Cooking

Yesterday I managed to get my hands on a second hand bread machine through a Kiwi version of ebay for NZ$50. Today I gave it a whirl with mixed results. On the one hand, it worked, on the other hand the recipy that was supposed to go with that particular model (found on the internet because the seller lacked a book) produced a very small loaf, more of a large bun really.

It called for 2 1/4 c flour, 3/4c water, 1tbsp sugar, 1tsp salt, oil and 1 1/4 tsp of yeast. From my previous experience with bread makers at home that seemed like way too much yeast and not enough flour and water. Turns out I was pretty much right. So I'll try again later adlib.

The other interesting cooking experiment I went through today was making some cookies. Those of you who know anything about me know that I like to make cookies among other things, so you might understand how shocked I was to discover that the complex I'm living in has no oven. That isn't quite true, it has a combination oven/microwave that claims to be able to do the best of both. I was rightly skeptical of these claims.

To begin with, it is the size of a regular micorwave, meaning that it does not fit your average cooking pan. The smallest cookie tray I could find at the local supermarket was too large... so I returned it and have bought a browni tin instead. This has the disadvantage of only being able to cook six-eight cookies at once, and that is if you don't mind them running together. When I'm used to making 20+ cookies at once at home, this feels like a considerable drawback. Strike one.

Secondly, its interface is mindboggling. If I want to cook with it's convection feature (instead of grilling, which doesn't work very well anyway because the grill is so high up, or microwaving with won't cook my cookies) I have to first cycle through the other options to get to convection bake, and then tell the thing what temperature I want. It then proceades to warm up. So far so good. But then, when it is warm, it turns of!!! After reading the instruction booklet, I learned that, once it has warmed up, I have to cycle through all the options again, choose the same temperature, set a timer for the cooking duration, and then press start again! Strike two.

Finally, there seems to be something wrong with my understanding of the temperature, or New Zealand eggs and butter are heat proof. Normally I cook my cookies at 300-325 f on convection. This gets them done in about 8-10 minutes depending on if I'm using butter or margarine, have put more or less flour, have added milk, the size of the eggs etc. For this "oven" I started off at 150C. By 10 min the cookies looked like anemic pancakes, not like cookies. I had to turn the temperature up to 230 C (446 F according to my online converter) to get them done! Strike three.

Oh well, at least they have chocolate in them. But I had to grate Nestles (yes mum, the baby killers, no other brand else seems to make good chocolate in the Countdown superstore I currently frequent) cooking chocolate bars in because the NZ equivalent of chocolate chips, "choco drops" seem to be made out of Easter bunny chocolate, ie sugar and emulsifiers with dirt for colour. Actually that is a bit too harsh, I happily chomped through a hand full or two as I was biking the other day.

To end on a cheerful note, I figure that, since I've got a brownie tin, I'll be making a lot more of those in the future because cocoa is cocoa every where.

Finally, I just got back from some fencing, first time in several weeks, had loads of fun fencing the only other epéeist there (apparently the rest are still on vacation) and what is best, they let me use their storage lockers for my gear so I don't have to lug it all back and forth every day and stink up my meager living space!