I made bread.

On sunday (well, on Saturday and Sunday, technically) I had a first go at making bread.  Baking absolutely terrifies me - my girlfriend is a wizard when it comes to the art, but I can't make head nor tail of it.  I am an approximate cook - I like to do things by taste.  I hate measuring, despite my scientific tendencies, so when I cook everything is done using the universal measurements of "That looks about right" and "Just another pinch, I think".  Baking is all about precisely measuring everything, mixing it together, and then putting it in the oven and hoping, so it doesn't really fit in with my style.  No knead bread, on the other hand, is different, because it contains very few ingredients and gives you quite a bit of feedback as you go.  Baking for the less precise artist, I suppose.

Cups are a deceptive measurement, though, aren't they?  Especially when the recipe calls for 5/8's of a cup.  That isn't a real measurement at all.  And so, as is my way with things, I ended up making an incredibly runny dough which was a nightmare to work with.  A whole lot more flour added saved the day, but I am still washing the dregs of the mixture out of the teatowel.  I ended up with a very flat, heavy, but successful loaf that I am immensely proud of, even if the crust is rock solid.  The next batch is already in preparation.  I think I could get into bread making, especially if there are more ways to do it as easily as this.

Light

Well, look at that.  Daylight is here again, streaming in through my windows at unheard of hours like 7:30am and 5pm.  I love this time of year because while I'm not sure I'd pass for an SAD sufferer, I definitely get a lot more deflated over Winter.  Every year Kristy and I try to come up with ways to beat the blues, which have this year involved amazing hot chocolates, baileys, hot toddies, and for me, a hell of a lot of programming.  I've written three major projects since the nights began to draw in and I'm really proud of them all, and we've cooked a lot of good stuff, too.  I think the greatest find was Nigella's Mexican Lasagne (from Kitchen) which is a lasagne made up of cheese, beans, salsa and tortillas.  I think we'll be cooking that one a lot.

Anyway, enough of that! The light is coming again! Every day we gain over three full minutes of daytime to swan about in!  By the end of February I'll be getting home from work in daylight, and in March the clocks change and suddenly everything will be ok again, I'll be coming home to cocktals in the garden whenever the weather allows.  Fantastic.  This is what I spend winter waiting for.

Musings on Beer Butt Chicken

This weekend I had a go at cooking Beer Butt Chicken, a rather comical but actually very real recipe in which you sit a chicken on top of a can of beer and cook it, resulting in beautifully moist meat. It's a bit weird but I'd heard that it works, so I decided to give it a shot. I won't go into the recipe specifics, because you can google the name and get a million variations, and I didn't really use any one of them.

I used Old Speckled Hen as my beer. Because of the size of my chicken, I cut the can in half, and drank half the beer. I think that I had a little too much beer in there, actually - most recipes suggest half a can but they also imply that the chicken will support the whole can, so I guess I should have used more like a quarter, or a third. Recipes vary on how much you should add to the beer, so I decided to go for two garlic cloves. I also chose not to season the bird much, because Glynn Christian tells me that you only flavour the skin with that. I avoided stuffing or rubbing it at all so that I could get at the raw beery flavour, to see how the method affected the roasting process.

Oh yes, and one more note: I cooked it for 20 minutes per 500g. Most recipes I've seen tell you to add another 20 minutes on top of that, but Glynn says not to, and How To Cook Without Recipes is my bible, so that's what I did. I didn't do any turning or any nonsense like that, although I did have to take the tray out briefly to add the roast potatoes.

So how did it go?

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