Piss Easy Beery Stovies

As submitted by MooCow_Byter

This is a bastardised version of the traditional Scottish meal, and is lovely and filling with a smooth, rich gravy. Good for cold nights or comfort food.

Don't worry too much about the exact quantities of ingredients. The ones given will serve several people, depending on how greedy they are, but you can easily scale up or down.

You will need:
4-6 Potatoes. The big, floury, baking kind.
Minced Beef. 800g is good.
An onion, or two if you want.
Oil, butter or fat.
A can of beer. Lager gives best results.
2 stock cubes. I prefer chicken, but beef or vegetable are fine, too.
Seasoning - pepper, chopped parsley, herbs, whatever you have.
A big pan with a lid.
Optional: button mushrooms. I like them, but they aren't essential.

How to do it:
Heat the oil in the pan and add the chopped onion. Cook it until it's soft, but not brown. In the meantime peel the potatoes and slice them thinly. You might want to chop them in half first if they're especially big. Put them in with the onions and stir so that everything is covered in oil. If you're using mushrooms, chop them up and add them now, too.

Put the lid on the pan and leave it on a low heat for ten minutes or so. Then add the beer, and crumble in the stock cubes. Now cover the pan and cook on the lowest heat you can.

Once the potatoes are cooked (probably about half an hour, check back and stir from time to time), add the mince and mix it all up. Season to taste, and turn up the heat a bit so that you have a slow simmer. Leave the whole thing for at least 45 minutes, although anything up to a couple of hours is fine.

You can serve with bread or oatcakes if you like, but it's fine by itself, too.

Mashed Up Chicken Pie

As submitted by Hooker1UK

Mashed Up Chicken Pie
(bit like shepards pie but i like it)

What you need: -

4 chicken breasts
Posh chicken gravy,
Potatoes
Butter
Milk
Salt and pepper

Large casserole dish

Chop the potatoes, and boil them until ready to mash. Whilst they're cooking chop the chicken into chunks and fry it off until cooked through and nicely browned. 

Once potatoes are ready, mash them carefully to ensure there are no lumps (this is important) adding, milk, butter and tiny amonuts of salt/pepper

Make posh gravy up, make sure it's not too watery it needs to be a bit stodgy

Place cooked chicken and stodgy gravy into casserole dish.

Place mash on top of gravy and chicken

Slap in the oven for about 20 mins until mash has crisped up on top

(Don't forget to make some veg up to go with it or it looks pure boring)

Cabbage Rolls

As submitted by Mongychops

(Editors Note - My favourite Londoner visited Sir Pigeon Nipples in Australia a few month ago. He came back full of Guinness and a love of all things Oz-like, but most of all, he was impressed by Sir Pigeon Nipples' wife's cooking. He sent me this recipe for the blog. It's origins are Polish, but it reminds me a little bit of Greek Dolmades.)

Cabbage Rolls

INGREDIENTS (t=teaspoon, T=Tablespoon, C=Cup)

1 medium cabbage

1/4C rice
1C water
1C milk
1/4 - 1/2lb minced steak (lean beef mince)
1/4lb minced pork
1/3C milk or cream
1&1/2t salt
1/4t white pepper
1 egg (optional)

2T butter for frying
1T brown sugar
2C beef stock

pan juice for gravy
1&1/2T plain flour
1/2C cream
salt, pepper, seasonings

Use a large boiler/saucepan fill with water and bring to the boil.

Cut a 'V' out of the base of the leaves, where the stem is at its thickest, in order to cut the stem out.

Boil and blanch a couple of cabbage leaves at a time (until they go bright green). Remove and place on a clean tea towel, or paper towel.

Rinse rice in water, then cook in boiling water (1C of water), until the water disappears.

Add the milk (1C), cook slowly until the rice is tender, then cool.

Add to mince, egg, seasonings.

Get a cabbage leaf and place approx 2t of meat mixture (depending on leaf size), and place near the base of the leaf. Fold 1 side of the leaf in, over the meat, then roll up roll from the bottom once. Next fold over the other side of the leaf, and finish rolling up the cabbage roll. Fasten the roll with 1 or more toothpicks. Repeat as many times as required.

Heat butter in fry pan (preferably an electric fry pan).

Brown rolls on all sides.

Sprinkle with brown sugar.
Pour stock over rolls.
Cook slowly until tender, basting occasionally (for about an hour).

Combine the cream and flour, and add to the pan juice.

Stir until boiling, then reduce temperature and then simmer for approx 5 mins.

Serve on a bed of rice with the gravy poured over the top and a dollop of sour cream on the side, or in the center.

Finally make sure you cook it with love.

Spangolin's Famous And Lovely Cottage Pie.

Spangolin's Famous And Lovely Cottage Pie.

This is my favourite. Will serve 3 easily.

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes
butter
A bit of milk
Maybe some cheese for sprinkling
500g minced beef
A carrot
Some frozen peas (about a handful)
Red oxo cube
Lea & Perrins sauce
Brown rice miso, if you have some (not completely necessary, but nice)

Method:

First, peel all your potatoes, cut into quarters, and place in half-full saucepan of water. Bring to the boil, put on a relatively high heat, cover and vent, and leave for about 20 mins or until the potatoes are soft enough to slide off a fork if poked.

Drain, put lid back on and set aside.

Chop up carrots, put in saucepan with mince. Brown all the mince, mix it up and stuff. Try not to let it stick to the bottom of the pan. When it's all brown, add your crumbled oxo cube. If you have miso, add a spoon of it to about a pint of boiling water, then pour most of it in. If not, just add about half a pint of water to the mice now.

Splash some lea and perrins in. Don't drown the mince, just enough liquid to nearly cover. Add your peas now. Turn heat down, cover and leave to simmer for 5 mins.

Now turn oven on to about 200 degrees or whatever that is for gas. While it warms, mash up potatoes with lots of butter and maybe a tiny bit of milk.

When mince is done, put mince in the bottom of a pyrex casserole dish or something similar. Use a fork to spread the mashed potato over the top, filling in all holes. Eat some mashed potato now - cook's privilege. Sprinkle lots of cheese on top if you like.

Put in oven for half an hour to brown the top. Make sure dish is sitting on a tray or something - it will bubble over.

Manwhile, make some beans, or veg if you are feeling healthy. Ta-da!

Captn Hood-Butter’s Onion And/Or Egg Fried Fluffy Fucking Rice

Captn Hood-Butter’s Onion And/Or Egg Fried Fluffy Fucking Rice

For this use Basmatti rice. Nothing else will do. NOTHING.
Bring to the boil some water and add half the desired quantity of rice. Make sure there is loads of water and it don’t boil away. When the rice has embiggified and is cooked, pour the contents of the pan into a metal sieve and immediately pour a kettle of boiling water over the rice, shake all the water out and place in a bowl.
Now do the same thing again only this time add a teaspoon of turmeric to the water. When done add this rice to the other rice. You end up with white and yellow rice and it looks the bollocks.

Now get out your wok and fry some onions until well brown - almost burnt if you like. If you like egg rice, then fry some eggs into the onions and keep stirring with a wooden spoon until the egg is all broken up. Add the rice, mix together and serve. Hey Presto - Fluffy fucking rice.

Captn Hood-Butter’s Sweary Potatoes.

Potato Potato, Fucking Potato.

Get some nice big potatoes and bake in their jackets. A good way to do this is wrap them in a bit of kitchen roll and microwave them for 10 mins. Then put them in a preheated 180°-190° oven. When done cut the fuckers in half and scoop out all the flesh and put into a bowl with butter and cream. Mash together and put back into the potato skins. Pop them back into the oven for a few minutes until browned a bit. If you like, you can put a bit of cheese on them first.

Now as an alternative, why not just serve up the potato as mash. Then you can use the skins to make...

Cocking Nyommy Potato Skins.

Make up this into a paste:

In a food processor put some cubes of cheese, some red onion, a squirt of tomato puree, an egg yolk, some chilli flakes, a pinch or two of sugar and if you have it a little left over gravy. Yes, fucking gravy. Whizz into a paste and spread over the, now quartered, potato skins. Stick them in a hot oven (180°) until they are browned off. These are cocking ace.