“Fancy a quick one?” There was a time when one could ask that without drawing the ire and raising the hackles of half the planet. It’s an innocent question. If it has been misinterpreted in your cesspit of a mind, that really is your problem, not mine. I’m talking about a Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry. It’s really easy (You could misinterpret that too.) and quick. Try giving it a lash.
“What on earth is Lardo?”, I hear you ask. Only because I was in the “What is Lardo?” camp myself until my friend Katia brought me a piece back from a trip to Rome. Lardo is the cured back-fat of a pig. This may cause some of you to recoil in horror. Get over yourselves if you do. If you use butter, oil or margarine, you are using fat in your cooking. Lardo is fat. Lardo is not the sort of thing you should eat by the block. But, Lardo is a true delight when used correctly.
f yu cn red ths yu ar prbbly a hily ntlegnt an goo lookn prson. N fct, yu ar undutbly to intlgnt fo ths rcpie. F yu cnt ndrstnd ths, thn ths s te rcpie fr yu. It a pty yu ar s tick s a brck. Bt, te rcpie wil mak yu lok smartr an wil dligt yur frnds an fmly.
“I can’t believe he said that!” But, I did. I said it and I intended to. I know you are a sensitive soul and are easily offended. But, I just had to say it. I said it so you would recognise yourself and say “Yes, perhaps I am a ‘lazy B’. That’s why I don’t cook any of Conor’s lovely recipes. I like to look at the nice pictures and imagine how the food must taste. That’s satisfaction enough for me.” If you do, then this is a dish for you. I’ve even named it for you “Lazy Bastards’ Ginger Chicken“. It is simplicity itself to prepare and is a total delight. Who knows, it might make a cook out of you too.
Some people believe that if you concentrate hard enough, you can make things levitate. That is, you can raise them up in defiance of the laws of gravity. These people are deluding themselves. Like so many self delusionals, they passionately believe the nonsense they spout
A good friend in the food industry left me thinking when he described lemon chicken as being “very nice, but it doesn’t taste of lemon”. The irony of the statement was not lost on me. So I set about getting some lemon chicken cooked. This
Holy Lord! It’s cold around here. Temperatures had dropped below freezing and I had got myself into a real deep winter gloom. This was driven by a number of factors. Firstly, it’s winter. Secondly, we seem to be living in very pessimistic times. Thirdly, the media have been whipping up a storm about the cold weather. One newspaper here in Ireland was telling us to expect “Thundersnow”. They also reported on roads grinding to a halt and flights being cancelled. Thankfully, I’m not completely gullible to this shock tactic journalism. I read elsewhere that “Thundersnow” is not a meteorological term. I also found out that the only flights that were cancelled from Dublin were because of snow in London. Pathetic standards. But the sort of journalism we must expect in a clickbait, post truth world. Now, back to the chicken…
I’ve been reading up about click baiting. Facebook are having another go at putting the kibosh on the practice. I have some issues with the approach. I understand that they will not allow headlines that don’t directly relate to the content following. I do accept that there is a need to prevent the “Ten things that rich people do that you don’t.” and “At last, a simple cure for your flatulence.” headlines. But, this line of reasoning will, ultimately, lead to writing with no creative content. Where the headline needs to relate directly to the following content and subject needs to be SEOed into the text, the ability to write around a subject, as I am doing now, becomes very difficult.
The Americans are gas. They have the biggest democracy on the planet and they end up with the Donald as one of the two contenders for the most powerful position known to man (or to woman, if Hillary gets the gig). ‘The Donald’ has tried to attract specific groups by playing to their fears. This will prove to be a mistake. If I were to take a similar approach, we would build a wall in the Irish sea and I would call out some lovely Irish blogs (like Donna Hennessy’s A Cookbook Collection or Katia Valadeau’s Proper Food and say that you shouldn’t vote for them because they are run by women. Worse than that, Hennessy is the name of a drink and that Valadeau one is not even Irish. How can we let these people into an awards competition, let alone into the country? But, I’m not ‘The Donald’. Have a look at their blogs (if you must) and then vote for whoever you think is worthy.
When it comes to cooking chicken on the barbecue, low and slow is the way to go. Here in Ireland, we tend to only have a decent spell of what any reasonable person might call summer every four years or so. When a period of sunshine arrives, we tend to go a bit crazy. Sallow fleshed white men don ‘summer’ shorts (and little else), repair to the garden and swill vast quantities of cheap lager. They then do the only bit of ‘cooking’ they are capable of handling – the botulism fest known as the ‘barbecue’.
