Ridicule is nothing to be scared of
Apr. 22nd, 2014 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaCulinary delights from the weekend...
I was at home for Easter, so got to indulge in my favourite Good Friday activity: making hot cross buns. Last time I tried this it went dreadfully wrong and I made buns which were not so much cross as sullen. The buns nearly fell at several early hurdles: we are nearly out of butter! No, we've got exactly 2 oz. We are nearly out of milk! No, there is just 8 fl. oz. left in the bottle. We, er, don't appear to have any raisins. Um. Never mind, we have dates and crystallized ginger, no one will notice.
Now, my mum's hot cross bun recipe says something along the lines of "this is a very sticky dough". This is further emphasised by a note scrawled by the mother on my photocopy saying "VERY sticky. But keep going for ten minutes and it'll be fine."
I stirred the liquid into the flour. Stirred. And thought, um. This is not sticky, this is not even remotely a dough. Did I put a pound of flour in? No, I think I put 8 oz. in. I weighed out 8 oz. Yup, that looks about what I did last time. Throw that in too. Aha, now it is a sticky dough.
And bloody hell is it sticky. You're all children of the modern baking world, you probably have those silicon wossnames that celebrity chefs wave about on YouTube. I, however, do not. I spent a lot of time scraping dough off the worktop with a kitchen spoon. And off my fingers. With my fingers. Which then stuck to the dough I'd just scraped off.
Anyway, 8 tracks of the Best of Adam Ant and it was starting to look like dough. I left it to get on with rising; I don't have a second oven, or an airing cupboard, so I parked the bowl in a patch of sunlight. It didn't do much. It hadn't done much when it was time to head off to church, but by the time I'd done that and gone for lunch in the pub, it had risen indeed.
I started making the buns, then glommed them back together, put the fruit in, and started again. And there was another protracted period of waiting for the second rising, and eventually I decided they were done enough. I glazed them, added the crosses and put them in the oven. Which promptly switched itself off, because it's scared of high temperatures. However, despite setbacks, they came out ok.
Always keen to respect the views of other members of my household, I didn't put crosses on all of them.
I questioned a local representative as to the absence of raisins (personally, I thought it was an improvement - I like dates much more than raisins). "I think you got away with it" was the verdict.
On Saturday morning, we were pootling round the greengrocer's. I was all ready to get excited about the fact they were selling duck eggs - I do like a nice boiled egg, and duck eggs are just that little bit bigger. Then, aha! The greengrocer turned out to be selling goose eggs, which are larger still.
But at £2.50. Per egg. I was just muttering that I couldn't really justify it when ChrisC pointed out that if there's one day of the year you can probably justify egg-related extravagance, it's Easter Sunday. We bought two goose eggs, and carried them home (carefully!) snuggled up in bubble wrap.
They really are quite large, by the way. Here are the goose eggs, with a normal hen's egg for scale.
My usual favourite egg-cup clearly wasn't going to cut the mustard.
I located some small mugs. T'internet said various timings for soft-boiled goose eggs ranging from 7 minutes to about 12 minutes. I'd rather risk runny white than solid yolk, so set the timer for 7 minutes (and then blathered a bit before getting round to taking them out of the water).
And lo!
A soft boiled goose egg.
Bloody marvellous. Like a boiled egg, but just a lot more of it :-)
I was at home for Easter, so got to indulge in my favourite Good Friday activity: making hot cross buns. Last time I tried this it went dreadfully wrong and I made buns which were not so much cross as sullen. The buns nearly fell at several early hurdles: we are nearly out of butter! No, we've got exactly 2 oz. We are nearly out of milk! No, there is just 8 fl. oz. left in the bottle. We, er, don't appear to have any raisins. Um. Never mind, we have dates and crystallized ginger, no one will notice.
Now, my mum's hot cross bun recipe says something along the lines of "this is a very sticky dough". This is further emphasised by a note scrawled by the mother on my photocopy saying "VERY sticky. But keep going for ten minutes and it'll be fine."
I stirred the liquid into the flour. Stirred. And thought, um. This is not sticky, this is not even remotely a dough. Did I put a pound of flour in? No, I think I put 8 oz. in. I weighed out 8 oz. Yup, that looks about what I did last time. Throw that in too. Aha, now it is a sticky dough.
And bloody hell is it sticky. You're all children of the modern baking world, you probably have those silicon wossnames that celebrity chefs wave about on YouTube. I, however, do not. I spent a lot of time scraping dough off the worktop with a kitchen spoon. And off my fingers. With my fingers. Which then stuck to the dough I'd just scraped off.
Anyway, 8 tracks of the Best of Adam Ant and it was starting to look like dough. I left it to get on with rising; I don't have a second oven, or an airing cupboard, so I parked the bowl in a patch of sunlight. It didn't do much. It hadn't done much when it was time to head off to church, but by the time I'd done that and gone for lunch in the pub, it had risen indeed.
I started making the buns, then glommed them back together, put the fruit in, and started again. And there was another protracted period of waiting for the second rising, and eventually I decided they were done enough. I glazed them, added the crosses and put them in the oven. Which promptly switched itself off, because it's scared of high temperatures. However, despite setbacks, they came out ok.
Always keen to respect the views of other members of my household, I didn't put crosses on all of them.
I questioned a local representative as to the absence of raisins (personally, I thought it was an improvement - I like dates much more than raisins). "I think you got away with it" was the verdict.
On Saturday morning, we were pootling round the greengrocer's. I was all ready to get excited about the fact they were selling duck eggs - I do like a nice boiled egg, and duck eggs are just that little bit bigger. Then, aha! The greengrocer turned out to be selling goose eggs, which are larger still.
But at £2.50. Per egg. I was just muttering that I couldn't really justify it when ChrisC pointed out that if there's one day of the year you can probably justify egg-related extravagance, it's Easter Sunday. We bought two goose eggs, and carried them home (carefully!) snuggled up in bubble wrap.
They really are quite large, by the way. Here are the goose eggs, with a normal hen's egg for scale.
My usual favourite egg-cup clearly wasn't going to cut the mustard.
I located some small mugs. T'internet said various timings for soft-boiled goose eggs ranging from 7 minutes to about 12 minutes. I'd rather risk runny white than solid yolk, so set the timer for 7 minutes (and then blathered a bit before getting round to taking them out of the water).
And lo!
A soft boiled goose egg.
Bloody marvellous. Like a boiled egg, but just a lot more of it :-)
