Thursday, May 23, 2013

Which Wine should One Serve with Baked Beans?


One evening a week, DS goes to gym classes, leaving me to fend for myself.

Fending tends to gravitate to putting half a frozen pizza in the oven, but has none the less required some reflection.
Firstly - how do you get half a frozen pizza?
Normally, you start with a complete frozen pizza, of course (though at this level of cuisine, "of course" is a presumptuous phrase).

Early attempts tended to end with numerous fragments of frozen pizza, which taste the same, but look even less professional.
The secret is to find a very strong, very convex kitchen knife, which you then press down very firmly across one diameter whilst rocking to move the pressure-point across the pizza.
A mezzaluna would be ideal, but we don't have one.
When sufficiently weakened (& all the culinary art is there) place the pizza so the edge of the work-surface is just under your new groove and press down (Seasoned glass & tile cutters will understand) when it should break cleanly into 2 perfect halves.

If so - don't forget to kick the bits of cheese out of the way before DS gets back.
If not - more rocking with the curved knife next time.

Then there is the cooking time & temperature.
In the end, I settled for what is certainly not the optimal-pizza method, but must be the quickest & cheapest.
Put the cold pizza on a low grid in the cold oven.
Put a non-stick tray underneath to catch the cheese.
Turn the oven to 220°C.
Return to TV or PC.
Wait for oven to ping or smoke alarm to warble.
Turn oven off & eat pizza.

Today though, I fancied something more "special".
So - 205gm of Branston Baked Beans (so much tastier than the well-known brand leader).
2min at 50% in microwave.
Simultaneously (so not for absolute beginners) plate in oven at 60°C & thick slices of bread in toaster at max (what happened to real men's toasters?).
Take plate, add toast, add butter, add beans, add dash of Lea & Perrins.
What more could you want?

Ah yes, this is France, after all, so - wine?

Unable to find any recommendation for accompanying BB's, I settled for a Cabernay Sauvignon.
It came out of a Bag-in-Box, which seemed appropriate somehow.

All this leaves me wondering if I am really as French as I thought...
This kind of behaviour would be judged worse here than lying about your Swiss bank account, I suspect!

Parting thot: "Perfectionism is spelled:    p  a  r  a  l  y  s  i  s" - Winston Churchill

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