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...

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.