You’ll never catch me cavorting through kitchenware shops wearing undies over tights and a snug “GG” emblazoned skivvy. Gadget Girl, I am not.
In fact I’m a consumer nightmare. Most of what I own is home-made, pre-loved or scrounged. The more they jack up GST and lower income tax the happier I am. I just hardly ever buy stuff. The “operators waiting now” will be on a pension by the time they get my call, even if I only have to make 43 easy payments of $29.95 and they throw in set of free steak knives that can rip through a ripe tomato after cutting a shoe in half.
I just seem to be able to somehow manage without the Amazing Fly Gun, Handy She-Wee Portable Urinal, Realistic Microphone Shower Radio and Hilarious Farting Keyring. Hell, I don’t even have a dishwasher, or a toaster that pops up. My washing machine has knobs not buttons and the drier belonged to Great Aunty Alice.
Which is why when I do make a new purchase, it’s so life-changingly spectacular and evokes such wonderment and joy, that I can scarcely take my eyes off it.
Yes, it’s the new 8.5 litre stainless steel glass-lidded no-plastic-components calibrated stock pot, including air bags, ABS braking, turbo charged fuel efficiency and TomTom GPS. Na, I just made those last bits up. Although after a thorough road test this weekend I can report that fuel efficiency is remarkable – I’d swear the element was closer to “off” than a poorly wrapped piece of blue cheese in the back of the fridge, yet the stock was still bubbling away merrily. This could be attributed to a very thick bottom with a near perfect match to the stove element. Size does matter. In fact as far as bottoms go, this pot rivals Jennifer Lopez. It's also very, very good looking. I reckon you could get away with plonking it straight on the table to serve from, maybe brimming with cheerios for your next cocktail party, with a side of home made sauce in a tomato shaped squeeze bottle and paper napkins folded into swans. Rather styly.
Side Comment: The Stove. Damn, if this isn’t the best stove/oven I’ve ever owned I’ll eat a half cooked sunk-in-the-middle fruit cake in one sitting. I’ve owned state-of-the-art wall ovens, fan assisted, self cleaning, rotisserie enabled, thermo nuclear convection/conduction, multi faceted cooking appliances both gas and electric, but this baby takes (bakes?) the cake. It’s at least as old as I am. The oven is BIG - with a bit of strategic manoeuvring you can easily do a roast (including all the veg) for 10, facilitated by 9 (yes nine) different shelf positions. It’s got a warming drawer the size of a small Japanese apartment and lift up/push down elements for easy cleaning. Of course there’s no fan-bake, and only 3 coil type elements, the supports of which are so rusted I have to choose their position wisely after cleaning (it doesn’t do to have your element collapse under the strain of a bechamel whilst entertaining). Presumably I’m the only person left in the first and second world who still uses this type of cooking appliance, because those pie-dish style aluminium foil drip catchers that go under the elements have disappeared from the supermarket shelves.
Back to the Pot.
My uncharacteristic display of extravagant consumerism is the result of a 4 day, 2 Goldilocks and half kilo of baking soda attempt to shift burnt tamarillo chutney from The Old Pot. Honestly it’s arse is so thin it could be a Super Model, or at least moulded into a pie dish. Why, given the amount of preserving that goes on at OK Bay, have I persevered? Is there a relationship between preserving and perservering other than the obvious? As chance would have it, Farmers had a half price sale. There were cheaper (mine was $70 half price) stock pots and bigger ones, but my pot was aesthetically pleasing, and it called to me. Hell, I might even have to give it a name. It even came with instructions. WTF?
Of course when you've got a new toy it can't just be left in the box:
Road Test #1: Tomato Sauce: Boil up 3kgs of tomatoes (homegrown, frozen), 2 onions (homegrown) and 5 apples. Push though a sieve when soft. Add vinegar, salt, sugar, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, cloves, allspice and ginger. Cook for 1¼ hours. Pour into (scrounged) sterilised bottles. Smells divine, and no matter how many times I checked (and despite 750g sugar) it never stuck to the bottom. Miraculous. I can now no longer stomach the bought stuff, it tastes like thickening agents, emulsifiers and numbers, which of course is what it’s made of.
Road Test #2: Blanching broccoli and cauliflower for freezing: Find gumboots and sharpest knife. Harvest heads when firm. Cut into florets and plunge into boiling water in a large stock pot (ooh, lucky there!) for 2 minutes max. Slugs and snails will float to the top, skim them off. Freeze free-flow on trays and bag up for later use.
Road Test #3: Place towels on spare bed. Empty entire contents of 3 freezers onto same. Identify frost-bitten items, have those for dinner. Resolve to cook that duck. Find several packages labelled “chicken frames/bones – for making stock”. Do so, in your large new beautiful stock pot (hey, lucky again). Jam everything back into 1½ freezers and switch one fridge/freezer off, thus saving on power bills.
On a cold winter's day bubbling stock fills the house with divine comfort smells (and fogs the windows). No wonder books have been written about chicken soup for the soul. It's now settling in the fridge, waiting to coagulate so the fat can be skimmed off and made into soup. (The stock I mean, not the fat).
Hmmm. Am I getting old when "Great Pot" means exactly that?
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Octopus Brains
5:00 a.m. is a nasty time to get up for work, particularly when nerves have resulted in roughly 4 hours sleep. I simply daren’t look in the mirror at that hour, nor any other hour for that matter. When it comes to how you look, a strategy of blissful unawareness has a lot going for it. Importantly though for this head-in-the-sand approach is that you must have at least one very close work colleague who will promptly alert you to any grave and socially unacceptable facial transgressions, such as sleep in your eyes, stray whiskers, nasal debris or spinach in the teeth. Of course on weekends (if you live alone) you’re stuffed, and you must bite the mirror-bullet, which is unfortunate as chances are you’ll be looking especially rough around the edges on a Saturday and/or Sunday morning.
After 3 hours at the office I did a Clark Kent in the Orewa public dunnies. Enter Poncy Corporate, exit Trainee Chef. A bit like Stars in Their Eyes: “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be . . . . “ a complete failure no doubt. Incidentally, does anyone actually use baby changing tables in public toilets? They’re jolly useful for keeping an assortment of costume changes off worryingly wet floors. Likewise disability handrails – very handy for getting-legs-into-trousers balancing manoeuvres. I then drove 30 kms to Riverhead to begin Day 1 of Chef School Restaurant Work Experience, feeling refreshed, calm and confident. Ho, ho.
The Head Chef was very kind and immediately impressed me by roasting off chicken frames to make his own stock. Doubly impressed that he also had a batch of ciabatta underway, using the brewers yeast from their beer production (it’s a boutique brewery/fruit wine outfit as well as a restaurant). And trebly (is that a word?) impressed that he’d installed chickens (live) for egg production, albeit yet to lay, and had plans for a vege garden. All rather right up my culinary alley. (Oooh, that sounds gross, like alimentary canal or something equally intestinal). I thought to myself “I’ve nailed it. I’ll love it here and they’ll love me”. I made a mental note to check Riverhead property prices so I’d be able to nip home between shifts at the restaurant after they’d begged me to work there permanently.
Reality. Head Chef set me to work shaping, flouring, egging, breadcrumbing fishcakes, prepping Kiddie Burgers, slicing spiced beef, peeling/slicing roasted beetroot (very serious death-trap slicing machine), chopping garlic and parsley, butterflying prawns. I tried to work as fast as I could, eager to impress, but ultimately you just feel like an utter muppet, where’s this, where’s that, how does this work, is this the right size? Plus, unless you’re into limbo, being of hobbit height is of no advantage whatsoever, particularly in a commercial kitchen - benches at chest level (yes I know, that used to be higher), having to lasso overhead power leads to plug in machinery, and not being able to reach high (OK, medium) shelves.
My last job took the cake:
Sous Chef: “I’d like you to clean the octopus”
Me: “No problem”
I was thinking about those cute little ones you get in Asian restaurants, I mean they probably just need a quick rinse, right? The sous chef came out of the cold room with a 30 litre bucket full of octopus. Turns out there’s only two octopi to a bucket. When he emptied them into the REALLY deep sink they almost filled it. I mean seriously, they should have been in the Smithsonian. Minimum four feet long each. I’m sorry to be vulgar, but they looked the collective afterbirths of a herd of recent cow mothers.
Sous Chef: “First you turn the head inside out”
Me: “uh huh”. Watching intently, not sure if I should take notes. This could be one of those apprentice piss-takes.
Sous Chef: “Then you pull the brains out like this”.
Octopus: “brlooomghaphooomph” That was the sound of brains the size of footballs slurping into a bucket.
Me: “uh huh”.
Sous Chef: “Now cut this bit here, remove the beak and skin the whole thing. OK?”
Me: “Sure” Trying not to smile.
When you’re a virgin octopus cleaner, it takes roughly an hour to de-brain and skin two four foot octopi. It’s very laborious in the tentacle region. (Oooh, that sounded rude again). I couldn’t help chuckling to myself - a few hours earlier I was wearing high-heeled boots, my arse planted on a swivel chair in an air-conditioned office, glued to a computer screen and shuffling paper. Now I was elbow deep in pink/purple gelatinous gunk, my chef’s “whites” adorned with fish, beetroot, prawns, mince, and brains.
I trimmed the side off my finger 10 minutes before knock-off time (3:00 p.m.) but managed to conceal it in a paper towel and not drip blood anywhere. Except on my jacket, but that would have gone un-noticed, all things considered. At this stage pride did not permit requesting a plaster.
I drove back to Orewa and did another Clark Kent dunnie change. Unfortunately it’s a good few metres walk from the carpark to the public toilets, past the library, where I’m personally known due to constantly having a dozen food/gardening books out on loan. Or at least I used to, in the days when I had time to cook and read books about cooking. God only knows what the mild-mannered librarians made of me legging it from car to dunnies, a flash of white, purple, pink, red, brains, checks, clogs. Back to the office for another couple of hours paper shuffling, absolutely honking of seafod, garlic and sweat. Nice.
The octopus wasn’t a piss-take. Just before I left, the head chef gave me a sample of the de-brained, skinned, boiled and marinated end product and it was utterly delicious.
Squid Pro Quo?
After 3 hours at the office I did a Clark Kent in the Orewa public dunnies. Enter Poncy Corporate, exit Trainee Chef. A bit like Stars in Their Eyes: “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be . . . . “ a complete failure no doubt. Incidentally, does anyone actually use baby changing tables in public toilets? They’re jolly useful for keeping an assortment of costume changes off worryingly wet floors. Likewise disability handrails – very handy for getting-legs-into-trousers balancing manoeuvres. I then drove 30 kms to Riverhead to begin Day 1 of Chef School Restaurant Work Experience, feeling refreshed, calm and confident. Ho, ho.
The Head Chef was very kind and immediately impressed me by roasting off chicken frames to make his own stock. Doubly impressed that he also had a batch of ciabatta underway, using the brewers yeast from their beer production (it’s a boutique brewery/fruit wine outfit as well as a restaurant). And trebly (is that a word?) impressed that he’d installed chickens (live) for egg production, albeit yet to lay, and had plans for a vege garden. All rather right up my culinary alley. (Oooh, that sounds gross, like alimentary canal or something equally intestinal). I thought to myself “I’ve nailed it. I’ll love it here and they’ll love me”. I made a mental note to check Riverhead property prices so I’d be able to nip home between shifts at the restaurant after they’d begged me to work there permanently.
Reality. Head Chef set me to work shaping, flouring, egging, breadcrumbing fishcakes, prepping Kiddie Burgers, slicing spiced beef, peeling/slicing roasted beetroot (very serious death-trap slicing machine), chopping garlic and parsley, butterflying prawns. I tried to work as fast as I could, eager to impress, but ultimately you just feel like an utter muppet, where’s this, where’s that, how does this work, is this the right size? Plus, unless you’re into limbo, being of hobbit height is of no advantage whatsoever, particularly in a commercial kitchen - benches at chest level (yes I know, that used to be higher), having to lasso overhead power leads to plug in machinery, and not being able to reach high (OK, medium) shelves.
My last job took the cake:
Sous Chef: “I’d like you to clean the octopus”
Me: “No problem”
I was thinking about those cute little ones you get in Asian restaurants, I mean they probably just need a quick rinse, right? The sous chef came out of the cold room with a 30 litre bucket full of octopus. Turns out there’s only two octopi to a bucket. When he emptied them into the REALLY deep sink they almost filled it. I mean seriously, they should have been in the Smithsonian. Minimum four feet long each. I’m sorry to be vulgar, but they looked the collective afterbirths of a herd of recent cow mothers.
Sous Chef: “First you turn the head inside out”
Me: “uh huh”. Watching intently, not sure if I should take notes. This could be one of those apprentice piss-takes.
Sous Chef: “Then you pull the brains out like this”.
Octopus: “brlooomghaphooomph” That was the sound of brains the size of footballs slurping into a bucket.
Me: “uh huh”.
Sous Chef: “Now cut this bit here, remove the beak and skin the whole thing. OK?”
Me: “Sure” Trying not to smile.
When you’re a virgin octopus cleaner, it takes roughly an hour to de-brain and skin two four foot octopi. It’s very laborious in the tentacle region. (Oooh, that sounded rude again). I couldn’t help chuckling to myself - a few hours earlier I was wearing high-heeled boots, my arse planted on a swivel chair in an air-conditioned office, glued to a computer screen and shuffling paper. Now I was elbow deep in pink/purple gelatinous gunk, my chef’s “whites” adorned with fish, beetroot, prawns, mince, and brains.
I trimmed the side off my finger 10 minutes before knock-off time (3:00 p.m.) but managed to conceal it in a paper towel and not drip blood anywhere. Except on my jacket, but that would have gone un-noticed, all things considered. At this stage pride did not permit requesting a plaster.
I drove back to Orewa and did another Clark Kent dunnie change. Unfortunately it’s a good few metres walk from the carpark to the public toilets, past the library, where I’m personally known due to constantly having a dozen food/gardening books out on loan. Or at least I used to, in the days when I had time to cook and read books about cooking. God only knows what the mild-mannered librarians made of me legging it from car to dunnies, a flash of white, purple, pink, red, brains, checks, clogs. Back to the office for another couple of hours paper shuffling, absolutely honking of seafod, garlic and sweat. Nice.
The octopus wasn’t a piss-take. Just before I left, the head chef gave me a sample of the de-brained, skinned, boiled and marinated end product and it was utterly delicious.
Squid Pro Quo?
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