Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Hoping for a nice surprise
After last year’s interesting present from my laterally-thoughtful husband taken from the traditional anniversary list, I wonder what he will get me this year. The traditional present for this anniversary is leather and the modern one is crystal or glass, according to Wikipedia. Or perhaps he will whisk me away somewhere exciting, exotic and romantic.
One thing’s for certain: I’m not cooking anything special after the Valentine’s Day fiasco!
Valentine’s Day culinary disaster
Normally, Colin loves my cooking. Normally, Colin says he doesn’t have a sweet tooth. Normally, this isn’t entirely true.
Normally, I’m a messy cook. Normally, I’m quite disorganised in the kitchen. Normally, Colin tidies up after me. Normally, Colin doesn’t have man-flu.
The menu was to be:
Purple-sprouting broccoli with hollandaise sauce
Scallops
Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy
Lemon tart
The hollandaise sauce split. I ditched it because I hadn’t got very far with it, although it was a tremendous waste of butter and the egg. I was a little dubious about the egg to start with because, whereas it didn’t smlee when I cracked it, I did manage to crack it when I was simply holding it. I’m sure that’s not supposed to happen. So, I put another batch on. This batch turned out ok, except that the recipe says it’s fine to leave it over the pan of water for up to half an hour, but it wasn’t. That was a lie. When it was done, I took the pan off the heat, and put the broccoli on to steam. During that time, the hollandaise split. The recipe said if it split, to put the bowl is icy cold water and whisk like billy-oh. I did, but it didn’t work, so out came the electric mixer. That didn’t help, so I just left it. When I next looked, the cold water had caused the sauce to solidify – but at least it had re-emulsified. I put the bowl back over the heat, and stuck the elctric mixer in it. It seemed to have recovered well. By this time, the broccoli was done, so I plated it up, and stirred the sauce before pouring it over. That simple act of stirring caused it to curdle again. Still, Colin guzzled it – a good sign.
The next course was a diversion from tradition and was the main course instead of the fish course, because the sauce had took so long and the meat was ready before I knew it. There was no time to do any veg, although if I’d thought, I could have stuck some frozen peas on while I was doing the gravy. Anyway, that course was really very nice, with the meat being done to perfection, thanks to Colin’s ability at sums. Colin gets annoyed when I ask him to work out how long the meat will take, so I proved to him that it was best that way: I worked out it would take over 20,000 minutes.
Next was the fish course. It was scallops and garlicky butter with toast because I forgot to put the bread in the oven and the garlic was slightly more browned than desired. Still, it was nice.
Dessert was an unmitigated disaster. If I hadn’t been quite so hungover on Saturday after being out dancing till four in the morning, I might have had the sense to make tarts then, so at least they’d have been set. As it was, they weren’t, despite having been in the freezer for quite some time. Also, they were “too big” and “too sweet”. It didn’t get eaten, which just shows how horrible it was deemed. The cat liked it, though.
What’s more is that I’m a terribly untidy and messy cook, not cleaning up after myself like Colin does and tells me to do. Usually, I cook and he cleans up. Not this time, however: he came down with man-flu in time to not be able to do it. Hence the kitchen looks like someone’s been cooking in there for a year and never washed up so much as a fork in all that time. I’m really only writing this entry because I’m putting off cleaning it up: I don’t even know where to start.
Pomodoroing in earnest
A while ago, the Pomodoro Technique was pointed out to me. In the Pomodoro Technique, work periods are counted down from 25 minutes by a kitchen timer; when the bell rings – and not before, it’s time for a break. The huge long list of things to do is gone, or rather, is replaced by the activity inventory, from which a selection of tasks is taken and put on a to-do-today list. The to-do list now contains only things that are feasibly achievable in one day. At the end of the day, you record your progress and use that to improve your working practices.
The 25 minute work period is called a pomodoro, after the Italian word for tomato. What an odd name, you might be thinking. Well, the inventor of the technique, Francesco Cirillo, is Italian and he used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer.
I bought a timer at the weekend from Lakeland. It’s not a tomato but an egg (see below). Luckily Cirillo didn’t use an egg: the Ouvo Technique doesn’t quite have the same ring. Anyway, my egg is red, like a tomato, although it looks quite orange in the photo. It has a loud tick, which I can shut out, and a loud ring, which gives me a fright when it goes off.
Egg-shaped kitchen timer
I also bought a blank refill pad and a file to store my activity inventory, to do lists, records and so on. Yesterday, I started pomodoroing in earnest. I did get much more work done than I would have if I hadn’t been using the technique, although it still wasn’t perfect. But, the Pomodoro Technique Illustrated by Staffan Nöteberg tells me I should give it a couple of weeks to get used to it. I shall keep you posted.
I just need to train the cat to respect the pomodoro now.
The Christmas cake is tasted
As promised, we have tasted the Christmas cake this evening, despite being rather full after a Chinese takeaway. The result: it tastes like Christmas cake, but without one ingredient, due to complete incompetency on my part. The absence, which I forgot about when I wrote the previous entry, was noticed immediately when I cut open the cake to reveal its insides. There was a distinct lack of red circles.
When I made the cake, I thought I’d forgotten to buy some glace cherries, despite them having been on the list. I really couldn’t remember buying them, though, and I couldn’t see them in the cupboard. So, I used dried apricots instead, which also add moisture to fruit cakes. When it was too late, I discovered a tub of natural coloured glace cherries in the cupboard. Oh.
Anyway, it’s fine, if a little burnt-tasting to my palate. Colin thinks it’s ok. The marzipan is fine if you don’t look at it, although it’s quite thick. The icing is thin. I forgot to mention yesterday that the marzipan dried out a bit after application to the cake and is no longer a claggy mess, but like marzipan.
Christmas cake
I made the Christmas cake about a week before Christmas. I gather you’re supposed to make it much sooner than this because it has to mature or some such. I never got round to icing it though, so it has sat, untouched, on the kitchen table, for want of anywhere better to put it.
Last weekend, I thought I’d give icing it a whirl. This involves sticking on some marzipan with apricot jam, then smothering it with royal icing. You can use fondant icing, but I dislike it.
Step 1: painting the cake with apricot jam
We’re not big jam eaters. Last year’s jar of apricot jam, still in the fridge, had gone mouldy, and not for the first time, if I’m honest, so I chucked it. I decided guava jam would do instead, because it makes a good glaze for fruit flans made in those cakey flan cases you get. I put some in a glass dish, nuked it and painted it all over the cake with a pastry brush. Fortunately, I waited until the marzipan was ready before painting, or it would have dried.
Step 2: the marzipan
I discovered that marzipan doesn’t freeze well, especially when it’s been defrosted and refrozen during the year. Again, this is last year’s. So, that also went in the bin. I couldn’t be bothered going to see if the shop sold it, but I knew Delia has a recipe for almond icing, which is the same stuff, but without the lurid yellow colour. All I needed was 350g ground almonds.
I found 100g whole almonds (blanched) and just under 100g ground almonds. I also found a gazillion other kinds of nut. I have a grinder-like device, which I’ve used to grind almonds before, so I thought there’d be no problem. There was a problem. I chose macadamia nuts because they had no skins. The grinder refused to grind them because they were too oily. I ended up with a lumpy mush. If you have a recipe or other use for such a substance, please tell me in the comments.
I next found some hazelnuts. They had skins on, but are a much drier nut, so I ground them down, along with the blanched almonds and some more almonds with their skins on to make the numbers up. Finally, I had my 350g of “almonds”.
Other than that, I followed Delia’s instructions to the letter, but I ended up with a claggy brown mess. I think the nuts weren’t fine enough to absorb the liquid. I painted the cake as described above, then manually smeared the “marzipan” on. It actually tasted ok, but looked awful. It sat like that until today.
Step 3: the icing
I was sick of looking at the cake in its sorry state, so this evening, I made the icing. Delia said I should whisk it with an electric mixer for 10 minutes or until it formed stiff peaks. I clearly stopped too early because it kind of drooped down and off the sides. Still, I’m hopeful it’ll set overnight.
I shall sample it tomorrow.
Update: by popular request, I have uploaded a photo of the finished cake. Luckily, I didn’t take a photo of it with just its marzipan on.
Our 2009 Christmas cake
Christmas preparations
In the last few years, I’ve used Jamie’s Xmas recipes, but this year, because the BBC showed her new Xmas programme recently, I’ve gone all Delia mad. I’m not as organised as her, of course. I only made the cake and pudding on Sunday, along with a tonne of mincemeat (despite having half a jar in the fridge from last year). I made sausage rolls on Monday, and still have the mince pies to make. There’s still a dirty great ham to boil for hours as well. Unfortunately, it’s too big for my stock pot. It just about fits in the wok.
Song of the Day
Today’s song is dedicated to everyone affected by the flooding in Cumbria and Scotland: November Rain by Guns ‘n’ Roses.