Sunday 13 January 2008

Thank You God For Electricity

In keeping, brothers, with new year resolution number 5, I am trying to cook something special.

On electric hobs. It is a rented flat. I cannot really heave the oven out of the window.

Oh, but do not ask what is it, by the time it is cooked it will not resemble food at all.

Here is My Guide to cooking on electric hotplates.

General principle - wait 30 minutes for the heat to get as hot as you think it ought to, then watch in despair as it continues to climb insanely, or fail.

As for the numbers on the switches,

1 - Not enough to warm baby's milk. Luckily for me and the baby, I do not have a baby.

2 - Who thought this was worth doing? Some vacant fucker from Levitttown.

3 - Scald baby's milk. See 1 above in case you think I was maltreating a baby. Or a Kunekune pig - I have none of those either.

4 - Burn whatever you are cooking. The surface of your food will remain (contra all the laws of Physics) stone cold.

5 - Like reheat in a modern fighter jet on takeoff. Your 'cuisine' is just a smear on the tarmac.

6 - At some point your dinner will burst through the floor of the flat above and kill everybody within the confined space. I wouldn't recommend going upstairs and scraping up some stuff because you are starving. Really not.

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Addendum: there was, last time I looked, fierce controversy in the pasta world about how you cook pasta. I say, several minutes at a rolling boil, followed by a couple of minutes in the water to settle - time ratio about 9:2 or 8:3 depending on the pasta. Instructions on my "La terra e il Cielo" organic lumaconi - "cook for approx. 21 minutes". Well, it is 'distributed' by a company in Bristol, nowadays the home of disappointed Communists.

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Note to newlywed ladies: never under any circumstances fling a piece of pasta at the kitchen wall, to see if it is al dente or no. It will stick to the wall, which is disgusting, or it will fall behind the oven and you will have to go rooting for it. Either way your husband will take to whiskey and whores.

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He will whatever you do, you poor ingenue.

6 comments:

Wickedred said...

Hmmm - what If I were only to marry men that liked whiskey and whores in the first place? Then may I fling my pasta about as I wish?

Chertiozhnik said...

And knives, crockery, tantrums - free fire zone.

Anonymous said...

Nobody has EVER used that pictured hob to cook on!

Chertiozhnik said...

I just killed a spag bol on one of those.

And I used to be a contender.

Anonymous said...

Would you like to come and clean my oven for me?

Chertiozhnik said...

As long as I get to wear a gimp suit, and you aren't expecting any edible food at the end of it.

If you have a gas stove, we will have to re-negotiate.