Yum! I could eat that all over again. |
So let's begin with "the good", which accolade is almost entirely restricted (apart from a really nice Chilli con Carne on Monday) to the scampi in breadcrumbs dinner that hubby made for us all.
It wasn't so much the scampi - which are gorgeous no matter what you do with them - but the accompaniments, that made the meal. He'd obviously put some serious thought into what he was going to do to go with them and had made some super-yummy croutons (or crunchy crauters, as they've become known) as well as concocting a devilish mixture of iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, almond slivers and spring onion as a salad.
Those croutons are a thing of great beauty and, as they're made from a lovely light bloomer loaf, are already on their way to being light and crunchy before they even hit the oven. With a sprinkle of olive oil and some herbs and sea salt, they are absolutely terrific in a salad. To be honest, I'd just nibble my way through a plateful of them while watching t.v. if I could! (But I can't 'cos that'd be terribly bad for my waistline - but believe me, I've thought about it!).
Meatballs : good - curry : bad! |
However, this also leads us on to "the bad". I completely shot the poor old curry in the foot by including too much garam masala. I do have a reason for it, which is that the stupid "medium" curry powder I bought from Asda is no more "medium" than fly to the moon. More like "blisteringly hot", I think. So, as I didn't want to increase the heat of the curry, I reduced the amount of curry powder and increased the amount of garam masala - so that it would "taste like curry", without being hot. Well, it certainly did taste like curry, but it was so gritty from the ground spices that it was a bit nasty. I enjoyed the sweetcorn in it, though - which was fresh and I'd taken from a cob earlier. It provided the sweetness without having to rely on sugar - which is quite a good thing, with a diabetic in the house.
Not mine, I'm afraid. |
Now I have three theories regarding the non-setting problem. The first is that I had four sheets of gelatine left from a packet which had been in the cupboard for a number of months. Does gelatine go off? It was still within its "use by" date, but I wonder if perhaps it had lost some of its effectiveness, with age. The second theory, is that because the existing packet was a super quality gelatine, but the second packet was just Asda's own, I wonder if the lower quality gelatine didn't have as much effectiveness as the "silver quality" version? I'm not sure about this one. Lastly, is the very great probability that I got my maths wrong (twice) and didn't calculate enough gelatine for the quantity. It should have had 5-6 sheets for 1 litre of juice - and I had used 10 sheets by the end of it. It's a mystery.
Smiley faced pan says "yay! An egg!". |
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