Saturday 26 February 2011

There are drawbacks ...

..to having kitchens in two different houses, in two different countries. And I don't just mean those occasions when reaching into the cupboard at a critical moment for sugar that I know I bought only a couple of days ago, only to remember that in fact the sugar is sitting in a different cupboard half a continent away (and the shops are now closed, and anyway, people are arriving for dinner in twenty minutes...so, improvise!)

No, the drawbacks can be more complicated than that. Like the evening before last, when I'd decided to make cream and walnut tart for dessert, and put the pastry shell into the pre-heated oven to bake, as I then focused on getting the cream reduction underway.
Except that I'd forgotten I wasn't in Italy, where the fan-assisted oven setting on the right-hand oven is two turns anti-clockwise from 'off'......which is what I did. In London, however, that setting starts the self-clean function going, which means that the temperature is raised to a planet-scorching level of intensity...and it was only as the distinctive self-cleaning-hot-metal smell wafted into my consciousness that I realised something might be wrong. 
By which time, the self-clean self-lock facility had also come into play (a little gizmo which prevents non-existent children from immolating themselves by opening the oven door during the self-clean process), and all I could do was watch helplessly through the glass panel as the pastry shell burnt to a crisp, and I wrestled in vain with the locked door, willing the oven to cool down sufficiently for me to get the bloody thing open. 
Which eventually it did....and it was just as I finally retrieved the sad and sorry burnt-offering that the cream - unwatched - effortlessly boiled over and flooded the entire hob.

It was (sigh-makingly) more like the Keystone Cops, than cooking.

Tonight's Dinner:

Steamed Prawn Won Ton.

Slow-roast Pork with Garlic & Star-anise; Spinach sautéed with Spring Onion

Chocolate Mousse, with fresh Raspberries

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A double disaster, what a shame. I think I would be even more confused by having two kitchens to work in.

Pomiane said...

Oh, it was rescuable...it just needed some more pastry and a top-up of cream. And after all, what doesn't destroy us makes us stronger!

Anonymous said...

That's the spirit!