Morning, how are you all? I think it’s ok to not be as ok as you normally would. Hopefully you’re doing fine though. Welcome to a brand new week here on Arseblog, where the BLOG part of the name is becoming more weighty than the ARSE. At some point the ARSE will return, and we can all start our obsession with ARSE again, but for now it’ll just have to be BLOG with occasional chunks of ARSE as and when they emerge.
This morning, I’m sorry to say, there are no lumps, bumps, slices or dices of ARSE, but perhaps some stuff will happen during the week. If it does, please be assured that I will serve you up a delicious helping of ARSE, perhaps with a side of ARSE and smother it all in a delicious ARSE gravy. Ok, I took it too far with that one.
This morning, let’s talk food. We’ve all got to eat, and seeing as many of us are stuck at home with only the supermarket trip as our reason/excuse/ability to go outside, some simple recipes might be useful. I love cooking. I wasn’t always into it, but over the years it has become something very important to me. There was a period when I found baking cakes and bread became a way of escaping Arsenal when things went badly. It’s a great way to switch your mind off. I made a lot of cakes/bread in the last few years!
So, today – here are a couple of recipes you can make pretty easily at home, and play around with too to make them to your own liking/specifications.
Chilli, cheese and bacon soda bread
I should point out right now that I don’t really measure stuff out, I just go by how much is in the bowl etc, but I’ve added approximate amounts because that’s generally quite useful for recipes. You’ll figure it out yourself after a couple of goes though.
Ingredients
- Plain flour – 400-450g
- Baking soda – 1.5 teaspoon
- Salt – 2 teaspoons
- Bacon bits – some
- Cheddar cheese – 100g
- Hot red chilli – 1
- Buttermilk – 200ml or maybe a bit more or maybe a bit less, I don’t really know.
Method
- Pre-heat oven to 180C
- Lash all the flour in a bowl. Add the baking soda and salt. Mix it like Sir Mixalot.
- Fry up the bacon bits
- Chop up the cheese into 1/2cm chunks
- Chop up the chilli real fine like
- Add cheese, bacon and chilli to the dry mix
- Add the buttermilk until it all comes together without being too wet
- Turn it out onto a floured surface
- Make a kind of roundy-shaped, but slightly flat ball, you don’t need to knead it. Just shape it.
- Place it on a baking tray with baking paper or a pizza stone if you have one
- Score a 1/2 inch deep cross into the top of it
- Add some thinly sliced cheddar (if you like) to the top of the dough
- Place in oven, bake for 40-45 minutes.
- Remove, cool on a wire rack.
- Eat
You should get something that ends up looking like below – and it’s delicious. Thank me later.
Obviously, if you’re vegetarian you can leave out the bacon. Hector, if you’re reading this and you’d like to make a vegan version, you can leave out the bacon and the cheese, and I guess you could make a vegan buttermilk by adding lemon juice to soy milk. I have never done that though, so I can’t make any assurances as to it’s deliciousness.
Crispy, crunchy Korean chicken (Dakgangjeong)
Remember when Jamie Oliver did a paella recipe and then everyone in Spain wanted to kill him for it? It’s true. He created some kind of abomination that enraged people. I can’t recall exactly what he did, but he suggested adding bits of bangers and mash to it or something.
Anyway, to the good people of Korea and those of Korean descent, I am not suggesting this is better than the way it’s done at home, I’m sure it’s not, but it’s still very tasty and I thank you for the gift that is Gochujang.
Ingredients
- Chicken breast/thighs – as much as you need
- Cornflour/potato starch – 100-150g or so
- Buttermilk/Milk
- Garlic – some cloves
- Gochujang red pepper paste – this is the stuff you need from your local Asian market
- Honey – 3 tablespoons
- Soy sauce – 1 or 2 teaspoons
- Ginger – a wee bit
- A red chilli
- Some spring onions
- Sesame seeds
- Vegetable oil
Method
- Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces – like the size of Harry Kane’s brain
- Put chicken, some minced ginger (about half a thumb sized bit), and some minced garlic into a bowl. Pour in buttermilk. Add some salt, black pepper, I like a good sprinkle of cayenne pepper in there too. Swizzle around. Cover with clingfilm and leave overnight in the fridge if you can – or for a few hours at least. If you’re in a hurry, can do it with regular milk, and give it about 20 mins, but the first method leaves the chicken really moist.
- Put cornflour in a big bowl. Take the chicken pieces out, let excess liquid drain off them. Put into bowl with cornflour and scromple them around until they’re all coated. I’ve been experimenting with a half cornflour, half potato starch mix here too, it seems to make things v crispy, but if you don’t have the latter don’t worry about it. You also don’t need a huge amount of cornflour to do this, so throw in 100g to start with and if your meat it still a bit ‘wet’, add a bit more.
- In a deep pan (or a deep frier) add vegetable oil and heat it up to the point where if someone invaded your cathedral you could pour it over from them from on high. Fry the chicken bits until they are crispy and crunchy.
- Now, the sauce. I think the ‘proper’ way has more complex flavour, because there are ingredients like sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and other specialised bits, so feel free to use them if you have them in your kitchen. If you don’t, this still works very well.
- In a small saucepan add the soy sauce, honey, a bit more garlic (if you like), chopped chilli and a big tablespoon of Gochujang. This stuff is sticky, so you’ll have to get used to that. It’s also quite nice to add a half a tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter (also v good if you’re planning on serving it to a mortal enemy who has a nut allergy). Heat it up slowly, stir it a fair bit but not obsessively like the sauce in Goodfellas.
- Then put the fried chicken bits in a bowl, pour/scrape over the sauce, and make sure they’re all coated by twerdling them around (sorry for the technical language).
- Serve in a bowls, sprinkle over some sesame seeds and sliced spring onions and eat the bollix off it.
You end up with something that looks like the picture at the top of the blog. You will mourn the eating of the last piece because you will want some more. If you become addicted to this chicken, it’s not my fault. I don’t know if there’s a vegetarian/vegan equivalent to this, but you guys will know better than I would if tofu or something might work. This recipe is also good for chicken wings.
So, there you go. Happy eating/cooking.
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Podcast fans, James and I will be recording an Arsecast Extra this morning. As ever if you have questions or topics for discussion, send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re on Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
The podcast will be out for you before lunch. Until then.
