Making a meal of it

I didn't buy in enough fresh food and the only meat in the house needed to be defrosted. There was only one thing for it - a cupboard special. The ingredients: Rice (Water and Chilli Extra Vigin Olive Oil), Chickpeas, Tinned Mackerel in Tomato Sauce and a jar of generic supermarket Rogan Josh curry sauce.

First up I put the water onto boil for 5 minutes, once bubbling added the Basmati Rice with some of the Chilli Olive Oil stirred, turned down to a low heat and set the oven timer for 5 minutes.

With the timer beeping at me I came back to it. It was time to open the tins, the electric tin opener made light work of the pre soaked Chickpeas tin. It was then time to lift the ring-pull on the top of the Scottish Mackerel in Tomato Sauce tin and peel back.

Ring-pull lifted... pulled back, the ring-pull started to break the seal of the tin, the ring-pull came back with my arm.

Ah pants. Tinned Mackerel fail.

Not deterred by this 'crazy man vs can' event ending in an away win to the can, I begun the rematch immediately. The electric tin opener didn't work, it got stuck after about 2cm due to the groove in the can. No hand held tin opener to be found due to the old one going rusty and never working anyway due to its mega blunt cheapness I reverted back to the stone age. Sadly all the rolling pin actually did was spurt tomato sauce through the little holes I'd managed to inflict on the tin and splat me and the kitchen surfaces with fishy smelling oily fluids.

Turns out a standard fork as a ring-pull replacement is the efficient way to get into the nom'y goodness inside of container of this nature.

Victory!

The Mackerel went in the pan with a little more Chilli Olive Oil followed by the Chickpeas and sauce and at that point it was starting to look like an actual meal. Well an actual meal that looks a little like sick. Saying that it's probably looking more appetising in the pan than the last meal I blogged about.

10 minutes later... Voilà! Mackerel and Chickpea Curry with Basmati Rice. I think it turned out looking OK and tasting pretty nice in the end. No bones or metal shards to be found... well, yet. Shame I didn't have a Naan Bread handy.