How to Dine Alone (in Forty Steps)

1. Ignore the protestations from the back of your brain and push the door. Tell it now isn’t the time. Tell yourself that this is what you wanted anyway.

2. Cast a final casual glance across the burger bar and freeze inside. Realise that the tables you thought were so empty from across the street look an awful lot full. Realise that though the ordering queue is clear there is a collection queue ten deep.

3. Realise that the girl at the counter is looking at you expectantly and smiling.

4. Briefly, momentarily, allow the idea of leaving and trying the Scottish-named burger bar across the road to flick across your mind. Stamp it out. Know that leaving now means breaking this eye contact and the associated social protocol and it’s much much too late to do that without becoming a story they tell in the breakroom about their oddest customers.

( 4A. Know actually that they wouldn’t do that and she’d not even bat an eye but also know that you’d carry around the idea that they would and she would for the rest of your life and sometimes it will bubble up out of nowhere and choke you.)

5. Place your order. Note that the girl is Eastern European and keen and clearly new. Repeat your order a couple of times and decide to try the cajun fries because you only live once. Smile inwardly that she carefully explains the ordering process to you as though you’ve never been to the burger bar named after Some Chaps Numbering Less Than Six and Greater Than Four before.

6. Bear this in mind when you realise later on she still got your order wrong.

7. Pay. Note that you are order number 23. Sweep your gaze again around the room to clock how many tables are emptying up soon and how many people are ahead of you. Pretend to be casual about it all while you work out that if she leaves now then they’ll get that table which means that he might sit there and maybe they’ll take out.

8. Note particularly that large group of cackling selfie-taking girls taking up that whole middle area that’s either a shared table or a perfectly legit place for several alone-diners to eat separately without having to ask if anyone’s sitting here.

9. Pop your earphones back in and press play.

10. Take your big paper cup up to the fancy drinks machine and browse. Add exactly enough ice to stop the drink fizzing up too much but not enough that it will make the drink cold.

11. Press pour now to enjoy a big cup of cherry Dr Pepper.

12. Isn’t Dr Pepper cherry flavoured anyway? Wonder if you’ve been tricked.

13. Wait. Keep checking the tables. Keep waiting.

14. When order 20 is called look around again and panic that nothing has changed. Start wondering if maybe you should take your food out and go find a park or something.

15. Know that there’s no park within a sufficiently short distance that won’t make you feel awkward carrying around a bag of hot food.

16. File taking away as plan B and asking someone if you can share their table as a reasonable plan A. Start working out who you’ll aim for. The balding man watching something on his iPad seems a safe bet.

17. Berate yourself for thinking any of them won’t just nod indifferently and barely acknowledge you anyway.

18. Take order 23. Show the receipt thingy to the guy. Half-fold it and put it in your pocket so you can claim it back when you get home. Wonder what the expense processing people will think when they see that you were staying in the hotel with the great Belgian restaurant in it but you still went to eat a burger.

19. Berate yourself for thinking the expense processing people will spend more than half a second looking at the receipt.

20. Gird yourself and stride towards the table. Note with surprise and relief that the man and his iPad have gone and the table has already been cleared by some assiduous employee. Leap on it.

21. Start to eat. Keep your earphones jammed in in case someone sits next to you so you can both pretend the other doesn’t exist

22. While eating, always keep one hand clean so you can adjust the volume of your ill-curated iPod as it skims between bouncy electro dance-pop and trad-folk. Skip the occasional unruly track.

23. Decide that the cajun fries are good but also that the potatoes are bloody Maris Piper again. Wonder why anyone is buying this lie that they make a good chip. Regard the soggy stragglers at the bottom of the bag with a sort of sorrowful disdain. Keep up a running commentary in your head like a game show host reminding you that if it all gets too hot you’ve still got 12 sips of drink left.

24. Bite into your burger and realise at once that she forgot the lettuce. Obviously don’t even entertain the possibility of complaining.

25. Have a bit more burger and realise she put mustard in there instead. Check the order thingy on your receipt. It says mayo,tomato, grilled onion, mushrooms, BBQ and mustard, just like it shouldn’t.

26. Realise you quite like this burger. Glance again at the receipt thing and thank… thank Marua in your head for this new good burger combo she gave you.

27. Note that the place is still busy but nobody has yet come to sit at your table.

28. Smile when your iPod shuffles to a dancy indie pop number you first heard in a dancy indie pop club somewhere in the region of fifteen years ago. Think wistfully about how many more dancy indie pop clubs you could have gone to if you hadn’t been the sort of person who goes for a cheap burger instead of a nice Belgian meal just because you’re alone.

29. Realise that you’ll never be as cool as you were in those moments, even if you are much better dressed now and with a much less stupid haircut.

30. Rue the stupid haircut.

31. Miss hanging out with the people you used to go to dancy indie pop clubs with.

32. Spend a mealtime flicking between missing the person you were and reminding yourself that actually you still like the person you’ve become and it’s probably ok and healthy to be doing both.

33. Don’t take too much comfort from that.

34. Get up to leave. Note that a cool looking young guy just asked the girl at the table next to you if he could sit there and she gave him an indifferent nod and a brief smile.

35. Tell yourself something along the lines of “that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

36. Still hate yourself for not being able to go to the nice Belgian place alone.

37. Note that as the gaggle of teenage girls continues to be almost leaving their excited yammering fills the room and you’ve no idea what’s come on your iPod next.

38. Reach for the door.

39. As the door opens, realise that what you couldn’t hear playing was Jeff Buckley covering Leonard Cohen. Step out into the cooling summer air and go back to your hotel and your bath.

40. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Exciting Recipes (Presented In The Most Exciting Way Possible) #2: The Sausage and Mash Solution

 

Exciting Recipes (Presented In The Most Exciting Way Possible) is probably the most important cultural event since the Macarena. Look out for new ones every month or more often, depending on how excitable I get about the whole idea.

The Sausage and Mash Solution is the result of having a whole day off and a trip to the pound shop on a search for costumes.

Exciting Recipes (Presented In The Most Exciting Way Possible) #1: MEGABEEF Chilli

Exciting Recipes (Presented In The Most Exciting Way Possible) is probably the most important cultural event since the Macarena. Look out for new ones every month or more often, depending on how excitable I get about the whole idea.

The sound’s a bit all over the place, but it was bedtime by the time I was done with the edit and I couldn’t be arsed trying to balance it any more.

Authoritatively Telling You What To Do With… A Chicken!

Authoritatively Telling You What To Do With is a new series of articles¹ where I leave a lot more of the actual cooking and whatnot up to you, but still tell you what you’re doing wrong in my own inimitable way. It assumes a basic level of cooking knowledge on your part but that you still need patronizing guidance, as opposed to the recipes, which assume you’re an utter moron who needs patronizing guidance. ATYWTDW will appear once every three or four weeks, when I can’t be bothered to write up a new recipe. No, I’m not sure about the capitalization either.

---

In terms of an effort invested to quality of results ratio, a whole chicken scores extremely highly. Other members of the Classic Sunday Lunch Quartet² pay off more dividends if you know what you’re doing, but any idiot can take a chicken and turn it into something succulently delicious in a couple of hours.

Obviously there are other things you can do with this lot, but the roast is the easiest. Take a bit of butter, a slightly-manky lime that you rescued from the fruit bowl, and a bit of butter. Bash on your herbs and that. Squeeze your lime juice over it and then shove the lime where the sun don’t shine. Maybe make a marinade out of some spicy bits, garlic and oil. Look, this is ATYWTDW, the assumption is that you already know what you’re doing when it comes to roasting a chicken. Instead, I’ll move onto the section I’ve decided to call received wisdom about chicken that is actually bullshit.

Received wisdom about chicken that is actually bullshit #1: Everybody lies about time!

Pick any two recipe books off your shelf. If they’re the same recipe books that I pulled off my shelf, the otherwise excellent advisors within will tell you that your chicken needs 90 – 100 minutes’ worth of roasting. And look at this:

This guy is full of shit. You’re roasting a chicken here, not making a quick sandwich before you run out to pick up the kids. Savour it, for God’s sake! Take your bastard time. After the prescribed 1 hour and 36 minutes, the bird above looked like this:

Is it edible? Yes, it probably is. The old adage about jabbing in a skewer and seeing if the juices run clear presented a perfectly transparent-looking grease. Is it delicious, though?

Look at the pale, barely crispy skin. Look at the pallid flesh, just barely in the region of cooked. Look at those wings, resolutely not falling apart.

This is not a delicious chicken. A delicious chicken requires at least two hours’ cooking time. It should be falling off all the bones at once, the juices bubbling all over the place and the skin so crispy you could eat it as a pub snack.

Received wisdom about chicken that is actually bullshit #2: The breasts are the best bit.

This is all advertising’s fault. It’s all “100 per cent succulent chicken breast” this and “grilled breast of chicken” that and “boobs off of a chicken-bird” the other. Commercial whatsits want to sell you chicken breasts because they’re the easiest to prepare and serve.

Legs and thighs are where the flavour is. Curries, pies, stews. If you’re putting chicken in it, you use chicken thighs. If you want to give someone the most flavourful bit of a roasted chicken, you hand them the leg³. The breast is for the people who you invited for dinner but didn’t really want there.

Received wisdom about chicken that is actually bullshit #3: Peel back the skin and carve.

Peel back the skin! This is genuine carving advice I’ve seen in chicken-roasting recipes. Written by MENTALS. The following advice is all you need:

1. Take the skin, the delicious greasy skin, and pull it from the chicken with your fingers. Feel the oils and the crunchy flavour bits as they roll between the pads of your fingers. Savour this moment.
2. Look around the kitchen. Is anyone watching?
3. There’s nobody watching. They’re all in the dining room, waiting for you to bring the Sunday dinner out, remember?
4. Shove all the greasy chicken skin into your mouth. All of it. Slurp it down, coat your mouth with the deliciousness of it all.
5. There’s grease on your chin now, but you love it. It’s the sign of a winner. As you chew the last morsels, wipe your chin with the back of your hand like a champ.
6. Feel sick. Hang your head. Why did you do this? You’ve eaten a meal’s worth of grease in one mouthful and you now have to go sit in the dining room and eat with everyone else like you’re a normal person. You’re not a normal person, you’re a greasy sicko.

Received wisdom about chickens that is actually bullshit #4: Those weird bags they come in now.

Roast in this bag that we in the shop have provided for you. Take your recipes and your love of making delicious food and shove it. We have placed this chicken in a weird plasticy bag and you can fucking well roast it in it. And in the little foil thing too. We own you.

I don’t know where those weird bags came from, but you can’t buy a supermarket chicken without one these days. They’re there to tell you that it’s suddenly so easy to roast a chicken, but it’s always been easy to roast a chicken! They just want to control you, with their bags. It’s probably where all the plastic bags went now you have to pay for them.

Extract your chicken from the bag at the earliest opportunity. You can use the foil tray thing it came in if you must. It comes in handy if you’re using a honey-based marinade and can’t be fucked with the washing up. Just cover it in foil, making sure to take it off about twenty minutes before your two hours are up in order to crisp up the skin.

---

 

That’s the lot! This is the bit where I put a closer in there and pretend like this is a newspaper website and I want people to share their roast chicken tips in the comments section. So, yeah. Do that.

Incidentally, my favourite full-on recipe for roast chicken is this one, which has a relatively high faff-and-marinade factor, but it tastes epic. Don’t listen to this chap about roast potatoes, though, it’s difficult second album syndrome. 

 

---

1. Articles! Hark at him! ↩
2. You’ve got beef up front, obviously, with pork on the left wing and a solid midfield presence in lamb. Chicken’s in goal.⁴ ↩
3. Except for that weird gristly jelly bit on the drumstick! What is it, why is it so horrible, and why can’t butchers get rid of them? ↩
4. Is this legit sports chat? It sounds like the legit sports chat that people sometimes say around me at work. Let me know in the comments if you doubt its legitimacy. ↩

Bloody Hell, Why Did I Make So Much?

A Continuation of Our Offensive Tour of Italy

Bolognese is a hard thing to get rid of. Which is to say, it’s really easy to feed to people, and they’ll probably eat it without having to discretely tip it out into a plant pot or forever terminate their friendship with you, but there’s always some spare. What to do with it, though, long after all your guests have left and eating an entire bowl of spare sauce to yourself seems wildly indulgent at best and painfully rich at worst?

Some Sort of Lasagne

Serves 2, probably

What you will need

A dish to bake it in – It can be any size or shape, really, but rectangular is best for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. I’m listing it at the head of this section despite it being not an ingredient because I’m about to make reference to it two paragraphs down. Besides, this isn’t called the ingredients section, smartarse, it’s called the what you will need section.

Your leftover bolognese – Depending on how much you have left it might or might not be worth bothering with this, to be honest. If there’s not that much either warm it up and have bolognese two nights in a row, or freeze it until there’s loads. If you left it sitting in the pan overnight before you thought to bung it in the freezer or something, refresh it with a bit of red wine¹.

Some stuff to bulk it out (optional) – If you’ve loads of bolognese left, you won’t need stuff to bulk it out. Pour the bolognese into the dish to find out². You want the sauce to be deeper than your middle thumb knuckle at the least. If not, you want some stuff to bulk it out with. Good some stuff to bulk it out with might include:

• Mushrooms. Slice and sauté[^3] them.
• Asparagus. Griddle them in sort of bits that are approximately the same size as you might imagine a serving of lasagne to be. That way, when you serve it all up it will look neat, as though you planned it that way.
• Baby corn, maybe? Griddle it in butter and it’ll probably do the job.
• Other veg or something, I don’t know.

If you’re using some stuff to bulk it out with, you should mix the some stuff to bulk it out with into the sauce, unless you’re using long bits of some stuff to bulk it out with, in which case you should lay them delicately atop the sauce, like an artist.

Some sheets of lasagne – Ideally, you’d want one sheet of lasagne the exact dimensions of your dish. The only way that would happen is if you made your own pasta, and if you make your own pasta, why the hell are you reading this?

A good bit of butter – Call it 75g, give or take.

Flour – A couple of tablespoons’ worth, ish.

Three decent handfuls of grated hard cheese – Obviously this being a traditional Italian dish savoured throughout the generations, the best cheese to use is cheap pre-grated Cheddar from Lidl³. Any cheese will do, really. In the photos it’s mostly the Lidl Cheddar and also bits of a mini Babybel.

About half a pint of milk

Cooking time: Ten minutes’ faff, an episode of the Simpsons’ cooking time.

Directions:

If you haven’t already, spread the sauce around in the bottom of your dish and add your some stuff to bulk it out with. Cover with a layer of the lasagne sheets, without making them overlap but also while still covering as much of the surface area of the sauce as you can. This will involve snapping off bits of the sheets, probably, then dropping them back into the box or throwing them away because they’re so tiny, then realising you could use them to fill out this next bit, scrabbling to get them out of the bottom of the box, because have you tried getting shards of lasagne out of the bottom of the box without spilling stuff everywhere?

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 360 degrees Fahrenheit (who uses Fahrenheit?)

Put the butter in a saucepan and melt it over a medium-high heat. When completely melted, throw in a couple of spoonfuls of flour. Mix intently, till it looks like the above picture.

Faff around with your phone trying to get a decent picture for so long that the roux⁴ starts to burn (optional).

Pour in the milk, a little at a time, and whisk the crap out of it. At some point, you’ll know when, it will reach optimum thickness⁵. Take it off the heat and season.

Add about two-thirds of the cheese, and mix well. Pour the cheesy goo all over the lasagne sheets, ensuring as even a coverage as you can.

Scatter the rest of the cheese all over the top. Technically the aim of this bit is to provide a slightly toasty texture to the top of the lasagne, but the real reason is that you can add extra coverage to any areas where the cheese sauce isn’t quite covering the bits of lasagne. Cheese covers a multitude of sins.

Bake in the oven for 25 – 30 minutes, until the top is golden and cripsy. I think you’re supposed to serve it with a salad or something on the side, but I just eat it on its own, maybe with a pork chop.

If I catch anyone eating lasagne with chips there’ll be trouble, though.

---

1. I invented the term. It means “pour a glug of wine in with the sauce and then heat it all up a bit”. I have no idea what, if anything, it does, but it seems to make the sauce more saucerer. ↩
2. See? That’s why. You try constructing a logically parseable list of ingredients without referencing the dish, if you think it’s that easy. ↩
3. Real talk time. Pre-grated cheese versus cheese in a big block. Price considerations aside (that auto-grater machine they have at the cheese factory is clearly more expensive to run than you’d think), the real decider in the pre-grated / block decision is how long it’ll be in the fridge. It’s basic maths. There’s not as much surface area in a block of cheese, so if a bit of mould gets to it you can cut off the offending section, or even the entire surface of the cheese and still have functional cheese left underneath. A bag of grated cheese, though, is pretty much all surface area. Once mould gets to any of that, you’ve just got a big bag of green gross. ↩
4. French for flour-and-butter-mix-stuff. ↩
5. Basically, it’s when the amount of effort put into the last measurable gain in sauce thickness is more than double than the amount of effort put into the previous measurable gain in sauce thickness. ↩

An Insult to its Italian Heritage

Serves 3-4

Long, long back in the midsts of time, some shepherds or something outside Bologna or somewhere mashed up tomatoes and animal and ate them together with pasta, and thus a tradition was born.

I once studied under a wise old Italian chef¹, who taught me that the monstrosity knocked together by British people under the name bolognese is nothing of the sort, and calling it that basically represents Britain not yet having got over being occupied by the Romans in the 1st Century² AD.

Fuck that guy, though. Have you seen how long it takes to make a proper bolognese? They spend all day at it, stirring and poking and basically not watching any telly at all. This recipe is good enough for me and you.

What You Will Need

Onions – I’ve gone for one medium one and one small one, but you could use one big one, or three little ones, or half of one absolutely massive one, or even three medium ones and have a bit more onion in your sauce, it’s basically all fine.

Garlic bits – Two or three garlic bits. I understand these to be called cloves, though for a long time I thought the whole bulb was called a clove. This was because of the Game Boy game Super Mario Land 3: Super Wario Land (five Mario coins out of five)³.

At least two of the following:

• Passata – Passata is Italian for “tomatoes, but all mushed up in a tomato musher”. It is one of the kinds of red goo you get these days. Passata comes in a 500g thing most of the time.
• A can of chopped tomatoes – Chopped tomatoes is Italian for tomatoes that have been chopped up and put in a tin. Tinned tomatoes have normally been through the tomato musher at least once, unless you get plum tomatoes in which case they haven’t. Plum tomatoes are so called because normally you buy them only because you meant to buy chopped tomatoes and you only spot your mistake when you get home, which makes you feel a right plum.
• A bit of tomato puree – Tomato in its purest form, it has been through the tomato musher at least three times and is really tomatoey.

Mince – Mince is English for “sweets which freshen your breath⁴ “. Beef is best, but you can use pork to feel authentic. You want about 500g, fat content 15 – 20%. Ignore those packets of mince boasting about a low fat content, they’re basically ripping you off. Fat is the most delicious bit of food.

The scrag end of that bottle of wine you couldn’t be bothered to finish – I’ve gone fancy this time with port, but you can go for red or white or whatever else. It’s really only there to make you feel like you’re a proper chef.

Pasta – Pasta comes in two forms, lumps and stringy bits. Stringy bits like spaghetti, linguine, etc are a bloody waste of time. You have to work to get them all into the pan without snapping any, they’re a faff to serve up⁵, and then when you’re eating it you’re guaranteed to get sauce all down your shirt. Steer clear, and go for lumps instead. Swirly bits, pointy bits or shells, they’re all great. If you can find some shaped like dinosaurs, then all for the better. You should cook more pasta than you need, because I always do and I don’t see why anyone else should get it right.

Flavour bits – Flavour bits are the things that make the sauce taste more than just of beef and red. Classic flavour bits include herbs and that (rosemary is a great herb and that, and you could go for oregano, a bay leaf and that mysterious jar labelled “Italian herb mix”), salt, pepper, stock cubes, those weird stock jellies they do now, spice things or bits of sausage⁶.

Cooking time: Twenty minutes’ faff, one-to-two episodes of a high-quality drama’s cooking time.

Directions:

Chop the onions and garlic bits into smaller bits.

Heat a bit of olive oil⁷ in a big pan on a medium-high heat. Throw in the oniongarlic bits. Cook them until soft, then add the mince. Fry until the meat is browned all over.

If you’re using wine, now is the time to throw it in there. Let it cook for a bit until it seems like it’s gone all syrupy and absorbed into the meat. This may or may not improve the flavour of the overall dish, I’m not really sure.

Add the mushed tomato products. At this point, your dish should be very red and bubbling, like a volcano from a kids’ film in the 80s. Turn down the heat.

Go watch your high quality drama product, poking the sauce occasionally. After episode one, the sauce will be ready. If you’re willing to wait for the end of episode two, it will be rich as all balls. Waiting any longer than that means you’ve got too much time on your hands and you should have gone for a fancier recipe in the first place.

Cook your pasta, serve, and enjoy with a massive cup of tea or something.

---

1. Read it in the glossy magazine bit of a Sunday newspaper. ↩
2. Paraphrasing⁸. ↩
3.  Remember when Nintendo used to call their game cartridges ‘game paks’? Aiming for the ‘edgy motherfucker’ market with their intentionally poor spelling, though I’m not sure they were after the proximity in spelling to a certain famous racist epithet. They’ve had form for this kind of not understanding English properly long before the Wii was on the scene. ↩
4. Last joke of the form “is X for [insert silly thing here]” in the recipe, I promise. ↩
5. Don’t you bloody dare tell me to use one of those spaghetti server things, they’re worse than a big spoon. ↩
6. Well, I say sausage, I mean those crazy sausages you get in foreign parts. Not good British bangers, no indeed. ↩
7. I didn’t tell you to have olive oil in your cupboard, because I’m not your mother. You have to take responsibility for yourself at some point. ↩
8. But still basically true. Fuck those Jupiter-worshipping pricks, they cheated and we weren’t ready. We let them win. We all fought with one hand tied behind our backs. It rained a bit and all the blue paint ran into our eyes. Look, we won on the rematch, yeah? Enger-land, Enger-land, Enger-land. ↩

The Rain

The rain fell down today. It started early, overtaking the bright sunny morning with fat, grey gobs that spattered on the windows and rolled depressingly down. In a few hours, the ground was slick with puddles and the drains were starting to back up.

That’s not an apt metaphor for how I feel about the election, it’s literally a description of how the weather turned from a sunny morning to a rain storm that pissed down from on high and ruined the plans I had of gathering some like-minded friends and seeking post-work commiseration and company outside a pub in the sunshine of a glorious spring evening.

It’s also an apt metaphor to describe how my mood slumped from the first drops of 10 o’clock last night to the horrifying swell of filth water that ruined everything a few hours later. That’s just coincidence.

I don’t think I’ve seen so many people who looked like they wanted to cry before.

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to cry so much before.

I posted something on Twitter last night, while we were all still riding high on the waves of collective decision making and before any of us knew exactly what decision we’d collectively come to. It was something I’ve had rolling around for a while now, and like any good Islington* media-set faux intellectual I’ve done nothing about it.

“No matter who’s in charge tomorrow,” I said, “keep this going. Don’t sit on your arse for five years. Tell your MP what you think. Constantly. Tell them when there’s something they do right. Tell them when there’s something they do wrong. Keep on them. Your democratic responsibilities aren’t discharged only twice a decade”.

It’s still true, even now the excitement’s over and the miserable rain’s set in. Some people are lucky enough to live in seats where they got the MP they voted for. Most people aren’t, but the principle’s true either way. Our democracy’s fucked not necessarily because of the voting system, or the selection system (both of which do whiff like day-old underpants) but because there’s no follow-up. The assumption is that, well, they’ll do what they want now, and what can we do?

We can annoy them. We can make sure they know we’re paying attention to them. We can flood them with our opinions on their every vote, if we want. And not in a 38 Degrees, cut-and-paste email way (though I love 38 Degrees), but in a personal way too. Tell them our stories. Tell them how we’re hurt by the things they do. Tell them how some of the things they do help us.

Do you know about Dunbar’s number? There’s only so many individuals our primitive ape brains can cope with before they just fizz out and boil new people down to paper cut-outs. Your friends and family are great, they’re well-rounded people. That guy who just raced away at the lights is a prick, like all Audi drivers. Your brother has a diverse set of interests like football and Polish cinema. All Millwall fans are aggressive thugs. See how it works?

Our job now is to make sure our new crop of MPs remember they’re representing individuals, not paper cut-outs. It’s to make sure the Tories know every drop of harm they do, and that Labour know too. It’s to stop Labour lurching to the right in terrified response to today’s results. It’s to stop Nigel Farage and his ilk from using Dunbar’s number against us and making the paper cut-outs into the enemy.

So that’s my first thought. I intend to have others, later. I’ll probably Dunbar a few people on the way, because nobody’s immune. But I’ll keep the faith. There are decent people all over the country. Don’t let them Dunbar each other. Don’t Dunbar them.

* Actually I live in Leeds

There’s a trend, found especially in DVD and blu-ray advertising, of inviting people to buy films so that they “own the experience forever”. Disney movies tend to go even further and tell you that “the magic is yours to own forever”, which is a bloody exciting sell if you can back it up.

Hello again, by the way. We’re talking about the nature of home video sales today, I’m easing back into it. Also, spoilers probably follow for some of history’s best-loved twist-filled films. I doubt it, I’ve not really seen any of them. But you will learn that there is a twist in From Dusk Till Dawn and that there’s that film about the woman who turns out to be a man at the end. Yeah. You been spoiled, motherfucker.

Own the magic forever? That’s not half a good thing to do if you can pull it off. Even assuming that the Disney corporation isn’t implying that by purchasing a thin slice of plastic you’ll be taking on the combined powers of Gandalf and Merlin (Gerlin’, verb. 1940s fratboy slang for something that wouldn’t at all be acceptable these days), they’re still claiming you can replicate that first joyous experience of seeing Bambi’s mum get shot and feel the same excited thrill, over and over again (I’ve never actually seen Bambi, but I can only assume that she was a baddie. You’re hard pressed to find an authority figure in a Disney cartoon who isn’t a baddie). This is of course a demonstrable falsehood. The first time you saw Bambi’s mum get shot, you were shocked to see what turn events had taken. Unless you’re wildly naive, nobody expects a film to be different the second time around (unless it’s the Cluedo film from the early 90s, which, statistically speaking, probably was different the second time), so every time you’ve opted to watch Bambi again it was safe in the knowledge that some evil mother-deer would get what was coming to her and some lucky hunter’s poor hungry children would eat well that night. Over and over and over. You sadist. Bambi’s mother wouldn’t deserve the number of murders you’ve inflicted on her, even if she was the Osama bin Laden of deer. Which, from my limited understanding of the film, I gather that she is.

I have a deep and burgeoning desire that I will share with anyone around me after three pints of reasonably nice beer, or a double vodka and coke. I really want someone to cut my brain open, dig around with a fancy laser and a couple of prodding tools, and carefully remove any and all memory of ever having watched From Dusk Til Dawn. Not because it’s an especially bad film, it sits firmly in the ‘OK’ camp –  not Tarantino’s best work, but better than a kick in the teeth. But if you could sit me down in front of it, my mind blessedly clear of any previous knowledge and tell me I was about to sit down and watch a bloody crime caper with no mention of all the vampires and stuff, I’d be happy. Except I wouldn’t. I’ve no interest in watching an average Tarantino crime flick, and if you tell me it has vampires at the end in order to entice me into watching you’ve basically stopped me from enjoying the vampires. All you could really do is tell me that it’s actually a really good Tarantino flick, which would be deceitful and duplicitous of you, and we wouldn’t be friends any more after I’d learned the truth. Why do you want to hurt me?

Until such a time as film-erasing surgery and acceptable-deception-of-friends-regarding-the-artistic-quality-of-cinematographic-filmstrips becomes a thing, I find it difficult to believe that even the vast resources of the Disney corporation can really let me take the magic home forever. There’s only so many times you can find glee in the sight of an evil deer’s righteous demise before the whole thing becomes predictable.

Pie, bitches.

This is a steak, ale, and chorizo pie. Gaze longingly upon it, and know that you can’t have any because I’ve already eaten it. Long ago, back when I last made a post in this blog, I promised to one day divulge the secrets of pie-making. The stars are aligned, the nights are drawing in, and all the greenery is falling off the trees and turning the colour of a lightly-baked Gregg’s steak slice. It is time. Let’s talk ingredients.

600g(ish) stewing steak – there are essays written on the best meat to use for pies, and the answer is always the same; use the worst, toughest, fattiest meat. The pie-process will do amazing things to them that you could never imagine being done to a so-called “prime” cut. It needs to be cut into what you might term “lumps”.

Some carrots – two biggish ones, or more than that if they’re smaller. It’s not rocket science.

Two red onions’ volume of shallots – If we’re all being perfectly honest, shallots are just onions with ideas above their station. So you can use shallots, or actually red onions are just as good. Fuck you, shallots, I’m calling you out, you rugby-ball-shaped motherfuckers.

Herbs and that – Herbs and that are essential for adding subtle nuances to the big, beefy, sausagy flavour you’re about to create. Also, nobody can be taken seriously as a chef without using some herbs and that. The following herbs and that will come in handy: rosemary, thyme, a few cloves of garlic. You’ll also need things like oil, butter, and sugar, the kind of thing that I shouldn’t have to tell you you need in your kitchen in the same way that I don’t have to tell you to wear underwear. Please, wear underwear. Especially if your jeans are too loose. You know who you are.

500g(ish) Puff pastry – You can make your own, it’s far far easier than you’d think. If this is your first pie, though, stick with the shop-bought stuff. In the UK, every supermarket you can think of will sell pre-made pastry in the fridge cabinet with the butter and stuff. In the US, apparently you can only buy it frozen, and they make it with the vile concoction that is high-fructose corn syrup, so it’s a real pisser to work with. Plan accordingly, and leave the country.

Chorizo – Some. You want a piece about the length of a typical breakfast chipolata. Probably a bit more, because you’ll accidentally eat some while you’re working.

No celery – What the hell, man? Every British savoury pie recipe I read calls for celery. Fuck you, celery. You manage to simultaneously taste of nothing and taste vile at the same damn time. Fuck you, celery. Prick.

A pint of beer – You might be prepared to use any old shit if you’re cooking, but you’re wrong. Remember, if you’re not prepared to drink it, don’t be prepared to force your dinner guests to eat it. Of course, knowing the tramp’s wee some people I know are prepared to drink, that don’t say much.

Cooking Time: 20 minutes divving around, a two-hour transatlantic Skype call, another 20 minutes of divving around and then an episode of acclaimed BBC / HBO drama Parade’s End.

Directions:

Melt some butter in a decent-sized casserole pot or similar. When it’s bubbling, throw in all your veg and your herbs and that. When they’re all golden and softening, throw in your beef and make sure it’s sealed. Once you’re done with that, throw in everything else that isn’t pastry or chorizo. A good slosh of hot, spicy-based thing (Worcester sauce, paprika, that kind of thing) and also sweet thing (I’d recommend a dark sugar, or possibly honey, though I’ve never tried it with that) needs throwing in there too. Maybe a bit of tomato puree or something. Drop the heat, stick on a lid, and go place your Skype call. Stir occasionally.

Once the Skype call’s over, take the lid off and stick Parade’s End one in the background. While you’re yelling at the TV for Benedict Cumberbatch to just give in to his emotions, ditch his horrible wife and go off with that girl who’s perfect for him, roll out the pastry. Line a pie dish when it’s quite thin. If it’s too thin, you’ll know because it’ll fall apart in your hands. If it’s too thick, you’ll know because you won’t be able to see over it. Look, you’ve eaten pies, you know how thin the pastry should be. Keep the spare, you’ll need it.

Get out a frying pan and heat up some oil while you slice your chorizo. Eat a couple of lumps of chorizo while you’re thinking about what to do next. God, that stuff’s good, isn’t it? Quick, chuck what’s left in the pan and seal it before you eat the lot. Give it a few minutes on each side, so that the tasty orangeness starts to ooze out.

Your pie filling’s ready now, so throw it in the lined pie dish, leaving enough of a lip to use to seal the lid together in a minute. Dot your bits of chorizo on top of that, and then lie some more pastry on top for your lid. Crimp it together with the lip of the bottom part (or, in plain English, squish ’em together). Brush it with beaten egg  or milk (milk also works well as pastry cement if bits are falling off). You have a pie! Top work!

If there’s any spare pastry, you can write thing on your pie, like I did, imaginitively writing the word “pie”. Bang it in an oven that’s about 180C for half an hour or so. Eat it with mash. Gloat about it to your friends.

Slaying the Dragon of Tradition with the Sword of My Grandfathers While Wearing an Outfit Covered in Bells

If you do a thing often and long enough, you can go around saying it’s what you’ve always done, even though that’s probably hyperbole. If you teach your kids to do it, then you can go around saying it’s a tradition, which is a handy shorthand for “I don’t really think about why I do this any more, but I’ve invested so much time into doing it that I don’t want to have to go around start doing something different now, it would be a real ballache”. For those readers who love their logic but don’t know the words for logic things, this is a classic sunk cost fallacy.

Most of the time you can get away with calling something a tradition because it’s fun or it looks nice. Morris dancing, really big churches with gargoyles and columns and stuff, and chasing rolls of cheese down a hill are all excellent examples of this, depending on your definitions of ‘looks nice’ and ‘fun’. Often, your traditions might be downright silly but nice looking or fun, like morris dancing, really big churches with gargoyles and columns and stuff, and chasing rolls of cheese down a hill. Did you know that in Aylesbury they have an annual Running of the Ducks, ripping off Pamplona’s more dangerous bull-based event but adding a dose of fine English injury-free sensibleness? It’s things like that that make my heart stir with pride for my homeland.

The problem strikes when people mistake the fact that they’ve done something for ages and they think it looks nice for any kind of sensible argument at all. Fox hunting, refusing to let gay people get married and deciding that women should take their husband’s name are all defended under the big banner of tradition, which for some reason has to be the end of the argument.

“Don’t you think that gay couples deserve to be treated by the State in the same way as their heterosexual friends?” you might ask of this imaginary straw man I’ve just conjured up. (That’s logic term number two, there, logic fans who don’t know the name of logic things).

“Oh, yes, of course I do,” replies Jerry Strawman. “But marriage is for straight people, isn’t it? I mean, it’s traditional. You can’t go around changing traditions. Where would we be?”

“We’d be in a place where couples of all possible sexual orientation and combination can enjoy the same rights, responsibilities and protections in exchange for going to the same registry office and paying a flat fee for a certificate and some licensed person to say a few words about love and stuff.”

“Well, that does sound good, but tradition!”

“It’s a stupid tradition,” you can respond.

“Traditioooooooooooooooon!” he’ll wail.

“It’s a tradition that’s making vast numbers of people wildly unhappy,” you can point out.

“Traditioooooooooooon!” he’ll come back with. “If two men get married, who’s going to change their surname? Imagine the logistical difficulty of it! Society would collapse!”

“Look,” you’ll say. “Look, Jerry Strawman. Why do any married couples have to change names? What’s the point in it?”

He’ll moo in response this time. “Traditiooooooooon.”

That’s probably all you’ll ever get out of him, mostly because he’s a fictional construct I’ve knocked together during an episode of Seinfeld, and therefore he’s unreflective of even the most simple-minded opponents of, y’know, clever progress and stuff. But that’s ok, because my broad-strokes point is made. Tradition is dumb, at best. It’s an aesthetic argument.If all we did was cling to tradition, we’d all go around being racists, having more wars and growing our own crops. And I really can’t be having with all the crop-growing. Or the wars. Or the racism. If your pros and cons for doing something are exactly equal, then you can consult The Big Book Of Tradition to see what you should do. Otherwise, throw tradition out of the window. Tradition is just a code word for “we’ve been doing this for so long that we’ve stopped thinking about why.”