I can’t stand Bulmer’s.  Like all minging ciders,  it always reminds me of heaving my guts out all over the car park of Wesley disco. However, last year I came up with a great use for it – shoving a can of it right up a chicken’s rectum and firing up the barbie.

You may have had a beer can chicken before, this is my variation on it. What normally happens is that you get a 500ml can of beer, drink half of it, pierce it a few times in the centre of the can, put it up a chicken’s jacksie and stand it up on a barbecue with the lid down for about an hour. The outside of the bird is left crispy and smokey but the inside is tender and moist from the beer. Or in my case, cider.

There is an irony here. When Bulmer’s first brought out it’s Pear Cider, the only reaction to it on the streets went a little something like this:  “Jaysus I had a few of them Bulmer’s Pear last night and I spent the whole morning on the bog. Put a road right through me.” And here I am telling you to plug an arse with it.

Seriously though, all butts aside, there aint no finer way to cook a chicken. You should be left with something that looks like this:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 normal sized chicken (corn fed taste best I reckon)
• 1 500 ml can of Bulmer’s

FOR THE SAUCE:

• ¼ cup of English mustard
• ¼ cup of Dalkey Mustard (or other grainy one)
• ¼ cup of Dijon Mustard
• 1 teaspoon of Olive Oil
• ¼ cup of white wine vinegar
• ½ cup of cloudy apple juice (Aldi + Lidl do a good one)
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• ½ teaspoon of salt

METHOD:

Combine all of the sauce ingredients together by whisking them in a bowl.

Take half the sauce and throw it on the chicken, keep the other half for another meal. Let the chicken marinade overnight if you can.

Heat up your barbie. Open up the Bulmer’s and pour half of it out. Then pierce the can at the halfway mark a few times.

Stand your chicken up right and shove the can up it’s Brenda Fricker. It should be able to stand on it’s own now, without falling.

Place it on the barbie on a medium heat for 1 ¼ hours to 1 ½ hours. When it’s all golden on the outside and the leg can come away fairly easily, it’s cooked.

The mustard sauce gives the outside of the chicken a slightly spicy flavour and a rich colour while the Bulmer’s keeps everything moist and brings a great sweetness.

SERVE WITH:

Some decent, dry French cider. The stuff from Normandy that comes in a wine bottle. There’s loads of it around, a few different brands. Beats the shit out of the Bulmer’s any day.

Ray D’Arcy interviewed a lady recently who wrote a book all about diaries that teenagers keep.  After reading out excerpts of some exceptionally embarassing adolescent stories from her collection, Ray and his team felt inspired to dust off their own log books and share them with the nation. Quite possibly one of the bravest acts I’ve ever heard on the radio.  I cringed til I could cringe no more, not just from what I heard, but from the floods of my own memories that hit me because of what they shared.

Images of my early rocker days quickly haunted me. And it’s not even my brutal mullet that makes me go morto years later. It was my denim metal jacket covered in patches with the immortal words, “MOSH WITH TOSH”, emblazened on the back in permanent marker. My single most embarassing teenage memory, all 12 letters of it.

Not that I am no longer a fan of metal and rock anymore. I just don’t see the need to share my musical tastes with the rest of the world, at least not on my clothing.

Back then, we had to wait for one of the lads to have enough bread to buy the latest Megadeth or Metallica album on vinyl and then he/she would be bombarded with a load of blank tapes for all the rest of us to blag. And you’d never heard any of those kinds of tunes on the radio, not so today thankfully. Three days of week on Phantom FM at 10 pm they lash out every variety of dark rock/industrial/metal. One of which is hosted by the charming Laura Lee Conboy, my guest contributor this week. Her show Spiral Stares on Thursdays features everything from Alien Sex Fiend to The Sisters of Mercy.

On top of being a fantastic radio DJ, she is also a budding Japanophile with a level 4 understanding of their language and a keen interest in their cuisine.  She shares with us her take on the classic Vegetable Gyoza, a main staple in the diets of millions of Japanese.  But first, a wee bit of  Q agus A….

What’s the one food or dish that would make you instantly puke?

Anything with meat in it as I’m a veggie!!

I used to love red peppers, when I was little I ate so much I was ill…not such a big fan these days….

Red wine and I’m sure it was lots of it

What’s the worst thing you can eat before going on air?

Pasta because it fills you up but then you’re starving again!

Have you ever gone on a whacky food diet?

Only because I have so many allergies, I went off anything I had an intolerance too, but gave up on that, I like my food too much!!

What’s your all time favourite hangover meal?

A veggie fry!

And everything is おいしい Oishii !  (tasty in Japanese!)

Many thanks to Laura Lee Conboy for her time this week! Check out her show on Thursdays at 10 pm, it’s deadly! www.phantom.ie

I got locked with a Cougar the other night. A proper one too. She was well into her 80’s. By 12.30, I had my fill of drink and could barely walk, yet she didn’t seem to have a bother on her. I stumbled out of the boozer and woke up the next day with the most terrifying hangover.

We were both waking a great man, Mr. Joseph Corrigan, her brother in law and father to my good friend Bilbo Bangkok. The session was in The Gate Bar in Crumlin where Bilbo, Joseph and I had shared many pints before. Joe was survived by his wife and 4 kids. He was given a fantastic send off, one that involved a geansaí load of gargoyle with lots of family and friends having the craic. May he rest in peace.

Double digits of alcohol units are all well and good for seasoned octogenarians who know how to handle their brandy, but not for the weak hearted such as myself. I had a funeral to attend and I felt like I should have been at my own.  After the obligatory, berocca and solpadeine cocktail I opened the fridge and noticed I still had some pizza dough from the weekend. Ten minutes later I was wolfing down a calzone (folded pizza) and washed it back with a double espresso. Just about made it to the church, still in a jocker but feeling ever so slightly more human.

Making pizza is actually very easy. If you have a fear about baking anything, this recipe will get you over it.  If you make this dough it will keep for a week if you break it up and individually seal the portions in cling film. I use my barbie to make them. Do the same yourself but only if you have one with a lid. You can also cook them in a normal oven of course but it is best to use a brownie baking tray as it is easier to remove the pizza when done. The polenta on the base is a must. It prevents the pizza from sticking and makes it good and crunchy.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE CORK STREET MARINARA:

This sauce got it’s name after the  exact location where I got all the ingredients, the Lidl that is nearest to my gaff. It couldn’t be cheaper, you can make a big pot of it for about 6 quid, freeze what you don’t use on the day or it will keep in the fridge for a week.  Don’t be a food snob and think that you can’t make a good sauce from a massive German supermarket. This one ticks all the right boxes for what a decent Italian gravy should be.

- 1 whole bulb of garlic

- 1 jar of Lidl sun dried tomatoes

- 3 packets of Lidl passata

- 1 tube of Lidl tomato puree

- 2 tablespoons of sugar

- 1.5 teaspoons of salt

- 2 teaspoons of pepper

- 1 liter of water

- 1 tablespoon of oregano

METHOD:

- Rub a little oil round the garlic and roast it for about 25 minutes at 180 degrees. Then take it out and let it cool.

- While that’s cooking, pour all the oil from the sun dried tomatoes into a big pot and heat it up good and hot, but not too hot.

- Then you stick in the sun dried tomatoes and fry them off for about 5 minutes. When they’ve taken on a darker colour, lash in the passata and fry that off for about a minute, stirring it all up.

- Slice your roasted garlic in half, but not from the top, across. Then scoop out all the garlic into the pot with a spoon or with your fingers. Add in everything else, stir it up. Let it cook off for 5 minutes. Then get one of those soup blenders and liquidize the whole lot. Bring it to the boil and then let it simmer for an hour on a low heat so that it can thicken up and intensify.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE BASE:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 packet dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 1/4 cups of Type 00 flour (may use a little more or less). You can get this in any Superquinn.
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon of polenta(You can get this in a lot of supermarkets now but they sell it in The Asian Market too)
• Dried Mozzarella cheese, enough for 3 x 10 inch pizzas, a couple of bags basically.

METHOD:

Get a large bowl and mix the water, yeast and sugar. Mix it gently for about 30 seconds with a wooden spoon. Then lash in the flour and salt. Knead all this for about 15 minutes.

Then on a flat, dry surface with a little flour on it, roll out the dough. Place the dough into a greased bowl and cover with a clean towel. Place in a warm, draft free place for 1 hour to 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and roll to desired size. It helps if you roll away from yourself, you get better control of the shape and size.

Get your oven or barbecue on and as hot as they can get. Roll out the dough as flat as you can and then sprinkle on some polenta and roll it into the dough. Flip the dough over and smother it in some of the Cork Street Marinara sauce, taking care to leave the edges sauce free. Drop a fistful of cheese on top of the sauce and then wet the edges of the pizza dough with a brush dipped in water. Fold the pizza into itself by bringing one half of the edge of the wet dough to meet the other half. Ideally you wanna aim for a half moon shape but it doesn’t really matter too much. Push down the edges hard so that they seal. It’s not a bad idea to let that dry for at least a few minutes coz if you don’t, it may open up when you cook it.

If you’re using your barbie keep the lid on. It should cook in about eight minutes with a nice char grilled finish underneath. About 10 minutes in a normal oven.

A Crumlin Calzone