Rib of beef

Today marks National Two Different Coloured Shoes day and like every other person of sane mind, I'm celebrating it in the company of a small section of cow.

In actual fact, we cooked this at Easter but it's only now that I've found time to post about it. If you came here specifically for menu ideas for those times you've got one shoe completely wrong, I'm afraid you'll have to move along, there's nothing to see here.

Pork fillet

In the words of Rakim, it's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you.

The truth is, people tend to cook a few things over and over, hence the posts slowing down. Plus I've embraced my inner bear and taken up hibernation as a hobby. It's really working out to be honest, apart from the weight gain and astronaut level muscle strength.

In this controversial and wholly unexpected post, a middle aged bloke puts some meat in some water.

King prawns

My internet's rubbish, 3mb rubbish but there's never been any availability in the local cabinet to upgrade. Until recently. So I placed my order, waited for upgrade day and then lost the internet for 3 weeks. I apologise for the lack of updates.

On the other hand I've found my pasta machine which has meant fettucini for every meal since. Thinking of what to go with, prawns offered themselves as an option so with a hungry girlfriend and a song in my heart, off we went.

Top rump

Since the whole silverside thing happened, I decided to try another cheap beef joint to see how it went. All in all it went pretty well but due to the number of oil-rich bags I've just used, this post is unsuitable for Greenpeace supporters or as I call them, perverts.

Don't get me wrong, any sane and decent person wholeheartedly agrees with Greenpeace's principles and I stand shoulder to shoulder with every one of them. Then I see a dozen of them trespassing someone's ship and it makes me want to burn some tyres. Here's my advice to Greenpeace - engage, not enrage.

The reason I used so many bags was because the beef kept releasing juices which traveled up the bag under vacuum ruining the seal in the process. Next time I'll open the packaging and leave it to dry in the fridge for 24 hours giving me ample time to storm a BP fracking rig.

Tenderstem broccoli

I'm going for the shortest blog post ever. The entire post is going into the intro.

Sometimes in life it's nice when something's surprisingly hard. With tenderstem broccoli however, less so. Cooked the same way as asparagus at 85 degrees for 20 minutes it's annoyingly firm. Watch for an update soon.

Silverside

Us Brits are known for our roast beef. It's instinct borne of generation. Hunks of meat searing in a crackling hearth, dutifully turned on the spit while embers pop and crack in an otherwise lifeless space.

These days we stick it in a box of water replacing the fire risk with botulism and call it progress.

Duck breast

We love duck, so much so that we had a whole one a few Christmases ago. Not between the two of us, I'm talking one each. One duck, one potato, one sprout, some gravy. You'll need to buy bigger plates for that event. We've been doing confit duck legs the past couple of Christmases because every holiday deserves so much salt it takes your mind off the fat. In this episode, we tried breasts and it was a rip-roaring success.