Red Dwarf Food: Drunken Fry-Up

Drunken Fry Up ...aka "The Full Monty"

Best between Midnight and 4:00 AM.

To qualify a meal as a Drunken Fry Up, two criteria must be met:
1. You must be drunk when you prepare it.
2. It must be some variant on the traditional English or Irish breakfast.

Red Dwarf makes references to the Drunken Fry Up here and there in episodes like Stasis Leak, Emohawk, and Thanks for the Memory. In keeping with the Lister Tradition, our weekend visits to Gwen's Old Family Canal Haus usually involve at least one evening with massive amounts of alcohol and a midnight fry up for 5 or 10 drunken geeks. It's amazing how much better baked beans taste in the middle of the night.

Suggested Ingredients:
Black Sausage, White Sausage, Back Bacon, Smoked Bacon, Bangers, Sausage, Kippers, Oysters, Baked Beans, Eggs, Oatcakes, Toast, Mushrooms, Tomatoes, Mashed or Fried Potatoes


Prep all of your ingredients ahead of time and set them by the stove. This is extra important if you're drunk enough to be dangerous with a knife: prep THEN drink.

Don't forget this Very Important Step

For the Oysters, use a standard cornmeal crust: dust in flour, dip in egg, roll in cornmeal or crushed saltine crackers. Pan fry them over medium heat in a little bacon grease (sub oil mixed with butter) until the crust is golden brown.

Another Very Important Step

Get the beans going over medium-low heat near the back of the stove; they'll take care of themselves. The kippers can be served at room temp straight from the can.

This might be a good time to get a helper

Heat a VERY LARGE frying pan (or all the frying pans)(I think). Start with the meats, especially the bacon. Use the bacon grease to fry up the eggs, mushrooms, oysters and tomatoes. This is an excellent time to find out what else tastes good cooked in bacon grease.

Time to try beer with bacon grease?

Pile the food on a plate. The percentage of food that actually makes it onto the plate is inversely proportional to the amount of alcohol you've had.

Lancashire Hotpot

Autumn is upon us here in the cool, gray Pacific Northwest. The nights have grown cold (even a little frosty!) and the fall leaves are turning. It's the perfect time of year for hearty, warming meals. I have yet to make my first soup of the season, but recently I had another hankering for some piping hot, savory Britfood. To that end, I ventured into the kitchen to try my hand at Lancashire Hotpot.

Lancashire Hotpot is a one-pot dish, in the same family as casseroles or pot-a-feu. It's simple to prepare and ignore, as it cooks slowly at low to medium heat: you can assemble the ingredients, pop it in the oven, and leave it alone while you go do something else for awhile. The general ingredients are ground lamb, sliced potatoes, broth, root veggies, butter and seasonings. A traditional hotpot is made with lamb only, but I made mine with ground beef, and it turned out great. You can mix beef and lamb, as well as mixing up the various root vegetables depending on what you like or what's in season; you can also substitute flat beer or ale for part of the broth.

INGREDIENTS
About 1/2 lb. of ground lamb, beef, or a mix
2 or 3 carrots, sliced into 1-inch chunks or 1/4-inch medallions
1 medium white or yellow onion, in 1/2-inch dice
2 to 3 medium-sized firm potatoes cut into thin slices (stay away from baking potatoes; they fall apart too easily)
About 1/2 pound root veggies, cut into 1-inch chunks (try yams, parsnips, or turnips)
Broth (beef, or a mixture of chicken and beef)
Butter
Thyme
Salt & pepper

We used carrots, parsnips, turnips & red potatoes

INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350F.

Cook the ground meat in a little bit of butter or oil on the stovetop over medium heat until mostly cooked but not browned. Drain off most of the fat, then add onion and cook until translucent but not browned. Add carrots and root veggies. Season with thyme, salt and pepper to taste.

You can also cook the veggies first if you like.

 Cook until the meat is starting to brown.

Meat & veggies

 Transfer the lot to a casserole dish with a lid. Use a spoon to flatten out the top. Pour in the liquid until it almost covers the meat/veggie mixture. Put a layer of sliced potatoes on top of the mixture. Dot with butter, sprinkle salt & pepper to taste, then add another layer of sliced potatoes. Dot with butter again, put the lid on, and pop into the oven. (I recommend setting the casserole dish on a cookie sheet with a fairly deep lip, as the pot can bubble over and leak out while it's cooking if the lid isn't terrifically tight.)

Potatoes on top. Note level of liquid.

Cook for about an hour to an hour and a half, then take the lid off and cook for another 15 to 30 minutes to brown the top layer of potatoes.

Piping hot!

Serve with crusty bread, a winter salad, steamed winter veggies (like broccoli, mustard greens, or Brussels sprouts), and a good stout, dark ale or porter. Perfect for a chilly fall night.

Avocado Ice Cream

Important ingredients

This past weekend we packed up for another informal weekend at the family beach house, this time to celebrate Dear Spouse's (DS's) birthday. As usual, much food was brought down, recipes shared, and a good time was had by all.

Dear Spouse loves to tinker in the kitchen as much as Lexi and myself do, and this weekend he wanted to try his hand at making avocado ice cream. DS and I first sampled this treat several years ago on a vacation to Morro Bay. Our trip just happened to coincide with their annual Avocado & Margarita Festival, so we popped on down to the waterfront to check it out. Many of the local restaurants had booths open where we could nibble on nummies created using avocados as a prominent ingredient: that year we tasted shrimp and avocado cocktail, several kinds of sushi, and a delightful ceviche. But far and away our favorite was the avocado ice cream, made by the talented chefs at Windows on the Water. DS was so enamored of the creamy, honey-laden goodness that he nicked a margarita cup and went back to exchange enough booth tickets to fill it with ice cream. He's been wanting to try the recipe himself ever since.

So this past week found DS contacting our friends to find an ice cream maker or two. As luck would have it, one of our friends loaned us an ice cream bowl and paddle attachment for my trusty dusty antique KitchenAid mixer, and another managed to dig up an old-fashioned bucket-style electric ice cream maker from the early 1980's. As luck would also have it, avocados happened to go on sale this week. So we stocked up, DS did some recipe research, and we headed off to the beach house, avocados and ice cream makers in hand.

Here's what DS came up with.

INGREDIENTS (will make approximately 1 gallon of ice cream)
8 ripe avocados
1 qt whipping cream
1 qt 1% milk
1 c brown sugar
1 c granulated sugar
1 T vanilla extract (use genuine if you can get it)
Juice from 1/2 of a lime
Ice
Rock salt

INSTRUCTIONS
Peel, pit, and blend the avocados in a blender or food processor. Get them as finely blended as you can, removing any strings and pulverizing large chunks (though leaving small chunks is a nice textural touch). Transfer mashed avocados into a bowl and add cream and milk; stir together. Add sugar, vanilla, and lime juice and stir until all ingredients are well blended.

Transfer mixture to the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions. The above recipe made about a gallon of ice cream in a bucket-style electric ice cream maker.

Phase One: Soft Serve

With this particular model of ice cream maker, DS turned the paddle on and let it mix until the paddle slowed and/or the motor stopped. At that point, the ice cream was supposed to have reached a soft serve consistency. In this case, however, DS ran into an issue: the outer layer of ice cream, smack up against the cold metal container, froze more quickly than the center, so the paddle stopped sooner than it was supposed to.

Taking a risk, DS took the next step: he removed the metal container, put a lid on it, and stuck it in the freezer, banking on the probability that the ice cream was already well-blended and would stiffen up if it was left to chill for awhile. His gamble paid off.

Phase Two: Hard Serve

When he removed the metal bucket from the freezer, the ice cream had stiffened up nicely. It ended up being somewhere partway between soft- and hard serve in consistency, smooth and creamy, with a pale greenish color to it and little bits of avocado throughout.

Phase Three: PROFIT!!

The final result was in-smegging-credible. Avocado is high in oil, so it emulsified readily, producing an evenly-textured ice cream broken by soft little chunks here and there. The amount of sugar was just enough to put an edge on the natural sweetness of the avocados, but not overwhelm it. The flavor of the avocados dominated the mixture, but was subtle and mellow in a way that only avocados can be.

We all ate three bowls of the stuff the first time around. The second time DS added cinnamon. Next time he's thinking of trying it with honey.