Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

Yes, I do think those are penises.

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

I’ve talked about bad food before, as well as trying my hands at cooking, but recently as I visited a friends house I knew something had come along to trump even my best of egg-poaching abilities. I was ushered into a room with a thin pot sitting on a table, cover closed, and his mum grinning widely at me. We all sat down to eat, and my friend took off the lid.

pasta1

Yes, I do think those are penises. Multicoloured pasta-shaped penises penis-shaped pasta. You know when you’re younger you enjoy playing with your food more than eating it? I think I relived a bit of that again. Needless to say it was time to analyse the anatomical correctness of the dish. Here’s a mind-blowing structure we assembled:

pasta2

… and because we’re much, much dirtier than penis pasta can justify, my friend opened up a second pot on the table – home to generous dollops of what seemed like thicker carbonara sauce. Needed to complete the picture, we immediately started reconstructing an operational model using naught but the tip of our forks and the pressure from our spoons. We also took the opportunity to redecorate our previous structure:

pasta3

I wonder what exactly is stopping the local minimart down the street from stocking products like these – or do they belong is specialised niche shops, “Erotic Pasta”? Obviously I don’t know enough about food to give you an answer, but I can tell you that despite whatever shape they turn pasta into, such as in the example above, it still tastes almost just like normal pasta if you close your eyes. Well, I did say almost.

Kraft is for sissies!

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Some remember my last attempt at perfecting my cookery skills. Obviously, poaching eggs aren’t my thing. (those Emacs folks quipping up with C-x-poach shut up). This event actually happened a couple months ago, but that’s irrelevant. The fact is, a friend and I decided to team up and tackle the hardest of all culinary skills: cooking Macaroni and Cheese. As you can see, it is such a complex process that it is hard to find detailed documentation on it online. Unfortunately, we ourselves were not able to get snapshots of the early stages of creation for fear of the camera getting wet.

We started off by purchasing the necessary materials, this being in order of importance:

  • Baking gloves (I swear the pot has a mind of its own)
  • Cheese
  • Decoration (this included various leaves we could get from downstairs)
  • Macaroni (Remember kids! Use real macaroni from the packets. Kraft is for sissies!)

Well, after several hours of image editing cooking, this is what we turned up with! Click on the image to check out the full size!

This was taken with my phone camera. Yes, I actually cooked that without messing up!

Edit: some people asked me whether I really cooked this. Yes, I cooked that, and no image editing was used except for adding the “italiano” text. Also, I cooked it using proper macaroni, not the instant stuff Kraft gives you.

How to Poach an Egg (in 10 steps)

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Taken from personal experience. This works. The resultant poached egg is actually edible too. I don’t care what you say.

Step one. Take a tablespoon and stir a small pot full of boiling water very vigorously. This is essential as environmental air is a very important factor in this creation. You shall attempt to create a vortex or a whirlpool of water.

Step 2: crack an egg and beat it. Once done, pour it into the very center of the vortex. This will allow the yolk of the egg to stay in the center whilst a wonderful egg white crust is being formed around it. If you don’t do this correctly, you will not end up with a poached egg. You will end up with something that looks like white crap floating in water.

Step 3: practice step 2. As you can see. I have not practiced it enough. I ended up with white diarrhoea. If you did end up with this, do not worry. All is not lost. In fact, this might as well work just the same way. We will see how to tackle with this problem in the next step.

Step 4: move everything into a frying pan. This allows you to boil the water off a lot quicker. This will also add heat to the egg, giving it a warm temperature when served. As we all know, most customers like things fresh.

Step 5: After about 20 minutes of boiling, you will find some large chunks of egg white have grouped together. You must use a spoon to remove these chunks, they can be used later for “decoration”.

Now, poached eggs are not only egg white. They also contain the yolk. If you are lucky use a or chopsticks to delicately push away the smaller bits of egg white to search for the yolk. unless you punctured it before, it should still be in one piece. After finding it, take a ladle and carefully take the yolk out and put it somewhere safe.

Step 7: Since we don’t want to waste food, take a strainer (like for flour) and strain the white mixture. You will be able to gather up a lot of the egg white. Store this in your neighbours trash a safe place.

Step 8: Put the egg white on the center of a plate. Remember, presentation is everything. Now carefully adjust the egg white around the yolk so it looks as though it is all in one piece. Careful not to puncture the yolk.

Step 9: I accidentally punctured the yolk. Damn. It takes practice. By now you will have something worth serving.

Step 10: Enjoy! After maybe 10 tries or so you will be able to come up with something like this:

Note: you might want to try add some weeds from your garden or chili flakes (you know, the one’s you can steal at your pizza place). You also might want to use Photoshop and the crop tool if you are planning on serving this to customers.