Tower and Town, July 2020

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Cooking During Lockdown

If, like me, you are getting your weekly shopping done for you by a friend, you may be having an interesting time devising your menus. My shopping arrives on a Saturday so, for the first few days, I have plenty of ingredients to choose from and we eat quite well. However, by the time Friday arrives, there are probably some strange items left in your fridge and you have to be imaginative.

Take last Friday, for example. I found 6 mushrooms, 2 green peppers, a couple of tomatoes and some cooked rice left over from yesterday’s risotto. OK, I thought, not too bad. We can have stuffed peppers. Just add a bit of garlic, some pine nuts, a touch of chilli sauce and put this mixture in the halved peppers with some salt and pepper and a sprinkling of parsley from the garden and a touch of olive oil on top. Cook in a moderate oven for 30 minutes and serve immediately. This turned out quite well.

But what about a pud? No fruit left in the house apart from two lemons. All right, I have some eggs and I can make a lemon mousse. My eggs were small, and the recipe called for large ones. Shall I add another egg, or put in less gelatine? I made the wrong choice and reduced the gelatine. I got bored with waiting for the mixture to set, had a cup of tea in the garden and did a few emails. No luck, the mixture was still too sloppy. I decided to add another couple of sheets of gelatine (soaked and melted, of course) which I left while I went to watch the 6 o’clock news. Still too liquid, so put the bowl in the fridge and went outside for a glass of wine with my husband. Half-an-hour later I came inside and found the mixture almost solid. What should I do? I quickly beat up the egg whites, then beat the lemony mixture hoping this would loosen it. No luck. So, just beat the two together, put it in the fridge and forget about it! Conclusion: a very unappetising-looking pudding which tasted quite delicious!

Better luck next week.

Karen Osborne