Pizza, pesto and ciao to 2013!

I was ACTUALLY playing (read: losing) Scrabble when this was taken aka it wasn't set up for kitsch blogger photos

As I touched on in my last post, 2013 has been good to me. I feel more settled now than I ever have done as an adult and during a walk to Lidl to buy some yeast and strong bread flour for this recipe, I had a good think about why.

I think happiness has a lot to do with what age you feel. I never enjoyed the “young person” thing and up until now, being an adult has been the shittiest crawl through a sewer I have ever experienced. A lot of this has been down to me and how I have approached my life – laziness, being a coward, selfishness and self-pity – but some of it has been down to the STUPID things we are expected to do in this ridiculous, horrible young adult path that is meant to be enjoyable.

Between the ages of 18 and 24, I felt like I was forced to sit on a rollercoaster with a hangover every day. The idea that we are meant to enjoy going out in heels and small dresses and drinking stupid amounts of alcohol. The idea of meeting strangers in grotty, sweaty cavernous rooms with migraine-inducing music and GETTING ON WITH THEM when in reality, the majority of people I meet, I would be happy never to see again. The amount of times I have sat alone in a club, surrounded by hundreds of people but feeling as lonely as hell.

The shared living and the poverty-with-iPhones BECAUSE WE SPENT ALL OUR MONEY ON BOOZE BUT OMG WHY ARE WE SO POOR, the confusion of wrong relationships and strained friendships. The stupid pseudo-intellectual-babble debates that we have again and again and again. Religion, politics, current affairs, charity, war, poverty, the press. All these fucking ISSUES that we argue about like a bunch of car tyres stuck in the mud…as if our arrogant opinions expressed loudly in a middle class hippy pub are suddenly going to change everything. As if we are going to go out into the night half-sloshed and build some new affordable housing.

This is what my brain was like from about 2006 – 2012. Six years of anxiety-ridden hell.

But this year, I changed. I think that I have finally become the age and the person that I was so desperately frustrated to be. It’s in no small part thanks to some kind-hearted, beautiful friends I found again. It’s not that these people have DONE anything exactly. More that…everything just feels right and because it all feels so right, I feel right too and I want to do right.

And that feeling is so refreshing, so carefree and so precious that I want to breathe it forever and ever.

In reality, there are still loads of things I will do wrong and even if I don’t, most people fuck up this Zen-thing by having children and replacing all the contentment with perpetual anxiety, guilt and tiredness. So yeah, things will probably go wrong again and I don’t expect to live in this dream-state forever (just in case people think I am boasting or naïve, I’m not, I’m not!)

Anyway, I’ll be quiet about everything that might go wrong in the future because seize the day and all that shit.

Another thing that makes me super, super happy is pizza. The closest I have ever come to making a pizza is grating extra cheese onto a gourmet Co-Op Margareta. So this is pretty big.

I got the recipe from Rose and the highlight, for me, is the pesto which is soo tasty and so satisfying to blitz up.

 Start by making your dough. This recipe will make enough for 4 medium, super thin pizzas.

500g strong white flour (and a bit extra for kneading)

1 tbsp salt

A 7g sachet of dried yeast

A sprinkle of caster sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

330ml tepid water (or the same amount of grams if you’re weighing it all)

Put the flour and salt in a bowl. In a separate jug, mix up the rest of the ingredients and leave for one minute. Whilst you’re waiting, pre-heat your oven to a tiny temperature (like 100c for about 3 minutes or some shit…unless you have the heating on or it is summer – in which case, don’t worry about this step).

Pour the wet stuff into a little well in the middle of the dry stuff. Use a metal spoon to gently incorporate the whole lot together. Persevere: I thought that I had used way too much flour but after a few minutes, it all comes together to make a sticky dough.

By now, you can turn your oven off if you decided to put it on.

Flour a work surface and tip your dough out. It’s time to knead! I have always failed at this – never, ever have I had dough DOUBLE in size – the thought was laughable. But this time, I had a nice warm area (the pre-heated oven) and I kneaded my ass off.

Spend about 5-6 minutes or maybe even 7-8, pulling the dough, like stretching it and then putting it back together. Also knead it in a massage-y way. Basically, just keep that shit moving until it’s smooth and slightly less sticky. You can use quite a bit of flour without it being a disaster.

Now, lightly flour a bowl and put your dough in it. Sprinkle with a little more flour and cover with a damp tea towel. Put it in your nice warm oven and shut the door. Seriously, the oven needs to be warm…and no more than warm….for this to work.

Leave for an hour. While you wait for the magic to happen (seriously, it’s actually magic!), get making your pesto. It doesn’t take THAT long to whip up and it is amazingly tasty – properly beautiful.

A basil plant (99p from Lidl)

50g raw pine nuts

88g grated parmesan (the stuff I had was veggie friendly so any kinda hard cheese will do)

2 cloves of garlic

110g or ml of olive oil (seems a lot but this makes quite a lot of pesto)

A large pinch of salt

Tear off all the leaves from the basil plant and chuck them in a blender (or a bowl if you’re using a hand blender). It’s fine if a few stems go in there too. Add all the other stuff – whizz – hey presto! Store it in the fridge, perhaps in a little jar.

 Tick tock, tick tock.

Okay, after an hour, take your dough out. I really am still in shock that this stuff doubled in size. Break the dough into half and half again. I made two pizzas so am storing half of the dough in the fridge for later this week (it’ll be fine for up to a week).

Put two (or how ever many pizzas you are making) baking trays into your oven, upside down. Now, pre-heat that oven again. 200 fan, 220 no fan.

Roll out your pizzas. I used a wine bottle (thoroughly washed, label scoured off) as I don’t own a rolling pin. Worked FINE. Make it super-duper thin – like if I was a person and I had gone through a breakup and lost LOADS of weight from never eating because every time I ate something, I cried NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE – that thin. Put each pizza base onto a sheet of tin foil.

 Now, OMG, there is so much to do. Top your pizza.

A box of passata

Dried oregano

Mozzarella

Whatever else you like – sundried tomatoes, artichokes etc. etc.

Pour on a bit of passata and spread it around with a spoon. Sprinkle the oregano over your base and swirl on some of the pesto. Top with a few slices of mozzarella.

Take an upside-down baking tray out of the oven and sliiiiide the tin foil onto it. Place in the over. Repeat for additional pizzas. I waited about 10-12 minutes and although the cheese was bubbling, the middle was still quite doughy. I guess just wait until the middle looks firm. I wouldn’t have thought it would be more than 15 minutes.

 Serve with sweet potato chips, a crème fraiche dip and a leafy salad.

Satisfying, healthy and messy. MY FAVOURITE.

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East & West - Review

Oh, well. And if this ISN'T a Christmas miracle then I don't know what is. I found this old review in my drafts and while some of you may have read it before, some of you definitely won't have! Wow, oh wow.

Anyway, this was the last review I ever did as the official Food Reviewer for this lil newspaper. The end came thanks to what SOME people would regard as "a series of fuck ups". Actually, these fuck ups have ended up making 2013 one of the most fulfilling and fantastic years I've had as an adult on this planet.

So, RIP food column but hello to becoming a better, happier human.

Love and best wishes from the meanest muncher in town xxx

SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT

​Food Review: East & West

Address: 227 Abbeydale Road, Sheffield S7 1FJ



Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

​

Nothing is new; it’s all been done before. The Rolling Stones were the best rock ‘n’ roll band, the 1920s/50s/60s had the best fashion and Nokia phones are basically as good as technology is ever going to get. Sadly, the same can be said for the world of food: an Indian restaurant usually means a pickle tray to start, some curry and a side; an Italian means a thin-crust pizza or lasagne and a Chinese means chicken coloured in with a luminous orange highlighter.


So, when you come across something a bit different, something that you don’t quite understand, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. East and West is a tiny, inconspicuous South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant squeezed onto Abbeydale Road and is exactly that: a cuisine that until now, I was virtually unaware of.

The neon sign à la ‘local takeaway’, the no-frills interior spotted with wonky tables, the toilet located outside, down an alleyway, and the metal school-dinner trays that each course is served upon might cause the typical restaurant-seeker to do a Dionne Warwick (walk on by, for the uncultured). However, if you’re feeling a little adventurous then East and West is just the ticket.

I still don’t fully understand the menu – what is a starter and what is a main? Do these things even exist? Why do we eat three times a day? I don’t know! Stop asking me questions! To ‘start’ I had the Chilli Paneer (£4.25), which was a total dream and highly, utterly recommended: chunky peppers, onions, and this un-meltable cheese all smothered in the greatest sharp, zingy sauce.

We then moved onto a Dosa, which is basically a large crepe, filled with whatever you like. It’s not quite a main and it’s not quite a starter – reflected in the price (£3.50 - £5.95) but it’s worth a try. We tried grated paneer and masala dosa, both of which were nice and tasty but could have done with a bit more filling to warrant the Sahara-esque expanse of pancake.

The brilliantly-titled Chicken Devilled (£5.50) for me, at least, conjures up terrific images of a world taken over by chickens, all led by a possessed rooster despot. Back in Sheffield though, this translates into chilli chicken and is a joy.

I must point out that East and West is no longer a BYOB establishment and they enforce this new licensing very strictly (a woman left the restaurant because she was not permitted to drink her bottle of red onsite). Alcohol is for sale though and the bottle of wine we shared did the job nicely, so much so that my recollection of how the food tasted from this point onwards is slightly hazy.

To finish, I ordered the Mixed Veg Uttappam (£4.95), which is described as a thick crepe. For me, it felt more like a solid omelette, full of chunky tomato slices and a few peppers but garnished superbly with herbs and a choice of three sauces to dip into.

The gratification of eating out and being able to pick something like an Uttappam, in complete ignorance, is something I miss. This new world of guessing and road-testing unfamiliar dishes and liking them or not liking them is something that we so rarely see now. This owes to the authenticity of the food at East and West, marking it on the map as a must for any food lover.

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Fusion Organic Café - Review

UNRELATED: missing my bro this Christmas (he is on an oil rig)

I wanted to do a post on ‘how to have a vegetarian Christmas’ (above) but I couldn’t be bothered to take any photos and my mum has done all the cooking which means it would be a bit of a cheat. Next year, huh?

Anyway, I wanted to bring to you a little story. When I was about 8 or 9, my parents took me to Spain for a summer holiday and it was the first trip on a plane I had ever had!

We flew with British Airways and apart from the whole getting a metal lump filled with people into the air and actually managing to steer it to a specific location, the most fascinating thing for me was the sick bag.

I wondered if I should start collecting them from all the different airlines. The one (overwhelming and ultimately fatal) worry I had was that most of my friends had already flown before. What was the point in collecting them when everyone else already had TEN sick bags? I was on the back foot and instead of fighting against adversity, I gave up.

Over the next few years, I had the good fortune to fly with Aeroflot (you shared a recycled one), Emirates (a 24-carat gold sack for one’s pukes), JAL (a cute Hello Kitty bag), American Airlines (supersize), Virgin (you puke into a sexy cabin crew member’s hand) and so on and so forth.

And each time I flew, I thought “you stupid, stupid idiot – why didn’t you start collecting them when you first thought about it” but NOW, I can’t start collecting them because I have missed all these opportunities already and so there is absolutely no point…even if I manage to fly on a million more airlines, there is still no point because I have missed all these opportunities.

And this is how I feel about Fusion Organic Café in Sheffield. It’s always a worry to review a restaurant when you have spoken at length about sick. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here so let me be explicit:

I ONLY WISH THAT I HAD TAKEN A PHOTOGRAPH OF EVERY SALAD I HAVE EVER EATEN THERE BECAUSE THEY VARY EVERYDAY, THEY ARE MORE INVENTIVE THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE AND THE PEOPLE THERE PRODUCE SIX SALADS EVERY DAY. I STOPPED TAKING PHOTOS BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED SO MANY AND NOW THE TASK FEELS OVERWHELMING. THE SALADS ARE DELICIOUS AND THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE LINKED TO SICK IS BECAUSE I SHOULD HAVE STARTED TAKING PHOTOS OF THEM WHEN I FIRST THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

And so, this is (to eliminate any remaining confusion) a positive review.

The salads cost £3.70. You get to choose 3/6 salads and when I say salad, I mean lentils and sweet potato and bulgur wheat and purple sprouting broccoli, olives, courgette ribbons, coconut rice….basically all the stuff that you can’t be arsed to cook! For all the veggies out there – this place is as good as it gets for a work lunch. It’s almost all veggie and loads of gluten-free, dairy-free stuff. OMG I can’t shut up about this place and OMG it does meat too for all you cute-baby-animal eaters (lol lol).

Oh and one final thing. The café is a training café linked to Freeman College so that young people with learning difficulties or behavioural problems can train and work in a great environment. The staff there – especially Moo, who is perhaps the most enthusiastic cashier I have ever met – are wonderful. It’s a great business and a producer of ultra-healthy food that we are lucky to have in Sheffield.

Butcher Works, 74 Arundel Street, Sheffield S1 2NS – I think they close at about 3pm and they are also shut in school holidays. Take out or eat in.

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An Italian dinner party in York

An amuse-bouche // hors d'œuvres (I can never remember the difference) of artichokes, peppers, these delicious cheesy bite things, olives and riiight over there in the distance, sundried tomatoes.

York has always been a weird one for me. I have tried to live there twice now but it just never works out. The first time round, I lived at the university, in accommodation that was so dilapidated and awful-looking that it was nicknamed “Cell Block C”. It has since been demolished and rebuilt.

Here is a quote from “Barny” on the Student Room forum: “Yep, theres (sic) no denying cell block c is a hell-hole, its (sic) called cell block for a reason. Was voted worst uni accommodation (sic) for 3 years in a row I think!?”

Anyway, that’s enough from you, Barny. I stayed there for 10 weeks and then decided mid-Christmas holiday that I was done. So my mum, brother and I drove furiously up to York and packed everything up into bin bags. Belongings included my duvet, which was covered in sick because I’d puked up a few days before we broke up for Christmas and hadn’t bothered to wash the sheets and a 4-way plug also covered in sick (in hindsight, a very vomity hazard). We drove home, relieved.

I think the problem with York is that it’s not a city. I mean, it IS a city but it shouldn’t be. The mentality of a lot of the people there is one of small-town. Why did the Vikings settle there? I have no idea; maybe they didn’t care about being cosmopolitan, decent nights out and having a cool youth culture. I mean, it can’t be a city just by virtue of having a Minster because Rotherham has a Minster and well, yeah – I needn’t say anything more.

But now – now I don’t live there – I’ve started to like it a bit more. I go up there every now and then because one of my most wonderful friends lives there (the Italian). She is the most talented chef (she will deny this) and she knows exactly where in York to go to buy the most wonderful ingredients. Perhaps she is the love child of Antonio Carluccio and that other famous Italian chef Nigellissima. She almost MAKES me want to live in York again – third time lucky?

So last Friday evening, I popped up for a night of sophistication, deliciousness, good company and astonishing generosity from the Italian. I might bully her into writing out one of these recipes for the blog because when I ask “HOW DID YOU DOOOO THIS?” she names a cheese I have never heard of and then says: “I made it into a quiche!”

Starter #1 - a homemade mushroom (and loads of other nice stuff) sort of pate wrapped in filo pastry.

Starter #2: Asparagus and burrata quiches (sooooo good).

Starter #3: Brie on bread, drizzled in truffle oil, mmmmm.

Main course: Homemade saffron gnocchi (sooo good, never eaten properly-made gnocchi before) and a creamy sauce with some nice herbs, I forget which.

And then....a TRIO, yes a TRIO of desserts! L-R: white chocolate and caramelised walnut semifreddo (WOW), a chocolate brownie recipe ("which I just adapted") with cherries and finally, a superb pistachio cheesecake.

And then, the morning after, I was treated to a special edition hazelnut espresso. For me, a weekend doesn't really get much better. 

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Guacamole and tortilla chips

In 2010, when I graduated* from university with a degree in arguing hypothetical points without coming to any discernible conclusion, I thought that the world was my oyster! Three years of studying and pretending to enjoy going out meant that I was definitely owed a high-powered, thinking man's role with a generous salary and bountiful benefits in an ethical, forward-thinking and trendy but established and well-respected firm.

I fired off the job applications and refused to sign on at the JobCentre ("It'll just be a massive hassle when I have to sign off again in a few days, so I won't bother!")

After a few weeks of silence, I called my mobile phone network and asked my mum to send a couple of "test emails" to my email address, just to make sure that everything was in working order. I carped on about the recession a lot and angrily complained that I wouldn't be able to get any experience if no one would give me a job. But then someone did see my potential and after a depressing interview, they decided to give me a job. In a call centre, selling gas and electricity.

Selling is something that I'm not very good at. It's not that I can't sell...I'm sure, if you do everything correctly and act a bit cheeky, you'll get sales. The problem I had was that it required effort and if you sounded like you didn't care about the dual fuel saving and the direct debit discount, the customers wouldn't care either (not all of those propaganda-laden training sessions were a waste!). And I didn't care.

Laziness, though, is never very well respected at work and so I cleverly devised a little disguise by exaggerating my leftie views and embarking on a Marxist moral crusade.

"If people don't want to switch providers then I'm not going to force them into it just so I can line my pockets"

"I'm not gonna kill myself working just so those fat cats at the top can give me a couple of extra quid whilst they compensate for their tiny dicks with Bentleys"

And all these sentiments were based on thoughts that I did actually have but this agenda also suited my comatose state perfectly. It allowed me to become possibly the least successful employee at the company (an accolade I was awarded at a couple of other jobs too) until I was eventually and unceremoniously forced to hand my notice in after receiving a tip off that I was about to be sacked.

A lot of my colleagues sold hard. They said that whilst they were sitting in this hell hole for 8 hours a day, well into the evening, they might as well make some money out of it. And they did.  Their productivity was rewarded when they received significantly fatter pay packets than I did.

And although I couldn't be one of them, I did sort of admire their attitude; financially, at least, it made sense not to toss it off.

In cooking, it also sometimes makes sense not to toss it off. Some things are worth that little bit of extra effort. Guacamole is a dip that most people don’t consider making because it’s so available in its little plastic tubs in the hummus department and so why would you?

It’s really easy though and by making it yourself you a) know what has gone into it and b) can make it superbly chunky.

You will need…

2 ripe avocados

Half a red onion, chopped fairly small

5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, chopped into quarters

The juice of half a lime

Small handful of coriander

A pinch of salt

1. Scoop out your avocados and tip the flesh into a bowl. Don’t discard the stones just yet.

2. Using a fork, mash the avocados. This can be tricky as they are slippery little buggers. Use another utensil to hold them in place if necessary. Don’t mash too much – you don’t want your guac to be smooth. Or maybe you do!

3. Mix in everything else!

I also made some oven-roasted tortilla chips. You get some tortillas and cut them into triangles. Lay them out flat on a greased baking tray and sprinkle a bit of salt, chilli flakes or whatever over them. Place in an oven at fan 160c for 5 minutes and hey presto! Leave them to cool so they go crunchier.

TOP TIP: To keep your guacamole from going brown, you can pop the stone in and this should do the trick. 

* I did get a degree but never actually graduated due to my aforementioned breakdown, which resulted in me having to take an exam after everyone else had graduated. All very embarrassing. Here is a photo on the day of my supposed graduation. 

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The Leon Superfood Salad and Original Wrap

To make the wrap, simply wrap some salad in a tortilla or flatbread.

Sometimes people get very mad about things that hardly affect them at all. For example, there was a bit of a moral panic when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West announced that they had created a foetus and as ever, outrage relating to trivial matters is never better demonstrated than in the Daily Mail. 

Instead of wasting our breath complaining, we should celebrate that the world's most successful porn star (progeny of the world's most successful female pimp) and a rapper who’s too-big dick is (at least partially) all over the internet ("You can't imagine how disappointed I was that I gotcut off")  have unified.

Celebrate? Are you mad? Yes, I am but that is a result of various other non-celebrity factors and none of your business. Please, give me a chance to explain. First, take a moment to consider the alternative: Kim is currently pregnant with a civilian’s baby. The normal person's genes, honed through years of careful reproductive selection (ie: not shagging celebrities) have been, to the disappointment of his ancestors, obliterated thanks to a drunken split-second/loving 15 minutes.

As if that is not sickening enough, take it a step further and assume that Kanye has done the same. A female member of the general public is waddling around, trying not to drink whilst growing an all-rapping, all-dancing human inside of her.

If it happened, this situation would be disastrous for humanity primarily because it would produce two broods of half-slebs (a species often as annoying and self-obsessed as the full version).

Another common and dreadful side-effect of this cross-breeding is that the very contagious "celebrity" condition often transmits to the civilian mother or father, causing them to become infected as well.

Appallingly, this plague doubles the amount of wazzock-celebrities the world has to endure and to illustrate this point I have helpfully compiled a non-exhaustive list of celebrity-world denizens: Britney's K-Fed, Jordan's Alex Reid and Sting's Trudie. See?

So come together and say a great big thank you to K and K for limiting their number of offspring by coming together in this beautiful way. With any luck Baby K, will have the good sense and compassion to marry an Andre-Price. 

Other things that should be applauded for being together are the ingredients in this Leon Superfood Salad. You might think that broccoli, peas and cucumber are boring and non-cool veggies but jazz them up with some feta, mint and avocado and bob’s your uncle, you have a winner.

I missed out the peas and probably some other ingredients too, so don't use this picture as a shopping list.

I used to eat this salad straight from the Leon outlets at Spitalfields and Kings Cross Station. I’d have it in a wrap and boy, it was good! I’m not really sure what superfoods do and I think that they are probably a bit of a myth (a bit like “negative-calories-in-celery-gate”) but don’t let that put you off because super or not, it’s healthy and tasty!

The original recipe only serves 2 but as I wanted this to last me for the week, I doubled the quantities in the recipe below.

Serves 4

400g broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets

240g peas, fresh or frozen

200g cucumber, cut into smallish pieces

200g feta cheese, crumbled

40g alfalfa sprouts (et al)

40g toasted seeds (I used sesame, sunflower and pumpkin)

100g avocado, cut into pieces

60g quinoa,

Handful flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped

Handful mint, rough chopped

4 dessert spoons lemon juice (I didn’t use this amount but add the juice to your taste)

8 dessert spoons extra virgin olive oil (I didn’t use this amount either but add the oil to your taste)

Put the quinoa in a medium pan. Cover with cold water plus about an inch then let it gently simmer until the water's gone - about 25 minutes. Spread it on a tray to cool to room temperature. Spreading on a tray is a revelation! It avoids the sticky mess you often end up with, as demonstrated by my quinoa, feta and courgette salad debacle. 

Put an inch of hot water into a large saucepan with a pinch of salt and cover it. Once boiling, drop in the broccoli and peas and put the lid back on. Drain after three minutes and run the veg under cold water to take all the heat out and keep them good and green.

Now build your salad in layers, starting with the first ingredient on the list and ending up with the dressing (but only dress it just before you eat it).

Here are a few notes on various stumbling blocks:

1.      Where do I get alfalfa from? I searched everywhere for this and had no luck until I stumbled across this little package in Tesco. It contains alfalfa but not exclusively. However, it seemed to work and although you feel like a first-world wanker by buying ‘sprouts’ in such elaborate packaging, you should just go with it.

2.      Toasting seeds? What a palava! Don’t panic: you can combat this with a microwave. Scatter your seeds onto a microwavable surface in a single layer. Drizzle with a LITTLE oil (I did too much and had to drain it away halfway though cooking) and put in the microwave on high. Monitor minute by minute until the seeds start to go a bit brown. Then take them out, allow to cool and proceed as normal.

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1847 Vegetarian Bistro - Review

Yesterday, I went to Manchester with my Italian friend. The only reason we went to Manchester was to facilitate the Italian’s life-affirming crusade to finally visit the Nespresso shrine, sorry, shop, in the Trafford Centre. Being Italian, the Italian is obsessed with coffee and, although you can order espresso capsules online, when you have obsessions with things, you make pilgrimages.

Shopping is one of my most hated “pastimes” and calling it a pastime is offensive to real pastimes like painting and crosswords because shopping doesn’t pass time for me; it makes time ground to a halt and causes me to slowly retreat into a parallel universe where Forever 21 is where you stay 21 forever and people queuing outside Starbucks only ever associate the brand with Kelly Oxford’s abortion joke: if men could get pregnant, every Starbucks would have an abortion clinic in the back. Sadly though, this remarkable universe either doesn’t exist or will not admit me and so back on Earth, I will only do shopping on the condition that I have been fully fuelled beforehand.

Luckily, the Italian (who is a fellow vegetarian) was willing to go wild and have a three-course meal for lunch, in order to prepare for our road trip to hell.

We decided to go to a vegetarian place in the centre of town called 1847. It only serves veggie stuff but also caters for vegans. It’s the kind of place that causes vegetarians to mistakenly believe “even a meat eater would enjoy it here!” and there is no reason why they wouldn’t. However, most meat eaters I know would not consider a purely vegetarian restaurant because they really like meat.

If you’re a veggie though, this is heaven! You can actually consider what you would like to eat, as opposed to automatically plumping for the only suitable dish on the menu. You don’t have to ask any awkward questions: Gelatine? Parmesan? No worries here!

The restaurant is a bit hidden. You walk down Mosley Street and arrive at 58, with no clues as to where the restaurant is. The Italian said that this had happened to her somewhere in Brussels – she had turned up to a restaurant, only to find that it had closed - and I thought what a ridiculous website, letting us book when there was no restaurant any more. We were a bit sad and I reflected on the situation: “Woody Allen was right; life IS made up of the horrible and the miserable! Shopping is horrible and no restaurant is miserable!” But Woody hasn’t been to Manchester because this was merely a test designed to test, well, I’m not sure! The test didn’t matter because the restaurant existed, just off Mosley Street!

The bistro itself is fairly small, in a nice boxy, modern sort of way. The tables all look very ethical, with a variation of ethical seats including benches with cushions on, which is very ethical.

We shamelessly ate the evening deal for lunch, which comprised of 3 courses for £15. The deal isn’t usually valid at lunchtime because who the hell would want to eat three courses at lunch? Yeah, who would?! For more adjusted people, there is a lunchtime deal which includes any main course and a glass of wine for £10 – very palatable.

If you are a massive pig like me, you can enjoy the evening meal at lunchtime by typing in this exclusive code that the lovely guys at 1847 have kindly provided to Mean Muncher readers, which is HA HA, who am I kidding? Just book it on the website – anyone can! There is no secret!

So, the foooood. Oh wow, the food. I know it’s such a dickhead thing to do – to take pictures of your food but I never said I wasn’t a dickhead.

The starters: I had the carpaccio of beetroot with red stem radish, feta salad and harissa dressing, which is gluten free as standard and also has the option to go vegan (presumably without the feta). It was a delight – everything a starter should be – light, tasty and perfect.

Carpaccio of beetroot with red stem radish, feta salad and harissa dressing

 The Italian had jalapeno cheddar cakes with soured cream dip and chive oil, which is not gluten free and not suitable for vegans. The Italian seemed to enjoy her starter.

 Jalapeno cheddar cakes with soured cream dip and chive oil

 Then I had possibly the most badass veggie meal that has been invented: battered halloumi or tofu (I had halloumi, obviously) with hand cut chips, homemade tartar sauce, pea puree, shoots and lemon vinaigrette. This has a vegan option (the tofu, presumably) and a gluten free option.

Battered halloumi or tofu (I had halloumi, obviously) with hand cut chips, homemade tartar sauce, pea puree, shoots and lemon vinaigrette

 It’s essentially veggie fish and chips, replacing the fish with cheese. The only saving grace health-wise with fish and chips is that there is a bit of fish, which is fairly good for you. My mind explodes when I think that regular fish and chips is the healthy version of this meal. It’s the kind of meal that would enable you to become the first vegetarian contestant on Britain’s Biggest Loser.

They’re not shy with portions either; I’m pretty sure I have a block of battered halloumi enjoying life as a stomach tenant right now, and lying in bed last night I mulled over the idea of calling 999 to request an urgent non-alcoholic stomach pump. Whilst recovering from the procedure, I would set up an Amazon store selling a never-ending supply of salty, stomach-decanted cooking oil. It was worth it though. So, so worth it.

Look! It looks like fish and chips!

 The Italian was much more sensible and had a rich and creamy asparagus, pine nut and spinach farfalle topped off with a freshly poached egg (not vegan and not gluten free). The waiter informed us that the farfelle would be replaced with different pasta and as an Italian, she could probably tell some sort of difference. 

Asparagus, pine nut and spinach non-farfalle topped off with a freshly poached egg

 And finally, we ordered two different desserts to share between us: vegan chocolate tart with pouring soya cream and warm hemp and apple muffins, green apple sorbet. Both were delicious and astoundingly, both were vegan! Chocolate, pastry, sorbet! VEGAN? The tart was beyond good and the sorbet was almost of a marshmallow consistency, strange but wonderful.

Apple and hemp muffins with apple sorbet

Vegan chocolate tart with soya cream

If you’re a vegetarian, go here and if you are not a vegetarian but you know a vegetarian, go and make their life and take them here. It’s the best veggie restaurant I have ever been to.

The full menu, various deals and more information all available on the website.

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Carrot and Hummus Crunch on Sourdough (or Irish Soda Bread)

The final sandwich, complete with my mangled hand.

The national airline of Belgium is called SABENA. I know this because when I was 9, my family took me on a coach trip to the Black Forest in Germany. Obviously, it would have been very tiring to do the trip all in one go, so we had little overnight stops along the way. One such stop was in Brussels, where we stayed in a hotel that was rather close to the airport.

Upon arriving at the hotel, you couldn’t help but notice a big fuck-off sign spelling out SABENA on the side of the terminal. Obviously spotting a good opportunity for a quick quip, the coach driver’s sidekick announced “That’s the Belgian airline. It stands for Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again!”

Oh and how everyone chuckled. Especially me because a) that is what you do when a grown-up joke is made, to show that you “get it” and b) I was still at the stage where “bloody” was a bit risqué, as was “piss”.

Anyway, as I was making this sandwich and everything was going wrong, I thought about SABENA. I mean, the final deal was, well, okaaay…although perhaps my enjoyment was thwarted by the various disasters along the way. I have lots of leftovers so have a few more opportunities to work out whether I actually do like this meal or not.

I was initially attracted to the recipe, by Nick Sandler and featured in the Meat Free Monday cookbook, because it was very short. For a lazy cook, this is always a deciding factor (along with How Much Washing Up Will This Create?). The meal used soda bread (can be bought ready made), hummus (can be bought ready made) and some carrot/garlic/seedy thing, which I would of course make by myself.

However, I had read on Twitter and stuff that soda bread was really easy and that homemade hummus was in a completely different league to the supermarket stuff! So, in an attempt to impress my readers (ha ha), I boldly decided to make everything myself….from scratch!

Off I toddled down to Rotherham town centre to pick up the ingredients. I already had most of the stuff that I needed for the soda bread and the only outstanding ingredient, buttermilk, was surprisingly in stock. I also soon had everything I needed, in my basket, for the hummus, until I went off to find the tahini (ground sesame seeds and olive oil).

Buttermilk sourced from Rotherham!

 After a long, drawn-out search involving various staff members, every aisle in existence and Tesco computer databases, my search ended with a “Sorry love, this one is new on me. If it’s not with the curry stuff, I don’t think we will have it.” So, I put the chickpeas and other hummus-y stuff back and picked up a tub of ready made stuff. SABENA.

Back at home, it was time to make the soda bread. This actually wasn’t a disaster at all, despite the finished goods looking somewhat like the elephant man’s head. This is the easiest bread IN THE WORLD. The recipe says it takes an hour (including cooking time) and usually these timings are ambitious because not everyone has ingredients measured out in endless mini bowls. Anyway, it actually DID take an hour because it couldn’t possibly take longer!

Dah-dah!

I used the Irish Soda Bread recipe from Good Food and it was great. The method urges you not to overwork the dough and so my “loaf” did go into the oven looking more like a collection of pieces of dough, although it did work out well in the end.

Before cooking (a hodge-podge of bits of dough)

 To add another complication to the most complicated sandwich I have ever attempted, I had decided to join a band. Not in a serious way (eg; no one in this band would ever consider music as a career) but in a “let’s hang out in some really cold practice rooms and jam!” sort of way. Which is basically an excuse for some guys to smoke doobies…and that is why everyone joins a band, isn’t it?

My boyfriend was going to pick me up at 6.45pm and it was 4.45pm, so there was plenty of time BUT I had no carrots. “Don’t worry,” my Dad said “I’m going out, so I’ll pick you some up!” All was good, so I began to cut up my chilli and garlic. Over an hour later my Dad finally arrived home because there seemed to have been some kind of northern carrot shortage, so it was all rush rush rush and then, for some INSANEEE reason (self-sabotage), I decided to a) double the quantities and b) manually grate the carrots instead of using the food processor because I thought it would be too much washing up. SABENA.

Look how much fucking carrot there is and I STILL had more to do :-(

 The root vegetable God had forsaken me because the carrot grating step took just over half an hour. My hand was about to fall off, a bit of finger had been grated into the mound of orange stuff and wet carrot was sticking to every surface, towel, tap and floor tile in the house. This shambles went on for such a ridiculously long time that I missed band practice and spent another boring half an hour washing up instead. SABENA.

A literal MOUNTAIN of hand-grated carrot.

 So, feeling all sweary, sweaty and frustrated, I bundled the sandwich together and gobbled it down. SABENA! SABENA! I think, what with the sophisticated ingredient of caraway seeds, I was hoping to be a bit more bowled over by the taste than I was. I didn’t let the carrot mixture fully cool, so that may have been a problem. Like I say, I think I should try it all again another day, when I’m feeling a little less besieged, and then make my final judgement.

The carrots, cooking (obviously).

 Serves 2 (I doubled these quantities) (SABENA)

“Fry 2 coarsely grated large carrots in a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 chopped garlic cloves, ½ chopped red chilli and 1 teaspoon caraway seeds over moderate heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Cool before using in the sandwich. Cut 4 slices of sourdough bread. Spread 100g hummus onto the bread, followed by the carrots. Remember to scrape in the caraway seeds and chilli. Add 2 tablespoons Greek yoghurt to the bread in blobs, followed by a handful of chopped coriander. Season with freshly ground pepper.”

I just mixed the coriander into my carrot mix and I also forgot to season with pepper. Please note also, that after watching Jamie Oliver on (I think it was) the Jonathan Ross show, I jazzed up my lame supermarket hummus with cumin and paprika, plus a little parsley. It tasted a bit nuttier, I think. SABENA. Also, this dish is super garlicky, when you consider the hummus (which is enough to repel all people for at least a day aka very useful) AND the cloves added to the carrots. So handle with care, my friends.

Pimped hummus (cumin and paprika).

 NB: OH MY WORD, I JUST READ THAT BACK (proof-reading, you see) AND SAW THAT IT SAID SOURDOUGH, NOT SODA BREAD!!! What an unmitigated DISASTER! I baked and wrote about the wrong bread, which just shows how completely and unreservedly SABENA the whole thing is.

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