Insomnia 2: My Brain Foams Over
This must be happening because last night a friend asked if I still had insomnia and I said no. Apparently I'm a liar. Anyway....
So I got home last night and waiting for me in my mailbox was an issue of Knife Merchant catalogue. It was addressed to me, not Javert. Did I order this? No. You all probably don't believe me and now think I'm some sort of creepy knife enthusiast who enjoys war or an unhappy 13-year-old boy making plans to do away with his teachers. I assume I got on the Knife Merchant list through Cooks Illustrated, because the knives all had to do with cooking (Javert was considerably less excited about the catalogue when I told him this), and because there is a section devoted to pots and pans and kitchen tools, and because CI recommendations are highlighted in pink. This is just yet another way in which CI cannot get their act together. Yet I continue to use their recipes.
Unfortunately the last thing I attempted to cook was not featured in CI. Perhaps I should have understood that as a reason why I should not attempt it. Here's the story: I made polenta on Tuesday night and Wed. was looking forward to turning the leftovers into fried polenta. I had mashed the polenta into a baking pan and refrigerated it overnight and then planned to fry it in the smaller of our two cast iron pans (we do not use non-stick pans). Now you need some back knowledge...Javert likes to save our frying oil and reuse it at least once. The last time we reused oil was to fry tortillas into taco shells and everything worked fine. But the time before that, when we used old oil to fry falafel, disaster occurred! All the oil in the pan foamed up, to the point that we couldn't find the falafel balls anymore and they all fell apart as we searched for them. I worried that we'd never be able to make our own falafel, but after yelling at Javert (sorry Javert!) I tried again with new never-been-used oil and things worked as they should and we had a delicious dinner. Incidently, I had leftover falafel for lunch the next day, and then we drove to Baltimore to see my parents who offered us yet more falafel for dinner.
Anyway, on Wednesday night Javert used old oil to fry the polenta and almost killed us. He put about 1/2 an inch of oil in the pan and added only one little square of polenta and it foamed up and all the foam overflowed onto the stove and burner, which was still lit till quick thinking me screamed at him to turn it off so we could avoid an actual fire. The oil continued foaming over the edge of the pan for a good five minutes, maybe even longer, after it was removed from the heat.
This incident scared us but we were determined to eat fried polenta for dinner. For some (idiotic) reason, instead of trying again with fresh oil in the bigger frying pan--a proven solution to the foaming problem--I decided I'd oven-fry the squares on a baking tray. I heated up some fresh oil on a tray and when the oven was ready I put the squares on the tray and returned it to the oven. Mere minutes later smoke was pouring out of our oven and we had to deactivate the smoke alarm so as not to wake the neighbors. The polenta was completely uncrispy. In fact it was downright soggy. Turning down the oven did not help in terms of crispiness, but we had to if we wanted to avoid having to evacuate the building (it was A LOT of smoke). Finally we gave up and took the now greasy and goopy mess of polenta out.
Javert got a little scared of me at this point, since normally I get angry when things don't work out in the kitchen, and since this oil thing was his fault AND the second time it had happened he had good reason to be concerned. But I'd had a glass of wine so I was considerably less mean than usual and I simply suggested that we have pasta instead. Luckily we have an emergency supply of dried pastas so we decided on elbow macaroni and forturnately it cooked normally and tasted good. I did yell at Javert a little, because he is so damn optimistic about these food disasters and was trying to salvage the polenta way after it was clear it was inedible. We did scrape off the mostly ungreasy top layer and eat it though, before throwing the rest in the garbage.
I've never almost had a grease fire before and it was a little exciting. I was on the phone with my mom right after this happened and she said "Oh, you better keep the baking soda out to put on the fire." I felt very smug when I told her it was already out. (She doesn't need to know it's out just because we bought it at Shop Rite and havent put it away yet.) Javert then yelled "We have a fire extinguisher and we'll use that in case of fire" or something equally logical and slightly annoying but my mom is now sufficiently relieved that we have multiple ways of putting out various small fires in our apartment. I'm sure using a fire extinguisher would be MUCH messier than using baking soda, but probably is more effective. But honestly I didn't even remember that baking soda goes on a grease fire. I distinctly remember thinking as I yelled for Javert to turn off the stove that if flames did occur, I would smother them with a dishtowel. I think we can all be happy that I didn't need to put this plan into action.
My friend said she'd ask her sister who is a chemist if she knows anything about foaming old oil...but if anyone else knows I'd be excited to hear why it occurs.
So I got home last night and waiting for me in my mailbox was an issue of Knife Merchant catalogue. It was addressed to me, not Javert. Did I order this? No. You all probably don't believe me and now think I'm some sort of creepy knife enthusiast who enjoys war or an unhappy 13-year-old boy making plans to do away with his teachers. I assume I got on the Knife Merchant list through Cooks Illustrated, because the knives all had to do with cooking (Javert was considerably less excited about the catalogue when I told him this), and because there is a section devoted to pots and pans and kitchen tools, and because CI recommendations are highlighted in pink. This is just yet another way in which CI cannot get their act together. Yet I continue to use their recipes.
Unfortunately the last thing I attempted to cook was not featured in CI. Perhaps I should have understood that as a reason why I should not attempt it. Here's the story: I made polenta on Tuesday night and Wed. was looking forward to turning the leftovers into fried polenta. I had mashed the polenta into a baking pan and refrigerated it overnight and then planned to fry it in the smaller of our two cast iron pans (we do not use non-stick pans). Now you need some back knowledge...Javert likes to save our frying oil and reuse it at least once. The last time we reused oil was to fry tortillas into taco shells and everything worked fine. But the time before that, when we used old oil to fry falafel, disaster occurred! All the oil in the pan foamed up, to the point that we couldn't find the falafel balls anymore and they all fell apart as we searched for them. I worried that we'd never be able to make our own falafel, but after yelling at Javert (sorry Javert!) I tried again with new never-been-used oil and things worked as they should and we had a delicious dinner. Incidently, I had leftover falafel for lunch the next day, and then we drove to Baltimore to see my parents who offered us yet more falafel for dinner.
Anyway, on Wednesday night Javert used old oil to fry the polenta and almost killed us. He put about 1/2 an inch of oil in the pan and added only one little square of polenta and it foamed up and all the foam overflowed onto the stove and burner, which was still lit till quick thinking me screamed at him to turn it off so we could avoid an actual fire. The oil continued foaming over the edge of the pan for a good five minutes, maybe even longer, after it was removed from the heat.
This incident scared us but we were determined to eat fried polenta for dinner. For some (idiotic) reason, instead of trying again with fresh oil in the bigger frying pan--a proven solution to the foaming problem--I decided I'd oven-fry the squares on a baking tray. I heated up some fresh oil on a tray and when the oven was ready I put the squares on the tray and returned it to the oven. Mere minutes later smoke was pouring out of our oven and we had to deactivate the smoke alarm so as not to wake the neighbors. The polenta was completely uncrispy. In fact it was downright soggy. Turning down the oven did not help in terms of crispiness, but we had to if we wanted to avoid having to evacuate the building (it was A LOT of smoke). Finally we gave up and took the now greasy and goopy mess of polenta out.
Javert got a little scared of me at this point, since normally I get angry when things don't work out in the kitchen, and since this oil thing was his fault AND the second time it had happened he had good reason to be concerned. But I'd had a glass of wine so I was considerably less mean than usual and I simply suggested that we have pasta instead. Luckily we have an emergency supply of dried pastas so we decided on elbow macaroni and forturnately it cooked normally and tasted good. I did yell at Javert a little, because he is so damn optimistic about these food disasters and was trying to salvage the polenta way after it was clear it was inedible. We did scrape off the mostly ungreasy top layer and eat it though, before throwing the rest in the garbage.
I've never almost had a grease fire before and it was a little exciting. I was on the phone with my mom right after this happened and she said "Oh, you better keep the baking soda out to put on the fire." I felt very smug when I told her it was already out. (She doesn't need to know it's out just because we bought it at Shop Rite and havent put it away yet.) Javert then yelled "We have a fire extinguisher and we'll use that in case of fire" or something equally logical and slightly annoying but my mom is now sufficiently relieved that we have multiple ways of putting out various small fires in our apartment. I'm sure using a fire extinguisher would be MUCH messier than using baking soda, but probably is more effective. But honestly I didn't even remember that baking soda goes on a grease fire. I distinctly remember thinking as I yelled for Javert to turn off the stove that if flames did occur, I would smother them with a dishtowel. I think we can all be happy that I didn't need to put this plan into action.
My friend said she'd ask her sister who is a chemist if she knows anything about foaming old oil...but if anyone else knows I'd be excited to hear why it occurs.
posted by Emil at 5:11 AM
1 Comments:
I e-mailed her, but I'm waiting for a reply. I promise, as soon as I hear I'll let you know.
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