Something cooked yesterday made me think about how hard it is to cook with bad equipment, and easy with good. I breaded some turkey breast steaks and baked them in a hot oven in a sturdy non-stick roasting dish that has lasted years and will probably outlive me. They worked really well. Try that on a thin version and you'd burn them and/or the coating would stick and be lost.
Same with pans, moreso maybe. Try making an omelette in either a warped pan, or one with a thin bottom (the two faults usually go together), and tears will follow.
I pull back in horror in supermarkets when passing their 'bargain' cookware. If you can waft a pan like a table tennis bat it is too light. And they are not bargains, as the thin base will be ruined in weeks, the food cooked therein often burned and buggered, and you'll have to replace them. Message to those starting out in life, buy the best you can afford and save money in the long run. Or as I did originally, 'borrow' a few good pieces from parents.
Showing posts with label pans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pans. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Monday, 19 November 2012
One Flame Pudding - Cheap and Cheerful
November is when I start to feel the need for a pudding to finish an evening meal, and not something like a pastry or a blob of ice cream either, it needs to be sweet and starchy. I put it down to the failing light - yesterday it felt as if the day were ending about 3:30, and when we ate at 6:30 (it would have been 7:30 in spring and summer) the world had closed around us, cold, dark, unwelcoming. The body craves supplies to get it through the winter.
Earlier we had warmed and cheered ourselves - and rewarded, as we'd just chopped down an unproductive tree at the allotment and dug several beds over - with my favourite winter-warmer, hot buttered rum. A measure of rum (Kraken spiced rum the first bottle to hand) pinch of cinnamon and mace, tsp of sugar, and three measures of boiling water in which a tsp of unsalted butter is melted and vigorously stirred. Cake in a mug. Toddy or pudding (and pudding), damp cold weather has its compensations.
Only having thought of the need for a pud as the main course neared readiness possibilities were limited, pancakes the obvious choice.
Everyone loves pancakes, and everyone should be able to make them. For student bedsits for example it seems the ideal standby, minimal ingredients, quickly done, and informal - they are best eaten hot from the pan rather than batched up to eat together, so traffic and conversation flows in and out of the kitchen.
Why in Britain many people don't eat them other than on Pancake Tuesday is beyond me. For a few pence you have something that carries savoury or sweet fillings, is rapidly made, and tastes great.
Plain flour, an egg, and milk are whisked until a single cream consistency is arrived at, a pinch of salt added, and for pudding ones a tsp or three of sugar. Non-stick pan barely greased and heated, just enough batter to thinly coat its surface is poured in (it's a big mistake to make fatter versions, they take longer to cook, and the middle ends up doughy while the surfaces overdo), and tossing or flipping with a spatula the pancake is cooked in a couple of minutes. As with all cooking, a decent pan - with a heavy base - makes life easier, but pancakes are more forgiving of thin pans than most things.
We had most of ours with ice cream and chocolate sauce, one with maple syrup. A couple last night were eaten as they were. Sometimes a squeeze of lemon or orange juice and sugar is preferable, sometimes butter and sugar. We all felt better for them.
Earlier we had warmed and cheered ourselves - and rewarded, as we'd just chopped down an unproductive tree at the allotment and dug several beds over - with my favourite winter-warmer, hot buttered rum. A measure of rum (Kraken spiced rum the first bottle to hand) pinch of cinnamon and mace, tsp of sugar, and three measures of boiling water in which a tsp of unsalted butter is melted and vigorously stirred. Cake in a mug. Toddy or pudding (and pudding), damp cold weather has its compensations.
Only having thought of the need for a pud as the main course neared readiness possibilities were limited, pancakes the obvious choice.
Everyone loves pancakes, and everyone should be able to make them. For student bedsits for example it seems the ideal standby, minimal ingredients, quickly done, and informal - they are best eaten hot from the pan rather than batched up to eat together, so traffic and conversation flows in and out of the kitchen.
Why in Britain many people don't eat them other than on Pancake Tuesday is beyond me. For a few pence you have something that carries savoury or sweet fillings, is rapidly made, and tastes great.
Plain flour, an egg, and milk are whisked until a single cream consistency is arrived at, a pinch of salt added, and for pudding ones a tsp or three of sugar. Non-stick pan barely greased and heated, just enough batter to thinly coat its surface is poured in (it's a big mistake to make fatter versions, they take longer to cook, and the middle ends up doughy while the surfaces overdo), and tossing or flipping with a spatula the pancake is cooked in a couple of minutes. As with all cooking, a decent pan - with a heavy base - makes life easier, but pancakes are more forgiving of thin pans than most things.
We had most of ours with ice cream and chocolate sauce, one with maple syrup. A couple last night were eaten as they were. Sometimes a squeeze of lemon or orange juice and sugar is preferable, sometimes butter and sugar. We all felt better for them.
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Onions and Le Creuset - Both Bargains
We had our annual bonfire do last night, feeding I think 19 in all. The biggest culinary hit was a simple accompaniment to a big bit of plain boiled gammon, onions in a cheesy bechamel. The idea was lifted from Nigel Slater, though I think his version was without cheese. I love the breadth of his ideas, and his frequent focus on things other than meat, but can't abide his writing style as it has evolved over the last few books. Still, he is probably not worried given I have at least five of his tomes.
The dish was made by peeling medium-sized onions and cooking them in boiling water for about 25 minutes, then halving them, placing them like little domes in two Le Creuset cast iron oval dishes, and covering them in a bechamel sauce before finishing in the oven for half an hour at 180C, by which time the surface was starting to brown and bubble.
Milk for the bechamel was infused in the morning (thinking ahead as it was a party) with onion, carrot, bay and nutmeg, and the sauce made in the usual way, on the thin side as the cheese then added would give it extra body anyhow. At the end of the evening there was some gammon left, about half the pate (too much bacon in it, a sin Elizabeth David railed against), but not a scrap of cheesy onion (nor a single sausage, that standby of the bonfire party). Sternest critic rightly said later that the onion was a touch watery, so I'd probably cook them for just 15 minutes in future and rely on the oven to finish them off.
Ten onions cost about £0.75, the milk and cheese maybe £1, so it was a cheap and tasty success, a bargain. As were those Le Creuset dishes about 25 years ago. Good cookware lasts, and helps the cook. I have two sets of pans, one stainless steel, the other LC cast iron, both bought in the late 1980s, and both pretty forgiving of wavering attention. They cost quite a bit back then, but had we chosen cheapo options with thin bases and delicate lids they'd have died at best three years later, and would have burned half the things cooked in them.
Biggest firework hit btw was Molten Madness from Sainsbury's, brought by a friend. It was roughly the size and weight of a fridge, and effectively laid down an artillery barrage for five minutes. Le Creuset Soup Pot with Lid, 2-3/4 quart - Cherry (Google Affiliate Ad)
The dish was made by peeling medium-sized onions and cooking them in boiling water for about 25 minutes, then halving them, placing them like little domes in two Le Creuset cast iron oval dishes, and covering them in a bechamel sauce before finishing in the oven for half an hour at 180C, by which time the surface was starting to brown and bubble.
Milk for the bechamel was infused in the morning (thinking ahead as it was a party) with onion, carrot, bay and nutmeg, and the sauce made in the usual way, on the thin side as the cheese then added would give it extra body anyhow. At the end of the evening there was some gammon left, about half the pate (too much bacon in it, a sin Elizabeth David railed against), but not a scrap of cheesy onion (nor a single sausage, that standby of the bonfire party). Sternest critic rightly said later that the onion was a touch watery, so I'd probably cook them for just 15 minutes in future and rely on the oven to finish them off.
Ten onions cost about £0.75, the milk and cheese maybe £1, so it was a cheap and tasty success, a bargain. As were those Le Creuset dishes about 25 years ago. Good cookware lasts, and helps the cook. I have two sets of pans, one stainless steel, the other LC cast iron, both bought in the late 1980s, and both pretty forgiving of wavering attention. They cost quite a bit back then, but had we chosen cheapo options with thin bases and delicate lids they'd have died at best three years later, and would have burned half the things cooked in them.
Biggest firework hit btw was Molten Madness from Sainsbury's, brought by a friend. It was roughly the size and weight of a fridge, and effectively laid down an artillery barrage for five minutes. Le Creuset Soup Pot with Lid, 2-3/4 quart - Cherry (Google Affiliate Ad)
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