chaos ensues

This blog should probably be temporarily renamed as Tales from a Makeshift Kitchen – we are having a new kitchen installed, which has involved knocking out the dining room window and replacing with French doors, making a bloody great hole in the kitchen dining room wall, and at the weekend, removing the current units. Now we just have to wait until Martin from Zenith has built the new units and installs them.  Aargh.

There’s an ongoing gallery of photos on Flickr, should you care to see.

We have set up a sort of field kitchen, consisting of:

• a microwave / grill / oven combi
• a single ring induction hob
• a Remoska
• a slow cooker
• two saucepans and a steamer basket
• two cast iron saute pans with lids (one large, one small)
• one cast iron griddle pan
• a folding table

We also have a small subset of kitchen equipment, most of the herbs and spices, and some of the utensils.

Last night, I constructed dinner of chicken pie (bought, I’m afraid), with boiled potatoes and steamed sprouts, and that was OK, though I need to find somewhere else to chop veg.

This morning, Pete decided to have a bash at one of our staple breakfast foods, drop scones. We have a cast iron griddle, and the induction hob – how hard could it be? We located scales, pyrex jug. We found a different tablespoon to the one he likes. We excavated a fish slice from a box of Stuff. Off he went.

Hmm … it never occurred to us that the point of induction is that it heats the pan. The part of the pan that is *on the ring*. So they took a while, and were not as nice as usual, but hey – scones. It worked.

More tales of tribulations to follow.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

weekend 26/27 Feb 2011

On Wednesday, we looked at the wreck of the house, kept telling ourselves how lovely it would be when it was all done, and realised that the dining suite we bought for £1.47 (yes, really) when we moved it really wouldn’t do any more. I had a quick look on eBay, and found an extending solid oak Ikea table, with six leather(ish) chairs, for £185 starting bid, stuck a bid of exactly that on it, and expected to be trumped. But no – we won it. Which posed a bit of a problem in the short term, because there is NO BLOODY ROOM anywhere in the house right now, and the old dining table has a microwave and pans and a plugin hob and god knows what else on it.

Thankfully, some friends came to the rescue, so on Saturday we took two trips to move the table and chairs in the GermanBarge over to their garage. The stuff is vair nice, although the table is a little bigger than we expected, but it’ll all look lovely. Brian and Lesley fed us firstly with coffee, and then with a lovely impromptu lunch, so thanks once again for your assistance!

We went home and resisted the temptation to just light the fire and slump; instead, we finished emptying the kitchen cupboards, and dismantled them, stowing them all in the aforementioned GermanBarge; the only thing left in there, cupboardwise, is the sink unit, and it’s empty, and we’ve blown the bloody doors off. Martin the KitchenMan will be coming to do his working survey at the end of this week. We had sossidges for supper from fabulous Fields (did a quick detour while in Anlaby collecting dining set), the final run for the old gas cooker, which the plumbering man will be removing when he does the plumbing. I’ve also ordered the dishwasher now.

On Sunday morning, we took up the carpet tiles and lino, and found some really rather nice floorboards underneath. The rest of downstairs has sanded and sealed original floorboards, and we keep wondering whether this would be practical for a kitchen. But probably not. We added these to the boot of the car, and trundled off to the tip; Hull City Council tip staff are fab, and help you with anything bulky, so it was a quick trip. Thence on to Wickes to look at paint (two tester pots bought), and a sausage, egg and mushroom roll for breakfast from the very excellent van in their car park.  Then home via Tesco for cat fud, taking down the old cooker hood (already gone on Freecycle), and then a hot bath each, and a slump.

Up early again this morning, as the gasman cometh, and again tomorrow when he returns with the relevant parts. Still, at least we’ll have reliable hot water then. Won’t we?

Documenting of the kitchen is here on Flickr, should you be interested.

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

corned beef hash

We haven’t had this for ages, and it’s a really tasty, easy meal if you have the bits ready cooked. Which we had.

Chop an onion and fry it off in, ideally, some dripping, but oil would do. I suppose. Add chopped cooked potatoes, and something green in the way of vegetables – cooked cabbage, sprouts, spring greens – we had sprouts left from last night. Cook gently until it’s all starting to break down, then add a can of corned beef, cut into dice, and continue to cook gently until that breaks down too.

In a perfect world, you’d be using a non-stick sort of pan so you could bring up the heat and brown it off, but in my current kitchen-free world, I was using a cast iron sauté pan, and didn’t dare do that, because I couldn’t face the certain sticking.

That’s it, really – very nice with HP Sauce, for those of us with taste, or Lea and Perrins Worcester sauce, for those who don’t. One pot cooking.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.