Conan! What is best in dinner parties?
Feb. 22nd, 2009 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceBest in dinner parties is to have leftovers, and a relatively tidy house; but the greatest of these is leftovers.
Soup and apple cake for lunch: and you have no idea how glad I am to be able to type those words. Not just for the eating thereof, but apple cake and I have had a fraught relationship for a quarter of a century, tho' we'd ever only met the once.
In brief, I made one - at least, I followed a recipe for one - 'way back in the eighties, for a dinner party again, and it was a catastrophe. The batter split and would not cake, the apples didn't cook... Urgh. And yet the whole apple-cake idea still seemed lovely to me, in that way that unconsummated relationships so often do; so I have held it in my head as a treasured ideal ever since, but never quite dared to ask it out on a date again. As it were.
Until Friday night, when I just decided to be bold. I had found a recipe that - after being absurdly, impossibly particular about the proper type of rare Dorset apple to be used - more or less said "mix up your ingredients and bake your cake" when it came to the actual instructions bit. So I giggled cheerfully and poked around in the internets, and came up with a more-or-less consensus view on the Dorset apple cake (cream butter and sugar, add eggs and flour and lemon zest, a couple of tsps of baking powder to give it a little lift, mix in chopped apple, pour into tin and sprinkle with demerara, and bake same).
So I did that, more or less, and it was very nice. I am no longer scared of apple cake, and will do it again. Perhaps with a little ground almond next time, substituting for some of the flour.
It is absurd, though, how long these anxieties persist. I have a similar omigod-I-can't-do-that about stuffed aubergines, because I tried one recipe once thirty years ago and it was horrid. Really, the problem is that I have too much choice and I don't cook enough, so I need never repeat a failure. Concomitantly and contrariwise, neither do I often get to try interesting variations. I'd like to bake a dozen apple cakes, just to figure out which one is best; but I don't suppose I'll do a dozen in my lifetime, just because there is always so much else.
Also, I would like to revisit Harold McGee to determine the difference between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, and test same with examples, just so that I have actual knowledge rather than needing recipes. But I don't suppose I ever actually shall.
Soup and apple cake for lunch: and you have no idea how glad I am to be able to type those words. Not just for the eating thereof, but apple cake and I have had a fraught relationship for a quarter of a century, tho' we'd ever only met the once.
In brief, I made one - at least, I followed a recipe for one - 'way back in the eighties, for a dinner party again, and it was a catastrophe. The batter split and would not cake, the apples didn't cook... Urgh. And yet the whole apple-cake idea still seemed lovely to me, in that way that unconsummated relationships so often do; so I have held it in my head as a treasured ideal ever since, but never quite dared to ask it out on a date again. As it were.
Until Friday night, when I just decided to be bold. I had found a recipe that - after being absurdly, impossibly particular about the proper type of rare Dorset apple to be used - more or less said "mix up your ingredients and bake your cake" when it came to the actual instructions bit. So I giggled cheerfully and poked around in the internets, and came up with a more-or-less consensus view on the Dorset apple cake (cream butter and sugar, add eggs and flour and lemon zest, a couple of tsps of baking powder to give it a little lift, mix in chopped apple, pour into tin and sprinkle with demerara, and bake same).
So I did that, more or less, and it was very nice. I am no longer scared of apple cake, and will do it again. Perhaps with a little ground almond next time, substituting for some of the flour.
It is absurd, though, how long these anxieties persist. I have a similar omigod-I-can't-do-that about stuffed aubergines, because I tried one recipe once thirty years ago and it was horrid. Really, the problem is that I have too much choice and I don't cook enough, so I need never repeat a failure. Concomitantly and contrariwise, neither do I often get to try interesting variations. I'd like to bake a dozen apple cakes, just to figure out which one is best; but I don't suppose I'll do a dozen in my lifetime, just because there is always so much else.
Also, I would like to revisit Harold McGee to determine the difference between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, and test same with examples, just so that I have actual knowledge rather than needing recipes. But I don't suppose I ever actually shall.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-22 03:55 pm (UTC)Hard to imagine how you could disasterise a stew, or at least make a practice of it; but other people's blind spots are always baffling. Like their taste in books. Or, indeed, other people...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-22 03:58 pm (UTC)Apparently Jenn kept trying to fancy the stew up. Stew should not be fancied. The funny thing is that she had a recipe for what was effective a rabbit stew, but, y'know, fancier than boring old beef stew, and the rabbit stew evidently came out brilliantly, but she still could not make a beef stew. I guess she ruined two or three, at least. :)
but other people's blind spots are always baffling. Like their taste in books. Or, indeed, other people...
*laughs right out loud* Indeed. :)