CORNED BEEF HASH
&
SENSIBLE VEGETABLE

INGREDIENTS

The quantities that we give in this recipe are for one person. If you’re cooking for more, then just multiply it all up.

• Corned beef, 100 grammes (get a tin or buy it from your supermarket deli counter).
• Potatoes, 1 medium sized spud
• Onion, half an onion,
• Cooking oil
• cabbage (half a small cabbage per person)
• Tomato ketchup

This is a favourite GET STUFFED recipe that costs peanuts, (actually, by weight, much less than the cost of peanuts).

First, wash yer handies.

Now, parboil the potato or potatoes. Do this by scrubbing clean the potato and gouging out any nasty bits, or worm holes, or sprouting buds, or disease, or green bits, or anything that looks a bit weird. Chop the potato into lumps no bigger than the size of a ping pong ball and then put them in a pan of cold water. Put the pan on the hob and do what you’ve gotta do to bring it to the boil. When it’s boiling, turn down the heat until the water is just simmering, (getting this right is a real pig). Leave the potato to simmer for about 14 minutes.

After 14 mins the potato will be almost, but not quite, cooked. Now, drain off the simmering water and roughly cut the steaming potato up into smallish pieces. Each piece should be about the size of the smallest toe of a bloke with size 9 feet.

Next, chop up the onion, (take the dry skin off first and chop it up into quite small slithers). Open the tin and chop up the corned beef into bits about the size of a front tooth which has become lost in a pub brawl.

Find a frying pan or, better still, a wok. A wok is totally ideal for this dish.

Put a dollop of oil into the wok, about as much oil as you’d get for a single shot of whisky, and put it on a high heat until it just starts smoking. Don’t arse around with hot oil cos it is dangerous and needs to be treated with respect - don’t even answer the phone if it rings. Now turf the chopped potato into the hot oil and turn it around with one of those kitchen-utensil-thingies that you flop food around in a hot frying pan with*. Carry on doing this until bits of the potato are all getting a bit crispy looking. If the potato starts to stick a bit to the pan then just add a little more oil. Make sure that you keep gently turning the potato or it will burn.

As soon as some of the bits of potato are developing a slight crispy ‘skin’, turn the heat right down low and add the chopped onion and chopped corned beef. Stir it all together and cover with a lid - if you haven’t got a lid then just lay a double folded layer of tin foil over the top of the cooking mixture. You will have to stir this mixture every three or four minutes, otherwise it will burn. Basically, it will be cooked when the chopped onion has lost its firm crisp texture and turned into severely wilted bits. This will take about 15 minutes and during this time the parboiled potato bits will finish cooking. Don’t worry that the corned beef is disintegrating, this is supposed to happen and is all a part of your dinner’s destiny.

Meanwhile, cook your cabbage. This is easy, just put a big pan of salted water on a hot ring and get it to boil. Hack the cabbage into shreds (ideally with the kind of knife that appeared in Hitchcocks’s PSYCHO during the shower scene) and, when the water is boiling, bung in the cabbage. The cabbage** needs to cook for only 5 minutes - any more and it will be a soggy overcooked mess. When it’s done, drain the water and serve. If the cabbage is done before the corned beef hash, drain it, put it into some sort of ovenproof dish, cover the dish and leave it in the oven at 100 degrees Centigrade. It will keep quite happily like this for 10 minutes. In fact, it’s a good idea to have your oven heated to this temperature anyway because you can warm some plates in this oven ready for your corned beef hash.

When both the corned beef hash and the cabbage are ready, slop them onto a hot plate. This dish is massive when served with great dollops of tomato sauce.

* A “fish slice”. Lah-di-dah.

** Did you know that “cabbage” is the only musical vegetable because you can play the chords C and A and B and G and E on a guitar/piano/whatever. Pants lousy tune tho!