From: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Monsieur Not Al, Cordon Bleu Masterchef)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Pained Whale?
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:33:48 GMT
Reply-To: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Monsieur Not Al, Cordon Bleu Masterchef)
Organization: Penicuik People's Revolutionary Sheepdog Cookery Class

In article <26653@castle.ed.ac.uk> fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:
>
> Microwave Food:
>
> a) Read timing information on packet.
>
> b) Do like it says.
>
> That's it. A great meal every time :-)

Which planet do you live on Mike? Certainly not one in the same reality as
I do. Here's the *correct* recipe...

Microwave Food:

a) Read timing information on packet.

b) Do like it says.

c) After the microwave has beeped, have a look at it, conclude it needs a
   bit longer because the given times were for a 700W oven, not a 650W one,
   spend the next five minutes cooking it in 20 second bursts (hence
   wasting all the time you'd saved by microwaving it) checking to see if
   it's done.

d) Decide it needs a really *long* burst at the "Irradiate until it glows"
   setting, mainly because the "Defrost" setting that you were supposed to
   do it at for the first five minutes seems to do nothing but turn the
   light on and spin the plate around without actually doing anything
   unnecessary like *cooking* the bloody thing.

e) Eat it, ignoring the solid chunks of ice you find buried in the depths
   of it that 20 minutes of near constant microwave radiation somehow
   managed to miss completely.

Oh, and then there's another favourite - nothing quite as handy-dandy as
microwave junk food, it's heat'n'serve junk food.

The thing that *really* peeves me about these is that the cooking
instructions for cooking from frozen *always* say "pre-heat oven to gas
mark 9 then heat pizza at gas mark 6 for 11 minutes".

Yet *nobody* on the planet actually pre-heats the oven, do they? If you're
cooking something quick and simple, you don't want to preheat the oven for
x minutes, come back and put the pizza in then come back still later. You
want to shove the pizza in the oven and leave it. So why the hell don't
they just give a time to cook that takes into account the fact it's going
into a cold oven?

And, to finish off, a genuine recipe...

Spaghetti Surprise
------------------

Ingredients:

Cheese
Stuff to make a roux (sp?) with
Mushrooms
Bacon
Bread
Pitta bread
Sweetcorn niblets
Anything else you might have lying around that seems suitable

Method:

Take the pitta, cut into halves and open out the halves. Make a roux
(y'know, white sauce thing, can't remember the ingredients offhand). Add
cheese (any sort but I favour a mild cheddar) turning it into a cheese
sauce. Chop up the mushrooms, add them. The cheese sauce should now turn a
sort of unpleasant brown-grey colour. Toast the bread, cut into little
crouton-y bits. Add that too. Cut the bacon into little bits. Add that too.
Take the sweetcorn niblets, add those too. Heat the sauce, ignoring how
unpleasant it looks. When it's nice and hot, ladle it into the (heated)
pitta bread halves. Serve - two pitta pouches per person should be enough.
Side salad is optional. Given the less-than-appetising appearance of the
sauce (damn mushrooms) it's actually pretty delicious.

Yeah, and the name is a rather lame joke that's unfortunately stuck - the
surprise being there's no spaghetti in it.

--
		Not Al Crawford - Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk
      "Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist sheepdog thang"