Bathroom cooking
21 September 2020 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeAn unanticipated side-effect of having my draining-board in the bath and my washing-up in the bathroom sink is that I have to clear all the day's washing-up before I can actually use the bathroom to wash *myself* at all. Today I finally managed to wash my hair after clearing the sink at about 5pm, after what felt like an entire day's nonstop cooking, washing up, cooking, more washing up, carrying the chopping board into the bathroom to scrub it, and constantly emptying the washing-up bowl down the toilet on the grounds that I really don't want fragments of food getting lodged in that particular sink outlet pipe. (Draining saucepans over the toilet is also a highly non-intuitive activity, and I can see that sooner or later I'm going to end up tipping a teaspoon in.)
Given that I'm obviously not going to be able to use the bath for its normal purpose for days, I decided to use the rest of the tube of sealant to re-seal the end of the bathtub as well. I just need to remember to allow an extra day on that. Fortunately I'm well used to washing over the sink...
I came across a rolled joint of breast of lamb from the butcher in the market yesterday, and remembered seeing it recommended as a suitable roast for small households. So I embarked on my first-ever stuffed Sunday lamb roast, untying it, unrolling it, and then doing it up again as per instructions with home-made lemon and thyme stuffing. It smelt absolutely delicious while it was cooking, but not so savoury on the plate as all the burnt bits left in the pan -- either I should have been eating the outside skin (but it was all leathery!) or else I ought to have put some salt on before eating it. Probably the latter.
(And despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the fat spatters off the inside of the oven afterwards; there were billows of blue smoke the next time I used it. I should have covered the joint.)
Still, it was tasty, and it has been a very long time since I had roast lamb. It's only going to do about two meals, though, which makes the four-pound cost seem rather less economical!
Click for pictures
I also made a very successful sourdough plum upside-down cake -- basically a Pflaumenkuchen variant. https://www.beetsandbones.com/sourdough-plum-pie-kuchen/
I don't have a 'stand mixer', and I don't use the American technique of feeding and throwing away half the starter ('discards') on a regular basis, so I think that the next time I try this -- which may not be until next year, as we're getting to the end of the plum season -- I'll try to remember to start off by making a plain 'yeast sponge' with just flour and water. That way I can add the entire starter and then replenish it from the result overnight; this time round I had to save back about half of it, because the risen dough mixture is full of egg and butter and lemon and can't be used as a starter for the next batch, and as a result, given the small proportion of chilled starter and the enriched and fairly solid dough, the recipe took about 18 hours to rise properly.
I feel that in the absence of a mechanical mixer it would make more sense to cream the butter together with the sugar before adding the latter, too, rather than following the instructions to add it *after* mixing in the flour and use the 'paddle attachment' to combine in the lumps! (I did it by squishing it in with a knife-blade; fortunately the day was warm and the butter soft, and it worked out.)
I had a near-disaster when I forgot to sprinkle 2tbsp sugar on top of the plums, as directed, before dumping the risen cake mixture all over them! Fortunately I was able to flop the entire assembly out onto a plate and simply sprinkle the sugar over the bottom of the tin; it messed up my neat arrangement of plum slices when the mixture was tumbled back into its tin afterwards, but the outcome seems to have worked well, with a delicious sweet glaze over the top of the finished cake when you turn it out.
It's a relatively economical recipe because it's basically just an enriched bread dough with fresh fruit cooked under it (only two ounces of fat in the whole recipe); it's not 'sour' at all in flavour, save for the lemony taste of the zest, and it's not dense or chewy, but sweet, light, and beautifully impregnated with juice. I was reminded of the very successful 'German apple cake' that we used to make as a tray bake from a Yorkshire recipe, where chunks of whole apple are covered with crab-apple jelly and then the last third of the dough is dabbed in spoonsful over the top, leaving chinks of fruit showing through in the finished product and mingling with the same exquisite soft lemon flavour. Absolutely nothing like the traditional wholemeal-cinnamon-and-brown-sugar English apple cake.
Given that I'm obviously not going to be able to use the bath for its normal purpose for days, I decided to use the rest of the tube of sealant to re-seal the end of the bathtub as well. I just need to remember to allow an extra day on that. Fortunately I'm well used to washing over the sink...
I came across a rolled joint of breast of lamb from the butcher in the market yesterday, and remembered seeing it recommended as a suitable roast for small households. So I embarked on my first-ever stuffed Sunday lamb roast, untying it, unrolling it, and then doing it up again as per instructions with home-made lemon and thyme stuffing. It smelt absolutely delicious while it was cooking, but not so savoury on the plate as all the burnt bits left in the pan -- either I should have been eating the outside skin (but it was all leathery!) or else I ought to have put some salt on before eating it. Probably the latter.
(And despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the fat spatters off the inside of the oven afterwards; there were billows of blue smoke the next time I used it. I should have covered the joint.)
Still, it was tasty, and it has been a very long time since I had roast lamb. It's only going to do about two meals, though, which makes the four-pound cost seem rather less economical!
Click for picturesI also made a very successful sourdough plum upside-down cake -- basically a Pflaumenkuchen variant. https://www.beetsandbones.com/sourdough-plum-pie-kuchen/
I don't have a 'stand mixer', and I don't use the American technique of feeding and throwing away half the starter ('discards') on a regular basis, so I think that the next time I try this -- which may not be until next year, as we're getting to the end of the plum season -- I'll try to remember to start off by making a plain 'yeast sponge' with just flour and water. That way I can add the entire starter and then replenish it from the result overnight; this time round I had to save back about half of it, because the risen dough mixture is full of egg and butter and lemon and can't be used as a starter for the next batch, and as a result, given the small proportion of chilled starter and the enriched and fairly solid dough, the recipe took about 18 hours to rise properly.
I feel that in the absence of a mechanical mixer it would make more sense to cream the butter together with the sugar before adding the latter, too, rather than following the instructions to add it *after* mixing in the flour and use the 'paddle attachment' to combine in the lumps! (I did it by squishing it in with a knife-blade; fortunately the day was warm and the butter soft, and it worked out.)
I had a near-disaster when I forgot to sprinkle 2tbsp sugar on top of the plums, as directed, before dumping the risen cake mixture all over them! Fortunately I was able to flop the entire assembly out onto a plate and simply sprinkle the sugar over the bottom of the tin; it messed up my neat arrangement of plum slices when the mixture was tumbled back into its tin afterwards, but the outcome seems to have worked well, with a delicious sweet glaze over the top of the finished cake when you turn it out.
It's a relatively economical recipe because it's basically just an enriched bread dough with fresh fruit cooked under it (only two ounces of fat in the whole recipe); it's not 'sour' at all in flavour, save for the lemony taste of the zest, and it's not dense or chewy, but sweet, light, and beautifully impregnated with juice. I was reminded of the very successful 'German apple cake' that we used to make as a tray bake from a Yorkshire recipe, where chunks of whole apple are covered with crab-apple jelly and then the last third of the dough is dabbed in spoonsful over the top, leaving chinks of fruit showing through in the finished product and mingling with the same exquisite soft lemon flavour. Absolutely nothing like the traditional wholemeal-cinnamon-and-brown-sugar English apple cake.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-22 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-22 08:58 pm (UTC)(From the same book as the original stuffed breast of lamb recipe, Good Food on a Budget -- I believe you're a collector of vintage cookbooks?)
I had mine with baked potato and baked tomatoes, as Georgina Horley recommends...
no subject
Date: 2020-09-23 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-10 03:09 pm (UTC)Although in winter temperatures it took about 48 hours from start to finish, since it has to rise twice...