by
Brakes are a band. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? They tour a fair bit, as do many bands up ‘n’ down these isles of ours. So, like a kinda public service, DiS invited Brakes’ Eamon Hamilton to provide something of a post-tour recovery menu, for the benefit of other bands and crazy gig-goers alike.
And what’d he have in store for us all? Tasty pastry snacks full of succulent meats and delectable vegetables? Quick ‘n’ neat pasta dishes designed to boost your energy levels and leave a slight chilli tingle on your tongue? Battered fish and deep-fried potatoes?
Turns out that Eamon likes soup…
Here are a few recipes for DrownedinSound readers. I hope they like them.
Eamon
These recipes form part of the Preparing For Armageddon series. Cooking skills are vital. As is upper body strength, for climbing up the CREVICES TO HELL, which will open up ACROSS THE WORLD… and for fighting.
To start, i.e. as a starter, you need:
1 chunk of ginger (about half a fist) (60p)
3 lemons (60p)
Pot of honey (£1.50)
Miniature of whisky (£1.45)
Chop up the ginger and chuck it into a pan with the juice from the squeezed lemons (cut them in half, squeeze them with fist into the pot). Add water, three or four tablespoons of honey, and pour in the miniature of whisky. Heat, but don’t let it boil – just let it get to when the will o' the wisps start to form. This is a good drink to help you cook the rest of the meal.
Tomato soup – yum yum yum yum
2 sticks celery (65p, use the rest for tuna mayo sandwiches and dunking in peanut butter)
1 onion (15p)
1 carrot (15p)
1 small potato (10p)
2 tins of chopped tomatoes (£1.30)
Take a chunk of butter the size of two thumbs (10p out of 90p’s worth) and heat it in a pan. Heat a pan of water with a stock cube in it (chicken is yum yum, vegetable is yum; one of those ‘Kallo’ ones is best – £1.45 for pack of twelve cubes) or just hot water with a teaspoon of salt and lots of pepper. Put in a pinch of sugar if you’re loaded from t-shirt sales or near a ruined Co-Op. Get some cream (60p).
Chop up the celery, onion and carrot into small chunks; fry them in the butter (gas mark two or electricity three) for five minutes. This probably takes ten minutes if cooking on an electric hob. Whilst they’re cooking, chop up the potato and chuck it in. Stir and then chuck in the tomatoes – it’ll sizzle like burning flesh. Pour in the stock or the salty water, simmer (slow boil) for about half an hour. Do you have a hand-held whizzer device? Use it now if so. If not, use a potato masher to mash up everything. During Armageddon, who cares: it’ll taste good anyway.
Pour in the cream, pour into bowls. Yum.
Chicken soup
This is the BEST thing to do with a whole chicken – just stuff it into a pot (use the handle of a knife to smash its bones so it fits into the pot), shove in some carrots and celery and a chopped-up onion, pour in enough water to cover it and turn up the heat to 5. When it starts to boil, turn it down to 2 and skim off the scum. Put your wooden spoon in the pot and then put the lid back on, so the steam can come out. Add water if it drops below the chicken. After two hours, pull out the chicken, put it on a chopping board, and then take out the vegetables with a slotted spoon. Chuck the veg, as it is useless. Add some more fresh veg (a chopped carrot, two sticks of celery, a chopped-up leek). Pull the meat off the cooked chicken and save a breast and some leg meat for sandwiches tomorrow. Chuck the rest into the pot. Simmer for twenty minutes. Serve in bowls. This will last one person for two days.
Thanks to Eamon for sharing his priceless culinary secrets with us; when the day comes, we’ll be fully stocked to survive with the cockroaches. Now is a convenient juncture to mention that Brakes’ latest single, ‘Cease & Desist’, is out now on Rough Trade. It’s from the album The Beatific Visions, which is also out now – click to the band’s website, here, for further information.
