Tuesday 21 February 2012

Experimental Cooking Day!

Last year after Experimental Cooking Day a few suggestions were made as to what I could do this year - I decided to go with the 'Batter and deep fry things which shouldn't be battered and deep fried' suggestion!

So, I employed the assistance of a chef - Webby (well, to be honest he was in charge and I was doing the assisting!), put together a shopping list and got stuck in.

Always conscious of health and safety I made sure we were covered in case anything went wrong........


'things to be battered'
1) Cheese
2) Bacon
3) Polos
4) Cream Crackers
4) Battenberg Cake
5) Jelly Babies
6) Chocolate Buttons
7) Flying Saucers


First up was battered cheese cubes, we coated them in flour, dipped them in the batter and dropped them in the pan.  The batter was perfect and it all reacted very well in the pan with little leakage.

The results looked very good when removed from the pan.



We gave this a score of 9/10, they tasted really good and I'd actually consider serving this as a starter with some sort of dipping sauce!

Next up was the bacon, no issues with the flouring and battering so straight in the pan it went - another 'successful in pan' item.


Again, the results when removed from the pan were very good (although some pieces did look like prawns!).



This was a 10/10, tasted fantastic and a really good way to stretch a pack of bacon - 1 slice produced about 7 of the 'battered bacon bites'.

Then we decided to do the polos, bit of an issue here with flouring (obviously it wouldn't stick!) so we did our best and dropped them in!  Amazingly they retained their holes in the pan!


They looked much better than we'd hoped when they were done and were still recognisable as polos!


Hmmm, these only got 4/10 and were considered to be something you should never put in your mouth - bizarrely though they tasted of mint choc chip ice cream!?!

Cream Crackers (pieces of) next - same problem with flouring but battered well.    
                                                                                           

In no way recognisable as Cream Crackers!



This didn't work that well, only 5/10, it all just tasted very dry.

Time to move on to the messier stuff!

Battenburg Cake - awesome idea, can't remember whose suggestion it was but well done!  Floured and battered well, resembled cheese on toast in the pan although this was the first item that smelt like something burning in the pan!


Looked a little like waffles (burnt ones) when we brought them out, really impressed that they still looked like Battenburg when we cut into them :-)



Looked ok but didn't taste that good, strong taste of Battenburg but so, so wrong with batter!

Jelly Babies!!! No flour required, battered well but didn't really survive the drop in the pan!


Meltdown!!  Jelly Baby blood!


Kind of looked like something from 'Alien' when removed from the pan and especially when I tried to pick one up to eat it and it was stuck to the paper with a translucent gooey mess - ugh.



Not a pleasant experience at all, 1/10 at best - although the longer it was in my mouth the more it started to taste like a strawberry Opal Fruit (or for those born after the '80's...a Starburst)

Chocolate buttons, disaster!  As expected the chocolate just melted in the pan (there wasn't even time to take a photo!) and we were left with little round hollow shells!



Couldn't really give this any more than 0/10 - lightly chocolate flavoured batter shells.

We saved the flying saucers for last (Webby was slightly concerned that they might actually explode when we dropped them in the pan!), apart from sticking to each other these battered really well!!




Looked kind of distrurbing when cut in half and tasted absolutely foul!  8/10 for battering success but 0/10 for taste!

Overall the bacon and cheese were the only total successes, I don't think I'll be rushing to eat any of the rest again in a hurry!

Thinking cap on for next year now!

.

No comments:

Post a Comment