Final Meal 2018 - L'Escargot Risotto Noir

It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming; Football's coming home...

Well, it was until Wednesday evening anyway. But England can take heart from the fact that this time nobody expected them to do a whole lot, and a valiant semi-final exit is a decent achievement. (Indeed their pair of losses to Belgium in the Group stage and 3rd place play-off suggest that, perhaps 'overachievement' might be a better word!)

Black risotto with snails

What it does mean is that this years 'Final Meal' now has to be a fusion of French and Croatian dishes, which is a shame because after Trippier's free kick I was planning for a Bouillabaisse Pie with Roquefort mash. Surely a future classic, no?

But we'll make the best of the situation with a bit of cuttlefish ink and a few snails and, who knows, it might even be vaguely edible.

(If you haven't been keeping up with the tradition, the 2014 World Cup saw the creation of Black Forest Churrasco, while Euro 2016 - Portugal vs France, of course - lent itself to the Peri Peri Croque Monsieur. This lark began back in the 2012 Euro finals when Spain took on Italy and I gave you Gnocchi Bravas.)

So, here we go then.  2018's 'Final Meal'...

MSG, Marinara and the magical fish

Way back in the long-long agos, when I were a wee sapling child and Feargal Sharkey was just launching his solo career, there was quite a lot of tooing and froing in the media about Monosodium Glutamate. MSG. Angel Dust.

These days it's all about Aspartame and how it makes Diet Coke actually more fattening than drinking melted butter because scientists on the internet proved it or something, but back in the late 1970s and early 80s the controversial food additive was MSG.

Worse than Heroin and Thalidomide, MSG was going to give us all cancer and turn us into Communists by the year 2000.

Thank fuck it's not around any more.

Although, in reality, it is. Probably more than ever, in fact. They just stopped calling it MSG and people stopped caring so much. People can be like that at times.

If you look closely at the ingredients, you can see that it turns up in loads of packaged savoury foods, from cheese and onion crisps to chicken wings to pizza to ready-made Marinara sauce. It's just called E621, or 'flavour enhancer'. these days 'Hydrolysed vegetable protein' is, I gather, almost identical too.

As rebranding exercises go, I think they can chalk it up as a success story. Bastards.

Spaghetti Louse

I’ve been to Brecon twice in my life, and I’ve been to the Brecon Tandoori twice in my life too.

Because it’s a fantastic restaurant that lures people back to Brecon time after time with its irresistible food? Because it’s so good no trip to the Brecon Beacons would be complete without sampling their delicious curries?

Well, no. It was because it was the only place in town where we could get a bite to eat after about 8 PM. That's small towns for you.

The first time - I think was 13 - was on a camping trip to West Wales with my father and my brother. On the way back we stayed overnight at the Gremlin hotel in Brecon and ate at the Brecon Tandoori.

It was nothing special, and we didn’t particularly feel like eating there again. Ever. 

The following year (or quite possibly later the same year – it was a long time ago) we returned to the area to climb Pen y Fan, staying once again in the Gremlin, where we hoped to catch a glimpse of their famed Billiard Room ghost. 

Why the Internet is Bad and Seafood Risotto is Good

I’ve been playing a stupid-but-addictive Facebook game lately – Solitaire Blitz, which is basically a form of Patience, against the clock, with a bizarre nautical theme.

I logged on at the weekend, hoping to beat my highscore and accrue some more treasure… Oh dear - my score, my treasure, indeed my entire Solitaire Blitz history, had been erased!

Everything was reset to zero, as if I’d never played the game before. Everything.

Damn you, PopCap, if that is your real name!

And it’s not like this is the first time something of this shitty nature has happened on Facebook either - around Christmas time I decided I wanted to play Super Snowman, surely the most amusing drag’n’drop Flash application ever devised.

I’d played it the previous Christmas and the Christmas before that. It was cool.

But...