8 posts tagged “cooking”
I like ice cream but making it at home can be a bit of an arse as ice cream makers are expensive and can be a bit awkward to use. So I was inspired when I saw James Martin make a banana ice cream in about three minutes. If I hadn't just boxed everything in my kitchen up and had the shippers pick it up I'd have gone and made some of my own straight away.
This morning I went out to buy the bedding to put on my new bed. Once that was done I popped into the Container Store to get a few fridge magnets and a linen basket. While I was there I noticed this great little tool for keeping a wooden spoon from dripping all over the counter top while you're cooking.
OK, the black pepper will have to wait until next week. The soup wasn't photographed despite being very tasty but the mashed parsnip and potato was. It's a fairly rough mash rather than a purée and it's about two thirds parsnip. Gorgeous.
No posts for... well quite a long time. I suppose I was just a big busy.
I'm not normally a big fan of dumplings. Possibly because I look a little bit like one and possibly because I'm always a bit wary of any kind of food that comes with a 'wrapping' or sauce. Surely, if the ingredients are good, there's no need to coat them in pastry, dough, batter, bread crumbs or thick syrupy, creamy, unctuous sauce?
I love alliums. Leeks, onions, shallots, scallions and garlic; I love love them all. So, much as I'm happy to see that spring weather is arriving, I miss the hearty allium bases to soups, stews and roasts in the warmer months. So today I made my farewell meal: slow cooked alliums, served on a split bread roll that had been covered in grated cheese.
This evening I decided to finish off the quinoa I had in my store cupboard. As I was cooking it I noticed how it looks like frogspawn while it's half cooked and then I wondered why I found the idea unpleasant.
After all, I eat chicken eggs. Regularly. I like them soft boiled, poached, fried, scrambled and as cheese and spinach omelets. And on occasion, they're good raw, too. And I also like the eggs of other species, in particular fish. Caviar is delicious, as are taramasalata and those lovely pink ikura I love on nigiri.
But the idea of eating frogspawn makes me want to vomit. I've never eaten a frog but I definitely don't find the idea disgusting. And I don't think the sliminess factor can be it because I like chicken eggs cooked so lightly they're still translucent and I like fish eggs uncooked. I've even eaten some fairly slimy risottos.
But frogspawn is like devilspawn according to my stomach. It started jiggling around as soon as I noticed the resemblance. It was a bit like looking at a jar of peanut in that respect. I suppose I'll have to add frogspawn to my list of things I don't want to eat, right under dessicated coconut.
When I was in London last week my father told me about a trick he'd heard of for poaching eggs perfectly with relatively little effort. This morning I gave it a go and compared it against the traditional method. To poach an egg using my father's method you will need:
- A pan of boiling water
- Eggs
- A small mug
- Butter, margarine or vegetable oil
- Cling film
- Salt and pepper
Take a sheet of cling film and press it into the small mug, then lubricate the film with a bit of butter, margarine or vegetable oil. Crack your egg into the cling film whole and twist the cling film closed. Lift the little package into the boiling water and wait for up to four minutes. I waited for about three as I like the yolks to be nice and gooey.
Lift the cling film package out of the water and peel it open. You may want to do this on a towel. Then lift the eggs from the cling film to wherever you want to serve it and season it with salt and pepper. As you can see, the resulting egg is fairly circular and no mass has been lost to the water.
Furthermore, it doesn't taste of vinegar - or cling film.
I also decided that I should compare the cling film method against the traditional method of cracking an egg into some boiling water and waiting for it to cook. I did this and was not surprised to find that a lot of the albumen bloomed into very thin sheets and broke away from the main body of the egg.
Again, I waited about three minutes for the egg to cook before lifting it to a serving dish. It was a little smaller and a little more messy but tasted about the same as the egg that had been cooked in cling film.
I think I prefer the results of the cling film method but it is a little bit more awkward as it involves a few extra stages and is not so easy to use if you want to do several eggs at once.
