Adventures in Baking

Since my last disasters in cooking, I've been a little reluctant to step out of familiar territory. Recently, however, I've been getting up the nerve to try again. The price of food here has meant that I've been quite keen to do some home-cooked versions of the staples.

We started out with the Darwin fishcake, but have since moved onto muffins and cookies aplenty. These have mostly worked, with a few exceptions, mostly due to our odd oven. Because the element is at the bottom, everything burns underneath. I've been advised to put in an extra baking tray underneath to disperse the heat, but things are still going black :(

What I was particularly keen to try, though, was bread baking. I tried my first loaf on Saturday but things went a little wrong. We were having a housewarming party and we took on a little too much with the preparation. As a result the bread was still rising when the first guests arrived. Quite a few cocktails intervened and I forgot to bake it, and didn't return to it until lunchtime the next day. I thought I'd still give it a go, but we ended up with a rather flat loaf that absolutely reeked of white wine (not what I wanted with my hangover)! We reluctantly binned it and I worked out the many and varied reasons why the loaf had done this. Accidentally leaving it to rise on the oven heat outlet was probably not my best idea. Anyway, my second attempt yesterday seemed to actually work. It was a wholemeal oaty bread, and it didn't fully rise, but was still pretty tasty (if a bit dense). I have plans to do it better next time.

We also found some Hobnobs in Auntie Crae's for the alarming price of $4.13 and so I searched out a recipe. They're still cooling downstairs but I've already taste-tested them. They just need a thin covering of chocolate and they'll be complete. So much for my diet...



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Cooking in Canada

I am not a bad cook. In fact I'd go so far as to say I'm a pretty good cook. However, for some reason, ever since I got to Canada it all seems to have gone a bit wrong. As I wanted to expand my repertoire I brought a cookery book with me, eager to try some new recipes, and to save money Liam and I have been planning our meals very carefully. What we forgot to take account of was that many of the ingredients just aren't available here, and this has led to some unsatisfying conclusions about both cooking and shopping:


1. You cannot buy Halloumi, but you can get about 25 different types of Feta.

2. Havarti is not an adequate substitute for Halloumi, and will melt and burn all over your pans.

3. Strong cheddar is basically tasteless plastic, unless you pay extortionate sums in a specialist 'shoppe'.

4. Guessing the Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion is not a sensible thing to do, and proper calculations should be done (see nos.4 and 5)

4. Macaroni cheese (or Marconi cheese as we now like to call it) does not like to be cooked for too long in a too cool oven, or it turns into an inedible solid

5. Spanish omelette shouldn't be cooked in a pan that's too hot or it burns very quickly indeed, setting off smoke alarms and annoying the neighbours

6. You can't really buy decent cordial/squash here. Our first buy was "tropical punch" that basically tasted overwhelmingly of almonds, making me constantly suspicious that Liam was attempting to poison me

7. Cider vinegar is not a good substitute for actual alcoholic cider in cooking, and will burn your eyes in the process

8. 'Broiling' is actually grilling, despite what it sounds like, but the 'Broil' setting on our cooker doesn't actually work, rendering this discovery rather pointless


I'm sure I've left some off, and will no doubt return to the theme in a later post. I rather suspect that this won't be the end of my culinary disasters...


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