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There really is a certain joy in producing menus for dinner parties with more courses than your guests have fingers and toes, but right now it’s coming up for two in the morning and all I’ve done all day is shop and cook and wash-up. I do have a new obsession with a certain product and a sumptuous banquet just eaten to show for it, but it’s coupled with dish-washing wrinkles, bleary eyes and an acute tenderness in my whisking/stirring muscles and it just doesn’t feel worth it.
There’ll be a post in a bit about the stuff actually in the menu accompanied by lovely plating and pictures from my talented sis, but for the moment what I really need is time to sleep and recover and quake with fear about the impending Boxing Day banquet that I’m cooking for 20.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but smell is apparently the sense that’s linked most closely to memory and now that Christmas is almost upon us, I can’t help but agree.
We put up our Christmas tree last week and ever since the house has been filled with the amazing scent of gorgeous pine and now, every time I wake up and go downstairs or come home or walk into the living room or go and stick my nose in the prickles I just get these amazing happy feelings and warm memories that come from somewhere. If there’s any smell that really says that it’s the holiday season again, it’s got to be the Christmas tree and without that smell it just doesn’t really feel like the real thing. We had a fake tree a while back when we were living in Japan and we’ve used it once since then and somehow, even though everything else was in place it just didn’t feel right, but as soon as I catch a bit of the right smell then it all just magically falls back in where it should be.
The tree’s more or less what’s brought it to mind now in particular, but don’t you notice how much the smell of things will affect what comes to mind. That smell of fresh bread that they pump out in the supermarket baking section just brings up images of bakeries and chubby men in white outfits regardless of what your eyes tell you, the smell of seawater makes your eyes widen and heart beat faster whether or not you can see or hear it and nothing brings back memories of an old place like catching the particular way it smells somewhere on the wind.
Now that I’ve thought that up maybe it’s not so much memories in particular, but just every sort of connection that your mind can make…. whether or not you’ve experienced it yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever gone exploring the oceans on a raft made out of driftwood and lashed together with my own hair, but smelling the sea makes me think that I could, it just smells like adventure; I don’t think looking out on it makes anything like the same impression. In the same sort of way I don’t think I’ve ever seen the bakery that exists in my head and the behind the scenes I’ve seen in bakeries tells me that it probably doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t spring into my head completely on its own every time I take a loaf out of the oven. So maybe what really happens whenever I smell a Christmas tree isn’t that it brings up all of my own fond memories, but that it brings up all the things that Christmas represents; it’s like tapping into all the Christmases of everyone and everywhere (the Universal Kristmas Consciousness perhaps…) and giving you a little bit of that joy which every Christmas should be.
I wonder why shops don’t pay attention to the smells in their shops more, maybe it’s just something that I’m obsessed with and no one else really notices. There’s that whole fake food smells thing that loads of crap fast food places have and obviously perfume counters and soaperies always smell like they should but why aren’t Smith’s spraying nice-book-smell gratuitously around their shop or delis hanging hams in their most smellorific position? My shop was going to have smelled of chocolate and coffee and old wood, leather and books, it was something I put a bit of thought into… I guess I’ll just have to settle for having my flat smell like that (plus a mild whiff of Atakku) instead.
In the mean while I’ll just be sitting at home and reliving all the Christmases I’ve had and all the ones I haven’t every time I smell our tree.
then don’t try to make candy with your bare hands.
I’ve been playing around with things made with hot hot sugar for a few days and it has been very unkind to the bits around my hands aren’t asbestos yet.
Over the past year or so I’ve become less and less fond of utensils, I’m not quite sure why, but it’s become a little bit of an obsession. Try it next time you’re frying something, if it’s something that needs turning then probably you can pick it up with your fingers and turn it over before you burn them, or if you want to just ease yourself into it then just put some bacon into a hot buttered pan with your fingers and then press it down until it makes a sizzling sound and feels a bit warm. If you need to marinade something then mix it up in a big bowl with your fingers to stir and knead it in with your palms. If you need to debone a chicken or gut a fish then look no further than the ends of your arms. Always lick your fingers after. There’s something very satisfying though about being able to whip up dinner with no utensils but a big knife… it’s probably all my hidden masculinity desperately trying to assert itself over the surface layer of playing with sweets all day.
Anyway, I’ve been a bit scared about trying out anything like that with chocolate (because I’d so just end up eating it) and with candy (because I’m not quite man enough to get my fingers anywhere near boiling, spitting caramel) but I found that apparently a time honoured way of testing sugar contents in a boiling sugar solution is to stick your hand into icy water and then just grab a little bit of the stuff and feel the texture. Needless to say I was quite thrilled with the idea and since I don’t have a candy thermometer it would actually be quite an improvement on what I’d been doing up until then, which was the good old drop-a-bit-in-water-and-see-what-happens method.
After a few tentative tries I got gradually more and more confident and less and less cautious around the hot pans and sugar until eventually I had the most brilliant idea ever. In order to give the fudge a smooth texture you’re meant to wait until it cools to about 50 degrees C and then agitate it with big scrapers or something until it cools to room temperature and apparently that gives it a smooth texture. Now 50 degrees isn’t exactly hot and after a bit it gets quite thick and not sticky at all (though that might just be because I’m not doing it quite right) so what I thought I should do is try to knead it like you would a loaf of bread.
Now, everything would probably have gone quite smoothly except for one slight hitch. When I started kneading the fudge it WASN’T 50 degrees, it was much more like 60. Normally I can get the temperature down quite well, but I normally measure the temperature based on how much water has come out of the recipe which I measure by the good old drop-a-bit-in-water-and-see-what-happens method and then from there I know how long it takes to cool down. This time it was all icy-fingers-and-grab-a-bit method, which I haven’t quite got the hang of yet and so when it got to the kneading stage it was all a little bit too hot. Obviously (well, not really… but at the time it was the only course of action!) I didn’t want to give up at that point since I really wanted to see what would happen to kneaded fudge and so I ended up kneading and kneading and grinning and grinning and then eventually tossing this lump of hot sugar and butter from one very pink and slightly sore hand to the other like some sort of demonic hot potato. I’m doubly sad to say that the fudge didn’t even end up with a smooth texture since I started agitating it too soon and didn’t keep going long enough for it to cool down, if it had been smooth it would have been totally worth it, but as it is I just feel slightly deflated.
So kids, the lesson for today is…
“If you feel something is burning you, it probably is. Don’t keep on trying to knead it.”
It’s a valuable lesson.
