Tooty the Chef and Citrus Semolina!

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 the Chef’s Rubbery Custard Surprise

It’s not often that Tooty the Chef turns his amazing gastronomic talents to the subject of sweets; but when he does, it’s going to be worth the effort. Well in theory anyway. The Rubbery Custard Surprise started well enough. Our resident  silly hat wearer rolled out some puff pastry into thin layers…

He then estimated the surface area required to fill the mould at varying depths; cut the requisite  four differing sizes out of the pastry; then baked them…

For some reason he had expected them to expand in every direction. They didn’t. As they grew upwards, they shrank sideways. But he cared not one jot – just as long as one of them fitted in the bottom of the mould – which it did, of course…

Then it was time to tackle the tricky part: making the custard thick enough to set, but not too hard that it  required a pick axe to get through. Here he was only partially successful. Going heavy on the custard powder, and light on the milk, the custard was set before it had begun boiling. Nevertheless Tooty the Chef pressed on and dragged it from the pan into the mould…

At this point there was to have been another layer of puff pastry; but for reasons that will become clear, the great nosh-maker went straight to the cooked slices of apple…

…which he coated liberally with cinnamon. The following picture explains the loss of a pastry layer: he needed it to fill out the huge gaps in what would have appeared the third layer. Oops…

Unable (probably because of his age) to learn from his mistakes – or ‘creative hiccups’ as he prefers to call them – he produced  another floppy custard brick…

…finally topping it off with the third (fourth?) layer of pastry…

…which didn’t quite fit.  Hopeful that a hour or two in the cold might make it all sag slightly, and therefore fill the mould correctly, Tooty proceeded to the fridge…

Although appearing confident, the Wok-Master had an inkling that this was not going to be a tour de force in the realm of custard, so whipped up a fabulous stir-fry…

…that would leave his victims so full and satisfied that they wouldn’t notice this…

Oh dear, he forgot that his propane oven burns the bottom of pastry at the drop of a hat. So he pretended that the brown bits were cinnamon. He also provided a knife and fork to eat it with. But at least he didn’t need a hammer and chisel: it could have been worse. Pity it looked so dull and tasted so  bland. Or should that be termed ‘subtle’?