Whipping up a new taste sensation

TV posh-nosh-fest Masterchef is back on our screens, but whilst the C-List Celebs battle it out, I’ve been busy coming up with some much better culinary delights.

Inspired (as I often am) by the brilliant advice of my Niecelet Rebecca, I have thrown caution to the wind, and whole-heartedly embraced the idea of alternative flavour-combinations in a way that only the mind of a nine-year-old usually can. Or maybe Heston Blumenthal.

Rebecca concluded that a pizza that only had mango, pineapple, assorted other fruits and a few kinds of meat as toppings wasn’t really complete. The simple answer was chocolate buttons. Suddenly, it’s a taste sensation that would have Greg & John gushing enthusiastically about how Rebecca “has really taken cooking to another level”.

Whilst adding chocolate to just about anything will inevitably make it better, this fusion between sweet shop and pizza parlour got me wondering what I could improve.

In my small, twitter-based, universe it has been controversially established that Butterscotch Angel Delight is actually the true King of desserts from the 1970s (although there are still doubters in both the Chocolate and Strawberry camps who have sworn deadly revenge if I start that argument off again). Since the startling introduction of a make-your-own-ice-cream variety, it has become possible to enjoy the delight of angels in extra chilly form, but it occurred to me recently that, whilst divinely perfect, it was still just possible that the bar could be raised slightly higher still. Dare I take the whisk? Sorry, risk?

Nervously, I prepared a batch (five whole minutes of whisking!) and scoured the kitchen for the perfect addition. And then it struck me – HobNobs. The finest of biscuits, crumbled into the most luxuriously delicious of puddings. The rest of the series of Masterchef is cancelled. I’ve clearly won.

Emboldened by my innate, previously untapped, chefiness, other ideas began to mix themselves together in the oven of my mind. Bacon-flavoured wheaty snack wonder Frazzles, on pizza! No wait... Frazzles breakfast cereal! Everyone likes bacon for breakfast, but what if you can have wheaty goodness, bacon flavour and put skimmed milk on it? No cooking, just a healthy and delicious bowl of wonder. And the best thing is, I don’t even need to mess around inventing it, as Frazzles and milk already exist. Just put the two together!

Suddenly, anything is possible. It doesn’t matter what the rulebook says any more, tear it up and throw it out of the window. Or better still, puree it with some garlic and spread it on toast.

Roast chicken, stuffed with Jelly Babies! Mmmm. How about a beef and apple smoothie? Anyone want marshmallows, on a bed of Branston pickle, with a jus of Bovril, mixed with whiskey? (It would be too hard to pour otherwise, obviously.)

I am the new, less annoying, Jamie, Nigella, Delia and Dr Frankenstein rolled into one, genius level, super... Excuse me – I just need to pop to the loo for a minute...

This post first appeared in my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail, on the 16th of August 2013. You can view the version the paper published here - it lost about 40 words in the edit.

Good to see that the NWEM have sorted out the Blog page on their website - although I wasn't complaining that my Royal Baby story stayed at the newest one on their main page for a few weeks.

Another idea for this week's column was the tale of a character called Captain Hairy Bumchin, invented by Rebecca, me, and the fact that I do indeed have a hairy chin that looks like a bum if you squeeze it on either side. Not quite sure the discerning readers of Cumbria are quite ready for that. Not yet, anyway. I'm working on it...

(Music on an exceedingly wet day today courtesy of Robbie Willams' "Escapology" album.)

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

Is it cold? Snow way...

Lunch out? Not unless you want snow balls... I’ve got a confession to make. Lean in a bit, because I’m going to whisper it. Bit more. Did you have curry for tea? OK, good. I’m a weather nerd. There, I said it. When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman – I wanted to present the weather on the TV. I was lining myself up for a career at the Met Office when, at about 18 years of age, I discovered I was allergic to studying. Anyway, despite a jam-packed and varied career over the subsequent years, I still have a fascination for the world of meteorology. I even have one of those clocks that projects the time and the external temperature onto the ceiling at night, so I can see how cold it is outside whilst lying awake worrying that I might have wasted my life and been more successful with girls if I’d been more into cars than clouds. So far this year, I’ve gazed at a chilly reading of -5C a couple of times, and been grateful for previous sensible ch...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog