<\/p>\n
I’ve never had a really large repertoire in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Cooking for me is a hassle, but a necessary one.<\/p>\n
Obv.<\/p>\n
I dislike\u00a0those<\/em>\u00a0cookery programmes with a deeply-held and profound sense of loathing.<\/p>\n They are all a load of pretentiousness, served up on a bed of rocket with some strawberry coolis, on a slate.<\/p>\n A fucking slate.<\/p>\n I ask you.<\/p>\n When did roofing materials start to become something we ate our food off?<\/p>\n What’s next?<\/p>\n Restaurants will be serving your prawn spritzer from the tailpipe of a 1973 Ford Cortina?<\/p>\n Anyway.<\/p>\n I digress.<\/p>\n Back to my repertoire in the kitchen.<\/p>\n And I mean cooking, not swearing or doing the washing up.<\/p>\n Though I am hella good at the last two in that sentence.<\/p>\n There’s a cottage pie. Made with minced Quorn.<\/p>\n And a pretty mean spag bol. Made with minced Quorn.<\/p>\n And a pasta dish (which isn’t the main feature ‘cos that’s the sauce which changes massively every time I make it).<\/p>\n And a sweet and sour stir fry (easy on the ginger, heavy on the pineapple, medium on peppers but chuck in some mange tout and don’t forget to fold in the rice for a flash-fry before serving). Made with chicken. Or chicken Quorn. It’s up to you.<\/p>\n And there’s a chicken (or Quorn) stir fry (lots of teriyaki sauce, a touch of soy, and about half the quantity of teriyaki of Worcester sauce, and frozen peas added straight from the freezer for the flash-fry when you fold in the rice).<\/p>\n I suppose those are my main runners and riders.<\/p>\n Anything else is an also-ran.<\/p>\n So I’ve been dicking around (to use a well-known cookery expression) with the chicken stir fry for the last three Tuesdays.<\/p>\n There’s a reason for the Tuesday thing which I’m not going to reveal here, The dicking around has, to a point, been successful.<\/p>\n Except last week, when the chicken tasted like the sole of a well-used Wellington boot.<\/p>\n I mean it was rough, tough, and rubbery (insert racist Chinese joke here and I’ll kick your arse out of town, OK?).<\/p>\n So this week I didn’t cook with Ocado’s I cooked with Morrison’s average chicken.<\/p>\n Which was absofuckinglutely lovely.<\/p>\n But the rice (Ocado’s own-brand long grain) let the side down very badly.<\/p>\n Very very badly.<\/p>\n In fact, Ocado’s own-brand long grain rice let the side down like Wayne Rooney at a grab the granny competition, in a Scunthorpe nightclub on a Monday night.<\/p>\n If that’s even possible.<\/p>\n Over half an hour to cook (despite the ‘simmer for 10-11 minutes’ instructions on the packet).<\/p>\n And it still had more bite that Theresa May at PMQs.<\/p>\n Mind you, that’s not a lot of bite, going by last week’s piss-poor performance.<\/p>\n But enough of politics, and back to the kitchen.<\/p>\n I want to give up on the Tuesday night chickenarama.<\/p>\n The Food Gods have had their laugh.<\/p>\n Chicken with the consistency of a Goodyear that’s done 25,000 miles.<\/p>\n Rice that won’t fucking cook.<\/p>\n Nah. I’m done with it.<\/p>\n Next Tuesday I’m going to flip over to one of my other tried and tested.<\/p>\n The trouble is, I’m likely to be the only one who will eat it.<\/p>\nbut it involves my double-life as a secret agent for the CIA<\/del>.<\/p>\nworst<\/del> finest chicken (because it isn’t fine, obv).<\/p>\n