I've always enjoyed cooking but for the first few years we lived together our kitchen was so small it diminished my enthusiasm a little. When we moved to Barnsley and my kitchen was suddenly dramatically bigger - not huge, but you could put a pan down without losing half your counter space - I found my cooking enthusiasm renewed. I'm not the world's best cook and I'm certainly not the tidiest or best at presentation, but I enjoy it. With a personal benchmark of 'Dave ate it and he did not die', I'm never going to be a Masterchef but I can at least share my culinary fun along the way!
Cheese Sticks
These week's recipe was for cheese sticks, courtesy of Eat In magazine. Technically they were supposed to be cheese twists but we'll get to that. Based on a straightforward shortcrust pastry recipe but with sugar removed, this was effectively a dough enhanced with a huge amount of cheddar and parmesan before being re-rolled and cut into strips (to then be twisted).
What went wrong?
The twists. I suspect I hadn't rolled vigorously enough because as soon as I started to try twisting all of the cheese fell out of the strip. After a couple of attempts I decided to make cheese sticks the target goal, as cheese twists were never going to happen on this first attempt.
What would I do differently next time?
More rolling! Never be lazy on the rolling.
End result?
I'd probably be booted off the opening round of Masterchef, Bake Off, Iron Chef or any other cookery show you could name with this strange attempt but actually they were pretty yummy. They lacked a little crunch - maybe they'd have crunched more as twists - but they were quickly being set upon by Mr B and he has given them the seal of approval.
Success or failure?
Success! As long as I'm never required to make them look pretty...
