Bloke cookery
is what happens when a bloke is left without either
a skilled cook to feed him or access to retail cooked food outlets. It is
neither an art nor a science, it is a system
to stop the hunger pains and sustain life, requiring the minimum amount of resources,
time and effort and preferably without leading to post-meal medical
intervention (too often). www.londonbeerengine.co.uk
The optimum method is to get everything into one
pan and heat it up till it’s uniformly hot and/or reasonably safe to eat. More
pans = more clearing up time and less free time. Maximum points are scored if
that one pan is a frying pan.
Presentation
DOES NOT COUNT. Visualise what your teeth and stomach acids are about to do to
that food… there is NO POINT in making it pretty!
Calories DO
NOT COUNT. The objective is to remove the hunger pains. If you were dieting,
you wouldn’t be cooking anyway.
Flavour
DOES NOT COUNT. As long as it isn’t actually actively repellent to your taste
buds, it’s edible and will sustain life.
Beer is an ingredient.
It may not always make it as far as the pan, but it’ll come in handy while
you’re cooking.
Smoke
is a perfectly normal by-product of bloke cookery. It means something’s ready. Flames,
however, may indicate that something is not going exactly to plan.
Adding spices
is a good way of livening up dishes. Snorting spices is inadvisable. www.londonbeerengine.co.uk
Ketchup
(or brown sauce) covers a multitude of errors.
There is no disgrace in using tinned, packet or
instant foods as long as the end product is edible.
Sell-by and Best-Before dates are optional, Use-by
needs to be taken a bit more seriously. Have a sniff. If it doesn't smell bad, it might still be OK. If it smells bad, binning it is probably the safest thing to do.
Meal times are approximately ‘When both I and the
food are ready’. Clocks are responsible for licensing hours and therefore have
no place in a bloke’s kitchen.
The 3-second rule applies for anything dropped on
the floor. If more than 3 seconds have elapsed, the 10-second rule applies.
www.londonbeerengine.co.uk
If you hit upon something you like and can actually
produce, practice it every day until you can do it on autopilot. That’ll save a
lot of time looking it up in future.
If in doubt, stick it between two pieces of bread
or in a roll, bun or, heaven forbid, a baguette. If it threatens to escape the
bread, use a sandwich toaster to seal the edges.
If you think we've got something wrong or missed a point out, please get in touch!