Kitchen nightmares

As I mentioned yesterday, I celebrated my houses's rehydration with a bout of baking, and I think it's fair to say that I did a half good job. Without it being an exaggeration, I've done more baking over the course of the last year or so than in the rest of my life put together, and whilst my historical lack of culinary prowess doesn't exactly make that a difficult feat, it's still been something of a personal revelation.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not putting myself in the Gordon Ramsay league as packets and instructions still largely dictate my cooking technique, but I've been branching out and yesterday I made my first ever quiche which, even if I say so myself, came out rather well. It was a bacon and broccoli affair, and whilst Chef Ramsay would most likely have taken a forkful and declared it to be bland, I was very pleased.

I said at the beginning of this post that I did a half good job though, and there was indeed a downside to my relative success with the quiche. I also made a couple of apple pies, which should have been in the oven for around an hour, but they ended up baking for considerably longer. When I spoke to Melanie on the phone in the evening I proudly told her all about my adventures in baking, but as I was doing so I remembered the apple pies, and the fact that they were still in the oven.

It wasn't as bad as my spoon-based misadventures from earlier in the year, but after three and a half hours I don't think the pies were as moist as they could have been; apple crisp is a popular dish in these parts, but these were more like apple burnt-to-a-crisp. I probably do myself an injustice there as I think what emerged is still going to be edible, but a large amount of apple filling remained in the oven having burst through the pie crusts, and is now charcoaled in lumps at the bottom in a small-scale recreation of the last day of Pompeii.

I'm currently debating as to whether I should clean up the mess since it could eventually be of archaeological interest to future generations, but as I'm still going to be here for the next month I think history is going to have to lose out on this occasion. I'm going to make a cake at the weekend though...

Pancakes and podiums

Canada secured its second gold of the Olympic Winter Games yesterday when Maelle Ricker came home first in the women's snowboard cross, and whilst events such as this and the moguls - which sounds more like an adversary in Star Trek: 'Captain, we are being hailed by the Mogul vessel' - might not be in the traditional Olympic mould, they are certainly highly entertaining to watch.

It was also Shrove Tuesday yesterday, and armed with Melanie's recipe I ventured into the kitchen and attempted to make - and toss - my own pancakes. They didn't turn out too badly, but I will be the first to admit that there would have been no awards for artistic impression:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating though, and they were quite palatable once laced with a bit of jam and a sprinkling of sugar. I did have some lemon juice in the fridge for a more authentic topping, but on closer inspection of the bottle I realised that the sell by date was back in September so I thought better of it. Maybe I can try to pick up a lemon from the store here and have another go at the weekend; let's see how brave I feel.

Cutting the cheese

I've received a great deal of culinary advice since I wrote about my dalliance with Kraft Dinners last week, and in the breaks between updating my iPod I've really been going to town in the kitchen. Last night I went as far as adding a tin of tuna and a tin of mixed vegetables to my pan of mac and cheese, and it must only be a matter of time before I receive an invitation to take part in the next season of Hell's Kitchen.

I also still have two chunks of mystery meat in my freezer - could be caribou, could be whale - but I've been a bit wary about tackling them as they're both as big as my head and I don't possess a suitable cleaver with which to carve them up. If I can get round to borrowing one then I can expand my repertoire still further, but until such time we'll stick with more traditional fare.

Oh and speaking of cheese, which we were earlier, I read today about an employee of McDonald's in the Netherlands who was fired because she gave a colleague a free slice of the stuff. It seems that she gave a co-worker on a break a more expensive cheeseburger instead of the hamburger that she'd paid for, and as this contravened the company's rules that prohibit staff from giving free gifts to friends, family or colleagues, she was given the sack. She's now won her court case for unfair dismissal, but I don't think the $6000 she was awarded in compensation will make too much of a dent in McDonald's 2009 fourth quarter profit of $1.2 billion, which they announced last week.

Makes you think: if someone is fired for stealing a piece of cheese, I wonder what would happen if they stole a whole burger? Might explain why we don't see Hamburglar any more...

There is no spoon

I melted a spoon today.

Now, that can't be a sentence that has been written too often before, if at all, so let me explain. I fancied some rice for lunch so I put on a pan of water to boil whilst I was watching the end of the soccer on TV, but so engrossed in the game did I become that I completely forgot about my boiling water until my eardrums were all but burst by the smoke alarm going off (at least I now know it works).

As I turned my head away from the screen I was suddenly aware that the house had filled with smoke over the course of the second half, and after frantically scrambling upstairs to shut off the alarm I set about trying to find the source of what I thought must be a fire because, after all, there's no smoke without one. It was only when I entered the kitchen that I remembered my pan, and upon closer inspection the mystery was solved.

There had been no fire - thus disproving the maxim I referred to earlier - but for some unknown reason I had left a plastic mixing spoon in the water as it boiled (a spoon with which I eventually intended to stir my rice), and now not only was there no water left but there was no spoon either. Only the part of the handle that must have been sticking out of the pan remained, and the scene was reminiscent of one of those photos of spontaneous human combustion where all that is left of the victim is a disembodied lower leg, complete with slipper.

The rest of the spoon had totally dissolved, and I now had to run around the house opening all the windows in order to let out the resulting smoke, which I guess wasn't too toxic as I'm still here some hours later relaying the story to you. I abandoned the whole rice idea until this evening - luckily I had a back-up p(l)an - and on this occasion I didn't leave the kitchen until the whole meal was cooked and on my plate.

I think I'll stick to sandwiches from now on.

And everybody lived

I am very proud of myself today.

I am also very relieved.

I had guests over at the weekend, and I cooked for them; I'll just give you a moment to take that in....Now for me, cooking is very much the equivalent of landing a man on the Moon. No, I don't mean the 'being faked and it didn't actually happen' part; rather, it very rarely happens and takes a huge amount of planning when it does.

I admit that I did receive some help from Betty Crocker in making part of the dessert, but I made pizzas from scratch and I also baked a rhubarb crumble, which was very much a first and actually came out very well indeed, even if I say so myself.

But the most gratifying part of the whole experience was that, upon my return to work today, my weekend guests are still alive and well.

As is my motto in the kitchen, any meal that you can walk away from is a good meal.