desperance

So: I told you already that I burned the bread. That was my fault entirely: I got the timing right, but neglected to turn the heat down a couple of notches when the loaves (Moroccan flatbread, as it happens) went in. Scorchio. I shall cut off a bit of blackened crust soon and chew on it, see whether it's edible or not.

Meantime, I am trying to make a Bey's Tagine - which is not what you think of when you think of a tagine. This is a Tunisian dish, and basically it's a savoury baked egg concoction in fancy layers (can we say quiche? only without the pastry?). And if the recipe had thought to stress the importance of a broad flat dish, I wouldn't have got halfway through trying to persuade the second layer to set before I realised that doing it in a loaf-tin was going to cause problems. So I transferred it into a bain-marie and doubled all the timings - and spilled half the water when I took it out to add the third layer, and so extinguished the oven. So there has been a second hasty transfer to the second oven, which will have to heat up from cold of course; and I have spent a happy five minutes trying to regenerate the main oven, which I need for something else. Aaargh.

So far, it's all been my fuck-ups; this doesn't help. Also, the hand. I had to knead the bread-dough myself, because the machine just wasn't drawing the dough together properly (dunno why, unless it needs to be wetter for the hooks to get a grip?), and as we know that does me no good at all.

Now I'm going to bake a rhubarb cake that I ganked from

la_marquise_de, and see what novel and exciting ways I can find to screw that up also. Will report back; I know you're all agog.