I seem to be having all sorts of cooking problems lately. This started with a bag of frozen burgonyanudli. This literally translates as potato noodles but they are actually a type of dumpling which you put in boiling water and remove when they float. You can then coat them with fried breadcrumbs if desired. I got the bag out of the freezer to check what to do with them. I then made the mistake of putting them in the fridge, ready to use the next day. You will guess what happened, once thawed they congealed back into a single lump of dough! Not a problem, thought I, just divide them up and reform them. I was not bothered about the shape, I would just make rough balls, like you would with suet dumplings. The trouble was, the dough was very wet and sticky, so I had to add loads of flour before I could handle the dough without it all sticking to my hands. They worked OK in the end and I cut them up smaller and used them in soup. You can use them as savoury or sweet.
I don't tend to do baking much but in the cold weather it can be a good excuse to be in the kitchen, which is the warmest part of the house. Also the stove is going anyway, as it does the heating as well as cooking. The bag of flour I used to rectify the sticky dough was now plastered with dried on dough, so I wanted it used up in order to throw away the packet. I therefore decided to make pastry with it.
I still had a part jar of mincemeat left from Christmas so I made a dozen normal size mince pies plus a larger one. There was still a lot of pastry left so I did a couple of Victoria sandwich tins with pastry to bake blind. I had never done this baking blind before but I knew you could use rice to weigh down the pastry. What I had not heard was that you have to use foil or parchment to stop the rice from sticking to the pastry!. OK, I eventually got all the rice off the pastry and then was looking to see what I could use to fill my pastry cases. I had in mind quiche or egg custard but all the quiche recipes called for cream, which I didn't have and the egg custard recipes used egg yolks rather than whole eggs. I then remembered that my mother sometimes made a lemon meringue pie when she made egg custard, I suppose it was to avoid wasting the egg whites.
I had some packets of vanilla pudding mix which one of my Hungarian volunteers had picked up on our shopping trips. This seems to be something like blancmange so I decided to use this in my pastry cases. The instructions are in various languages but not English. I could see that it called for half a litre of milk so I guessed the rest. I made a slurry with some of the milk, heated the rest of the milk and poured it onto the slurry then boiled up the mixture. I had put a layer of home made plum jam on the bottom of the pastry cases and on one I also added some mandarin orange segments. I poured the boiled mixture onto the pastry cases and then tasted it. I then realised it does not contain sugar, I should have added some! I guess the instructions must say something like "sweeten to taste", as they don't give a quantity of sugar.
My mince pies looked OK but most of them stuck to the tins, so they came out in bits! I had greased the tins but with butter. Perhaps I should have greased them with margarine or cooking oil.
I don't tend to do baking much but in the cold weather it can be a good excuse to be in the kitchen, which is the warmest part of the house. Also the stove is going anyway, as it does the heating as well as cooking. The bag of flour I used to rectify the sticky dough was now plastered with dried on dough, so I wanted it used up in order to throw away the packet. I therefore decided to make pastry with it.
I still had a part jar of mincemeat left from Christmas so I made a dozen normal size mince pies plus a larger one. There was still a lot of pastry left so I did a couple of Victoria sandwich tins with pastry to bake blind. I had never done this baking blind before but I knew you could use rice to weigh down the pastry. What I had not heard was that you have to use foil or parchment to stop the rice from sticking to the pastry!. OK, I eventually got all the rice off the pastry and then was looking to see what I could use to fill my pastry cases. I had in mind quiche or egg custard but all the quiche recipes called for cream, which I didn't have and the egg custard recipes used egg yolks rather than whole eggs. I then remembered that my mother sometimes made a lemon meringue pie when she made egg custard, I suppose it was to avoid wasting the egg whites.
I had some packets of vanilla pudding mix which one of my Hungarian volunteers had picked up on our shopping trips. This seems to be something like blancmange so I decided to use this in my pastry cases. The instructions are in various languages but not English. I could see that it called for half a litre of milk so I guessed the rest. I made a slurry with some of the milk, heated the rest of the milk and poured it onto the slurry then boiled up the mixture. I had put a layer of home made plum jam on the bottom of the pastry cases and on one I also added some mandarin orange segments. I poured the boiled mixture onto the pastry cases and then tasted it. I then realised it does not contain sugar, I should have added some! I guess the instructions must say something like "sweeten to taste", as they don't give a quantity of sugar.
My mince pies looked OK but most of them stuck to the tins, so they came out in bits! I had greased the tins but with butter. Perhaps I should have greased them with margarine or cooking oil.
