26 June 2007
Warning: The following photo is liable to make Rob angry.
He accuses me of only ever making baked goods he didn't like when we lived together (mainly things involving bananas) and now cooking all his favourite dishes, since there's an ocean in the middle. People who know Rob know that he has a great fondness for sickly sweet things. If ever you're in the position to pick up a treat for him, think to yourself, 'Hmmm, which of these things would make me physically ill due to its sugar content?' That's the one for him!
For example: apple crumble -- not good enough. Apple crumble with a layer of toffee/caramel, drowned in custard? That's the ticket! I finally had a go at making homemade custard yesterday. I'd been really put off by all the talk of curdling, etc, but it was simple in the end. I think it helps that this recipe (what I'm going to call the Magic Nigel Slater Formula) produces a thinner custard -- better for pouring over things than spreading between layers of a cake.
Nigel's recipe calls for five egg yolks, but I scaled it down and used: 300ml milk, 3 egg yolks, and 3Tbsp sugar (plus some vanilla and a tsp of cornstarch for good measure). I think you can see the magic formula there -- easily scalable. If it makes you feel better, Rob, I later poured most of it over bananas.
These gorgeous books arrived yesterday:
We put out our own edition of A.A. Milne's The Sunny Side in the UK last year. Some time back, I received an e-mail from Harper Collins in the US, who owned the American rights and were planning on reprinting. They bought both our typeset files and the illustrations I had done for our edition, and now the book's been printed and should be available in shops.
It's very exciting to see these, for some reason. I would have expected to have been more excited about our own edition, since I did all the work for it, but it's actually quite fun to have somebody take elements of my work and produce something unexpected (and beautiful!) with it. And having a third party (especially Harper Collins) wanting to use my illustrations is very pleasing indeed.
How exciting! I think the book looks lovely. I adore A.A. Milne so I will have to look for a copy of this.
posted by sara at June 26, 2007 02:18 PM
I'm not always angry and/or eating sugary things. I do other stuff. That said, I *am* about to eat some dessert with custard on it. But that's only because you started me thinking about it.
(plus, maybe the reason I like *you* is your extreme sweetness.)
posted by Rob at June 26, 2007 09:06 PM
(Awwwwwwww. Bleh.)
posted by Anna at June 26, 2007 09:37 PM