New and Improved Socks

Note: This post is about Socks the spider, not socks the things-you-put-on-your-feet. If you came here looking for the latter, I’m sorry to disappoint. Pictures and stuff behind the jump. Don’t click through if you don’t like spiders!

Satu Can Still Ride a Bike

Last weekend, we finally dusted our mountain bikes off and took them for a lap around Cannock Chase.

The last time I came back from a long break of not doing any mtb at all, the first couple of rides were terrible — I was really wobbly, slow and nervous as hell; so I wasn’t expecting this to be much fun, just the first step to get back into it.

Happily, I was wrong!

Yes, I was rather slow, but only on the uphills: my wonderful post-Lejog fitness has finally disappeared entirely, which was inevitable. The technical bits, however, were much more fun than I’d expected. I did the rocky bits, the stupid roots, and even the Werewolf Drop[1], which I definitely hadn’t planned on; that video shows what the drop really looks like — from the top it seems much steeper and more worrying.

Because Mr Satu had gear problems and I was wheezing up the hills, we decided to skip the Monkey Trail and just do one lap of the Dog; it was extremely muddy, so by the time we got back to the car park our bikes were crunching and we were freezing. But, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

The next step will be to get my stamina back. Mr S has joined a road riding club and has been going out with them almost every weekend; I don’t particularly like going out on Sundays, especially when it’s with a load of people I’ve never met before, so I haven’t been joining him. Yesterday, we went for my first road ride in ages — a variation of our usual 20 mile loop through the Clent Hills (the variation was to avoid the actual Clents with the long climb near the end); it was quite pleasant, though a bit chilly. My feet were frozen by the end, and I was tiiired. But that’s the first step done! A couple more shorter rides and I might be ready to go for a club ride if I can drag myself out of bed.

I’ll probably also try and get a set of pedals and a saddle for my proper road bike so I can start taking that out again. Dewey is in dire need of maintenance after a winter of commuting — there’s much squeaking from various parts.

So, I’m happy to report that I can still ride a bike, not just for commuting. I now have a couple of months to get ready for the Dyfi Forest Enduro, which I intend to finish this year!

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[1] Not my video, just googled it for illustration purposes.

News from the Spider House

WARNING: This post may contain spiders. Or at least pictures of them. Don’t click through if you don’t want to see them!

Daring Cooks February 2011 Challenge: Cold Soba Salad & Tempura

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.

Oh dear, this challenge has not gone well. Not only am I almost a week late, I have also only completed half of the challenge.

The sad part is that I was really looking forward to this one; I love tempura, and I love noodles. I don’t love deep-frying, however. This was my first attempt at it, and it did not go well, which is the reason I’m so late actually completing the challenge.

My first attempt was a couple of weeks ago; I thought I’d try various veggies — sweet potato in particular, which I adore. So, I spent a good hour preparing: chopping the veggies, blanching what needed blanching, mixing the batter and setting everything up. Then I realised how little oil we had. I had planned to use our big wok but ended up with the small saucepan instead, to get a decent depth of oil in there. I had my brand new cooking thermometer which unfortunately didn’t come with a good way of securing it to the pan, so it just sort of bobbed around in there.

It was all going okay until I actually put in the first bit of tempura, at which point I panicked. Bubbling oil! Eek! The thermometer was all over the place, getting in the way, and worse yet, the oil was still heating up. I got the first couple of bits out of the pan and then turned the heat off. It was just a bit too much. I ended up turning the veggies into stir-fry.

And I’m not sure at which point it happened, but when I took the thermometer off the dish rack I discovered that the glass had cracked at the base. Mr Satu thinks he might have broken it while washing it, but I really don’t know. Either way — I might try deep-frying again at some point, but I do not feel up to it at the moment.

So I did a baked tempura recipe instead (this one), and I didn’t get a chance to do that until today. The batter was almost the same; the only real difference apart from the baking was the bread crumbs — I didn’t really want to use them, but when I tried it without them I realised why they were there: the batter would just run off the broccoli otherwise.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with this recipe, I have to say. The breadcrumbs — lazy ones from the shop — were too crunchy and made the crust really hard; the broccoli itself didn’t taste of very much until I drowned it in soy sauce. They looked quite pretty, though:

The soba noodle part of the challenge was a total fail; I just didn’t get the chance to go to the Chinese supermarket and get the required bits — and our local supermarket doesn’t carry them at all.

Let’s hope this month’s challenge goes a little better!

88 Legs

N+1 is a well-known concept among cyclists: the answer to the question, “How many bikes do I need?” is always “n+1″, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.

It seems that something similar applies for spiders, too, except possibly on a larger scale. We bought our first spider exactly a month ago; now we have 11.

WARNING: There will be pictures and descriptions of these spiders below the jump. Please don’t click through if you don’t want to see them!

Daring Bakers January 2011 Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime and Entremet

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert. The recipe can be found here.

Phew, this was a tough one! I learned a lot from this challenge, not least that I should probably never become a pastry chef.

Let’s just say that I had some Drama with this cake. I spent a lot of time thinking about fillings, and probably not enough about the design of the sponge. As you can see from exhibit A:

Squiggles are harder than they look.

So I had squiggles, spirals, dots and a few lines, but not enough of any of them to go around the entire cake. In the end, it got a bit of everything.

The second problem I had was that the — very cheap — silicone mat I bought turned out to be warped when I laid it out:

That's right, bright green. The only other option was bright pink.

So I went with baking parchment instead, which ended up wrinkling in the oven — so my sponge layer came out all uneven:

Also, the food colouring didn’t come out quite as I’d imagined — I’d been hoping for a delicate light minty green, but this basically looked like mould.

The third bit of drama came when I prepared the rest of the sponge to use as the cake’s bottom layer. I’d spread the rest of the joconde paste and drawn a few lines through it (I made half the stated recipe and still ended up with lots left over), then poured the uncoloured batter over it. At the very bottom of the bowl I discovered several strange lumps:

I still don’t know where the hell these came from — the only explanation I have is that somehow some of the flour and almond meal clumped together to form these; but I’m sure they weren’t there when I mixed it. Oh well! By this point I’d spent all morning in the kitchen and wasn’t about to throw out all my work and start over; the sponge was just going to have to be what it was.

I enjoyed making the fillings quite a bit more!

My bottom layer was lime curd. I basically used this recipe, same as when I made the lemon meringue pie last year, except with lime instead of lemon. For some reason I’d expected it to be bright green — lime coloured! — until I put the egg yolks in and realised that that’s where the colour comes from. Duh!

For the second layer, I chose mango geleé. And because I’d found a packet of lychees at the supermarket, I threw those in as well. Some furious googling turned up this nice simple recipe. I used tinned (well, jarred) mangoes rather than fresh, because the slices came in transparent plastic cups that would be perfect for the spider baby I’m lusting after (WARNING: contains spiders).

To top it all off I made a fresh mint cream; this was a recipe of my own invention, which is why it doesn’t have proper quantities. I threw maybe a dozen mint leaves into a tub (250ml, I think) of cream and let it infuse for a few hours. Then I zapped it in the food processor, added some sugar (a tablespoon or two) and whipped it. At the end, I folded in some Greek yogurt.

Then the whole thing went into the fridge to set, and I went to bed to do very little for the rest of the evening.

The next morning came the moment of truth. It didn’t look anywhere near as professional as some of the other Bakers’ efforts, but I was pretty pleased nevertheless…

… especially when I cut it:

It tasted pretty good — if very much of lime rather than anything else. Mr Satu was suitably impressed; I think he liked it more than I did and actually took half of it to work, where it was apparently well received, too.

I don’t think I’m ever going to make this again! It felt rather more like a crafts project than a recipe, and I’m not that crafty. I liked the layering business and putting the different flavours together, though. And if I ever desperately need to put a pattern on a cake, now I know how!

This will be my last Daring Bakers challenge, at least for now. At the moment two challenges a month seems like a lot, especially if, like this one, they take an entire day.[1] Right now, I want to spend most of my weekends doing nothing. And because neither of us are actually big cake eaters, it makes more sense to drop the Bakers than the Cooks.

I’m sure I will be back at some point. I’ve learned a lot even in the short time I’ve been a member, and it’s given me the confidence to try things I wouldn’t have dreamed of a year ago. Thanks to all the Daring Bakers out there for being a friendly, supportive community, especially those who come up with such brilliant challenges.

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[1] I should note that this is in no way a criticism of this particular challenge, which was, in my opinion, perfect, and exactly what the Daring Kitchen should be about.

Daring Cooks January 2011 Challenge: Cassoulet

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman. The challenge recipe can be found here.

I admit, I was skeptical about this one.

I’d never heard of cassoulet before; I was vaguely aware of confit, but didn’t know exactly what it involved. Mr Satu looked at the various things I was buying and was really dubious. So much fat!

Even while I was preparing the whole thing, I wasn’t sure we’d actually like the end result. Nothing seemed to look quite right — certainly not like the pictures I’d seen — and whenever I tasted it along the way something was a little off.

I halved the recipe and made several substitutions, which was probably part of why I was so worried. For the confit, I used chicken thighs and goose fat: duck anything seemed to be impossible to get at our supermarket. Neither of us are big pork eaters (except BACON!), so I used stew beef instead of pork belly, and bacon instead of pork rind. And I used tinned beans rather than dried, and probably not quite as much as I should have.

So, I worried! After all this preparation, I didn’t really want to end up with something neither of us wanted to eat. And because I was worried, Mr Satu became really worried. But I thought we should at least try it — we could always get a take-away if it turned out to be inedible.

But then!

When I took the stew out of the oven it still didn’t look like any of the pictures, but it smelled absolutely lovely. So I had a little taste, and it was, in fact, really good.

Mr S was still not convinced until he took his first bite. I only wish he hadn’t sounded quite so surprised when he said: “This is really nice!”[1] And then had second helpings. And third.

I served it with potatoes because I couldn’t help myself. The second night we had it with pasta, and the rest we finished off with potato wedges. Mmm.

This was quite a lot of work, but absolutely worth making again. The full recipe next time, I think!