I have invented a wonderful new recipe! Hairy Nut Scratchings! Here is a guide to making this marvellous convenient and nutritious meal!

First, get some top quality Pork Scratchings and some delicious nuts.

As you can see, the Pork Scratching is a hairy beast.

Add the Pork Scratchings and the nuts to the bowl!

Marvel at the Hairy Nut Scratchings! Desire them! They are a thing of terrible beauty!

They look so good!

Marvel at their hairy nutty glory! Hairy Nut Scratchings are truly the food of kings!

NOW YOU MAY DEVOUR THEM!

I had a great culinary triumph yesterday. I cooked borscht and home-made cheesy bread. It was a truly wonderful meal. Here's how to do it.

For the borscht:

Fry up half a bulb of garlic, a pack of bacon bits and a couple of onions, add a leek, some tomatoes, 3 big beetroots, half a red cabbage, a handful of black olives and some beef stock. Shove in a load of boiling water to soup it up. Cook for a couple of hours Serve with a swirl of cream. Absolutely DELICIOUS!

For the cheesy bread:

Mix 400g strong white bread flour, a teaspoon each of yeast and salt, 150g or so of cheddar, cut into cubes, and 300ml of warm water.

Mix the dough, leave for 10 mins in the bowl covered with a cloth.

Lightly oil the worktop and your hands, knead a bit (not much, less than a minute) and put back in the bowl. Leave it 10 mins, knead it again for a bit, leave it 10 mins and knead it again.

Leave it 45 mins and flour the worktop. Pat the dough flat and roll up, shove on a floured try, seam down. Leave another 45 mins, flour the top, cut a slice in it.

Shove a tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven, at 220 degrees or so (dead hot anyway)

Whack the bread in the oven, take it out after 45 minutes and BINGO YOU HAVE GOT CHEESY BREAD AH YEAH!

Slice and butter, serve with your delicious borscht! You have THE BEST MEAL IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD!

There are no photos of either the borscht or the cheesy bread, as it was all ravenously devoured before I got the chance to snap it. Sorry about that. I looked as good as it tasted though!

We have got a slap chop in the office! Inspired by this amazing video by DJ Steve Porter. Hooray! I wanted to create a proper meal I could prepare at work, where there is no cooker, using the slap chop. Here is my solution - Slap Chop Steak Veitchois!

 

 

Ingredients: sirloin steak, 2 spring onions, half a lemon, a hot chilli pepper, Thai fish sauce and a slap chop.

 

 

A whole sirloin steak proved to be too ambitious for the slap chop. I really put some welly into this, but it was not going to work. It was a bit of an ask fot the slap chop anyway - clearly more than it was designed for.

 

 

No, this clearly isn't working.

 

 

I resorted to cutting off a bit of the steak to try slap chopping it in segments. This seemed fairer to the slap chop.

 

 

I'm really giving it some here.

 

 

It has certainly slapped, but does not appear to have chopped particularly.

 

 

I resorted to dicing the steak with a knife and then slap chopping it.

 

 

Slap chopping was not doing the job so I stamped on that sonofabitch.

 

 

Here's the slap chopped steak. Actually it's diced with a knife and then stamped with the slap chop - it hasn't chopped the meat at all, but to be fair it has mangled it, achieving something similar to tenderising with a spiky tenderising mallet. Not a complete waste of time then, but also not a very efficient tenderiser.

 

 

OK, this is the spring onion and dried chilli pepper- easy prey for the mighty slap chop! Time for it to show that it is actually capable of doing its job.

 

 

No, it can't even chop spring onions. Just mangle them. What a piece of crap.

 

 

The juice of half a lemon goes in with the steak, spring onions and dried chilli.

 

 

The Thai fish sauce goes in. Vital for flavour, it is a brilliant brilliant thing.

 

 

The finished article! See how the lemon juice has sort of "cooked" the steak. This is proper food! AH YEAH! Slap Chop Steak Veitchois for the win!

 

 

Ed tries a mouthful of Slap Chop Steak Veitchois. He's frankly dubious.

 

 

Ed says "it's surprisingly not bad" - Ed is very diplomatic. I think he was actually horrified by the whole experience.

OOH YEAH THAT IS THE GOOD STUFF! OOH BABY THAT IS GOOD!

It's pay-off time - I get to gorge on Slap Chop Steak Veitchois! And BOY is it tasty!

 

 

Steak Veitchois verdict is excellent! Absolutely brilliant food!

The verdict on the slap chop however is less good. It is a completely useless piece of crap.

I had a wonderful dream! A dream of a cocktail of meat! Specifically, a full English fried breakfast served in a cocktail glass made of bacon. Once in every lifetime true revelation strikes a man, and this was my moment of total clarity! This was my chance to make a mark on history! To ACHIEVE A KIND OF IMMORTALITY THROUGH BACON! Clearly, I had to follow my dream and make this thing of great glory. Ed came over and we set to work.

I started out using a bowl as a mould for the glass. I coated it in streaky bacon.

 

The bowl coated in streaky bacon. This was looking good.

We tried a couple of different approaches. This is a mug lined internally with back bacon, the idea being to make a smaller bacon cup.

 

Here Ed is demonstrating the internal cup bacon lining approach. I can't help feeling there's something vaguely obscene about this photo.

We did another bowl lined in back bacon to compare structural properties with streaky. Here Ed is trying it out as an unorthodox cap.

The stem for the cocktail glass was prepared by wrapping a core of streaky bacon in a coil around a skewer. This was then jacketed with an outer layer of back bacon.

We also tried an external casing of streaky bacon around a mug - we anticipated problems with this design due to the gap where the handle is. We thought we'd try it anyway in the interests of science.

Here I am displaying the external streaky bacon mug coating.

All the bacon bowls and cups ready to go into the oven.

Any cocktail needs ice cubes. For the meatini they are made of haslet - a kind of pork meatloaf made largely from entrails.

Into the oven with the bacony stuff! We'll give it about an hour.

A cocktail needs a slice over the edge of the glass, and an umbrella. The meatini's umbrella will be a mushroom. The slice will be black pudding - a sausage made from pig's blood, fat and pearl barley.

External bacon mug disaster! This has clearly not even slightly worked. Hey-ho.

This is more like it! The bowls have both worked lovely. The back bacon bowl is better, but the streaky bacon bowl is still pretty good.

The back bacon bowl is a thing of beauty!

The internal bacon mug has also worked! Hooray!

 

The Meatini starts to take shape! Hoorah! A base of haslet, then the stem of bacon. A second wedge of haslet on top to provide a wider base for the cup. A wooden skewer runs down it to keep it all firmly in place.

First in are the haslet "ice cubes"

Next in goes scrambled egg.

The black pudding slice goes over the edge of the glass.

 

HOORAYS! Here is the Meatini in its full glory! Complete with mushroom umbrella, sausage swizzle stick and cherry tomato cherry! It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!

 

Here I am, sipping my glorious Meatini! This is the greatest triumph of my entire life!

I immediately reclined in the garden with Zak., to sip daintily on my delicious Meatini! How very very civilised!

Here I am, chilling out, Meatini in hand.

The internal mug bacon cup was perfect for a lady-sized Minimeatini. Jacqui was very taken with it.

 

Jacqui was not allowed to eat her own Meatini however- little Bliss may be small but she knows what she wants! And she LOVES THAT MEATINI! You go girl!

 

This is an absolutely normal afternoon at the Veitch household. Nothing unusual here at all. Just chilling with some Meatinis.

 

I LOVE THAT MEATINI! OH YEAH! IT IS SO GOOD!

VERDICT: SUCCESS! THE MEATINI IS LITERALLY THE BEST THING EVER INVENTED IN THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING EVER!