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Up to a 50% saving on Indian takeaway from the Mirage, Paisley

A curry from Paisley's Mirage: the perfect start to the weekend, a mid-week treat or just because the fridge is empty

Wednesday! Not quite the start of the weekend but it’s in the air.

For many of us, the weekend wouldn’t be complete without a curry and if you hustle over to the 5pm Big Deal site then you can take advantage of today’s cracking Big Deal which offers up to a 50% discount on takeaway from the Mirage Indian restaurant in Paisley.

50% discount on Indian takeaway

The full details are on the 5pm Big Deal site but essentially it works like this: you buy a voucher for £12.50 from the Big Deal site and you can use it to buy up to £25 worth of lip-smacking, authentic Indian food from the Mirage.

The voucher must be redeemed by ordering your meal through the 5pm Takeaway site.

It’s the quick and convenient way to order takeaway online. Click here and you can browse the takeaway menus at the Mirage, pick your dishes and redeem the voucher.

The all you have to do is sit back, wrestle the remote control from your partner/kids and wait for your tasty takeaway to arrive at the door.

Not that you need to wait until the weekend to redeem your voucher. The vouchers are valid seven days a week until the 15th of July.

Online ordering with 5pm Takeaway

Of course, the 5pm Takeaway service covers all sorts of different takeaways. Whether you want Chinese, Thai, Pizza or Mexican, your favourite takeaway is just a click away.

Less salty food? That’s shocking!

Electrified food might sound like something that would feature in the Japanese torture game show Endurance.

However, according to this clip, electrifying food is a research project which is currently being carried out by a student at the Meiji University in Japan.

The idea behind it is that passing an electrical current through a drink or piece of changes the way that people experience or taste that food.

If electrified food tastes, say, more salty or sweeter than it really is then food manufacturers could cut down the amount of salt or sugar that they use but still produce the same flavour.

It’s an interesting theory but not one which we recommend you try at home.

Online ordering

Rather than going to the trouble of wiring your tongue to the mains, there are easier ways of making your taste buds tingle.

You might just find it easier to click through to the 5pm Takeaway site where you can order anything from burgers to pizza via Chinese, Indian and Thai takeaway.

By ordering through 5pm Takeaway, you can look for specific types of takeaway in your area, browse their menus and both place and pay for your order online.

It’s quick, convenient and easy to use.

Discounts on takeaway

Not that ease of use is the only benefit. Order over £15 of food from 5pm Takeaway and we’ll give you a 10% discount on your meal.

Simply type in FIRST at the checkout. Discount valid for one time use only.

Now that’s a much more palatable sort of electrifying offer.

Uber Burger

Ever wondered what goes into the perfect burger? Well, the chef boffins who wrote the Modernist Cuisine set of cook books reckon that it looks something like the above.

Probably not aimed at the casual home entertainment market, the Modernist Cuisine set of books weighs in at six volumes and 2400 pages. It makes Delia’s books look like the culinary equivalent of a Where’s Wally annual.

Although, to be fair to the sainted Delia, not many home cooks are equipped with a centrifuge or have hydrocolloids as a staple of their kitchen cupboards.

The Modernist Cuisine burger does look good but not everyone can lay their hands on a Maitake mushroom at short notice.

Online ordering

Rather than going to the trouble of vacuum compressing an heirloom tomato, you might just find it easier to click through to the 5pm Takeaway site where you can order anything from burgers to pizza via Chinese, Indian and Thai takeaway.

By ordering through 5pm Takeaway, you can look for specific types of takeaway in your area, browse their menus and both place and pay for your order online.

It’s quick, convenient and easy to use.

Discounts on takeaway

Not that ease of use is the only benefit. Order over £15 of food from 5pm Takeaway and we’ll give you a 10% discount on your meal.

Simply type in FIRST at the checkout. Discount valid for one time use only.

The perfect chip

French fries: the best use for a spud ever invented

For many, Maccy D’s chips are the best on the market. Always crisp, always crunchy, it’s no wonder they sell hundreds of tonnes of them every week.

However, David Myers, a Los Angeles-based chef reckons that he has cracked the secret formula and claims to be able to recreate the famous McDonald’s French fry in his restaurant kitchens.

You can find out how to do it at home by reading his recipe here. The only problem is that the Myer’s method requires precision chip-cutting, long soaking, double cooking at high temperatures and a lengthy spell in the fridge.

The 2 hour chip

Using his recipe, it will take at least two hours between peeling the spuds and taking your first crispy bite of French fry heaven.

If that all sounds like far too much time and trouble, then click this way.

The 5pm Takeaway service can put chips in your hands rather faster than you can make them yourself using the Myer method. We’re also fairly sure that they won’t cost the $7 plus tip that Chef Myer charges in his Comme Ca restaurant.

Order takeaway online

If you have a craving for chips or even a sausage supper, the 5pm Takeaway service is the quick and convenient, online way to order from your local chippy.

Click here to see all the fish ‘n’ chip shops on 5pm Takeaway. Using the site, you can browse their menus, order your meal and pay for your food online.

Order over £15 worth of takeaway and we’ll give you a 10% discount. Simply type in FIRST at the checkout. This offer is valid for one off use only.

£10 for up to £25 worth of delicious Indian food from Assam’s, Edinburgh

After happily trading in Glasgow for a number of years, Assam’s have opened a new branch on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk.

To celebrate the occasion, Assam’s in Edinburgh have teamed up with 5pm to offer a rather tasty deal on both takeaway and eating in at the new Indian restaurant.

Discount on Indian takeaway

The full details are on the 5pm Big Deal site but, essentially, it’s simple. You buy a voucher for £10 and you can use it at Assam’s in Edinburgh for up to £25 worth of food. You can choose to eat in, in which case you can browse the restaurant’s menus here.

Alternatively, you can redeem your voucher against takeaway food from Assam’s Edinburgh by ordering your meal through the 5pm Takeaway service.

Online ordering

By using the 5pm Takeaway service, you can browse the takeaway menus at Assam’s in Edinburgh, order your meal and redeem your Big Deal voucher.

You can also specify whether you want to collect your meal or have it delivered within Assam’s delivery boundaries.

Quick, convenient and easy to use, it is all done online with the 5pm Takeaway service.

You can browse the takeaway menus at Assam’s Cafe here.

Your blogger ate at Assam’s not long after it opened. We can recommend the ginger lime fish curry, the cauliflower and potato sides plus the chilli garlic chicken.

5pm Takeaway hero: Made in Italy

In a perfect world, pizza would be considered one of the essential five-a-day items that we are all supposed to eat for good health and long life.

According to this piece in The Daily Mail (so it must be true), such wishful thinking could be more than pie in the sky. Apparently, oregano, which is often used to flavour pizza, could be helpful in fighting cancer.

This is a slight twist on a story which did the rounds almost ten years ago. Back in 2003, there was a big hullaballoo because research seemed to indicate that cooked tomatoes, such as those used on pizza bases, could help prevent cancer.

At 5pm Takeaway, we make no claims for medical competence but we’re crossing our fingers and scoffing plenty of pizza just in case there is some truth behind the headlines.

Made In Italy

At which point, we should introduce this week’s 5pm Takeaway Hero: Made In Italy. A long term fixture on Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, Made In Italy specialises in fantastic pizza.

Gourmet pizza delivery

As well as wide selections of classic and gourmet pizza, you can also freestyle it and choose your own toppings.

It’s not just pizza that the Made In Italy team deliver. they can also sort you out with pastas, chippie meals, baked spuds, wraps and even (whisper it), cigarettes.

Discount on pizza delivery

Using 5pm Takeaway, you can browse the menus at Made In Italy, order your food and pay for it – all online. As an introductory offer, we’ll even give you a 10% discount on your first order over £15 from Made In Italy. Valid for one use only, simply type in FIRST at the checkout.

Pizza with a burger crust? Really?

Pizza or burger? You'll never have to decide between them again

So a couple of weeks back we snickered over the news that Pizza Hut had introduced a pizza with a hot dog crust.

It turns out that was one of the more restrained pizzas to have emerged from the Hut’s research and development kitchens.

Burgizza? Pizzburg?

Under the umbrella of the Crown Crust Carnival brand, Pizza Hut in the Middle East has just started serving pizza which has a crust studded with cheese burgers. Let’s be clear about this: this isn’t a crust which is stuffed with burgers. It’s a pizza which appears to be encircled by burgers sitting in their own open top pods.

Not that the burger pizza is the only fresh product in the Crown Crust range. If you can’t figure whether to eat chicken or pizza, then the new chicken fillet crust pizza has little pockets (nests?) of chicken dotted around the pizza perimeter. We’re not even going to start on the cheesy scallop volcano pizza which is on the Pizza Hut menus in Hong Kong.

If you want to see the cheese burger pizza in all its glory then watch the clip below. Be warned, it’s cheesier that a mozzarella-stuffed crust with double extra cheese.

Pizza takeaway

The 5pm Takeaway site can’t promise pizza burger crossovers but we can give you a quick and convenient way to order pizza online.

Simply click here to see all of the 5pm Takeaway restaurants which sell pizza. You can narrow the list down by location and browse the menus of whichever takeaway grabs your fancy.

Using our easy to follow online service, you can also pay for your food and then  organise to collect it or have it delivered.

10% discount

What’s more, we’ll give you a 10% discount off your first order over £15 with the 5pm Takeaway service. Simply type in the code FIRST at the checkout.

5pm Takeaway hero: Britannia Spice

Sail away to Britannia Spice in Leith

So you’ve got your eye on an Indian while your other half fancies Thai. What are you going to do? Toss a coin? Sort it out with a pillow fight? Or click through to the 5pm Takeaway service and place an order with Britannia Spice, today’s Takeaway Hero and the popular purveyors of top notch food from North India, Bangladesh and Thailand.

Award-winning Indian

Since opening in 2000 in Edinburgh’s Leith, Britannia Spice has won armfuls of awards for its authentic Indian, Nepali and Thai cooking. Now part of the 5pm Takeaway network, you can order takeaway from Britannia Spice using 5pm’s quick and convenient online ordering service.

Discount on Indian takeaway

Using 5pm Takeaway, you can browse the menus at Britannia Spice, order your food and pay for it – all online. As an introductory offer, we’ll even give you a 10% discount on your first order over £15 from Britannia Spice. Valid for one use only, simply type in FIRST at the checkout.

Thai takeaway

The only difficult bit is deciding what to have from Britannia Spice. How can anyone choose between the Britannia mixed tandoori and the Thai sesame chicken? Or how about the Bangladeshi shatkora gosht: tender pieces of lamb cooked in a medium hot sauce with rinds of a special Bangladeshi citric fruit, kaffir lime leaves and Bengal chillies? Or perhaps the choice is between the Kathmandu chicken and the fiery Ceylon chicken? It’s an impossible task but you can start by visiting 5pm Takeaway.

More sauce

Following on from yesterday’s story about Glasgow chippies stocking up on brown sauce for the all Edinburgh Cup final, The Daily Record has sent their man Brian McIver to the source of the sauce: Walter Blacks in Cambuslang.

Think along the lines of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory but with fewer Oompah Loompahs. His report is here.

Salt ‘n’ sauce Cup Final

Gold Star Brown Sauce: lifeblood of Edinburgh's chippies

Fantastic piece in the Daily Record about Glaswegian chippies stocking up on brown sauce before the Hibs v Hearts final at Hampden in May.

Famously, Edinburgh eats its chips with salt and sauce, a mix of brown sauce and vinegar, while Glasgow, in common with the rest of the UK, prefers salt and vinegar.

How did it come to pass that Glasgow and Edinburgh, two great cities only 40 miles apart, should be so divided over their condiment choices?

Brown sauce gene in EH1

Is there a brown sauce gene which is passed down to anyone living within ten miles of EH1? Is it something in the water?

After a little bit of digging, I’ve come up blank. If any readers want to pass on their theories of why Edinburgh and brown sauce go together like, well, fish and chips, please feel free to, er, chip in using the comments button.

Apparently, Walter Black Foods in Cambuslang, Glasgow, produce 60,000 litres of their Gold Star brown sauce every week for Edinburgh and supply 95 per cent of the capital’s chip shops.

60,000 litres a week? How many pokes of chips does that equate to? Who is eating them all?

Fish and chips

Whether you like your chips with salt and sauce or salt and vinegar, the 5pm Takeaway service is the quick and convenient, online way to order from your local chippy.

Click here to see all the fish ‘n’ chip shops on 5pm Takeaway. Using the site, you can browse their menus, order your meal and pay for your food online.

Order over £15 worth of takeaway and we’ll give you a 10% discount. Simply type in FIRST at the checkout. This offer is valid for one off use only.