Delicious Lies Our Parents Told Us - Lamb's Fry

G'day, Bert here, reporting from 1930 and the depression is in full swing. Not the Depression we know and love today as the scourge of almost everyone with an active Twitter account, no, the Financial Depression that wiped out stockmarkets worldwide. It was a time of empty pockets, threadbare clothing and cheap, dubious meats.

Well, calling them "meats" might be taking liberties, I'm not sure where offal falls into the meat categorising system, somewhere near the bottom, no doubt. But it was nourishing, which is the important thing because it kept out grandparents alive. And without that we wouldnt be here to enjoy the shit out my hilarious blog, so good on them for that.

OK, so just to update you, in case you don't follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram or aren't one of my real life friends, I have moved to Perth. It's not terrible but I don't love it. I genuinely miss Melbourne's abundance of amazing food. And as such, I have a plan in motion that will start to take effect later in the year that I will tell you about later in the year as well. 

IN the next couple of months I have some ridiculous stuff happening, including my new job on a TV series called Surfing The Menu. I'm literally driving the cast, crew and equipment around the entire country for about 9 weeks and it is extremely exciting for someone like me to be involved in. You know, with the food and everything. And the touring and the driving and all that. It's basically my dream job. So that's us caught up, what have you been doing? Look, no time for that now, I'll just tell you about my dinner.

So as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself for what was actually quite a riveting catch-up, my grandparents were depression people. Like with everyone else during that particular period of time they made do. That meant fixing and going without and eating things like offal, which as it turns out, they would acquire a taste for and continue to eat long after the world got back in the black. Now, offal is a pretty broad term that covers a lot of disgusting stuff and I am going to cover a few things from the pile including Kidneys and today's edition and my personal favourite; Lamb's Fry. Otherwise known as Liver.

The name is a bit contentious, sure. But you have to understand that our parents lied to us heaps when we were growing up and most of it was for a good reason. I mean, no kid would have put Tripe in their mouth unless it was called something as creative as "Angel Meat", would they? So I get it. The Easter Bunny, Santa and Jesus things, I still don't quite get but when I do have kids I have a feeling it will all make sense. Maybe not the Jesus thing.

SO, Lamb's Fry. Delicious, nutritious, rich and irony. Iron-y, meaning full of Iron, not Ironic like a song about Irony that contains no examples of irony. It's an acquired taste and I understand that its not for everyone. Although I do think that The Fonz did the reputation of Liver absolutely no favours and that it is worth another look if you have bad memories of it as a kid. The bad memories of kids often permeate adulthood unfairly as I am certain that a lot of our parents were not great cooks. I myself used to think that Pork Chops were a dry, terrible waste of stomach space only to realise in adulthood that my Dad always completely over-cooked them to the point they were almost inedible.

So I think you should give Offal a chance and Lamb's Fry is a great entry point into The Magical World of Organs as it's cheap, quick and easy to prepare and simple to cook. It's rich, has a pleasant texture and goes with mashed potatoes, gravy and bacon. It doesn't get much better than that. BUT it is definitely an acquired taste, so if you don't like it, I get it. All I'm asking is that you keep an open mind and give it a go.

I bought a Lamb's Fry from Coles for $3.89 which provided about 700gm of liver; enough for 5 decent sized portions AND some leftover for the dog. The bacon I bought cost more than that and I got the fattiest bacon I could, which I suggest you do too, as after you render the fat from the bacon, you will fry the Lamb's Fry in it.

Easy as you like, put the Liver into a bowl of salted water and leave for a few hours at least. It just helps to seep the remaining blood out of the liver which makes it less rich/more palatable. Drain off the water and pat the liver dry with paper towels and then slice the liver into strips or pieces roughly the thickness of chicken nuggets. Put the liver, about half a cup of flour and a generous amount of salt and pepper in a plastic bag (one with no holes in the bottom), hold the bag closed tightly and shake it until the liver bits are each coated in seasoned flour. Easy.

Now cut some fatty bacon into strips and fry at a medium heat in a frypan until the bacon starts to go brown and a lot of the fat is left in the pan. Remove the bacon and put ni the oven on a plate to keep warm.

Magical Bacon

Take the bits of Lamb's Fry, shake off the excess flour and lay in the pan in the juicy delicious bacon fat and fry on all sides until brown. This should only take a minute or so on each side. As they cook, take them out and put them on the plate in the warm oven with the bacon. If you cook them too long, it will taste quite bitter and be firmer. You want a consistency that isn't tough to chew through.

Shake off the excess flour

Cook up some vegies to go with it, steamed/boiled/mashed potatoes, carrots, whatever you like that goes well with gravy. Now chuck some butter in with the pan leavin's, which should be some crusty brown fried flour bits, and cook up some sliced onions, adding some hot water and a sprinkling of flour and a stock cube and maybe some herbs and scrape up all of the bits in the frypan to make yourself some delicious bacony fried up onion gravy. Divvy up the Lambs Fry, bacon, vegetables and onion gravy and there you have a delicious Depression-era delight, just like Gram and Gramps. 

And then, in the next few days, while your blood is chock full of iron, go and give blood, good on you.

HEY. Yeah sorry about the delay in posts.

Look, I've had A LOT going on in my life, ok? Not that it's any of your concern.

Since my last post I have moved 3000+ km from Melbourne to NOT Melbourne. AKA Perth, Western Australia. In fact Im living in the NOT even Perth of Perth. I am outside what is possibly the first known birthplace of Bogans. It's been quite a journey and one that I will chronicle with a different blog called "Welcome to Not Melbourne"

I have only cooked one meal since getting here, a delicious fettucine of garlic prawns and spring onions in a cream sauce. It was delicious, thanks for asking. I forgot to take a pic, so just use your imagination. I'll be back soon with something awesome.

Pea & Ham Soup is better than you

It's May, so it's starting to get cold again here in Melbsy, which is my annoying way of saying Melbs, which is everybody else's annoying way of saying Melbourne. So obviously my mind turns to warmth, because my mind is a frickin genius. And within warmth lies our biological need for soup. And within my biological need for soup lies my pathological need to not spend any money, because I don't have any money.
Luckily, soup is cheap! And satisfying. Well, it can be when you don't fuck it up. And even luckier is that it is very hard to fuck it up. Unless YOU are a fuck up. But then a fuck up fucking up the unfuckupable would be pretty much par for the course, so lets not count unhatched eggs as anything but eggs.

If you're looking for cheap, hearty and soupy, Pea & Ham Soup is all of those things. It is my absolute favourite soup in the world ever. It has all the things I need from a soup. It's thick, it's aromatic, it's meaty, it's pea-y and it reminds me of my childhood. It's a lot to ask from a soup. But there is more. It's cheap, there are only a few ingredients, some of which can be left out altogether if you want, and it will still turn a great result, and blokes will love it.

I was in ALDI. Because who doesn't love a bargain product with a similar name and font to a big name product but with a better price tag? Seriously, the doors to ALDI are a portal to a world very similar to ours but with no recognisable brands. The other day I bought some "Chazoo's" Cheesy Bacon Balls. Not Cheeto's. Chazoo's. Like the name, they were almost the same but not quite as good . Anyway, I saw Ham Hocks in ALDI so I grabbed a big one for the very good price of $3.61. Then I looked around for split peas but they didn't have any. Laptops, weights and Chazoo's Burger Hoops, sure, but no split peas. Makes sense.

In Woolies, the split peas were $1.66. (The Ham Hocks were WAAAAAY more expensive than ALDI bee tee dubs) Awesome. And as a bonus, the recipe for Pea & Ham Soup is on the back of the pea packet. It includes a bunch of other stuff like onion, carrots, celery and bay leaves which are ALL negotiable. Especially as the recipe says to do some stuff that I disagree with, like puree-ing the soup at the end. FUCK OFF.

You can cook this in a big pot or a slow cooker if you like (I went the slow cooker option because it requires less attention). Chuck the ham hock and split peas in the pot with 12 cups of water. Add a bay leaf, a chicken stock cube, a chopped onion and IF YOU WANT, I DIDNT BOTHER, 2 or 3 chopped up carrots and celery sticks. The reason I didn't bother is because I don't want to have to puree the soup at the end. It should be ready just from cooking it, fuck making more mess and delaying the eating process.

Then you can just leave it on a low heat (Low setting on the Slow Cooker) for ages and then come back and stir it every once in a while. Like, seriously 8 hours. BUT if you are cooking it in a big stove-top pot, be very careful not to leave it for too long without stirring it because the peas can burn to the bottom of the pan and then, yes, that will have fucked it up.

Then, after ages, when it resembles primordial sludge, it's ready.

It's ready.

Just remove all the ham bones and the skin, toast up some old bread, butter the shit out of it and go to fucking town.

This is a lot of soup. It freezes well but I don't recommend doing that. Just leave it in the pot and reheat as required. If you find it gets too thick and congeals, just add a cup or two of water in the reheating process and its good as gold. Good onya.

Wings For The Win

Southern Fried Chicken is a bit of a hot food item in Melbourne right now and we pay through the teeth for it. Chicken is cheap and fried chicken is a pretty simple thing to make that will please most people.

I'm a budget conscious shopping person, we all know that by now. And I live in an inner-city suburb, so ingredients are cheap and readily available. Especially if you are ready to dig. I have found some incredible places in Melbourne for super-bargains that have saved me in the days before pay day when I have had $9 in the bank to get me through. Whatever your reason for being poor, NO JUDGEMENT, there are ways to make the smallest amount of cash go a long way. There is a butcher (YES, A BUTCHER, not a shitty supermarket meat dept) near me that regularly sells chicken wings for $2 kg. You get about 8 or 9 large wings for that much, which is a lot. You should probably only eat about 3 or 4 of these in one sitting and if you have a family (2-3 kids), 2kg is probably enough. Couple that with fresh veg and maybe some rice and you have a great dinner for fuck-all money. At home, I knew I had flour (either way its 79c) and various herbs and stuff, so I didn't need much more than the wings.

In the US they eat fried chicken with what they call "biscuits", which are pretty similar to savoury scones. They go well together with the chicken and the gravy they serve with it. HEALTH. So, knowing I had the ingredients, I decided to make parsley scones. The biscuit is, after all, a filler. Scones are easy and your nana will have a good recipe, so I wont bother explaining it here (Unless you want me to? Leave a comment). Maybe try something like spring onion and cheese savoury scones? I also had all the required ingredients for the coating I wanted for the chook.

TRY THIS for a cheap awesome dinner.
2kg chicken wings
8 garlic cloves, crushed (or cheat and get the minced garlic for $4)
1 tbs oil (olive/vegetable/NOT engine)
(put the garlic and oil in the bag with the wings, mix it up thoroughly, leave while you prep the herb coating)

*Herb Coating*
1/2 cup of flour
2 chicken stock cubes, crushed
whatever herbs you have in the cupboard
   eg a shake of whatever shit your housemates have handy and wont miss. (I used a few shakes of vegeta, cajun seasoning, paprika, salt, oregano and dried thyme)
2 eggs, whisked in a bowl (although you may need another one or two, see how you go)

Mix all the stock cubes, herbs, spices and flour together thoroughly in a wide bowl. When it looks less like flour than before, its ready.

Heat up enough vegetable oil in a saucepan to cover a chicken wing (3cm depth). Make sure the oil is VERY FUCKING HOT. Now place a few chicken wings into the flour mix, pressing the mixture onto the skin so it stays there. Now coat the chicken in egg, then put it back in the flour mix and really press the mix onto the wing firmly.

Shake off the excess flour mix and place the chicken wings into the oil and they should bubble away nicely. As the coating turns golden brown, turn the wing over to ensure all of the chicken gets cooked (3-4 mins altogether).

Then remove from the oil, drain on absorbent paper and put into the oven to keep warm while you cook the rest of the wings. Its a bit of a process but well worth it considering you will cook all this for about $8 and its enough to feed 6 people really well. If its just for one or two, half the quantity of chook.

When you have cooked all the wings, prep some chicken gravy, warm up and butter the scones and smash it all down your face hole with extreme glee.

TIP! Don't overcrowd the oil or the wings wont cook properly.Only cook two or three at once (depending on the size of your saucepan)
ALSO, if you cant get wings or you prefer drumsticks or another larger cut, you will need to cook the chook for slightly longer.

Sweet Ass Slow Cooked Meaty Stuff

Americans. It's either super-fast, like a shitty burger from a drive-thru (or a gun that can rip out 1200 rounds per second) or it's super-slow, like the intelligence of whoever runs the NRA (or delicious meats of the slow-cooked variety). And when it comes to guns and meat, they seem to love both with a zeal that would suggest they could do a Gun buy-back scheme if they offered slow-cooked BBQ ribs or perhaps pulled pork. IDEAS, they're free.

The other week I was in Coles Broadmeadows (Broady) and I saw one of those boxed dinner sets in the meat dept that includes almost a Kilogram of pork shoulder and a sachet of spiced BBQ sauce on special ($9 down from $12) as it had an expiry date of the next day (who would have guessed that in Broady, which is heavily populated by Muslims, pork wouldn't be a big seller?). So I rolled the dice and bought it, cooked it as suggested on the box and five hours later had one of the most delicious things I have ever cooked. Praise Allah. It was tender, it was moist, it was sweet and bbqy and there was too much of it. ALL GOOD THINGS. The next day I made a pizza with the leftover meat HOLY PORK BALLS it was brilliant.

Pulled Pork. CHORTLE.
But seriously, when I finally go on a murderous rampage,
I want this as my last meal before I am put to death

So since then, I have been buying a variety of different meats and trying a few different things. Unfortunately, I forgot that I also write a food blog, so I haven't been documenting any of this. What an total fucking IDIOT.

THEN, the other night when I was stumbling around Safeway Brunswick with $12 left in my bank account looking for the cheapest things ever when I noticed a cheap little semi-offcut product called "Lamb Ribs". They were also on sale, down from $2.07 to $1.89. I grabbed two packs of these and also a bottle of this fantastic stuff called "BBQ Rib Sauce" by Three Threes (also on sale at $1.84). I repeated the recipe with the lamb and cooked them for 3 hours this time (they were a lot smaller than the pork shoulder and with the bones in, cooked quicker), turning them twice at regular intervals and re-saucing. UH-MAZING. The bones literally fell clean out of the meat. Massively recommend.

Three Threes brand did not pay me to promote their product, but they can if they want. I'll accept more of their awesome sauce. btw, this is the only context I will accept the term "awesome sauce" without going into a murderous rampage.

THEN I found some very cheap Pork Ribs ($5.63) and repeated the process as I think I am addicted to meaty, BBQy, heroiny awesomness. Check this shit out. So easy.

Do this.
Pre-heat your oven to just 150C.
Put your chosen meat on a tray.
Spread your chosen sauce all over it, but dont use all the sauce as you will need some for re-saucing as it cooks.
Chuck it in the oven.
Go watch one of those movies on your hard-drive that you've been meaning to get around to, (I recommend Cowboys & Aliens), make sweet sweet love to your life-partner, wash the sheets and voila its time to turn the meat over and re-sauce (that's what she said).
With some of the Chosen Meats, cooking time will vary because of the thickness of it, the bones in it, the quality of your oven and other contributing factors, so keep an eye on it as it may cook quicker than it takes to make sweet sweet love to your chosen life-partner, especially if you're into that tantric lovin'. I'm not, I tend to be a 6-7 minute kind of guy but that's not important right now, so forget I said anything about it. Certainly don't go telling all your buddies about it at the urinal or wherever men tell each other stuff. Please, it would ruin my otherwise impeccable sexual reputation. Oh, wait, actually, I don't care if you tell dudes. Just keep it a secret from the ladies.

Here is another pic of the ribs, after I cut them up. HOLY FUCK THEY WERE SO GREAT, I don't even mind that this picture ruins the formatting. THAT SHOULD GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW GREAT

Recipes on the back of packets #1

Next time you go to the supermarket to do a bit of shopping, have a look at the back of every packet you are buying. A lot of ingredients packets have recipes on them. Does anybody use these recipes? Are the recipes actually any good? I have a bit of a theory that they probably aren't very good at all. So I'm going to test a few as I come across them to see if they're any good.

#1. Choc Chip Cookies from the back of the Nestle Choc Bits Packet.
225g butter, softened
1/2 cup of castor sugar
1/4 cup Sweetened Condensed Milk (I used the Nestle 99% Fat-Free version)
2 cups Plain Flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup Choc Bits (I used Milk but Dark would be great)

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.
Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk. Cream until the mixture is light and fluffy. (Use your Mixmaster)
Sift the flour and baking powder together and then add to the mixture, beating it together slowly. Add the choc chips (and extras if you are adding any)
The mixture will come together like a soft, buttery pastry with choc chips in it. Because that's what it is.
Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a ping-pong ball and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper or tin-foil. Flatten them a little. Leave space between each cookie as they will flatten out.

The recipe says to bake them for 15 minutes in 190C. I found this to be too long for too high. I cooked them  at 150C and set the timer for 15 mins but I kept a close eye on them. When the bases were brown, I took them out of the oven. (My oven is slightly dodgy)

RESULT: Very good! But I would recommend trying some variations in this recipe as the choc chips alone aren't that exciting. I added mini-marshmallows but some salty caramel or fudge would be great too. These cookies are as good as or better than those ones from Subway.

There is also something odd about the choc-chips. On the front of the packet there is a "benefit" that claims that the choc chips hold their shape when baked. Does that seem odd to you? I'm pretty sure I would prefer chocolate that melts when it's baked.

TIP! Salted caramel is and will always be awesome. If you don't like it, feel free to not tell me about it.

NOTE! None of the companies mentioned in this recipe have paid me, asked me to mention them or try this.

Bloody Manly egg and bacon pie

I don't know why, but somewhere along the timeline of stupid man-stuff, "quiche" got a bad name. But the joke is that if you call it "Egg & Bacon Pie" it makes it ok. Maybe it's that the word "quiche" sounds a little poncy? Maybe some dumb-arse was emasculated by the fact that he couldn't spell it? Whatever the deal is, I'm over it. It's stupid and we've moved on since the 70's, so catch the fuck up.

I love quiche. Its EASY. Its about the easiest thing you can make, give or take a cheese toastie. And I will get to cheese toasties eventually too, as I have some brilliant variations that would hair on an alopecia sufferer's chest, which is something that science should look into.

Quiche is a brilliant way to use left-over stuff in your food storage areas. You can go with tradition if you want and just make it egg and bacon and cheese. Or you can use up the rest of the good stuff you don't want to waste and make it a "gourmet" mess, which can hardly ever go wrong, sort of.

Any recipe book worth a pinch of salt will have a basic quiche recipe in it which is basically a blank recipe that you can feel free to add your leftovers to. So here is a very, very basic quiche "blank" to start with and then you can go to town with whatever muck in your fridge is a couple of days past its use-by.

Blank Quiche
4 Eggs
1 cup of milk (warmed)
Pepper
Enough pastry to cover the base of a quiche dish (frozen shortcrust is awesome, puff will work too)
Grated cheese

Whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk and two or three grinds of pepper.

Line a fairly shallow dish with the pastry.

Now find some stuff to ensure your quiche is more than just cooked egg pie. For mine, I pan-fried some small cubes of pumpkin, then I did the same with some onion and bacon. Chuck it on top of the pastry in the dish and spread it about evenly. I added some spring onions at this point and then I poured the egg mix evenly over the lot. Then I quartered up some cherry tomatoes and spread them over the top. Then spread
some grated cheese over the top and chuck it into a preheated oven at 200C for about 15 minutes.

Remember that a quiche is basically open to putting whatever you want in it. It's receptive, so try a bunch of stuff. Mushroom is good. Roast chicken wins. Bacon rocks. Sweetcorn is awesome. Capsicum, yes. Potato, probably not. A cheeseburger, don't.

TIP: Spring onion makes any quiche more awesome, especially if you use a lot of cheese and don't have much else.