Cooking on Gas

Yesterday was a good day, a batch of granary bread for sandwiches this week. Last week's loaf was turned into breadcrumbs, wasting nothing as this can now be used as a topping for sweet or savoury dishes like tomorrow's courgette and tomato bake with sage and garlic which I will let you know how it tastes.

When you cook for yourself, it is surprising how vegetarian I become, as it is easier to cook without meat than to buy too much for one person and waste it.. excluding the dogs from the leftovers lol.. though I do like a whole chicken as the carcass can be used to make the most delicious stock or soup.

In addition to that, I made two marble cakes, one of which is now in the freezer. This was partly to use up some old eggs but I enjoy eating cake made at home rather than shop brought and it is generally much cheaper even when you add in the time and the gas used.

While these were cooking, I put together a lasagne, half of which I had for tea last night with some garlic bread and the other half I will have before college tonight.. filled with a selection of veggies, onions, garlic and tomatoes it was lovely but would have benefited from longer cooking and would have done if Jasper hadn't bolted over the wall once more in the afternoon...

This time he was caught and with stern words ringing in his here 'get back here.. NOW' and he lept over next doors fence and back round the front.  Where I thought he was leaping over, was not in fact where he was getting over, but was helped instead by the hedge stepping and he is a very athletic dog.. who now has to go out into the garden on a long line until new arrangements are made for the bottom hedge to be increased with visible deterrents for the miscreant.. he knows he has done wrong, and later in the afternoon he was treated to a lengthy game of ball until he cried mercy which meant that the entire evening he slept away as he was too tired to leave his bed..

Icing on the cake

Yep, just that.. yesterday's task was to ice the cake. The marzipan was on and dried, topped with fondant icing and then some royal icing on top with some silvered stars and christmas trees, red poinsietta flowers and green holly leaves.. I have got some photos just haven't loaded them up yet.

I also made two lots of sweet pastry for the mince pies which I have yet to bake but all is ready.

The last few things brought, for the christmas meal... which this year is to be goose haven't had one of those since mum was still alive so over 20 years ago but I am sure I will like it.

What happened?

I took the boys this morning over the fields in search of my autumnal harvest of blackberries but it was a very poor selection.

Last year, Murphy and I came home regularly with plump dark blackberries by the kilo. This year they are small, stunted and look dried out before I have had a chance to dehyrdrate them.

I really wanted a good batch to put in the mincemeat this year as an additional flavour but at this rate it doesn't look as though it is going to be possible.

Sunday Kitchen Duties

Luckily the football was cancelled, so no trudging around a pitch waiting eagerly for the end of the game. Luckily I have my e-reader and also MP3 player, though mysteriously my Sansadisk MP3 player has gone walkabout along with my sennheiser earphones.. no doubt they will turn up in due course.

A quick visit to B&Q to get some paint, to do the bathrooms and kitchen then back to the house.. The motorbike has been cheeping madly due to the alarm system running low on battery and tomorrow has to go to Long Rock for a visit to see what the options are. While SOH got him ready for going out, I headed for the kitchen for a long overdue session at the stove.

First off, was to make some cheese scones, for me as SOH doesn't like them. Then while they were baking in the oven a quick wash up of the pans and get a few more out to make a sponge sandwich.. actually I use a madeira cake recipe but cook it in sandwich tins.. while this was cooling more washing up before making some flapjacks with the dried blackberries in them.

While the flapjacks were cooking, I made the buttercream for the sandwich cake and washed up before putting the chicken in for tea. We brought two chickens from Tesco and have been disapppointed in both of them, origianally I was going to do a pot roast for after the football match but as that had been cancelled I roasted it.. afterwards I regretted this decision and nect time would stick to my guns and slowly casserole it as it was  tough old bird.

Disaster Zone

Given the weather yesterday, a day we had set aside for going out on the bikes, which was grey dank and drizzly at Redruth we decided to haul everything out from under the stairs and have a tidy up while at the same time I baked a madeira cake (chocolate) and a victoria sponge cake.

Well what a disaster the two cakes turned out to be, first of all the sponge cake appeared to rise and then when nearly cooked sunk like the titanic after the iceberg. The texture wasn't right, it seemed too crumbly and too sticky so I suspect that the recipe is wrong. The madeira I had more hope for as I have made it successfully on a number of occasions, but not yesterday. I was gutted when it came out more like a ring cake with no middle, I don't even know whether it is edible or not.

I have not idea why this happened, the oven was defnitely warm enough, the eggs were only purchased last saturday and I can only wonder if the measuring scales were accurate.

Still, not to let them beat me I will keep trying and have at the moment in the cooker, a plain vanilla madeira and a pecan spice madeira. I will split the plain one when cooked and put buttercream inside it with some jam, the other I think should stand up for itself.

It is not a nice thing to do when you see the results of your failure, and it brought home to me just how much I hate failing at anything I do.. hmmm time to rethink my coping strategy I think.

Poaching problems

I quite like poached eggs, but have never managed to get a nice shape or texture when trying to cook them.

No more problems though, I brought a couple of silicone poaching cups yesterday from the range and although they were expensive at £4.95 for a pair they were excellent and we tried them out for tea last night as we have a glut of eggs and a limit on how they can be used.

Without a cooker I am using an induction hob, which is good but only works with a single pan (at the moment) and it has withstood some serious sticking issues with fried eggs etc.

Well last night I filled it up with water to half-way, turned it on to heat and sprayed the inside of the cups with some oil to ensure the eggs would slip out and then cracked some eggs into each of the cups before carefully placing them into the water; needless to say one slipped out the cup between counter and pan and ended up on the floor - time to test the waterproofness of the floor!

The cups were two shades of green and looked a little like lilies in a pond while cooking. I followed the instructions which said use a lid and about 4 minutes later we had boobs sorry eggs on toast; this was due to the fact that when you turned them out of the cups onto the toast they looked like little white boobs :-)
 
A good buy if you like me struggle with strands of egg in the water and/or your eggs don't look very good.