The Joy of Delegation

I have become wiser with age and experience. I am starting to do some prepartion in the hopes of getting dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. When I say I’ve been doing preparation what I really mean is that I’ve been sending the husband out to do things. Glad we got that little confusion out of the way.

Wednesday night I sent the Husband off to do a little shopping on his way home from work. Chicken breast (only $9.95kg from yur ald maaaaate the mad butcher) and lettuce and tomatoes from fruit world. I have discovered a plethora of chicken recipes requiring x cups of cooked chicken meat so I poached my chicken to have it ready for the next night. Prepartion, it’s the way of the future. The very immediate future at any rate.

Chicken salad. Salad in a very 1966 way as opposed to a 2008 way. Firstly arrange the lettuce around the bottom and sides of the bowl. Add the cooked, diced chicken to the centre of the bowl. Add slices of tomato and egg to the edge of the bowl in a decorative pattern. Cover the chicken with loads of mayo, being careful that it does not cover the tomato or egg. Et voila – Chicken Salad.

The Husband loved it, I think he is regressing in his tastes. This could be a concern in several months time.

In order to keep the tally up I did two lots of baking – Small cakes which were like scones on the outside and slightly more cakey on the inside and spiced rock cakes with rasins and crystalised ginger. Niether were a huge hit at work. I don’t think I will continue with Rock cake making post-edmonds, they don’t seem to be widely appreciated.

Crystallised Ginger goes Savoury

I never thought that I would put crystallised ginger on my steak. Just more of the crazy things the Edmonds has led me to do. And peanut cake, don’t even start me on the peanut cake.

Steak Orientale – take a perfectly good steak and marinate it in pineapple juice, sherry, soy, brown sugar and chopped crystallised ginger. I’m still trying to figure out what is Orientale about this? Can anyone help? Perhaps they could have called it Steak Vaguely Foreign or something more appropriate.

And it actually wasn’t bad. I’m not a big fan of marinades on steak – If something has died to go on my plate then I think I should have the good grace to let it taste like what it was. Primarily I think I’ve had too many bad experiences with those marinated steaks you buy from the supermarket which have been flavoured and tenderised and brined and injected to within and inch of their lives. Except that phrase does not work terriblt well to the flesh of dead animals.

I will do a quick plug for the supplier of dead animals – the village butcher on Lunn ave – Sirloin steak for $13.95kg (and butterflied lamb legs for $12.95 a kg, might go and get myself one of those tonight) and very nice steak it was too, even with the crystalised ginger.

Peanut cake. A cake composed almost entirely of peanuts. A little sugar, a couple of eggs, a smidge of baking powder – but mostly peanuts. Would be good if you had a gluten allergy, but then if you are prone to allergies then Peanuts is probably something you’d want to stick relatively clear of.

And it actually wasn’t bad! The peanuts were “minced” (put through the food processor) so it had a certain grainy texture, and naturally a strong peanut flavour. Not exactly my cup of tea (or piece of cake) but interesting all the same. Perhaps hazels or almonds would be a little more contemporary?

We almost had a sticky ending when the only person with a nut allergy was 3/5ths of the way towards the consumption of the peanut cake before I arrived and circumvented danger. I like to envisage myself diving in slow motion, matrix style, to wrench the offending cake from his hand whilst yelling “nooooooooooo” in somewhat deeper tones than usual due to the slow mo… Fair to say I lead an active fantasy life in my head.

Meat Salad

Starting the week as I intended to continue I pulled three blocks of pastry out of my freezer. I love having hunks of frozen pastry lying in wait for me; it makes me feel far more organised and competent than is strictly deserved.

Veal and ham pie. I must admit I didn’t actually use veal, it turns out that I’m not made of money. I used some left over roast beef which I figured was close enough? This was an unusual pie – take a casserole dish, place cooked veal (beef) in, add rolls of ham, quartered boiled eggs and forcemeat balls. Add a little stock. Cover with pastry, cook for 45 minutes.

Unusual but quite tasty. It was sort of like a meat salad with pastry. A good use of leftovers although we are not generally a household with a lot of leftovers.

Fruit squares – grated apple, currants and sultanas encased in pastry. Not the sort of thing that tickles my fancy what with being a raisin hater at all – yes that does include sultanas, in fact they are even worse. I did hear from my appreciative audience that they were up to my usual high standard. Or something like that anyway!

Eccles cakes – Now my father was born in Eccles so I feel I should have some connection to these. Firstly I was disappointed to find that they are not really cakes, they are actually small pastry. Secondly they are full of the evil raisins smaller cousin the currant. Truth be told I actually don’t mind a currant, I wouldn’t say I was partial but I’m strongly indifferent if that’s possible.

I did try an Eccles cake, I wouldn’t write home about it but I am at home writing about it so I suppose that’s something

Boring biscuits and bad ice cream

Sunday Sunday… Sunday has traditionally – well for the last 9 months anyway – been baking day. Today was no different. I have trained my colleagues to expect baking on a Monday and I hate to think what they would be like on a Monday (which, lets face it is bad enough already) after dragging themselves into work and then finding that there is no baking. It would be very bad indeed.

Actually given that today is Sunday and I haven’t done any baking for tomorrow it’s entirely possible that I’ll be finding out in vivid detail what they are like sans baking. Gulp. Perhaps I can fend them off with the large box of little bags of chips that has been living under my desk – I’d like to think they wouldn’t turn nasty but I’m not willing to risk it.

Almond biscuits. Very boring. Flour, butter sugar and a little almond essence with an almond stuck on the top. The sort of boring biscuit that your flatmate’s Mum would bring around and you’d thank her but not mean it; and you’d wish she’s brought peanut brownies or possibly afghans. Beggars can’t be choosers but very poor students can.

I remember a time, and it concerns me that I am using that phrase at my age, when my flatmates and I used to eat for $20 a week each. We didn’t eat particularly well. I remember there being a lot of mince. We didn’t buy meat that cost more than $5 to feed 4 of us. Every now and then we’d splash out and buy one of those awful rolled roasts with the stuffing inside and as you cooked it the whole thing shrunk and the stuffing always used to get squeezed out. Stuffing munching was the cooks prerogative.

Cooking skills were dicey but not bad in most instances. In some instances they were bad. Like the first time one of my flatmates boiled potatoes – he was unaware the potato needed to be washed or cut up first so about an hour later they were soft and muddy on the outside and crispy in the middle. The same flatmate cooked fish in the oven for 45 minutes until the point when the fillet could be picked up from one end and still stay in one piece.

Enough reminiscing – back to the cooking. Vanilla biscuits. These were biscuits made with custard powder and sandwiched together with my most fabulous home made blackcurrant jam. They were ok, elevated to levels of greatness by the jam. Such good jam…

I also decided to do an experiment in ice cream. The first ice cream I had made from the book, Ice Cream (2), had been revolting. I was hoping from something better than revolting from Ice Cream (1) and (3). I was disappointed.

I called the Husband in to taste the ice cream. The poor man. He has become the culinary version of a beaten dog - he knows something awful is coming he’s just not entirely sure when. One recipe was elaborate involving custardy mixtures and egg whites and whipped cream. The other was simply blancmange and sweetened condensed milk. Both were foul – this was sweetened condensed milk in a form even Marcus Lush couldn’t love.

While I was at my ice cream making I decided to also make ice cream pudding. Mainly because I couldn’t figure out what the hell it would be. Turns out it’s near as dammit to being instant pudding. I love instant pudding; it’s like custard without the risk of boiling over in the microwave, however it lacks the basic versatility of custard so hence I love it less. Excuse me I’m just having a private custard moment now…

A night of surprises

Last Saturday night I was at home cooking, this Saturday I’m at home writing about it. That defines my life right now quite well! I need to deal with my blogging speed – the cooking productivity is such that it has been increasingly difficult to keep up. Still I must try harder.

American cutlets. I have no concept of what makes these American. Fat content perhaps? Take a mutton cutlet (I’m guessing that’s a loin chop?) smear forcemeat (stuffing) on either side of the meat. Wrap the whole thing in bacon. Crumb. Repeat 6 times. Bake in the oven. These were actually not bad, I surprise myself sometimes! Quite difficult to try and avoid the bones with your knife when you have to go through crumbs. Bacon and stuffing though.

To go with the cutlets I made onion bread. This was a baking powder bread with onion and cheese in – I swear that Edmonds is conspiring to bankrupt me or boost Fontera’s sales even further. Possibly both. The bread wasn’t bad, the husband liked it anyway.
I has a little time to spare while everything was in the oven so I made surprise rolls. Had I eaten these at a party they would have been a surprise to me. Bread, covered in melted cheese mixed with butter, place a stick of celery on top and roll – or not in our case as we had Vogel’s style bread which promptly fractured when I attempted to roll it. It was actually surprisingly good. There I am being surprised again. Try it at your next soiree and see whether the guests ever come back.

Living it up like I'm 80

Friday night I managed to get of work early and spent a few hours in the vege garden – it’s now fully planted and ready for the summer – butter beans, purple beans, beetroot in white, yellow and red and white stripes, zucchini/scaloppini, tomatoes, purple pak choi, asparagus peas and a lot of basil. I’ve also commandeered a portion of my grandfathers vege garden for golden midget watermelons and spaghetti squash seeing my 3x1M patch can only hold so much. Friday night and the highlight is planting midget watermelon seeds, I’m at least 60 years ahead of where I should be.

Edmonds wise any cooking done on a Friday is cooking that doesn’t need to be done on a Saturday or Sunday, hence freeing up my weekend to do more weekend appropriate activities. So I prepared an Edmonds feast for dinner

Pizza pie. It concerns me that pizza was ever referred to as pie. This was a scone-like base with the usual toppings. The husband was profoundly upset that I didn’t put any anchovies on, I’m not sure if that would be 1966 relevant or not. It wasn’t bad, I think I’d stick to may normal pizza dough base though.

Potato salad. Potatoes covered in mayo. Not particularly challenging but I’m still using up my seriously good mayo. Sooooo good. Sooooo bad for me. I also cooked up some eggplant with tomatoes. Not very 1966 I’m afraid.

To finish with I processed my stewed prunes into prune whip. I had to pass the prunes through a sieve. It took forever. I developed prune passers shoulder; days and nights flew past, the seasons changed. Ok, I got carried away with the emotion of the thing. The prune pulp was mixed with orange jelly and beaten. It tasted a little like prunes and orange jelly.
Outside I can hear the rain tap tapping on the carport roof, nice to know I won’t need to go and water the garden tonight. My level of coordination is such that it is almost impossible for me to water the garden without watering myself. So it will be wet outside but I’ll be dry inside for a change!

Fragrant Westphalia

The problem with the blog is that it has to be written on the computer. The problem with the computer is that it’s connected to the internet. The problem with the blog is that there are many more things which are more interesting on the internet. Must. Find. Motivation.

Meanwhile the rabbit has been locked up and is proceeding to rattle the bars of her cage for attention. I must not cave. I will not be defeated by 3.5kg of cute. The rabbit is also more interesting than the blog so I must not get distracted. Focus.

Although it is arguable just how not distracted I am when the first two paragraphs are all about what I must not be distracted by.

In other news I think I’m going to be on telly. On the next round of Blue September /prostate awareness ads. I’ll let you guess which one I am. I’ll give you a hint, there will be blue face paint. No, I’m not Paul Holmes. Not Richard Hadlee. Definitely not the Mad Butcher either.

Right. So back to the blog. Seeing that I now have to cook 2 recipes a night I have to maintain more focus. I managed to fit in a whole 15 minutes sitting in front of the telly tonight. I can be such a slacker some times.

Ok, so last Wednesday I made my house smell like a fish and chip shop. I hadn’t been able to cook on Monday or Tuesday because we’d been out so I had some ground to make up. We did win the quiz by the way. What two elements in the first twenty in the periodic table begin with ‘B’. Why that’s Beryllium and Boron of course…

So back to Wednesday. FOCUS. I started off easy with cheese and bacon savouries. This was cheese and bacon grilled on toast. I said I started off easy. The husband was most impressed.

Next was tuna savouries. This was tuna mixed with mayo and spread on crackers. Again not so challenging. The husband was still impressed.

At some point I decided I needed to heat up the chefade and do some deep frying – I promise I hadn’t been drinking – don’t drink and fry people.

Savoury potato rolls. Presumably as opposed to sweet potato rolls? These were unusual and painfully rich. Mashed potato, flour and other ingredients mixed together to form a sort of loose dough, filled with mince and then crumbed and deep fried. All in all this was not the cleanest process in the world as you can possibly imagine – there was flour, mince, egg and breadcrumbs everywhere.

The Husband was slightly less than pleased by this but he was now weighted down by the mass of several savoury potato rolls, 5 crackers covered in tuna and mayo and a piece of bread covered in cheese and bacon. He was in no condition or position to start picking fights over the state of cleanliness in the kitchen.

Last on the list were the Westphalia balls. I’m not sure what it’s like in Westphalia I only hope I doesn’t smell like a chip shop too. Westphalia balls are mashed potato mixed with ham, rolled into balls and coated with breadcrumbs. The kitchen could not have possibly become an more of a filthy pit by this stage. The Husband was actually too full to eat these so they had to go to work with him the next day.

If these levels of fat intake continue, by the end of the Edmonds the only firm thing about the poor man might be his arteries.