CAN OF BEER!! Things get explosive if you don’t. Put the can in the middle of the roasting tray (Use a solid tray, not a disposable foil one like I did in the photo, Doh!)

7.       Use your fingers to widen the ‘posterior end’ of the chicken, you may need to take the chicken out for drinks first, whisper sweet nothings to it, and spend 2 hours of foreplay first, I've heard birds prefer this to having it rammed straight in.

8.       Carefully slide the chicken over the can; it will bottom out in its ribcage.

9.       Layer the bacon on the chicken so it covers the breast meat and legs. This will flavour the meat from the outside.

10.   Then, deftly place the balanced tray into the oven and leave for 45 minutes.

11.   After this time, take the bacon off the skin, it’s done its bit, this is now your mid-recipe treat!

12.   Start to baste the chicken using the juices in the tray, repeat every 10 minutes until it’s been cooking for 1hr 20/30 minutes. Then take it out to rest.

13.   Leave it to rest for about 15 minutes, and then use what’s left in the can to make Stella gravy. Enjoy!

Nb. You can of course use the beer of your choice; stout-ier beers would make a better gravy.

Original source: http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipe/beer-can-chicken-keyword.html

@StevieGoodall

Eddie French: Blondies

Eddie is our first returning contributor to Cooking With Comedians, his recipe for Big Fat Greedy Pasta Bake can be found here.

These are Brownie like treats without the cocoa content so you don't overpower the other stuff in there. I can find some brownies a bit too rich if they have chocolate chips in, or other goodies so these can be made rather unique and exciting. This is how I achieve excitement these days. Society is to blame but that's for another time.

Fixings.

300g All purpose flour

170g Butter, melted and cooled slightly

200g Light brown sugar

100g Granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper (optional but very good if you're using a lot of chocolate in your 'Goodies' section)

280g Goodies. What ever you like really. Chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruit, methamphetamine, chunks of boiled sweet, hundreds and thousands or any combination of the above.

Method.

Preheat the oven to 160. Line a 9x13-inch baking pan (or 2 8x12 pans) with buttered/oiled greaseproof paper, letting the excess hang over the edges of the pan by about 1 inch so you can grab those edges and pull the Blondies. from the pan after they have baked.

Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda together into a bowl  Whisk the melted butter and sugars in a large bowl until combined. Add the egg, egg yolk, vanilla and Cayenne if you're using it, and then mix well. Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until combined.

It's important not to overdo this. Otherwise the mixture doesn't hold any air and you can end up with a very dense mixture.

Fold in the goodies and turn the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with the spatula.

A nice tip here is to keep the rubber spatula wet with a bowl of lukewarm water (email me if you need my recipe for this).

Put the tray into the oven, about 1/3 from the bottom. Bake until the top of the Blondies are light golden brown, slightly firm to the touch, and edges start pulling away from sides of pan. About 25 minutes should do it. Cool on a wire rack to room temperature. Remove from the pan by lifting the paper overhang and sling them onto a chopping board. Cut into 2-inch squares or simply tear off handfuls of the barely-cooled batch and cram into your tear-streaked face as your phone sits on the side, wilfully silent.

@EddieTheFrench

Sam Gore: Chorizo and Rocket Tortellini

Sam Gore is a regular writer on Russell Howard's Good News, and has appeared on The Tape Face Tapes, and FHM's Stand Up Heroes.

I’ll warn you in advance on this one – if you’ve never made pasta before, set aside pretty much an entire afternoon for making this dish. It is EPIC and you will need balls of steel. Oh, and if you don’t have a pasta machine, set aside about three weeks and space for a mental breakdown, because hand-rolling pasta is an absolute shitting nightmare that will drive you insane. If you reckon you can roll it perfectly thin and evenly then I salute you but I won’t be coming round for dinner because I expect being able to do it makes you some kind of high-functioning autistic serial killer who collects human teeth.

Making your own pasta is awesome. It’s a real pain in the arse the first few times but the difference in quality more than makes up for the extra effort. If you’ve got the kit and put in a bit of practice, it’s well worth it and you’ll get faster at it. Once you’ve got the dough right, you just run it through the rollers, clicking the machine down a notch each time to make it thinner. Not only is this dead easy, but you can also pretend it’s a clothes mangle and you’re a wartime evacuee. I’ve played around with loads of different fillings and sauces for stuffed pasta and this one is the dog’s bollocks (not literally, this isn’t ITV).

The rules with pasta dough are pretty simple. For each 100g or so of flour you’ll need one egg and a splash of olive oil. By a happy coincidence this also equates to about one person’s serving of pasta if you’re cutting it into tagliatelli – for tortellini it goes a fair bit further than that, provided you gather up all your cut-offs and run them back through the machine.

Chorizo & Rocket Tortellini (Serves 4)

For the pasta:

300g high-quality OO flour

3 large eggs

Paprika

Olive oil

For the filling

Two-thirds of one of those big horseshoes of chorizo, roughly chopped

Tub of ricotta

100g packet of rocket leaves

1 red pepper, roughly chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped

2 tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 egg

Generous handful of grated parmesan

For the sauce

The other third of the chorizo, cut into slices

5-6 sundried tomatoes, finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

Tablespoon of tomato puree

Paprika

Half a metric tonne of butter (adjust according to your own preference, but LOTS)

2 fresh tomatoes, finely chopped

Dried oregano

LET’S GET CRACKING.

Start with the filling. Heat up a large saucepan with a tiny bit of olive oil and add the chorizo. Cook for a few minutes until the sausage has started to colour and the oils and spices are coming out, then chuck in the red pepper, chilli and tomatoes. Cook until the pepper softens and add the rocket. Stir until the rocket just wilts, then turn off the heat and leave to cool for a bit. Have a cup of tea or touch yourself or something (wash your hands once you’re done) and then transfer everything from the saucepan into a food processor. Add the parmesan, egg and ricotta and a good pinch of salt and pepper, then process until it’s all smooth. Transfer to a bowl and stick it in the fridge to cool right down.

Now it’s time to sort the dough out. Measure out your flour into a large bowl and make a dent in the middle of it with your fingers. Then crack the eggs into the well along with a good slug of olive oil and plenty of well-ground salt and pepper (big chunks when you’re rolling pasta thin can make it tear). Add plenty of paprika – this doesn’t add much flavour-wise, but makes the tortellini a funky orange colour which is perfect for this dish and I’m all for that kind of artistic tomfoolery. Use a wooden spoon to combine everything until it’s formed a fairly dry-looking dough that’s a bit crumbly – as eggs are all slightly different sizes, add a little extra flour if it seems too wet.

Flour the work surface and start kneading the dough. At first it’ll tear a lot and come apart but the longer you do it, the less dry it’ll seem, the more the colours will blend and it’ll start feeling more elastic. Knead for at least ten minutes, until you’ve got a good springy ball that’s uniform in colour and doesn’t feel wet to the touch. Wrap it tightly in cling film to stop it drying out as you won’t be using it all at once.

Either get your pasta machine ready (clamp it to the work surface and dust the rollers with flour) or get your rolling pin and your insane mind prepped. Tear off a ball of dough and run it through the largest setting, then fold the sheet back on itself and run it through again. Do this a few times on the largest setting until your pasta is the right width, and then start adjusting the machine and rolling it through once on each setting. Keep flouring the sheet and work surface to stop the dough sticking. If the sheet’s too long and getting all over the place you can also cut it in half and run each piece through on their own. Keep doing this until you’ve got pasta rolled down to the thinnest setting. Work in batches assembling the tortellini rather than rolling all the pasta out at once, because you don’t want it to dry out.

Get two floured chopping boards ready; one for assembling the tortellini and one for putting it once you’re all done. Using a round pastry cutter (the bigger the cutter, the bigger the tortellini and the less faffing about you’ll be doing, the size is up to you), cut out discs of pasta and move to the assembly board. Get a mug of water ready and fetch your filling from the fridge.

Using two teaspoons to keep your fingers clean and dry, put a dollop of filling in the centre of each disc. How much depends on how big your discs are but it’s surprisingly little – try it out until you get it right, bearing in mind the disc has to fold over on itself and cover the filling entirely with enough space left to seal up the pasta.

This is the absurdly fiddly bit. Pick up a disc and keep it in the palm of one hand. Dip one finger of your other hand into the water and run it round the whole edge of the disc. Now fold the pasta over the filling to make a tiny Cornish pasty of deliciousness, gently rubbing out any air pockets. If there’s air in the pasta when it goes into boil, it will explode and EVERYONE IN YOUR HOUSE WILL DIE. Only joking! Only half the people in your house will die. This isn’t a lie, because if after all this effort your pasta just explodes in the saucepan because you haven’t got the air pockets out, you will go on rage-fuelled killing spree out of sheer fucking frustration. Once you’ve got your Cornish pasty shape, wet one of the flat corners and poke the filling in the middle of the flat edge. Bend around that dent and stick the two corners together. You should be left with a fully finished little tortellini that looks a bit like a sailor’s hat. Put it onto your other chopping board and cover with a tea towel to stop it drying out.

Repeat what will feel like a million times until you have enough tortellini for however many ungrateful pricks you are feeding, making sure you keep your assembly board dry and floured to prevent anything sticking where you don’t want it to. Also make sure you gather up your leftover bits of dough and combine them back together by rolling them through the largest setting of the machine, folding and repeating until the pasta feels right again.

Now you’ve got all your tortellini ready to go, get a big saucepan of water on to boil, along with plenty of salt and a slug of olive oil (this helps stop the tortellini sticking together in the water). Now it’s sauce time, bitches!

The finished sauce should be good and chunky to provide some texture, with the flavoured butter coating the tortellini to keep it suitably tasty and non-claggy. First of all melt your butter in a frying pan, then add the chorizo and again heat until the spices and oils start coming out. Add some extra paprika and the tomatoes, oregano, sundried tomatoes, chilli and tomato puree. Cook on a medium heat until the fresh tomatoes have pretty much disintegrated, then keep warm on a low heat while you cook the tortellini.

With your water on a rolling boil, tip in all the tortellini at once, giving it a quick stir to stop it sticking together. It should sink to the bottom at first so also move it around to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan and coming apart. Cooking fresh pasta shouldn’t take long at all – 3 or 4 minutes once the water’s returned to the boil, or until the tortellini rises to the top. Drain the pasta well, tip into the frying pan of sauce, toss to coat it all and then serve in bowls with plenty of parmesan and black pepper. Oh, and don’t forget to BASK IN THE ADMIRATION OF YOUR PEERS.

Sorry about the rubbish pic, I am useless at taking them.

@samgorecomedian

Charlie Sanders: Garlic Chicken Pasta

Charlie Sanders is a Sheffield-based comedian who is involved with The Sheffield Comedy Revue and manages the sketch group Staple/face. This is not the kind of blog that would make a joke about the surname of the author and chicken, but if it was, I'd have a fucking good one.

This is my mum's recipe. Cooking it today so I could attempt to write a recipe made me realise how much it must have really pissed her off to have me and my sister nagging her to make it all the time, because it's a  fucking pain in the arse to cook.  It involves two ingredients which are both amongst my favourite to eat and my least favourite to deal with while cooking (spring onion and tagliatelle). I actually fucked it up because I was  thinking of what jokes I was going to put in this blog when I was making it. It was still edible though but I couldn't remember any of the jokes. Just pretend I put some in there. Don't let me put you off making it though, it is by FAR my favourite thing ever and hopefully it'll become yours too!

What you'll need:
Chicken breast
Olive oil - er, whatever's the right one for frying with? A tablespoon of that.
Butter - about an ounce
Cracked black pepper
Plain flour
Garlic (two cloves)
Tagliatelle
Spring onions
Closed cup mushrooms

Some notes about quantities: I make this for one person, so just guess. Five tagliatelle nests for one very hungry  person worked for me quite well. I was tempted to use way more garlic, because although we don't have a family motto I'm pretty sure if we did it would be 'no, seriously, there is no such thing as too much garlic'. Basically, if
vampires were real, the Sanders clan would evolve into super unbeatable vampires because of their immunity to garlic. So yeah, let's all hope that doesn't happen. Two cloves were enough for me though. I also used four spring onions and three mushrooms. I made heaps, but I was very hungry, so there's that.

Preparation:

Dice the chicken. You need biggish chunks. Make them even so they cook at roughly the same time, not doing that dicks everything up MASSIVELY.
Mix some plain flour and some black pepper. Toss the chicken in it, coat it nice and thoroughly.
Slice the spring onion into strips. Not too thin though! I hate this part and got my housemate to do it for me. Slice the mushroom as well, and crush the garlic.
While you're doing this put the kettle on to boil. Or, in my case, forget to boil the kettle while you're doing the preparation, and put it on to boil after you've prepared the ingredients while you nip out for a crafty smoke.

Get either a wok or a stir fry pan and put the tablespoon of olive oil in as well as an ounce and a bit (highly precise, that's me) of butter. Let that melt into a mixture and put the pasta on to cook while you're doing that, then LIGHTLY fry the garlic.When that's fried enough (don't let it go brown), put the coated chicken in. At about
this point you start to get really, really fucking hungry because it's started smelling really, really fucking good. If you're anything like me you will have probably eaten some raw ingredients already, but that is kind of a gross habit, so maybe you haven't. I don't know.

Cook the chicken pretty damn thoroughly, and keep stirring throughout. At about this point - before it's started going golden, which is the end result you want - I take the biggest chunk of chicken and cut through it to check I won't get food poisoning. If it's cooked enough, put the mushrooms in and cook those for a few minutes, then finish with adding the spring onions for a few minutes. You need to keep stirring so everything's cooked evenly. When it looks ready and the chicken is all golden and the spring onion is not raw, it's done! Pour the (cooked) tagliatelle into the pan where you've cooked the chicken and stir thoroughly.

Feel so smug about having made some decent food that you accidentally leave all the hobs on and your house burns down while you sleep. Just kidding. Remember to turn the hobs off, don't be a shit.

That's pretty much it. By the way, when you're done, the chicken should be nice and golden. Don't overcook it, it's shit when it's overcooked and my mum would probably do what the living do when the dead spin in their graves. I don't know what the equivalent is. Oh, and let me know if you manage to pull this one off, and cook it for me as payment for me giving you such a great recipe, because I'm sodding TERRIBLE at cooking.

@charliesaur

Angela King - Secret Pork Scallops

Angela King is a Hull-based comedian who recently reached the finals of Mr. Ben's New Act of the Year.

This recipe takes a bit of prep and you're going to end up with a filthy kitchen, (no offence if it already is) but I promise you now, you will be one addiction up because these are blooming gorgeous!
It's a variation on an old army recipe apparently, they really know how to prepare a great last supper!

Ingredients: 

For the scallops you will need

4 pork loin steaks, fat and white membrane bits removed
1 cup of plain flour 
2 tubs of golden breadcrumbs, if you're too posh to use these, gravel from your front drive will go down just as well with me
1 tablespoon of garlic salt or garlic granules
4 eggs, beaten.
Olive oil, regular will do fine.
For the salad:

Half a cucumber
4 tomatoes, I prefer plum vine, but if you're not posh enough to buy these, any toms' will do.
1 bunch of spring onions
1 packet of greek feta cheese.


To make the scallops,
Take 4 plates, Mix the garlic salt with the flour on 1 plate, the beaten egg on another, and the third plate the breadcrumbs, the 4th plate is where you are going to place the pork once it has had it's treatment.
OK, this is the best part, get your loins and get a great big meat hammer, or a meat tenderizer, take each steak and BASH it out until it becomes twice the size of what is was originally, you have to use the mallet to manipulate the pork (it's a skilled job) after a couple of attempts you should be able to create something similar to a patch of Jame Gumb's jacket. Now take your new piece of thin pork steak and coat it in the flour mixture, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs, make sure you press the meat down into each one ensuring that it's completely coated and saturated in each ingredient, you will know if you've done it right because your fingers will be looking like skinny corn dogs and you should have a lovely looking piece of breaded pork to look at while you suck the salmonella off your hands.

Once you've cleaned your hands and washed up the used pots, (because we all know it's best to keep on top of our kitchens!) take a frying pan or a wok, heat up the oil until it's almost smoking, add one of the pork scallop and turn after a few seconds just to make sure each side is coated slightly in the oil, then reduce the heat a bit, cook for around 4-5 minutes each side. The breadcrumbs should start to look a deep golden brown colour with slightly darker brownish bits here and there and the meat inside should be lovely and white and cooked, don't forget, you've bashed the meat to such thinness that any longer would totally overcook it.
I usually then put the scallops onto a warming plate in a low temp oven while you cook the others.
Repeat this cooking process with the other 3, or 4 or 8 scallops, depending on how well you did with the hammer.
Now this recipe we used to have with spaghetti melanzane, but I found it was just too much food, so now we have it with a mixed greek cheese salad instead, to make that, take all of the salad ingredients, chop them up finely and then finger them into a lovely mixed salad with your CLEAN hands. 

And that's it.

I promise, I know it sounds like a lot of hassle but this will really make you say "OMG that is special" when you scran it for the first time! That's why they're a secret!! SHHHHHHUSHH!!!

Enjoy

Jim Bayes: Giant Yorkshire Pudding with Steak and Ale Stew

Jim Bayes is a Yorkshire-based comedian who runs nights in Leeds and Pudsey. Information here.

For the beef and ale stew

1.5k diced stewing steak

Teaspoon of salt

Gravy granules

A pint of water

A pint of strong bitter

You can also add spring onion and chopped shallots if you’re feeling craaaaazy

A hob and large pan would be useful at this stage.

Pour the water in the pan and add the stewing steak, cook on full heat for about 15 mins, then add the bitter and salt stirring regularly until boiling, once boiling add the relevant amount of gravy granules dependant on how thick you want the mix (a lot for father Dougal Maquire thick not as much for Boris Johnson thick) stir regularly and keep heating for 15 mins tasting as you go, make sure your steak is nice and tender before lowering your heat to a simmer and cracking on with the yorkies.

For the yorkie pud

300g Plain Flour

Teaspoon or so of Salt

4 Eggs,

330ml Milk

4 Tablespoons of Vegetable Oil for cooking

An oven (it helps)

A large baking tray



Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl, add the eggs and half the milk and beat until its nice and smooth. Mix in the remaining milk and leave the batter to rest in a fridge for about 20 mins

Add the oil to the large baking tray and insert into a 230C preheated oven, when the oil is very hot and slightly smoking add the batter mix and quickly put it back into the oven most likely burning yourself at some point in the process.

Let it cook in the oven, on the top shelf for around 20 minutes or until it is risen well and gone crispy, golden brown. Don't open the oven door until it has cooked as this could affect how your Yorkshire Pudding rise.

Once it has cooked and risen to satisfaction get a large plate load of steak and ale stew, a shovel to eat with and enjoy… please note I am over weight

@JimBayes

Joby Mageean - Patty Cakes and Piss Poor Cooking 2

The first half of this recipe, Condiment Soup, was posted yesterday.

Now Condiment soup will keep you alive but every now again you will want to eat actual food. for a very affordable option I suggest patty cakes.

Patty Cakes

Now first of all you will need to sell some DVDs amounting to the sum of around £3. Then purchase the following ingredients;

2 Eggs,

Porridge oats,

Cheese (I suggest Greek style salad cheese (sainsbury's basic feta)),

One vegetable of your choice (I suggest beetroot)

Mix 2 eggs into a bowl, then slowly add porridge oats whilst still stirring keep adding the oats until the mixture becomes stodgy then add some grated cheese and mix it in. Now dice up the vegetable, as I said you can use pretty much any vegetable but beetroot works really well as it makes the patty cakes pink in the middle and tricks you into thinking you can afford meat. Add the diced vegetables and mix again then shape the mixture into burger shapes (you should be able to make 4) and gently fry on either side on a medium heat.

Eat with a left over condiment and some Peter Bread... Delicious!

@thejobyshow

Recipe Review by Callum Scott

I decided these recipes were too interesting not to try, so I made 2 patty cakes and a bowl of brown and barbecue sauce soup.

The soup was very easy to make, but if I'm honest, I can see why Joby only suggested eating it when nothing else is financially viable. After tinkering around with condiment to water ratio, it began to taste a little better. I assume Joby has become a master of this sort of thing. My condiment soup will no doubt be inferior.

The patty cakes were a different matter entirely. They're very cheap and easy to make, and they taste good as well. I made 2, one with the recommended beetroot, and one with grated carrot, as I'm not a huge beetroot fan. I'll almost certainly make these again, though I might use a different soup recipe from this site.

Joby Mageean - Patty Cakes and Piss Poor Cooking 1

Joby Mageean is a London-based comic, Tickled Pig finalist, and Condiment Souperman. I've split his recipe into two parts. The patty cakes recipe will be up tomorrow along with the first of a new feature in which I will try to review some of the recipes that are sent in - Callum

Hello there you!

I am going to give you 2 wonderful recipes... one can be cooked on literally no money at all, but I strongly suggest you don't eat if any other food is available, and the other can be cooked on very little money and is actually very tasty.

Condiment Soup

So this is the food that costs no money at all. You see what they don't tell you about becoming a student is that they give you LOADS of money at the very start of your course. And by they I mean the Student Loans company and my Dad/my dead Grandad who set up some savings (I must point out that my dad and dead Grandad will not have given you money, but you may have a similar set up.) Now that money is to be spent very wisely on bills and food and whatnot so naturally I spent mine on a DVD of Home Alone 2 my second favourite Christmas film after Die Hard, and naturally after watching Home Alone 2 I then had to buy myself a big Christmas trip to New York where I stayed in a fancy hotel on my own and ended up spending £3,500 in a week (Completely true.) 

I came back from New York completely broke but with lots of wonderful valueless memories. Subsequently I had to spend the next three years worth of loans and earnings on rent and bills and had no money for food... it was then when I came up with Condiment Soup.

Ingredients; 

First of all you will need to go into town and start perusing every Wetherspoons, Toby Carvery and Students' Union for sachets of sauce and condiment, Brown Sauce is a must and pepper is always good, stay away from mayonaise or any other egg-based sauce as they will not work in a soup. The general rule I found is that if it is light coloured it probably wont work i.e tartar, horseradish and salad cream. Some mustards work, some don't, feel free to take a risk. MacDonalds do barbecue sauce that works really well but it does mean carrying those tiny little paper pots home which is tricky! Once I took a drinks cup from one of the empty tables, washed it out in the sink in the toilet, waited till no staff were looking and filled that bad boy to the brim with lovely barbecue goodness. I got some strange looks off customers but it lasted me weeks!.. So yeah barbecue sauce is a good shout, personally I hate ketchup but if you are a whore with no soul then I suppose that would be fine... also if you ever find a place that does mint sauce then you Sir/Madam are living the vida loca! 

Return home with your pockets filled with condiments and place the contents of every sachet into a saucepan add cold water and bring to boil stirring constantly. Of course you will get the exact same outcome if you just stick the kettle on and adding the to a bowl of the condiments, but this way you feel like you are actually cooking real food so that's a bonus. If you are looking for something to accompany the soup I would suggest stealing some of those wholemeal pitta breads off your housemate Peter (or Peter Breads as I like to call them.) It's okay he probably won't notice and even if he does he's not going to say anything, he'll probably just leave a sarcastic note on the cupboard again like when he bought those Pringles even though they are clearly a food for sharing!

Now Condiment soup will keep you alive but every now again you will want to eat actual food. For a very affordable option I suggest patty cakes.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

@thejobyshow

Rich Milner: Banana and Blueberry Cake

Rich Milner is a Yorkshire-based comic who runs a fantastic night, Square Hole Comedy, in Sheffield. This night has free cake included in the ticket price. I have sampled this cake and can confirm it is excellent - Callum.

I'm going to tell you a recipe that is not my recipe and you can find the original here. I make this nearly every month for the comedy night I run and people eat it and say THIS IS GOOD CAKE, DID YOU BAKE THIS YOURSELF?! I don't know if their incredulity is down to gender stereotyping or just the fact that they don't realise how easy baking a cake actually is because they are as ignorant as I was before my girlfriend linked me to this recipe. I like cooking things that only require one receptacle. A good example of this is stir-fries or poos. You literally just put it all in a wok or chamber pot. Cakes are cooked according to a similar principle. You literally just put it all in a tin. Unless you want to skip the last step and just eat the whole cake mixture out of the bowl. I highly recommend this option if you don't hate yourself enough already. If you already adequately hate yourself, put it in the oven and do some cognitive behavioural therapy until a skewer or knife poked into your tortured heart comes out clean.

You can probably do this cake in a variety of tins. You could make little cupcake type efforts out of it or whatever. Don't do that. Just use a loaf tin. This is a banana cake which is commonly called 'banana bread', so the loaf tin is the appropriate container to bake it in if you want to be able to legitimately make Nutella sandwiches out of it. If it's bread you can make sandwiches with it, right? Correct, so eat them for breakfast and brench, which is the meal between breakfast and brunch. If you find that you start to feel less healthy as a result of this diet have some yogurt drinks and do a fun run.

It makes it loads easier to remove the cake from the tin without bits sticking to it if you grease it with butter or margarine and line it with baking parchment. When you're greasing the tin, imagine you're one of those people who fancies inanimate objects and it makes it loads sexier. If you really are an objectophile only do this if you and your iPhone are in an open relationship. It will be prepared for being swapped for a younger model as part of its planned obsolescence but if you have an affair with a loaf tin from Poundland it will check you into rehab on Foursquare.

For the parchment cut a long strip to cover the bottom and ends of the tin. You could probably get away without lining the sides of the tin and just sliding a butter knife down the sides but you might scratch the tin and it is quite satisfying peeling the parchment off the baked cake, like pulling gauze off a seeping 2nd degree burn.

Turn the oven to gas mark 4. Make sure you take any other crap out of your oven because I hate it when people leave unused trays and stuff in the oven while things are cooking. I'm not sure there's any valid reason why, but do they need to be in there? No. They don't need to be cooked too so take them out, put them on the side and then put them back afterwards. Is it really that much of a chore? I bet you don't stack dishwashers properly either.

You're supposed to use 2 large or 3 medium ripe bananas, but you don't always have ripe bananas lying about, do you? Sometimes you've only got fresh ones that you bought that day because you thought AARRRGGHH I NEED SOME NUTELLA SANDWICHES ON BANANA BREAD and went and fetched some there and then. If you've only got fresh ones squish them with a fork straight away and put them to one side. It might just be my imagination but the mushy mass seems to ripen up a bit if left for a few minutes. If you've got some ripe ones, squish them after you've mixed the butter and sugar and put them straight in. Incidentally, if you do have a few too many bananas lying around and don't want to bake a cake, slice them and put them on a plate in the freezer. Frozen banana slices are quite nice to snack on, a little tip for you there which I learnt that whilst plotting the perfect murder (why worry about disposing of the blood-stained murder weapon when you can just eat it?).

You need 4oz of butter or margarine. I use Clover but I don't think it makes much of a difference. 4oz is 113.398 grams so get that measurement exactly right or your cake will be ruined and I will hunt you down in vengeance for ruining this recipe. I'll put a sharpened banana in the freezer and stab you with it. Death by banana. I hate things that are called 'death by'. It's typically 'death by chocolate'. It's too melodramatic for most people and too insensitive to diabetics. But I will stab you the to the actual death with my banana blade and then eat it. Luckily for you that is an empty threat; you could probably get the measurements wrong and the cake would still taste nice. I once baked a tray of brownies and completely got the measurements wrong and it erupted and spilled all over the oven and was just a mound of chocolatey brownie mush and I took a spoon to it and it was incredibly nice and no one died. Well, a bunch of people probably died in wars and from hunger related disease but I was eating a chocolate mountain so I wasn't even pretending to care that day. Perhaps that's what death by chocolate really means; the satisfaction of knowing people are dying while I get fat.

Cream the butter/marg with 6oz/170.098 grams of regular old sugar in a biggish bowl. It makes it easier if your butter/marg has been left out of the fridge for a while. When that's pretty soft and smooth, crack two eggs in and mix it together and then mix in the banana sludge. At this point I like to take a moment to recall something painfully embarrassing that I did once and wince a little, as I do at regular intervals throughout the day, but this is entirely optional. Then I add the flour 8oz/226.796 grams incrementally, adding a bit at a time, like you do when making your body immune to the poison of a venomous snake, until smoothish (some little lumps are fine).

Like one of the commenters on the original recipe's website suggested, I started putting blueberries in it. I did use fresh blueberries but they're relatively expensive and frozen blueberries are not only cheaper but also seem to be better for baking. Defrost at least partially beforehand or briefly in the microwave and give them a little squish. Tip them in and fold them in thoroughly and you're done making the mixture. Pour it into the loaf tin and stick it in the oven for 40 minutes and then turn it down to gas mark 2 and leave for another 30 minutes. Poke a skewer or knife in like I said and if the mixture sticks to it all sloppy like it isn't done yet. Put it onto a wire rack if you've got one and let it cool a for a little while. If you've lined the whole tin you should be able to just turn it upside-down and it'll fall out. Peel the parchment off and savour how good that feels. Your cake is baked. Now you will not have to learn to be a good MC and when you're dying of verbal masturbation can just say HOW'S THAT CAKE WORKING OUT FOR YOU HERE'S THE NEXT ACT.

@richpmilner

Eddie French: Big Fat Greedy Pasta Bake

Eddie French is a Yorkshire-based comic and a member of the Dicount Comedy Checkout improv group.

I call this the Big, Fat, Greedy Pasta Bake because it's a Pasta Bake and I'm a big fat greedy.

I realise that I am the first person to go about adding flesh to proceedings but this is easily removed/substituted in the dish to make it veggie or vegan. This will hopefully allow everyone to try this one out while also allowing me to be held lower in the esteem of some of my peers. Never accuse me of failing to multi-task.

Ingredients:

1 large onion.
3 medium peppers (any colours you like, treat yourselves),
6 large mushrooms (or equivalent volume in small mushrooms),
Half to two thirds of a courgette (if you're having trouble finding them then use a zucchini and an
Itallian to French dictionary),
2 tins of chopped tomatoes,
2-3 chicken breasts,
3 inches of chorizo (if one is going to make an amusing face when handling this then do remember
to flare your nostrils, some traditions abide for a reason),
Dried pasta,
Tomato purée,
1 lemon,
1 fresh chilli,
1 desert spoon of sugar,
3 cloves of garlic,
Balsamic vinegar,
Basil and oregano (fresh and dried),
2-3 slices of stale bread,
Salt and black pepper,
Grated cheese.
Rape seed oil.

Method:

The Bake.

Heat a few teaspoons of rape seed oil on a hob in a wide, oven safe pan. Obviously you can use the cooking fat of your choice but if, like me, you're not very edgy then using rape seed oil allows you to see how the edgy half live. It's quite liberating, I can tell you. (It's also an oil that can take a high heat and doesn't have a flavour that would overpower the dish.) Chop up the veg until it no longer poses a choking hazard and bung it into the hot oil. Season lightly with salt and pepper and stir fry until the veg is pretty much cooked.

The chorizo is used more as a seasoning than a substantial part of this dish. Slice it into tuppence sized slivers (feel free to snigger at the word tuppence; either as a childish anatomical reference or as an archaic term for what is now an essentially worthless quantity of currency) and chop them into quarters. If you want the seasoning and not the meat then add a generous teaspoon of paprika to the mix after the tomatoes have been added. Then slice the chicken into inch chunks and add them and the chorizo to the pan as well as the chopped chilli, two, crushed cloves of garlic and a squirt of tomato purée. Add more seasoning.

When the chicken is all sealed and the chroizo has released some of it's oil and started to crisp up a little then add the two cans of tomatoes and one can's worth of water. Stir everything through so it's all mixed up and looks like a runny ratatouille.

Add the lemon rind and juice and a splash of balsamic vinegar, more seasoning and the fresh basil and oregano (you can use dried if you don't have fresh). Then add the sugar, stir it up and taste the liquid. Adjust the seasoning to taste.

Add 3 handfuls of dried pasta, mix and bung the into a preheated oven (200 degrees, 180 if fan assisted) and bake until the pasta is cooked (15-20 minutes)

The Topping.

This is optional but it is rather good.

Take the stale bread and blitz in a food processor until it reduced to breadcrumbs. Then add the remaining clove of garlic, dried oregano and basil and salt and pepper. Blitz some more while adding 2-3 tablespoons of rape seed oil as it blends. Taste and adjust flavours.

When the pasta is just about cooked spread the breadcrumbs over the top and return to the oven or place under the grill. When the crumbs are toasted add some grated cheese and grill until melty and nice.

This dish is best served hot on the day of cooking and then on the following two days, straight out of the cooking receptacle, out of the fridge with the door open and a lingering regret that you have no one with whom to share said meal.

Love and indigestion,

Eddie French

@EddieTheFrench

The Discount Comedy Checkout

Jayne Edwards - Spicy Bean Mexican Tomato Soup

Jayne Edwards is a Manchester comedian who was recently named one of the 50 funniest women to follow on Twitter by Huffington Post UK.

Hello!

What I have decided to make is a delicious spicy bean Mexican tomato soup. Now that’s a lot of words right there, but it really couldn’t be simpler!

The ingredients aren’t exact measurements, but I honestly couldn’t tell you how much I use. “To taste” is the best way to go.

Take…

1 carton of passatta. (or “tin” if you’re a raggo)

Some real tomatoes – Let’s go crazy!

A pot of sweetcorns. (it’s like a tin, but softer?? You get them at Tescos. It’s like if NASA made a tin but didn’t put any effort into it. )

Peppers - Just various peppers

Onion

Chilli - However much you want I’m not gunna tell you how to live your life dude.

Garlic - I like a lorra lorra garlic. If you’re thinking “wow that must make you stinky”, my usual smell is “sick bag in a microwave” so it’s an improvement. Sorry, probably shouldn’t talk about this while you’re hungry.

We built this City on Rock and Roll – Need this on LOUD.

Oregano

Cumin- Hahahaha cum. (but don’t put cum in there unless you have the expressed permission of the person you’re feeding this to.)

Kidney Beans – Not made from real kidneys!!! Huhuhuhuhuh I’m gunna make a great comedian/funny mum one day.

Refried beans – Come on! I said let’s get crazy with this thing!!!

Doritos –To eat while cooking.

A cool hat – Cool hats are cool.

Spinach

Cooking:

To cook, gather all the ingredients together, chopped up, then imagine I’m bringing my separated
fingers together like an evil genius but my fingers cross over. That’s what you need to do with these ingredients, but in a pot!

Cook till all the enzymes are cooked.

Assimilate into your digestive system.

And that’s about it! Enjoy!

@JayneEdwards

Callum Scott - Spicy Vegetable Soup

(This is the first and only post that is taken partially from my other blog)

This is the first of what will probably be a few soup recipes I post on here. Making soup is an activity I rely on when I'm upset or angry. I'm not sure why this is. I think chopping everything up into uniform pieces somehow relaxes me. Soup itself is a comforting food. I think making soup for someone is a reassuring gesture.

I think my relationship with soup began in my first year of university. I would get pretty depressed pretty often, and I quite often didn't have a lot of money. I think maybe a Pavlov's dogs style relationship built up, as I was at my worst when I was too poor to get pissed and forget about it. I started off simple, and slowly built up my soup repertoire. It was also whilst in university halls where my obsession with soup became unhealthy. I would make more soup than I could consume. The freezer would be full of it, and I'd even post desperate facebook statuses trying to get rid of it. Second year saw my addiction subside a bit, so I was at least only making a correct amount of soup, a ratio which I've about kept up. Here is a sketch I wrote about my soup addiction.

There's nothing better after a bad gig than to make a massive pot of soup. It got me through Edinburgh a couple of times certainly. More people should try the soup method for dealing with bad moods. Like any coping mechanism, if it's not abused, it can be quite rewarding, and it cheers you up twice; once making it, and once eating it. This is my own recipe for Spicy Vegetable Soup.

Callum's Spicy Vegetable Soup
Serves 3-4
Ingredients:
1tbsp oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 sweet potatoes, diced
1tbsp paprika
1tsp oregano
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
1tsp cumin (optional)
1 red chilli, finely chopped (optional)
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock (cubes is fine)
1tbsp tomato puree
1 tin pinto beans
3tbsp sweetcorn
handful shredded cabbage
juice of 1 lemon
Salt and lots of black pepper

Gently sautee onion, carrots, and sweet potatoes in oil on a low heat for 10-15mins
Add herbs and spices (inc. garlic and chilli if using) and cook for another 1min before adding stock and tomato puree. Simmer until everything is tender. Remove the bay leaf at this point.
Blend the mixture until smooth and add beans, sweetcorn and cabbage. Cook for 8-10 minutes
Add the lemon juice, salt and pepper, and serve.

@callumformetal

Hello

This is Cooking with Comedians. It’s a blog that will consist of comedians sharing recipes, anecdotes, and all sort of other exciting content with you. My inspiration for this blog largely comes from the Heavy Metal Cookbook, by Annick Giroux, which is a similar concept, but with heavy metal bands instead of comics. I thought it might be a nice idea for fans of comedy and food like myself, of which I’m sure there are many, as well as a way for comedians to promote themselves in a unique and interesting way.

My name’s Callum Scott, and I’m a comedian based in the North of England. I’m also a fan of cooking and will probably contribute a fair bit of stuff to this blog. If you’d like to follow me, then I’m on Twitter at @callumformetal. The blog is also on Twitter at @CookingComics.

If you’re a comedian who would like to contribute something to the blog, your recipes will be gratefully received at callumscottleeds@gmail.com. Feel free to send in recipes along with pictures, your Twitter handle, a short bio, a video of you performing, food anecdotes, or even film your own cookery video. The choice is yours.

I’ll start off with a post of my own to give an idea of the format. Thanks a lot for reading.

Callum Scott