Boys Don't Cook

Jambalaya style One Pot  Before I even get started here I want to make it very clear I have no claim to Creole/Cajun-American, African, French, Spanish or any other cuisine that this dish has its colourful roots in. I just know it tastes great, is moderately healthy, and is a quick and hassle-free dish to always have in your back pocket! The name literally means mix up or ‘jumble’ - the dish has culinary historians connecting it with Jolof Rice, Stews, and even Paella, and as such the ingredients vary wildly.  My take uses ingredients you would also find in Valencia style Paella, simply because that’s the things I most often have in the fridge, but you can swap and change things as you like. Most sausages could replace the chorizo (although add the paprika back), and garden peas could be swapped for black beans , or okra. Oh - I’m going to say “Dutch oven” in this one, maybe, this is an Americanism I think that I’ve started using, I mean a Crock Pot, or large heavy-based, enam...

Ahhh B... Gravy!  Gravy is a staple of English cooking, but the basics aren't so much different from a "Roux" - you'll use to make the base of 'White' sauces, This method can even be adapted to make US style 'Biscuit' Gravy Everyone told me I needed it, but no one showed me how to make gravy...  If you believe the adverts you put a popular stock cube into hot water and a 3-piece dinner appears by magic.  Surprisingly, it's not that simple, but it’s also not as hard as you’re made to think, as it turns out.  Gravy (at least as I understand it, and I'm a boy who doesn’t cook),  is a rich meat sauce, served with a lot of British dishes, made of meat and vegetable juices.  My favourite way to make gravy is to make it AS YOU COOK... so while you have the veg, the meat, and anything else browning off in the pan that’s the best time to make magic happen: English Savoury Gravy Ingredients: 3 tbsp plain flour (corn flour will work but you will need abou...

There are several basic ways to cook eggs,  and the very same amount of ways to do them wrong. Trust me, I've made every mistake in the book.  Here are some in your back pocket ways to cook good eggs, every time. Basic eggs, we'll get on to 'yer fancy eggs later! - Keep scrolling for Scrambled eggs (UK and US) and a perfect Poached! (at the bottom) Fried Eggs I mean, you crack it into a pan of hot oil and watch it... that’s it, right? Well there are some tweaks: When you fry an egg you do want a small pan of hot fat, at least 3 tbs of good vegetable oil (olive oil isn’t good at very high temperatures). You want the oil hot so the white of the egg starts to take solid form as it hits the pan. Your hob will vary, but just above mid level heat should do it without burning anything straight away. A useful trick is to tilt the pan once the egg had started to hold together, and spoon some off the hot oil across the top of the egg, especially if you are cooking it ‘sunny side up’ ...

Lets make sure we're all talking the same language! You might notice that all* the measures in this book are in Metric milliliters, liters, grams, etc (if I've gone into kilograms anywhere I’ve obviously got a family of twelve to feed!). I’ve done this not because it’s my native system... The UK native system being: grab whatever unit happens to be running by and hope someone knows what the heck you are talking about ...but because Metric is the measure of science, and cooking is a science! (unlike baking, which is witchcraft and alchemy, and I will hear no argument!) You can use online converters to switch to ℉, lbs and cups. It will all work out fine, maybe. It would be useless to write in Imperial, since UK imperial is bigger than US imperial anyway, for which I blame a collective psionic-zeitgeist caused by UK drinkers looking at pints of beer and collectively thinking: I’ll have a wee lot more of that, thank you very much! A cup is equally confusing in these pages, will...