Busy cooking in the kitchen
The past few weeks have been spent in a couple of key ways while using up some leave.
Oh yeah?
Yes. Firstly having been given a kit by a friend to enable my food mixer to be used as a meat mincer, or grinder to my American friends, and finding neither me or my husband could get it attached to the mixer, I went and bought a device which would work.
Phew, long sentence
It really did feel like that. Working out how the equipment worked and doing it all for the first time, plus, of course the washing up…
Anyway, the idea was to make use of big joints of meat that would be too large for the two or three of us in a roast meal that we’d end up throwing away and use as mincemeat instead.
When the newer mincer arrived, we still couldn’t see how it fitted even with the adapter I’d bought. Having finally worked it out, 45 minutes later, I was ready to go.
I made mince with some left over beef and a tasty fresh Bolognese sauce.
That’s one thing then…
The 2nd is having seen the mincer on the Kenwood world site, I gave in to curiousity and bought a pasta maker attachment too 🙂
Pasta? Doesn’t that come in nice packets and you cook it for 10 minutes as a foil for pasta sauces?
Yes, yes it does. I’ve never had ambitions to make my own pasta. But the past few weeks, I have been making my own. Check out Home made pasta. The first lot I made with for a Pasta alla Genovese and the 2nd with the home minced beef. It’s tasty and once you’ve worked out how all the equipment works, pretty quick. Cooking it is mind blowingly quick: 2 minutes for really fresh pasta, 3 minutes if you’ve kept it a couple of days.
Oh yeah, as quick as opening the packet, measuring out what you want and bunging in some hot water?
No, of course not. But the pasta keeps for a week in the fridge and the texture is amazing. Of course, it is reducing plastic waste too.
Cost-wise it’s a dead-end, not worth the effort. A dried packet of pasta is £0.75-£3.00 depending on where you shop per 1kg.
The flour alone is £0.60 per portion and then you have eggs on top. That only makes enough for 4 servings.
But wow, it does taste amazing and cook incrediably quickly (after all the prep 😉 ).
OK, so that’s four weeks worth of time then?
Last night, with a penultimate afternoon off, I bought some venison, steak and made three burgers; one for me, my husband and son. I’ve not found anywhere that will sell me just three burgers so we end up splitting the last one.
This took a long time, from start to eating was just under 90minutes.
But wow, tasty for a burger that didn’t have any salt or pepper added. Cooked over a barbeque (and it was cold out there, so thanks Jon) and served with onions, the burgers were very different to the normal shop bought ones as it had the venison. They were darker in colour and flavoursome. I wasn’t planning on making them either – looking for steak, the venison was on special offer.
Of course, next time, I’ll be much quicker making them. The onions, parsely and garlic I add will be done in my hand blender mincer instead of the Kenwood Chef, meaning I can mince and do that at the same time. It will also reduce the washing up – that device being much simpler than the one I’d used instead.
But definitely, something to try again. I did buy the rolls the burgers… but I could do everything?!
Posted: April 2nd, 2021 under 42.