Porterhouse Steak and a MacBook Pro

There was one steak I hadn’t tried. The Porterhouse.

Homemade McDonald’s Hash Browns (Kind of)

Making homemade versions of ‘fast’, or ‘junk’, food (which term you use depends largely upon your personal viewpoint – but I suspect those who use the word ‘junk’ protest too much; they decry a big fat burger as the food of the devil when actually they secretly yearn to slaver over a large piece of meat stuck between two buns). I digress.

And so I will start again. Making homemade versions of ‘fast’, or ‘junk’, food is something of a hobby for me. An infrequent hobby, but a hobby none-the-less. I’ve made sweet and sour pork balls, fish and chips, Wendy Burgers, Chinese Chicken Curry, pizza (of course).

Of all these the Chinese Chicken Curry was the best – it actually was just like you’d get from a Chinese Take-away.

Anyway I thought I would play safe for my next fast food recreation and try recreating McDonald’s Hash Browns.

Not a McDonald’s Hash Brown…

Gnocchi – more trouble than it’s worth

As regular readers of this increasingly irregular blog might be aware, one of the vague (and I do mean vague) drivers of the content (sorry I am getting my business-speak mixed up with my normal-speak) is that the creations that are blogged should be original, if possible.

That is to say, I try not to post one-hundred ways to cook a steak (which BTW I fail at miserably – how many times have I cooked and photographed a half-cooked fillet steak…more times than grandma. Which was none, she didn’t have a camera).

Thus I am always on the lookout for something new and different. The internet is generally rubbish for new and different recipes – many of the food related sites you can find never really get updated, often regurgitating the same thing over again (BBC Good Food – you know who you are). In fact blogs are about the best source of food innovation and inspiration, but who wants to copy another blogger unless it’s absolutely essential (reference my Angry Bird’s Cake).

So when the wife (always the wife) suggested gnocchi, I jumped, nay limped, at the chance.

Thai Fishcakes with Cucumber and Carrot Salad

You know that thing where you cook something with the intention of blogging it, forget about it, go back to it and than can’t remember what the ingredients were? No? Well you’re a better blogger than I.

I’ve got a big backlog of recipes stored up on the my old laptop. Some good, some not so good and some disasters. This one was good. I just can’t remember the exact ingredients.

I’ve made fishcakes before, ages ago. That time I tested homemade against shop-bought from the local Wing Yip. The Wing Yip version won hands down; the homemade ones were too dry; they were deep fried and I cooked them too long.

These ones are much better – shallow fried just long enough to brown them up a bit and then ten mins in the oven.

This creation began when the wife presented me with three items for a side dish she wanted me to make to go with the fishcakes, and I had to guess what she wanted me to make….