Bank Holiday Blues - Oreo Brownies

Aren't Bank Holidays brilliant? Are they fuck!

Never have been, picture the scene, a small boy with a really miserable look on his face having his picture taken stood in the pissing down rain next to his mum with Blackpool Pier providing the backdrop.

Then substitute that backdrop for Scarborough, Bridlington or Whitby, pretty much any seaside town within a 2 to 3 hour radius of Leeds.

This my friends is the story of my childhood, those Polaroids still exist as proof.

So this is what I don’t understand, why does a day off work compel families to do something? What's this need we have to be doing something, anything got to do something. Why does convention dictate that you can't spend a bank holiday doing what you want - bugger all?


It'd be great to do nothing wouldn't it? 

Imagine a whole extra day off work where you could actually relax and enjoy. Problem is you then you go in to work the next day and the conversation would probably go along the lines of : -

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Nothing, just stayed at home”

“That was a bit of a waste wasn’t it?”

They'd look at you like you'd just taken a dump on their living room floor.

Why?

Is it human nature that forces us to get into a car or onto a bus and travel somewhere to spend a miserable couple of hours with other people who have had the same ridiculous idea?


Just think about it rationally, if someone asked you the following would you do it?

“Darling, how about tomorrow we sit in traffic for four hours, pay a fortune for shit food, have a massive argument on the way there and back and want to kill the kids within 30 minutes of leaving?”

“Sounds great, what time shall we set off?

“4am”


Of course you bloody wouldn't - but you do.

The Answer is we are all pursuing the Holy Grail of family life, that is - quality time, sharing common interests as a family the whole 'we wanna be together' syndrome. Bloody people on TV and in books giving us advice telling us we’ve got to have it, we can’t survive without it.

Well my interests are going to the football, playing golf and drinking beer. Fit that one into your family time Denise Robertson.

So obviously given my 39 year hatred of Bank Holiday outings we stayed at home this Monday.

Did we buggery. We went on a trip.

Cadbury World this was our day out and all I can say is wow. 

Against my preconception I actually found it interesting, the history, the chocolate making process, manufacturing and marketing etc.

They obviously glossed over the links to the slave trade and the Spanish massacre of the Mexicans to get the cocoa beans in the first place but hey who hasn’t changed the actual facts for a good story? *looks at shoes*

The wow really comes from the amount of chocolate they try and push on you, like some crack dealer trying to get you to try it for the first time.

We had an allocated time of 9:40 so queued up to enter, had our tickets scanned and were immediately furnished with 8 bars “to start with” – to bloody start with? What the hell was I going to finish with? A diabetic coma?

Unsurprisingly the descendants of the Gloop Family, who seemed to be having a reunion there on the same day, had no issues consuming this amount before being presented with more and then more again.

Throw in some liquid chocolate as a taster and then the make your own concoction with jelly babies, biscuit or marshmallow and the result was  500 Mr. Kreosotes waddling around the gift shop buying the obligatory crap. This crap consisted of chocolate bars as big as your head.

Our trip down was actually ok, mainly as I’d had the foresight to break up the journey with a visit and overnight stay at Mrs. Vino’s Aunties.

The trip back however went as expected….

I’m an only child and have never had to share the back seat with anyone, being a short arse as well meant that I’d usually lie out and go to sleep across the full length of the seat. I’ve actually missed entire countries by being asleep.

However put N & M together in a car for 5 minutes and they bicker, 10 minutes and they start to prod and pinch, so taking it to its natural outcome an hour in they’re kicking the crap out of each other.

Now the perceived wisdom when disciplining children is to not threaten anything that you can’t follow through on. 

However I am a massive failure at this. The whole "if you keep doing that I’ll send you to your room routine" just doesn’t cut it for me. Yes I can follow it through but frankly it’s dull.

So here are some of my Top Punishment Threats – frankly you’ll see they’re completely useless but even if I do say so myself they are quite creative :-

1 – Arguing in the car - I’ll make you walk home from here (we were in Birmingham)

2 – Moaning about having a hair wash - I’ll get all your hair shaved off

3 – Arguing in the car – I’ll turn the car around and we’ll go home (we’d driven 3 hours and were 2 minutes from the destination)

4 – Not listening to me – I’ll give you away to another family

5 – Complaining about dinner – I’m going to throw your dinner in the bin and send you to live with the school cook if her food is so much better

Basically without shouting at them I’ve got nothing.

I’ll let you into a little parenting secret, though it may not be the pc approach, it works. Yes there may be a few tears occasionally but it never did me any harm.

The recipe this week had to be something with chocolate, I mean what else could it be.

This is a Lorraine Pascal recipe and although I usually don’t go in for all her baking made easy crap but this works really well.

Oreo Brownies

Ingredients

165g Butter plus extra for greasing

200g Dark Chocolate - grated or finely chopped

3 Eggs

2 Egg Yolks

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

165g Soft Light Brown Sugar

2 tbsp Plain Flour

1 tbsp Cocoa Powder

Pinch of Salt

154g Oreos, broken into quarters – or whatever chocolate biscuits you like

Icing Sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c

Grease a 20cm Square baking tin with butter, then line with baking paper, the paper overlapping the sides a little

Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat

When the butter has melted, remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate

Leave to stand until the chocolate melts and then stir together

Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together until the eggs begin to get light and fluffy

Add the sugar in two lots, whisking well between each. Try to pour it around the side of the egg mixture as you want to keep as much of the air that has been whisked in as possible

Whisk until the mixture becomes stiffer

Once the egg mixture is ready, pour the chocolate into it - again around

the sides trying to keep the air in

Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt and a third of the biscuits and stir until fully combined

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin

Scatter the remaining biscuits over the top, pressing them in slightly

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25–30 minutes. The middle should be very slightly gooey

Leave the brownies to cool in the tin - the top will sink and crack a little

Pull the brownies out using the overlapping paper and cut into squares

Dust with icing sugar

Enjoy.

A

NB – We did make it home unscathed and all talking to each other, we’ve still got 10 bars of chocolate left and I can’t wait until the 27^th for the next Bank Holiday, if you see me that day you might as well kick me in the nuts to complete the experience.

Their Method, My Madness - Ginger Honey Cake

The purpose of these ramblings, rants, blogs or embarrassing insights into our daily life as Mrs. Vino calls them, through gritted teeth, is to share my love for cooking and baking.

Any of you who follow me on twitter will see I hate this and hate that, I bake this and bake that and most of all drink this and drink all of that.

On Instagram you’ll be bored senseless with endless photos of what I’ve made and now on Vine you can see six-second videos of the cooking process.

It really is awfully dull and I can’t believe any of you actually look at or read any of it. To be honest I bore the arse off myself with it.

So this week to celebrate my passion for the culinary art I’ve decided to turn my attention back to recipes namely those of our celebrity chef friends.

I make no apologies for this, after all these people are meant to entertain, inspire and educate us.

However as Frank Costanza my favourite comic character says, "I've got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!"

A recent report in The Metro stated "TV chefs 'adding to obesity crisis by encouraging us to eat fatty dishes'," with similar stories blaming celebrity chefs for our bulging waistlines in much of the media.

I kind of wished the story had been in The Mail, I’m sure they would have taken it to the nth degree characterising Worrall Thompson as a carcinogenic gnome.

This is not the issue I have though. Anyone that has watched a cookery programme or owns a recipe book can’t be surprised to find out that when on a Saturday our James, oozing manliness, adds 14 packets of butter to a pan of double cream to make a sauce to pour over his extra Belly Belly Pork, it isn’t particularly good for you.

With Nigella, yes I'm once again fixating on her, it’s more a case of being slightly concerned as to where her hands have been. Watching her seductively dip a finger in to taste the food rather than using a spoon may stir ‘those’ feelings but I’m surprised the council haven’t been round to shut her down or at least given her kitchen a low hygiene rating. 

I’m waiting for the day she dispenses with using her fingers altogether and simply dunks her left breast in, come on we all know that’s where it’s heading.

Now if you don’t realise that eating this 'celebrity way' all the time isn’t healthy then you’re probably already 38 stone. I actually look forward to watching the future channel 5 documentary about you. I’ll sit there with baited breath waiting to see if they can remove your front window so they can airlift you to McDonalds for your breakfast while a soundtrack of Elbow’s One Day Like This plays, “throw your curtains wide and stuff 24 McMuffins down your gullet before 8:30."

Please be aware this blog isn’t sponsored by Maccy D’s and in the interest of fairness and balance there are other fast food chains available who can make you equally as fat should you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there every day.

No my issue isn’t with chefs making me fat it’s with their bloody recipes not working. They're meant to work, I've paid a fortune for all these posh ingredients.

A perfect Tag Line would be - You’ve seen the show, you’ve bought the book, you’ve thrown the bastard cake in the bin.

I’m obviously exaggerating a touch here, lumping all chefs in to this bracket, when really I have only one man in mind, Paul ‘the Hollywood’ Hollywood - I'm sure his real name is Paulo Avanti, he just fancied something altogether more ‘glitzy’.

I’ve tried to get on with his book, thinking I’d done something wrong. Was the oven too high? Am I using the right tin? Had I misread the recipe?

Yes I’m man enough to admit making a mistake or cooking something distinctly average. Case in point was this week I tried a new curry recipe out on the family. 

N marked it 4 out of 10 and then made me promise I would never ever make ‘that’ again. Everything in our house is bloody marked and judged out of ten these days, I blame Strictly, N loves it. I just find it a little off putting that Mrs. Vino has adopted this scoring system. I'm not telling you what I was given a 3 for the other day.

So with Paulo I have tried the same recipes numerous times and I’m glad to report that it’s definitely not me it’s him.

He makes it so bloody hard to dislike him though, sauntering on to our screens with his piercing eyes, chiseled good looks and well coiffured silver hair. Looking down the camera lens setting many a middle-aged woman’s knees a trembling. He might as well just open his shows with this line - “Before we get started I apologise for making you moist.”

Well Hollywood I’m glad something is because your bloody cakes aren’t.

One person I’d like to admonish from this piece and all future pieces I may write is Mother Delia. The woman can do no wrong. The funny thing is I have no ulterior motive with Delia, she’s one of the few women on TV that I don’t want to do unmentionables to. Maybe it’s because she’s a bit too Mumsy or Saintly. Now Mary Berry on the other hand, I’d give my left nut for a couple of minutes with her.

In my book Delia has indeed inspired a generation of people to cook and her recipes are foolproof. If she says it’s 100g of flour it’s exactly that, no more no less. As her tirade on the pitch at Carrow Road proved, you don’t fuck with Delia.

I toyed with the idea of using a Hollywood recipe and seeing if it worked for any of you. However I know one person who has no problem with them and I couldn’t bare the *smug face* comment that would undoubtedly follow.

So I’m going to go for a recipe from my current favourite baker – Dan Lepard. His recipes are usually in the Guardian each week. The fact that he’s replied to me on twitter, commenting that my cakes made with his recipes look good, may also have a little to do with this favouritism. What can I say, I’m fickle.

Ginger Honey Cake

This is quite a fiery little number with 3 types of ginger but not so much so that N & M didn’t enjoy it. To be honest though I’m yet to find a cake M doesn’t like.

Ingredients

300g Honey – runny

75g Unsalted Butter - Melted

50ml Sunflower oil

3 Medium size eggs

400g Stem Ginger – Chopped (the jar I bought was 350g and this had no ill effects on the cake)

2 cm Piece of Fresh Ginger - peeled and finely grated (this is what I like about Dan’s recipes they’re very prescriptive- most people would say a thumb sized piece but whose thumb?)

4 Teaspoons Ground Ginger

1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

250g Plain Flour

2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

Extra Butter

Extra Honey to glaze the cake

Loaf tin – anything you’ve got will do

Method

Line the tin with Baking Parchment

Set the oven to 170c or 150c on a Fan Oven

Put the Eggs, Honey, Oil and Butter in to a bowl and beat until it is smooth and everything is incorporated. I used a hand whisk.

Stir in the Stem and Grated Gingers plus the spices. Finally add the flour and baking powder.

Stir really well the spoon the mixture in to your tin.

You then want to lay a thin line of butter centrally down the length of your cake. I cut a thin strip off the end of a pack of butter then cut that in half, repeating until the length of the cake was covered. Apparently this butter technique forces the cake to crack along this line and gives you an even bake.

Put the cake in the oven for 70-80 minutes, don’t touch it before 70 minutes as this cake will collapse if you as much as look at it wrongly.

Test it with a skewer after 70 minutes and it should come out clean. Mine was done after 70 minutes and didn’t need any extra.

The cake may look a little burnt on top – mine didn’t.

While it’s still warm brush the top with some honey to glaze and soften the crust.

Enjoy.

A

Cooking gets much tougher than they think - Pork Chops

Over the years I’ve had favourite TV Chefs and cookery programmes then pretty much fallen out with all of them. I revel in shouting abuse at the box as Nigel ponces around his kitchen garden knocking up ‘something simple’ from leftovers that the majority of us can’t afford to buy in the first place.

I have a problem with chefs, celebrity or otherwise being held in a position far outweighing their status. They’re not surgeons, scientists or superheroes.

When all is said and done, they show us how to cook our tea. (It’s tea, not dinner. I’m from Yorkshire.)

The only thing the Great British Menu recently taught us was that chefs can’t muster a funny thought between them, they’d have struggled even if one had marched into the kitchen singing “funny thoughts are here again.”

It leads me to believe the collective noun for chefs is a moribund.

Serving essence of food while adorning oneself with a silly hat or red nose doesn’t constitute humour. To steal from Black Adder again, they should have served a Turnip shaped like a Thingy and be done with it. Weeks of toe curling viewing could have been avoided.

What really irked was the seriousness with which the chefs approached the ‘competition’. Really what are they competing for, a ten minute slot on Saturday Kitchen where they can watch Mr. Martin chat up anything with a pulse? A friend on Twitter dared to comment on the questionable behaviour of one of the chefs only to have his followers and ultimately the chef himself, berate him for expressing an opinion. What an absolute dick.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learnt many things, stolen good ideas and favourite recipes from these programmes. My main problem, yes I’m a grumpy bastard most of the time and so have problems with many things, is the crusades celebrity chefs go on. The curly haired one telling us which chicken we can feed our family, the mockney one what food our children can eat at school. Yes I know these are just causes, we should consider the welfare of the poor chickens and the fat kids and no I don’t want N & M to eat twizzlers but please fuck off, it’s not your job to sort it. Just entertain me you dancing monkeys, is that too much to ask?

Then there’s Nigella, how I used to love Nigella. I’ve fantasised about whole weekends spent in various carnal states with her. Obviously she cooks me something tasty after I have satiated her every desire. Unfortunately these days she reminds me of some poor old dear with dementia, dressed up to the nines dripping with pearls hanging around the fridge door at midnight trying to get in to what I can only hazard a guess she believes to be Claridges.

My personal favourite, if by favourite you mean the programme that makes you spew expletives at your screen above all others, is Masterchef.

I don’t have issues with the contestants per se. Oh who am I kidding I sit watching in slack jawed amazement at the ineptitude of these ‘master chefs’, surely the clue is in the title of the show, if you can’t fucking boil water, don’t apply.

Then we have John & Gregg re-enacting their own Brokeback Mountain in front of the nation, the sexual chemistry makes me a little uneasy if I’m being honest, why don’t they just get a room?

I’d love John to do a palette test involving Beans, Bread & Butter, while Gregg bounces uncontrollably from foot to foot fawning over this masterpiece of culinary art.

Gregg’s metaphors are simply stunning. I can’t wait for the day when he delivers the ultimate line. Picture the scene, someone has dared make a Sticky Toffee pudding with plenty of sauce and topped with custard. John as usual doesn’t really give a shit but Gregg, he’s in pudding heaven. He manages to suck the silver off the spoon as he savours every morsel, then he utters the words “that pudding it, it, it…. takes my cock and balls out of my trousers puts them on the table and BANG hits them with a massive sledgehammer it’s that good” John stands there looking longingly into his eyes.

However the phrases that really make my blood boil are “Cooking doesn’t get any tougher than this” and “Pressure Test.”

You know what I’ll give you a bloody pressure test. It takes place in kitchens up and down the country every night. Children waiting for their dinner from 5 o’clock and parents trying to make them something tasty and nutritious while not finishing work 'til 6. Try bending the Space Time Continuum Gregg & John, that’s definitely cooking at it’s toughest.

So here’s a quick and simple recipe for a family tea, Pork Chops although you can adapt to use chicken breasts and make homemade nuggets. I’m claiming it as my own basically because I can’t remember where it originated.

Breaded Pork Chops

4 Pork Loin Chops or Steaks, something without a bone - 1 per person

Breadcrumbs

Grated Parmesan

Eggs

Seasoned Plain Flour

Method

The Pork needs flattening out, I ask the butcher to do this for me.

I sometimes bash my own pork (sorry couldn’t resist), so if you have a proclivity for violence lay a big sheet of cling film out put a piece of pork on top lay another sheet of cling film on top and knock the crap out of it with a rolling pin.

Ideally the meat should flatten to a thickness of about a centimetre.

Pre Heat the oven to 180c

Next you need 3 large bowls to bread the pork, the production line method works well.

In the first bowl pour in plain flour, enough to coat the pork. Season well with salt and pepper.

In the second bowl crack two eggs and beat.

In the third bowl put the breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan and mix well. Ideally you should use stale bread whizzed up in a processor to create the crumbs, in reality I use whatever’s in the house.

Take a piece of pork and coat in the flour making sure it’s completely covered. Knock off any excess.

Place the coated pork in the egg mixture once again making sure it’s coated.

Lastly place in the breadcrumbs and press down so the pork is encased in the Parmesan breadcrumbs.

Place on a plate and repeat each step with the remaining pieces.

You can prepare the pork in advance and refrigerate until you’re ready to cook it.

Heat a large frying pan preferably one big enough to hold all 4 steaks and pour in enough oil to cover the bottom (I like to use groundnut but whatever you have is fine).

When the oil is nice and hot carefully place the pork in and cook for 2 minutes each side, the breadcrumb coating she be nicely golden and have crisped up.

Place the pan in the oven and cook for about 8 minutes. Please make sure the pan is oven proof I don’t want anyone to have a melted mess in the oven.

The best way to tell if they’re done is to simply cut into one, if doesn’t look like it would kill you eat it.

Serve with whatever you want, mash and vegetables or Spaghetti and a tomato sauce works well.

Enjoy.

A