Tag Archives: aga

Camping stoves and why I despise them (and vice-versa)

Posted on by
2

This morning I was standing by my lovely, warm, reliable (unless it runs out of fuel) Aga and boiling a kettle, and remembering a moment three weeks ago when we had just arrived in the cedar forests of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.  It was twilight, and we had spent some time threading the Land Rovers through the tiny track between the mighty trees to find somewhere to stop and camp.  As we drove, we had spotted a troupe of macaque monkeys who were sitting in a silent circle and reminding me strongly of our Parish Council having one of its slower meetings.

We pulled up in a tiny clearing, and everybody but me disappeared rapidly into the cool depths of the forest to gather firewood or do anything else people need to do after a long drive.  I offered to make tea and was left on my own with the clear scent of cedar, the distant glint of snow on the mountains seen through the tree trunks, and a camping stove that I was completely unable to manage.

I filled a kettle with water and approached the stove, which fell over.  I put the stove back upright and put the kettle on it.  The stove fell over again.  I cleared a flat area and put the stove carefully back on it.  Then I carefully put the kettle in the very centre of the stove.  And the stove leaned slowly over until the kettle slid back onto the forest floor and tipped out most of its precious load of water.  I took a deep breath, refilled the kettle, found a completely flat rock and set up the stove again.

All seemed good, so I put the kettle on the stove then realised that I hadn’t actually lit the stove.  I took the kettle off, turned on the gas and struck a match, which immediately blew out.  When I had a little thicket of spent matches lying at my feet I went to find a lighter, and used that.  The stove finally roared into life and went up like a towering inferno.  I slammed the kettle down on it and the flames licked up its sides until the kettle resembled a phoenix in its burning nest.

This couldn’t be right, so I turned the gas down.  The stove went out.  And I couldn’t find the lighter, which I had put down somewhere and didn’t discover again until the next morning.  I went back to the Land Rover, and after a long search discovered the back-up lighter, which didn’t have much fuel in it and produced a tiny flame which was just enough to get the stove going again.  I carefully replaced the kettle and soon we had lovely boiling water for tea.  I took the kettle off the stove again and once more the flames went up with a whoosh and looked in the gathering dark like a distress beacon.

And this time I couldn’t turn the gas down.  There was a lever, and a red knob, and I tried pulling, pushing and twisting everything I could reach with absolutely no good results at all, while the stove continued to flare up into the shadowy heights around me.  At this moment everybody else arrived back from the forest, attracted to the light like moths to a lantern, and somebody competent turned the stove off.

So that is one of the many reasons I adore my Aga, it doesn’t do stuff like that.  It is a lovely friendly cooker which always seems to be on my side.  Unlike some I could mention.

Simnel cake/gander attack!

Posted on by
7

I hope everyone’s had a great Easter weekend (and are still having it).  We’ve been all over the place, visiting relatives and returning briefly to feed and tend the livestock in between fresh bouts of roast lamb, chocolate eggs and simnel cake.

On which subject, if anybody followed the appalling saga of my simnel cake, it ended up on a surprisingly positive note.  We had a brief hiatus when I covered it in marzipan, added 11 balls of marzipan to represent the apostles, put it in the Aga to glaze and (guess what?) forgot it again.  The 11 apostles collapsed and dripped into the rest of the marzipan, and the whole lot went dark brown and as hard as a tortoise’s shell.  It was far too late to start again, so I chipped the burnt marzipan off and tried again with fresh marzipan, hid the joins with fluffy Easter chicks and served it up with a flourish on Easter Day.

And it was really rather nice!  I don’t recommend cooking simnel cake three times and burning the marzipan, but if you do that thing,  just stick with it and keep the faith and all may yet be well.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today.  During one brief dash home to feed animals, we left the orchard gate open again and Porous (gander) processed out into the road.  Up the road came Julia with her trainer, practising for a half marathon.  Julia runs very, very slowly and her trainer was more or less marking time.  Porous came trundling out, spotted a victim (2 victims) and went straight into the attack –  head down, wings unfurled, orange rubber legs flapping along at super speed.  Julia’s trainer just slammed into fifth gear and zoomed up the hill at an elegant gallop but best of all was Julia.  I could have sworn that she was physically unable to run faster than a fast walk, but not a bit of it, she can go like the clappers!  She whizzed off in the trainer’s wake at warp speed, with Porous pounding along behind her, hissing fiercely and then the whole lot of them disappeared round the corner.

Porous came back in a while, with a swagger and a smirk, and let me drive him back into the orchard and slam the gate.  But when Julia finally slowed down, I’m hoping she found it very encouraging to have demonstrated to herself and her trainer that she can run like the wind if pressed.  Porous: super trainer (and thug).

Cake attack

Posted on by
12

Here’s another therapeutic blog, but it’ll have to be a quick one because Easter is ganging up on me and I have incoming relatives in an hour.

Today’s subject is the Simnel cake.  I’ve had various experiences with cooking fruit cakes in the Aga over the years.  There was the time I took it out too soon and it was more or less raw (back in those days I thought that 5 hours cooking would be enough to roast a hippopotamus – wrong!)  Then there was the time I forgot it altogether, took it out two days later and found a perfect cake shape just made out of charcoal.  Then there was another, emotional year when I took the perfect fruit cake out of the oven and turned it immediately out of its tin (I wasn’t concentrating because some chicks were simultaneously hatching out in the kitchen incubator).  The thing exploded into a vast puff of heavy fruit cake, spread over a wide area.  Acting on my feet, I stuffed the whole lot back in the tin and let it cool then plastered over the cracks with marzipan and really you’d hardly have known.  Especially once I’d added a wide ribbon around the side which acted like a corset.

This year I put it in and left it for about 6 hours.  It smelt heavenly and looked fine, so I took it out and left it to cool.  When I turned it out, it was very little changed from the original cake mixture I put in.  So I put it back in the tin and back in the Aga (twice cooked Simnel cake, my own recipe).  After another 4 hours I took it out again, and in a spirit of innocent enquiry turned it out of the tin.  Raw again, and exploded again, over a wide area.  So I shoved the whole lot back in the tin, smoothed it down and put it back in the Aga, where it will stay until this evening.

And yes, that was wonderfully therapeutic: I’ve stopped having waking nightmares of uncooked cake mixture coming at me.  Perhaps the Aga is just feeling a bit special after running out of oil last Friday (see previous therapeutic blog), and doesn’t want to be taken for granted.  And on the plus side the house smells wonderfully of hot, spicy cake.  Little will the incoming relatives know that they have a bat’s chance in hell of eating it for tea.  We’re having hot cross buns, I think.