=Gourmet Noodles For Beginners=

SO in my pursuit of musical glory through not having a proper job (and it’s working – voted 5th best original indie band from Hampshire by readers of the Basingstoke Post 2 years running) I’ve been steadily refining my ‘living on ten quid a gig’ technique and a big part of this is budget food; as your mum probably told you when you went off to college ‘invest in yourself and buy good fresh food, not cheap shit’.

Bollocks to that though, you’re brassic and you need last night’s gas money to buy some bogroll to deal with this morning’s kebab detritus. You need to economise, badly. So here I proudly present my ultimate noodles recipe. This is seriously next-level shit, Blumenthal WISHES he had my other recipes…

NOODLES A LA LONELY JOE PARKER:

Preparation time: 7 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
*4 Packs value noodles – the 9p jobs
*1 Pack of value veg cup-a-soup (4 sachets – the 17p jobs)
*Water
*A kettle
*4 Mugs
*Pepper / salt / tombasco / soy sauce / brown sauce / mustard / adrenachrome / other seasoning / blah

Cooking instructions:

1. Put water in the kettle and boil it.*

2. Put one pack of noodles in each mug. Don’t put the little flavour sachet in yet – and if you’re really skilled/pedantic you should be able to split the packs of noodles lengthways so that they stand up in the cup. This way they cook quicker, flavour more evenly and the noodles are nice and long and stringy when done.
If you can’t be arsed with that just mash them in there.

3. Completely fill the mugs to the top with water. There’s gonna be some air in there too so swill it around gently with a fork to get rid of that shit.

4. Do something else with your life for 5 minutes. Like, write ‘Spanish Girls’ or ‘Love Jugs’…

5. The noodles should be bigger and softer now. Pour away about a centimetre of water from each mug, or a bit more or less if that’s what you like.

6. Add the sachet of powder that came with the noodles, and also a sachet of cup-a-soup. This is the clever bit because the soup makes it thicker and also adds things like peas and chunks of carrot that make it a) look a bit more like a proper Pot Noodle, and b) decorates your puke nicely. Stir well.

7. Add condiments (or sauces as we used to call them back in the Thatcher years) to taste. Leave for a minute or so and maybe blat it in the microwave if you really want to.

8. Sit back and enjoy! You now have the makings of your very own noodle dinner party (that’s right, you do live in a squat, but face it, you’re as middle-class as a Plane Stupid demo) – why not have a competition to see who can make the best one?

!!CAUTION!!
Eating this crap for seven goddamn years will definitely turn your body into a sexy tower of muscle and sinew. Nah, really you’ll look like a big soft noodle yourself. But have more money to spend on white cider – yay.

*You can do this with a metal kettle on a van engine. But be ready for the diesel-y goodness.