Hey Blog! This week I’ve done some cooking.
Cooking is fun. You get a lot of satisfaction from turning a whole load of ingredients into a delicious dish, and it isn’t too hard. Anyone who has a cooker, an oven, pots and pans, and some food, can do cooking, or even baking. Here is the cooking I’ve done this week.
On Tuesday I went to Scouts. I’ve talked about Scouts before, but this time was a cooking session. The troops in the district are all sending one team from each troop to take part in a “Ready, steady, cook” competition this year, so Tuesday was the first stage of the competition to get in the main event. We had planned in advance, on zoom, but this was the real cooking.
We decided to make our starter. This was planned to be fried halloumi with sweet chilli sauce, with cucumber for decoration. I had practised making it at home to go with dinner that night (homemade tortillas with veg, halloumi, and the sweet chilli sauce) and it was delicious, but one of the ingredients is sugar, and something very interesting happens when you cook sugar for too long (interesting if you’re a toffee apple, that is…) – yep, we overcooked it at Scouts, and it turned into ‘Scout style’ Sweet Chilli Toffee. Chilli chocolate is wonderful, but no one’s ever marketed chilli toffee – hmmm, I wonder why?!
The halloumi was excellent, except for the first few seconds when we didn’t have oil in the pan, and it began to burn and stick. But that was soon solved, albeit by borrowing someone else’s oil, and with some heating up of the sauce just before we served it, it was just soft enough for the judges to eat, and spicy enough to set their mouths on fire! We did not win the competition (that went to the team cooking a dish of bangers and mash) but we all had fun, and we all did well. Good luck to the winners who are going on to represent our troop!
I have also done some baking this week. Over the winter we have developed a liking for “Daddy gü pots”, homemade gü pots made with shortbread, chocolate, cream, rum-soaked raisins, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, baked in the oven or the microwave, and served hot or cold (I prefer hot). We had cream, rum, raisins, cinnamon, and chocolate, but no shortbread, so I decided to bake some to make gü pots with. We used the simple 321 shortbread way, with 3 of flour, 2 of butter, and 1 of sugar. You can use any amount for a unit, just so long as you keep the ratio the same. These are really tasty, and served well in the gü pots. I always feel that homemade food is nicer, most likely because you put love and time in it, and it is given to someone that cares for the love and time.
Anyone can decide to do some cooking or baking, and if you care about what you are making, the food will taste even better! Have fun, and I hope you make something YUM!