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kaberettWhich, as it turns out, we first did seven years ago.
In early 2016 I was not having a... brilliant time of it. I was taking an interruption from the PhD because my antidepressants had, fairly catastrophically, stopped working; I was having a lot of housing/housemate stress; and I was consequently spending a lot of time at A's -- indeed, friends helped me move all of my stuff from one side of London to t'other, to move in with him, the last weekend in February.
One of the ways I deal with "stress" and "not wanting to eat" is tackling Learning A Culinary Technical Skill.1 The previous summer, I'd gone up to the Edinburgh Fringe with the same friends who spent the weekend moving me, and discovered the bounties of the crème brûlée van.
So I decided to learn to make custard, for the purposes of crème brûlée! And A very gamely ate a lot of slightly dubious experiments until I'd worked out how to achieve exactly the result I was after, most of which we brûléed with his soldering iron.
Adam's soldering iron, I should at this point clarify, is -- crucially -- gas powered and has removable tips. This means that you can remove the tip and use it as a flame torch, without getting anything that's actually touched actual solder on your food, which would not constitute Best Practice. We thought we'd only do it a few times, as proof of concept, and then if I didn't lose interest in making crème brûlée I'd get a proper culinary blowtorch! ... it worked sufficiently well that we didn't bother, and for the last mumble years the soldering iron body has lived in one of the utensil pots rather than in the tool box with the rest of its accessories and accoutrements.
This will not work if instead of flammable gas your soldering iron runs off, e.g., electricity. It is, additionally and furthermore, a bad idea to stick the metal tip of any kind of soldering iron into anything you are intending to eat! But if you have a soldering iron with more-or-less the same characteristics as A's, I can confirm that this approach works entirely adequately!
So there you go. That's the story. :)
1. If I am sufficiently sad and sufficiently uninspired by the entire concept of food I will accidentally end up making quiche and twice-cooked chips and salad from, variously, the flour and the whole potatoes on up, and usually by the time I've wrangled all of the moving parts and tasted things as I go along I wind up no longer feeling repulsed by food and actually willing to ingest it so that the effort doesn't go to waste.
In early 2016 I was not having a... brilliant time of it. I was taking an interruption from the PhD because my antidepressants had, fairly catastrophically, stopped working; I was having a lot of housing/housemate stress; and I was consequently spending a lot of time at A's -- indeed, friends helped me move all of my stuff from one side of London to t'other, to move in with him, the last weekend in February.
One of the ways I deal with "stress" and "not wanting to eat" is tackling Learning A Culinary Technical Skill.1 The previous summer, I'd gone up to the Edinburgh Fringe with the same friends who spent the weekend moving me, and discovered the bounties of the crème brûlée van.
So I decided to learn to make custard, for the purposes of crème brûlée! And A very gamely ate a lot of slightly dubious experiments until I'd worked out how to achieve exactly the result I was after, most of which we brûléed with his soldering iron.
Adam's soldering iron, I should at this point clarify, is -- crucially -- gas powered and has removable tips. This means that you can remove the tip and use it as a flame torch, without getting anything that's actually touched actual solder on your food, which would not constitute Best Practice. We thought we'd only do it a few times, as proof of concept, and then if I didn't lose interest in making crème brûlée I'd get a proper culinary blowtorch! ... it worked sufficiently well that we didn't bother, and for the last mumble years the soldering iron body has lived in one of the utensil pots rather than in the tool box with the rest of its accessories and accoutrements.
This will not work if instead of flammable gas your soldering iron runs off, e.g., electricity. It is, additionally and furthermore, a bad idea to stick the metal tip of any kind of soldering iron into anything you are intending to eat! But if you have a soldering iron with more-or-less the same characteristics as A's, I can confirm that this approach works entirely adequately!
So there you go. That's the story. :)
1. If I am sufficiently sad and sufficiently uninspired by the entire concept of food I will accidentally end up making quiche and twice-cooked chips and salad from, variously, the flour and the whole potatoes on up, and usually by the time I've wrangled all of the moving parts and tasted things as I go along I wind up no longer feeling repulsed by food and actually willing to ingest it so that the effort doesn't go to waste.
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Date: 2023-02-07 09:44 am (UTC)(<3)
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Date: 2023-02-07 12:18 pm (UTC)<3
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Date: 2023-02-07 11:27 am (UTC)Admires.
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Date: 2023-02-07 11:49 am (UTC)So, is that crème soudé?
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Date: 2023-02-07 12:42 pm (UTC)HEE. YES. I have in fact made barbecue food with lab glassware in my misspent youth... :)
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Date: 2023-02-07 12:42 pm (UTC)asd;lfaslkdfj
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Date: 2023-02-07 04:51 pm (UTC)A 100ml beaker makes a great shot glass.
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Date: 2023-02-07 04:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-07 05:31 pm (UTC)Um, yes, that!
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Date: 2023-02-07 06:56 pm (UTC)Solderer of Fortune
Date: 2023-02-08 07:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-02-10 08:43 pm (UTC)i don't know why i'm even surprised
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Date: 2023-02-11 09:20 am (UTC)I JUST FORGET NOT EVERYONE WAS HERE AT THE TIME BECAUSE, AS YOU SAY, IT'S NOT EVEN SURPRISING???
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Date: 2023-02-11 05:54 pm (UTC)When I've made CB in the past (when I could eat any of the ingredients), we used a hot air gun to caramelise.
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Date: 2023-02-11 08:29 pm (UTC)Ooh, it had not occurred to me we could use that for this purpose! Thank you for the idea. :D