Culinary Genius

Well.

The culinary genius burnt the toast, setting off every smoke alarm in the house and prompting us to run around fanning them and pulling out batteries. Then we opened all the windows and the balcony glass (yes, it's so refreshing to "air" the house down to near-zero temperatures). And then we couldn't find the cat, who was thought to have escaped from the peal of the alarms and the stink aroma of wheaten charcoal, via the nearest wall-hole aka open window.

Culinary Genius™ launched a search effort, mostly composed of whining about how the cat was missing, how it's someone else's fault for turning the toast gauge up to 6, how the cat is missing, how the alarms are really quite annoying, how it's cold, how it isn't her fault and how the cat is missing. Turns out the moggy was perched over the radiator, behind the curtain, appropriately nonplussed.

My apologies to the circa-dozen apartments enjoying enduring the smell and the noise. I have my jacket and blanket on. I am not amused.

Phew, it's been a while

And I haven't blogged in so long that I've forgotten how to type. Maybe.

I've been a busy little bee today in the kitchen, baking a cake for Jay's 14th birthday tomorrow. When it comes to cakes... and my cooking "skills"... um, there aren't any. I can cook an ordinary packet mix and it will taste acceptable, but the aesthetics of my decorating leave much to be desired. So today, much as I expected, my cake tastes like pretty much nothing. The banana can be detected (this is acceptable) but the chocolate cannot, and this is, well, disappointing if not unsurprising.

The real surprise so far is having extracted the cake from the tin without it disintegrating. I pondered how horribly sweet the icing would be on a tasteless cake and went a'Googling, and discovered Ganache. It's now cooling so that I can check if it will be thick enough not to slide off the cake in a gooey mess.

My industriousness has led to me thinking about Christmas. It's late for an Aussie to begin thinking about Christmas. It's ridiculously early for a Finn to, since the over-commercialisation of Christmas hasn't yet saturated the Helsinki streets, and you can wander into a shop on December 23 here and be out of the checkout in five minutes flat.

I have a few tried and tested ideas for do-it-yourself gifts, and I'd like to add a few more. Stay tuned... but don't hold your breath in case I completely forget to post anymore!

Hmmm writing?

So I've submitted an article to Helium for the first time in ages. I wasn't too enthused about the subject though, and it shows (currently ranking just above the middle). I need to put some quality in. Maybe next time? Blah.

Tonight I attempted home made pizza. The base was absolutely fantastic! I did have to add more flour than the recipe asked for, but that's ok, all flours are different. I made the dough in the breadmaker and threw in 4 tsp of pizza herbs to it. Pizza dough recipe

The toppings weren't so perfect though. I made one with barbecue sauce, because I ran out of tomato. It was ok, but overall the pizzas were a bit sweet (pineapple and sweet corn overdose). It needed something more on the salty side of things. Still, I can still award myself 7 out of 10, quite respectable for a first attempt. And the crust was a 9.

Great Inventions: The Garlic Press

Such an awkward-looking object, but has there ever been such a handy kitchen tool, I ask of you?



And does the humble potato stomper even come close? Yes, (and I hear you protest), that is, in fact, its technical name. Stomper. I mean, c'mon. "Masher" is such a lame term. It's just so much more satisfying to stomp on something than to merely mash it.

Think about that, the next time you "mash" some fallen leaves with your feet.