Cooking with Coolio: Finger-lickin', Rib-stickin',Fall-off-the-bone-and-into-your-mouth Chicken

Yes, this is my new book and I don't feel the need to explain my decision.
But I will say this - you know when you get really drunk and wake up the next day covered in bruises, or next to some random dude, or to find that your facebook status says something like KJJJ/R#'23-8923JM9HSDJK. Well I bought this cook book, so lets just get past it.
At the risk of sounding redundant, Coolio is so cool. I had no idea that he had his own catering company or book until I saw him on Market Kitchen a few weeks ago, the book is uber-rad - when Coolio is not referring to himself in the third person he's cooking dishes that makes women's underwear disappear and tastes better than your mother's nipples (I swear to God you guys, srsly!!!).
Now, tell me, what common dish these random ingredients all feature in?
I couldn't find any chicken wings in the supermarket so had to get thighs instead, chopped up a couple of peppers, garlic and an onion, and started weighing out the wet ingredients. I've never bought cream of chicken soup before and in the can it looked like this
-like fricking custard! And you know what? IT TASTED LIKE CUSTARD TOO!!!!
Anyway, you mix all that stuff up and shove it in the oven for a while.
Result: The sauce was way too water, it didn't thicken up at all, if anything it got more and more diluted which I think happened because thighs have more fat than wings would have done. Oh, and it makes your whole house reek of vinegar.
The taste is very nice, but more so the next day when you can smear a piece of toast with the jellyfied sauce and make yourself a chicken sandwich.
Just in case you were wondering, I checked, and my panties did not dissolve from eating this. I asked the boyfriend if it tasted better than nipples and he said no. So there you go, as comprehensive as you can get. Here's Coolio cooking the dish and messing about with some fat kid.

Salt and Pepper Tofu and Crab with Lemon, Parsley and Chilli

My final two dishes from the Marie Claire book are both semi deep-fried and semi really quite fresh. I hate hate hate deep frying crap - it's almost like daring yourself to have an accident, a deadly serious accident.
Anyway, I started by marinading the tofu in ginger, garlic and lemon the night before, then you roll it around in Szechwan pepper, cornflour and salt, deep fry and serve with a cool, sweet, spicy cucumber sauce.
I accidentally made these too salty (that's a serious accident in my book), but they were still pretty nice and I might make them again just to munch on while I'm watching 'my stories'... on a Saturday night.
The second other thing I made was these little fried toasts covered with a mix of crab, lemon and parsley. I use tinned crab and it was meh. It was also one of the few recipes in the book that didn't end with the ominous 'serve immediately'.
There are a few heartier and less fussy things in the book like muffins and salad, there are also drink recipes - classic cocktails and lighter things like punch which looked interesting, but I'm just over it and I want to move on.

TV

OK, I'm watching Hugh Fearnley Knowitall's Fish Fight thing, and god how dreary is he? The first half of the show is all about farmed salmon - how dare those bastards in the fish farms and the supermarkets make salmon cheaply available to all, when there's all these sardines we could be eating!!! In principle I agree with him, but maybe I would be able to take him a little bit more seriously if he wasn't on the verge of tears pretty much constantly.
Oh noes! Sad face is sad :(
I was cracking up when I saw this piece of 'equipment' LOLZ

More Marie Claire

As the old adage goes, if you want something done - ask a busy person. After the relative relaxation of being sick and in bed all over Christmas I'm back in the saddle and going at it at an alarming pace. There are simply not enough hours in the day to get everything done, I mean, I only managed to find time to throw away our long dead Christmas tree yesterday. Stress, but it means that if anyone asks me to do anything I sigh, add it to my list and stay up until 1am to finish it. Still I prefer this to lounging around on the sofa all day, exasperated because it'll be an hour before Cake Boss comes on. Between running around for work, family and housework I've still had to fin time to eat and this is what I've been having from the Marie Claire Food and Drink book.

Squid stuffed with risotto.
You start off by making the most delicious risotto I've ever had - simply fry onions with garlic and thyme, add the rice and some lemon zest, dribble n the stock and finish with fresh parsley and the juice of the zested lemon. It's really perfect, without the cheese you avoid the slightly cloying aftertaste some risottos have and the caramelised onions have it out with the tangy lemon juice for some sort of sweet and sour battle in your mouth - absolutely delicious, I would have been happy with a big plate of this for dinner. But of course risotto isn't really a party food any more than stew, or leftover soup is, no no no, you must be crazy. What you're actually meant to do is stuff the still warm rice into squid bodies and roast for half an hour. I cannot emphasize how difficult this is, my top tips are to buy really big squid so that you won't have to insert the rice into their openings GRAIN BY GRAIN! And inject your hands with botox before you begin so that you won't feel it when your skin burns off as you plunge your fingers into the molten risotto. This is almost impossible to do with a teaspoon and when I tried to employ a piping bag IT FRICKING MELTED which I had no idea silicone did - that's how hot it was.
Here are the pretty little squid out of the oven
And here they are even prettier cut up into circles ready to serve to all your fancy pants friends.
I will definitely make the risotto again, but will probably not go through the S&M of stuffing it into squid. This really tasted better freshly made, not after half an hour steaming in the oven. Oh and here's a little secret, if somebody serves this to you at a party there is a 100% guarantee that their hands were all up in your risotto up to the elbow.

Roasted pepper tortillas
I had to read the recipe all the way thorugh twice to realize you are meant to hide little bits of tuna in these tortillas. Annoying, but apart from that, this was really simple. You shove a couple of peppers in the oven, and while they roast mix up some sour cream dough sprinkled with cumin. Pinch off little balls and roll out (using a wine bottle still instead of a rolling pin, sigh). Fry in a dry pan for 15 secons on each side, sear the tuna in the same pan and wah lah!
Not nice. The mix or roasted peppers, balsamic vinegar and basil was wierd and a little synthetic, tuna was tasteless compared to it and tortillas were ok but a bit austere. All rolled up together it was strangely bitter.

Pickled salmon
You buy a little tub of sushi ginger, spoon off some of the pickling vinegar and chop a spoon of ginger, add this to freshly grated ginger, lime juice, chilli I think and mint of all things! Then pour over slivers of raw salmon and leave to marinade for 10 minutes. The salmon turns a little opalescent like ceviche and then goes to stuff some chicory leaves.
Quite nice, but tasted a little soapy because of all the ginger. I mean pickled AND fresh? Come on, there are other ingredients you know.

Spiced biscotti
Finally, I rounded off with some little biscotti biscuits. It's the boyfriend's mum's birthday today and since she always insists on no gifts and there is really only so much chocolate you can give someone I decide to make these from the recipe in the book - which turned out o be very very straightforward and hassle free. The spice comes from cinnamon and cardamon, as well as dried figs and apricots and mandatory sprinkling of almonds.
Apart from the ridiculous non-biscotti shape these are pretty good, I munched on a couple as I was carrying them to her house (and am eating another one now), she liked them and I'll make them again (maybe add a little almond extract next time).
Ok that's it, I recon Marie Claire has enough juice in it for another week and then I'll lose interest and move on.

Duck and Marmalade Turnovers and Ginger Hearts

Today is the first day of the rest of the week and I am beginning my new little game of cooking from one cookbook exclusively for a couple of weeks. The first book I've selected is my most recent purchase, the Marie Claire Food + Drink written in 2001 by the Australian food editor for the magazine, it's a fluffy collection of cocktails and canapes. What better way to live my fabulous life than to feed myself finger food for dinner for the next fortnight? Lets go!
The boyfriend and I have been pretty sick during the holidays so missed out on all the crazayzee partying people our age should have been indulging in, so I roasted a duck for us a couple of days ago to cheer us up, and the leftovers are going into cute duck and marmalade turnovers.
It's really simple, you fry up some onions and bacon, add the red wine, duck, marmalade and voila!
Quite a revolting shade of purple, this is the point you will get quite depressed. If you were really preparing this as a party snack for your wonderful friends, at this point you would start crying and drink the rest of the bottle of wine. But actually tastes quite nice. Then you cut out circles of ready made puff pastry (rolled out with the empty wine bottle because you still don't have a rolling pin, deadbeat), tuck the filling prettily in, and bake.
Result:
Very, very nice. Rich and tangy, these are very addictive. I was worried that they might be too sweet, but the marmalade we had is so bitter and disgusting that it actually works very well.
While I was waiting for these to bake I made a batch of Ginger Hearts from the book. I've never made gingerbread before, but compared to shop bought stuff, this is light and fluffy and almost not sweet enough. The ginger doesn't hit you until you've almost swallowed it,subtle is the word you'd use. Quite nice. Also, I didn't have any heart shaped cookie cutters, so these are more like ginger blobs. Oh, and I learned how to make gifs.

New Year's resolution

Well the blog has been going for over a year now and it's become a really big deal for me. I'm a total layzeeass but I try to cook something interesting at least once a week. If fact, whenever I make something that isn't from a book, i feel a bit guilty (sometimes I buy a book because I know it has a specific recipe in it, even if I know how to make it already). So my New Year's resolution is to channel this annoying, impractical focus in a deliberate direction, instead of just hopping from book to book like some slap-happy rabbit. I am going to select one book and use it exclusively for a week or so, this will hopefully force me to be a bit more organized, maybe chuck a few rubbish books away, plan, budget, learn, grow goddamnit!