Kev Eadie - XXX Jalapeno, Chilli & Mozzarella Omelette

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

A tablespoon of butter/margarine

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

25 drops of Tabasco pepper sauce

Lots of peppers

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

A red chilli pepper, chopped (“)

A ball of Mozzarella, chopped (“)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Callum Scott - Christmas Chutney and Coffee Syrup

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

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

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

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

Ingredients:

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

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

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

Happy Holidays!

@callumformetal
@the_pigeon_hole
@CookingComics

Jon Whiteley: Barbecue Sauce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ingredients:

• 1 Carton Tomato Passata (your favourite brand)

• Red Wine (your favourite brand)
• Vinegar

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

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

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

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

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

@whiteleyjon

@jokewoodcomedy

@QuippoFuel

Thom Milson: Poached Eggs on Muffins

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

Ingredients:

1 Breakfast Muffin

2 Eggs

2 Rashers of Bacon

1 Clove of Garlic

Salt

Chili Flakes

250g of Softened* Butter

 *leave it out (covered) for a few hours

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

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

Anyway, time for the damn recipe.

Directions:

Muffin:

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

Butter the muffin while it is still warm.

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

Bacon:

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

Turn over occasionally until golden brown.

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

Eggs:

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

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

Add a drop or two of vinegar.

Have the water simmering slightly.

Crack one egg into a small glass.

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

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

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

Repeat for your second egg.

Remove and place on a plate to one slide.

Putting the whole thing together:

Take one half of your muffin.

Place one rasher of bacon on it.

Place one of your poached eggs on top.

Chop up a small clove of garlic.

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

Split the yolk.

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

Now eat the damn thing.

@thommilson

@HOWLComedyNight