Cooking with Colin

It is not very nice out today and so we are in the kitchen doing some cooking.

I am a good cook. My lasagne is “to die for” and guests are always telling me that I should open a restaurant.

I should be so stupid. I did look at taking on a “Greasy Spoon” once except… Do you know what a Full Repairing and Insurance lease is?

My friend didn’t when the owners of the cafe she worked in said that they wanted to chuck it all in and move abroad. Her partner had inherited some money and she had virtually been running that cafe herself for the past three years. A perfect opportunity. Within a month her insurers had explained that the property needed 15 thousand pounds of work before they could renew the insurance and the old owners had moved abroad with all of her money.

Leases are funny things and running a cafe doesn’t really have much to do with food.

Today I am going to show you how to cook one of my signature dishes, “Half a Coconut of Scraps”

Hygiene is probably the most important thing in the kitchen and I recommend sterilising your coconut shell with a kettle full of boiling water after giving it a good wash.

Do this until your camera lens steams up and that should be sufficient.

As for ingredients well, Ideally you would just use lard and kitchen scraps. That is very, very cheap but it melts in the summer sun. I add about a half of one of those little ball things that you can buy by the bucket load and that seems to fix the melting problem.

So next you have to melt your fats. I use a pan. You could probably get away with just using a warm part of your body, lard melts quite easily but a pan works for me and it is not messy.

Finally, you put your stuff in the coconut, let it cool and then pop it in the fridge for a bit. I sometimes put mine in the freezer if it is a hot day.

The difficulty level for this recipe is no more than moderate. Anyone who can bake a loaf of bread or prepare a lasagne from scratch would have no problem with this dish. It should feed between 50-100.

Now for the acid test….

Yes! I believe that dinner has been a success and I feel a great sense of relief and achievement as I always do in these moments.

(Next recipe: Badger nuts with Raisins)