h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Even when you don't have anything conventionally breakfasty in the house... or think you don't.

I may or may not have started a thread about this in the past, but if I did I forgot to bookmark it. I do know that I've expounded this theory of mine more than once in various conversations, talking for instance about the American woman I lived with in London who would have July 4th and Thanksgiving parties and how there'd always be something left over next morning that was ripe for the picking.

Any road up. This morning: Four large deep-fried onions rings left over from lunch at a local restaurant yesterday, one home-made coconut and cherry cookie and a handful of cashew nuts. And of course.

Unconvential, but not at all undesirable sounding
I was forced by the movement of time, and drinking of coffee, to rename breakfast lunch today.... two fried cheese and ham sandwichs, with the bread I had to buy yesterday from the bakery nearby, some slices of gudar, (however its spelt), and Polish ham, and, fried in butter of course... so much more satisfying than 'cheese toasties', if a little more calory dense ... and tasty
Mianly done as an excuess to christen the new frying pan

Wait, what? You bought bread? Oh, 2legs

After leaving the plummer with my front door key, and giving hime three weeks, I still have no heating working at home... and at the point I got back no time to make it immediately, so it was buy, or go without ; Mind, I buy from a local bakery which is rather good; I do sometimes have to buy bakery made bread; Partially this is industrial espionage, as with their tiger bread (still can't quite figure out the topping right....)
At the moment its just too cold and dirty in the house to make bread, and not knowing what times the plummer is working, and with him to still do the kitchen radiator, and the boiler in the utility room, it'd ruin a bake, mid way through were he to turn up and have the ordasity to do soemthing, like fit a radiator or put my new boiler in and its cold at the moment here

Well, baking bread would warm the place up right?

I'll get me coat

Oh poor Gosho!
Bread is a lovely idea

I hope you get some heat!
It's headed down to 14 dgrees in Denver.
I trust the weather is warmer there, but still, cold is cold

No, it's 2legs that's cold I had the a/c on here all afternoon, but a cold front has passed through central Texas and it's feeling quite nice

81°F was the maximum today; 67 is the forecast for Monday, and 63 on Tuesday. Gonna be a bit chilly at night too. Might even be some frost outside of town

O my bad.

Sorry for you then 2legs!

Baking bread might well warm the place up, but it'd take days to rise, and I can't guarentee continuity of electric to teh oven, as he'll have to turn the electrics off at some point, when he gets round to the boiler I think.... Whenever that might be.... Plus, the kitchen is a bit full of his tools, as is the utility room, and I don't think I can get to the box full of my tins and trays, which is in the utility room... and the entire house is covered in dust and fragments of walls, from plumming works, which would certainly end up in anything I made having to use only the netbook at the moment, as its too cold in the studeo to use the PC, and at least with the netbook, I can use it whilst hiding under the duvet in bed Really wanting to get on with some baking though, must make more onion and poppy seed bread, plus bash on with perfecting the crumpet recipie (esp as I now have the new, larger frying pan), and I still need to have a go at making pierogi and work that towards a recipe I'm happy with then I've got to move on to ciabatta bread, so I can complete that* entry, and then I can work on perfecting mushy peas, once I've sourced some dried marrofat peas to make it with I'm too busy to have a job at the moment, too much cooking and baking to do

One of the kitchen managers at work had a go at making crumpets a year or two back, and they weren't at all bad. I wouldn't mind having a crack meself, just as soon as I can find the right kind of tin cans to turn into crumpet rings. Something like a tuna or salmon tin would be about the right depth and it used to be that you could cut both ends off with a tin opener, but you can only do that with the top now - the bottom end is moulded. I could do it with a normal 14oz tin but I've no way of cutting it down to the right depth Ooh, maybe I do... I don't have any tin snips but I think I've got an old pair of secateurs somewhere

I just bought some cooking rings for making them in its the recipe I need to get to work; didn't get any holes in my first, and so-far only attempt, but I have high hopes for the forthcoming second attempt, as I think I know a couple mistakes I made, and this time I may try a slightly differnt recipe

I may just go and buy some rings. They can't be all that expensive, especially from the restaurant supply store, although I love making something that's useful by recycling something else, as long as it does the job as well as the store bought version.

I bought one pack from a shop in town, for less than five quid (two rings), and then bought another pair off of EBay for £3.99 I think.
At first I was reluctant to buy something, for the kitchen, with such a limited, single use, for just* making crumpets.... But, since getting them, I now use them each time I fry eggs, and have perfectly round fried eggs... Which actually works rather well, and stops the two duck eggs, when fried, sticking together in the pan, and also means they come out an ideal size for fitting into my multigrain rolls No doubt they have other uses too, but I've not found them yet...
Four rings makes sense, for doing the crumpets, as they cook, in the rings quite quickly, but by the time I've ladelled in the dough, and flipped them, etc., it just speeds up the time for doing a dozen.... If the recipe works properly, next time, and I may be regularly making them, I might invest in another two, so I can cook six at a time; I think I may be able to fit six rings into the new frying pan

Well, apart from crumpets, pikelets and eggses, you can use them to shape hamburgers and croquettes, or anything similar that needs to be round. You can even fry bhajis and pakoras in them if you want to be really anal about getting them exactly circular

Might be a good idea for bhajis, mine always kinda disintergrate whilst cooking... I probably don't get the consistancy of the 'batter' right... mmm.... not made them in ages

I just found a bag of gram flour that I bought about a year ago at the back of the kitchen cupboard, so I think I know what I'll be making this week

I spotted my bag of gram flour too, at the weekend, whilst hunting through the spice cupbaord for something I'll probably make em too.... I've never got them quite right though... how'd you make yours?

Well, er... I've never actually used it and made anything like pakoras and bhajis. It's just another one of those ingredients I've impulse bought with every intention of trying something new, and two years later found it tucked away at the back of a kitchen cupboard, 12 months past its sell-by date

This stuff's still okay though so I'll be looking at some recipes today... or tomorrow... soon

There are plenty of recipes out there... Mostly quite contradictory, especially in terms of spices.... Some recipes seem to involve egg \Though I favour the more common versions, using just water Tumeric, cumin, Coriander seeds, seem to be fairly consistant spices, some say using a garum mucarla blend too, and a few like using (as I do), Ajwain seeds and some have fennurgreek seeds in them (both fennurgreek and ajwain are quite bitter, so I guess just one of them would make sense) But I think really you can throw anything in hmmm.... cheese and onion bhajis maybe?

I found the last time I made them (first time in ages), taht the ones that didn't work, were because I tried to make em too big; so keeping them small is key, to enable it to cook through before the outside is totally* burnt
Some recipes seem to like fresh coriander too, and a few recipes seem to want you to cook the onion first, but most seem to want the onion raw and then mixed into the other ingredients

|Getting the consistancy of teh 'batter' or 'dough' is tricky... I might have made mine a bit too dry last time, but then, they do need to hold together to some extent, so not too much water either

I need to find a nice young Indian girl to take me into her kitchen, and so I can see her making them mmmm or a nice young Indian boy of course


I did have an idea based on a version of bhajis, only done in the oven; it'd enable me to measure out each one more accurately, and cook them all togehter, as you can't fit many in the pan or they coaless into one massive bhaji
I've not yet tried to dare out this idea yet though... It may end up being a useless idea and just be straight for the bin