Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
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.
Photographs
I have added some photo streams to my photography page for your delight and perusal.
Update (28th October 2009): the XHTML produced by Picasa fails W3C validation because of the use of the non-existant font property and because it fails to put a space before the forward slash at the end of the
