A busy week … with coffee
Having carefully downloaded and selected my photos of the Show and its food, I can’t write you any of those promised posts. Not for a few days, anyhow. The reasons are rather good, though.
Some of them you know already. You already know that I’m teaching my food history course right now. Tomorrow we’re looking at the Middle Ages, but we also might be looking at historical apple varieties. I’m hoping to get a half dozen of them (fresh and crisp and just in season) from Pialligo Apples, first thing tomorrow. I also hope to get enough bullaces to make much alcoholic beverage to drink in two years time, but I guess that’s a separate issue, even if the bullaces are older than the varieties of apples in season right now. In fact, the class will meet some bullaces and other plums as well as the apples. I might even let them have my favourite Japanese tonguetwister, which entirely illuminates the relationship between the various types of stone fruit. I’ll report back on all this tomorrow, probably. I will be very joyous if I can get the apples and rather sorrowful if I can’t, since this is one of those weeks of much temperament.
In between the teaching, I’ve been testing more recipes for that Prohibition banquet. In the oven right now is a coffee custard. It smells good and it looks good, but it will be an hour before I can find out just how delectable it tastes. I’m very optimisitic, though, mainly because the basic proportions are beautiful.
I couldn’t find enough deep containers for the bain-marie, so I put one shallow container in the oven. This was a mistake. Before it even started baking, that particular custard was overflowing with water. Just goes to show that you can improvise almost anything in the kitchen, but there are some directions where improvisation should not go.
It’s been so long since I’ve strained anything the old-fashioned way that my lovely cloth for straining was curiously fungal. It’s going to have two hot washes before I introduce it back into my kitchen and even then I will have a triple-think about it. I may just have to get a new cloth.
That’s the trouble with days when moods swing: things go all kinds of funny. I think I’m due a quiet night tonight. Tomorrow should be good, starting with an orchard trip and ending with my food history class.
Right now isn’t half bad, despite my imperfect cooking. How can life be bad when the room I’m in is suddenly full of the delectable fragrance of coffee?
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