Cooking by other people

Apparently it is a “thing” to post pictures of your baking. I didn’t do these though, other family members were toiling in the kitchen this morning while I took care of important business involving the purchase of turnips.

Anyhoo, these soft pretzels were delicious.

Make good food with Simply Cook

Pretty much all I know about cooking can be summed up in this blog post from a while back. But number one daughter put us on to Simply Cook, which is livened up our mealtimes no end. You get sent sauces and whatnot to add to your ingredients, plus a well-explained recipe to follow. And the results so far have been excellent. We’ve had three of the four dishes above, just the Cuban Mojo to go.

We’ve set it up to get enough for four meals a month so we can have a new meal once a week or so. We can try out new ones or go back to favourites. We particularly enjoyed the Bokkeumbap. I never thought I’d like sliced cabbage that much….

Proper Cooking with Rob

I've been told that my first cooking recipe, Bananas and Custard, isn't actually a recipe. It's more of a serving suggestion. Huh.

Anyhoo, I'm going to keep going.  This is one of my favourite meals. It's a proper recipe with more than two ingredients. And things to do.  It is what I call "zero effort cooking". We have it quite a lot. Number one wife is very tolerant.

Sausage and Potato Surprise with Beans

Ingredients

• Two low fat sausages each. You can go for full fat if you like. It's your body.
• One baking potato each. Not too big. Just handy throwing size.
• One tin of baked beans. To share. Vary the size of the tin according to the number of diners. Or get more than one tin. That would work too.

Method

1. Start doing this around an hour and twenty minutes before you actually want to eat: Turn the oven on at 200 degrees or the gas equivalent. Which is definitely not 200. Wash the potatoes and then use a fork to make a few holes in each. Use the pointy ends of the fork, otherwise it is very hard work. Put the potatoes on a shelf in the oven.
2. Start doing this around half an hour before you actually want to eat: Take the sausages and stick a different fork into those a few times. I'm pretty sure that this is required. Otherwise I think they explode or something. If you are the kind of person who enjoys sticking forks into things you're having a great time by now, and you haven't even eaten anything yet. Put the sausages in a baking tray and put them in the oven with the potatoes. Do not cook the sausages straight from frozen, unless you want to revisit all the meals you've had over the last day or so.
3. Start doing this around 5 minutes before you actually want to eat: Open the can of beans, drop them in a pan and try to heat them up without boiling them. The true flavour of the baked bean is very delicate and can be somewhat impacted by being burnt onto the bottom of the pan. Number one wife has been known to fry an egg at this point, but I think this spoils the purity of the meal. And besides, the yolks on mine always break.
4. Start doing this when you want to eat: Serve everything up. Add butter to the potatoes to taste, and I'm a big fan of the Heinz Hot Tomato Ketchup. Note to reader: Heinz are not sponsoring this article. I wish.

Serving Suggestion

1. I don't know, you could give the meal a frontier air by wearing a bandana and dishing out the beans while holding a knife between your teeth.  Or perhaps wear a cowboy hat and prop a Winchester repeating rifle up against the table.
2. Oh, and if you are wondering where the surprise is, try shouting "Booo!" as you put the sausages on the plate. Then again, it tastes as good without this.

Cooking with Rob

I've started doing more cooking. As you do. Particularly when you are hungry. I'll be posting some of my favourite recipes over the next few weeks, when I can't think of anything else to write.

Today: Bananas and Custard

Ingredients: Two bananas. Tin of custard.

1. Peel bananas (very important). Don't leave the skins lying on the floor, unless you are after some comedy gold when the next person walks into the kitchen.
2. Slice bananas into two dishes.
3. Open tin of custard and share mostly equally in the two dishes.
4. Give number one wife the dish that you think has the least custard in it.

Tastes even better if the custard was half price.

Important: If you have any kind of custard or banana allergy then you probably shouldn't eat this. Or anything else with the words "custard" or "banana" in its name.