Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, December 25th 2007 at 4:09pm
Since I started living on my own, the need to ward off starvation has driven me to learn how to actually feed myself. So I’ve been getting better at it, especially in the past couple of weeks! Not too long ago, the majority of my cooking efforts were embarrassing stories of epic failure.
Starting with the cake, my luck started to change. Before, the best I could do for myself was making rice (in a rice cooker), and grilling chicken or salmon on a household grill. I could cook pasta on a stovetop, but when I tried to heat up the sauce, it exploded in my microwave. I’ve even messed up sunny-side up eggs by dumping half a shaker of pepper on it. I tried to salvage it, but alas the damage was done and my breakfast was ruined. :(
But I persisted. I tried making French Toast a few weeks ago, and the result was not-terrible. I baked at a banana cake for the TEAM Christmas Party Potluck and it was so good, people went back for seconds, thirds and even fifths! The next project was spanakopita … although I was really just a sous-chef this time around. It didn’t look difficult and I think I could even do it again unsupervised. It turned out so good that drunk people eating it a week later said it was delicious (and didn’t get sick)!
This week I’ve noticed a definite improvement. I made pasta again and the sauce didn’t explode. I made a stir-fry without so much as vague oral instructions, and it turned out pretty well!
Now I need to figure out how to put some planning into my food-making, so that I can have leftovers and actually eat them before they go bad … :-o
Tags: baking, cooking, food, home, problems | 1 comment
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, October 9th 2007 at 12:53am
I finally, successfully, made some food!
When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Bridget said, “Bake me a cake.” She bought me a beginner’s cookbook as part of my birthday present, so it seems only fitting that I should cook something from it. I ambitiously chose the Sunken Chocolate Cake, if only because the description in the cookbook read “ridiculously easy to make”. Also, because it had very few, simple ingredients: chocolate, butter, eggs, and sugar. No flour or anything fancy like that.
Luckily I had two good friends (Josh and Morgan) supervise me. They helped improvise a Double Boiler to melt the chocolate and butter in, and with beating the eggs. I was a little intimated by the egg beating, since I’m still traumatized by the last experience. No less than 40 minutes later, the cake emerged, and it actually looked like a cake!
Here’s a picture of it with icing sugar on top:
Lessons learned:
- Icing sugar and “confectioner’s sugar” are interchangeable terms.
- “Whipped Cream” and “Whipping Cream” are not. (Many thanks to Morgan for trying to help me improvise an icing).
- If you give Bridget a cake that tastes delicious, she’ll raise the bar and expect more next time.
Tags: baking, cooking, events, food, Friends, party, thanksgiving | 3 comments
Posted by Skrud at Sunday, June 11th 2006 at 1:35pm
Last night there was an awesome potluck held at Harley’s. There were a lot people and even more food, tons of booze going around (we polished off a bottle each of Southern Comfort, Bailey’s, Jack Daniels, Jägermeister, Vodka, Gin, Drambuie, Kahlua, and little bits of other stuff, too).
My contribution to the potluck was supposed to be Baked Alaska, which I saw on the geekified cooking show/podcast Ctrl+Alt+Chicken. (I suggest downloading the episode if you want to see what it’s like – the show’s great).
Little did I realise just how ambitious this project was. Baked Alaska seems relatively simple … you take shortcake, cover it with vanilla ice cream, cover that with raspberry sherbet, and then cover the whole thing with meringue icing and shove it the oven. See, egg whites are a thermal insulator, so they prevent the ice cream from melting while it’s in the oven. It’s supposed to be pretty awesome.
Anyway… the shortcake ice-cream part was simple enough. We had something like six people trying to beat the egg whites though, and after two hours with no meringue we gave up and declared the experiment a failure.
Apparently, there are a number of factors that go into making a successful meringue, that none of us could’ve thought of. For example, the weather is a factor:
If it is humid or raining outside, sometimes you won’t get the proper volume no matter what you do.
It was raining all day, and humidity was at 100%.
When whipping egg whites, always start your mixer on medium-low to medium speed.
Oops.
Beating, stirring and jarring can break down the foam.
Well … what the hell? How do you beat egg whites if beating them breaks it down??
They didn’t mention any of these factors on Ctrl+Alt+Chicken … Mind you, they’re geeks – not chefs – but maybe they should get a supervisor or something to make sure little tips like that get out!
I always figured that cooking and baking was just like following an algorithm – you follow the instructions and stuff happens. But it’s NOT!
Now Harley has a half-made Baked Alaska in his freezer.
Still, great party!
Tags: baking, cooking, events, food, potluck | 8 comments
