meemalee

Usually every Halloween, hubby and I have our nearest and dearest round for a horror film night. Our guests always bring sweet treats for us - I'm poo at baking, but my brothers-in-law's girlfriends are extremely talented - see below ... I always decorate the house is a vaguely spooky way, but usually I don't bother dressing up myself. This year however, I made an exception, for reasons I shall explain in another post ...

This blog post is brought to you by the letter "P" for "pain" as I have just sliced open a knuckle on a can of corned beef (mmm mmm, aren't I fancy?). MASTERCHEF ! The extravaganza continues. I've even made you a Spotify Playlist to soundtrack this post so you can relive every mother-loving moment. How much India Fisher can we take? 90 minutes as it turns out. So Steve, Daniel and Marianne have just delighted a roomful of Michelin stars and the opening chords of the most overused song in the TV world * means it's time for the final cook-off - they must produce the best three courses of their career so far. L-R: Dan, Marianne, Steve But first, an interminable X Factor style recap on the lives of each of the contestants begins. I find this excruciating partly because hello! they should be judging them on the quality of their food and not their family background, and partly because I've been there - I was on University Challenge a few years back (

Cooking doesn't get better than this! And so we've reached the final of MasterChef the Professionals 2009 . At the start, we saw such abominations as the girl who sliced butter on a board covered in rabbit blood, the lads who butchered chickens in the bad sense of the word, and people who seem to have never made a pancake in their lives. Thankfully, these so-called professionals were screened out by the marvellously terrifying Monica Galetti - Kiwi sous-chef to Michel Roux Jnr and a fab new addition to MasterChef. However, now it's just down to Michel and Gregg to decide just who will take the coveted title and win a small plastic trophy that looks a bit like the @ symbol. Voiceover lady intones "Steve, Marianne and Daniel have BATTLED their way through EXTREME competion to face their ULTIMATE tests. At the end of this show just one of these three will be CROWNED Professional MasterChef 2009". Hyperbole aside, it will be tough since all three have shown signs

AN ENTREPRENEUR'S THOUGHT PROCESS: I'm going to set up an amazing new health food cafe. It's going to serve alfafa and falafel and other foodstuffs with the letters L, A and F in them. It's going to be delicious and nutritious and organic and take the world by storm. I've even got the perfect name - it's going to be called "Ptooch". Yeah. MEEMALEE'S THOUGHT PROCESS: Do not call a restaurant any word which evokes hawking up and releasing a massive ball of mucussy phlegm. Just don't.

I expect you think this will be a post on fugu aka Japan's notorious poison puffer fish. Well, despite the fact that Mr Fugu sits happily on my banner, I've never tried fugu nor am I in the least bit inclined to do so. God knows I love food - but not quite enough to risk death or even paralysis. I know, what a killjoy. However, I have tried Japan's most dangerous (rather than deadliest) meal and blow me if it wasn't the best experience I've ever had in terms of both taste and fun. What am I talking about? All-you-can-eat DIY Kushikatsu aka Kushiage. My mate Sati (bib optional) Just plain old kushikatsu is a fantastic thing in itself - you pick various sticks of panko -breaded eats and they're fried to order in front of you - nothing beats the flavour of a freshly-frittered king prawn. DIY kushikatsu means you fry the kebabs yourself, at your table, with next to no safeguards. All-you-can-eat DIY kushikatsu means you're trying to deep-fry as many of the