So, I figured I’ve let you know that I made it to the UK and I would continue my UK story with the newest adventure that I’ve had: cooking. First off, let me say most of this story is my own fault and that Lance has been proven right. The only thing that I should be allowed to do in the kitchen is wash dishes.
Rebecca and I moved in on the 5th of January, two weeks ago and with my arrival Rebecca had decided that she was craving Mexican food, most specifically, enchiladas. Alright, this shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll go to the local grocery store, Waitrose, the classier of the two near my new apartment, and pick up the ingredients. I should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy. After picking up the easy things like chicken and cheese I wander over to the spices to try and pick up chilli powder to make an easy sauce. I already know that Anaheim peppers are out of the question so I don’t even bother. While up in Edinburgh I was already told that if I wanted Jalapenos I would have to buy them in a glass jar. However, what I didn’t realize is that chilli powder also doesn’t exist. Okay, plan B, not ideal but when I was in the “Mexican” section I saw that they had an Old El Paso enchilada sauce. I’m sure it will do fine. Last on the list corn tortillas. Interesting fact, if you ask an English store clerk for corn tortilla’s they will in fact take you to the Doritos and not to tortillas. I kindly told the gentleman thank you for your help and let him go on his merry way while I searched on my own. First stop, bread section – tortillas are kind of like bread and thinking back to Bashas that was where they were there – not there. Second stop, back to that Mexican section – Victory! I hadn’t seen them because instead of a bag like I would expect they were in a box. Either way, other then an unfortunate trip to the chip aisle a good shopping trip. Home to make them.
This should have been the easy part you would have thought. Fry the tortillas, cook and shred the chicken, use a can opener for the sauce and put in a pan to bake them. Just as easy as being an EW met (BULK ADD SOME MORE!). Sorry, bad Morenci joke. Everything is ready, oven is preheated, just slide the tray into the oven. THUD, Won’t fit, what about the other way? Wham, oven door won’t close… Who the hell sells oven pans that don’t fit into ovens???? This is ridiculous! Well, I don’t have any other pans (or at least not unpacked) so I guess we’re going to slide this sucker in on an angle and hope all the enchiladas don’t slide out. I will say that was a first. Baking Enchiladas on a 45-degree angle and stacking them to stay in the pan. Interesting thing you never realize that you don’t have until too late: oven gloves or tea towels. So, not only was I trying to get the enchiladas out without spilling them everywhere. I was doing this using a balled up t-shirt to try and not burn myself. I will say that it really makes you think about what you have and don’t have when you things like that happen. Even though the enchilada sauce was most definitely salsa that was put into a blender and there was a harsh realization that the oven is tiny, I’m claiming the first meal in London a success.
The next few meals I stay pretty non adventurous. I made chicken korma, basic ground beef burritos, and omelettes. With no catastrophes I’m feeling pretty confident when Rebecca says that she’s invited some friends over and I need to make something. We were both feeling the need for a pasta dish so I decided that I would make the white lasagne I liked making in Morenci. Seeing how the Waitrose wasn’t too helpful the last time I thought that I would go to ASDA, the larger, but less classy, store. Oh man, last time at least I had a fake Mexican section that I could pillage to make what I was trying. Ingredients that I was missing: Ricotta cheese, frozen spinach, alfredo sauce, Italian sausage, and Romano cheese. Ok, step one replace the easy ones, instead of frozen spinach I used fresh – not a big deal, actually tastes better that way it’s just more work. Instead of pre-made alfredo sauce I would hand make it, they have butter, cream and Parmesan and like the spinach it actually tastes better it’s just a bit more work. Ricotta cheese… well they have cottage cheese and I have a blender. Close enough. Romano… hmm hard cheese for topping, screw it I already need Parmesan for the alfredo, I’ll use it for that too. This leaves only Spicy Italian sausage. This one can’t really be substituted. Without it, the lasagne becomes very bland and boring. So I go ask the store clerk what I can use. I should have learnt from the Doritos fiasco in Waitrose. I follow the clerk and he hands me this red package that isn’t see through and says that this is what I want. I’m a little sceptical because it doesn’t feel right and it’s obviously written in some eastern European language. I buy everything and head home.
The next day I start to make the dish. Step one, take out the new cooking dish and make sure it fits in the oven. Well it fits, but it’s one of those silicon dishes, that should be okay right? Yeah, for sure, why wouldn’t the baking tray be okay, it’s made for baking. Step two, cook the sausage and mix in alfredo sauce. I open the sausage, fail. This is positively not Italian sausage. This is bologna, spicy bologna, but still bologna. I’m never listening to a store clerk again. How do you turn bologna into spicy Italian sausage? The only way I could think of, take out my cleaver (probably too big of a knife but I was angry and I was going to take out my aggression on the stupid wrong meat) and I find the New Mexico red chilli spices that I bought with Woot and Jarred in Hatch and mix it in. I’ve now turned mildly spicy bologna into very spicy indistinguishable meat pieces. I have to say close enough. I carefully layer each layer in the silicon-baking dish until it’s all in there. In hindsight, I probably should have noticed the problem there but I was still fretting about the lack of Italian sausage to pay attention. Into the oven it goes and onto the wine I go. About twenty minutes into the hour it takes to cook Rebecca asks me if the apartment smell like burning and indeed it did. So we went to check on the lasagne. Apparently, when the silicon dishes get hot, they lose a lot of their rigidity. I as a material engineer should have known this. In hindsight it seems rather obvious. Looking into the oven I could see that the sidewalls of the dish were bowing out allowing large amounts of cheese and lasagne sauces to escape and drip to the bottom of the oven where they were burning. Oh crap. Rebecca decides that the prudent thing to do was to turn off the oven and let things cool down and fix them then. I decide the smart thing to do is to build little props for the sidewalls to stay up and keep cooking. Which is what we absolutely did and it worked great. That is until we got to the point in which we had to remove the lasagne from the oven in the dish that wanted to topple over. Enter guests, always at the best possible time. Time to employ the double spatula and cooling rack technique without looking to stupid. GREAT SUCCESS! Dinner is served. In the end the guests say they enjoy the lasagne and even go back for seconds. Evidently massacred bologna with New Mexico chilli powder is an acceptable substitution for Italian sausage.
Further in our shopping adventures, thanks to Mitzi (one of Rebecca’s best friends) we came across an Asian grocery store. That, coupled with the glorious successes that Rebecca and I have been having, means that Rebecca has decided that it’s time to throw a sushi party. Great, all I need to do is add raw fish to the menu. If you hear of a tragic incident of a group of twenty some year olds dying in south-east London due to food poisoning it’s been great to know you. Well, I always knew it was going to be an adventure.
