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(No blog from me today, because I managed to contract a mild-to-moderate case of hypothermia (self-induced, while filming). Instead, have this post from the dim and distant past:)

Happy pigs make the best bacon, it’s true, but I’m with A A Gill on chickens. Not only because he’s disagreeing with the Mockney Prat, but because I really hate chickens.

Jamie’s got himself some good press recently, but it’s for all the wrong reasons. Right now he’s campaigning about the living standards of chickens, and chickens are scrawny little bags of evil covered in fluff, worthwhile only as an accompaniment to bacon. I have looked into the eyes of a chicken, and it was then that I knew true hatred. (Admittedly, I did proceed directly to eating its unborn offspring, who were delicious.)

You can’t cuddle a chicken or train it to fetch your paper. Cows, sheep, and pigs could be considered cute and/or fluffy. Even fish have personalities, and I’m in favour of farms that include playparks and whatnot for fish. Chickens, on the other hand, are drumsticks with a beak attached, held together by pure rage. It’s a bloody good job for them that they’re so damn tasty. If it wasn’t for the existence of garlic, I firmly believe that we would have eradicated chickens long ago, like we did to wolves and snakes.

Before that, Jamie gained notoriety by championing the concept of nutritious school dinners. Nice try, but I don’t care about children either. Children should shut up and eat their gruel, or whatever it is they have nowadays, thus leaving more of the good food for me. (Such as those free-range chickens that take up acres of farmland.) I had to suffer when I was their age. We called it ‘character-building’.

The right ideas, the wrong targets. Despite some mellowing in his old age, he still has some way to go before I’ll admit to agreeing with him about anything. And besides, in my head he will always be the Naked Chef, and as a result deserves eviscerating with a blunt whisk.

I am in favour of free range, organic, slow-reared, locally-produced food not because of ethics and certainly not because “it’s got more effics innit, geeza”. I give neither a hoot nor a fig for my Carbon Footprints or my Food Miles. I am in favour of free-range, slow reared, locally-produced food because it tastes better.

This week has been Blenders Week at Kamikaze Cookery Towers, so I thought I’d share a couple of tips that didn’t make it into the episode.

The two blenders we tested at first were horrendous, but that doesn’t mean that all cheap blenders are crap. I use a £15 one from the godlike Grays of George Street, which has never caused me any problems. So if you don’t want to drop ninety quid on an all-performing ultrablender, or a hundred quid on one with Gordon Ramsay grinning at you from the box, you’ve still got options.

We discussed in the episode that more power is not necessarily better. Blending was traditionally done by hand. You want something that will automate that process and save your carpal tunnels, not something that can reduce everysing in zer vorld to pulp. It’s not a contest. Be gentle.

Next, the beaker. Most blenders come with a dinky wee plastic container that you can blend things in, or so they claim. In my opinion these are best shunned, ignored, spurned, and thrown away. The whole point of having a stick blender is that you can stick it into things and blend them (which is another reason why they’re called “stick blenders”). Use the biggest pot you have available, which will help reduce spatter, or whichever pot your ingredients are already in, which will help to reduce washing-up. Use the provided beaker only if you’re having a party and you’ve run out of proper glasses.

Then there’s technique. Things are going to splash if you work at the top of the liquid, so don’t do that unless you have to. If you’re making a soup out of large chunks of vegetables, you might have to come down from the top a few times at first to break them up. After that, leave the business end of the blender on the base of the pot.

If you’re making a foam or a froth, you’re trying to get air into the mixture, and for that you need to be near the surface of the liquid, near where the air is. The proper name for the technique used to do this is “drawing up”, or, as it’s described at Kamikaze Cookery Towers, “you’ve gotta wank it”⁰. Hold the blender upright at the bottom of the container, start it blending, then gently pull it upwards towards the top of the liquid. Stop when it’s getting too close to the rim of the container. Repeat.

Make judicious use of the pulse button.

Finally, don’t over-blend. Once you’ve reached the consistency you’re looking for, stop blending. It’s a simple suggestion, but it’s an easy one to overlook. Over-blending things is the best way to turn food into glue.

Also finally, do not use the blender as a massage device. Although there’s probably an appropriate attachment you can buy for the Bamix uberblender. That damn thing does everything.

⁰ An allusion to the Wankel Rotary Engine, which is reminiscent of the rotary action of the blender blade, and also to the piston-like action used in the drawing up technique. Why? What did you think we meant?

Damn them, the guys over at Ideas In Food have done it again.

Steamed Brioches – what a wonderful idea.

Right… Goes off to dig out a Brioche recipe

So, Spud asked for a piece on eggs – and since we’ve not got any episodes coming up featuring ovoids (unless you count the Gordon Ramsey souffle episode coming in a few weeks), I thought I’d share some info on boiled eggs.

First up, a question that I’ve looked into a couple of times – are soft-boiled eggs really likely to give you salmonella?

How many eggs are infected?

Quite what the likely salmonella incidence in eggs is is a complicated question. An FSA study in 2007 showed a .38% incidence of salmonella – however, that was in cooked eggs served in restaurants and other catering places. (The same study warns that it’s best to be careful with egg product from Chinese takeaways and restaurants, which showed a very high tendancy to store eggs at ambient temperatures and pool eggs). It’s very hard to find out what the incidence of salmonella in UK eggs is – there aren’t any figures on the FSA site.

However, Andrew Wadge, Chief Scientist of the FSA, at one point refers to the UK’s having 10 times less salmonella in eggs than they found in foreign egg samples, implying an infection rate of about 1 in 300 boxes. However, the foreign egg survey also showed that 157 of the cases they found were salmonella on the outside of the egg only, with only 10 being salmonella inside the egg – and no details on how deep inside.

Given that salmonella on the shell will be killed immediately in a boiled egg, you’re talking about a 0.02% chance per box of eggs that there’s salmonella, rather than Intel, inside one of them (assuming you’re using a UK egg).

In the US, the Department of Agriculture did a survey in 2002 that showed there was an incidence of salmonella in 1 in 30,000 eggs produced in the US. That’s, erm, not very many (and almost exactly the same as my estimated UK incidence).

Harold McGee says that there’s basically no difference in infection rates between battery farmed eggs and free-range.

What precautions can you take?

The FSA and various other places advise that soft-boiled eggs aren’t safe – but the risk factor appears to be pretty darn low. Added to all the information above, whether or not the salmonella survives cooking depends on where it lies in the egg – because there’s a steep temperature gradient in boiled eggs, with the surface, obviously, getting pretty near boiling, the salmonella needs to be pretty deep into the egg to not boil alive, even if you’re cooking a soft-boiled egg.

On a practical note, I’ve been eating soft-boiled eggs for quite a few years now, with, touch wood, no salmonella so far.

Of course, you should still store eggs in a refrigerator – there’s no downside to doing that, and it prevents the growth of any salmonella that might be there. And as Heston Blumenthal and various other people point out, you should always wash your hands after handling raw eggs in their shells, because there’s actually far more likely to be salmonella on the shell than inside.

If you really want to be 100% sure, and you’re either fairly patient or have a sous-vide setup, you can pasturise eggs. Just stick them in a water bath at 57 degrees centigrade for 75 minutes for a large egg (thanks Douglas) – you can find out more in the Practical Guide to Sous-Vide. That’ll kill everything in there without coagulating the protein – although it may alter the taste and texture a bit. McGee mentions that you can also buy pre-pasturised eggs, although I’ve not seen them in the UK.

Of course, if you’ve got a sous-vide setup, you can also just cook your boiled eggs using it. Bruno Goussault, who more or less invented sous-vide, says that the perfect temperature to cook eggs is 64.5 degrees Centigrade. I must admit, I’ve tried cooking eggs sous-vide a couple of times, and the results have been a bit disappointing – but that’s a topic for another post. One thing that’s certain is that an egg held at 64.5 degrees for a few minutes will definitely be bacteria free.

So…

No, it’s not very likely that you’ll get salmonella from a soft-boiled egg, although it’s not impossible. It’s a non-zero chance, so if you’re feeding eggs to young children, adults with weakened immune systems, or anyone else who might die of salmonella infection, it might be best to be cautious.

But for a healthy adult, given the infection rates I’ve mentioned above, you’d have to eat a soft-boiled egg every day for a little under 100 years to even have an odds-on chance of encountering one contaminated with salmonella. And even then, there’s a good chance that the bacteria would die in the cooking process, or you’d just fight off the infection.

Hurrah. Back to the egg-n-soldiers for me.

Various Kamikaze Cookery bits…

We have a Facebook group! Yes, join us in our, erm, booking of faces .

The weekly Egullet conversation – this week, it turns out that we accidentally managed to buy the Rolls Royce of blenders.

And if you were wondering whether the Bamix does just as well in a crappy plastic beaker – I tested this morning.

Fruit

Fruit tastes okay, and many don’t produce any washing up. Remember that you need to eat fruit to avoid scurvy. The downside is that they’re sometimes difficult to get into, and normally produce some sort of litter (apple cores, skins etc.).

If you’re really lazy you can get the vitamin C you need to live from Fruit Juice drinks They’re quite cheap at the lower value end, especially value orange juice. However, you probably miss some sort of goodness from doing this, so if you’re really lazy just stick to apples, pears and tangerines, they’re easy enough to eat, and don’t cost that much.

Staples

Staple foods bulk out your meals. They normally don’t taste that good, but they’re okay. Here’s some advice on the common ones:

Rice
Rice is cheap, and generally tastes okay, but it really goes best with a meal with sauce. It can take a bit of effort to get the cooking time right as well; It’ll be crunchy and not quite edible if you leave it too short, and watery and unpleasant if you cook it for too long. Finally cooking rice involves a sieve and a pan, both of which will be covered in a tough, glue like substance if you don’t wash them straight away. Not the win.

Pasta
I’ve never liked this as much as rice, it’s bland as hell, and also really needs a sauce to make it taste half decent. However, it’s cheap and easy to cook, and doesn’t gum your stuff up anywhere near as badly as rice.

Potatoes – an old enemy.
Potatoes can be baked, roast, boiled, or fried. Especially baked and with butter and cheese they can actually taste quite nice. They’re also extremely cheap when bought in large quantities. You may wish to be careful how much you buy though.

At one point during lean times, Hugh persuaded me to buy 10 kilograms of potatoes at a tiny price, to make sure I was fed. After about 3 weeks of eating nothing but potatoes, I was thoroughly sick of them. I left the remaining 9 kilos in the cupboard thinking I’d want to eat them later. Now, potatoes, if left in a warm dark place, surrounded by organic matter (such as other potatoes) have a habit of growing. By 1 month in, our entire flat stank of potatoes, and a sizable potato plant had taken hold of the cupboard. Man, that was a pain in the arse to get rid of!

Bread
Bread is the student’s friend. It’s already cooked, you can put paté or cheese on it, or use it to hold the meat you’ve just fried. It’s pricey, and goes off quick, but it’s by far the easiest staple to use.

Various people have suggested it might be useful to have Alex’s Being A Student guide all together in one place, so here it is!

If you can think of someone or somewhere that might benefit from his studenty wisdom, please do let them know!

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It’s at around this time of year that loads of people will be moving away from home for the first time to take up university studies. Now I remember when I started my university life, I didn’t know the first thing about cookery, and frankly didn’t care to learn (that came about 3 years later). I was, however, required to somehow keep myself alive during this period, on not much money.

There were lots of student cookbooks, (my parents duly bought me one), but all of these seemed to want you to do things like use more than one ingredient, use herbs, measure things properly, and other such annoying time consuming stuff.

So over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be explaining some of the dos and don’ts of minimalist student cookery. The aim of this endeavour is to eat in a survivable way, very cheaply, with minimal effort, and without everything tasting minging.

1: Cooking, Washing up, and Student culinary life in general.

Yep, it’s that time of the week – the latest Kamikaze Cookery episode is available, and this time, we’re taking on… blenders.

Watch it over on the episode page or right here:

It must be a nightmare being a kitchen technology company. By and large, cooks are really pretty closed to the idea of new tech – even someone like me buys a new piece of kitchen technology incredibly rarely, and would far rather spend money on a cookbook the size of Belgium than, say, an exciting new blender.

The Bamix blender (£89.99 or therabouts) we feature in the episode really is the mutt’s nuts – it’s astonishingly good. But I’d have never bought one if we hadn’t wanted to test it for the episode. And it’s reminding me how much other cool kitchen tech there is out there that I’ve just not touched.

For example, the Tefal Actifry – apparently it’s an astonishingly good alternative to deep-frying that uses a tiny amount of fat. I’ve heard various people raving about them, but have I even seriously considered buying one? Hell, no.

Or the various halogen ovens (couldn’t find a useful link for these). Again, I’ve heard rave reviews. Apparently they’re pretty close to being a new way of cooking – we’re talking roast chicken in 15 minutes, plus pretty lights on your countertop. Have I bought one? Have I bollocks.

I’m a huge coffee fan. But have I bought myself a vacuum coffee maker, despite the fact that they supposedly make the best damn cup of coffee in all creation? Not so much.

And to that, add the fact that kitchen gadgeteers have to compete with lab equipment manufacturers and even hardware stores getting some of our hard-spent food money – it must be a pretty tough life.

No wonder some of them have started coming up with pretty unconventional tactics to sell their product.

Any kitchen gadgets you’ve been thinking of buying, but just haven’t gotten around to? Anything exciting that you think everyone should aquire?

This is a piece from the archives a while ago – I thought it might be interesting in light of this week’s bolognaiseness…

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So, just before Christmas I aquired a copy of Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection , where the genius chef behind The Fat Duck explores 8 different classic British dishes and attempts to come up with a recipe for them that gets as close as possible to his idea of perfection.

(I’m not going there. He knows perfection’s not possible. You want more, read the book.)

Several reviewers have described his recipes as being far too complex for anyone to actually cook. I then proceeded to describe their reviews as “bollocks”. And to prove it, over Christmas, my mother and grandparents agreed to act as guinea-pigs for a try-out of Heston’s recipe for Spaghetti Bolognaise.

His recipe is reasonably traditional, but complex, boiling down over a kilo of onions and another kilo of tomatoes, plus a list of about 20 ingredients, over three distinct stages of preparation and about 10 hours. Given that I’d probably say that I can cook a Bolognaise better than any other dish, and my version’s evolved from one that my mum taught me – one that can be cooked in about an hour – "Perfection"’s recipe was up for a challenge.

The credit crunch is everywhere these days. You can’t open a newspaper without being beset by “Ten ways to maintain your beauty regime using only household chemicals” or “Holiday destinations for the destitute”. Myself, I’ve got no money so I’ve got nothing to lose: the only effect the global financial crisis has had on me is that last week, when I went into the bank, the cashier called me “sir” and asked me if I’d like a candy. I asked if he could give me a better interest rate instead of wasting money on sweets, then I took the proffered Werther’s Original and completed the transaction in the resultant stony silence.

Only now the financial crisis has reached the food press as well. The demigodlike A A Gill devotes two thirds of his column to advice for restauranteurs during a global downturn. The Observer‘s Food Monthly supplement devotes five pages to the mystery of egg price rises. The Times has a two-page article on how overpriced organic food is doomed, or maybe it isn’t. No one seems to really know one way or the other.

On the one hand, it’s probably time for all of us to cut out the expensive dinners and the overpriced panini. On the other hand, we still have to eat two or three times a day, and one of the best ways to feel better during a depression—economic or mental—is a nice steak pie or a hearty stew. So maybe the quality of the food is going to become more important than the price.

What does everyone else think? Is it back to leftovers and lobscouse for us all, or will trendy eateries become even more of a status symbol than they already are?

You can now buy yourself a fine Kamikaze Cookery apron from the shop ! So, if you want to prevent your front being covered in hot, wet or caustic things, now you can do it in Kamikaze Cookery style!

(Plus, we’ve still got mugs, T-Shirts, bags, and all that stuff too.)

So. Jamie Oliver. What have we learned?

In the episode, we discovered the following things:

• He’s a mockney prat.
• Despite being one of the famous-est chefs on the planet, he doesn’t actually tell you anything interesting that you can use to make ragu with.
• The recipe was bland and basic, and it still took four hours to make.
• Recipe books, it would seem, are only any good if you already know how to cook.
• Did I mention he was a mockney prat?

I stand by my ad hominem remarks. They add colour and—I hope—humour to an article that would, otherwise, be a long whinge about celebrity culture. They act like the seasoning that was woefully lacking in Jamie’s ragu. And they’re valid—-even if Jamie taught you how to cook like Ferran Adrià, he’s still got one of those faces you just want to hit. (Apparently Channel 4 viewers agree with me.)

Any normal person trying to find out about cooking would have sweated away in a hot kitchen for some hours, and at the end would have been rewarded only by that (not insignificant) warm glow you get when you’ve actually finished making something all by yourself. The food itself was certainly nothing to shout about: the sauce tasted like sauce from a jar, and the pasta was slightly less impressive than you’d get out of a packet. Any member of the Findus Crispy Pancakes generation would have wondered what all the fuss was about. Having said that, after four hours we were hungry.

I’ve since experimented a bit with the recipe, and found that it benefits from a couple of tweaks: for instance, I add nutmeg. Hugh has an excellent list of things you should do to ragu, which includes a few other things I’m going to try.

Maybe it’s not all celebrity chefs, though. Maybe it’s just Jamie, and some of the others are quite good. Fear not, for the science is not finished yet. Armed with the qualitative data from our Jamie test, we’re next going to see how he compares to other celebrity chefs. Coming up later in the series we’ve got all-new Normal People set against Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay.

Also, there’s been some discussion to the effect that the recipes in Jamie’s Italy come from stuff he’s stolen from the Italians, and aren’t actually Jamie’s recipes at all. Does anyone think we should offer him a rematch?

Right. Ragu, aka Bolognaise Sauce.

Having ragged on Jamie’s gu (ooer), I feel I should throw my own hat into the red, bubbling, aromatic ring. So – what do I think should be done to improve Jamie’s ragu?

The short answer would be “I think it should be Heston Blumenthal’s ragu”. I’ll post a piece from the archives on cooking Heston’s Spag Bol on Tuesday. Despite the 8 hours it takes to cook, and the considerable cost of ingredients, Heston’s “Perfect” Spag Bol is indeed the finest example of the breed I’ve ever tasted, and ranks as one of the nicest-tasting meals I’ve ever cooked anywhere.

However, assuming that you don’t have 8 hours? Then here are five tips to spice up Jamie’s bland ragu:

Brown the damn meat . Jamie just chucks the meat in with the sauce. This is like putting up a sign saying “I don’t like flavour. Please make my ragu blander than Gordon Brown’s sex life.”. (I’m assuming here.) As you’re probably all sick of me saying by now, browning your meat stimulates the Maillard reactions, which cause an immensely complex cascade of flavour-producing reactions. I have no idea whatsoever why Jamie doesn’t do this – it’s just insane not to.

Add celery and carrot . The soffrito, the standard Italian package of vegetables added at the start of the meal, normally contains more than just onion and garlic. Exactly what’s in there is the subject of much debate and a certain number of Medieval city-state wars, but two of the most common ingredients are carrot and celery. There’s a reason for that – it’s that they make the taste of the ragu much richer and more complex. Both are, interestingly, from the same family of plants, and according to Harold McGee, add a “warm, woody” note to dishes, which is seriously lacking from Jamie’s effort. I also find the slight astringency of the celery adds something. By the way, if you hate celery and are going “eew” right now – most people don’t use celery right. Don’t use it as a vegetable. Use it as a herb.

Add milk Yes, milk. I normally add a bit in with the meat, after the onion and garlic are softened. Heston Blumenthal says that the proteins and sugars in the milk react to give the ragu extra body, and I could believe that. It also adds a bit of fat, which is something that’s definitely needed (see below). It’s also classic Italian, so it makes it doubly surprising that Jamie doesn’t include it. I first heard about this on “America’s Test Kitchen”, where they concluded that it made the best pasta sauce.

Add something sweet, something salt, something acid, and something fishy In Heston’s case, he adds Thai fish sauce, which is very fishy indeed, and sherry vinegar for the sweetness. I’ve tried that, but I find if you’re cooking just for one person, it’s very easy to get his flavourings out of whack. Instead, I tend to add a dollop of Oyster Sauce and a little bit of red wine vinegar – this one I’ve not seen anywhere, and it’s certainly not classical Italian, but it’s very nice, and gives a similar effect. Certainly, you should always add something slightly sweet to tomatoes – Harold McGee verifies that flavour chemists have tested and found both sugar and acidity intensify the flavour of tomatoes.

Add fat Heston’s Spag Bol uses about a ton of butter. I’d like to live past 35, so I tend to stir in a bunch of olive oil just before serving. This is an adaption of the technique Heston’s using, which is the French Monte Au Buerre, meaning “lift with butter”. Frankly, I prefer my approach for general use – Heston’s produces a very rich, heavy, filling sauce, wheras the olive oil is lighter and adds a fresh note to the proceedings.

There are dozens of other tips – add tomato leaves right at the end (intensifies flavour, again). Add stock. Serve with parmesan (really works). But, basically, if you can’t do better than Jamie’s ultra-basic ragu, you’re not trying hard enough.

There’s some interesting discussion of Normal Person vs Jamie going on elsewhere on the Web, so I thought I’d link to it.

Notably, egullet have (of course) a very interesting and learned discussion going on with a load of recommendations for celeb chefs I’ve not heard of, and at least one name that made me accidentally Google a porn star.

There’s also some interesting chat going on in my LJ entry

Both worth a read if you’re interested.

So, I’m curious – has anyone mentioned this on the official Jamie Oliver forums yet? If not, does anyone want to?

In this part, I’ll talk a bit about what to eat, and how to stay alive on little money and even less effort.

Meat

Meat doesn’t actually need any sauce or complex accompaniment to taste half decent. This is one of its major advantages for student cooking. It also normally only takes up one pan or oven, and can be cooked quickly (frying or grilling) or without too much supervision (roasting).

Okay, so some readers won’t eat meat at all, but frankly I’ve always been a carnivore and probably always will be. So here’s some of the things I learned about meat as a student:

Season meat – it makes it taste better. To season meat, cover it completely in as much seasoning as seems appropriate (easy to learn, after the first few tries) then cook it however you were going to anyway. Salt and Pepper is pretty much the easiest, cheapest seasoning available, but you can get specialised steak or chicken seasoning from supermarkets. Be warned, as these aren’t always an improvement on salt and pepper. Alternatively, you could experiment with a wide variety of different things¹.

Frying steak, pork chops and chicken legs and thighs are your friend.All of these are pretty cheap, half decent bits of meat which cook quite easily. Pork Chops will normally fry or grill, and Chicken Legs and Thighs will oven cook. A lot of my friends just bought chicken fillets, but these actually kinda cost a fortune, and probably don’t taste any better.

Watch out for turkey season. Now, this was always a (dubious) treat when I was in uni. From time to time, Turkey producers would have far too much turkey, and sell massive 1.5kg joints for about £4. This is a hell of a lot of food, is not unpleasant (at least, not until you’ve just consumed 1kg of it), and will keep you in turkey dinners, sandwiches, and if you’re feeling energetic² soup.

Gravy If you’re not a confident cook, do not attempt to make your own gravy; this is an advanced skill. However, if you put in some vegetables with meat you’re roasting, the juices can make them taste better.

Vegetables

It’s a time honoured tradition for students (especially male ones) to try to avoid eating any of these. I was no exception. However, about once a month I would get sudden cravings or feel ill and strange. At these times, I reasoned that perhaps my complete avoidance of vegetables was to blame. Here’s some of the ways you can get round the whole problem of eating vegetables:

Gorge on spinach. I’m ashamed to say it, but this was my first solution to the veg problem. About once a fortnight, I’d buy a large can of spinach, heat the contents in a saucepan then just eat the lot. This would be done independent of meals (I didn’t want to sully the meat).

Peas. Peas taste okay, require just a bit of boiling in a pan (which is then very easy to wash), and can accompany just about anything. They’re also cheap and come frozen in large amounts.

Can’t someone else do it? Let’s face it, vegetables with no effort applied don’t taste as good as meat does. However, they’re a lot cheaper. One way round the problem of cooking inability here is to just buy a salad or vegetarian dish from someone who knows how to make one (salad bars, supermarket, café’s etc.). It’s much cheaper than buying prepared meat.

Roast them with meat. Ah, now, this is actually a good solution. Vegetables don’t taste great, and involve extra effort, however, carrots, parsnips, onions and small potatoes take a similar time to roast as meat does. What this means is that for minimum extra effort you get to eat a bit more healthily. You do normally need to wash vegetables, but when roasting them you can normally leave most of the skin on. This occasionally produces a slightly bitter “rustic” taste, but you can grow to like it.

Alternative solutions. I heard of one guy with a porter’s job at a hospital taking to eating slightly out of date coma patient food. Once again, I wouldn’t advise it.

Next week I’ll talk about fruit and general staples, including the Potatoes of Doom story.

¹ I used to go with: Steak and Mustard (quite good), Chicken and Mixed herbs ³ (good), everything with Tobasco Sauce (results vary), Chicken with Irn-Bru (less good).
²,(which you won’t be if you’ve eaten nothing but turkey for the last 2 days)
³ They come in a box labelled “Mixed Herbs”