A Simple Plan
[This is sort of an old story at this point, since I've been busy wandering around the city and not checking internet as often as maybe I should (and that's caused hijinks of its own, but that's another story), so imagine it's still my second or third week in Berlin, and that it's time for me and Jeremy to repay Jesse and Jane for the dinner party they had a few days before.]
Due to astounding successes by me in the fields of Buying a Pan That Will Fit Lasagna and Finding the Hidden Ricotta Cheese in The Frighteningly Well-Stocked Cheese Department of the Local Supermarket, Jeremy and I were able to move forward with our plan of having Jane and Jesse over for delicious lasagna. Only a slight crimp was put in the plan when it turned out I was wrong in assuming that German boxes of lasagna noodles would have a usable lasagna recipe on them. There's certainly a recipe on the back of the lasagna noodle box, but it involved melting butter and making complicated sauces, and I was pretty sure that the last time I made lasagna, it mainly involved dumping various layers of meat sauce and cheese into a pan. So we decided to "wing it," which is a plan that for some people always results in some sort of success, and with me results about 20% of the time in strange burnt messes, 30% of the time in me finding myself wandering around Piraeus four hours before my flight is going to leave, 10% of the time in explosions of some form, and 40% of the time in something vaguely resembling non-failure. And somehow, this time, winging it worked, sort of, and we produced something akin to lasagna, with two kinds of ground meat and some delicious bacon [note: next time use WAY MORE bacon. mmm.] and untold many types of cheese. Stage 1 of our plan had succeeded, beyond all odds.
Our original Stage 2 (dessert) plan had been to make cookies, but since our cooking equipment situation means that the lasagna pan is also the cookie pan (it's basically a 4cm-deep cookie sheet), and since the amount of lasagna was frankly more than the four of us could handle, the cookie plan fell by the wayside. In its place: the Greatest Plan Ever.
Put simply: Deep-Fried Mars Bars.
For those of you who didn't work in the Let's Go office this summer, let me explain a few things. First: people in England eat very weird things sometimes. Second: one of these things is a Mars bar that has been deep fried in oil, and probably breaded or something. Third: it was a not-minor goal of the Let's Go: Britain bookteam to locate a deep fryer and make these deep-fried Mars bars. Fourth: this never happened.
But Jeremy and I had it on good authority (a Scottish person) that you didn't need a deep fryer, just some hot cooking oil, a few Mars bars, and some bread crumbs. Obviously, this was not a plan we could avoid trying. And just as obviously, this plan would not fall under the 40% that are in any way successful.
We were certainly prepared: I found some taste- and smell-free soybean oil, a box of breadcrumbs, and a half dozen Mars bars. After a little debate on the best way to make the bread crumbs stick to the candy bars (dip them in milk? cover them in oil? - we ended up trying the latter), we had some faintly breaded Mars bars, and a saucepan half full of heating soybean oil. I'm not sure what the first mistake was, but it's definitely true that not one of the four of us doubted that we should let the oil boil first. It must have been memories of watching french fries cook in fast food places that made us stand around the stove, waiting and waiting for some bubbles. Obviously, this did not happen, because now that I think about it, I don't think oil will boil at any temperatures reachable on a normal stovetop. So after a while, we put a bar on a spatula and dipped it in the oil.
What followed would probably have been predicted by anyone more experienced at cooking, or maybe just at life, but we, four Harvard-educated adults, were frankly kind of freaked out at the violent bubbling and smoking that occurred. Then the oil started to turn brown with melted chocolate, and various smells - by far the best of which was that of burned sugar - filled the room, so we moved the bar to a paper towel and observed its very disgusting state of oily meltedness. Clearly, we were doing something very wrong.
I tried to fish the pumice-like deposits of hardened, burnt chocolate out of the oil while Jeremy attempted to create a thicker breadcrumb covering for the second bar. For this, we brought out the milk, and ended up making some sort of paste of milky breadcrumbs - a paste that prefered to stick to literally any surface other than chocolate. In order to cover the candy bar, we eventually had to make a half-centimeter-thick cocoon of breadcrumbs, but this time there was at least no mass melting of chocolate. The result? A mottled brown, black, and tan log that smelled like deep fry, and tasted kind of like a pancake wrapped around a Mars bar. The meltyness of the caramel made it somewhat edible, but the atmosphere in the room, which by this point was thick with oily steam and probably the ghosts of sugar molecules, worked pretty hard to make anything unappetizing. I think we ended up throwing away the last half fried Mars bar, though heroically (and kind of disgustingly), we managed to eat between two and three of the things.
So Annie, Adrienne, Eoghan: if you still want to make some Deep Fried Mars Bars, here are a couple hints: use an exceedingly well-ventilated room, make a thorough covering of breadcrumb paste, and please, please don't wait for the oil to boil. And if your inventory of cooking vessels includes only one pot, one saucepan, and one frying pan, don't do this at all. We're still trying to scrub burnt oil off of the sides of the pan, and it's been quite a few weeks since the night of our misguided plan.
Due to astounding successes by me in the fields of Buying a Pan That Will Fit Lasagna and Finding the Hidden Ricotta Cheese in The Frighteningly Well-Stocked Cheese Department of the Local Supermarket, Jeremy and I were able to move forward with our plan of having Jane and Jesse over for delicious lasagna. Only a slight crimp was put in the plan when it turned out I was wrong in assuming that German boxes of lasagna noodles would have a usable lasagna recipe on them. There's certainly a recipe on the back of the lasagna noodle box, but it involved melting butter and making complicated sauces, and I was pretty sure that the last time I made lasagna, it mainly involved dumping various layers of meat sauce and cheese into a pan. So we decided to "wing it," which is a plan that for some people always results in some sort of success, and with me results about 20% of the time in strange burnt messes, 30% of the time in me finding myself wandering around Piraeus four hours before my flight is going to leave, 10% of the time in explosions of some form, and 40% of the time in something vaguely resembling non-failure. And somehow, this time, winging it worked, sort of, and we produced something akin to lasagna, with two kinds of ground meat and some delicious bacon [note: next time use WAY MORE bacon. mmm.] and untold many types of cheese. Stage 1 of our plan had succeeded, beyond all odds.
Our original Stage 2 (dessert) plan had been to make cookies, but since our cooking equipment situation means that the lasagna pan is also the cookie pan (it's basically a 4cm-deep cookie sheet), and since the amount of lasagna was frankly more than the four of us could handle, the cookie plan fell by the wayside. In its place: the Greatest Plan Ever.
Put simply: Deep-Fried Mars Bars.
For those of you who didn't work in the Let's Go office this summer, let me explain a few things. First: people in England eat very weird things sometimes. Second: one of these things is a Mars bar that has been deep fried in oil, and probably breaded or something. Third: it was a not-minor goal of the Let's Go: Britain bookteam to locate a deep fryer and make these deep-fried Mars bars. Fourth: this never happened.
But Jeremy and I had it on good authority (a Scottish person) that you didn't need a deep fryer, just some hot cooking oil, a few Mars bars, and some bread crumbs. Obviously, this was not a plan we could avoid trying. And just as obviously, this plan would not fall under the 40% that are in any way successful.
We were certainly prepared: I found some taste- and smell-free soybean oil, a box of breadcrumbs, and a half dozen Mars bars. After a little debate on the best way to make the bread crumbs stick to the candy bars (dip them in milk? cover them in oil? - we ended up trying the latter), we had some faintly breaded Mars bars, and a saucepan half full of heating soybean oil. I'm not sure what the first mistake was, but it's definitely true that not one of the four of us doubted that we should let the oil boil first. It must have been memories of watching french fries cook in fast food places that made us stand around the stove, waiting and waiting for some bubbles. Obviously, this did not happen, because now that I think about it, I don't think oil will boil at any temperatures reachable on a normal stovetop. So after a while, we put a bar on a spatula and dipped it in the oil.
What followed would probably have been predicted by anyone more experienced at cooking, or maybe just at life, but we, four Harvard-educated adults, were frankly kind of freaked out at the violent bubbling and smoking that occurred. Then the oil started to turn brown with melted chocolate, and various smells - by far the best of which was that of burned sugar - filled the room, so we moved the bar to a paper towel and observed its very disgusting state of oily meltedness. Clearly, we were doing something very wrong.
I tried to fish the pumice-like deposits of hardened, burnt chocolate out of the oil while Jeremy attempted to create a thicker breadcrumb covering for the second bar. For this, we brought out the milk, and ended up making some sort of paste of milky breadcrumbs - a paste that prefered to stick to literally any surface other than chocolate. In order to cover the candy bar, we eventually had to make a half-centimeter-thick cocoon of breadcrumbs, but this time there was at least no mass melting of chocolate. The result? A mottled brown, black, and tan log that smelled like deep fry, and tasted kind of like a pancake wrapped around a Mars bar. The meltyness of the caramel made it somewhat edible, but the atmosphere in the room, which by this point was thick with oily steam and probably the ghosts of sugar molecules, worked pretty hard to make anything unappetizing. I think we ended up throwing away the last half fried Mars bar, though heroically (and kind of disgustingly), we managed to eat between two and three of the things.
So Annie, Adrienne, Eoghan: if you still want to make some Deep Fried Mars Bars, here are a couple hints: use an exceedingly well-ventilated room, make a thorough covering of breadcrumb paste, and please, please don't wait for the oil to boil. And if your inventory of cooking vessels includes only one pot, one saucepan, and one frying pan, don't do this at all. We're still trying to scrub burnt oil off of the sides of the pan, and it's been quite a few weeks since the night of our misguided plan.
posted by Katherine at 10:12 AM
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