Futtocks

On the Great British Bake Off, the first casualty is the smug hipster. Yes!

Pork Ribs (my recipe is a work in progress). 1. Jab vigorously all over with a skewer, then put in the fridge overnight under a shawarma mix dry rub. 2. Cook for three or more hours in the slow cooker/crockpot until tender. 3. Spread with glaze and finish in a regular hot oven 'til sticky. Of course, not as good as proper barbecued ribs over smoke, but if you don't have a BBQ (or a garden) it'll make very tender, sticky, tasty ribs. You will also need soap and water to get the mess off your face. Shawarma mix ingredients (multiply as appropriate) - see previous post. Glaze ingredients. Again, scale up as necessary. Re-glaze halfway through cooking. 2 tbsp Tomato Ketchup 1 tbsp Worcester Sauce 2 tbsp Maple syrup (for a change, try black treacle or go 50/50) 1 tsp chipotle Tabasco

'Brute Man', starring the unforgettable Rondo Hatton.

Oh boy... that could be great or awful. Or, preferably, both.

I remember a long-ago canal holiday in the Canal du Nivernais in France. I was probably too young to appreciate the long, quiet periods when little happened (we had only packed two books for the whole family), but I did enjoy it overall. Especially the way you entered the centre of towns by water instead of road, which gave you a different perspective.

That's not the same programme as the 'All aboard' thing, BTW.

Useful thing to have - Shawarma spice. Good with chicken, as well as lamb koftas. Buy an airtight container, premix and store. INGREDIENTS 1 tbsp. cumin 1 tbsp. ground coriander 1 tbsp. garlic powder 1/2 tbsp. paprika 1 tsp. turmeric 1/2 tsp. ground cloves 1/2 tsp. ground cayenne pepper 1 tsp. ground black pepper 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon You can mix it with plain yoghurt as a marinade for chicken, or fry it for a few seconds in oil before adding to a lamb kebab mix.

BTW, here's the link to a version with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajM3lS8d20U

BTW, if you haven't watched it (and WHY not?), let me nutshell this train wreck of unintentional camp. Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show), Michael Beck (The Warriors) and Persis Khambatta (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) populate this wonderful turkey. Bostwick in particular will want to forget this movie, as he sports ultra-bouffy hair, a headband and some regrettably tight gold lamé jumpsuits. Very "Lion Bee Gee". Khambatta sounds like she was fed her script one word at a time, while Beck gives it some Cletus-style "yee-haw" country boy action. Meanwhile, Edward Mulhare pretends he doesn't know that the producers really wanted Michael Caine but couldn't afford him.

RiffTrax have just announced that they have given 'Megaforce' the full treatment.

Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam, aka "The Turkish Star Wars". I'd known about this film for years, but today I finally got to watch it. There was a bit, early on, which I thought almost made sense... then I watched that bit again, and it didn't. ALL the space footage is nicked from 'Star Wars', despite nearly all of the film being based on Earth. Or a bit of it. That part is unclear. But every now and then they break up the Earth-based ramblings with completely random bits of Tie fighter v X-Wing action. The music is filched from 'Indiana Jones' and 'Flash Gordon', there are many feral orange teddy bears and a lot of bouncing. And one of the 'dead' children seems to have trouble stopping himself from giggling. Long hand-to-hand combat scenes, involving Krap Fu moves, 'Judo Chop' dismemberment of the aforementioned teddy bears, mummies, nunchuck-wielding Chelsea Pensioners, clunky robots and sundry other characters in papier-maché heads. Continuity cockups a-go-go; I mean, how many times exactly did the Earth get blown up? The same stock footage appearing again and again, especially the X-Wing attack on a Death Star which isn't actually mentioned in the plot. Due to aspect ratio differences between the Turkish film and the stolen George Lucas footage, it's more of a Death Egg. Batcrap crazy. Makes 'Manos: the Hands of Fate' look like a cinematic masterpiece. And that was made for a bet.

Very relaxing, if you're in the mood.

ITV's BBQ Challenge. Seriously underwhelming BBQ skills, and with the utterly superfluous presence of Myleene Klass, the female Richard Clayderman.

One of the schools I attended was in Cambridge and, this morning, I suddenly remembered a character I used to see at the Red Lion shopping centre. The question is... how could I have forgotten a crazy-looking old guy in military uniform with mice running round the brim of his hat? Snowy Farr, boggled at and interviewed by the great Dave Allen.

BTW, I have used the beer cooler method with salmon steaks, and the results were excellent.

Sous-vide machines (the good ones, at least) are expensive and take up kitchen space. What I do is ersatz sous-vide, but the results are still good. So what you need is: 1. A digital thermometer with the probe on the end of a wire, so you can monitor temperature without opening the oven repeatedly. This is the one I have. It comes with a clip, so you can mount it on the side of the cooking pot, with its tip in the water. This is a very useful piece of kit for other types of cooking too. You can set it to sound an alarm when the temperature reaches a certain level, and you can use it to check the accuracy of your oven's temperature dial (most domestic cookers are fairly inaccurate). 2. A big cooking pot. The more water it will hold, the slower it will vary in temperature. This also applies to beer cooler sous-vide. 3. Zip-lock freezer bags. Due to the low temperatures involved, there's no danger of them melting. 4. A straw. Once the meat's in the bag with the herbs etc., close the ziplock 'til there's only a small opening. Stick the straw in and suck out the air 'til the bag snugs up tight around the meat. Then quickly remove the straw and seal the bag. Not a perfect vacuum, but close enough for the purpose. 5. Hot water. My kitchen hot tap gives me water at 55 degrees C, which is close to the kind of temperatures you normally use for sous-vide. Using hot tap water means you don't have to waste oven time and power by bringing cold water up to temperature. After the meat's been cooking for a few hours, you can then sear it in a hot pan with an oil/butter mix, so add colour and flavour to the outside.

Paul Brickhill - The Dambusters. I haven't read this in decades, but the author's pacey style and eye for humorous anecdotes and dialogue works as well as ever. He mixes the cold-blooded heroism with tales of the entertainingly disgraceful fun that young men with little life-expectancy got up to after a few drinks. After the Ruhr dams, the interlinked story of 617 Squadron and Barnes Wallis continues, with the V1 rocket bases, the Tirpitz raid and other campaigns, where they continued to re-write the rules on accurate and effective bombing, leading up to the use of the 'Tall Boy' and 'Grand Slam' earthquake bomb.

Look who's launched their own whiskey - hardly surprising...

Just polished off some sous-vide lamb neck (cooked with rosemary, honey and garlic), with mashed potatoes and marrowfat peas. Fantastic.

The priests in 'Father Ted' and where else you might have seen them. One was on the cover of The Smiths How soon is now?

I never saw it when it was originally broadcast, but because it wasn't set "in the future", the only SFX are the shooting stars, the triffids themselves (which are very well-designed) and the triffid gun (bad SFX, but wisely only once seen in action). The feel of the series is different to the book, updated to the Eighties and with Bill as very much an everyman of his time, compared to the book's more urbane 'chap'. Surprisingly little of the book's substance is cut from the screenplay. Of the other Wyndham books, there are some which have apparently not been filmed, and which might make good TV, like 'The Kraken wakes' or 'The Chrysalids'.

I watched the Eighties serialisation of 'The Day of theTriffids' last night. Still good.

Nielsen Ratings are to Australia (and the USA, and some other countries) what BARB Ratings are to the UK. Farmduck has become one of the statistical group on whose data the official viewing figures are based.