Not my day

Yesterday was one of those days - you know, the kind that start off badly and go downhill from there? The kind of day where a minor error takes an hour to correct; where small interruptions escalate into major irritations, and every completed task is immediately replaced by two more that need doing.

I made a special trip to Raeward on my way home from work, entirely for the purpose of buying a lemon in case the partially-used one I had at home was not enough to make my garlic lemon chicken (p141). At this point, I was feeling so worn out that a chocolate fish was absolutely necessary to survive the distance home.

Thus refuelled, I made it home, to be greeted by the dishes I'd been ignoring for two days, and and a house in dire need of a vacuum. Instead of dealing with either of these, I spent an hour or so sitting around in front of TV and heater, before finally dragging myself into the kitchen.

The garlic lemon chicken was a reasonably simple recipe - just mix up lemon zest and juice with garlic, soy sauce and paprika, brush over chicken drums, wrap in foil and bake for 30 minutes. This stage of the process was completed without a hitch. I got the chicken in the oven and ensconced myself back on the couch.

Incidentally, I never ended up needing that lemon I made a special trip to get. In fact, I put it in my jacket pocket and forgot about it. I was quite amused this morning when I went to put my jacket on, and a lemon fell out of the pocket!

With about 10 minutes cooking time to go, I stared throwing together some stir fry veges, using the 'make it up as you go along' method which traditionally yields extremely mediocre results (when I do it, anyway). Naturally, I misjudged the amount of oil needed, and the time it would take, so by the time the buzzer sounded for the chicken, I was looking at a frying pan full of soggy, overcooked veges.

I checked the chicken, but it didn't look cooked. I put it in for another 10 minutes, and, not wanting them to get any soggier or less appetising, sat down to eat my veges. In the process of consuming these, I managed to drop several pieces and get splatters of the oily sauce on my table runner, carpet and clothing.


When the oven timer buzzed again, I tried piercing the chicken with a skewer. No blood oozed out - a good sign - but no juices either. Well, maybe chicken cooks differently when it's done in tinfoil? Surely 40 minutes is long enough to cook a chicken drumstick! I put a couple on a plate and sat down to try them.

But when I cut into the drumstick, the chicken was uncooked on the inside. I don't mean undercooked; I mean completely raw. What the..?

Back in the oven for another 10 minutes, during which I collected up the splattered table runner etc and got them into the washing machine. When the timer buzzed again, I took it out and made another slice in the drumstick: still not cooked. Back in for another 10 minutes.


Getting off the phone from Mum just as the chicken was approaching the 1-hour mark, I took the dish out again, and, reaching up to turn the oven off, realised what the problem had been all along: the oven was set to grill, not bake.


Yep, that'd do it.

With the drums wrapped in tinfoil and nowhere near the top of the oven, it's not surprising they hadn't cooked in 30 minutes. Still, after 1 hour, they didn't look too bad. I put a couple on a plate, sat down and took one bite. It tasted ok, but I still had an uneasy feeling that it wasn't properly cooked. Cutting further into the center of the drum, I found it still wasn't cooked through.

With the oven on bake this time, I stuck the dish back in. In the end, The drums were cooked for a total of 1 hour 20 minutes, during which time I managed to work my way through the pile of dishes, including Monday night's chop dish with burnt-on kiwifruit marinade - which, despite two nights' soaking, still required a good deal of elbow grease to remove.

By the time the chicken was finally cooked, I had absolutely no interest in eating it. I wrapped up a couple of drums (one now completely mutilated from me constantly slicing into it) for my lunchbox, and went to bed before anything else could go wrong.


Eating the drumsticks cold at lunchtime today, I was surprised at how good they were. A little dry, but that's to be expected given my unconventional cooking method. I think if you actually cooked them according to the recipe, they'd be quite nice.

A proper Kiwi lamb chop

I was horrified when I recently discovered that, of the 33 recipes in the 'sauces and marinades' chapter, I had done precisely zero. Since there's clearly some catching up to do here, I got myself a couple of lamb chops and set about making a marinade.

Kiwifruit marinade (p190) is a mixture of finely chopped kiwifruit, honey, grated ginger and crushed peppercorns. I mixed this up and smeared it over the lamb chops - the recipe said to leave it for at least 15 minutes, but it was probably closer to an hour before I got around to putting them under the grill.

I put the chops under the grill for about six minutes per side - which, according to my Edmonds book, should be approximately correct for medium-grilled chops. Meanwhile, I bustled around sorting out some veges.

It was only when I was taking out the chops that I realised I'd forgotten to put the crushed peppercorns into the marinade - so really it only had three ingredients, but it still tasted really good.

The marinade gave a nice sweet flavour to the chop, and was very successful in tenderising the meat - the chops were tender and came apart easily. I found that perhaps 6 minutes per side was not quite long enough for my taste: the meat was still quite rare in the centre.

I actually put the second chop back in, intending to grill it for another two or three minutes on each side, but (typically) I forgot all about it, and only came running back into the kitchen when I smelt burning. Luckily, it was mostly the protruding bones in the chop that were scorched: the meat wasn't really burnt. I had the chop for lunch today, and, as often happens, it was even nicer eaten cold the next day.

If you love lamb chops like I do, it's worthwhile playing around a bit with marinades: they tenderise as well as favouring. Have a look in your Edmonds book for inspiration - I would never have thought of using kiwifruit in a marinade otherwise!

What's wrong with fruit cake?

I was recently told that I "must be the only person in the world under 40 who actually likes fruit cake". While this may be a bit of an exaggeration, it does seem that fruit cake is quite unpopular with those of my generation and younger.

I'm not sure why so many people automatically grimace at the thought of fruit cake - there are, of course, those sad individuals who dislike dried fruit in any form, and some shy away from particular ingredients - glacé cherries are the usual culprit. Others will tolerate the cake, but eat it mostly because they enjoy the icing.


Still, "I hate fruit cake" seems to me an overly sweeping statement, stemming from the belief that all fruit cakes taste the same. There are millions of fruit cake recipes out there, hugely varied in ingredients and flavour. Use a recipe without glacé cherries, for example, and you'll already have a few converts.

While I've come across a few unpleasant ones (usually bakery bought), I'm usually very big on fruit cake - luckily, since I've got a whole chapter of them to make! I'd been a little hampered in this by a lack of correct cake tins, but, having finally acquired a deep, 23cm round tin, I was able to have a go at ginger ale fruit cake (p58).


The ginger ale in this cake is used to soak the fruit overnight, so I combined the sultanas, raisins, currants, dates and mixed peel in a bowl, and poured over the ginger ale. This was to be put in "a warm place" overnight - not easy to find in the middle of winter. I settled for wrapping the bowl in a towel and leaving it in a cupboard.

The next day, I set about making the cake. The first task was to line the tin with two layers of brown paper and one of baking paper. This was a little fiddly, but I got there without too much of a struggle. As for the rest, it was simply a matter of getting out my mixer to cream butter and sugar, and beat in the eggs, then stirring through the dry ingredients and fruit.


I spooned the mixture into my lined tin, and put it in the oven at 140 for 3 hours. At the end of this time, the cake was looking nice and brown on top, and a skewer, poked into the center of the cake, came out clean. I took the cake out, and left it to cool completely before taking it out of the tin.

This was a trying wait - I was dying to try my cake and it took hours to cool completely. Eventually, I judged that it was cold, removed it from the tin, and immediately cut myself a slice.


The cake was very moist - almost on the verge of being soggy - and packed with fruit. I liked the somewhat unusual addition of dates, though I felt it could have done with slightly fewer currants: I've got nothing against currants, but they do tend to dominate the flavour of a fruit cake. The ginger ale gives no real flavour to the cake - its entire purpose seems to be in softening the fruit. A handful of chopped crystallised ginger would add a little ginger flavour, if that's what you're looking for in this cake.

All in all, it's a pretty good fruit cake. Not the best I've ever eaten, but not bad either. It's got plenty of flavour, and, unlike a non-fruit cake, will keep well enough that I can easily eat the lot before it goes bad (no, not in one sitting!). The round tin is a novelty for me - I'm used to fruit cakes being square - but you have to be wary of cutting yourself too big a slice!

First of three

The Edmonds book includes three oyster recipes: a relic, no doubt, from the days when oysters were cheap and plentiful. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. I'd intended to attempt at least one oyster recipe during Bluff oyster season, but at around $25 a dozen, I never managed to fit them into my grocery budget.


I still intend to use Bluff oysters for the classic fried oyster recipe, but this will have to wait until next season. For the other two recipes, however, I had every intention of finding a cheaper substitute. So when I was recently offered a good deal on some Pacific oysters, I bought a couple of dozen for this purpose.

I chose to try scalloped oysters (p117) first. Since I'd never tried oysters before, I was a bit apprehensive as I looked at the recipe - the oysters did not appear to actually be cooked, just stirred through a white sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and briefly grilled until the topping crisped up. Did I really want my first oyster to be a raw (or almost raw) one? Not really, but it had to be done.


So I forged ahead with the sauce. It was pretty standard: melt butter, stir in flour, then add milk gradually, stirring like a mad thing to get all the lumps out. Then it was a matter of stirring through some lemon juice, nutmeg and seasoning.

The sauce looked ok - a sort of smooth, creamy white colour - until I added the oysters and it turned a very unappealing grey. I whizzed up a bread roll into crumbs, stirred it through some melted butter, sprinkled it over, and put it in the oven.


It didn't take long at all before the topping had browned up. I served myself a generous portion, and sat down to eat, setting up my camera to film the momentous occasion that was me eating my first oyster:

As you can see, I found my first taste of oysters inoffensive, but hardly exciting. As I progressed through the plateful, however, I found them less enjoyable. The oysters, barely warmed through to begin with, had cooled down significantly while I was faffing about with the camera. By the time I was halfway through, I was forcing down cold slimy oysters in a congealing sauce.


I finished the plateful, but didn't feel I could face oysters again any time soon. Luckily, my parents were here the next night so I fed the leftovers to Dad. My second tub of oysters has gone into the freezer for a future attempt at oyster soup.

I think oysters are the kind of food that if you eat too many, you don't want to see another one for a long time. That's how I'm feeling about them at present! I think that the battered, fried oysters will be more to my taste than scalloped oysters, but we'll have to wait until next year to find out about that. The oyster soup will be attempted at some time before then - I have to say, I don't hold high hopes for it.

Little lemony things

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a big fan of all things lemon. So when I needed to make something for this week's morning teas, I selected lemon biscuits (p35), one of the variations on the basic biscuit recipe.

I'd been procrastinating for most of the evening, so it was approaching 9pm by the time I started on the biscuits. Luckily, they're pretty quick to make: cream butter and sugar, add lemon zest and eggs, then sift in dry ingredients.

The instructions were to bake balls from "heaped teaspoons" of the mixture. This seemed a little small to me, but I duly did as I was told. I suspect perhaps I was supposed to heap the teaspoons a bit higher - the recipe was supposed to make 36 biscuits, but I ended up with 44.

The resulting bite-sized, subtly lemon flavoured biscuits might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I quite like them. One tray was baked longer than the other, and biscuits that had a shorter baking time have a much softer, nicer texture. If you're going to bake these, keep an eye on the timer and take them out before they start to brown too much.

Eat 'em while they're hot

I'd chosen to use the rest of my flaky pastry by throwing together a mince and vegetable pie, thus using up not only the pastry, but also some leftover beef stock, tomato puree and egg wash.

The question was, what veges to have with it? I felt like something a bit different, so I turned to a recipe I remembered seeing in the salad chapter. I hadn't perused this chapter much since the cold weather set in, but there was one recipe that makes use of ingredients available at this time of year: winter salad (p180).

Winter salad is a mixture of cooked broccoli and cauliflower florets, with chopped celery and mandarin segments tossed through a french dressing. I had some celery that needed using, and with broccoli at 99 cents a head at Raeward, it seemed like the ideal time to be making a winter salad.

I dropped by Raeward on my way home from work, picking up the broccoli, half a cauliflower and a couple of mandarins. On arriving home, I cut my brassicas up into florets, and got them cooking while I sorted out the pie.


Once the cooked cauli and broccoli were chilling in the fridge, I turned to the other ingredients. I peeled and segmented the mandarins, then chopped the celery. It was past its best, so I chopped it into quite small chunks, hoping to make the celery a less noticeable component  of the salad.

These ingredients were added to the cooled cauli and broccoli, and tossed through with a french dressing. I confess that I used a bought salad dressing, since I couldn't be bothered making my own. It's possible that the homemade vinaigrette might have worked better, but on the whole, I usually prefer a bought, low-fat dressing.


I suppose you could call this recipe a success; it didn't taste bad, really. It's just that, realistically, all you're eating is cold cooked veges in a salad dressing. You don't get many salads in winter: this is mostly because the usual salad ingredients are out of season, and therefore either expensive or unavailable. But you could also say that salad in winter is just not appropriate to the weather.

If a plate of cold veges in the middle of winter sounds appealing to you, by all means have a go at this salad. Like I said: it's not a bad salad - I'd probably quite happily eat it in warmer weather - but as an accompaniment to a slice of pie in the middle of winter, I'd much rather have my veges hot.

Food and photos

I'd invited Nana over to my place to look at photos from our trip to Canada.  As an added bonus, I also offered to cook her dinner. It's not often that I have the opportunity to cook for anyone other than just myself, so I saw it as a chance to get a few more recipes under my belt.


It was not difficult to choose a main course to make: I selected steak and kidney pie (p130) as a dish likely to appeal to Nana. I'd never tried kidney myself, and was slightly dubious as to whether I would like it or not. It seemed like a good idea to make it for someone who would probably enjoy it, instead of trying to get through a whole pie myself. As a vegetable dish to go with the pie, I chose honey-glazed carrots and parsnips (p160).

I was undecided about a dessert until I made the apple bread on Saturday. At that point it occurred to me that a good way to use up the rest of the loaf would be as a bread and butter pudding (p207). I'd attempted bread and butter pudding more than once in the past, without spectacular results, but I had to make it sometime, and judged it a recipe that Nana, at least, would enjoy.

I wasn't sure what to serve with the bread and butter pudding. Custard seemed appropriate for a hot pudding, but bread and butter pudding is already quite eggy. I eventually settled for Edmonds pouring custard (p209), a custard recipe that does not include egg.

Nana was coming over on Sunday afternoon, but I began by making pastry for the pie on Saturday night. I'd already made flaky pastry some months ago, but I wanted to give it another try. I particularly wanted to try grating the butter, a tip from blog readers on my last attempt.

As it happens, I made a hash of the pastry. I have a fairly strong suspicion that I accidentally put in an extra cup of flour, (doesn't sound like something I would do, does it?) as I found that 6 tablespoons of water was not nearly enough to mix the dry ingredients into a dough. This suspicion was borne out by the fact that I ended up with about 600g of pastry, instead of the 400g it should have made. When I'd finally wrangled a decent-looking pastry out of my mixture, I chopped off about a third and set both lumps of pastry in the fridge to chill overnight.


The next day, I prepared what I could before I went to pick up Nana. The plan was to have both the filling and the pastry for the pie ready, so I only needed to roll out the pastry and top the pie while Nana was there. I started by browning off the meat in batches. This was then set aside while I cooked up the onion and celery, and created a gravy by adding flour, beef stock and tomato puree.

When this was ready, I added the meat back in and set the pan to simmer for an hour. Typically, I hadn't noticed the 1-hour simmering time when I first looked at the recipe: I now found myself quite rushed. In order to be at Nana's on time, I had to cut short the cooking time by about 10 minutes. This was not ideal - the meat needed to be cooked slowly and didn't really cook long enough to get properly tender.



But it couldn't be helped: I scooped the meat and vegetables into a pie dish with a slotted spoon, leaving behind the gravy. 1/4 cup of the gravy was drizzled over the meat, and the rest was reserved for serving with the pie.


While the meat was cooking, I'd been preparing a couple of other things: my custard was made and sitting in a jug in the fridge, and I'd sliced up the rest of my apple bread and arranged it (with a certain amount of difficulty) in a casserole dish. I'd also sprinkled it with a mixture of sugar, lemon zest and currants, so the only thing I had to do was pour over the egg mixture and bake it.

With the pie filling, custard and pudding base safely in the fridge, I went around to pick up Nana. We spent a pleasant afternoon looking at photos and talking on Skype to Mum, Dad, Daz and Esther in Canada. When it came time to make dinner, I took out my 200g lump of pastry and rolled it out. I had a bit of difficulty rolling it out big enough to fit the pie plate - I should have used a bigger chunk of pastry (it's not like I didn't have enough to spare!).

While the pie was baking, I mixed up the egg/milk mixture for the bread and butter pudding, reducing the quantity by a third to fit the small casserole dish I was using. This was poured over the bread base and left to soak.

I'd also peeled and chopped the carrots and parsnips, and put them on to boil. When they were done, I added butter, honey and lemon juice, shaking the pot to coat the vegetables with the mixture once it had melted. These were then sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds.

When the pie came out of the oven, the pudding went in, and I served us each a piece of pie with the honey-glazed vege, and some peas. It was a good-sized meal, especially for Nana, who is not a big eater, but we both managed to clean our plates.

I wasn't too fussed on the kidney, really: it has an odd musty flavour that did not particularly appeal to me. I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it again - except I still have to make a steak and kidney pudding at some stage!

Unsurprisingly, the pastry was not terribly successful: it had shrunk and pulled away from the sides as it cooked. Never mind, it still tasted ok!

I was quite taken with the honey-glazed carrots and parsnips - the lemon cuts through the sweetness of the honey, so they actually have quite a nice tangy flavour. Still, it'd hardly be a wonderful idea to add fat and sugar to your veges on a regular basis!


The pudding was ready shortly after we'd finished eating our mains. It looked quite impressive when I took it out, but I still wasn't too optimistic that it would taste good. I warmed up the custard and scooped out a bowl of pudding for each of us.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The pudding was not soggy, or overly eggy, which are problems I'd had when making bread and butter pudding in the past. It had a mild lemony flavour, and a combination of crunchy and soft textures. I really enjoyed it.  Having thick slices of dense, homemade bread definitely works well with this recipe, and I think using the full quantity of the sugar, lemon zest and currants, but only 2/3 of the egg mixture, made the lemon more noticeable.

I'd wondered how well the custard would go with the pudding - it seemed a bit of overkill - but it was actually a pleasant addition, and stopped the crunchy parts from being too dry.

Nana and I were both quite full after this repast. We cleaned up the kitchen and I took Nana home - having of course made sure she had some leftover pie and pudding to take home.

Now I just have to think of a way to use up that leftover pastry!