Sometimes you start writing a recipe and the title gets long. Very long. Because you see, in your writer’s mind, where this is heading. It’s Noodle Salad for godsake. We’ve got to make it interesting somehow!

Let’s first establish the ingredient list:

• Noodles (is this necessary to list in a “Noodle Salad” recipe?) (I prefer spirals because the oil and seasonings have a lot of surface area to cling to.)
• Olive Oil (Extra Virgin? Sure. Depends on your level of trust regarding where the olives have been.)
• Onions
• Peppers
• [insert other vegetables you like to eat and want to sear in a searingly hot cast iron skillet]
• Herbs, such as oregano and other “Italian-ey” leaves
• Salt, Pepper, Garlic (the big three!)
• White wine of some variety, preferably about to go off because you forgot a half bottle at the beach that time and had to circle back the next day and remarkably it was still there)

First step, in the spirit of Édouard de Pomian, set a pot of water to boil on the stove. (This reference is specially dedicated to the finest of friends who will know exactly who he is and will know it will have been churlish not to include this essential reference!) The water will, eventually, hold the noodles that you have chosen. So, choose your vessel wisely….

(How much do you salt the water? … Are you kidding me? At this stage in our relationship, you know you can do what you choose; I do what I choose; if you don’t like it, get another cook book (website)!)

Next, while the water boils, begin chopping. Vegetables. Chop the vegetables that is. No fingers. No suey. Just vegetables. Here’s what mine looked like:

You see those zucchini / courgettes in the background? Those came straight from Wombat’s Garden, and if you don’t know what that is, then you’re one of three people from outside the family who is reading this recipe. Keep those in mind as we proceed.

(You see that knife in the foreground? That’s handmade in New Zealand from a recycled band saw blade with a sustainably-sourced American ash handle. It’s carbon steel. It’s the most no-bullshit piece of kit you’ll ever find and the sharpest object I’ve ever held. You should have one. I have two — the santoku knife as well. Food tastes better when chopped with a handmade Nuz knife. (I just wrote that line, and yes, I’m available for hire as a marketing director, content writer, script supervisor, improv comedian, short-order cook, raconteur, party animal, etc….))

Back to the story: Because I’m basically allergic to everything when it’s raw, I sear the living shit out of everything — when it’s raw — until it isn’t raw anymore. Enter the cast iron skillet.

(I recently cleaned out the ol’ Lodge skillet. Heresy you say? Fine. I don’t care. Drop a comment at the bottom if you’re fussed. The problem was all the build-up from two decades of refusing to clean the pan. There was so much shit that there was no longer a smooth surface in the pan, which defeats part of the purpose of the cast iron; you want a smooth and really fucking hot surface to make contact with the food. Why smooth? Well, think about it. If it’s not smooth, the amount of material touching the food is less than it could be; the smoother the better. (As in all things?)

(Since you asked, I cleaned it with oven cleaner. Yes yes, I know there are a thousand ways to restore cast iron. This is what I chose in this instance, largely because it’s quick and easy (like me!) and I didn’t have the patience or space to push for anything more elaborate with two kids jostling about a 80 square metre flat flexing their perpetually poor attitudes toward one another, toward me, toward eggs, toward melted cheese, toward pissing directly in the toilet rather than on the toilet (which I just can’t get my head around), toward (gasp!) noodle salad…. It’s non-stop catastrophe around here folks!)

Anyway, I seared those round green slices of garden-fresh joy like this:

What the fuck else is in that pan???

Well let me tell you. These were leftover from the pizza we did yesterday. I saved them, plus a couple shreds of roasted green pepper. Want to see the pizza? Yeah cool. Me too (maybe someday I’ll do a recipe):

I did those separately because I wanted to ensure that there was sufficient flat cast iron surface to make contact with the faces of the vegetable. That makes them delicious-er. The rest of the vegetables went in after I removed those bits (stored safely in a warm porcelain bowl). The whole scene looked like this:

(It occurs to me in this moment: these are pretty pictures, but inessential to the technique involved in making noodle salad. To put a fine point on it: we’re searing vegetables that we’ll toss with noodles any minute now. Why all these pictures. Yes. I’m loathe to admit it. I’m a food pornographer. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all the food I’ve exploited to create these recipes. I’m sorry for reaping all the glory and all the honours, when really we should be celebrating the …. Yeah fuck that. I like sexy food pictures. So do you. Let’s proceed…..)

When you’re happy with the state of the vegetables, add some noodles. Remember those? I reckon somewhere in the middle of all this your timer went off and you strained them and tossed them lightly in oil. Yes? You did? Oh thank goodness!

While you’re tossing, ensure that you add some wine. That old weird wine that you were unsure about. Add that. It’ll contribute that je ne sais quoi, or as the Sicilians say: “what the fuck is that extra taste after I swallow?” (I worked for a few years at a Sicilian delicatessen, and I have yet to recreate the magic they created so effortlessly, despite insisting on using the exact same pan they used for almost literally everything that ran through the place. Anyway….)

Here’s how mine looked:

You’ll observe, no doubt, that I’ve added some seasonings. And oil. And everything else I promised. Then I sort of toss-stirred it around. To be honest, then I scraped it into a bowl and toss-stirred more noodles that were left and combined them as well into the big bowl of noodle goodness. Here’s how it looked in the end:

Different lighting? I dunno. This is a mobile phone camera. Do I look like a professional food photographer to you? Do I look like I have a budget and a production team? I have nothing my friend. Nothing but a rather sizeable stock pot of freshly-tossed noodle salad, which I shall bring to some casual barbecue or another, never revealing the deep Sicilian secret to this recipe.

I can’t say.

Nope.

It’s secret.

…

(OK. The secret is to never overdo the oil. Better that it’s a bit dry than greasy. And, add some butter if you’re into the salty goodness of melted churned milk fat. Doesn’t that sound appealing!) ((When in doubt, more salt.)) (((Too much salt? A dash of lemon juice will cure it.)))

***

Did you enjoy this recipe? Great.

That is all. Our exchange is over.

You can’t leave comments.

I don’t even care if you read the other recipes. Does this look like the monetised site of an influencer? Nope. I don’t think Clarke himself even knows this homage to his existence exists.

Please just enjoy some noodle salad.

Why do we need yet another classic fried chicken recipe? We don’t. Everyone and his brother knows how to fry chicken. But surely you’ve figured out by now this isn’t really a cooking site.

Why would we even need yet another recipe site? Nadia Lim has the internet sewn up already, doesn’t she? Not to mention Jamie Oliver (couldn’t find his website; whatever).

What the hell is Recipes for Clarke then?

Well, it’s a site where I write recipes that, for some reason, I think Clarke Gayford, the world’s coolest stay-at-home-dad, might appreciate. But not just Clarke.

You realise I used to write a fairly popular parenting blog? I retired it. (But the archives live on. (You can trust that link / server and port and all that. It’s run on a little laptop sitting on top of my amplifier here in Auckland. Totally safe.)) It was simply time to move on to something new. (And so RootBeer.co.nz was born, and its various offshoots.)

What I want to say is that writing makes me happy. I like the low-pressure kind of composition that sites like this involve. I don’t even plan my posts. They simply flow. It’s good fun, and cathartic, you might say. (And I thought it would be funny to dedicate a website to someone who, obviously, and rightly so, would never have the slightest interest in having fuck-all to do with it. Now here we are.)

So look. If you want to make fried chicken like an American. Hello. I’m here to help. I still hold a valid passport. And I still remember enough to hold some authority, I think. (Do I?) Moving on….

Ingredients

• Chicken (does this really need an entry on the ingredient list?)
• Flour
• Egg and milk (they’ll get mixed)
• (optional) Hot sauce
• Oil (to fry in, duh)
• Various seasonings

What separates this fried chicken from that fried chicken is what goes into “various seasonings”. Eleven herbs and spices? Marketing bullshit. Welcome to the real, homemade thing! What separates this fried chicken from that fried chicken is how we treat it when it’s cooked, in order to keep it crispy. That’s it. Full stop. Also, what separates this fried chicken from that fried chicken is whether the chicken has been frozen previously. That’s it. Full stop. But also:

• How long you “marinate” in seasonings prior to flouring
• The quality and temperature of the oil
• Free range or battery? (Oh it’s gonna get batter-y one way or another!)
• Do you have a drive through?
• Can I get onion rings with that?

Time for a picture:

This was how my first batch started. And here are some of the seasonings:

That’s my favourite garlic salt, a pepper grinder (you can tell because it’s black), and vegetable stock. There are other secret ingredients, but I can’t tell you here what they are (obviously they’re secret!). However, I told you here.

I can tell you that one time I tried onion flakes, but they ended up tasting burnt by the time the chicken was completely fried. I recommend against onion flakes now.

And the thing about vegetable stock: nobody knows what’s in it — and it’s impossible to find out — so it adds a je ne sais quoi. You know — that thing you don’t know.

Anyway, here’s the:

Method

Plan ahead. You want to rinse the chicken under cold water, shake off the drops, and put it in some kind of vessel. Above I put it in a glass cake pan. Then, salt it, pepper it, give it a few of the secret seasonings — but importantly salt. Let it sit a bit, covered if you’ve got a problem with fucking goddamned flies everywhere all summer goddamnit!

Thinking ahead, the cooler the chicken is when it hits the oil, the more it affects the temperature of the oil (negatively). Consistency is key here, and so a nearly-room-temperature chicken is your friend. (Which is really simple to accomplish if you struggle to make new friends. However the chicken is dead. Bonus: dead friends have low expectations, so.)

Now, dump out a cup or so of flour per flat of chicken parts. (I’m using these little wings because Charlie loves them more than he loves his own arm.) Season the flour. How much seasoning? What am I a fortune teller? You know what you like. Express what you like into the flour! (Why an exclamation point? I dunno. I’m leaving it.)

Maybe start the oil at this point. Put some fire under your cast iron skillet! I do it about half full of canola oil. Why canola oil? Because it’s cheap and tasteless, and so am I! (Exclamation point?)

Now, in a bowl, whip up an egg with a splurt of milk and (optionally) a shot of hot sauce. That’s what’s going on in the picture above. I know; you thought it was a bleeding yolk. Ew. But no. It’s hot sauce.

Does the hot sauce make a difference in the end? Charlie swears it does, and somehow he can tell when I alter the recipe ever so slightly, so, I’m continuing with this technique.

Dip a few pieces of chicken in the egg wash, being sure to get the whole thing coated with egg. (This is a disgusting-feeling thing to do, but it’s essential.) Then, ONE PIECE AT A TIME, put an egged chicken part into the flour. Here’s what I do: I do the egg wash with my right hand and leave my left hand relatively dry for the flouring, so things don’t get too clumpy. Once the egged chicken is in the flour, I use my more-or-less dry hand to fluff some flour all over it. When it’s entirely coated, set it on a plate or something clean and sturdy nearby.

When the oil is hot — wait a minute. Is he going to tell us how to tell that the oil is hot? Yes I am.

You can take a drop of water on your finger and flick it in the oil. Does it sputter horrifically? Great. You’re ready.

Now, this takes some experience, so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it right the first time. Put a piece of floured chicken in the oil. You’ll see bubbles come out the sides. Perfect. Not huge popping-hot bubbles, but little champagne bubbles. That indicates you’ve got the oil right. (The bubble texture will change over time. Don’t worry.)

Brian: can’t you measure the oil temperature.

Fucking amateurs. I don’t do temperature. This is entirely by feel. Fucking amateurs!

I typically add chicken to the oil in a spiral pattern so that I know which one went in first. I’ll use this important knowledge when I flip the chicken (we’re getting there). Add enough chicken parts so that you have something like this:

Mmmm that’s looking delicious.

Flip it from time to time to ensure even cooking. And let it go until the colour is “right”. Like this:

Fucking nailed it! Look at that colour! Nice and golden orange brown. Mmmmmhm.

Now, I promised to say some stuff about how to keep the chicken crispy. The pan you see here is special. It’s a roasting pan, but it has a home-fashioned wire grid in the bottom that keeps food off the bottom of the pan proper. In doing this, you allow the oil to drip off the chicken, rather than have the chicken sit in its own oil (think of the fry baskets at Maccas). I store the pan in the oven at a low temperature (between 50 and 100 (I cook in metric, by the way)) while I continue frying. (The mission is to keep the food warm without cooking it further, otherwise it will dry out.)

Onions? Haloumi? You bet!

Inevitably, I have flour left over. So I raid the fridge and find anything and everything to deep fry. Onion rings are an obvious hit. Check it:

(That’s how things look when they’re floured.)

Haloumi cheese is absolutely incredible done up like this. Cut it into a thickness of no more than a centimeter.

Broccoli, cauliflower. You name it. It’s deep-fryable. In the end:

That’s haloumi on top in that last shot. Oh man it’s good.

Happiness

I grew up on Johnny Cash. Kris Kristofferson wrote a song that Johnny did a bang up job on: Sunday Morning Coming Down. It includes the lyrics:

But I lit my first and watched a small kid cussin’ at a can that he was kicking
Then I crossed the empty street and caught
The Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And it took me back to something that I’d lost somewhere somehow along the way

That line about frying chicken always got me. You know? Even though we never fried chicken when I was a kid. There’s something in it that I always wanted. I knew from that line that you could feel like you’d lost something — but I didn’t have anything I ever felt would “take me back to something”, when I was a kid. I wanted that. That kind of defined my existence for a while.

Look at me now. And look at Charlie. And look at Ray. (Clarke: look at Neve.) I know you’re doing what I’m doing, and giving the kids something they might get taken back to somewhere somehow along the way.

That’s it. That’s the secret ingredient, Clarke. We found it!

It’s not the je ne sais quoi. It’s got nothing to do with “knowing”.

It’s got everything to do with “being”.

It’s who we are, who we’ve become, who we made ourselves into. This is it, man. All wrapped up in fried chicken. This is life in food.

So, why another recipe site?

It ain’t recipes.

This is about taking time. Sharing experiences. This is narrative in ways that recipe sites aren’t.

And there’s no mission, no advertising. No way to make money off you reading it. I wouldn’t have it that way. There’s no happiness in that. Just buy me a beer some day.

Why this site? Because one day, when he feels the pull back to something that he felt he lost — something he wants back –, Charlie will have this. He’ll have the story. He’ll have the memories. He’ll have the story of how I felt when I cooked for him.

He doesn’t get it now; he’s too young. But I still do it. I cook for him every day, the best stuff I can. But if he doesn’t even get it, why do I still do it?

Because this is what I wanted to have — to have possibly lost — but I didn’t. Because I never had it in the first place. The food. The feelings. None of it.

You feel me Clarke? Like when you went back to Gisborne: “There’s no place like it,” you said. I can’t say that about where I grew up — well, I guess I can, but I don’t mean good by it. And that’s what I’m trying to convey here. (In a fried chicken recipe? Apparently, yes.) I want Charlie to think of Auckland — to think of Devonport — like you think of Gisborne. Like there’s no place like it, because of how we made it, not because of where it is on a map. Because of where it exists in our lives. I want Charlie to feel like there’s something to recapture — something about us. And maybe recipes are the best I got, because they’re the most I give.

This might be addressed to you, Clarke, because that’s good for a laugh, but it’s FOR Charlie (and for Ray, but Charlie gets the fried chicken recipe! Sorry little guy.)

Another recipe site: because one day, Charlie, you’ll read this recipe. (You’re sitting in your room playing Minecraft right now, oblivious to the mortality I feel far too often.) You’ll never remember that Minecraft game, but you’ll read this story and you’ll know how much I love you with every memory you can conjure, slurpy as that sounds.

Well well, you’ll say. The old son of a bitch wasn’t kidding.

And hot damn could he fry chicken.

Corn Flake Crumbs

We make a lot of fried chicken around here, lately, because Charlie also, lo and behold, loves fried chicken. (I promise a recipe soon!) So when I used one of the planet’s most popular search engines to get some advice on what to do with those pesky end-of-bag corn flakes, and chicken popped up at the top of the list, oooh boy I bet you heard me howl with delight. How I love a new chicken recipe.

The idea is simple, and here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients

• (pesky end-of-bag) corn flake crumbs
• chicken breasts (ideally two)
• one egg
• a splurt of milk
• various seasonings

Here’s a snapshot of how it starts:

Yes, these are the various seasonings I choose. And this is the basic texture of corn flake crumbs.

About the seasonings: These are the same I use in my secret fried chicken flour recipe. Do I need to list them? No, but I will mention Badia Complete Seasoning. I don’t know what magic is in this shit — so I looked it up. Garlic, onion, various salty things — your typical mixed seasoning fare. Plus.

Wait for it.

Monosodium glutamate. (Also known as ‘Flavour enhancer (621)’ in New Zealand.)

There it is. The magic. I don’t know what the 620 other flavours that led to MSG tasted like, but my friends, they got it right on the 621st try. Mmmmhm. (I unashamedly love MSG, and I’m going to live forever.)

Method

This is pretty simple stuff (otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it!)

First, crumb those flakes. I leave them in the bag and use a rolling pin to flatten them into crumbs. Takes half a minute of rolling.

Next, season the crumbs. This I leave to your sense of taste. Do I use a tablespoon of MSG powder infused Badia or two cups? Hell I don’t know. I use some. That’s a quantity that makes sense to me. So.

Same with the other seasonings. When the mix smells right, it’s right, am-i-right?

Next, whip up an egg wash by beating an egg and a splurt of milk.

Then, (this all seems so obvious) cut up the breasts into roughly one centimetre chunks, dip them in the wash, roll them in the crumbs.

Set these on a baking-paper-lined cooking sheet. A bit like this*:

* First time I did this, I learned that putting the crumbed chickens directly on the cooking sheet results in half-crumbed chicken and half-crumbed cooking sheet. I assume this is not your goal. It wasn’t mine, and I was, shall we say, pretty fucking disappointed.

Now, chuck them in an oven heated to, I dunno, the oven’s not too precise. Maybe it was 180 degrees, bottom heat with the fan. In about twenty minutes, you’ll have this*:

* I should mention: it’s a good idea to flip them half way through, or else the bottom will be soggy. There. I remembered to say it. Anyway:

I know what you’re thinking: that’s the same picture!

Nope. These things look almost the exact same coming out as they look going in, which can be a bit unnerving when you’re dealing with chicken. My solution is simple: cut the thickest one in half and if it’s cooked the whole way through, eat it without hesitation! (And wash it down with something delicious.)

Denouement

I’ll be honest — this isn’t much of a recipe. In fact, it’s pretty dull, except that snark about Flavour 621. That was ok for a giggle if you’re in good spirits to start.

Maybe I’m losing my edge, or like a butter knife, never had one. So I looked up what to do. Here’s a piece about Simple Tips to Include Humour in your Blog Posts. From the look of things, I neglected a hilarious stock photo of some rando pulling a funny face. Oops.

Other insights: Funny metaphors. Self-deprecation. Memes.

Fail. All of this is a fail.

Can we talk Clarke?

Let’s just talk here.

The thing is this: life’s hard with kids around.

2.15 AM I was awakened by the little guy shouting about his favourite lamp not being pointed in quite the right direction or some ridiculousness. That’s how it is, right? You deal with it. But for me, I know I’ll be awake, minimum, two hours. In those two hours, my mind will race, competing with nobody but itself, and that’s hard to take because everyone else goes back to sleep and you know — you just know — tomorrow’s gonna be hard now. Harder than usual. Tomorrow ruined tonight. It’s a grim feeling. I feel it too often.

So laying there sleepless, I got thinking. Two things. One: the very reason we have this recipe is that kids can be so fucking unreasonable! Why the fuck won’t Charlie eat the final two centimetres of corn flakes in the goddamned bag? Why why why?

Gets you to thinking: when I was a kid…. Well Clarke, when I was a kid, we didn’t have corn flakes. Why not? Because, inexplicably, what they called frosted flakes were cheaper, if you played your cards right. Sugar-coated corn flakes. Cheaper than the corn flakes themselves — if you had a coupon and it was double coupon day or whatever scam they ran to get you to consume this absolute garbage.

Those were different times (we tell ourselves). Sundays we’d get the big newspaper with all the advertisements, and there’d be a coupon section, and we’d lay across the floor in front of the forced hot air vent — oil-fired furnace back then and how we didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning is a bloody miracle — and we’d flip through and find all the goodies we liked best and clip the coupons — that’s what they called it. They even made it sound fun. We didn’t use scissors to cut out the rectangle, we clipped the motherfucker because that’s exciting!

So we’d take those coupons to the grocery store, walking around with a picture of the oversweet faux-food in our hands, find the matching box on the shelf, do a quick calculation — save fifty cents, doubled, and the frosted flakes are on special this week — and there it is. Inexplicably cheaper. Therefore, the kids get frosted flakes this week.

You know what — now I get it — that’s why, when I was a kid, I didn’t leave the crumbs. Because the crumbs were little pellets of sugar drugs.

Tangent: Nowadays here we are worried about privacy and tracking our web browsers and cookies and all that shit, and it occurs to me: what we got ain’t nothing new. Man, they tracked those coupons, those portable pictures of what they wanted you to buy — they had UPC codes for a good reason. They knew which newspapers to put them in, which demographic would buy the frosted shit, and they delivered that shit directly to our door. You want to talk about social media invading our privacy. Shit man. Let’s think about it short and quick: what we got ain’t nothing new. (That line is a reference to Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”, which is one of my favourite books and films. So much of what I’m saying here is wrapped up in the story there. Worth a read, mate.)

And this reminds me of something I learned fifteen years ago when I was a computer programmer. I worked for a bank — yep, I spent a decade (eleven years really, but who other than me is counting) — and one day the president of the mortgage division was trying to tell me how their commissioning and fee system worked, and I was stumbling over all the confusion and one-off deals they ran, how shady it all sounded, trying to figure out how to automate some process for them. And he stopped me and said, and goddamn I’ll never forget this:

We always get our money.

Well blow me down, and he’s 100% right not only about banks and their money, but the grocery stores, the social media advertising machines, everyone. And it ain’t nothing new.

What I’m trying to say is that Charlie wouldn’t leave two centimetres of frosted corn flakes.

Would you?

Here’s the other thing I was thinking. Tanya asked me yesterday where I see myself in ten years.

Where do you see yourself Clarke? I figure, you’ve got this history as a tv presenter — and you’re good at it! You seem to have your act together as a guy. After reading all these recipes here, you’re probably a damned fine short order cook as well. (Who am I kidding? I’ve seen Fish of the Day. You fucking rock already. You’ll land on your feet pal. But I’m still curious to know what you think.)

Me: I honestly don’t have any idea. I quit that bank job because it was sucking my soul away, and because it cost so damned much to purchase health care in America. Then we emigrated here — and I love it. Man I love it. As you surely know by now, I’ve done this and that over the years. A bit of teaching at University of Auckland. A bit of writing. Some bicycle repair. A whole lot of editing. And these goofy little side projects, like this ridiculous site.

I also wrote a novel.

Is it any good, you ask? I dunno. I liked it. A lot of friends who’ve read it liked it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done — including writing a PhD.

People ask me what I’ll do with it. Well, it’s been rejected a few times already — not surprising. But I’m not really putting in an effort to be honest. Does it need to be published? I dunno. I’ve got steady work so I’m not hurting for cash. My goal in writing it was to give voice to a particular character — I don’t want to ruin it for you! — and that worked. And I wanted to connect with a new friend here in Devonport who grew up around Frank Sargeson. He loves the manuscript — called it Sargesonian wouldn’t you know — and we sat and talked about characters and plot and scenes for hours. Kept us both alive sometimes. (He’s 83 and he’s an absolute treasure.)

What do you do with that Clarke? What do you do?

The way I thought of it overnight, in my manic fit of insomnia, in ten years I’d probably buy myself an orange shirt and pretend to work at Mitre10 and give people all kinds of ridiculous advice. I was thinking wouldn’t it be funny to direct everyone to the duct tape aisle, regardless of what they asked for. You know, duct tape. Fixes anything.

Then I got thinking about duct tape. It’s incredible, isn’t it. You can peel it off itself like an overripe banana, but then you can use it to close gaps between pieces of industrial ventilation systems, and it’ll hold for a goddamned decade. Now that’s some magical technology that somebody somewhere thought up, and that somebody probably had some idea where they’d be in ten years. Lucky bastard.

Here my claim to fame is what? Finding a way to keep corn flake crusted chicken — the dregs of the bag that my child rejected — from sticking to a cooking sheet. Bully for me.

Ten years, man. I’ll be 58. Nobody will hire me. I’ve already not worked for anyone since Charlie was born — that’s 11 years now. My CV is a piece of shit, to be honest. But I’ve got all these projects that I’ve tried and didn’t really go anywhere. I’ve got this manuscript. I’ll have another one soon enough — yep, novel number two is in the works!

I think back and my past was so driven by rage and heartbreak. (I wrote that line while in the insomniacal fit. Is it still true this morning? Maybe.) I was an angry kid, felt like I’d missed out on so much. And now here I am, not angry (well, not like I used to be), not missing out on anything because we’ve made it, in some sense, and I’m doing my goddamndest to give the kids something better than I had. Like we all do Clarke. What I got here ain’t nothing new.

So when the little guy wakes up at 2.15 AM, and I think my tomorrow’s ruined, well. That’s just me knee-jerking like I used to. As though what we got ain’t nothing new.

NO! Goddamn it I’ve got something new. And I made it. I fucking made it. Literally. With my hands, my mind, my words. (Maybe you’ll read the novel one day. Will you like it? Do I need to publish it? What difference will it make? What difference does Fish of the Day make?)

Maybe the question is this, my friend: Who will you be in ten years?

I’ll be this oddball with these silly projects, these serious projects, maybe still a reasonably competent editor, and one of the best goddamned short order cooks you’ll want to share fried chicken with. (Maybe I’ll buy a red shirt and pretend to manage a KFC?)

Anyway, life’s hard with kids around.

All I can say is: don’t go hard on yourself, if you’re ever tempted. I got to tell you, I don’t know how Jacinda’s managing to steer this ship with a kid below deck, but I reckon it comes down to you Clarke. You’re doing alright too, and I hope somebody’s telling you that when you need to hear it.

The very strange coincidence is that I happened to make Corned Beef Hash yesterday, because I happened to have a bunch of corned beef that was about to go off, and I happened to have some potatoes and onion as well. So. What would you do?

Then I happened to look up random facts about corned beef hash, to try to make this post a little more amusing, and BAM! There it was. Today. Corned Beef Hash Day. What are the chances.

(The chances are 1 in 365.)

What is corned beef hash?

It’s corned beef that is chopped (because “hacher” in French means “to chop”). Of course, CBH (I’m tired of typing it out…) originated in England, they claim, and we all know how much the English get on with the French. Perfectly sensible. (Why do we preserve so many French words in English, like “connoisseur” and “omelette” and “apostrophe” and “soup”? Linguistic colonialism?) ((Wait, “apostrophe“? Seriously?))

Obviously this raises the obvious question: what does it mean to “corn” beef? Obviously.

Well, “corn”, in French, is “pink”, and so to corn beef is to pinken it. And that’s why corned beef is pink.

(That’s false, but you’ll never look it up, will you?)

((It’s essentially tough beef made tender by, more or less, pickling it with “corns” of salt. Yum. Pickling.))

Is corned beef hash hard to make?

Yes. It is very difficult and you shouldn’t bother trying. (Hah! Obviously it’s easy; I’m doing it!)

Are there many different recipes?

There are three. I used a popular search engine to see how many results it could find for “corned beef hash recipe” and it found 8.77 million. That number is FALSE.

This is the best recipe you’ll find written by an American who’s been in New Zealand for ten years and can’t remember a large portion of his past.

Hi. I’m Brian and I write recipes!

Ingredients

• Corned Beef — chopped (“hacher”! Bless you.)
• Potatoes — chopped
• Onion — chopped
• Butter — chopped
• Garlic Salt and Pepper — chopped

Your ingredients will look something like this:

Oh wait, those potatoes aren’t chopped! And you’re asking, what size do I chop the potatoes? Your answer will appear forthwith!

Do you peel the potatoes? Well, the answer depends on how much you value your time. Potato skins contain lots of vitamins and shit (totally unbiased reference to potatogoodness.com, which, like nearly everything in the big old universe, for reasons we will never fathom, exists independent of human consciousness.)

In response: I value my time. So. No. No I don’t peel the potatoes.

Method

First, using a non-stick, cast-iron pan (cast iron is non-stick when it’s hot enough), get those potatoes frying in some butter (or oil if you want; I’m not fussy). What does it look like when potatoes fry in this manner? Like this:

At this point, they’re nice and golden and toasty. Mmmm. And no, you didn’t miss anything: I have added zero seasonings. (Don’t worry; we’ll get there.)

The way I operate, I like to use one skillet if I can. And in this case, I can.

Next, I’ll scrape the potatoes to one side of the skillet and add the onions, then let them caramelise a bit. Mmmm that onion-y sweetness. Like this:

Oh dear. A little bit of the corned beef snuck in there. Oops. Am I bothered?

(Apparently not.)

A couple minutes later:

That looks good enough doesn’t it? Everything will cook slightly more with the next step, which I take to be obvious.

Next, add the hacher-ed corned beef (my, that’s redundantly repetitive):

This is the point at which I sprinkled in some seasonings. But you don’t need much. Corned beef already has a good flavour, and that’ll spill out into the potatoes pretty well.

Eventually, this goes in a bowl and looks fucking amazing:

Lemme tell ya, that bowl was empty pretty quick. And not because I spilled it.

Now, you’ve seen fancy recipes for corned beef hash, I’m sure. Some people use Worcestershire sauce. Some mash this stuff into cakes. Some fry an egg with it right there in the pan.

Worcestershire sauce? Too difficult to pronounce. Already enough flavour.

Mashed cakes? If that’s your thing. Who am I to judge.

Egg in the pan? Here’s the thing: I love eggs, especially fried. However, a powerful member of the household absolutely fucking hates eggs. The smell of eggs. The texture of eggs. The very word “egg” (even the French word “oeuf” conjures revulsion). And we’re all stuck inside during a pandemic, so did I fry an egg along side my delicious and incredibly simple corned beef hash?

Yes.

No! I’m not a monster!

And with that, Happy Corned Beef Hash Day!

Ah, Beef Stew. I’m perfectly comfortable in myself to admit that I had to look up the difference between soup and stew — partly because I bought SOUP beef, not STEW beef, and given my frequent states of great anxiety or agitation, I was unsure how to proceed.

It’s this. Soup: a bunch of stuff in liquid. Stew: A bunch of (slightly larger) stuff in (slightly less) liquid. Easy peasy (lemon squeezy).

Now, why do we need an introduction to an absolute staple of basically every cuisine on Earth? (Am I overstating the pervasiveness of this dish? Probably. But the world is so very full of things, and many of those things are full of beef.) The answer: Beef Stew is controversial. Not controversial like Socialism and leaf blowers (you know how I feel about the devil’s motorised broom, yes?) Here the controversy concerns what makes the perfect Beef Stew. (Why am I capitalising Beef Stew? I don’t know, to be honest. But it started and now there seems no way to stop it, so I’m rolling with it.)

Our goal isn’t perfection. It’s simplicity and delicousnessocity. Ultimately, this recipe should be entirely uncontroversial, though obviously also perfect. (If you disagree, I invite feedback in the form of smoke signals or letters typed on vintage typewriters. Bonus points for carrier pigeon delivery.)

(Joke: How do you make beef stew? Tie a cow to a steak.)

Let’s just start with the ingredients, most of which can be seen in the lead picture:

• Beef
• Potatoes
• Onion
• Butter + Flour = Roux
• Seasonings, like beef stock cubes, salt and pepper

(* Vegan warning: Let’s note that both potatoes and onions are suitable for vegan consumption, so you can consider this a Partially Vegan recipe. But, if it’s pure veganity you’re looking for, these elements must be carefully extracted from the final product and washed of all their meatiness, flavour, and overall yum. Sorry. (I mention this because I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if someone tried to make vegan Beef Stew — since the very definition of “stew” includes the inclusion of meat. Of course, in an internet age, we’re twenty keyboard clicks away from a lengthy page of search results showing eleventy billion such insipid meatless meat stew recipes. It’s horrific. I didn’t dare click the “images” tab. But I’m tempted — just as I’m tempted by pimple popping videos. C’mon, you know you are too…. (Sometimes I wish I could smell the internet. I know, that’s weird, but it’s a fact about me; I truly believe we’re missing out. And there’d be a lot less pornography. Have you ever imagined how sweaty and shitty those sets must smell? Is it only me? It can’t be only me; we live in a world with vegan Beef Stew for chrissake!)))

(* Gluten tolerance warning: You can make a simple gluten-free version of this recipe by melting a tray of ice cubes and adding a single bun-less cheeseburger, minus the cheese. Salt to taste. Fuck off.)

Back to the very ideas of purity and perfection. There is, obviously, no perfect Beef Stew. This recipe is simple. Deceptively simple. Almost a foundation for other beef-related stews (not capitalised, for reasons I cannot identify). It’s the technique that makes it so delicious. Note there are only three main ingredients, two of which are vegan!

This could be an even more vegan recipe if you add carrots to your beef stew, as some lunatics do. Obviously that’s a terrible idea because carrots are the shittest vegetable. — actually. — celery is the shittest vegetable. — or, come to think of it, what is the shittest vegetable? Eggplant? Beets? Yams? — oh there it is. Yams. Fuck a Yam.

(“Fuck a Yam”: That could be a bumper sticker to advertise a fetish brothel franchise. (If you’re hip to urban slang, you’ll surely agree. If this doesn’t seem sufficiently punny, then I recommend you DO NOT search any website related to urban slang for the definition of the term “yam”. Simply move on. You can do it. I believe in you. This internet can’t possibly hold such sway…. (And I’m very glad I couldn’t smell that web search.)))

(Joke: What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup? Anyone can roast beef.)

Back to the recipe and the techniques. (Finally.)

First, let’s make a roux. (Are you surprised? You must be new here. Welcome.)

(Edit: actually, this is the first-but-one step. Really first: salt the soup stew beef and let it come to room temperature — for a few hours at least I reckon. We’ve been through this.) First, heat up your cast iron skillet. When appropriately hot (you know how this works by now, yes?) sear the stew (I’m going to just call it stew beef from now on) beef. Why are we doing this? Well, we want to lock in some of the good juices and give it some structure and seared taste. If you simply drop stew beef in liquid, it’ll still be Beef Stew, but that beef will be entirely cooked by boiling, which is obviously a false thing to do. This searing step changes the taste, I swear.) It’ll look like this to start:

Second, remove the beef from the cast iron skillet. It’ll look like this by now:

(Note: this is not well done at all. (I mean the done-ness of the meat; in another sense, this is actually done incredibly well. Yay me!) There’s still plenty of pink available. But see those crispy bits: that’s what you’re looking for. Actually, they could have been crispier, if I’d let the pan heat up more, but you can’t win ’em all, right? Where would you put ’em?)

Next: add a bit more oil to the hot dirty skillet, bring it back to temperature, then add the diced potatoes. Get them a bit crispy as well, again to help preserve some structure when they’re in the soup stew. (Whatever the fuck it is.) They’ll look like this:

While you’re at it, caramelise the onion a bit. This will give it a slightly sweeter flavour, which is nice in the final soup stew, I think. If you don’t think so, then 1. you’re wrong; 2. skip this step, Wrongy McWrongFace. Here:

Now your main ingredients are ready to go. At this point, make a roux, then add all these stew chunks to the roux. Chuck in a bit of bourbon or beer if you’ve got some handy (note in the lead picture, as always, I had some handy). Lends a good taste to the beef. Or add it to the beef while it’s in the skillet alone. Hell, I don’t care. Just get some liquor into this dish to warm your heart’s cockles. Like this:

In this image, I’ve stirred everything around, coating the stuff with roux, more or less. Then I crushed a couple of those beef stock cubes and added some garlic salt and black pepper.

(This recipe has been quite serious, I feel, and not at all controversial. So I’ll add this: I don’t really have a problem with Socialism. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment. (That’ll keep the newcomers busy; it’s my site, fuck comments, I like Socialism. Hah!))

(Joke: How do you make a milkshake? Give a cow a pogo stick. (Is he going to stop with the stupid puns? No. Obviously you haven’t met Brian.)

Now, add water and dump it all in your crock pot and let it crock (that’s a verb, right?) overnight — or at least as long as humanly possible. That’s what gets the beef all stewy (not angry, but moist and bursting with flavour. (I wish that was how I felt when I stewed.)) Check it:

That’s a lot of fluid, isn’t it? So is this stew or soup? (Oh the controversy!) The ingredients will absorb lots of water and it’ll thicken up over time. Don’t worry. And I can’t be bothered to stand guard over the damned crock pot while it’s crocking (I like this idea that “crock” might be a verb; is it? There’s no way to find out), so I just add a bit more water than I mean there to be. (Does that make sense as an instruction? No. No it doesn’t. Or I’m utterly incompetent (beef pun?))

After all’s said and done, serve with a slice of bread or something. It’ll look this awesome:

Yeah, that’s right. I ate the first bowl of this while sitting in my favourite blue chair. Those are my shoes down there. And a box from Office Max containing little Raymond’s school supplies. Oh and Charlie’s new basketball shoes. So there’s your little behind-the-scenes shot of life beyond my kitchen, you nosy bastards.

That reminds me: Ray needs new school shoes. Sorry I gotta go.

You’ve probably guessed that I don’t own a microwave. I have never, personally, owned a microwave, though I’ve lived among them. They are noisy, ineffective, and energy inefficient; they are, in short, the leaf blowers of kitchen appliances. They should all be thwacked relentlessly with rakes and brooms, which are precisely the correct tools to use for assembling leaves into a pile — not a fucking leaf blower. But I digress.

Now, let’s say you’re locked down in a small flat with two children during a pandemic. No reason in particular. Let’s just imagine such a scenario [twitches anxiously]. You need comfort food. And comfort bourbon. But let’s focus on the food in this post, shall we? Great.

First, collect some ingredients:

• Steal two eggs
• Milk
• Butter
• Bread
• Whatever toppings you like in or on your scrambled eggs; I chose salami and spinach because YUM!, and I’ll have no dissent on this point thank you very much

Your pile of ingredients should look something like this:

This is pretty simple (simple enough that I’m not even certain why anyone needs a recipe, given how much information the name of the dish conveys. Perhaps the only information needed is that one cooks the eggs in a pan before placing them over the toast. To be honest, I’m losing my faith in this recipe; let’s see how this progresses….)

First, butter the bread and toast it. In my case, I melted the butter in a hot cast iron skillet (of course), like this:

Because this technique never actually manages to make toast, I put the bread in the oven, partly because the oven is directly under the stove and I was already standing right there. Lazy bastard. (In case you’re wondering about my feelings toward another common kitchen appliance, namely the toaster, I’m comfortable with it. I have one. It’s a middle-range toaster, and surprisingly consistent in the results it pops out. But the toaster was waaaaaay over there at the time.)

(Aside: every time the toaster pops, Raymond, currently nearly four years old, cackles with delight and declares that the “funny totes” is ready. Isn’t that cute? (Don’t be fooled. He’s probably overturning a box of dirt on a carpet somewhere or dumping an expensive bottle of liquor down the toilet as we speak; so much for the comfort bourbon. This is roughly all he otherwise does; he’s a very tiny, very cute wrecking crew. Who won’t eat eggs.))

For fun, I took a picture of the lonely toast in the giant oven (well, it’s not quite toast yet; I believe in this picture it’s still just Modest Bread, which should be the name of a bread brand that isn’t particularly pompous, like Luxury Super-yacht Gluten Free Bread. Nor is it particularly shit, like Assistant Bank Manager Bread [shudder]. It’s just good old Modest Bread that you can count on):

(Holy mother of….! That oven is filthy. Better call a professional oven cleaner. (I just learned this past week that such a thing exists. On a popular social media platform, a member of a group of friendly and optimistic locals inquired for a reference to a reliable professional oven cleaner. A what? Yep. A THAT. That’s a thing. What kind of criminal record do you have to have to end up at THAT dead end? (Apologies to any upstanding professional oven cleaners out there. But how is this a thing?? Who would let a balding white dude with a paunch and a spray bottle of degreaser through their front door, let alone into the sanctity of their kitchen, even if the guy did profess to possess esoteric knowledge of how to release aerosolized oils from metal surfaces? Oh my god I just described myself. Whatever happens, I recommend against letting me clean your oven; I’ll probably disassemble it first and give up half way through. Typical me.)))

With that underway, it was time to SCRAMBLE the eggs. In my case, I used a fork. To achieve this: crack two eggs into a bowl and add a splurt of milk. How much is a splurt? This much:

Then stir vigorously with a fork. You’ll know you’re done when the eggs are all yellow. (Good luck getting that tune out of your head. Hah!)

Next, heat up that skillet and pour some butter in it (“In the name of love!” Sing it with me! “C’mon fire me up!”) (Look how quickly I was able to jettison that other crap song from your head. Yeah, I’m a professional writer. I’m hot. Sticky sweet.):

Pour in a parachute of scrambled egg:

Then whatever stuff you want in the eggs:

Now here’s the thing. As we said at the head: this ain’t no omelet. Or more precisely, this is an omelet for those of us who don’t give a shit. About what? We’re locked down in a pandemic my friends, with two children: we have no shits left to give, as the man says, or as the kids say when they crap on the floor next to the toilet. (This isn’t entirely true; they crap in the toilet fairly successfully. Peeing, however, is a different kettle of fish. They seem utterly unable to pee in the toilet, preferring, inexplicably, to pee on the toilet. The place stinks like a gas station bathroom full of incontinent squatters. Anyway:) Get in there with your spatula (or whatever you call your flipper) and fold or stir the mass of stuff around for roughly a half a minute until it looks like this:

Do you like salt and pepper? Great. Then shake your thang; do what you wanna do. Yep, add any flavour you want. Go ahead; you have my permission. It’s your lunch. Then put the toast on a plate and the eggs ON the toast (see how vivid the name of this dish really is) to make it look a little something like this:

And that’s it.

*

Seriously, that’s all there is. It’s over.

*

No more recipe here. Go on. Eat your eggs.

You’re probably asking yourself, ‘Who is this guy to claim he makes the best nachos on Earth?’ Well I’ll tell you exactly who I am.

Hi, I’m Brian. And so can you!

In addition to being a fully-qualified, professional Brian, I’ve both eaten and made lots of nachos. And I lived a long time in Southern California, so there.

(I notice that I said ‘made lots of nachos’ instead of ‘cooked lots of nachos’. Interesting isn’t it. You don’t bake nachos. Or fry them. Or blanche them. Or poach them. There’s no particular heating technique embedded in the verb we use to describe the process of transforming a pile of corn chips into a gooey cheesy pile of paradise. ‘Make’. Humph. I think nachos deserve better. From now on, I’m going to ‘fricassee’ nachos. I don’t know what ‘fricassee’ means, so I’m not worried. Does anyone really know what fricasseeing is? I thought not. Henceforth, to ‘fricassee’ is to expertly prepare nachos. Anyone here a wikipedia editor?)

Back to the recipe. You’re definitely going to need salsa, and I can, in good conscience, only recommend one. You know the one.

Additionally:

• Corn chips (I’m using Mexicano round chips which are always on special at New World; I’m cheap.)
• Refried beans (I’m using a can of black beans that I find perfectly suited to my tastes. I’ve tried making my own and it absolutely takes days and days and in the end, it’s no better than this particular can.)
• Cheese (I’m using Rolling Meadow Colby because it’s creamy and melts well and it was on special at New World; I’m cheap.)
• Jalapenos (optional, but not really optional)
• Avocados (optional, but not optional for Tanya, but I’m actually allergic to avocados. Haven’t I told you?)
• Chicken (optional, but you need some kind of meat product on fricasseed nachos, obviously)
• Roasted peppers (optional, or if available)
• Beer (not optional; these are nachos for godsake; treat yourself right!)

I should mention that Tanya called this dish ‘His and Hers Nachos’ because it’s so easy to make one side vegetarian and one side wholly edible, thereby satisfying both of us. It’s an excellent observation, and a good guide for thinking about your nacho layout.

Speaking of your layout, don’t just dump chips on a tray. Why? Well I’ll tell you my thoughts, then you tell me yours (though I won’t be able to hear you). My main thought is that if you simply dump the chips, then the chips at the very bottom will be just plain old chips. Ugh, how bland. On the other hand, if you arrange the chips, then you can ensure that EVERY CHIP gets some topping. To me, this makes a big difference in the nacho-eating experience: there’s no pressure to dig around and find a perfect chip with stuff on it. Each part of the nachos — each nacho — is a perfect expression of the whole of the nachos. There ought to be a word for such beauty (there is, but I can’t think of it; it’s not synechdoche, but I wish it were because that’s such a lovely word. Alas.)

Check this out:

My goal here is to make some portion of each chip visible. So I insist on overlapping them rather particularly (I’m fun to live with!) Next, you’ll dump some refried beans on.

About the refried beans: you might need to add water to the can of beans, or if you’re making your own, make them a tad runny so that they can drip on to the chips. But, and this is very important, don’t make them so runny that they make the chips moist.

Brief aside: part of what makes my nachos so incredibly good is that they remain crispy. We learned that you can’t put salsa directly on the chips or they get terribly damp. I also know for a fact that if you use chilli on nachos, they’ll get soggy. I know this becuase I actually do this — or used to do this until I discovered that it’s so much easier and better to keep the chips crisp (that ought to be a bumper sticker: ‘Keep Your Chips Crisp’. Wouldn’t that look classy right next to your ‘Honk if You’re Horny’ and your ‘Whoever Dies With the Most Toys Wins’. Speaking of this latter bumper sticker, one time toward the end of a long road trip, when we all get a little punchy in the car, we saw one of these bumper stickers. It was on some stupidly oversized sport utility vehicle towing something useless like a jet ski or whatever. I said to Tanya: you know, the problem with that bumper sticker is that it doesn’t specify what you win. What if what you win is shitty? What if whoever dies with the most toys wins a giant bag of dicks. And now you’re dead and you have to carry around a giant bag of dicks for all eternity. What kind of winning is that? You don’t even get to pick out which dicks go in the bag! They could be really shitty dicks (also literally depending on where you live (or die)), and then what. Then your afterlife includes a sack of shitty dicks just because you collected stupid jet skis and SUVs. No thank you ma’am! We went home and jettisoned several toys just in case.)

((My friend Conor believes I’ve made an error here: he wisely points out that I’ve conflated winning and prize giving, which are clearly not the same thing. Clearly. Let this double parenthetical remark stand eternally as acknowledgement that Conor, on at least one occasion, has corrected one of my jokes. (The cool thing is that Conor manages to make jokes out of joke corrections (in real life that is; not here because I’m in control of the conversational flow, muahahaha), and despite this charming character feature, he’s hugely fun at parties. Downright magical!)))

Back to the nachos again. I assume you realised that you’d need to heat up the beans. Like this:

They’re still pretty gloppy in that picture. By the time they were sufficiently heated, they were smooth and ploppable. In fact, here’s the next step:

No, it’s not an exact science. But there’s a plop on exactly every chip. (‘Plop’ is a technical culinary term. You heard it here first!)

Next, I had diced up the chicken and some jalapenos. Check this out:

Sprinkle that stuff on the proto-nachos:

And then sprinkle shredded cheese atop this pile of healthy living:

The final step is to FRICASSEE the nachos in the oven on fan grill. I don’t preheat the oven — which is how I proceed whenever I fricassee; I set the temperature to 200 and slide the tray somewhere in the middle of the oven and give it a few minutes. Warning: it doesn’t take long! Be careful, because fricasseeing at this pace can easily burn the edges of the exposed chips. Obviously that’s bad. So bad that you’ll have to eat the whole tray alone and start over for your guests (so not really that bad.)

Here’s how it looks all melty and amazing, with some sliced avocado on Hers side:

Obviously, as you eat the nachos, scoop some salsa on each chip. Or, you can drizzle some salsa across the top. Whatever suits.

*

I promised a few words on ‘Why are nachos good for you?’ I can give you some evidence that they’re in fact healthy: my kids won’t eat them.

A simple argument: 1. My kids don’t eat healthy things; 2. My kids don’t eat nachos; therefore 3. Nachos are healthy things.

Now, any philosopher worth a whit will tell you that’s not a valid argument. But fuck them. Do you want to be correct or do you want to enjoy nachos? That’s what I thought.

The Philosophers might also wank on about false beliefs and justification, but all of this is irrelevant. Because, as we all know, whoever dies having eaten the most nachos wins. Y’all better get to fricasseeing some serious nachos quick, because after this summer, I’ve got a hell of a head start.

(Not 100% sure what you win in the death-by-nachos competition, but the bag of dicks is already spoken for, so….)

Let me just say quickly: 2019 wasn’t my healthiest year, as you might have read when I wrote about hot honey water. By the end of it all, I had sinus surgery and that cleared things out incredibly. Here’s the thing: one of the potential complications of sinus surgery is that you might lose your sense of smell. I was absolutely horrified by this possibility, partly because I rely so heavily on this sense, especially when cooking.

Right after surgery, waking up in the recovery room, I had a chance to give a quick test before everything swelled up hideously for several weeks. Good news! I smelled! (Yes, I imagine I also smelled after surgery.)

Skip forward a bit and I was back on my feet and all the swelling was coming down in my sinuses. With a bit of new found perk, I figured I’d work on my lentil soup recipe, since Tanya loves the stuff, and since it’s so cheap and easy to make.

At the point where I added the seasonings, I realised, suddenly, that lo and behold, not only could I still smell, but my olfactory acuity had vivified. Whoa! Just standing there, not even coaxing the scent upwards with a whiff of my hand, I could take in the subtlety and complexity of the seasonings.

Suffice to say, I feel rather amazing. So let’s make some farty delicious lentil soup, shall we?

First, gather your ingredients. It will look something like this:

• Half a highball glass of lentils
• One can of chopped tomatoes in juice (or make your own if you can be bothered)
• Onion
• Peppers
• Two stock cubes
• Relevant seasoning (in my case, I’m using this Moroccan BBQ stuff I found that is quite delicious)
• Butter and flour for — you guessed it — ROUX!

First, and unsurprisingly, we need to make a roux. Well, I say ‘need’. Do we really need to?

Yes.

So do that. I’ll wait.

*

Cool. Hi again. You should now have this:

I know it doesn’t look like much, but trust me. One time I made this recipe thinking, why bother with this overly complicated step just to make a soup that’s naturally thick as it is. Short story: I never thought a bowl of soup could end in divorce. Shall we say, Tanya noticed.

Now, I assume that from the picture above you figured out that you’re supposed to dice the peppers and onions. If that’s only just occurring to you, ugh. Please. Pay attention!

Add the diced onions and peppers to the roux. Let them get all coated and gooey. Mmmm. Like this:

Now, add the lentils and the seasonings. How much seasoning? This much:

I don’t usually shoot nudes, but yeah, that’s my hand.

Surely you’re asking, what the fuck is in the Moroccan BBQ seasoning packet? Lucky you — I’m here and I have the actual packet! The packet lists cumin, sweet paprika, turmeric, cinnamon, and some other stuff that’s irrelevant that far down the list. The key is the first three. If you’re rolling your own seasoning packet, hit it with those.

Crumble up your stock cube (or whatever wanky way you choose to get stock into the mix), and add some salt and pepper. (I think we’re at a point in our relationship where you know that I simply always use Lawry’s garlic salt. But go with your gut.)

Add the can of tomatoes. Well, add the contents of the can of tomatoes. Recycle the can after rinsing the food waste from it responsibly. (Or if you’re using fresh tomatoes, give yourself a big pat on the back for having scheduled so much free time into your life. Go you!)

Get all that stuff stirred around real good and add water. How much water? At least double the quantity of lentils. But probably more. You’ll be watching and stirring, so don’t worry too much.

Here’s what I call the base, before the water (oh hey there’s my little helper in the corner; he loves lentil soup. He also loves to announce his farts):

Then add the water:

Now simmer it until it looks like lentil soup. Sorta like this:

Your whole house (or at least the kitchen depending on how conspicuously unnecessarily huge your house is) should now be filled with the inimitable wafts of lentil soup. This goes amazing with bread — a bubbly delicious bread that can really soak it up. Tanya likes a cheese toasty with it and maybe even some avocado.

I’m a tad more old school (read: not vegetarian) so I’ll throw some garlic seared chicken in there for good measure (use your cast iron skillet, of course).

Settle in and enjoy this quick, hearty, fragrant soup.

*

I suppose, given the title, I should mention farting. I’ll be honest here: I don’t remember being particularly gassy after eating lentil soup. I’ll be even more honest: I’m a particularly gassy person. So I might not have noticed.

There’s no shame in this. I’m at a point in my life where if I have to fart, I’m going to fart goddamnit. Do I care if you care that I fart? No I don’t. I’m 46 years old. I’m married with two kids. I’ve done more than I imagined I’d do in life (low expectations are so much fun!). I’ve got nothing to prove. Nobody to prove it to. And with my sense of smell wholly intact — nigh improved! — I can tell you that my farts smell of exquisitely digested filet mignon and elderberries. A veritable cloud of delight.

So I say, if lentil soup makes you fart, then fart on soldier. Fart on!

Anyway, in Spanish, “salsa” simply means “sauce”. But here in the English-speaking world, when we say “salsa” we usually mean a spicy tomato-based chilli sauce that makes Mexican cuisine the world’s best cuisine on Earth.

Salsa comes in many textures, colours, and degrees of heat. A jar of Old El Paso, for example, tends to be an overly-sweet, chunky tomato, chunky pepper stew, utterly insipid in its flavourings, utterly bereft of onion. Here, we’re not aiming for such a mess. Instead, this is a blended salsa. You’ll find this variety in real Mexican restaurants — and by real I mean ones in the greater Los Angeles area, because that’s what I’m familiar with and therefore that’s the only variety worth talking about.

Onward and upward: Ingredients.

• Tomatoes
• Peppers (or capsicum, for those speaking the Queen’s English)
• Onion
• Cilantro (or coriander, which is the same thing in alternate English)
• Cumin (or taco seasoning of some variety if you’re not a purist wanker)
• Salt (or garlic salt) and pepper
• A blender

Here’s what’s so beautiful about this recipe: it’s simple. By now you know me (hi, I’m Brian), and you know it’s all about technique and not overloading your dishes with bullshit (not literally, but also literally).

To start, get some water boiling. While it starts boiling, slice the tops off the tomatoes, lay them flat, and cut a shallow X across the back. This idea is that you’ll blanche the tomatoes, which is to scald them in boiling water in order to get the skins off. The X at the bottom will make it super easy to peel off the blanched skin. Here. It’ll look like this:

You probably asked yourself, “how many tomatoes”? Well there’s your answer.

The blanching process looks like this:

Pluck them from the water after about thirty seconds. The idea is not to cook any of the tomato flesh; the idea is to loosen the skin. They’ll look a little something like this:

Peel the skins and dump them in the blender.

Then, take the seeds out of the peppers you’ve chosen. Which peppers? How do I know what you like?? For this batch, I used one green bell pepper, one red bell pepper, and a handful of pickled jalapenos I had in a jar. I take the seeds out of the bell peppers first, then Julienne them (cut into strips, that is), then throw them in the blender.

Do the same with the onion. (I don’t mean to take the seeds out of the onion. There aren’t any seeds in there. If you go looking for seeds inside an onion, you’ll be sorely disappointed. In fact, at the centre of an onion is — dun dun dunnnnnh — nothing.)

Can you use hotter peppers? Of course. I have delicate children at home and they don’t know the joys of excruciatingly searing heat in their mouths. They’ll learn eventually. For your part — obviously — use what you like. It’s Spanish for “sauce” for chrissake! Put whatever you want in there.

Anyway, at this point, you’ve got something like this going on (background cactus optional):

Oh yeah, I added the cilantro too. How much? Well, how much do you like the taste of cilantro? Same with the onion. For this batch, I used one medium onion — and that’ll provide some serious onion taste, but I like onion taste. And I used half a bunch of cilantro that I picked up at New World. (What’s New World, you ask? It’s a New Zealand-owned supermarket chain. I’m not saying that you, fair reader, need to visit New Zealand just to procure a bunch cilantro (though they’ll call it coriander — Queen’s English and all), but it’s worth a visit to New Zealand (if you’re not already here) in general, even though the salsa here is shit, except for mine, which is mind-bogglingly good, as I’ve said. Keep your eye on Betelgeuse!)

Now, notice how tall this stack of ingredients is. When you turn on the blender — WAIT! We’re not ready yet! — you’ll need to press the stuff down into the blades. This is incredibly dangerous.

Before you do this horrifically, potentially dismembering blending, add your seasonings. For this batch, I added a bit of some random “Mexican Seasoning” (from New World, duh), and a healthy smattering of Lawry’s garlic salt (straight outta Los Angeles!), and a few twists of fresh ground pepper. How much? This much:

Now, grab a potato masher or something like it. Turn on the blender and give the ingredients a gentle push. Now look, I’m not taking responsibility for the safety of your fingers here. You know roughly where the blades are at the bottom of that death vessel. You know roughly how long your fingers are. Steer clear. But you have to get the tomatoes ka-jiggled up enough to get the whole mess blending. Use your best judgement. If you lack best judgement, then use someone else’s.

And that’s it. You’re done. It should look absolutely identical to the featured picture here, unless you stuffed it up somehow, which is difficult to imagine given how incredibly simple it really is. (Except for that part where you potentially lost a digit.)

Enjoy this blended salsa as a dip for corn chips. Put it in a taco. You can even pretend it’s soup, like our little boy Raymond does — god he’s weird.

Percentage explained.

From these facts we learn that my chosen childhood soup diet was notably non-nutritious. Survival was never guaranteed; scurvy was likely. Furthermore, that I developed a shred of interest in vaguely healthy cooking — let alone savoury stuff worth cataloguing — is nothing short of a suspension of the laws of nature by the hand of God. Yes, a miracle.

Recently we learned that dried black beans retain better flavour when not soaked prior to simmering. So we did that yesterday, and what they say is true. I promised I’d make a vegetable stock and some soup, but typical me, I forgot to make stock until an hour before dinner time. Plus I forgot to even think about what else to put in the black bean soup. So the pressure was on.

Good news for you: we’ve developed a quick recipe, assuming your black beans are ready to go, as ours were. Here’s the ingredient list:

• Black beans
• Vegetable stock, which if you’re making your own consists of:
  • green wilted shit from your vegetable drawer
  • water
  • salt (I suggest <36% of the recommended daily allowance)
  • pepper
• Salsa, which, if you’re making your own, consists of:
  • tomato sauce
  • finely chopped onion
  • finely chopped peppers (capsicum), to taste
  • cumin
  • garlic
  • salt
  • pepper
• Bacon
• Roux (are you surprised?)
• (Campbell’s uses carrots too, but fuck carrots!)

If you’re making your own stock, then start clearing out the vegetable dregs — the hopelessly wilted and spurned whom you’ve not yet cast to the worm bin. Chop that stuff up a bit, put it in a pot of water, and boil it with salt and pepper. Put a lid on it to speed things up.

In my case, I found a leek that looked like it was about to faint, so I chopped it out of its misery. There was some vaguely useful cabbage in the crisper drawer, so I cut its heart out, dissected the heart carefully, and dumped it into the boiling pot. I assured myself that the remaining cabbage will turn up in something and returned it to safety. We’ll see.

While that was going, I pan fried some hoki for the kids. They’re not like me; they don’t eat bean with bacon soup. This, combined with their occasional willingness to eat fruits and vegetables, means their chance of developing scurvy is significantly lower than mine. Good for them, I say. And more bacon for me.

Tanya wanted fish too — by the way her chances of suffering an easily-avoided nutritional deficiency are also quite low, given that she’s who the kids take after — so I fried her a tarakihi fillet. By the time all that was dusted (with flour!) and done, the stock smelled a delight. Back to the soup.

We stood there looking at the pot of beans. I looked at Tanya. She looked at me. We blinked slowly.

I was reminded of the first time your baby shits and you look at each other utterly confounded. What is this mucky goo? Where to turn? What to do?

Look, it’s just soup. It won’t crop up Freudian discontent and need ages of therapy if you shout or cry over it. So holler and wail as the spirit moves you. Follow your instincts and know that she’ll be right.

“What else goes in black bean soup?”. We let the some random web site guide our instincts, and here’s what worked out:

• Strain the stock into the bean pot, and now it’s officially soup. Do as you please with the vegetable matter from the stock.
• Add some salsa.
• Whip up a roux in a cast iron skillet and add it to the soup. You don’t want to thicken it too terribly. Just take the watery edge off, and give it a buttery tinge.
• Add any other seasonings to taste.

I suggest pairing this with a glass of Wild Turkey.

To keep it vegetarian — note that contrary to all reasonable indications, Wild Turkey is in fact vegetarian — I didn’t add the bacon to the soup. (Fry up the bacon first, of course.) It’s fine to top off with the bacon, as in the featured image. Or to keep the vegetarians satisfied(-ish), try avocado. Like this:

Anyway, there’s the simple answer. To black bean soup, add salsa and bacon. But by all means, make it good bacon. Make it good salsa. And leave the goddamned useless carrots and sodium to Campbell’s.