Lasagne Wars. Pampered Chef to the rescue, Arnie.

We're gonna teach this lasagne a lesson or two

You wouldn't have thought lasagne trimming would be up there in the league of kitchen challenges. Just goes to show I know nothing.

A not very exciting rectangle of flat pasta.  That's it really, what else do you need to know? Well it's the perfect vehicle for minced beef and a cheese sauce and at that stage in its lifecycle it becomes a damn fine thing to eat.

I like making the finished lasagne and I like eating it ever so slightly more.  But there are issues.  The trays I cook it in are not the same size, whatever the plan, of the pasta sheet.  Which ever tray/dish I use, neither will take the sheets as they are; there are overlaps, gaps and what ever.  Now you'd think the pasta makers and the dish makers would get their heads together and draw up a detailed list of specifications and get some synergy into this.  I could then take out the sheets from the box and lay them like little duvet covers on a bed of beefy yum-ness.  Perhaps I'm over ambitious in this regard.

But at least I'm not the only one with issues. At the moment I just tend to snap off the corners with finger and thumb and make do. Other snapped bits that didn't snap well, fill in the gaps so there's a great deal of bodge and compromise.  But others have more given this more thought than I.

There's been much chatter of late on Her Majesty's facebook about trimming techniques.
My chum Kirsty is no namby-pamby when it comes to dealing with pasta.  Oh no.  This woman gets out the shears.  I've said before about my admiration for shears when it comes to taking out branches and stubborn undergrowth, but pasta?  I need to be careful in my critique here because any woman that resorts to shears for egg-based semolina concoctions isn't going to take nonsense from a dozy half wit bloke like me.

As a side issue, during a mad supermarket dash recently with seconds to spare, all I could see were the not really value, value sheets even below the level of value range.  They clearly had no intention of cooking even after far longer than normal in the oven. I might as well have used roof tiles.  Horrendous.  Anyway...

So...just when I thought we'd reached a level, it turns out others, like Marianne favour the Pampered Chef Japanese-inspired  Santoku knife.  This is one mean piece of (quote) '...finely crafted fully forged, high-carbon German steel for a perfect edge and sharpness, stain and corrosion resistance, and superior strength and durability.'  It also has a lifetime guarantee and a full tang. In case tangs are a new thing for you, it apparently refers to the blade going into the handle.  Hence a full tang means the blade goes right down the length of the handle, aiding balance, strength etc.

I doubt if the original lasagne makers - which were almost certainly Greek and not Italian as we might think (the main theory is that lasagne comes from Greek λάγανον (laganon), a flat sheet of pasta dough cut into strips) would have ever thought such Nato-style weaponry would be required.

Marianne quote: 'Hold the lasagne sheet at a slight angle on the choppingboard, then 'slam' your big santoku at the place where you want it cut.... it snaps in 2 pieces (well most of the time!)'

It's like reading the script from  Arnie's  'Terminator 3: Pasta, The Revenge.'  Warning, contains scenes of extreme violence and appalling language. 'Hasta la Pasta Baby...'

I'm going to look at lasagne preparation in a totally new light now.  Anyway, I'm just going to settle down  and peel an apple for lunch. I'm going to give it a go with my hedgetrimmers.

Pampered Chef stoneware saves your fish fingers from unsightly floppiness.

Is there anything more disappointing than a limp fish finger.

Sad, floppy and minus most of its Cap'n Birdseye crumb coating, or Tesco, or ASDA, Aldi or wherever your reshaped and crumbed finger has come from.  Example: fish fingers on a metal tray. Turn after half through the cooking time and watch the underside coating stay exactly where it was, as a now semi-naked fish finger flops over. Heartbreaking.  No, seriously. Admittedly if the fingers are in a sandwich then who's to know the coating content, but you know; there are issues here.

The ice crystals from said finger, melt, form tiny puddles and leave the sodden findger just too heavy on its fragile underbelly. Flip, rip and disappointment.  If only there was an answer, if only they could be cooked on something that took care of the frozen bit.

Over the horizon like helicopters in Apocalypse Now looms...stoneware.  They shun cleansing, refuse to let anything stick to them and can handle almost anything you care to throw at them.  Weapons of Mass Cooking.

A round stone in my house, for example has been used for pizza, potatoes, bacon, sausage, pies, so on and etc. And nothing, absolutely nothing has stuck to it. The only alarming point is the marked colour change of the stone. When you take it out of the box, it has the flawless complexion of Gwyneth  Paltrow.  Mine is now more like Charles Bronson.  I have no idea why but I think of a flattened turtle shell when I look at it.  

Now, I am a strictly low maintenance washer upper. I don't do it if at all possible, is what I'm saying. It was the tradition where I came from and maybe you too - female cooks food, male immerses everything in vast quantities of suds, scrubs violently, leaves slippery pools of water everywhere, mostly on the kitchen floor as a sud-dy mess drips off the draining board, male sleeps noisely in chair, female goes back to kitchen, wipes up mess, making mental note to give male a piece of her mind later, then washes the pots herself, properly this time, returns to male and 'accidently' kicks him on the way to sitting down. Just another Sunday.

Thank the Lord for dishwashers.  If ever there was a piece of kit that I w ould rather not do without it's the dishwasher. Except emptying it, obviously, I'd rather not do that. Pampered  Chef stoneware positively dislikes suds and all things detergent.  In fact, it will have nothing to do with the stuff. No suds, bubbles or anything of the sort.  After a good workout in the oven all it requires is a light shower.  A soak if the sausage fat is particularly diagreeable, but more than often a splash or two of hot water is all it asks for. If it was a human it would probably be a bloke: minimum personal hygiene, in and out of the shower, no shampoo.

I just can't get enough of the stuff.  To prove a point I cracked an egg onto my round stone and baked it in the oven with some other bits.  You rarely if ever need any oil of any sort. Yet even that lost its grip and slid onto a plate. Horrible to eat, naturally, it was like a plastic something you might have bought from a joke shop, but the point was made.

Bin the tin, kids. Stoneware, my friends.  It's the future.

Don't light the BBQ Ray, the washing's out!

Time to burn stuff in the garden aka get the barbecue going. Now, stop me if I'm wrong, but I think I heard  the majority of the nation's females groan, just ever so slightly.

It's one of the few things that truly excites the male of the species. As I kind of hinted in the last post, chopping stuff and setting fire to stuff is deeply appealing to the male.  I used to do it to old Airfix models of Sopwith Camels as a kid but now I've moved onto meaty bits. There's no point in me telling you that the speciality of the male BBQ house is a blackened yet still raw sausage.  We know that, been there.

I can't offer any sensible explanation, there is just something seriously appealing about lighting charcoal, watching the flames die down-ish, losing patience so therefore putting the meat on too early and generally doing a sort of OK job.  And we do know of course that the girls are pushed to one side.

Except that we chaps do occasionally want to tweak the boundaries and dump the briquettes in favour of twigs, and wood bits  so we can do the real outdoor thing.

This is the point were my wife shouts from the patio doors: "Oi! Ray Mears! Calm down, the washing's out and we could do with keeping the hedge for a bit longer yet!" This usually coincides with me glancing casually at the pint or so of unleaded that was decanted into a container, which is now by the bins, from the lawnmower at the end of last season.

"Don't even think about it..!"  Her capacity for mind reading is disturbing, wholly accurate and deeply frustrating. BBQ lighting brick things it is, then.

I am about to invest in some new heavy duty tools for the job.  Rather better than the lame fork thing I currently use which means I am far closer to the flame than sensible as the hairs of my arm sizzle in sympathy with the bits of burger now falling between the bars of the grill. I duck occcasionally as an overheated sausage explodes, turning itself inside out and, in sympathy with the burger, disappears between the bars, preferring the flames to me relentlessly prodding it.

Which is perhaps why the BBQ grill tray caused ripples of excitement at a men-only cooking show I did recently.  " My God! That's pure genius! " claimed one enraptured guest with one eye on sausage preservation and the trick of veggie cooking.

These are treats I will have to wait for.  Meanwhile now the rains have passed and the garden is walk on-able again, I'm out there, as flames engulf the bottom of the garden like a stunt from Die Hard 2 and bits of cremated burger drift gracefully to the almost dry white duvet cover  on the line. All that's missing is Bruce Willis in a vest, saving us all  from certain death. Speaking of which...

" You did get the washing in first, didn't you...didn't you?"

All this at the precise moment my wife, now through the doors with menace in her eyes, considers plunging my head into the still warm pasta salad bowl.

Don't worry, she's done it before. Honest.

(Please 'join' the blog - to the right of your screen - most kind) 

Pampered men. They appeared last night.

I think the sausages are done now...probably...

Before I get going: Note to self.  Must finish all these pages on the blog - and more on the mike gets students cooking blog. If only you didn't keep adding stuff...is all I'm saying. Point taken.


Right.  Where was I? Ah yes. Men only cooking shows.  Well, earlier on these pages you heard me chatting away to Ben as something of a preview to an event last night - a men only cooking show. Just to recap, it was held on 'neutral' territory, if you like, in a bar rather than at a house.

The link is here if you missed it.

So what happened?  Well there were few takers in the first few minutes but it built in a short time and a great atmosphere was created.  That's a very short summary.  But here's the cautionary tale. The numbers were small  and as eight oclock approached I was half tempted to say 'let's just not bother' to the  host cum bar owner.  In my defence that's not because I wasn't that interested, to be blunt I was damn nervous.  I was nervous because getting men to such an event seems, by talking to others, a not straightforward exercise.  And yet, as I said, it built through the evening  and in pampered chef-speak, was a qualified show.  Bottom line: it was a success.  Thank heavens I didn't cave in.  Now I'm left wondering if there was more to this problem of getting men to approach direct sales events than I first considered.

There is no doubt at all that such events are 'catalogue shows' 'party plan' or whaever phrase you use, spoken out loud or otherwise.  And frankly I could be selling spanners and I suspect it would be just as hard to break through that unspoken barrier.

But part of last night's lesson to me was, maybe we just make too many assumptions here; maybe we give up to easily.  Maybe the market we guess is there, really is there after all.  It's just harder to grasp and to mature with this type of selling approach. And all it takes is a little more persistance from us - the creators and sellers - to succeed.  More shows are planned following last night because the few guys that were there - enjoyed it! Barbeques were mentioned, probably because apart from chopping stuff, we males like setting fire to sausages with equal passion.

It will be a long haul, methinks.  But certainly worth it. I've got some more thinking to do about all this.  But I smell something in the wind.  And it's not just a sausage.