IRN BRU 'SALAD'

Hello! Sorry for not posting for a bit, but I had to take some time out while I got a new kitchen. By which I mean a different kitchen in a new house, as we sold our old house and - as is traditional, given I don't live in a yurt or similar - the kitchen was included as part of the deal and apparently I'm not allowed to go back there and mess it up anymore. Which is a shame, as that means I have to clean up after myself in my new one rather than leaving it in the old one for the new owner. Bah.

Well I say my 'new' kitchen, but it isn't really. It's new to me, of course, but ironically the cooker in it is this: really really old. So old some of the numbers have actually worn off the knobs, so as if my cooking wasn't bad enough it now has an entirely unwanted element of surprise to it as well - up to and including:

'Is the gas actually on?' [presses ignition]
...
'PTHOOOOMPH!'


'...yes, yes that was on.' [puts out eyebrows]

Unexpected pyrotechnics aside, this week we have a 'reader request'. My friend Simon alerted me to quite the most repellant genuine recipe I'd ever heard of: 7-Up salad. This intrigued me for 3 reasons:

1. A salad with 7-Up in it? WT and indeed F?
2.  See 1.
3. Now I'm over the shock of 1 and 2, can I make it any worse?

On further investigation it seems that in the US of United States, 'salad' pretty much means 'any old crap as long as it has mayonnaise in it'. And on even further investigation (I really did my research this week - thanks Wikipedia), it seems this is a variant of a fruit salad recipe called 'Ambrosia'.

As you may or may not know but are about to be told regardless, ambrosia was popular with the ancient Greek gods as some sort of magic slop brought to them by doves that gave them immortality. That, and it's also a brand of rice pudding of course - though I'd assume that doesn't give you immortality on the basis that if it did, they'd probably make more of a fuss about it in the marketing (though given how hard it is to wash the stuff off of bowls once it's cooled and congealed, maybe it's a mistranslation from Greek and it's actually the pudding that's immortal?).

Quite how this recipe got the name ambrosia isn't clear, but suffice to say I'm delighted we don't worship Greek gods anymore as after trying this I think it's safe to say we're all a lot better off with chocolate eggs and advent calendars.

Something from all the main food groups here: cholesterol, salt, oil, type 2 diabetes and ADHD triggers. Well, my main food groups anyway.

Ingredients:

I would absolutely not recommend you make this on the basis I used half as much as the original recipe said, and it still made up what many top chefs would refer to as 'an absolute shitload'. But if you simply won't be told or have the same adventurous palate (ahem) as me, here's the bizarre selection of bits you'll need to cobble together:

150 ml Irn bru (Because what could be worse than 7-Up? Why, Scotland's answer to the question "Hey can you make something that tastes worse than original Lucozade and is even sweeter than Cherry Coke?" of course.)*
100 g mini marshmallows
1 small packet of lime jelly
100 g of cream cheese
1/2 a packet of stoned olives (the original recipe had cherries in, which I hate, so I thought I'd simultaneously up the ante AND make it more like a legitimate salad)
1 can of crushed pineapple (yes, this does exist much to my surprise)
3 large spoonfuls of mayonnaise
150 ml of milk

1 packet of Dream Topping - the original recipe says to use 'Cool Whip'. Which, while it's great because you get to go round saying 'Cool WHHIPPP' like Stewie from Family Guy back when it was funny, you can't buy in the UK. So I went for what was probably roughly the same in that it was blatantly as far from a natural foodstuff as a plastic bag is.

*If you've never tried Irn Bru, here's how awful I think it is: I bought a small bottle and it cost me £1.10, whereas I could have had a large 2 litre bottle for £1.00 from the same shop. I paid more for less, and still feel I got the best part of the deal - it's THAT bad.

Method:

You know it's going to be a good one when the first ingredient, on its own and unheated, already looks like a pan of boiling urine.

First off, heat up your irn bru in a pan. When it's starting to bubble even more than it was in the first place, lob in all the marshmallows. This will result in what I can only describe as 'clag'.

I dunno about you, but this makes my teeth feel squeaky just looking at it - it's like Willy Wonka went into the tarmac business.

Once they've all melted and dissolved - and unbelievably they will disappear without a trace, which I think is testament to the corrosive power of irn bru as much as it is them melting - you can reduce the heat a bit and throw in your slab of jelly. Because of course, what this recipe needs at this stage is more sugar and weird colourings.

Despite what it looks like, I'm not cooking a pan scourer in golden syrup. Though I can't honestly say the outcome of doing that would have tasted much worse...

Then, once that too has dissolved (seriously, what is the carrying capacity for sugar of irn bru? There's a PhD in this somewhere), you have to stir in the cream cheese. And stir. And stir and stir and stir. Then stir some more. Why? See below:

Bollocks.

Yep, this separates out beautifully into a horrific, lumpy disaster. Mmm. After about 20 minutes of stirring I still had a fair few lumps, so I gave up and sieved it. And do you know what? I still had lumps afterwards as well. No, I don't know how either (and yes, I do know the difference between a sieve and a colander). At this point, throw in the olives and the crushed pineapple because sure, why not?

...and that's how you make frogspawn special effects! Any questions?

Anyway, once you too have given it up as a lost cause, it's on to part B. First, whisk up your dream topping powder with the milk until it's thick enough to support the weight of a dropped teabag (don't ask). Then, to this, add the mayonnaise, stir it in enough so that you can try and forget it's there, and then add all that to the irn bru, marshmallow, jelly, pineapple and olive concoction.

I'm not saying it's unappetising, but it does look a bit too much like a meringue that a cat with a bladder infection has pissed on for my liking...

Stir this together until, against every expectation you may have, it starts to come together to look like lumpy custard that someone has flobbed in (and let's face it, when that's an improvement on how it looked before you know you're in trouble), and you're nearly done.

It almost looks edible here. Almost.

Bung it in the fridge overnight to set, and if you're lucky you might die overnight in your sleep. I wasn't, so next day I had to eat it. Bugger.

The results:

First problem was this: it ended up setting so well, I had to put it in a bowl of hot water to get it out of the bowl. Once I did dislodge it though, I wished I hadn't.

That's...not good.

I mean, what could be more appealing than yumming up something that looks like a close-up of acne? Pretty much anything is the answer, of course, but I persevered nonetheless. Amazingly, it did actually slice without falling apart and/or dissolving my knife:

Why not treat your family to something different this festive season by making them something that looks like an albino christmas pudding with lumps of mould in?

So how did it taste? Well the bits without olives in tasted remarkably, cloyingly sweet - like a damp cake made entirely of boiled up skittles (the fruit sweets, not the 10 pin type). The bits with more pineapple in tasted like that but with the added sensation of consuming wet string, and the bits with olives in were all that but with sudden bursts of saltiness and chunks of hard gunk - probably a bit like swigging from a can of coke only to find someone has recently sneezed in it.

Would I recommend it, though? Astoundingly, and with caveats and to a very select audience, yes. If you like sweet stuff - and I mean really, REALLY sweet stuff, leave out the olives (or put something else in, like opal fruits) and this might be for you. You deviant.

For the rest of us? Oh christ on a bike no. It does at least explain why many Americans are so rotund though - I'd eat a lot more fast food as well if I thought this travesty was a 'salad'.

Next time: MINCE PIES (Yes, *that* sort of mince. With sugar and custard.)