One day, in a kitchen far far away, Tooty the Chef searched desperately for inspiration. The family, sick to death with shop-bought yoghurts and the like, wanted a nice pud. It was down to Tooty to deliver the goods…
Being a ‘chuck-it-all-in-and-see-what-happens’ kind of chef, delivering a nice pud was always going to be a challenge for the pointy-nosed idiot. However, after much deliberation (i,e ten seconds) he settled on these primary ingredients: lemon merigue sauce mix; cornflour; Valencian orange food flavouring; and semolina.
Well obviously (being the heaviest item on the list) the semolina would need to form the bottom layer of a three-layered delight. So he boiled some up…
…and slapped the resulting goo in several eqally small serving bowls. As it cooled, he bubbled up the lemon meringue sauce and poured it on top…
So far, so esthetically pleasing. But what wonder was he going to conjure up from a jar of cornflour and a small bottle of food flavouring. Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? Custard! Orange custard…
Actually it went well. The orange didn’t make the milk go all wonky, and it thickened nicely and evenly. Sadly the colouring was somewhat lacking, so – as you can probably see – he added some yellow food dye. It didn’t work: the finished custard remained pale and insipid…
But good old Tooty didn’t give a monkey’s toss…
…coz when (that evening) he warmed them in the microwave, they were scrummy! Of course they were. Unfortunately the serving bowls were made of melamine and duly absorbed more than their fair share of the heat created by the microwaving. On the outside he might appear pleased with himself: but on the inside he’s smarting – just like his fingers and thumbs.
Tooty Nolan: Languishing Somewhere Between Clever and Stupid 