Tenth Post: Week 11.

Week 11. It's something that most undergrads will not have heard of. It's something most postgrads will not have heard of because we don't work on an arbitrary weeks system. It's the week after all the undergrads have gone, and all services shut down despite our requirements to work staying the same or increasing. It's unpleasant. It's cold. It's lonely. It's time for 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One'.

To spice things up a bit I will be doing three mini-reviews of four meals that I have not tried before. The Tesco 'Light', 'Italian' and 'Classic English' menus are not ones that I have sampled before, but there's a first time for everything. We will be rounding things out with a nice Sundary roast from Asda.

Wednesday Night: Light Bangers and Mash

The first thing you notice about this dish is the fact that the potato is wrong. It doesn't just look wrong, or act wrong, but it has some sort of transcendental wrongness. It's frozen in a peak, as though it has just been secreted from some ungodly mechanical orifice in the factory. This is not a frozen meal, so I must assume it has some sort of quick-setting property such that even the ripples are still preserved. The whole blob is solid, and can be slid around in the packet as a cohesive whole. I think if I tried, I could snap it. This does not bode well.

Before

After - note the lack of change in the potato

The ingredient list is also pretty interesting. Light meals tend to sound more wholesome, due to their market, so there's not much in the way of E numbers and preservatives, which is nice. One ingredient did catch my eye though: Pork Rind. That's skin, folks. I have to admit that this blog was in large part inspired by Steve, Don't Eat It!, the second episode of which was in fact just a jar of Pickled Pork Rind. Skin in vinegar. I didn't think I would be sinking to such depths so soon.

Welcome to Flavour Country

Upon microwaving, the meal has not changed much. The block of potato has not changed shape but has become more gelatinous. It slithers onto the plate mostly whole. I am surprised by how much onion is in the gravy, as that's quite a good sign.

Speaking of skin, the potato has one.

ACTION SEQUENCE!
Provide your own sound effects

Despite appearances, this meal is actually really nice. The potato tastes like...wait for it...a potato! Not salty crap like most mash you get in packets. Sure it could use some butter, but I really expected worse. The sausages are a little anemic in meatyness but the gravy is delicious. Its onion and redcurrant I believe. It makes the potato quite pleasant too.


Roundup:
Skin Level: Copacabana Beach
Saving Grace: Sauce
Rating: 7/10. Tasty, but a little unfilling, and a little scary

Friday Night: Fish and Chips
As I live with the spectre of Christianity, and I am British, I chose to get fish and chips for Friday. The dish had the classic boxart/reality gulf that one has come to expect from these ready meals.

Even the puppy tray in the background looks worried

I received some Christmas cards in the post today and so chose to add a bit of festive cheer to my plate. I think it adds a little something, even if that something is an additional layer of ennui.

Don't worry, the black bits are just because my baking tray needs a good scrub

As one might expect, the chips are utter shit. Some are burned to a crisp, some are flaccid and undercooked. All are tasteless and unpleasant. They have that sort of floury texture that implies that it's all reconstituted slime. I had to literally douse them in Tesco mustard to make them palatable. The matter was also helped by a bottle of free Mulled Wine I pilfered from a university Christmas outreach event, which added to the flavour.

The fish is alright actually. Doesn't taste bad, and the batter is pretty good. It's a very thin piece of fish, which clearly takes a bit of skill to produce. It's quite grey under the batter, but given that this meal cost me £2, it's actually a pretty cheap and easy way to get some fish into your diet, relative to the fresh stuff.

Reminds me a little of the fish committee scene in
classic 1970's borstal drama, 'Scum'

Regardless, this was all pretty bad. I wouldn't recommend it. Just go to a chippy or something, or get a reputable frozen brand. Tesco do a pretty good bag of frozen salmon that's cheap and quite tasty. I would recommend that over this. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go and get half-cut on free mulled wine before I go to see the Hobbit.

Not Middle Earth's intoxicant of choice, mind

Roundup:
Salt content: 37% of your GDA - surprising for the lack of flavour
Rating: 4/10 - Why would you choose this over decent chippy stuff?

Saturday Lunch: Light Sweet and Sour Chicken
This is another example of where I am trying a different version of a dish I have had before. Instead of the standard Ken Hom stuff I am intrigued to see what the Light version is like. It's clear to see there are smaller portions, which makes sense, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be any big surprises in the appearance of the meal.

Colourful!

Rather than the usual egg fried rice I think this is boiled rice. In addition to the customary peas you get in other Tesco Chinese meals, there are flecks of red pepper. These are mostly cosmetic as they don't really have any discernible flavour. The same goes for the rice, which has a good texture but no real flavour. At least the peas are sweet and juicy, unlike the bullets you often get in a microwave meal.

The chicken is alarming. The flavour is alright but it has the chalky texture common to most Tesco ready meals. There is no evidence of the creepy ridges from my last review. I have no idea how one manufactures a meal that requires the chicken to marinate in the sauce for literally days and still maintain absolute lack of moisture. This is dryer than an Oscar Wilde quip.

"Don't bring me into this" - Oscar Wilde

I suppose it would be better if the sauce was pleasant but really it's just tangy red syrup. I wouldn't dip a chip in this.

Roundup:
Comedy categories: Will not dignify
Rating: 4/10, just dissatisfying

Sunday Dinner: Asda Roast Beef for One
Ahh here we go...this is what we are all here for. My first entry on this blog was inspired by a Sunday Asda lunch, and here we are again. There's a special kind of despair associated with a traditional family meal that can be prepared for one in 6 minutes. The question is, am I a GENIUS for picking this up for £2.50, or are the people who are lovingly preparing a meal at great cost and expense really the winners in this imaginary situation? Let's find out.

A Rainbow on a plate

The meal consists of mash, about four thin slices of roast beef in gravy, and some carrots and broccoli as a side. Note the odd inconsistency of the gravy...at 12-2 o'Clock on the plate it is thick and congealed. At 8-12 o'Clock it is thin and watery. It's basically a diurnal representation of my smokers cough.

The meat is amazingly thinly sliced, so I have to fold it up to get any kind of bite into it. Its oddly rubbery and tastes like it has been soaked in some salt to preserve it. It's halfway between sliced sandwich beef and pastrami, either of which would be nicer than this. Apologies for the sound on this clip, it was Kirsty Wark repeating an ignorant homophobic quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

The veg is really quite good, and the mash tastes like there's at least some butter in it. This does not distract from my alarm that they saw fit to comb the mash like a zen garden in the packet. Either that or they press a trilobite into each tray.

Zen?

I guess the problem here is that microwave roast dinners are sufficient mimics of true roast meals to remind you of happier times, but are not in themselves pleasant enough to create happy times of their own. This juxtaposition of sentimental nostalgia and contemporary unpleasantness creates a heady mix.

There's a certain unpleasantness on the packet. It has a kind of stamp or brand that labels this a 'Meal for One'. I am reminded of the Soviet Bureaucracy simulator 'Papers Please'. It's just a badge of shame, and nothing more.

The Dark Mark

The Roundup!
Packaging: Designed to shame
Meat thickness: Only Waf-fer thin
Rating: 5/10 - Palatable but misery inducing

Ninth Post: Christmas Party Food Special

I have decided to do a Christmas party food special today. This is due to the fact that today is the last day of term, which means only two more weeks of unrelenting work for me. Why just now I am being hassled to do more work. Not right now, Professor...it's 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One' time.

 ♫ On the twelfth day of Christmas, my diet gave to me, ♫
♫ Twelve extra kilos, ♫
♫ Eleven new wrinkles... ♫

In keeping with the twelve days of Christmas, I have chosen for tonight's dinner to have 12 pigs in blankets. In order to balance the meal out I have also added 3 jalepeno poppers.

♫ Ten greasy face spots, ♫
♫ Nine lost years.... ♫

For a beverage I wanted to get some eggnog, but in spite of us adopting all the worst parts of American Christmas traditions (the excessive consumerism, the receiving rather than the giving, the Christmas album and of course the sitcom Christmas special) we have yet to reach a point where this nectar of the gods is readily available in the UK.

♫ Eight dry heaves, ♫
♫ Seven caffeine shakes... ♫

Therefore I have prepared a snowball - Advocaat and lemonade. For dipping condiments I have chosen dipping mustard and chilli mayo. I guess the former is for the sausages and the latter for the jalepenos, but I won't be too frightened to let them mix. I do so love to experiment.

♫ Six hours sleep, ♫
♫ DIAAAAARHEAAAAA... ♫

The concept of pigs in blankets has always somewhat concerned me. What other food do we take one part of an animal and wrap it in another? Then again, I had pigeon with pigeon in pigeon sauce once, which was nice. I think that the main problem with pigs in blankets as a concept is that the awesomeness of bacon can easily mask the flavour of a mediocre sausage. I fear this is what is happening right now. The delicious, crispy, smokey bacon is wrapped around a flaccid, pallid and flavourless wretch of a banger.

♫ Four cavities, ♫
♫ Three mouth Ulcers... ♫

I feel that I should say that I am not eating party food just for the benefit of this blog. This is not a regular occurrence, but I couldn't say that this is the first time. Neither can I say that this would be the first time I have eaten Christmas novelty food. Last time was at The Nightmare Before Christmas Music Festival, and all we had to cook with was a kettle. That meant lots of Pot Noodles, and given the time of year, that meant trying the Christmas Pot Noodle. It was weird. It was pretty much just a chicken soup pot noodle with a few cranberries and flecks of what was meant to be meat. It tasted bad. It tasted wrong. It tasted like the perrenial uptick in suicide rates around the holidays.

♫ Two wheezing lungs, ♫
♫ And a Vitamin deficiency... ♫

The meal tonight was pretty enjoyable actually. The mix of flavours was unusual but quite complimentary. If you haven't tried party food for dinner you really should. There's nothing like a plate of bhajis.

THE ROUNDUP!

Number of ingredients in what is essentially pig in pig: 23
Sleeps until Christmas: 19
Minutes spent making a bad version of the 12 days of Christmas: 18
Rating: 10/10, bacon cures many sins.

Eighth Post: Pulled Pork Sandwiches

 Tonight on 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One' I will responding to the critics who complain smugly that I should try cooking. In order to meet their expectations I will be making some 'delicious' pulled pork sandwiches. Asda will be helping me in this endeavour.

'Great for Sharing'
Not likely, Asda. Not likely.

I have to say that the contents were rather less impressive than the box. Unfortunately my camera died during the photo, possibly out of self-preservation. Thus the photo is very poor quality and actually masks how disgusting it looks. The brownish patches were actually vivid orange like a Mini Cheddars packet. During decanting this substance stuck in the packet, but I chose to add it in case it was important for the flavour.

Imagine this but irradiated

In order to make this more enjoyable I have elected to rent a movie on BT Vision while cooking proceeds. I have chosen 'Only God Forgives'. I bought the soundtrack to this on vinyl when it came out, but haven't seen the film. I had assumed the badass song from the trailer would be on it, but it was not. It's one of my most regrettable impulse buys, but there's the potential that this pork will edge it out of the leaderboard.

I am not sure if I am following the plot correctly but it seems that Ryan Gosling's character has a form of clairvoyance which he can only use when he is passively watching a consenting woman masturbate. The Notebook this aint.

Just as we arrived at a scene where the villain was doing Karaoke, my kitchen timer finished. I was required to take the pork which had been cooking for 45 minutes, remove the liquid, shred it, add sauce and return it to the oven. Yes you heard me right, this 'pulled pork' requires pulling. That's not so much a packet of pulled pork so much as it is...pork.

Ostensibly.

It was strangely spongy. I tried a bit of it and the sauce before the last cooking bit and it was sweet, tender and pleasant.

I really don't want to eat just pork and bread so I have decided to take inspiration from a vegetarian cookbook. I imagine this would be really good with some seared peppers, but I am more taking inspiration from the fact that veggies substitute cheese in place of meat. I will substitute cheese in place of veg. The monterey jack represents panfried courgette and the emmental represents shredded beetroot.

With imagination, anything is possible!

I chose to use Tesco's Finest Oat & Barley Farmhouse bread, because I am a man of some discerning standards. The meat is pretty tasty for the first sandwich. By the second it has become a bit dull. By the third it is cloying. I am suffocating in meat. I retain some for breakfast.

The flavour is basically smokey molasses. I can't really attach any other description to it. It's too sweet, as most ready food is. Apparently they sampled the 'finest BBQ delights' of 'Dallas, Memphis and Kansas City'. I am disinclined to now visit these places.

The Roundup!

One-word film review: Anhedonic
Most surprising ingredient: Vodka! Vodka in the sauce. Who uses vodka as an ingredient in BBQ sauce? Bourbon, maybe but vodka...?
Best ingredient: Panfried Courgette
Rating: 8/10. Not really good enough to be worth the effort of all that pulling

Seventh Post: Audience Challenge, Tesco Value Korma

Today on 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One' I will be following up on Sarah's challenge and tackling a Tesco Everyday Value ready meal: Chicken Korma

 

I have decided that I will only be doing one request meal per month, on account of the general sadism of my internet friends. Last time I left myself at the mercy of facebook I ended up with two-tone dyed pubic hair. I looked like Keith Flint.

 

I have eaten the Tesco's standard Korma an awful lot. It will be interesting to compare it to the budget version. First impression is that upon piercing the film lid a stench of cabbage emerged. This does not bode well.

The decanting experience was quite bad. It didn't come out cleanly, and the sauce was much more liquid than one would expect from a Korma. The sauce visibly settled on the plate, with the front being preceeded by a thick and visible ring of oil.

Not Sure I am ready for this

 The chicken is a little chalky and dry but not really much different to any other ready meal you might care to name.

The sauce is...how do I put this...gritty. In addition, there's some strips of some sort of vegetable in the sauce. I really can't put my finger on it...perhaps celery? I would check the ingredients but I am scared of finding out that there are actually no vegetables in it. 

The marketing says that this is 'Made only with kitchen cupboard ingredients'. That's a weird statement given that I have bleach in a kitchen cupboard. Even if you exclude non-food items, I think you would have a hard time rustling up a chicken korma out of the end of a bulk bag of pasta, some teabags and expired herbs and spices.

Having spent so much money on the premium range I really don't see the difference. Viscosity is no reason to spend an extra pound.
THE ROUNDUP
Price: 95p
E Numbers Preservatives and non-food ingredients: suspiciously absent
Respect for Tesco: Growing
Rating: 9/10

This was actually pretty damn tasty, super cheap and it didn't seem to have any real difference in quality from the preservative-riddled normal one. Oh the money I have wasted. I feel like a Death Stick dealer, and this Everyday Value Chicken Korma is my Obi-Wan.

Sixth Post: the Liquid Breakfast

This morning in 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One I will be looking at my breakfast, which is a can of Rockstar energy drink: fruit punch flavour.
There's a fine politics to energy drink brands. Relentless is my favourite but it's kinda pricey. Monster is tasty and varied but I stopped buying them on account of marketing that was so sexist that it went through to full on misanthropy. No Fear reminds me of shit tshirts worn by dull children. So I am left with rockstar.

The Student's Breakfast Bar

It has vitamins in it, and so purports to be healthy. That's kind of like saying that you are treating an iron deficiency with a shanking.

Looks salubrious, right?

If one peers down into the can the drink itself becomes visible. I think it's trying to look like fruit juice, but it reminds me more of motorcycle oil. The can is blacked out like a porn shop window.

If you look carefully there is an engraving around the rim:
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

Fergus: The Guava flavour? Love that stuff.

Nick (present at the time):It looks delightful from here

The flavour is slightly fruity, with a berry note. This delicate touch is swimming on a tidal wave of apocalyptic sweetness. It reminds me of when I used to eat my mums Canderel artificial sweetener pellets like tic tacs. If sweetness was an acting style, this drink would be Nicolas cage.

Fergus, the guava and green apple are definitely superior. This is more like being kicked in the balls by sugar while a raspberry tickles your earlobe.

There's a slightly oily pallor across my tongue. My throat feels unpleasant. I can feel the caffeine taking effect which is pretty unpleasant on the U1 bus. I'm listening to opera.

I recall an a-level experiment where we gave caffeine to microscopic pond bugs and watched their heart rates increase. Later at Uni we repeated the experiment on ourselves in a lab. I'm still getting data replicates 5 years later.

I didn't know this was made by Barr, purveyors of knockoff coke and disappointing shandy-in-a-can.

The Roundup:

Caffeine content: 160mg
My Heart: skips, skips a beat
Most alarming ingredient: Black Carrot Juice Concentrate. I have never met a black carrot, and it sounds like a euphemism for a penis.
Rating: 5/10, get a different flavour

Toby: 5/10 sounds generous for being punched with a black carrot.

It did the business, Toby.

Fifth Post: Tesco Ken Hom's Kung Po Chicken with Egg Fried Rice.

Tonight on 'Adventures in Depressing Food for One' we will be examining Tesco Ken Hom's Kung Po Chicken with Egg Fried Rice.
I have eaten an awful lot of these during my University career. I would use the hyperbolic phrase "I've had this more times than I have had hot dinners" if that particular idiom didn't have particularly unpleasant connotations in this context.

Miranda: Oh goody!!!

Sarah: Those are somehow bland and disgusting, if memory serves me correctly. The sauce definitely doesn't taste of sweet and sour sauce.

May: Maybe you should try cooking from Scratch

I occasionally cook from scratch...why just this afternoon I made Croque Monsieur. [This was actually a lie. I made slightly fancy cheese on toast.]

Sarah: Come on Mike, get to the gratifying details of disgusting food. Is it humming away in the microwave? 

Yes. It's one of those annoyingly needy microwave meals that requires attention halfway through. Their curry dishes are much more self-reliant.

Sarah: I think I once had a delicious ready curry meal from Tesco. Might have dreamed it though. 

The ingredients are interesting in themselves. I fear that the only authentically asian part of the meal is the fact that the chicken came all the way from Thailand.

May: Oh a croque Monsieur, tres bien! [I feel awful for lying] Don't get me wrong your stati are educating me in the variety of ready meals. I'm not judging - I had a 2am walk in to take away dominos pizza last night. Im still struggling to rehydrate myself from all the salt but DAYUM It was goooooood.

The decanting process is an important part of my experience in ready meals preparation. Some are good, but this is not. First the sauce slithers out like an oilslick. Then the chicken and cashews slops out with an unpleasant plop. Finally whatever grim force is holding the rice in relents, and it slides out in an almost complete brick.

YUMMEH

 I really want to know what practice, process or purpose leads the chicken to take on this texture. It looks like a shoe indent in CSI.

I don't want to do this anymore

Claire: The pictures really add an extra dimension to your reviews. Before seeing them, the food didn't sound thát bad.

May: Grim

I think that this dish really warrants a blow by blow breakdown, because there's a lot going on here:

Chicken: Succulent and tender, even though there are clearly some dark arts at work
Sauce: Syrupy, but with a smokey edge. The Kung Po one is a bit nicer than the sweet and sour
The Rice: Chewy. Veeeeery chewy.
The peas in the rice: Kind of hard like bullets, but once crushed they take on a chalky consistency
The egg: was actually hard to find any, as there doesnt appear to be much, and it tastes of nothing
The cashews: probably the worst part. They are clearly not happy to have been swimming in sauce the past few days. They have rendered down into some sort of wax. While they retain their original shape, they are fragile, and could probably be spread on toast.

I finished eating but the experience was so forgettable that I forgot I was writing this review. Brief roundup:

Sense of malaise: high
Width between chicken grooves: 3mm
Re-evaluation of my life: ongoing
Score: 6/10, simply mediocre.

Sarah: It almost looks like they formed the chicken parts with some sort of scraping machine. I shudder to think.

Tony: Why do you eat such awful food?

I have to satisfy my audience.