Hi, everyone! I'm Patricia: joining me in lockdown is the Curator of Cute Animals. Funnily enough, I've been less freaked out about all of this than I thought I'd be. Quite possibly that's due to spending a few days in Germany (it was supposed to be a week in Austria, but never mind, mussn't grumble) at the middle of the month -- everything touristy in Munich was closed when we got there, Bavaria was entering lockdown when we left. Hell, the Austrian radio station the Curator favours even changed its ident to "Stay at home, baby!" sometime the middle of last week.
Being on leave as all this blew up made everything especially surreal. While the Curator and I both enjoy cooking, we tend to get recipe boxes for the sake of not wasting food/laziness -- which, of course, we cancelled, because we were going away. We came back to an empty fridge, a pantry full of random #ArchivedIngredients, grocery stores stripped bare, and our recipe box service run totally ragged. In short:
Luckily, our epic grocery shops (London Bridge to the Old Kent Road Tesco on foot!) provided us with a couple of packets of mince, assorted veg -- including wild garlic, ta muchly, Ted's Veg, yes apparently I am that middle class -- some fruit including a cheap pineapple, cream, and a tub of mascarpone I found at Sainsbury's, because, yes, damnit, I am that middle class. Pay attention to these, they'll appear later.
Our first meal back was Archival Chilli, featuring a tub of passata best before 2 years ago and two tins of beans and a tin of tomato puree with best before dates that would put them in school, if school were in, and tins went to school. There's no recipe, because it's chili, and no prep pictures, because we didn't think of it, but it came out like this:
(If we don't take pictures of meals to show Mama Curator, she yells at us.) Not a bad showing for kidney beans in the reception class, all in all, I think.
Saturday Morning Pancakes, however, we can share. The Curator is also the Chief Pastry Chef, and prides himself on being able to make pancakes out of anything. We had sour cream to use up, so we, by which I mean he, made sour cream pancakes. To play along at home, you'll need:
3 large eggs
200 mL sour cream
4 T water
175 g self-raising flour
2 t baking powder
pinch salt
Break the eggs into a jug and beat them: then whisk in the sour cream and water.
Add the dry ingredients to a bowl, make a well in the center, then add the wet ingredients and whisk until you have a smooth, fairly thick batter:
Grease your favourite pancake-making pan with your fat of choice (the Curator favours ghee), then pour in batter in quarter-cup dollops and allow to spread a bit -- our pan fits three at a time. Cook until bubbles appear (about a minute) then flip with a spatula and cook about a minute more, until you have a puffy, evenly-golden-brown pancake. We tend to put them on a plate and keep them warm in the oven, then eat them all at once. We got a dozen pancakes, but your mileage may vary based on pancake size.
We served them with maple syrup and pineapple fool, comprised of:
1 pineapple
150 mL cream
2 T powdered sugar, or to taste
1/2 t vanilla
spice(s) to taste
3 T Greek yogurt, or to taste
Peel the pineapple and cut it into chunks (hint: cut them smaller than shown for a more foolish experience). Whip the cream until stiff, adding the sugar, vanilla, and whatever spice(s) you fancy as you go. Fold in the yogurt, and then the pineapple. This will stay reasonably good for 12 hours, since breakfast fool was the leftovers of the previous night's dessert.
Being on leave as all this blew up made everything especially surreal. While the Curator and I both enjoy cooking, we tend to get recipe boxes for the sake of not wasting food/laziness -- which, of course, we cancelled, because we were going away. We came back to an empty fridge, a pantry full of random #ArchivedIngredients, grocery stores stripped bare, and our recipe box service run totally ragged. In short:
Luckily, our epic grocery shops (London Bridge to the Old Kent Road Tesco on foot!) provided us with a couple of packets of mince, assorted veg -- including wild garlic, ta muchly, Ted's Veg, yes apparently I am that middle class -- some fruit including a cheap pineapple, cream, and a tub of mascarpone I found at Sainsbury's, because, yes, damnit, I am that middle class. Pay attention to these, they'll appear later.
Our first meal back was Archival Chilli, featuring a tub of passata best before 2 years ago and two tins of beans and a tin of tomato puree with best before dates that would put them in school, if school were in, and tins went to school. There's no recipe, because it's chili, and no prep pictures, because we didn't think of it, but it came out like this:
(If we don't take pictures of meals to show Mama Curator, she yells at us.) Not a bad showing for kidney beans in the reception class, all in all, I think.
Saturday Morning Pancakes, however, we can share. The Curator is also the Chief Pastry Chef, and prides himself on being able to make pancakes out of anything. We had sour cream to use up, so we, by which I mean he, made sour cream pancakes. To play along at home, you'll need:
3 large eggs
200 mL sour cream
4 T water
175 g self-raising flour
2 t baking powder
pinch salt
Break the eggs into a jug and beat them: then whisk in the sour cream and water.
Add the dry ingredients to a bowl, make a well in the center, then add the wet ingredients and whisk until you have a smooth, fairly thick batter:
 |
| This looks like a volcano! |
 |
| The Curator at work |
Grease your favourite pancake-making pan with your fat of choice (the Curator favours ghee), then pour in batter in quarter-cup dollops and allow to spread a bit -- our pan fits three at a time. Cook until bubbles appear (about a minute) then flip with a spatula and cook about a minute more, until you have a puffy, evenly-golden-brown pancake. We tend to put them on a plate and keep them warm in the oven, then eat them all at once. We got a dozen pancakes, but your mileage may vary based on pancake size.
We served them with maple syrup and pineapple fool, comprised of:
1 pineapple
150 mL cream
2 T powdered sugar, or to taste
1/2 t vanilla
spice(s) to taste
3 T Greek yogurt, or to taste
Peel the pineapple and cut it into chunks (hint: cut them smaller than shown for a more foolish experience). Whip the cream until stiff, adding the sugar, vanilla, and whatever spice(s) you fancy as you go. Fold in the yogurt, and then the pineapple. This will stay reasonably good for 12 hours, since breakfast fool was the leftovers of the previous night's dessert.
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| The end result |
I am very, very jealous of your pineapple and pancakes. You done good, for emergency rations in an empty kitchen. (Also, much kudos on your elementary-school-age chilli. If you add it all up, are they graduating soon?)
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm particularly pleased as I whipped the cream by hand. (Yes, all together the chili is doing mock GCSEs. Still not the worst.)
DeleteThere's a rather lovely story attached to those pancakes, too: they used the last of our flour, and could we find any? Could we hell. When I posted on our local Mutual Aid's WhatsApp, about 30 seconds later, a lovely bloke named Tim offered us some of his. And *that* is how we wound up in our Mutual Aid group!