Be Excellent To Each Other

No, never.

Whatever, dick.

That's a no from me, too.

And me. Common sense, no?

I think you're on your own here, Wogan.

Do your fingers get hurty when you light fires too?

No, he's cut them all off when he's using the knives. He had two left, but he grated them away.

Barbecue coal-starting chimney. Woo!

Also, I'm prepping early for the barbecue I want in a couple of weeks by making and freezing bread dough sausages, for easy defrost-slice-rise-bake on the morning. First up, simple white loaf but with 2tbsp home-made habanero oil, 1tbsp Hotel Chocolat cocoa-chilli oil and some extra habanero flakes. Looks like a normal loaf, initially tastes like one, but builds to a really nice tingle on the tongue. Success!

Need to get another done this weekend and buy a bunch of boneless chicken thighs to start marinading (I'm going to put the thighs in a freezer bag with the marinade and freeze). And look up a sticky bbq sauce recipe.

I just made a fucking amazing barbecue sauce. I looked up recipes and none satisfied, so I improvised. Seriously, fucking amazing.

I called it Barbazooka!

Mrs Trouser Bulge got me some lovely smelly Ewe's milk cheese from the Lakes. It's dead creamy and nice. We also got some beers from some brewery. I'll take a pic later. Maybe.

Craster and I proved that you're better off without one.

Impossibly.

Damned right. Fuck you, science!

How so?

We had a race. Mr Chris adjudicated.

Nothing judged by Mr Chris can ever be deemed scientific.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmste ... -beef-lie/

Iiiinteresting.

("This country" isn't specifically this country, by the way, although it apparently is the same worldwide).

That is interesting. While I knew you couldn't get Kobe in the US, I wasn't aware that they were actually fraudulently (legally or not) marketing other beef as Kobe.

Wagyu has never meant anything really - although if you buy something that calls itself wagyu that isn't excellent beef with superb marbling, I would say you could be justifiably annoyed.

One odd thing I've noticed in Thailand is the emphasis all over menus that steak restaurants are selling "100% Australian Grain Fed Wagyu Beef". Quite why they are trumpeting the decidedly inferior quality of grain-fed over grass-fed beef is quite beyond me.

I started a blog post that I've not yet finished, ranting about the use of names of breeds in food. What's the most famous beef breed in the UK? Aberdeen Angus, of course. And if you buy something labelled that you think you're somehow guaranteeing quality in your steak. Of course, all it means is that the herd is Aberdeen Angus. It doesn't tell you anything about how it was raised, what its diet was, how it was slaughtered and at what age, how it was hung etc. It being Aberdeen Angus tells you pretty much nothing whatsoever about the quality of the meat you're about to eat. Really fucks me off.

Didn't the Aberdeen Angus craze really take off because they were the only breed not to have been found to have BSE in them at some point? So people equated that with safety, and then quality?

That could be utter bobbins.

It's utter bobbins. A lot of good Angus herds were quickly certified as safe because they didn't use ground up animals as feed, but BSE was found in Angus beef as much as others. Again it's back to the naming - from a BSE the 'good' herds were those that were solely grass/grain fed. The bad herds were those that were ground meat fed, regardless of breed.

The two follow ups to this post are also worth reading.

The non-Welsh wagyu they supply is pretty great and totally different to any other steak I've seen in the UK, better than the £40 one Australasia sold me (£60 now!).

I will be eating Kobe beef in Kobe in June, cost be damned (also spider crab (takaashigani) sushi in Suruga Bay, Shizuoka prefecture).

I will now also be wanting to try these two.
This is going to be an (even more) expensive holiday.

I have a very good friend who is moving out to Japan next year to marry his Japanese girlfriend and live out there. She lives in Kobe. I shall be visiting.

Thai cooking class today! I am now a Tom Yam master.

That 3000 headcount is going to dwindle rapidly.

Danielle and I made a three course meal for the Egg and Mrs The Egg tonight.

Appetiser was chips and dips (a bit cheaty, but hey, it's a school night so prep time is short, plus I only have one oven right now). We made fresh guacamole and a from-scratch caramelised onion dip (with sour cream, mayo, and cream cheese) which turned out to be bloody nice.

Main course was salt-cured beef brisket, with twice baked potatoes and runner beans. Beef was cured for three weeks then slow-cooked in beer. Potatoes were baked, the top cut off and most of the flesh removed. Flesh was mashed with sour cream and spring onions, spooned back in to the shell, and the whole potato baked again to rewarm it and slightly crisp up the top of the mash. Beans were blanched, then fried in Iberian pork lard with some finely sliced prosciutto.

Dessert was tiramisu, inspired entirely by some marscapone I had to use up. We made a fairly proper one, with a zabaione based cream. Very happy with how it turned out.

Pics to follow!

Cunt.

Unrepentantly so.

I see the new Top 50 Restaurants in the World is out.

Only three from the UK this year, with 'Dinner' at #9, and 'The Fat Duck' and 'The Ledbury' at #14 and #15.

'Noma' still at #1.

Is Gaywood (*crowd roar*) at number 51, then? I'm shocked he didn't make it into the top 50 now that he has a pot of Iberian pork lard. He must be gutted.

And after gutting, melted down into Welsh dwarf lard.

Really, who's going to buy something called 'Dick Gaywood's Welsh Dwarf Lard' Other than Dick Gaywood*, Welsh Dwarf?

(*The Internet's Famous)

I've heard mixed things from Dinner, more negative than positive. (not bad per-se, but more by referencing to how good they thought it was going to be)

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that a bread recipe of 0.5 cups of oatbran to 3.5 cups of mostly-wholegrain flour with lots of mixed seeds and some porridge oats is not conducive to a stable digestive system.

Good thing it's been blowing a gale for the last week, really.

Second best pizza I've ever made: Iberian ham, Portobello mushrooms, mozzarella.



Best pizza I've ever made: shaved asparagus, spring onions, and three cheeses (mozzarella, reggiano parmigiano, goat's cheese)


Three cheese and shaved asparagus pizza by PenLlawen, on Flickr

Edit -- a post about it -- http://objection-salad.com/post/2285158 ... agus-pizza

I just had a Reggae Reggae Chicken ready meal, you bastard.

Admittedly, it is the King of Ready Meals.

I had a dry as hell burger followed by half a tub of ben and jerrys.

I had a bag of Minstrels, and a bag of Maltesers for dessert.

That pizza looks amazing... Want.

I have an m&s veg and pesto pizza. Bet it's not a patch on that asparagus confection.

I had three whole squid, which I cut up and pan fried with some stuff. Then I ate them. It was brilliant.

Fish and chips. I win

Chinese. When it finally arrives from Beijing.

Stupid sudden rise in popularity of favourite take away emporium.

In other news, I've now arbitrarily ruled that the family pie is eating at Byron Burger tomorrow.

I am just going to assume that they were giant squid.

:Cthulhu: :Cthulhu: :Cthulhu:

I bought a pack of mixed chillis from Waitrose. I have some jalapenos, some of those quite hot narrow Thai ones... and a Scotch Bonnet. Which is, of course, Proper Hot.

What am I going to use a Scotch Bonnet chilli for before it goes off? Pitch me!

Curry goat.

Helen bought octopus for a chorizo and octopus Catalan thing.

I fucked it up by using a litre's worth of stock concentrate thinking it made 200ml. She likes it, thankfully. I had to have the stilton-chilli-beans on toast I mentioned somewhere else. Bugget.

Also, plant the seeds. Or send them to me.