It helps, too, that cooking them by listening to them leaves you time to observe the transit of Dionysos Leader, a Japanese registered car transporter of 60,000 tons or more. Huge ugly thing but at 20kts, it doesn't take long to pass, unlike the FT Force, chemical tanker doing 6kts. but she's only 5,000 tons.
As for doing the same to bacon and panchetta. Right. I did learn a couple of things though. One is that you should use a wooden spatula to cook chorizo so you can feel when they are done, not going by the colour change to crispy but a wooden spatula will tell you when they get to the firm side of soft. Rubbery is better. A plastic spatula will just bend and you won't be able to feel when the bits are doing and done. Major tip there, eh?
The other lesson learnt is that a garlic may have been too much. A segment is a clove, not a round white thing with loads of them. Didn't make the same mistake this time. Three wedges, peeled, chopped fine and bunged in with the onions as they're browning a bit. Easy stuff, this. Takes ages, though. If you include all the peelings and chopping it's nearly half a day, so far.
I forgot the beans so I had to run up the road, I use the term "run" rather loosely and whilst I had been trusted with a €10 note I got some salt, pepper and a loaf thinking that if this all came to nought you can't go wrong with beans on toast, except I'd be moaned at for stodging the beans up.
I'd no sooner got back to the cooker when the Jean De La Vallette went away at 25kts. She's a catamaran car ferry going to Pozzallo, Sicily which won't take her long as it's only 60 miles away. She's only 100m long but she makes way rapidly. A fine sight to see but never for long.
So, once everything's cooked, apart from the eggs, obviously, you have to let it all cool down so it doesn't cook the eggs when you bung them in. This gives time for a little refreshment whilst you watch Malmnes, a Portuguese freighter of 10,000 tons pass by at 10.4kts on a course of 318° as she makes her way to Algiers.
Suitably refreshed all that's left to do is remember where the instructions are and once recovered web page is stable mix a bucket load of eggs, stir and add onion and garlic. Get a pair of similar frying pans and get one hottish, spread out the potato, spread the bacon, panchetta and chorizo over them. Pour the egg slop over all of it and turn up the volume to 11. Keep running a spoon around the edge and once you reckon it's done turn it into the other pan. Repeat till done. Obviously the makers of the instructions never do it enough because it's not done till you've catched the thing and crisped it up a bit, is it?
Once it's all done right through turn it onto a plate and deliver it to your nearest and dearest. Await plaudits.
In fact it was OK, just crispy a bit and quite tasty. The beans weren't runny and all in all it was a decent enough followage of instructions.
Beware, though. The video said allow 35 minutes but from peeling, chopping, waiting, assembling, popping out for the beans, doing the eggs, putting it all into the pan and stirring it till done took all day. By the time it was dished up it was dark and I could only see the lights of Jill Jacob, 70,000 ton tanker heading SE at 10.2kts.
One other thing I learned was that red wine is for red meat, white wine for white meat and if it's eggs that's what lager is for, especially Cisk which even comes in egg yellow cans, unless you are affluent and have Cisk Excel in silver and blue ones but I ran out of them at the peeling stage.
No comments:
Post a Comment