I need to have a go at whipping something.

 

I don't really do cream so I'm somewhat unfamiliar with stiff peaks.

 

The runny stuff, the single cream is OK up to a point, but double whisked, fluffed-up cream isn't my number one choice. This is perhaps the reason why I have few whisks at my disposal at home.  Apart from a flick around a gravy, I generally have no need for the things.

Meringue is another mystery to me.  Pavlova is a big hit in our usually male dominated house, so I can't even say it's a girly thing.  I have tried it, but it's a deeply disappointing experience.  You bite into it only to find there's nothing actually in your mouth except a blast of something that was probably very sweet.  It just seems a bit pointless. 

In fact, if I'm honest, puds don't really cut it for me at all.  I'd have a cheese board or just an ice cream if an ice cream should be available. Any flavour. Oh and fruit salad.  I make an excuse for chocolate though.  My passion for chocolate is well-documented in these pages.

Pavlova? I don't really get it.

Yet some people visibly melt at the very mention of meringue.  I've noticed it prompts the occaisional "Oooh...ooooh" with a curious accompanying satisfied or expectant facial expression from those of a female persuasion which suggests I am totally out of my depth when it comes to egg white-based confections.  

I might be wrong here but they so often appear to be the same ladies that go all peculiar when it comes to Baileys, which is another off my radar item. It tastes, to me, like the catch-all medicine that I used get rammed down me as kid that was a cure-all for whatever was ailing me at the time from chicken pox to runny nose.


But of course, it contains cream.  So maybe that's it. Or maybe it's the emulsifier containing refined vegetable-oil which stops the cream and whiskey splitting that doesn't work for me, taste-wise. Whiskey or whisky, on the other hand are big hits with me. We've had an affair for many years.

Double cream, double the fun? Pampered Chef double balloon whisk time.

Anyway.  I'm getting off the point. I would like to get into the whole whisking thing because I think there could be something quite satisfying about it and it's prompted by a couple of events. 

One squirt or two..?

One: I read some - no, quite a lot of  - sniggering from women clearly up to speed with the whole 50 Shades of Grey thing and there were whisk references going on.  It's a not a bedside reading item for me so I can only wonder what caused such sniggers or whether I had totally confused the messages. Maybe it was cream, rather than whisk thing...anyway.

And two: the Pampered Chef double balloon whisk I saw demonstrated a bit back.  It's a strange looking creature, if I'm honest.  It looks like somone started making what a whisk should look like and got a bit confused having too many whisk-type metal bits, mid way. 

Anyway the end result is maximum aeration. Loads of air after a moderate beating. It certainly made short work of the cream I looked at. After giving it a bit of a seeing-to, the female demonstrator had peaks all over the place.  And in record time.

I want to join in the fun.

Taken us a while to get there; we've had a passion for sweetened creamy stuff since the sixteenth century. Maybe my not liking frothy cream thing was also driven by the 'squirty' cream that was a pudding staple in my childhood. Press too hard, one squirt and it was all over the damned place. And it tasted of what, exactly?

I could give a batter a batter. It's a possibility. But maybe I need to get over this whole whipped aversion, get a double balloon whisk, give it a go and see if I can peak.

I might even like it.

• If you have any thoughts and theories, please feel free to comment. And repost on facebook and twitter as you so please. You can contact me on mikegetscooking on facebook or at mikegetscooking@gmail.com.

More male pampered chef surprises. Oh Hilary!

Just click on the pic to hear the latest revelation.

Mangoes? You can't be serious?

The Pampered Chef Mango Wedge.  Great when you can get mangos.

Mangos. Seen one recently?

 

Do you know what, I couldn't buy a mango last week.

I had change in my pocket earmarked for a couple of them.  But there wasn't one single mango in my town to buy. Not one. Well, actually that's not quite true.  There was one, in a traditional grocers, but it had clearly been a mango for quite a long time and had long since dispensed with the need for keeping up appearances.  It had let itself go rather.  Even the lady in the shop didn't bother to hide her dismay; she didn't even really try to sell it to me.


'Yes...it's a bit past it, isn't..?' she said in a faltering voice.  But she still put it back on the rack, mind you.

Now I appreciate for many reading this, the situation sounds highly unlikely.  You've already gone back and re-read the first bit.

'Did he say there were none - in his town..!?' 

Well, yes I did.  I checked the supermarkets and the two available grocers.  You see, I live in a small, rural market town.  Even a few miles down the road the mango choice would no doubt have been extensive.  I could have browsed on at a leisurely pace through a selection, tweaking as I went to check for flabby bits or round firm buttock-y type portions.


And this search was first thing, about 8am to avoid any rush on exotic items.  But it was interesting to note the reaction of those I asked.  I had to ask in the shops - something we don't normally do these days - because time was of the essence and I needed to get to the point.

Having received a few startled jumps from the early supermarket gang, unsettled by demands for information on the whereabouts of fruits native to the Indian subcontinet, I dashed instead to the grocers.  The first encounter is detailed above and the second and final was even more brief.  I didn't even really make it through the doors properly. A quick dash passed the Jersey Royals and a chap, still putting out the morning displays, came up to me with armfuls of strawberry punnets.

'Morning!'  Cheery so far, in a grocer kind of way. 'Looking for anything in particular Sir..?'
'Well...mangoes actually, I don't suppose you..?

He shot me a glance that hovered between disbelief and outrage.

Strawberry punnets

'Mangoes?! No, definitely not!' Then, short pause...'Sorry about that' after he'd regained his composure. The look on his face suggested he was far too busy with a potential early strawberry rush to spend time on whimsical requests, I was clearly getting ideas above my station and should really downsize my ambitions. Or maybe he knew that mango peel and sap contain urushiol, the chemical  in poison ivy and I was obviously planning some kind of civil disobedience.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a small community, I'm not an urban creature. But there are times when it would be great to be somewhere where you could buy more than one sort of rice.  And don't get me started on  polenta.  That can never be an impulse buy, involving a 50 mile round trip; no I'm not joking.

So mango and chilli salsa is on hold until I venture onwards.  I would like to sample the PChef Mango Wedger with its dishwasher safe ergonomic handles and protective storage cover, but...geography will clearly play its part.

There are 35,000,000 tonnes grown worldwide, and the only mango I could get couldn't manage The Last Waltz, never mind a Salsa.
 

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Pampered Chef salads could be good for your ears.

Pampered Chef Mix Measure and Pour, on salads, obviously

Whatever happened to lettuce?

When I was a kid it was just lettuce. Just lettuce. That's what it was called.  And with the lettuce went cucumber, half a tomato or two and half a boiled egg.  When visitors came around the egg might be sliced. On top of that for me went a significant amount of Heinz Salad Cream.  I don't ever remember being a fan of salad, but I was - and still am - a fan of salad cream.  Unfortunately as I keep finding, there's a time and a place to admit to these things, if you read my bit about fish and brown sauce.

Not that I turn up my nose at more adventurous dressings these days.  There's a great piece of Pampered Chef kit that I suspect is somewhat overlooked.  It's a salad dressing mixer that looks like an individual caffettiera.  It goes by the name of  Measure Mix and Pour which pretty much covers what it does and what you do, for that matter.

Around the sides of the cylinder are recipes for  a range of different dressings.  We've tried a couple at home and they're very good.  So, you put in fresh ginger, top up to that line with rice vinegar, add garlic then this amount to this line of olive oil and so on. When you've added everything, up and down goes the plunger with a bout of vigorous plunging, pour it out onto your salad, in the fridge goes the remainder.  I like it because I don't have to faff about looking for a recipe, it's a one-stop shop.

Olive oil, ideal for ears

Olive Oil for Pampered Cheffers

It's a strange one isn't it, olive oil?  Again, when I was a kid, olive oil was in the medicine cabinet and used to loosen your ear wax. One of those Sunday night rituals. Bath, Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the tele, and ears brimming with salad dressing. Odd.

Speaking of the tele, I see there's a new impetus in the salad dressing ads, new ranges of tarted up sauces.  One leading brand of mayonnaise now has a hint of caramelised onion, a 'twist' of pepper, a 'spark' of chilli, a 'hint' of wasabi.  Wasabi?  Now maybe that's quite clever, that could be a winner with a particular set.

'Salad cream?  Eeeeeaaawwooooo!  Mayo with wasabi you say? Oh yar, def. Squirt away, darling'


It's a bit like a few years back when 'hint of a tint...' was suddenly huge in DIY paint situations.

'Love the magnolia walls, so retro...'
'Errr, I think you'll find that's hint of a peach, thank you (sniff)'


But then everything has to be tweaked this days  to be what it isn't and never was.  My bathroom has to smell like an alpine forest or the Chelsea Flower Show, or else.

Lettuce leaves, a fashion statement

My lettuce must comprise of a baby leaf or two. No seems to complain that such leaves have been ripped from the hearts of their loving mother lettuce.  No, they're sweet and tender, so that's OK. It's now romaine, butter lettuce, endive, lambs, escarole, rocket, so on and so forth.  There's even beetroot leaves and sliced red cabbage in there. The thought of my mum putting cabbage in a salad beggers imagination.  Cabbage in our house was only consumed when it was given a damned good boiling and taught a lesson.  Then it was boiled some more until all the green colour had come out and was down the sink where it belonged. See-through cabbage was never a favourite of mine.

Salad eating weather

Lettuce, as in lettuce, is now the unloved Cinderella.  And to be fair, I've had to put some desperately limp lettuce out of its misery today and into the kitchen bin.  I didn't like doing it, I hate throwing any food away.  But it really was at death's door, mainly because - and this won't surprise you - it's been raining of late and is right now as I type.  Again. Not salad eating weather.  I'm sure what salad eating weather is but I just don't think it's now.

So I'm going to have to keep my Measure Mix and Pour in the cupboard a while longer. If you have any dressings left over, just waiting for the sun to shine, you could always put a drop or two in your ears to see if it shifts anything stubborn.

Probably best leave it until you need to liven up a leaf.

• PS, If you'd like one of those excellant dressing mixers, just leave a comment or send me an email.  Also remember, please repost or facebook or twitter this blog and please join the site on the right hand side.  You can also find me at mikegetscooking on facebook.

Silly menus and Family Bathrooms

Pan fried Pampered style.

Pan fried. 

Pan fried?  What else should I use apart from a pan?  I could try the kettle but it wouldn't go down well with my wife, would be my best guess.

Sloshing a pint or so of vegetable oil in there to heat up and fry a few nuggets wouldn't be a preferred plan.

I've been a little quiet on here of late - real life taking over for a while plus I've been away.  Catching up on various things, I've read numerous postings, emails etc.  I've been reading about overblown menu writing and the way it's all put down these days.  Once upon a time, not too long ago, it was all French if the restaurant thought it was important enough.  Few could understand a damned thing, but at least it sounded important. Even hairdressers my mum went to when I was a kid were 'Salon of Madame Jean' or something or other.

Frankly, it's not much better now, and it's in English of a sort.

There was ( I say was, it's no longer there) a restaurant not far from where I live that boasted: hand battered haddock, nestling on a bed of crushed peas served with hand cut chips. (Small mist of semi rage appearing).  That'll be fish, chips and mushy peas then? Crushed is OK, mushy is not.  It's just a word.  Why is one cool and the other chavvy?  And you just know all the half dozen same size chips will be stacked like a game of Jenga.  Not for me, thanks. I'll go to the chippy.  I get a free fork there too. And scraps.

Jus versus gravy

How did I manage to get through the early years of my life without a jus?  Half a teaspoon of brightly coloured cack in a cresent blur on my plate. No damned use at all.  Or a veloute, that's a good one.  I like gravy myself, but apparently I shouldn't say that out loud.  I was staying in a hotel in Wales last week and ate mind-boggling good lamb.  It arrived doing the backstroke in a meaty gravy to die for and came with an additional gravy boat. Yum.  If I had a straw I would have supped the lot. Here's a couple of real ones: 'gateau of grilled vegetables' and a 'bouillabaisse of sardines'.  Good grief. 'A carpaccio of courgette'.  I'm not making this stuff up.
I ordered one of these hand battered haddock malarkeys at a restaurant in Wales last week.  When it arrived, the waitress - as they do - asked if I needed anything else.  I asked for brown sauce.  I don't like ketchup, I like brown sauce.  She blanched.  The blood drained from her face. The request took time to process.

'Sorry, I got confused for a second....you said brown sauce?  With hand battered fish?  It's just that you've already got our homemade sauce of tartar as it is '

'Brown sauce would be great, yes please'

'Right...well. I'll just err...'  And off she went, clearly to tell the head chef to alert the authorities. I had little intention of using the hand-carved lemon wedge either.

Baked beans and brown sauce, please

To get back to our friend the veloute for a second, it's a long established sauce. Nothing new; it was one of the five "mother sauces" designated by Auguste Escoffier in the 19th century. It's just that for some reason we've picked up these words and trot them out to make a perfectly sensible dish sound flash. What on earth for? I'm getting grumpy now.

Pot au feu d'agneau aux pommes de terre et aux oignons I think you'll find is Lancashire hotpot. Boule aux épices et aux fruits secs would be Spotted Dick.  As I said, I've spent a while away in Wales  and I loved the fact that the shop and road signs made no sense whatsover.  Well, they would if I was Welsh. 

I'll have to take it that 'Mae hyn yn ffordd i ganol y dref' means 'This way to the town centre'.  It could say 'All your camels have warts'  I have no idea.  But like I say, it makes me happy that even in this small island in which I live we can celebrate our national heritage of words and language. That bit, I love, I'm just  not comfortable when we mess about with words for no real reason.


But it's not just foodies that revel in this tangle of consonants.  I quite like watching property programmes when I just want to relax. Phil and Kirsty and Jasmine with the A Place In The Relocation, Location, Home or Away or whatever it's called. But.

'And up the stairs you can see the Family Bathroom.'  A what? The Family Bathroom!  Is there another sort?

'Can I use your loo..?'

'No...please don't go in there, you are a friend, you must be upgraded to...The  Family Bathroom.  We only use this one for Non-EU Residents, total strangers or the dog if no-one else needs it'.

Yes, I know I'm getting sarky, but I mean, really...

A pack of Birds Eye Lamb Grills destined for a BBQ at our house years ago came with the instructions 'Do not grill.'  And again just last week while away, we walked past a childrens play area.  The sign was vast.

'Large childrens play area.  Families welcome'  Really..? Not just for orphans then?

Tonight I shall feast on a root vegetable confection of chopped beef encased in a hand rolled all-butter crimped shell served with a thickened tomato-infused bean broth and pomme puree and a molasses-based drizzle.

Or, pasty, baked beans and mash with, you guessed it,  brown sauce on the side. (Small burp.)

• Please leave a comment, offer your opinion and if you like this or anything else on here, please re-post, link to facebook, whatever takes your fancy.  I'd be very grateful.  Thanks.

A pampering fit for a Queen. And an inflatable crown.

Pic from Belinda.

Ma'amite on toast for my Jubilee breakfast?  Not for me thanks. 

Notice the witty twist on the Marmite there? The label, presumably for a short run is a union flag with the 'Ma'amite' wording.  I quite like that.  Bit of thought going on.  I like it significantly more than I like the sticky brown stuff in the jar.  Concentrated brewers yeast on toast, originally from the Bass Brewery, has never featured on my 'to-do' list.  And I would not have naturally thought of it as a likely Jubilee commemoration product.  But then I've just read about French champagne sold at Gatwick, I think it was, with a gigantic union flag all over the bottle.

Now steady on here; French champagne wrapped in our flag?  Thin end of the wedge. Jumping on a bandwagon I suspect. Stiffly worded email to the relevant embassy required.

I do wonder what Ma'am (pronounced 'mam' so I'm told) is making of all this stuff that's out there?  Mind you, when your face is all over the stamps I guess you get used to Royal merchandising.

I fancy some fancies, personally. The nations baker, Mr Kipling has a boxed set of eight 'Great British Fancies' in a suitably patriotic box.  They taste of nothing whatsoever, but I love them and I have no idea why.  What a Great British Fancy is exactly, I have no idea on that score either.

So if my Jubilee tea is to be extended beyond cake, then as an Englishman, I have to have a sandwich.  And there are actually recipes out there for classic British/English sandwiches.  Now, I didn't realise I needed instructions.  Something out the fridge between a couple of slices usually covers it.  Anyway, I nicked this from Fortnum and Masons website:

Proper sandwiches for tea should be tiny and crustless, and cut into triangles, squares or fingers.
Cucumber: Very thin-cut brown bread spread with well-peppered cream cheese, very thinly sliced cucumber and crusts removed.
Anchovy Relish: Unsalted butter and Fortnum’s Anchovy Relish sprinkled with chopped chives.
Marmite and watercress sandwiches: Use thin-cut brown bread and roll up like a miniature Turkish carpet.
Colnbrook: Shredded boiled beef, mace, butter and shredded pickled cabbage (sauerkraut).

Mace?  Mace...? In a sandwich?
And that damn Marmite again, and how exactly do you roll a sandwich  to look like a miniture Turkish carpet? What does a miniture Turkish carpet look like?  There's no call for them where I am.

Anyway, the P Cheffers have been busy across the land making gigantic trifles in vast bowls and truly spectacular cakes all decorated with 'The Flag'.  Sales of blueberries must be at near record levels. Meanwhile I've been dragged around the shops again trying to source 'novelties' for the weekend.  We have the required bunting and flagged-up cup cake paper cases.

There was one awkward moment when my wife spotted red white and blue hair extentions in Primark.
"Do you think these will look daft...?"

Naturally, I shot her a quick look for signs of irony, but there were none. Realising there was an outside chance she might be serious, I pretended to get a text and moved off.

Aside from fancies, the weekend winner for me is the £5 inflatable pink crown in a shop I can't remember. At last, a jubilee momento that makes sense.  What's not to like about an inflatable crown? And pink at that.

Got to be better than that damned marmite, ma'am.

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.

Goggle free onion action thanks to Pampered Chef

Fancy a go with my chopper? (blush)

'Oh I'm definitely having one of  them,' she said, 'I can stop wearing goggles.'

Actually, I think from the description, it was more of a snorkel mask, but anyway. Whatever it was, it wasn't a standard kitchen utensil.

Now, you hear of this kind of thing but I never, honestly, thought it was true; resorting to goggles when chopping onions.  It's just at the far end of being plausible. I need to get the tea on, but before I do, where did the kids put the goggles after the Saturday swimming lesson?

Logically you need the Pampered Chef food chopper but anyway...back to the story.

Reeking of swimming baths you twang a pair of hideously tight goggles over your face, carefully adjusted just last week for an eight year old, which now push your eyeballs out alarmingly.  Disorientated, you now look at the world which seems smaller than it did two minutes ago with not absolutely everything in your vision and do the only sensible thing - grab a really sharp knife.  Undeterred by the fact that the only way you can see anything is to lean backwards at an angle, whilst standing as close to the kitchen bench as possible you now start onion chopping.

I mean, did  you really think this through? Half blind and machete-ing your way through root vegetables?

The goggles, perfect for a belly-flopping eight year old, have now significantly reduced blood supply to the side of your face and breathing is at best only available through your now wide open mouth.  Concentration levels are now at such a peak you've not realised that the tip of your index finger is almost certain to be part of the chilli con carne you're preparing because you failed to notice...

a) the pain in said finger
b) small river of blood
c) the fact that you can see less and less to be fair, because you hadn't accounted for the fact that the goggles would steam up in the warm kitchen.

And yet when the husband carries out his vigorous tree pruning outside you bellow at him, because 'he'll have somone's eye out, with that thing.'

Wrenching off the goggles which have left a perfect goggle-shaped outline around your face skin, you're now aware you've been dribbling ever so slightly from your gaping mouth, partly due to the heightened concentration levels. Looking down at your handiwork, you're surprised, not for the first time time, that you haven't got the finely chopped onion all the TV chefs seem to manage.  Instead you've got wierd big chunks because, of course, everything seemed so much smaller through  steamed up lenses.

Science bit:
1. When you cut the onion root it releases an enzyme.
2. That enzyme reacts in the rest of the onion to release a gas.
3. When that gas combines with water, it creates an acid.
4. If that water is in your eye, you have acid in your eye. That makes you cry.

Several ladies asked for further demonstations of my P Chef chopper at my last cooking show.  And of course, it's always incredibly amusing to ask a bloke if they can use his chopper.  It was over an hour into the demonstration, but they got there in the end. 'Oooh - shall we leave you two to it..?'  (Cue sniggering and discreet blush). Excitment over, they bought armfuls of the thing, I'm pleased to say.

It is extraordinarily efficient, even a slippery morsel of smoked salmon destined for a tartlet gave way to my chopper action (you see, you've got me started now - I'm half expecting Sid James to appear - Carry on Pampering.)

Nuts, mushrooms, cooked meats all succumb to the blades and the dishwasher does the rest.

And the woman featured at the start of this tale can now look forward to less hazzardous veg preparation and less facial disfigurement.



PS.  If your interested in finding out more, just contact me as ever at mikegetscooking@gmail.com and why not join this blog?  You can 'join' the page via a button on the right hand side or follow me at facebook.com/mikegetscooking

Men are useless with dishwashers - official.

Why are men so  totally and utterly useless at using the dishwasher?

I mean, what could be simpler?  You put the stuff in the machine and it washes it. As long as they don't put bits of double gusset angle throcket from the motorbike or the dog in there for a quick rinse, what's to argue about using the thing?

This rose its head again after I suggested in the last post, about the floppy fish finger, that I couldn't manage without a dishwasher under any circumstances.  Two points hadn't crossed my mind.  I didn't realise that dishwasher misuse was such an open sore in the female community and that I wasn't the only one who was told off on a daily basis for my crass ignornace of dishwasher protocol.

After the last post I had several 'Oh God my husband is such a ....' etc and so on.  I'll spare you the detail but fill in the gaps yourself.  To be honest I found it quite liberating on a personal level.  So I'm not the only total...... after all!

Two areas of confrontation.   Why do men think it is actually OK to only empty only half the dishwasher at a time and the direction of cutlery in the cutlery tray.

Typical rebuke in my kitchen is as follows.

"Why have you put the knives pointing down and the forks pointing down again. AGAIN! I mean how many more times!"

"Because the pointy bits are facing down and I won't stab myself."

"But they don't clean properly that way!"

"How does the direction of a stabby bit affect the cleaning of..."

"You just do, that's all!  And you don't put bowls facing that way and how do you expect that to clean when it's balanced on that, I mean...."

(Sigh...wife takes most of dishwasher content out and restacks muttering severely, you won't hear the last of this. Fast forward to later in day)

To precis this, I've just emptied the bottom half of the dishwasher, the big stuff, because we're going out in five minutes, top stuff remains.  Dishwasher spot check.

"Why have you only done half the dishwasher?"

"Because we're going to be late and at least I've got some done", I whine pathetically waiting for the gale force response.

" I can't leave the kitchen in this state...."

"But they're in the dishwasher, the door's closed..." Voice trails away knowing the argument is at best lame and unconvincing.

But at least, I'm not the only one.  I feel so much better now.

I'd go back to rubber gloves but we'd never agree on the colour.  Pink?  Pink?!

-------------

PS Nothing to do with anything on here.  This is a personal message from me, sorry to interrupt but I was just wondering if any dear reader knew of a roomshare in  London/south of England.  Middle son seriously desperate and needs a lucky break. New job, no room. Sods Law. Short term even a floor crash so he can look for a room. I thank you.

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.

Lamb and feta meatballs with warm chickpea salad

I do happen to be a fairly serious fan of the humble meatball.  

Just for a change, here's a Pampered Chef- Greek-style version - lamb and feta meatballs witha warm chickpea salad and yogurt with pita bread.  Click on the small arrow on the soundcloud box and have a listen to how it all went...remember you can always make a comment or join the page or join me at http://www.facebook.com/mikegetscooking

Mini apple and blackberry crumbles

A quick peek around the kitchen suggested a couple of mini apple and blackberry crumbles might be in order. No shopping, it's the kind of stuff that's already sitting there. So this is what I did ...

Coffee, white no sugar. Is it too much to ask, Casper?

All I want is a coffee.  Just a cup of coffee.  White, no sugar thanks.

It's amazing how difficult that is to get these days. Whatever happened to the white and no sugar please? Sadly, it's no longer fashionable, that what's happened to it.  Because if there is such a drink in the high street coffee house or department store cafe, it's been forced to have a name change. In some cases the end result has had a good Gok Wok-ing and been turned into something else, but the same. Plain is dull, plain is uncool, plain is...well, plain. Sandwiches are paninis. The white sliced is now ciabatta or rosetta, maggiolino and tartaruga.  Boys can't be called Colin anymore, it's Casper, girls are Mozarella or something or other.

Somewhat parched and mildy delirious after a lengthy shopping bout with my wife I ventured into a well- known high street coffee establishment.  Now that alone is a major shift in English culture that we seem to have quietly accepted, and I have no complaint there, as such.

"Just a coffee please...ordinary coffee..."
"Latte?"
"Just a coffee, thanks"
"Espresso Macchiato?"
" Ermmm...?"
"Iced Caffe Americano"
" Just a...."
" Lattecino, Moccaccino, Mokka..."
"...white, no su..."
" Breve, Espresso Romano, Espresso Ristretto, CaffÈ Freddo..."
" Look, all I want is a normal black coffee I can put some milk in and no s...."
" Espresso Con Panna, Cafecito, frappa thingy, wotta-chino, flappa wappa, giddy up a ding dong?"

(Pause)

"Can I have a cup of tea..?"
"Fair trade..?"

I left, still thirsty, sans caffeine and in a thoroughly unpleasant mood which was severely cranked further when my wife said, " Never mind....I just want to to pop into Clarks to see if they've got any shoes for work." 

Pop?  Pop? Name me a woman who has ever popped for shoes.

Next time, I'm taking a flask.

(PS...please feel free to leave a comment or join the site)

(PPS... Yes, the above does sound a little far fetched but honestly, it did happen, in Lincoln, even down to the shoes...ask my wife.  Particularly the shoes bit. Don't get me started.)

At last. A can-do attitude from a can opener. Sounds corny to me.

Corned beef sandwich anyone..?  One slice or two.

I've just had a full on row with a can opener. I gave it a piece of my mind I can tell you.

I asked it to do a simple job, a job that fully fits its job description. I asked it to open a can, a job it carried out with a rather sulky attitude for my liking.  It all started with a tin of corned beef, the contents of which were destined to be sandwiches.  Now it wasn't until I took the tin from the fridge that I realised the famous corned beef tin key was missing. Which begs the first question; why are corned beef tins such a damned silly shape, all squarish and tapered.

Views differ.  Some say because the meat is easier to slice like that, others say it goes back to World War One and the tins were easy to store and carry in a soldiers bag, the key being his handy means of getting at the meat. Well I hope they appreciated the concept is all I can say because opening a squarish tin with a sulking can opener is a lengthy  and near fatal occupation.  The opener pierced the tin and frankly gave up after that. Opening the can round the rounded corners was laughable.  The result after 20 minutes or so of hacking was a mass of jagged metalwork, and a temper.   I gave up in the end and - to cut the story short -  I realised late in the day that I could wrap a tiny screwdriver around the little metal tab that was left where the key should have been and managed, somehow, to turn it.  In effect, the screwdriver became the key and the contents are now sandwiches.

It's not the first time this can opener has let me down. More than once my kitchen has looked like a scene in Casualty or Holby City as jagged tin lids, half cut and half punched have sliced through  various bits of me.  Frankly, the novelty has worn off.

If you are tired of including sticking plasters as part of your essential kitchenware then standby for a solution.  Not that long ago I witnessed a can being opened with one of these. Extraordinary. Your jaw will drop. It's like watching a Penn and Teller magic trick in your own home.  A can opener that not only opens cans but cuts in such a way that the now severed can lid is smooth. You can pick the circular lid up, run your finger around the edge and all your fingers plus skin will remain intact.

They should be available on the NHS; they'd save the NHS billions a year in A and E finger fixing. And, just to show what a show off it is, both left and right handed types can use one.  Clever clogs.

Might sound corny to you but there's plenty to beef about.  (Those are page 23 and 19 of the cliche book respectively.)