gibberish

Or just a “drink for poofs”? You decide.

I am indebted to Stephen Tait for bringing this research to my attention. Never underestimate the opinions of the consumer. On the other hand the targetting could be slightly off-brief.

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I’m sorry, but I have to share this with you.

I’ve had lots of fun in the last few days in the office clicking on the freedictionary.com’s voice simulator.

At inappropriate times of the day (quiet mainly, when people are really busy working on important stuff) it’s highly amusing to hear the rich baritone of an Anmerican voice intoning “jobby” “poo” “penis” and the likes across the office.

For example.

If you don’t believe me try it out yourself at www.thefreedictionary.com/Wanker.

683 million others have.

And the comment below from Phillip Lewis shows that I am not the only nincompoop out there.

You could always use the ‘microsoft sam’ voice programme, if you are using winxp go to Start/Control panel/Speech. and replace the phrase “you have selected Microsoft Sam….” with any words or phrase of your choosing and click ‘preview voice’

Endless hours of childish fun!

“If I had some eggs, we could have ham and eggs; if I had some ham.” my Uncle Christopher declared this afternoon.

Wise words.

But my mother violently disagreed with this because she retorted

“If we had some eggs we could have eggs and ham; if we had some ham.”

Not sure about that. In fact it’s total bollocks - because what she really meant to say, and did, was…

“If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs; if we had eggs.”

You know what…

…I don’t give a monkey’s uncle!

Since coming back from Portugal this summer Cataplana has probably been my favourite dish to make.  It’s so delicious and the kids will eat it!.

In case you don’t know - a Cataplana is a copper ‘clam-like’ cooking vessel hinged on one side that is a traditional cooking vessel in Portugal.  You can of course use a ‘Big Pot’ which is exactly what I will continue to do until someone kindly buys me a Cataplana for my birthday or something!

Make up an onion and tomato sauce base with two tins of chopped toms and a couple of onions, plus Bay leaf and garlic (cook for 40 mins or so) add green peppers x2 chopped (obviously) with half a chorizo, about a pound of pork tenderloin, cubed, a couple of ounces of chopped proscuitto and a couple of slices of smoked ham along with a slug or two of chilli sauce to taste (you won’t need any salt in this dish) and a load of white wine.

Then it’s up to you.  Finish off with 200grammes or so of a fish of your chioice.  Smoked Haddock and monkfish are both good, half a dozen king prawns and finally add in the piece de resistance - a bag of mussels or clams, whichever you prefer.  I prefer clams but they’re not to everyone’s taste and they’re fairly pricey.

Add some water so that the whole shooting match steams  and cooks the clams/mussels and Prawns.  Serve immediately with bread to mop up the delicious meaty tomatoey sauce.

I realise the completists amongst you have been disturbed by the misposting of this recipe, so I indulge you with bloggish tidiness…

Chop up Asparagus, onions, red pepper, mushroom and anything else you fancy (courgette might be nice, or how about candied crocodile testicles?) into 0.8635cm cubes and set aside for another recipe because you won’t need any of them for this one.

Instead…

Dice chicken breasts (if you roll a six it will be fab, a 1 means you should throw all the ingredients away and save yourself the bother).

Fry off the chicken till it’s brown and set aside.

Brown (to the point of crunchiness) one of those packets of Cubbetti de Pancetta that makes you sound such a snob when you ask the shelfstacker at the Co-op “‘Scuse me, do you have any cubetti de pancetta” and she replies “you what?” and you have to embarresedly say, “You know those wee bacony things.” and she sneers at you “The fridge in the next Aisle (you tosspot).”

Set aside.

Brown some pine nuts. Don’t burn them you idiot, they cost a fortune.

Set aside.

Put everything together in a pot with salt, pepper, finely chopped chilli, a glass of rank white wine, pesto and cook it all up a bit.

Then add it to the pasta you cooked as you were doing all this (I use small stuff, macaroni is good).

Mix it all together and Bob’s your brother.

OK?

Take 10 packets of McVities Mini Chocolate Hob nobs, place all 20 biscuits on a baking tray.  Hand the tray around to your guests and consume immediately

My mate Derrick (yes that is how you spell it -  his folks beat the Beckhams to it in the naming stakes when he was conceived in the middle of the North Sea) rang the doorbell at 11.30 this morning looking for this recipe.  I slid from my preternatural pit towards the front door in trepidation having ‘long-lied’ after a veritable feast the night before with a few of our good friends.

‘What d’you want?’ I groggily queried.  I managed to refrain from cursing.

‘Do you have a chicken curry recipe?’ he chirpily responded.

I then spent the next half hour sharing my life’s secrets only for him to…

1     Lose the recipe before he got round to preparing it for the aforementioned North Sea lovebirds and

2    Leave behind the ingredients that I gave him (fish sauce and Thai curry paste to be precise)

I thought that it called then for this week’s recipe to be the dish in question.

 This is how you make Thai Chicken Curry.

 First off you need a few exotic(ish) ingredients. 

Thai Green Curry Paste (or Red if you prefer) - you’ll get it in a tub in one of my favourite Edinburgh Shopping Emporiums (Pat’s Chung Ying on Leith Walk)

Fish Sauce (ditto)

Coriander (ditto)

Don’t buy any of these (or for that matter peppercorns, dried garlic, herbs and spices, soy, coconut milk) from a supermarket - you’ll just get ripped off.  Get tae Pat’s!

Take a tin of coconut milk.  To it add a large spoonful of the curry paste, the juice of 2 limes, 2 slugs of fish sauce and the stalks of the Coriander (retain the leaves).

Fry off four chopped up chicken breasts and then marinate them for half an hour in the coconut milk sauce.

Chop up a bunch of spring onions (1 inch pieces) lightly so they remain crunchy.

Heat up the marinade with the chicken and add the Spring onions at the end. (15 mins later I ‘d say)

Serve over boiled rice with the Coriander leaves sprinkled over.

You won’t need much salt because the Fish Sauce is salty.

You can add thinly sliced red chillis if you want it hotter and you can add mushrooms but they make the coconut milk go brown and look mingin’ (but taste good),  Stick in some red peppers too if you fancy it.

Easy, quick and spicy.  (Use half fat cocunut milk if you don’t want to be a lardass like me -doesn’t make much difference to the taste.)

Serve with lashings of Chardonnay and listen to Joanna Newsom’s new album, Ys, while preparing.