Homemade Chicken Doner Style Kebab

So I’ve been playing around with homemade doner style kebabs recently, this is my take on the chicken doner.

You will need:
5 skinned and boned chicken thighs
1 large onion
1 large red pepper

For the marinade:
2tbsp natural yoghurt
1tbsp tomato puree
1tsp oregano
1tsp garlic powder
1tsp onion powder
1tsp smoked paprika
1tsp cumin
1tsp cayenne pepper
1/2tsp ground black pepper
1/2tsp salt
The juice of half a lemon

To serve:
Pita bread/flat bread/tortilla wraps
Mint yoghurt sauce
Salad

Method:
1. Put the chicken thighs in a bowl, add in all the marinade ingredients and give it a good mix with your hands, massaging it into the meat. Allow the meat to marinate for a couple of hours minimum, ideally over night.
2. Fold the thighs over and feed them onto 2 skewers, using 2 will make the kebab easier to turn and handle later on.
3. Place on a raised grill rack over a fairly deep baking tray and put into a 225 degree (Celsius) preheated oven for 30 minutes.
4. After 30 minutes take it out of the oven and turn the kebab over using the skewers, baste with the juices in the bottom of the baking tray before adding the roughly sliced onion and pepper to they tray.
5. Put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes until the meat, onions and peppers have started to caramelise around the edges.
6. Remove from the oven and allow the meat to rest for 5 minutes or so before carving, as seen in your local kebab shop.

Notes:
Serve on a tray with the pita bread/flat breads, mint yoghurt sauce and salad.

I must be hating wrong, I often hear others say “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t have the energy” to hate. I hate lots of people and lots things, but I find that it doesn’t really require any of my time or energy. Essentially unless they’re literally in front of me, or someone directly mentions them, then I’ll barely be aware that they exist. It’s only when I’m confronted by their existence that I feel the anger and distaste bubble up inside me and think to myself “I fucking hate you”.

2018: A Brand New Year

It’s new years day and we’re a little over an hour into 2018, or at least here in the UK we are. 2017 wasn’t an easy year for me, I’m not going to go into detail and I’m not going to make out that I’ve had the worst year in the world, there’s certainly plenty of people who’ve had it much worse than me. That said 2015, 2016 and 2017 have essentially been the 3 worst years of my life, I’ve lost more than I ever thought possible, a large amount of the blame for that lies on my own shoulders and I’ve not dealt with it very well at all. It’s been a dark period for me, but I’m trying to learn from my mistakes and I’m really hoping that this year I’ll start to see some light come back into my life.

Swadlincote International Food & Drink Festival

Last weekend (the 13th, 14th & 15th October) was Swadlincotes annual food and drink festival. I’ve been to a few localish food fairs and festivals over the last few months, most notably the monthly Bustler street food market in Derby, and I’ve had some pretty good experiences and enjoyed a really nice variety of decent quality foods and drinks. Barring that, and the fact that this years festival was supposed to be bigger and better than previous years, in mind I had fairly high hopes for the Swadlincote food and drink festival. Unfortunately after visiting the festival and spending an hour or so wandering around taking in the sights, sounds and smells I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

There was a fair number of stalls, I definitely couldn’t argue with the turnout, however rather than there being a huge variety of different foods and drinks available there was just a plethora of same old, same old. There was 4 different stalls literally just offering roast pork cobs, with little to no variation between each stall, and it was the same for cheap frozen “gourmet” burgers, “premium” hot dogs, noodles etc. This is what the bulk of the festival was made up of and it appeared to be what the organisers had given priority to. These stalls seemed to have been given the largest pitches right in the center of the market, where they would get the highest footfall.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t a few good stalls, offering something a little different or of a higher quality, but these had been pushed out onto the fringes of the festival, some situated on smaller side streets with very little space and considerably lower footfall. In my opinion these are stalls that the festival should have been about, they should have been show cased and given pride of place. A food and drink festival should be about celebrating variety and celebrating artisanal food & drink producers, not pushing the same old mass produced thing and branding it as “gourmet” or “premium”.

Why don’t toilets have arm rests?

It’s the one place you’d actually quite like to be comfy, instead you end up giving yourself pins and needles from resting your elbows on your thighs.

That Autumn Mood

It’s getting late in the year and the weather is starting to cool off, the nights are dropping cold and that always puts smile on my face. I love waking up in the morning to the feeling of cool air against my skin, it makes my blankets seem extra cozy. I love nothing more than to wrap myself up in them, with just my head sticking out and enjoy those last few minutes before I know I have to get up. The only problem is that it makes it extra hard to get out of bed and get myself ready for work Monday to Friday.

I Once Killed A Boy...

I once killed a boy with a fender guitar. I don’t remember if… ok, ok it was a fucking cheap assed peavey guitar. I don’t remember if… god damnit, fine it was a fucking MDF board with 3 fucking elastic bands pinned to it. You think I won’t fucking kill you too if you don’t shut the fuck up?

Sometimes All I Want To Do Is Sleep

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve had fairly regular periods of Insomnia, when I get a bout I feel constantly tired, incapable of concentrating for even short amounts of time and just generally low and negative. That said I’m fairly lucky with it because it only happens once every few months and only tends to last for 4 or 5 days at a time. I’ve known people who have suffered for months and even years at a time, to the point where it’s almost completely controlled their lives. It’s hard to explain to someone, who doesn’t get insomnia on a regular basis, just how bad not being able to sleep properly can and does effect your ability to function.

There used to be a time when if I needed to escape the real world I could nearly always rely on a book, I would quite often find myself lying in bed reading until the early hours. I’ve read so many books over the years that I can’t even begin to remember half of them. Books have always given me the best and most meaningful adventures. I’ve touched on hundreds of lives, visited a thousand different places, seen a million wonderful things and all through the pages of books. Books are incredible, magical things and deserve to be revered as such.

Unfortunately a few years ago that all began to change, I’m not sure what caused it, when it happened, whether it happened all at once or if it was a gradual process, but at some point I realised that I could no longer lose myself in a book. It doesn’t matter how well the book is written, how interesting the story is or even how compelling the characters might be, books simply no longer hold my attention and I find this quite upsetting.

One Of Those Days...

So it’s been one of those days today, I feel like I’ve been struggling all day and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Work is really starting to drag me down again, promises of things getting better keep being made, but nothing ever changes. I feel like I’m being completely ignored and I’m not the only one. We lost another member of staff today, that’s the fourth one this week and management don’t seem to want to do a thing to stop it. Management don’t seem to want to do anything but pat each other on the back about how hard they’re working and how well they’re coping, whilst their teams fall apart around them. We’re coming up to our busiest time of year, if we lose anyone else we’ll be absolutely fucked.