Nothing To Do With Arbroath...
...is one of my favourite websites. It keeps me entertained for hours on end when I'm bored and can't be bothered to focus on the immediate task at hand. It is great for fun stuff to direct people to, and there are some seriously weird things out there in cyber space.
Today I was on the bus reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith that is called 44 Scotland Street. Its a very interesting read, given that the book itself started life as a newspaper novel. I was greatly intruiged when there was a character who had moved from Arbroath to Edinburgh, so I made it my Task Of The Day to improve my knowledge of geography of the British Isles.
So far, I have found that Hull is on the East side of England, and Edinburgh is more east than I originally thought. Tracing the path to Arbroath leads me still along the East Coast of Scotland and it is located between Dundee and Montrose, and further down from Dundee is the town of Perth which had very pretty scenery, not unlike the Australian version where I lived for a number of months.
Anyway, my duck turned out a success. It was stuffed with apricots, pearl barley, pancetta and chestnuts and halfway through the cooking regime I decided to shred some red cabbage and let the duck cook on a bed of it. My friends think I'm a pretty good chef, which I myself think so too, only when the results turn out good. Half the time when I'm in the kitchen, the receipes that I cook up are concoctions of things that I dream up, some hybrids of menus from various restaurants that I've dined in, and a dash of TV cookery thrown in. Fingers crossed, all my more adventurous dishes have turned out to be pretty good, bar one occassion.
In a drunken state once I announced that I would cook dinner. At the time I was in the pub with some friends and so we all traipsed back chez moi and I had a rifle through the cupboards to see what I could whip up. Having just been to Spain, I had various goodies in tins- seafood, calamari, shrimps, octopi, chorizo... you get the picture. I even had various packets of paella seasoning so I ventured to make a paella. Everyone thought it was a great idea and I started on the preparation.
When it came to the actual cooking, I had forgotten what it was that I'd set out to make. clutching my glass of Rioja, I stumbled into the living room where my friends were getting merrily sozzled and a joint was being passed around. It came my way and so I took a couple of drags and sat on the sofa and chatted a bit. After about 5 minutes one of my friends asked me how far the cooking had got to because they were starting to get quite hungry.
I went back into the kitchen having been reminded of the dish I was supposed to make. 'Paella, paella' I kept chanting to myself, and finding it funnier and funnier. So I threw all the ingredients in a pan and found out I'd run out of rice. Searching through the cupboards threw up a packet of dessert rice, and being completely inebriated I thought that it would work just fine. I suppose that it would have been fine if not for the fact that I'd failed to look at it properly and it was actually Rice Pudding In A Pack, the sort that you Just Add Water, and so into the pan that went and got stirred around and the resulting mass went into the oven for the recommended time.
Forty minutes later the bell went off and I took the pot out of the oven. It smelt okay and by now my friends were starting to come into the kitchen, all of us completely stoned, looking hungrily at the paella. Someone had produced a block of parmesan and a grater and we all thought that it was a pretty good idea to have a Spanish/Italian fusion dish since the rice looked like it was arborio rice. Dishes came out and everyone piled the paella on to their plates and filed back into the living room.
Just as I was spooning some onto my own dish, I heard a cry from the living room. Actually it was more a vomituous sound, echoed over and over. My friends were looking quite disgusted and somewhat green when I went to investigate. Mouthfuls of the 'paella' had been spat out and everyone was glaring at me. I simply shrugged and went back to the kitchen and tried out some of the 'paella' that was looking so tantalisingly delicious.
What happened next was indescribable. I'd never had such a foul assault on my senses. Not even eating field snails in Beijing compared to the taste that I was now trying to have eliminated from my mouth. Red wine seemed to be helping and after downing 2 glasses in quick succession I went back to the living room, silently gathered all the plates and chucked the remaining vileness into the bin, and I doubled up the bag just in case it decided to escape and remind me what a monstrousity I had composed.
Yuck.
We had pizza after that, but one of my friends thought it would be funny to sprinkle sugar on the slice that she gave to me.
I learnt 2 very important lessons that night: One, I should be more careful in the kitchen and pay attention to the ingredients.
And secondly, sometimes your friends can be real cunts.
Today I was on the bus reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith that is called 44 Scotland Street. Its a very interesting read, given that the book itself started life as a newspaper novel. I was greatly intruiged when there was a character who had moved from Arbroath to Edinburgh, so I made it my Task Of The Day to improve my knowledge of geography of the British Isles.
So far, I have found that Hull is on the East side of England, and Edinburgh is more east than I originally thought. Tracing the path to Arbroath leads me still along the East Coast of Scotland and it is located between Dundee and Montrose, and further down from Dundee is the town of Perth which had very pretty scenery, not unlike the Australian version where I lived for a number of months.
Anyway, my duck turned out a success. It was stuffed with apricots, pearl barley, pancetta and chestnuts and halfway through the cooking regime I decided to shred some red cabbage and let the duck cook on a bed of it. My friends think I'm a pretty good chef, which I myself think so too, only when the results turn out good. Half the time when I'm in the kitchen, the receipes that I cook up are concoctions of things that I dream up, some hybrids of menus from various restaurants that I've dined in, and a dash of TV cookery thrown in. Fingers crossed, all my more adventurous dishes have turned out to be pretty good, bar one occassion.
In a drunken state once I announced that I would cook dinner. At the time I was in the pub with some friends and so we all traipsed back chez moi and I had a rifle through the cupboards to see what I could whip up. Having just been to Spain, I had various goodies in tins- seafood, calamari, shrimps, octopi, chorizo... you get the picture. I even had various packets of paella seasoning so I ventured to make a paella. Everyone thought it was a great idea and I started on the preparation.
When it came to the actual cooking, I had forgotten what it was that I'd set out to make. clutching my glass of Rioja, I stumbled into the living room where my friends were getting merrily sozzled and a joint was being passed around. It came my way and so I took a couple of drags and sat on the sofa and chatted a bit. After about 5 minutes one of my friends asked me how far the cooking had got to because they were starting to get quite hungry.
I went back into the kitchen having been reminded of the dish I was supposed to make. 'Paella, paella' I kept chanting to myself, and finding it funnier and funnier. So I threw all the ingredients in a pan and found out I'd run out of rice. Searching through the cupboards threw up a packet of dessert rice, and being completely inebriated I thought that it would work just fine. I suppose that it would have been fine if not for the fact that I'd failed to look at it properly and it was actually Rice Pudding In A Pack, the sort that you Just Add Water, and so into the pan that went and got stirred around and the resulting mass went into the oven for the recommended time.
Forty minutes later the bell went off and I took the pot out of the oven. It smelt okay and by now my friends were starting to come into the kitchen, all of us completely stoned, looking hungrily at the paella. Someone had produced a block of parmesan and a grater and we all thought that it was a pretty good idea to have a Spanish/Italian fusion dish since the rice looked like it was arborio rice. Dishes came out and everyone piled the paella on to their plates and filed back into the living room.
Just as I was spooning some onto my own dish, I heard a cry from the living room. Actually it was more a vomituous sound, echoed over and over. My friends were looking quite disgusted and somewhat green when I went to investigate. Mouthfuls of the 'paella' had been spat out and everyone was glaring at me. I simply shrugged and went back to the kitchen and tried out some of the 'paella' that was looking so tantalisingly delicious.
What happened next was indescribable. I'd never had such a foul assault on my senses. Not even eating field snails in Beijing compared to the taste that I was now trying to have eliminated from my mouth. Red wine seemed to be helping and after downing 2 glasses in quick succession I went back to the living room, silently gathered all the plates and chucked the remaining vileness into the bin, and I doubled up the bag just in case it decided to escape and remind me what a monstrousity I had composed.
Yuck.
We had pizza after that, but one of my friends thought it would be funny to sprinkle sugar on the slice that she gave to me.
I learnt 2 very important lessons that night: One, I should be more careful in the kitchen and pay attention to the ingredients.
And secondly, sometimes your friends can be real cunts.
posted by Marmoset at
2:30 pm
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