Entries from May 2007
One of the things that you learn when you stop doing domestic cooking and switch to the bucket chemistry version is that the recipe is only there as a starting point in the negotiations. Another thing I’ve been learning over the past few weeks is that a lot of the recipes in those “tried and tested” cookbooks are just plain wrong. Take my creme brulee for example. The recipe says put the brulees into a tray of water and cook at 150C for one hour. If you’re a fan of vanilla flavoured scrambled eggs then you might want to try that. But I notice that I’ve scrawled underneath the recipe “130C for 40 minutes” That’s a pretty major variation from the recipe and, before you ask, the temperature of my oven measured with a high precision probe thermometer was exactly right. So maybe the Good Housekeeping institute’s oven is a wee bit cold - who knows. I used to be a fan of Saint Delia Smith so, at the risk of being struck down in a hail of cranberries and balsamic vinegar I will venture to suggest that her oven temperatures are a bit on the low side.
Much cooking yesterday and today. 1 x sticky toffee pudding, 2 x choc fudge cakes, 1 x chicken liver pate, 1 gallon of broccoli and blue cheese soup (looking at previous posts guess what kind of blue cheese!) and the fudge topping for the choc cakes (another completely wrong procedure, this time from Pru Leith. “Remove the boiling sugar from the heat and stir in the chocolate” - I don’t think so. The phrase “allow to cool a bit first so that the chocolate doesn’t seize” might improve things. Fortunately this is the fourth time I’ve tried the recipe so I’ve got the hang of it now.
Currently enjoying some of my home made bread and blue cheese. Oh, go on, have a guess what kind…
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So there I was standing in the kitchen looking at two eggs and thinking “what goes in next?”
We have one resident who stays all week and he has scrambled eggs for breakfast. Dead easy. Except that it was five past seven in the morning and my brain had jammed.
The technique for omelette and scrambled eggs is very similar. Two eggs, milk for scrambled, water for omelette and a bit of salt and pepper. Get a nice hot pan (I use my little black iron pans) and mix it all vigorously as it cooks.
Omelettes had been in demand over the weekend and maybe that’s why I’d got confused. Lorna’s craft retreat saw Bob & Nancy from the US, Michel and Viviane from France and Alison from England enjoying knitting tuition from Lorna and weaving from Janis Embleton of Flight.
Dinner was cooked by me and Ed and went down well by all accounts. Everyone seemed to have a good time and some arranged to come back for next year’s jamboree.
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If you’re not tempted by sticky toffee pudding, apple crumble, creme brulee or hot chocolate fudge cake, you can always have some cheese. We’ve been selecting some cheeses from Scotland and elsewhere, but one of the problems with this is that usually you have to buy a whole cheese. If you’ve ever seen a whole Stilton you’ll realise that this is ever so slightly impractical for a small hotel. Here, for example, is a Cashel Blue from Ireland.
It’s enormous! 1.5Kg in weight. And that’s a “small” cheese. I suspect blue cheese quiche may appear on the menu shortly!
Categories: Food
We had three guests this morning and now we have seven. This is good. Even better is the fact that two of them are in the dining room enjoying (I think) some of our gastronomic delights. OK, two isn’t going to pay any bills, but we aren’t doing very much advertising other than to guests. We took a sample menu round to the TIC (tourist information centre) this morning, so hopefully Joyce and her minions will send people our way. A lady from the local newspaper is coming tomorrow to discuss placing an advertisement.
Dawn - you clearly have inside information about obscure UK place names. If Aarlene had managed to get Penicuik (Penny-cook) right I was going to try Milngavie or possibly Leicestershire:-)
Lorna is downstairs making final adjustments to her plans for the craft weekend. She now has an after dinner speaker which she’d virtually given up on. The numbers booked mean that it’s unlikely to be a financial success, but hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves.
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Edinburgh was basking in warm sunshine this morning when Ed, Ingrid and I rolled into town. E+I had not been to Edinburgh before and were, I think favourably impressed. They’re talking about what they will do on their next trip anyway. I headed for a little cookshop on Lauriston Place just off Tollcross and bought some more black iron pans…
and then remembered that I’d parked two streets away and forgotten to buy a ticket. The hazards of living in a small town with no paid parking! Edinburgh wardens have a reputation for taking no prisoners so I feared the worst as I hurried back. Next to the car stood a warden with his wee machine poised ready…
“Sorry .. forgot to…” I began, then realised that he hadn’t printed the ticket yet. They’re supposed to wait for five minutes and I’d just got back in time.
I don’t know what the parking fine in Embra is, but it’s over £40 and more likely around £50. These pans could have been kind of expensive.
A lovely day became even lovelier.
I headed for my Sister’s place in Penicuik (American readers - I dare you to pronounce that!) and after lunch spent the afternoon sitting in her garden in the sun. Back to Jed around 8 and back to work tomorrow.
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Food
One of the nice things about being chief cook and bottle washer is that I get an official day off. When we were looking at properties several hoteliers gave us the same advice:
“If you have a day off - leave the building!”
It’s good advice. If I stay here on my day off, I inevitably end up doing paperwork, or laundry, or fixing something, though thankfully that’s rarer these days.
So today, once breakfast is over I’ll be heading for Edinburgh.
Food sales have started slowly and that’s no bad thing. It has given us time to work out what works and what doesn’t without having a dining room full of irate customers. Since we have a fairly short menu we get to practice almost all the dishes even with no more than a couple of diners per night. My sticky toffee pudding (actually Alastair’s, but the next one will be mine) has been much in demand. No-one has yet asked for my chocolate fudge cake despite it being truly delicious (tho I say so myself). Fair enough. If I see sticky toffee pudding on a dessert menu I tend not to read any further. I have resorted to glazing the creme brulee on demand, since the caramel topping does not like being left in the refrigerator overnight - it goes all granular. The whole glazing process only takes six minutes and five seconds of which six minutes is heating the salamander iron.
Events
Lorna’s craft weekend is coming up and I have to provide some fine Scottish fare for the people attending. This will take a certain amount of planning which, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know is not my strong point. Stay tuned for further developments…
Categories: Food
We have two couples staying tonight. One couple had dinner at 6 and afterwards there was a lot of standing around in the dining room and wiping already clean work surfaces in the kitchen. At ten to nine we decided that there was little chance of anyone else coming for dinner, so Ingrid set up for breakfast and Ed cleared up and emptied the dishwasher.
I think you can guess what happened next…
Yes, the other couple showed up at 9pm. Since we advertise that dinner is served between 6 and 9.15 that’s perfectly reasonable and, well, four is better than two.
Declaration of the Callant tonight. The massed pipes and drums of Jedburgh and a fair sized crowd. I haven’t yet discovered who this year’s victim, oops I mean lucky lad is. The Callant for those not in the know is the person who leads all the horse rides during the Jedburgh Festival in July. I’m sure I mentioned it a year or so ago - why not have a look in the archives.
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We had a party of six booked in for four nights. They hadn’t shown up by 8.30 so we called them.
Them: “Oh! no, we cancelled that booking in December”
Us: “The booking was made on the 5th of January”
Them “Oh. Er, sorry”
Us: “Maybe you could let us know next time”
Fortunately we hadn’t turned anyone away. And it does mean that we don’t have to get up tomorrow:-)
Two bottles of Hobgoblin waylaid me in the bar and begged to be drunk. What could I do but oblige?
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Saturday night - it’s the Thistle sevens, the bar is bouncing and we have diners. In the dining room. Waiting. I’m calm. I can do this. Sixeen years working in TV must have taught me something about working under pressure. Cooking seven dinners compared to playing news tapes into Reporting Scotland? Piece of cake. Or sticky toffee pudding. Or or or.
Coming to kitchen in 5 - 4 - 3 -2 -1 - -
On air.
From memory this is where it all used to go a bit pear shaped.
Ingrid arrives with the first order. Very few starters. Two soup, one pate. Thankfully no chilli nachos since the chilli’s at -22C in the freezer downstairs. That was stupid. Three fillets two medium one rare. Should have had a look at them before now - Bloody hell! They’re enormous! - Two salmon, one chicken. Heat griddle to 9000000C and place steaks on top. Smoke everywhere. Cook salmon, pan fry chicken. Check what kind of potatoes the salmon is served with. Crap! it’s supposed to have pesto on top. I only wrote the bloody menu and I still can’t remember it. Put the pesto on top and shove it under the grill for 90 sec. Breathe. Looks fine.
I’ve spent all afternoon trying to get a red wine sauce that tastes good. Needless to say all the steaks are with pepper cream sauce. How do you make that then? Suppose I should have found out first. Tarragon cream sauce for the chicken. OK that’ll have tarragon and cream in I suppose. Mmmm pretty good. OK ready to go. Chips, veg, boiled potatoes, veg…….
Puddings. Surprisingly most people want cheese. One apple crumble which, if I may say so looked and tasted damn good and one creme brulee, the recipient of which went into raptures about saying it was exactly the same as the first one he’d tasted in France.
Feedback is generally positive. The soup wasn’t hot enough, one steak was returned as being undercooked (much better than overcooked since then you have to start over) but they said they’d be back next year and would eat with us again.
So on balance a successful first night. We know a bit more about what we don’t know and we have a list of extra equipment to buy next week. An extra freezer is at the top of it.
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Voting
It was election day yesterday with ballots for the Scottish parliament (by proportional representation) and the local council (by a different form of pr. For the parliament, you put a cross next to the candidates you want and for the council you number the candidates 1 - 6 in order of preference.
All this was explained to me in the polling station twenty seconds before I went into the booth and put a cross on the form that was supposed to have numbers 1 - 6 on it. Putting anything other than a cross is completely counter-intuitive and marking only one candidate is clearly more ingrained than I’d thought. Anyway. it seems I was in good company as there were an estimated 100,000 spoilt papers. I wonder who the other 99,999 were.
Bork! Bork! Bork!
Evening meals kicked off at the Spread and went reasonably well apart from the fact that no-one actually turned up to try them. This wasn’t unexpected - due to several false starts over the past two years and the extreme last minute-ness of the whole enterprise (the wine lists arrived this morning and the glasses still aren’t here) we hadn’t actually advertised the fact to the general public. We have 10 residents, but they were eating elsewhere. Or nowhere.
The evening was spent testing procedures, timings and what not, so it wasn’t wasted. If anyone shows up tomorrow we will be better prepared than today. Tourist info are being sent copies of our menu and now we know it’s achieveable we’re actually daring to tell people.
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