Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Labour Day holiday today and it was hot. Vegged around, went for a swim and fried under the sun for a good half hour. Then busied myself in the kitchen for a long while. Good Lord I sound like a suburban housewife if such a thing even exists in Hong Kong.

Firstly, O managed to nag his teacher into giving him a recipe for Willy Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight. This morning he nagged me into making it for him. Allow me to share and do try it at home:

You will need:

Saucepan
1 adult
1 large bowl of your favourite ice cream ready in the fridge
60g dark chocolate
1 Cadbury’s Crunchie
60g butter
80g dark brown sugar
150ml double cream
8 marshmallows

1.Break the chocolate and the Crunchie into large chunks and set to one side
2.In a saucepan, over a low heat, melt together the butter, sugar and cream
3.Stir until all the sugar has dissolved, then turn heat up and continue stirring for 10 minutes.
4.Turn the heat down again, and get your bowl of ice cream from the fridge
5.Put the marshmalllows, chocoalte and Crunchie into the saucepan, stir around once and pour over your ice cream

Even though the double cream I used was past it sell by date (by 1 week only), no sign of food poisoning so far (I did not partake in the feast as I had assigned myself as the control group). O said it tastes exactly as the name suggests so go ahead, try it!

Then I made bread using half bread flour and half semolina flour and this is what it looks like:




As you can see (or can you?) the texture is quite tense but it is not heavy has a very nice flavour. Semolina flavour, like.

This baking in a cast iron casserole pot thing, as suggested in the NY Times recipe, is great cos with the lid on, the bread can bake whilst the chicken roasts on the top rack! Waaaaaaaaheeeey!

So, yeah, roasted a grossly overpriced free-range chicken at a ridiculously high temperature right above the bread. For a change I flattened the bird by cracking its rib cage with my bare hands, tearing the skin with my gnashers (man, that felt goooooood), and it cooked real fast.

As part of my health/wealth maintenance plan, drank a bottle of pricey posh-looking organic beer with my dinner. It's called St Peter's Best Organic Bitter. I didn't like it. Its posh taste did not agree with me but that obviously did not stop me from finishing it. And that is just the kind of person I am.

4 comments:

Project WANNABE said...

Looks great, especially considering that it's made out of marshmallow!

(Well ok I eventually figured out it was two different recipes.)

Eh-choo mui mui. said...

i heart all types of beers. even the ones that suck.

so, i would've finished the organic one as well.

Pierre said...

Project,

That marshmallow thing disappeared faster than I could say hang on a sec let me just grab my camera...

Eh-choo,

Good on you!

In some restaurants here you can get Chinese beers that are dirt cheap like HK$5 per bottle (e.g. "Kingway" or "Yenching"), and 9 out of 10 times you'll hear my wino/tramp/bum persona coming out saying "hey if it's cheap, who cares if it tastes like crap!Cheers!" I frighten me, sometimes.

Jamie said...

One of my students asked me today, if you could have your any meal you wanted RIGHT NOW, what would it be? Quick as a flash and cunning as a fox, I snapped "Cold roast chicken, potato salad, beer!" And the beer I was thinking of was Cooper's Sparkling Ale. Australian, which I admit is not promising. But it's the one beer I'd choose if I could only have one type for the rest of my life.

Gosh. I'm fascinating.