STODGE OVERLOAD (AKA NANNY PLUM MEALS)
If, like me, you have a children or childrens, or a broken telly that only shows Channel 5 (shudder), you'll probably have come across an excellently amusing kid's show called Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom. It's by the same people who make Peppa Pig, but is considerably better - mainly because regardless of it being for kids it's one of those shows that starts preposterous and gets progressively more silly and unhinged as time goes on. You know - like Father Ted. Or Question Time.
Anyway, one of the characters in B&H LK (which I've just inadvertently realised looks like some sort of special brand of fags when abbreviated) is Nanny Plum, who is renowned as an excellent cook. An excellent cook who, in one episode, makes a load of terrifyingly stodgy recipes.
I could explain the plot of the episode in question in detail, but to be honest if you haven't seen it it'd be much easier if you just watched a copy of it that I absolutely haven't linked to accidentally that's on YouTube which I'm not 100% certain is legit but I think it might be. But if it isn't, sorry. Blame your corrupt uncle or something.
Back? Marvellous. Now we can dispense with this preamble to what I'm doing this week and get on with the actual...er...amble? Periamble? Whatever. Further words, anyway - oh look, here are some now.
Never say you don't get value for money here, because I'm doing 3 (yes, 3!) Nanny Plum-inspired recipes (yes, recipes!) this week (yes, w...I'll stop that now). Should you wish to recreate one, some or fewer of them yourself you will need some, all or none of the following:
Pie, mash & chips
A pie of your choice. My choice was steak, but yours might differ. But given you're having it with mash and chips I'd suggest not letting it differ so much as to choose, say, apple & blackcurrant.
Some chips
Some mashed potato, created via a method of your choosing. For example, mashing a boiled potato, or boiling a kettle to make up some powdered stuff. Or mashing a boiled potato with a kettle if you're simultaneously desperate to be authentic but woefully short of implements. Just don't blame me if you get starchy residue in your spout.
Treacle sponge with blancmange and custard
A treacle sponge. You could go to the effort of making this rather than buying one from a shop, but you're also going to ruin it by covering it with blancmange, so don't.
Some blancmange. I got 4 pints of the stuff for a horrifyingly cheap 60p, and went with the raspberry flavour (which turned out to be probably the wrongest of 4 fairly wronged-up choices).
Some custard
Jacket potato stuffed with potato, with mash & chips, and a fried egg on top
A jacket potato
Some more potato - I used roast potatoes because I like the illusion of variety in my meals with 4 identical ingredients.
Some mash (see earlier)
Some chips (see earlier)
An fried egg (see a chicken)
As we've got 3 things on the go I'll lump everything together this week - though I didn't make and eat them all on the same day due to not actually wanting to die from literally bursting from overstuffing. It'd be like the bit from Alien, only with cooked tubers.
Anyway, let's start nice and easy and build up to the heavyweight division shall we?
Pie, mash & chips
Pretty straightforward, this one. Pop your pie and chips in to cook, and in the meantime boil up your potatoes ready for mashing (yes, despite the gag earlier I actually made my own mash rather than packet stuff - I'm not completely inept). Once they've softened up, give them a damn good squashing and then arrange them into a sort of potatoey pie hammock, thus:
Then, once cooked carefully lower your pie onto the mash bed - to continue the UFO theme from above, a bit like a mothership coming in to land. Assuming that aliens have become so advanced as to be able to make spacecraft out of pastry, but are also stupid enough not to realise that's a really bad idea (if nothing else, your ship's bottom would get terribly overdone on re-entry).
Once in place, you can arrange your chips in a jaunty fashion. I went for thin chips for no real reason other than they're easier to shove into mash, but thick ones would probably be fine (albeit requiring more force to pierce the mash). Either way, prod them into place, and you're done!
This was, as you'd probably imagine, flippin' excellent. It looks fabulous for starters, and who doesn't like pies and potatoes? Answer: a massive idiot. And as we're CLEARLY not idiots, I think you'll all agree this is a triumph. On to dessert!
Treacle sponge with blancmange and custard
As far as I'm concerned this is already worse as it requires a lot more effort. First, you need to make your awful, awful blancmange (for those not familiar with blancmange, it's like jelly with cataracts).
The first job was to open the rather industrial-looking package.
The contents - a white, disappointingly un-cocainey powder - then needed to be mixed with a small amount of milk to create a frankly disturbingly luminescent paste:
Next, you add more milk and transfer to a saucepan and heat, making it thicken up until you get something resembling what I assume they mix up to create latex face masks for special effects in films.
Ideally, you're supposed to let this cool overnight and set, but that's for your 'jelly' style blancmange - and as this was going onto a hot treacle sponge with hot custard on top, there didn't seem much point as it'd melt instantaneously anyway. But, as I didn't want to deny you the chance to see how awful cold blancmange looks, here's the abhorrently gelatinous chocolate one, complete with retch-inducing skin formation:
And here? Here is the finished product:
The interesting thing here was that blancmange is obviously a very 1970s-era dessert, but the taste really does bring back memories of the 1970s. Sadly, these aren't lovely, sepia-tinted visions of my childhood but instead long-repressed recollections of a brand of children's medicine you used to have to take if you got the shits. Yes, not only does it make any meal look like it's got a peculiar strain of mould growing on it, it also tastes like horrible diarrhoea medicine and makes everything else taste of it too. I may as well have been eating polystyrene, because I couldn't taste the custard or the treacle sponge much at all. About the only good thing I can say is that at least it didn't taste of that disgusting banana-flavoured antibiotic stuff kids have.
Worst part is, I still have 2 sodding packets of it left (vanilla and strawberry, or 'albino nightmare' and 'haemorrhage' as I think they'd be better off named), and no one has dared eat the chocolate cowpat in the fridge either. Anyone peckish? Anyone?
Jacket potato stuffed with potato, with mash & chips, and a fried egg on top
After a few days of not eating horrible items, I tackled the last one. This was a fairly straightforward assembly job too - just cook your jacket potato, potato, mash, chips, and fried egg, and slot them all together like brown, greasy lego:
Now, you might be thinking 'surely this is too much potato?', to which I'd answer 'No, it isn't, as there can never be too much potato'. What I will concede it *might* be is a bit dry, but think about it - if you were out drinking, this is basically the ideal 'soaker upper' meal. Why buy a dodgy kebab or dirty burger when you can clog yourself RIGHT up with healthy vegetables? After all I'm fairly certain this counts for more than 1 of your 5 a day - admittedly it's the same one 4 times, but I reckon it qualifies as 2 or more by brute force alone.
In essence, a show for children has accidentally led us to a foodstuff that could revolutionise post-pub eating for adults. Admittedly it's also led us to memories of mum shoving a spoonful of unpleasantness down your throat while you tried not to go to the toilet in the wrong place, but let's focus on the positives, eh? And the positive was this - it was actually really nice, even if I felt like a complete binner for having eaten it. And I really did eat it. Look:
OK, so it felt at one point like my oesophagus was probably never going to unclog. And I admit I didn't eat anything else for about a day and a half. But hey, there's another bonus for you - time saving! Just think what you can get done in the time you'd take eating 2 meals a day. Well, the time of 1 meal maybe - you'll need to set aside at least half an hour for burping.
Still, I think we can safely say Nanny Plum truly is a genius. Albeit a starchy one.
Ingredients:
Never say you don't get value for money here, because I'm doing 3 (yes, 3!) Nanny Plum-inspired recipes (yes, recipes!) this week (yes, w...I'll stop that now). Should you wish to recreate one, some or fewer of them yourself you will need some, all or none of the following:
Pie, mash & chips
A pie of your choice. My choice was steak, but yours might differ. But given you're having it with mash and chips I'd suggest not letting it differ so much as to choose, say, apple & blackcurrant.
Some chips
Some mashed potato, created via a method of your choosing. For example, mashing a boiled potato, or boiling a kettle to make up some powdered stuff. Or mashing a boiled potato with a kettle if you're simultaneously desperate to be authentic but woefully short of implements. Just don't blame me if you get starchy residue in your spout.
Treacle sponge with blancmange and custard
A treacle sponge. You could go to the effort of making this rather than buying one from a shop, but you're also going to ruin it by covering it with blancmange, so don't.
Some blancmange. I got 4 pints of the stuff for a horrifyingly cheap 60p, and went with the raspberry flavour (which turned out to be probably the wrongest of 4 fairly wronged-up choices).
Some custard
Jacket potato stuffed with potato, with mash & chips, and a fried egg on top
A jacket potato
Some more potato - I used roast potatoes because I like the illusion of variety in my meals with 4 identical ingredients.
Some mash (see earlier)
Some chips (see earlier)
An fried egg (see a chicken)
 |
| I have no idea who Pearce Duff is, but clearly they're some sort of sick, twisted evil genius who (a) has invented a time machine, and (b) decided the only thing they're going to do with it is collect desserts from circa 1971 and drop them off in supermarkets 46 years later. |
Method & Results:
As we've got 3 things on the go I'll lump everything together this week - though I didn't make and eat them all on the same day due to not actually wanting to die from literally bursting from overstuffing. It'd be like the bit from Alien, only with cooked tubers.
Anyway, let's start nice and easy and build up to the heavyweight division shall we?
Pie, mash & chips
Pretty straightforward, this one. Pop your pie and chips in to cook, and in the meantime boil up your potatoes ready for mashing (yes, despite the gag earlier I actually made my own mash rather than packet stuff - I'm not completely inept). Once they've softened up, give them a damn good squashing and then arrange them into a sort of potatoey pie hammock, thus:
 |
| The worst part about making this was I made a joke about it all getting a bit 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and Mrs H had no idea what I was on about. I dunno - it's almost like 40-year-old films aren't part of pop culture or something. Do Doo Doo Doooo Dooooooooooo! (I bet loads of you won't get that either - I don't know why I bother sometimes.) |
Then, once cooked carefully lower your pie onto the mash bed - to continue the UFO theme from above, a bit like a mothership coming in to land. Assuming that aliens have become so advanced as to be able to make spacecraft out of pastry, but are also stupid enough not to realise that's a really bad idea (if nothing else, your ship's bottom would get terribly overdone on re-entry).
Once in place, you can arrange your chips in a jaunty fashion. I went for thin chips for no real reason other than they're easier to shove into mash, but thick ones would probably be fine (albeit requiring more force to pierce the mash). Either way, prod them into place, and you're done!
 |
| This reminded me of the Millennium Dome. Only unlike the Millennium Dome, this is plainly an enormous success that I won't have to sell to O2. Although if O2 are reading, I'm always up for |
This was, as you'd probably imagine, flippin' excellent. It looks fabulous for starters, and who doesn't like pies and potatoes? Answer: a massive idiot. And as we're CLEARLY not idiots, I think you'll all agree this is a triumph. On to dessert!
Treacle sponge with blancmange and custard
As far as I'm concerned this is already worse as it requires a lot more effort. First, you need to make your awful, awful blancmange (for those not familiar with blancmange, it's like jelly with cataracts).
The first job was to open the rather industrial-looking package.
 |
| Nothing like a tasty packet of K2106 08:27 1C 17 214 to round off a lovely meal. |
The contents - a white, disappointingly un-cocainey powder - then needed to be mixed with a small amount of milk to create a frankly disturbingly luminescent paste:
 |
| I haven't fiddled with the colour at all - that's the actual hue. Which is quite fitting, since 'hue' of course is also slang for being sick. |
Next, you add more milk and transfer to a saucepan and heat, making it thicken up until you get something resembling what I assume they mix up to create latex face masks for special effects in films.
 |
| If you've skipped ahead to this caption, rest assured I haven't just pureed a load of naked mole rats. Though if I had there's a fair chance that might taste better. |
Ideally, you're supposed to let this cool overnight and set, but that's for your 'jelly' style blancmange - and as this was going onto a hot treacle sponge with hot custard on top, there didn't seem much point as it'd melt instantaneously anyway. But, as I didn't want to deny you the chance to see how awful cold blancmange looks, here's the abhorrently gelatinous chocolate one, complete with retch-inducing skin formation:
 |
| If you've ever seen what artificial silicone breast implants look like, there's a worrying similarity here... |
And here? Here is the finished product:
 |
| This looks at first glance like Neapolitan ice cream. Which is a shame, as the first taste shatters that illusion like a cheap wine glass being kicked at an anvil by a furious donkey. |
The interesting thing here was that blancmange is obviously a very 1970s-era dessert, but the taste really does bring back memories of the 1970s. Sadly, these aren't lovely, sepia-tinted visions of my childhood but instead long-repressed recollections of a brand of children's medicine you used to have to take if you got the shits. Yes, not only does it make any meal look like it's got a peculiar strain of mould growing on it, it also tastes like horrible diarrhoea medicine and makes everything else taste of it too. I may as well have been eating polystyrene, because I couldn't taste the custard or the treacle sponge much at all. About the only good thing I can say is that at least it didn't taste of that disgusting banana-flavoured antibiotic stuff kids have.
Worst part is, I still have 2 sodding packets of it left (vanilla and strawberry, or 'albino nightmare' and 'haemorrhage' as I think they'd be better off named), and no one has dared eat the chocolate cowpat in the fridge either. Anyone peckish? Anyone?
Jacket potato stuffed with potato, with mash & chips, and a fried egg on top
After a few days of not eating horrible items, I tackled the last one. This was a fairly straightforward assembly job too - just cook your jacket potato, potato, mash, chips, and fried egg, and slot them all together like brown, greasy lego:
 |
| Just so you can clearly see it, here's my jacket potato stuffed with potato (which I inexplicably took a sideways picture of, but you get the idea)... |
 |
| ...and here's the finished product, ranging from beige to dark brown - the best part of the spectrum, food-wise! (I'm not counting the white bit of the egg - and anyway, it's a bit brown at the edge so it counts and also I don't care.) |
Now, you might be thinking 'surely this is too much potato?', to which I'd answer 'No, it isn't, as there can never be too much potato'. What I will concede it *might* be is a bit dry, but think about it - if you were out drinking, this is basically the ideal 'soaker upper' meal. Why buy a dodgy kebab or dirty burger when you can clog yourself RIGHT up with healthy vegetables? After all I'm fairly certain this counts for more than 1 of your 5 a day - admittedly it's the same one 4 times, but I reckon it qualifies as 2 or more by brute force alone.
In essence, a show for children has accidentally led us to a foodstuff that could revolutionise post-pub eating for adults. Admittedly it's also led us to memories of mum shoving a spoonful of unpleasantness down your throat while you tried not to go to the toilet in the wrong place, but let's focus on the positives, eh? And the positive was this - it was actually really nice, even if I felt like a complete binner for having eaten it. And I really did eat it. Look:
 |
| You're in luck this isn't a video, because suffice to say there were a considerable amount of indigestion-style noises afterwards. |
OK, so it felt at one point like my oesophagus was probably never going to unclog. And I admit I didn't eat anything else for about a day and a half. But hey, there's another bonus for you - time saving! Just think what you can get done in the time you'd take eating 2 meals a day. Well, the time of 1 meal maybe - you'll need to set aside at least half an hour for burping.
Still, I think we can safely say Nanny Plum truly is a genius. Albeit a starchy one.
Next time: Macaroni cheese...cake
PS Oh look, here's a plug for the splendid Mr Biffo's Found Footage, which also features lovely food (well, goujons anyway) and - regrettably - me, though reassuringly briefly.
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