Cooking on Gas: Review

I spent a month trying to cook as many recipes as possible. I managed 5. They were:

Cranberry and Almond Muesli 

Cajun Chicken

Harissa Chicken with Bulgar Wheat Salad

Quick Cod and Prawn Gratin

Winter Lamb and Lentil Broth

The Winner: Cajun Chicken. The Binner: Winter Lamb and Lentil Broth.

I didn't cook as many meals from cookbooks as I'd hoped, but one a week isn't too bad. It's more creative than I was doing, which was mostly banging chicken breasts into wraps with a bit of salad. I was also hammering takeaway places with alarming regularity- I've cut down on that too (but that's another blog post).

I'd have cooked a lot more meals, only the motivation to shop, prepare, cook and eat a meal for four (splitting the finished item down over a few days) is hard to muster after you've been at work all day and then been to the gym. And speaking of the gym, I started this project to be healthier and get back in shape. So how did I do? Well, I boxed a lot and I feel a lot sharper and fitter than I used to in these classes. I've done a few gym classes as well and haven't done to badly there either. I didn't spend a great deal of time in the actual weights gym, but I did hit a few PBs between 12/5 and 12/6.

Cable crunch (rope handle) with 15 plates: 20 more reps

Cable crunch (metal handle) with 15 plates: 30 more reps

Dips: 10 more reps

Horizontal grip chin-ups (backs of hands facing face): 1 more rep

So: a few improvements. My body weight is still hovering above 70kg though. To bring this down, I propose that, once a week, I cook a new recipe from the Hairy Dieters' cookbook rather than rely on staple meals like chicken stir fry. I've cut so much junk out of my diet that Ive got to replace it with something better- these recipes are as good as anything else, if not better.

More recipe blog posts to come. Stay tuned.

Soup FAIL

As part of a month of cooking, I fired up my soup maker for the first time in, well, quite a while. The next recipe in the book: Winter Lamb and Lentil Broth.

The recipe included a turnip, which were discontinued in both Tesco and Co-op. My Asian colleague suggested that Asian cash-and-carry shops would probably stock them as they are staple ingredients used to thicken up dishes like curry. My parents' friends suggested a swede would have a similar effect.

After sourcing for a few days, I started to prepare the ingredients. The cutting board got a bit crowded with everything on it, but I managed that far. I followed the instructions, putting in the required amount of each ingredient, but the total food ready to go into the soupmaker was around three times more than the soupmaker could take. I put in a certain amount and set the soupmaker to begin cooking, but after a few seconds the power cut out. I tried again. No luck. I Facebooked Morphy Richards. Their page was awash with complaints from people trying to use a whole range of their kitchen equipment. The brand eventually got back to me telling me that the device has sensors that will cause the machine to cut out if too much material has been put in. They also suggested that I put in the stock first and then add the rest of the food, so that it doesn't fry and stick to the bottom of the appliance, that being what may have caused the outage.

I started Take 2.

The recipe wanted 650 mls of stock, but my pyrex jug only went up to 500. I had a plastic jug that went up to 900, but boiling water isn't great for plastic in the long run, is it? I risked it anyway.

When it came to filling the soupmaker, the amount of stock the recipe asked for came to way more than the machine could handle.

I cooked a portion of the mixture in the soupmaker for the required time on the suggested setting of “chunky”. When the device beeped to say it had finished, I poured out a bowlful.

It smelled and tasted utterly foul. The chunky setting had done no additional chopping- I'd had to chop the ingredients myself before I added them to the mix, and they were the same size when they came out of the machine. The vegetables were still hard, so I poured it back into the soupmaker and gave it another 30 mins. By the end of the second run the lamb had been tenderised but the veg were still tough. None of the dish was tasty.

Suffice to say, I binned the excess mixture.

My mum is planning to borrow the soupmaker and give the same recipe a shot to see if it's just me not getting it right, or whether it's genuinely a shit recipe. In all fairness, this is one of the few recipes I've attempted that straight-up didn't work out. Everything else I've ever followed from a recipe has pretty much been edible and usually tasty.

Tattu

I went for my second meetup with Manchester High Life, a group that visits the smarter-end bars and restaurants in Manchester. This time we dropped into the new, incredibly opulent body-art-themed Chinese restaurant Tattu. See their website for impressive visuals and their Twitter for the latest info.

The Gartside St venue opened last month, and we dropped in on a reasonably-busy Thursday night. The Spinningfields venue's nautical-themed entrance welcomes you into the ground floor bar area, providing long tables for groups and great service, accompanied by light chillout vibes. I started with a non-alcoholic Virgin and Glory cocktail before we were led upstairs into the plush dining area and seated at a circular table under an impressive whole dried blossom tree. The music, I realised, was provided by a DJ as opposed to an automated playlist, an interesting feature.

As we arrived as a party of around 10 we were split into 2 adjacent booths, which wasn't ideal but was workable. We started with a little sake, a Japanese fermented-rice-wine drink- not something I'd choose to drink again but it was interestingly-strong and didn't taste like anything I'd tried before.

We ordered a few extra side dishes alongside our starters. I accidentally ate something with a mushroom in it, but I soon washed it down with water and leveled the situation with some tasty prawn balls. I had the delicious baby chicken main with a side order of duck rice, and finished this off with Queen of Fruit, a picturesque but eye-wateringly sweet dessert with liquorice and mixed fruit, including mangosteen, a tropical fruit I'd admittedly never even heard of.

The group was much more varied in age range in comparison to the last meetup at 47 King Street West, with some attendees in early 30s, and others older.

After paying (my meal came to £36, which isn't bad for the quality of the food and venue and location, and without a discount of any kind) we were escorted back down to the bar area again (good marketing tekkers there) where I polished the evening off with a superbly unique hot chocolate with an added hint of orange flavouring. I needed mine replacing as a part of the drinks machine came off in the mug, but it was no biggie. Staff were polite, and service was immaculate.

Every corner of the restaurant contributes to the body-art theme, from the bar entrance with ship's wheel door handle (weren't sailors among the first westerners to get tattoos?) to tattoo photography (or incredibly realistic paintings, one of the two) and uniquely decorated busts.

A grand venue and a powerful contributor to the Spinningfields' burgeoning leisure scene.

 

Reading and Planking Fail

Last week I wrote how I planned to plank my way through the enormity of Jonathan Franzen's critically acclaimed The Corrections. 

Well, I've powered through the first 100 pages. I'm just not getting into it. Maybe the act of planking, and the effort it seems to take, is hampering my appreciation of the literature. Or maybe it's just not my kind of novel. I dunno. So far I've established that Franzen is a capable writer. But if you ask me, his characters are dull to the point of fading into middle-American obscurity and the plot- once-rich people struggle with middle-class 90's financial difficulties and Alzheimer's- depresses rather than engages.

Possibly because of this I didn't have the strength nor the willpower to hold plank longer than 2:24, way below my 4:02 record.

I will try another reading and planking project soon with an equally large but more promising novel.

The New Male Sexuality

Every once in a while a book comes along that you read and think, shit, why did nobody tell me to read this AGES ago? The New Male Sexuality, by leading US therapist Bernie Zilbergeld Ph.D. is one such book.

Describing itself as “the truth about men, sex and pleasure”, the book is a guide for men of any age who want to know more about their sexuality. Sexuality, in this sense, means less your sexual orientation (it's a book for hetero men) and more your life as a sexual man- your thoughts about yourself, women and sex.

I'm not going to go too much into the detail of the book, as the reviews out there will say more than I ever could about its content and how incredibly reassuring it is to read. Consider this as a comparison if you can: there's an old Woody Allen film called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).

It's a bit of a misleading title, considering its content. Instead of asking “what is normal?” it shows you people and situations who definitely aren't. (I have never wanted to know what it is like to fuck a sheep.) It's a funny film, but not an educational one.

The New Male Sexuality is as close as I've found to a resource that fulfills that need so far. If you want to know something sex-related, it'll more than likely be detailed in explicit but light-hearted form somewhere in this book. If I had read it when I was 18, things could have been much different and much better.

Read it now, before you get any older.

Manchester Creatives

Friday: a meetup with Manchester Creatives, a group of people involved with- or looking to be involved with- the creative industries. Think TV, film, art, writing, advertising. I went to meet people who might be interested in screenplays or blogging. The venue: The Bridge pub on Bridge St, off Deansgate. A bit of a shithole, but served a purpose. The people were nicer than the venue.

Most people the group were professional filmmakers with a tech background trying to carve a niche in a dreadfully competitive and overpopulated market. A good group of people, so if you're a struggling media graduate like me (there are more than a handful of us in the city) this is a group you should get involved with.

After this we moved on to The Moon Under the Water on Deansgate, the biggest pub in Manchester. It's also one of the chavviest, but hey. We trekked further down Deansgate and into Liars Club on Back Bridge St, an aptly named “Tikki dive bar”. I won't be back.

I may meet up with the group again, and I'll probably bump into some of them at other meetups too- at least 2 I recognised from previous meetups at different groups like 20s and Early 30s. What this shows is that the site is bringing people together, and is helping people find their people, but more importantly it's showing that people are actively trying to get out and expand their social circles and enjoy themselves, which is pretty fucking important in my book.

The Meetups You Missed Out On Last Week

Socialising social media site Meetup has come alive in recent months, with group after group being set up in Manchester and, more than likely, the rest of the world. Last week I used the group to continue meeting more people and to explore more places in Manchester.

First up, on Thursday I visited swanky new restaurant 47 King St West, with the group Manchester High Life Club. See the event here.

The relatively new restaurant was offering 3 courses for £25 during the week, which for a venue of its stature is a great deal. The offer applied to any of the starters and desserts, and to any main under £21 (which ruled out all the meat dishes). A sample menu is here. I went for the pate- sorry, parfait- on toast to start with (a generous portion), followed by a spicy seafood linguine main washed down with a complimentary glass of Prosecco. I polished this off with an Eton Mess dessert, possibly my first.

The food was great with fine service and atmosphere (kudos for the low-level chillout music), although nobody beforehand mentioned anything about the service charge, which bumped the price up to £30. Still, a good price for a meal in this venue, considering. Get on this offer while you can. It's quiet during the week, so service is fast.

The Meetup group itself was interesting. I was the youngest there at 32, with at least one of the group a retiree. I don't mind meeting older people. They're wise and have good stories to tell most of the time, as they did on Thursday, but they did all have a few years on me. It may be ideal, if you're checking out a Meetup group for the first time, to glance through a few attendee's profiles and gauge the age of the average member before RSVPing.

Most people went home after this, but the younger ones among us dropped into Elixir on Deansgate, a small and fragrant cocktail bar playing deep house. Well worth a look. I had a few “No-jitos” (non-alcoholic Mojito) and got to know the group members a little more before moving on.

Most people were in work the next day and went home- I'd booked off the morning so I lone-wolfed it in to The Milton Club for their Thursday Night party, Marquee. A Much more fun atmosphere with a younger clientèle than Milton Club's weekend nights, Marquee offers a little more to look at and to soak up while you drink. Pics from the night are here. 

Coronation Street's Brooke Vincent (Sophie Webster) will be celebrating her birthday there next week, if you fancy checking it out.

Saturday: Cocktails at The Botanist with Manchester Social Group. This was the first time I'd been out with this group, a cool and varied collection of people with a good knowledge of current and historical Manchester. They also like getting drunk in cool bars. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned. And other than a few characteristically-wobbly stools, The Botanist is a class act of a bar- good top row, good clientèle, and soft-rock live music, which isn't normally my thing but was a good touch.

Just as it started chucking it down in Manchester as per, I dived into the newly refurbished Lawn Club with some people who had just finished at another Meetup across town. More spacious and pleasantly whitewashed, the bar seemed to have improved not only in appearance (which I honestly thought was fine before) but now has quicker service.

To finish the night off we checked out The Milton Club, where this scenario unfolded:

Bloke: You look like someone.
Me: Is it Gareth Barry?
Bloke: Yes!
Me: Funny that, you look like Conan O'Brien.

The bloke immediately walked off after this. Well, don't give it if you can't take it...

Good people and music, overall. Glad I could introduce people to the venue. Further Meetup nights planned. Be on them!