Who Is The Red Flash?

i recognize this is a pretty offensive image, but it's still funny

last night, i did some almost impromptu cateing for the late-night crew at mrs smith’s workplace.  the hard working agency types were pulling a radical all-nighter (probably super top-secret like most things in the high powered world of advertisation). i must say i was impressed, and somewhat flabbergsted at the commitment displayed by these indsutrious little advertising elves, particularly as i am an intensely lazy individual whose main focus while “on the job” is to craft novelty towers from the office recycling or stare out the window dreaming of a better place where unicorns lick my face…

anyway…

mrs smith decided that in order to work all night at their optimum performance levels, these creative types needed a little dash of culinary inspiration (i.e. dinner). so she enlisted my help to provide her typewriter monkeys with the vital sustenance they needed to keep working long into the dark night.

I’ve not really done much in the way of catering before (apart from a team away day for the now sadly defunct “food is love”) but i do find it kind of exciting. not like something i’d like to do for a job, but there is something quite satisfying about making food for a large (ish) group of people outside of a dinner party or similar setting.  i suppose it’s the lack of connection that means no-one has to complement you if they don’t feel that what you’ve produced is any good. if, for example (and i was a little concerned about this myself), what you serve is too spicy, or salty, or flawed in some other way, chances are that you’ll hear about it, and most likely directly. especially if you’re being paid (which i wasn’t for some reason – i guess it’s all about the love here at smith & co.). unlike at a dinner party where you’ll usually go out of your way to complement the host and his cuisine while guzzling gallons of cheap rose, only to bitch about how the mussels were rubbery and trifle just isn’t innovative on the bikeride home (and if you don’t bike home, then that’s why you’re fat). so i was quite keen to see how this whole event would go .

perhaps predictably, i decided on korexican birdreedos as beeing a pretty good option for the 20 or so people who really weren’t there for the food, but were there to work. it’s an interesting set of flavours, oh so trendy, easily adjusted on the spice-o-meter, and all packaged up into a familliar tortilla shaped wrap that even the most culinarily prudish can relate to. there was at least one vegetarian, so i did some tofu, mushrooms and peppers, in the same bulgogi style that i have used twice before as well as beef and pork for the non hippies. unlike the first time, i decided that it was much more cost effective to make my own bulgogi marinade, not to mention being much more fun, and hopefully excellently and more awesome ( i’m well aware that that makes very little sense…). the recipe i used is pretty simple:

(this is for about 4-6 people)

• 3 tablespoons  light soy
• 2 tablespoons crushed garlic
• 1 teaspoon crushed ginger
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons korean chilli paste
• 2 tablespoons korean fermented bean paste
• 1 teaspoon chilli flakes
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 finely minced onion (i used the bamix and a splash of mirin to completely liquidize this guy)
• sesame seeds
• 1 tablespoon mirin

-mix it all up, marinate your meat.
like anything, i adjusted the quantities to get the flavour that i thought was right, and i went a little easier on the chilli than usual.

i made everything up the night before, and left the meat and tofu (seperated of course) to marinate.
the next day i loaded up the king of shopping, edwardes, with all the tools and ingredients and headed off to south london. the massive load unfortunately proved too much for edwardes, and his back whhel near exploded under the load, breaking a total of 9 spokes, which will lead to his untimely demise, at least in his current form.

anyway. everything went really straightforward, although cooking a large quantity of meat and rice on a small, shit stove in an advertising agency is considerably more difficult than i had anticipated. it would have been a lot easier if i’d had a hot plate that spanned two burners, but as it was, it turned out ok, i just cooked the meat in small batches and put it in the oven to keep warm.

everything else was super easy, there was plenty of food for everyone, it wasn’t too spicy, and it went really quickly, so i can only assume that it was a success. the only thing i noticed was that the beef was a little dry.

even though i enjoyed the experience, mostly because it’s pretty great to know that something you’ve created has given a whole bunch of people a tortilla full of joy, i don’t think i’m goign to start an office catering business just yet.

there’s nothing better in this land of eternal sunshine than the conjunction of two important astrological events. namely the end of a long-weekend and the beginning of national bbq week. i have to admit, that i had not anticipated having a bbq, which is an event normally associated with the grilling of bloody flesh into delectable chunks of joy, with a large posse of vegans. vegans who, admittedly were all sweet and completely lacking the aggressive millitant approach that so often reflects badly upon their kind. I decided that i would rise, culinarily , to the challenge, and prepare a feast of vegan treats to add to the communal table. i hit upon home made pita bread, hummous, vegan burgers and vegan cupcakes for desert.

so in order:

the pita bread was easy, surprisingly easy in fact. i began by consulting the fresh loaf, an amazing repository of baking advice. i found their recipe so effective, that i didn’t even need to adapt it, so i’ll just reproduce it here:

3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
1 packet yeast (or, if from bulk, 2 teaspoons yeast)
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups water, roughly at room temperature
2 tablespoons olive oil, vegetable oil, butter, or shortening

combine, knead, prove, knock back, rest, rollout, bake for about 3 mins. eat.
i’m learning that you always need to knead, and knead some more to bake the good breads

hummous is easy too, and a real winner. smash up chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt, pepper, olive oil gradually until it tastes nice.
vegan burgers were a bit harder. without the eggs to bind them up they can go very crumbly, but the addition of rice flour helped it to bind ok, and then a pre baking before their time on bbq meant they worked out really well.

the big disappointment was the vegan cupcakes. completely fucked. i really don’t know what caused their unfortunate failure, again it was the lack of eggs, i fear. apparently there’s many ingredients like soy yoghurt and flaxseed and such like to help replace the binding and leavening effect of the hen’s bounty. so back to the drawing board i go.

as for the actual bbq, a remarkable vegetable kebab courtesy of cyanide cupcake and my vegan burgers filled our pita breads with meat free, cruelty free, ideology free friendship. the pre-mixed mojito alcopops flowed, and so did the rain, at which point we all rushed in to take turns behind the wheel of bekki’s boat shaped bar.

who woud have thought you could have such fun without meat!

first, i have to state that this is a totally brilliant concept, and not one of my own devising. i was first alreted to the concept by the amazing kogi bbq story, and i got the original recipe from seriouseats, which i often mine for culinary inspiration.

basically, after an entirely successful sunday breakfast of bacon and egg quesadillas, we had several toritllas (actually they were turkish tortilla style flatbreads, but let’s not split hairs, ok, at least not today). rather than see them dry out and curl up at the edges, mocking my predilection for wasteful profligacy (you didn’t see that coming, did you?), i racked my brains for something to do with them. lo and behold, up into my rss reader pops the aforementioned article on seriouseats.

a lack of time, and a late finish at the office solving river crimes across the galaxy, meant that i didn’t quite have the inclination to make my own bulgogi sauce. wrestling with my own weakness, i headed straight for my favourite japanese-korean supermarket to pick up a jar of excellent pre made bulgogi marinade, along with some amazingly zesty and powerfully stanked kim chee. the previously mentioned recipe suggests finely chopping both the pork and the kim chee, but i prefer to stripify the entire affair, so left the kim chee chunky and cut the pork into long strips.

i also really wanted to use the lime marinated onions, but had no limes. disaster i hear you wail. indeed no. my ever agile mind settled upon the amazing flavour combination of lemon juice, lemon zest and mirin. worked a treat. i also added some iri goma (black toasted sesame seeds) and nori flakes to the rice, for some extra jazz.

if you’ve never had a korean birdreedo, then stop farqing around and make one immediately, you’ll never look back