False (Home) Economy

After my recent experiments into frittata, it became quite obvious that I needed to invest in a new frying pan of a smaller circumference, but retaining the same depth. While the frying/grilling system for making a frittata has been reasonably successful in my home set-up (ignoring the fact that I always seem to miss something in the ingredients...Foreshadowing...), the outward spread of the mixture has always greatly diminished the potential depth of the frittata, and everyone knows that they're mean to be deep-pan omelettes.

So, on a recent trip to a local supermarket, I had look in their kitchen utensils section, and found something rather odd.

There are such things as 'omelette pans', which fit the bill: 20cm diameter, 4cm deep... they're basically designed for making frittatas, rather than omelettes. At least, I've always thought of omelettes as being large and fairly flat, the idea being to fold them in half - the only way you could accomplish that with such a small, deep frying pan would be to make a 2-egg omelette... but that's hardly worth the effort, right?

So, here was this small, deep pan that not only seemed purpose built for my needs, but was even named an 'omelette pan', just to hammer the point home. Perfect, right?

Wrong.

Because, just a short distance away on the same shelf was a 20cm diameter frying pan. It, too, was 4cm deep. It, too, seemed purpose built for my needs.

So, gentle reader, what do you suppose the difference was?

Well, for starters, there were cosmetic differences, such as the steepness of the curve toward the rim, the size/shape of the handle and also the composition of the handle.

The most important difference, though, was the price: the 'basic' frying pan was a whole £2 cheaper than the 'purpose built' omelette pan (£10 vs £12). That represents almost a 17% price hike between two pans which, for all intents and purposes, are the same, except cosmetically.

Being on a bit of a budget at the moment, I'm sure you can guess which one I ended up choosing.

 
The new pan (left) and old vs new (right). Not as broad, maybe, but every bit as deep... leading to...

Oh, mercy yes, that's a nice, deep-pan frittata, alright!

Sits neatly in the central recess of the plate (though it would be a better fit if I'd got it out the right way up, rather than dumping it out by holding the pan upside-down over the plate)

Doesn't that look good?
(You may notice a distinct lack of Dill - yes, I forgot it... and all the seasoning, to be perfectly honest... but I ended up solving that little gaffe by serving it with mustard and dill sauce, normally reserved for plain salmon steaks and the Filet o'Salmon Fish Fingers)

On Merchandise

Absolutely ages ago, I was planning to do a T-shirt for this blog, featuring my little feline mascot and a range of terribly witty captions. That particular plan hit a bump in the road, but is still going to happen... eventually...

For the moment, though, I'm working on an alternative...

The idea behind this is that far too many supermarkets were describing Key Lime Pie as a cheesecake, rather than what it really is. I can understand supermarkets being reluctant to stock a product that essentially contains raw egg yolks (particularly considering my experience of many supermarket custard tarts, but that's another story), but it wasn't just the supermarkets getting it wrong.

When I first went looking for recipes for Key Lime Pie, virtually every UK-based foodie website said Key Lime Pie was made with cream, marscapone and all the other things you'd associate with cheesecake. It seems this has now changed (I wonder how many of these changes came as a result of people finding this very blog, probably while searching for someone in particular) but my point, expressed here in cartoon form, still stands.

In lieu of a 'proper' snacks & the single man T-shirt, I think this one would work out nicely... and the QR code leads to my recipe for 'Off-Key Lime Pie', so it gets people here one way or another. Feedback always appreciated - either here, or on Facebook, or even on deviantART.

Recipe Books

And so it came to pass that, for my most recent birthday, I received The Little Paris Kitchen in book form.

I can confirm that it includes the recipe for the Chocolate Lava Cake (including the one with the salted caramel filling). In fact, it has all the recipes demonstrated in the TV show and loads more, broken down under well-thought out section titles (apart from one of the later ones: "My Paris addresses" is more correctly called "My favourite Paris addresses".

With any luck, I'll find the time and the inclination to try out a selection of the recipes for this 'ere blog but, out of respect for the chef/writer, I shall not be reproducing the recipes here.

I can further confirm that, yes, it does contain many, many glorious photos of Rachel Khoo.

Gentlemen, I have a feeling we'll be improving the sales figures for this particular recipe book no end.

A Cautionary Tale...

...About Molding Your Truffles

Over the recent Easter Bank Holiday, I decided to make some more truffles, intending to take a stock to my parents' home to share them out. There were a couple of things I did differently this time, though. Some by choice, and some out of necessity and/or pig-headedness.

To take the latter points first, my original recipe calls for runny honey to sweeten the chocolate. Sometime since then, however, I've used my runny honey for other things, didn't restock my cupboards, and so I no longer had sufficient for the mixture as specified, and in any case wanted to increase the honey content to better counter the extreme bitterness of the 100% Javan Cacao chocolate I'd picked up for this batch. I didn't want to resort to sugar, because that would introduce the risk of graininess, should the crystals not dissolve thoroughly. Sure, there's plenty of icing sugar, but I wasn't sure how that would affect the consistency, and I didn't want to be too experimental with this batch. My eyes alighted next on a tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup. Problem solved. On this occasion, I added something more than 100ml.

Other than the different origin of the cacao, the only deliberate change was the use of ice-cube molds to create a batch of neatly shaped and consistent truffles, to go along with my gloriously cock-eyed, hand-molded blobs... and therein, the problems began...

Initially, I was looking for either soft plastic or rubber confectionary molds, and preferably as shallow as possible. Sadly, my local shops had nothing suitable, and I didn't fancy traipsing off to one of the bigger shopping centres because I'd left everything to the last minute (which, facing facts, is the only way to do truffles of this recipe, since it involves raw egg yolk), so I grabbed a set of three ice-cube molds from a local pound shop.

The increased liquid content of the mixture led to a rather runnier final product, which made it all the easier to pour it into the molds, but it had struck me that getting them out again might well be a problem. With a more viscous mixture, oil or cocoa power could have been applied to the mold. As it stood, either would just have been absorbed and become useless.

And, as it turned out, I was right to worry. When I pulled the trays out of the fridge later on, the truffles were very much stuck inside the molds, and the rigidity of the plastic meant that they weren't easily displaced. The obvious next step was to stick them in the freezer, and use the old 'warm water' trick to get them out once they were rather more solid.

Only they didn't become more solid. Something about the truffle mixture resists proper freezing and just stops at the 'properly set' state. Thus, even after leaving the three trays in the freezer for a few days and then running warm water over the backs, the truffles still didn't want to come out.

In the end, I figured I might as well give in and just use a spoon to extract them...

Very much a work in progress. Two trays to go...
Oh my, the hardship...

Celebrity Crush/What The Hell, BBC?

I have to admit that, despite my vague culinary inclinations, I tend to avoid any and all food programming on television. There's just something dull about watching someone - heavily edited - preparing food that I'd probably never even think to order in a restaurant, let alone try to make myself.

So surely there has to be a scurrilous ulterior motive to my new fascination with BBC2's 'The Little Paris Kitchen'?

I shall not attempt to disabuse you, my dearest reader, of your churlish notions on that subject, but know this:

• Rachel Khoo's kitchen is smaller than mine, so it gives me a clearer sense of effective use of the space I have
• Each week, she effectively does a full, three course meal, often with extra little treats thrown in
• Most of it, so far, looks easy enough for me to try
• She puts her own spin on traditional French dishes, as only a Croydon-born cook-and-writer living in Paris would dare
• She does everything unashamedly full fat. Gotta respect that, in this day and age
• She's clearly not afraid to show things not going perfectly according to plan
• She even shows the washing up

OK, it doesn't hurt to have all those casually erotic, lingering close-ups of her gob as she shovels down a helping of whatever she's just cooked, but the format of the show is quite refreshing, and it's amazingly cool that she's turned her tiny Paris home into a 2-seater restaurant.

But of course, the BBC website lets the show down as only the BBC could. Each show features three or four recipes... but the website has so far only put up two recipes from each show.

When Ms. Khoo assured me, her rapt viewer, that I could look up her recipes at bee-bee-see-dot-koh-dot-you-kay-forward-slash-food, I was keen to look into the molten-cored chocolate cakey-thing she demonstrated on Monday's show... But that is not one of the recipes currently available.

...I guess this means I'll be buying the book..?

Nice one, BBC.

(Addendum 18/4: It is amusing to see that the most frequently asked questions on Ms. Khoo's Twitter are actually nothing to do with food. The pattern is this:

• Men are frequently asking "Can I work in your restaurant?"
• Women are frequently asking "What's that lipstick you're wearing?"

I'm not kidding - look through her Twitter feed yourself, every ten lines or so she answers one question or the other. Frequently both. She should add an FAQs section to her website...)

On Portion Sizes

What should be considered the more pathetic:

• The size of the individual choc-ices in a Sainsbury's 8-pack, or
• Deciding to have two for dessert because they seem so small

Answers on a post card (or in the Comments...)

Nothing May Come Of It, But...

There is now a snacks & the single man channel on YouTube.

Obviously there's nothing on it yet, so it's not 'visible' but, should I ever decide to go the route of filming my kitchen efforts, I have somewhere to put them.

You have been duly warned.

Gentlemen, Is This A Familiar Sight?

(Yes, I'm a fan of Winnie the Pooh. Get over it.)

OK, with all this cooking, there's inevitably a lot of washing up to do. When I first moved into my flat and had the kitchen redone, I thought very briefly about having a dishwasher installed. Since I'm living on my own, and rarely have guests (and, on those occasions, frequently end up eating out anyway), I figured there'd never be sufficient dirty dishes to warrant the use of something like a dishwasher.

I must have been assuming that I'd do the washing up after every meal, or something.

Of course, what actually happened was that plates and bowls and cutlery and baking trays and mugs and glasses began to pile up on that handy, stowable work surface (which is almost never stowed because it generally has washing up stacked upon it). Since I have six of everything (other than dessert spoons... still trying to figure that out), I'd often get to the end of the week and only do the washing up because I'd otherwise have nothing left to eat off, or with. That photo up there ain't the worst it's ever been. Far from it.

This is not good.

So here's the thing: I know I don't get an awful lot of feedback on this 'ere blog, but I'm going to put this question out there anyway...

Those of you without dishwashers (you foolish, foolish people!), what do you do to motivate yourself to do the dishes more frequently?

I mean... I have a lovely view out of my kitchen window, and the quantities don't exactly present a great hardship for me... But, all too often, I'll end up just making a deal with myself, like "No TV till I've done the dishes" or, in extreme circumstances, "No internet till I've done the dishes"... and yet, even then, I'll merely make a half-arsed pass at the cutlery, drinking glasses, and/or whatever pots and pans need doing.

I'm open to suggestions, here...

New, Improved Recipe!

Two tracks for this train of thought on improvements: an example of the way some companies feel the need to 'improve' their recipes, and the way food companies package their wares these days.

---

By the time I finished my 7 Months of Baking challenge, I'd picked up my next round of Wright's flours for baking, including their Madeira cake, which wasn't available at the food show earlier in the year. The selection on offer wasn't great, but I did bag another couple each of the chocolate and carrot cakes. The first one I baked was a second chocolate cake, according to my own embellished 'recipe', specifically so I could take some round to my folks because I'd neglected to do so the first time round.

The other day, I decided - on a whim - to bake myself a carrot cake. After all, I have plenty of Betty Crocker icing left over, and even those shop bought carrot cakes that refrain from pollution by walnut will invariably be iced to one degree or another. The perfect match, surely?

I noticed something was different the moment I started tipping the mix into my bowl: the carrot pieces were larger. Back when I baked the first carrot cake, I noted that the carrot pieces were basically crumb-sized. Now, they have officially graduated to 'flakes'. Still not the full-on gratings that some ready-made cakes contain, but a noteworthy change nonetheless, particularly since it seems to have happened without any fanfare. Then again, other than that, the mixture is unchanged, so maybe larger fragments of root vegetable don't deserve announcement.

The cake was fine as it was, but the larger carrot pieces do add to its texture and, with a carrot cake that tastes as good as this one (let's face it, nothing tastes better than freshly baked cake!), the last thing we need is for the delicate balance of spices to be upset.

There have been times when a 'New, Improved Recipe' has basically ruined a product so, while I'm fully aware that the thing that sets the best companies apart is their response to customer feedback and their constant striving to improve the quality of their products, I believe that some things should always stay as they are.

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Anyone who spends any amount of time shopping in supermarkets will no doubt know the frustration of packing cardboard food boxes into their fridge or freezer. Nine times out of ten, the boxes are oversize for their contents, so it's always appreciated when packaging is minimised. Where the food is contained in a plastic tub or foil tray, extra packaging is often limited to a printed band around the container - less wasteful of cardboard, more easily compacted, and just as recyclable as a full-size box.

When restocking my freezer in Iceland today, I found that some of their foodstuffs that used to be packaged in oversized boxes (and the product contained in a plastic bag within) are now packaged only in their standard heavy-gauge printed plastic bags. These take up far less space in the freezer drawers and become even more convenient as their contents are removed (cardboard boxes can be folded, sure, but tend to unravel, flap about and generally become a pain in the backside).

I should point out that there's no indication on the bag as to whether or not the plastic is biodegradable, recyclable (are either mandatory now?), or even what type of plastic it is. Then again, there's no council-provided recycling collection from my home, so whatever I don't transfer to my parents' place for recycling will end up in the bins. Also, and perhaps more worryingly, while investigating one bag I discovered that the particular chicken product I was looking at was prepared and packaged in Thailand... and, no, it wasn't Thai Chicken.

Poll on Facebook

Just for jollies, I would urge readers of this blog to pay a visit to the snacks & the single man page on Facebook, to participate in a poll to decide which of the remaining six Wright's Baking mixtures I try next.

Assuming I get a decent amount of feedback, there may be a follow-up poll to decide how I embellish the process. For example, if the winner is Chocolate Cake, I'll ask if I should add Willie's Cacao Venezuelan Black 100% Cacao chocolate chunks, Cadbury's Buttons, After Eight mints, etc. If the winner is one of the three breads I'll ask if I should do a simple loaf, a sub, some buns, or try some interesting knotwork with the dough. Who knows, it might end up as a Mixed Grain pretzel-y thing.

The Choice Is Yours...
 

And, hey, while you're there, Like me...

snacks Challenge: 7 Days of Baking

OK, so I popped over to the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court last weekend and came away with a selection of ready-make mixtures for baking all kinds of cool stuff from Wright's Baking. I have:

• Ginger Cake
• Chocolate Cake
• Toffee Cake
• Carrot Cake
• Parmesan & Sun-Dried Tomato Loaf
• Cheese & Onion Loaf
• Mixed Grain Loaf

I'd like to say "It is my intention to bake one every day for the seven days from Monday 16th May" but, frankly, I know myself better than that. I ain't kidding when I call myself lazy. Despite giving this posting a title that suggests I'll do one every day, I know that's highly unlikely. Despite my best intentions, even if I wanted to bake one a day, I know I wouldn't. Despite making it easy on myself by buying liners for my loaf tins (I could actually bake three at a time if I fancied washing the bowl three times before getting anything in the oven... or, y'know, buying two more bowls), I know there will come a point (probably Tuesday) where I decide I can't be bothered, and spend the day playing videogames instead.

And no, that wouldn't even include WiiFit.

So, instead, what I shall say is this:

"It is my intention to bake all of them soon."

I'm not saying when, just that I'll do it. Maybe there will be other postings in between, maybe there won't. One thing you can be reasonably sure of is that I'll decide to embellish at least one of them. For example, I have some large chunks of 100% Cacao chocolate sitting in the fridge, waiting to find a suitable home. Did you see the phrase 'Chocolate Cake' up there? Hmm? You see where this is going?

You know you like the suspense.

Thought for the Day

OK, y'know what's missing from this blog?

Booze.

Shit. No. Done that one already.

What's missing, from a blog about food, written by a guy whose parents nicknamed him 'Pudding' when he was a nipper because that's all I ever wanted to eat, and whose colleagues nicknamed him 'Two-Puds' because I once had two rounds of dessert in a restaurant... is dessert!

But all that... (DUN)

Will... (DUN)

Change... (DUUUUUUUN)

snacks & the single man: Last Course...

Coming Soon... To a Blog page near you...
(like, right here... when I get round to it...)
(but obviously not right here... it'll be in a different post...)

Cornflour

Spent the afternoon at my folks' place, and learned a valuable lesson on the thickening of gravy. That lesson is that you can either spend absolutely ages boiling down your fluids, or you can just add some cornflour. For best results, it seems, one should decant a small amount of the gravy-in-progress into another container, there to mix in the cornflour (the idea being that this makes it easier to ensure there are no lumps), then transfer the mix back to the saucepan to continue.

Obviously high on adrenaline and endorphins thanks to the excitement this news produced, I offered to cook my Sausage & Mustard Mash with Sparky Onion Gravy when I'm next over there, with my sister and niece as additional guests.

What was I thinking?

I suspect less-than-two-year-old niece will be having something a little less spicy, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Should I practice this coming week, to ensure I don't make a complete tit of myself, or should I use my old GCSE/A-Level revision trick of doing absolutely nothing remotely associated with this subject until the day arrives?

It's gonna be the latter, isn't it?

On Stereotypes

OK, right, before anyone comments on the last Thought for the Day post, along the lines of "Oh, you stereotypical Single Man, you... I bet you've got loads of booze at home, and no milk in the fridge, just like a stereotypical Single Man. All beer and no milk. Aw, bless", please examine this photo carefully.

In the bottled drinks rack, wedged in between the 2ltr bottle of Doctor Pepper and the 1ltr carton of Tropicana (Extra Juicy Bits), you will see a bottle of milk. Milk which I bought just yesterday, to replace the bottle I'd used up the day before.

I do have breakfast sometimes, y'know. And I rarely drink beer.

This has been a public service announcement.

Thought for the Day

OK, y'know what's missing from this blog?

Booze.

I mean, come on, it's called snacks & the single man. Why is there no alcohol?

Steak and Ale pies are off the menu because beef makes me ill... but surely something similar is possible with other meats? And how about looking into making up a beer batter for some home-made fish and chips (good grief, that Red Onion Gravy is going to my head!) since I tend to enjoy the stuff they serve in pubs, and I've got a new fishmonger just over the road now?

Cocktails, certainly... Plenty of rum, tequila and vodka sitting in my kitchen (I seem to acquire far more alcohol than I actually drink, and most of the time it ain't me buying it!)...

\\Research mode...

I CAN HAZ MASCOT?

It has been my plan, almost since the very first post on this blog, to do some small measure of promotion for it, with it, around it. One of the certainties in this vague plan was the creation of a t-shirt, or range of t-shirts, relating to the blog and its contents. I'm also not entirely sure I actually want my mug plastered all over these pages...

So, what do I need? A mascot, that's what!

And, being a big fan of the whole Lolcats phenomena, what better place to start than 'I can haz cheezburger'?

Well, naturally this cat would want something slightly more impressive...

There's this version... and a super-huge 300dpi version that I'm hoping - sometime soon - to turn into a t-shirt (though I suspect I should add the full, proper URL in there somewhere)... if not for public consumption, then very much for myself.

Anyone care to suggest a name for the fussy little fellow?

Thought for the Day

I really must stop buying ready-made Spaghetti Carbonara from shops and actually attempt to make my own with some halfway decent bacon.

For whatever reason, whichever the shop, whatever the 'high quality' subline, the one common factor in any and all ready-made Carbonara recipe is that the bacon chunks tend toward 70% fat, 30% meat... and the problem with a Carbonara is that the bacon never cooks to the point where the fat is crispy, and thereby palatable to me.

I'm sure there are many people out there who don't mind bacon fat... I just find it too chewy.. and chewy isn't good. It's entirely the wrong texture for something like a Spaghetti Carbonara.

Being entirely honest, I'm sure I've been to restaurants who serve Spaghetti Carbonara with bacon that's not much better... but at least it tends to be cooked a little more thoroughly than any of these ready-meal varieties.

But, let's face it, it's just spaghetti, bacon chunks, and a mild cheese sauce (or, occasionally a Béchamel sauce with cheese). I should be able to make one myself. Make the sauce, grab some thick-sliced bacon, probably cook it briefly on its own, do the spaghetti, add the bacon, add the sauce, stir it together...

How hard could it be?