Irish Horlicks.
Premise:
If you can "Irish" a coffee by adding a shot of whiskey and topping it with cream, does the same apply to other beverages? I chose to carry out this "Irishing" on Horlicks because it seemed to be the ideal extreme - the anti-coffee.
Preparation:
Make a mug of Horlicks, throw in a shot of Irish Whiskey, and top with cream. Bingo - Irish Horlicks!
Result:
Absolutely scrummy. The whiskey complements the malty Horlicks taste superbly, and the cream makes it even smoother and, well, creamier. Highly recommended.
Score:
Beetroot Omelette.
Premise:
Falling into the category of desperation
cookery, the beetroot omelette was created one Sunday when I found that my food supplies had run down so low that all I had left was some eggs and some pickled beetroot. The possibilities were somewhat limited, but rather than play safe and eat them separately I decided to combine them to see what happened.
Preparation:
Preparation is as straightfoward as it gets - fry some beaten eggs in a pan and chuck in some diced beetroot.
Result:
Irredeemably foul. I'm not sure if there is a word that means the opposite of synergy, but if there is it applies here to a huge extent - combining two things to create something much less than the sum of its parts. The only circumstance where I could recommend that anybody makes one of these abominations is if they have a burning desire to see the colour "purplish-yellow" which almost certainly exists nowhere else in nature.
Score:
(serving suggestion)
Guinness Ice Lolly.
Premise:
The quest for an alcoholic ice-lolly needs no justification...
Preparation:
Take a can of guinness, pour it into a glass, stick a fork in it (prop it up so it's vertical), chuck it in the freezer and wait. One slight improvement to this recipe is to stir in a shot of Tia Maria to the guinness before freezing, which obviously makes it a bit more potent, but also sweetens it up a little (without it the lolly is a little sour).
Result:
Superb stuff - a near perfect guinness ice lolly. The only imperfection is the head, which although it has a great texture, will be on the bottom of the lolly when you eat it. This aside, you do get the best part of a pint of black, alcoholic, ice lolly, which has got to be a good thing.
Score:
Extreme cheese and pickle sandwich.
Premise:
If you ask for a cheese and pickle sandwich anywhere in the UK, you'll almost always be given cheddar cheese and ploughmans pickle. Given the vast array of different cheeses and pickles available you could, however, feasibly be given any one of an almost unlimited number of different combinations. This recipe was an attempt to discover a more exciting alternative to an established classic. Thus was born the Danish Blue and Lime pickle sandwich...
Preparation:
Slap liberal helpings of Danish Blue cheese (or stilton) and lime pickle between two slices of buttered bread.
Result:
Not as bad as you might think - mainly because if you mix anything at all with lime pickle the result will still taste pretty much of lime pickle. Apart from a slight creamy taste and a little blue cheese tang though, the Danish Blue doesn't add much to the mixture at all.
Score:
(serving suggestion)
English Breakfast Curry.
Premise:
Bored with your usual recipes? Why not offend some proud nations (and probably your tastebuds) by clashing a few cultures together. This recipe is the culinary equivalent of a particle acclerator - brutally colliding two perfectly good meals together to create one rather less good one. The idea, formed after eating a curry with boiled eggs in, went something like this: If you can have eggs in a curry - why not the rest of a full english breakfast?
Preparation:
After frying some onion and garlic, throw in some sausages, bacon, tomatoes, potato, baked beans and curry paste, and then cook for about 20 mins. Add a couple of boiled eggs (halved) and cook it some more.
Result:
Not particularly successful - although
coz I'm a veggie I was using veggie equivalents for the meaty bits - I suspect that using actual bits of dead animal would work a little better. In particular, for bacon I used little soya chip things - and I think this led to a strange powdery texture to the whole curry. The baked beans didn't help much either.
Score:
* This is a lie.
