Monthly Archives: July 2009

Recipe: veggie sausages and spicy super-mash

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This simple recipe is one of my favourite comfort foods. It feeds one hungry person with a bit left over – feel free to experiment with portion sizes and so on. I know this is a dish that is fairly standard, but I do the mash in a particular way that keeps it smooth but textured, herby and a little spicy too. Plus I just ducking love it.

Veggie sausage and supermash with gravy

Veggie sausage and supermash with gravy

Sausages (yes, this is a worthy cheat)

  • One pack Cauldron Lincolnshire style sausages. Comes in unhelpfully-sized packs of four. You can also use Quorn bangers (from the chilled section), but Cauldron are tastier. Avoid Linda McCartney!

Mash

  • 2 good sized white potatoes.
  • 1 red onion, or a few shallots.
  • Some cloves of garlic (4), or garlic puree.
  • Grated cheese – any hard cheese should do, but mature cheddar is best.
  • Butter or spread.
  • Yellow English mustard.
  • Spices: rosemary, course ground black pepper, chilli flakes.
  • Marigold Vegetable bouillon, if you have it.
  • A little milk, or cream if feeling flush.

Extra – gravy, of which Bisto Best vegetable gravy granules are highly suggested.
You can also boil up some chopped carrots or microwave some frozen baby carrots to go in with the potatoes.

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C, if you going to oven cook the sausages (recommended). I use an oil spray on a baking tray and over the sausages as well, before placing them inside.
  2. Wash and peel the potatoes. Chop them roughly into pieces approx 3 cm on one side. Perfection isn’t essential as long as they’re roughly the same size. Place these into a metal saucepan (not non-stick unless you want to wreck it) and fill with cold water from the tap until they are covered, plus 1-2 cm then put on a high heat to boil. Throw in no more than a spoon of salt. It’s important you do this with cold water, rather than cover with boiling water and reboil. Boil for approximately 20 minutes.
  3. Chop the red onion finely. Peel the cloves of garlic and get ready to crush them later. If you fancy extra spice, chop a small red chilli too, finely. Don’t rub your eyes!
  4. Check occasionally on the potatoes with a knife to see how tender they are. They’re ready when the knife goes through very easily. Drain completely using a colander, then return the potatoes to the pan and place back on a medium heat for a few moments – you’re trying to drive as much moisture out as you can. Don’t let them stick to the bottom however. Remove from heat.
  5. Check on the sausages. You may wish to switch the sausages from cooking to warming mode, if your oven has one, else they’ll be overdone.
  6. Potatoes and garnish ready to mash!

    Potatoes and garnish ready to mash!

    To the now soft potatoes, add a good knob of butter or spread, grated cheese (to taste – I suggest 150g), the red onion; the garlic cloves (crushed); and the spices plus bouillon powder to taste. I find about two teaspoons of each works well. Add a 1.5 teaspoons of mustard.

  7. This is the difficult part: you’re now going to mash the mixture using only a fork. This is why the potatoes had to be soft and you have to use a metal saucepan! Using a decent size fork (or a masher, if you absolutely must), press down the mixture and move round the whole saucepan. There’s no set way to do this except you must mash up all the potato. After the first round, add the littlest drop of milk, perhaps a tablespoon, and continue. If you have a ceramic hob, you can keep it turned on at the lowest setting to assist with this process.
  8. Repeat this, including stirring it from time to time, until it takes on a smoothish consistency. In my opinion, it needn’t be completely smooth but it should be soft for the most part. The onion will, of course, remain crunchy.
  9. If you added the bouillon, the mash will be an appealing golden colour (I hope). Serve the mashed potato as a bed in the midde of the plate, onto which you will place your Cauldron tofu sausages. Three is a good number for one plate!
  10. Drizzle with the hot gravy… I like mine fairly thick, but moving and poured directly over each one of the sausages with a bit dripping down.
  11. Serve!

So a pretty simple recipe, but I really think using those particular herbs makes the mash an enjoyably spicy part of the meal, rather than just a bland accompaniment that requires lashings of gravy for any flavour. Mashing with a fork, while taking a bit longer, means you keep the crunchy red onion and give it a texture you won’t get from a processor.

Veggies should love this (it works on my little brother, without the chilli) and it’s great comfort food, as well as being gastropub-esque. You can probably do it with regular sausages too, but I have no idea of course :)

I’ll try and find a picture… regrettably I ate all mine! Sadly iPhone pics were all I could find at short notice, but I assure you it’s totally gorgeous.

Tried it? How did you find it? Comments welcome.

Social Media Cafe Manchester – poll update and August meetup

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In my last blog about Manchester’s social media cafe, I blogged my thoughts on the venue-swap to the BBC Manchester offices.

Thanks to Tim and Gill for their useful feedback. Their thoughts were that the BBC offered a great opportunity to properly set up sessions in different parts of the space, with presentation facilities and much, much better sound.

I completely agree – this is a big benefit of a space like the BBC, and the advantage is that we can access it without necessarily paying the rates of renting office/conference space in Manchester, which at this stage would make the meetup unviable.

Poll results

However, in a totally unscientific poll on this blog (which received a paltry 17 votes) 82% (14) suggested we reserve the BBC for ‘special events’. 3 votes were cast to try and remain at the Beeb where possible. No-one disliked the BBC as a venue.

I think this is telling. The BBC is obviously a great place to hold events, but perhaps some regular attendees – including myself – may feel that it may not be suited to having regular meetings there. This was the thrust of what I wrote last time.

It certainly has benefits over the slightly awkward layout of The Northern (and bar prices are thankfully cheaper). But, I’d like to see different venues explored – coffee shops or other pubs with function room spaces. Perhaps suggestions can be noted in the comments?

It’s also worth noting that not everyone can access a space that serves alcohol or one that doesn’t have disabled access. Not something we always think about but something we should try and consider, even in informal meetups.

August meetup?

Finally, there’s no planned meetup in August. So how about an informal meetup? I’ve started a discussion thread on the Social Media Manchester Ning network, which complements the wiki. Sign-up to comment and keep networking through the summer, either online or offline.

Creating a free issue tracker using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

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I recently launched a WordPress-based microsite for a project that is a partnership between my workplace and two other charities. As the digital project manager, I had to manage queries both the internal and external stakeholders, all of whom were keen that the inevitable snags were dealt with as rapidly as possible by myself or the developers as appropriate.

It’s very easy to drown under a weight of emails with different requests, of varying priority and ability to fix. I needed a quick way of letting people input their issues into a central store, without needing to login or navigate anything that looked remotely scary. It had to replace sending an email to me.

Here comes the Twitter bit…

I put out a call for a free bug tracker on Twitter and got a number of useful suggestions (Trac, Uservoice, Getsatisfaction) but none of them quite fit what I wanted to do. I also ran a Google search and got a couple of solutions, that required a bit of sign-up and configuration. Thinking further, I realised that a Google product that I had almost never used was actually the answer.

Creating the issue tracker

Google Docs & Spreadsheets logoGoogle Spreadsheets is a free online spreadsheet system that is designed for collaboration from the ground-up. Using your inevitable Google Account, you can quickly create and publish spreadsheets to either an invite-only audience or to everyone who has the link.

Within minutes, and with Dave Mee‘s advice, I’d set up a basic spreadsheet that covered off all the key things you’d want to know if you were tracking bugs. Using the ‘Share’ button, I can create a link like the one above and let anyone look at it, or even edit it, without signing-in. For the purposes of demo, you won’t be able to edit the sample tracker, but please click ‘File / Create a Copy’ for your own version.

Keeping it simple (stupid)

Unfortunately, sending users to a spreadsheet isn’t the most friendly interface to provide them with. Remember, I needed this to replace email so that means users need a simple, easy-to-understand method to put data in there, without logging in.

Well, the great thing about Google Spreadsheets is that it can act as a basic data-collection platform. This is key, because you don’t need to share the spreadsheet and all the data stored in it in order to get data into it, nor do you need users to login to yet another system.

From the spreadsheet above, the obvious ‘Form’ menu option, I was able to quickly create a simple form that automatically updated fields relevant to the end user. For example, I wanted users to tell me the problem (Issue detail…) but I would be setting the priority level and assigning it to the right people for resolution. During the creation of the form I was easily able to edit how all the fields are displayed and whether they’re required – and delete the fields that users don’t need to see.

That form can now be emailed around to anyone relevant or embedded within another webpage, say a feedback form on a beta/testing site or even on an organisation’s intranet. It’s trivial to further configure the spreadsheet options to email you whenever anyone then adds an entry to it via the form.

Love and spreadsheets are free

Total cost of this endeavour? Zero, apart from my time which was approximately 30-45 minutes, allowing for my fiddling around. Now that all requests for fixes are routed through one place, they can be managed much more easily and transparently, saving time and with users being able (if you wish) to monitor the fix status of any issue!

Found this useful? Am I missing out on a better way to capture these issues? Leave a comment below…

Social Media Cafe and the Cutting Room Experiment

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BBC Manchester, Oxford Road

BBC Manchester, Oxford Road

This month’s social media cafe was another triumph for the community and came with the extra special glow of being held at the BBC in Manchester, complete with Tardis in the foyer. Thanks Ian!

I’ll refer you to Tim’s roundup of the sessions at the cafe (they were good) as he had the opportunity to flit around. I settled in to watch the chaps from Cahoona and events management agency Ear to the Ground discuss the Cutting Room Experiment, a project described in classic hyperbole as the ‘biggest user generated event in the world’.

My thoughts on the Cutting Room Experiment

I have to admit, when I first saw the press release from Manchester City Council, my heart sank. The press release, regrettably, reads a bit like the classic ‘public sector tries to do social media, misses the point’ with a smattering of buzz words: ‘flash mobs’; ‘user generated’; ‘unique event’, complete with manufactured quote from a director. It’s unfortunate that this was the first piece of publicity I saw.

What I saw next, thankfully, was a pretty darn nice website, complete with integrated social media PR campaign that picked up some great coverage online. This was followed up by a ‘blog launch‘ at the Bay Horse, suitably bribing people with the offer of a free pint in exchange for a short (and painless) presentation from the team.

I think this quickly shattered my misconceptions. Though not my misgivings.

In the end, Cutting Room Experiment turned out to be just that, a bold experiment, blessed by the usually control-hungry public bodies that sponsored it and one that achieved its key successes – 400 people there, extensive media coverage, and awareness raised of the location (though these GPS co-ords are not the square).

However, while I’ve already alluded to degree of hyperbole that did surround some of the marketing (‘biggest’ user generated event? ‘world first’?) the presentation was refreshingly honest when it reflected some of the highs and lows of the exercise. In particular, David (Ear to the Ground) pointed out that “It’s hard to turn a devoted online audience into a vibrant offline one”.

And this is a key problem for any online social marketeer. It’s easy to make people sign-up to an event and click through, but will they actually turn up? I ‘counted myself in’ to a couple of events, even posted my own (slightly tongue-in-cheek) event – but I didn’t go. My main aim was to see the alka seltzer rockets, provided by the Manchester Science Festival team but unfortunately I missed the slot.

From my own personal experience, I imagine that a risk of this sort of ‘user generated’ process is that some people just won’t go unless they’ve got one killer event and that might be the event that they themselves organised, or for which they had some personal buy-in (e.g. employee/volunteer). Perhaps the truth is that an online community where ‘buy-in’ is limited to ‘agreeing to the possibility that you might attend’ is a difficult one to convert.

Cutting Room Experiment though, had the benefit of a local community and they did tap in to this with flyers; the killer piece of info that was perhaps missing from the presentation was being able to know how the attendees (who weren’t staff or volunteers) had heard of the event – online, or offline. I suspect it was the former, whereas arguably you needed more of the latter, particularly those who lived locally.

To conclude, it’s hard to criticise something into which a whole lot of people put a lot of hard work, and which produced some stunning results. However, I have to wonder whether this experiment, conducted largely online, needs to have much more of an offline aspect in order to make sure that the numbers for the ‘real world’ event does materialise.

The venue – keeping it social

Finally, the BBC was a great one-off venue and I, like many young (ish) meeja whores, am naturally excited by anything taking place there because of the weight that the BBC as a brand can lend to it. However, the Social Media Cafe, despite being less than a year old, has definitely established itself as a key hub of digital networking and knowledge sharing. Stopping in at the Beeb every so often would be great, but I think the social aspect of the cafe would be better served by sticking with a venue where turning up late without being signed-up (for example) won’t cause any organisational stress for those who’ve worked hard to secure those spaces.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment or vote in this non-scientific poll: