Hwsgo has been innovative in the kitchen. Perhaps my "try it and see" style of cooking is rubbing off on him after all. Anyways, he found himself without a lemon (a terrible sin in his household) whilst making an apple crumble, and substituted it with a lime instead.
It's quite a revelation. All the liminess of a key lime pie, but underlaid with the sweet crunch of a proper British crumble. It wouldn't work with nuts in the crumble mix, but with a 'normal' Jamie Oliver 8:4:3 (flour:butter:sugar) mix, it works intriguingly well. Although stewing the apples with a little water seems to have left the results a little on the damp side, it's a very tasty damp side.
Go, innovation, go!
Showing posts with label apple crumble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple crumble. Show all posts
Monday, 30 March 2009
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Outed
I cooked for my parents this weekend. Without breaking into a cold sweat. And I've outed myself: they now think that I can cook (eeek!). I did the Simon roast chicken (which I can now do with my eyes shut after a couple of glasses of red - well, I haven't tried that experiement yet but I'm willing to give it a go) with roasted onions, potatoes, garlic, red peppers and a thin gravy, followed by the Magimix apple crumble (translation: shove all the ingedients into the Magimax, hit the button, pour into dish, shove into oven, take out, gloat) with the custard recipe from my well-thumbed copy of the Good Housekeeping cookbook. And apart from cooking the custard a little too quickly (not watching it enough whilst chatting to my mother; possibly also affected by said couple of glasses of red by then), it seemed to be perfectly edible.
Okay, a little background here. My little sister is, as I've probably said before, a serious chef. A *really* serious chef. Gold medals at 18, world competition title by her mid-twenties, own gourmet restaurant before 30 - that sort of serious chef. And I by comparison - well, let's just say that I grew up burning things and making almost-inedible sauces with lumps in that looked like new life forms. My parents have been visiting a lot lately (few things to sort out down on the old farm etc), and every time they come I offer to cook and they do anything - anything, up to and including going out for a kebab - to avoid this. But yesterday they were so tired that I got away with it - and had the lovely warm feeling of producing a whole meal from start to finish including dessert in just over an hour. And having my mother go back for seconds (something she very rarely does) of *my* cooking. I'd consider being shocked if I wasn't too tired.
But a few details before I go. The crumble was great: a real light French apple crumble. This was partly because it was a French recipe book, but also because the apples were right. I had a bag of little red apples (I think from Tescos) that were floury and nasty to eat: I thought they'd cook well, and they did. I'll look for them again, next time I want to do a baked apple dish. It *is* possible to hurt yourself badly with a potato peeler (I did). Roasting peppers and garlic works really well if you put them into the roasting dish 30 minutes before the chicken's due out of the oven. And you can't hurry a good custard: if you set the temperature too high and whisk it too much, it will curdle (will taste fine but look horrid). Be gentle, be patient and it will, as most things treated gently in the kitchen, come right.
Okay, a little background here. My little sister is, as I've probably said before, a serious chef. A *really* serious chef. Gold medals at 18, world competition title by her mid-twenties, own gourmet restaurant before 30 - that sort of serious chef. And I by comparison - well, let's just say that I grew up burning things and making almost-inedible sauces with lumps in that looked like new life forms. My parents have been visiting a lot lately (few things to sort out down on the old farm etc), and every time they come I offer to cook and they do anything - anything, up to and including going out for a kebab - to avoid this. But yesterday they were so tired that I got away with it - and had the lovely warm feeling of producing a whole meal from start to finish including dessert in just over an hour. And having my mother go back for seconds (something she very rarely does) of *my* cooking. I'd consider being shocked if I wasn't too tired.
But a few details before I go. The crumble was great: a real light French apple crumble. This was partly because it was a French recipe book, but also because the apples were right. I had a bag of little red apples (I think from Tescos) that were floury and nasty to eat: I thought they'd cook well, and they did. I'll look for them again, next time I want to do a baked apple dish. It *is* possible to hurt yourself badly with a potato peeler (I did). Roasting peppers and garlic works really well if you put them into the roasting dish 30 minutes before the chicken's due out of the oven. And you can't hurry a good custard: if you set the temperature too high and whisk it too much, it will curdle (will taste fine but look horrid). Be gentle, be patient and it will, as most things treated gently in the kitchen, come right.
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