Tomorrow is the first meeting of The Book Circle & Pudding Club I said I would make the first pudding and as such found a never-before-tried-but-nonetheless-easy recipe for Blueberry Trifle. At the weekend I shopped for all the ingredients, and as it needs to chill overnight, this evening when dinner was over I set about making the pudding.
The recipe requires a mixture of white wine and elderflower cordial to be poured over the spongecake base. So I took a bottle of white wine from the fridge and proceeded to open it. Unfortunately, I am not proficient with a corkscrew (I know, I know - you find that very hard to believe!) and so when I gave it a tug, I wasn't THAT surprised that only the half the cork came out of the bottle.
Further attempts to release the remaining cork only succeeded in pushing it further into the bottle, to the point where I decided the best course of action was just to push it all the way in and sod the consequences. So I did this, rather unusually choosing my index finger for the pushing. With hindsight, I don't know what possessed me to do that, especially as I got said index finger stuck in the neck of the bottle.
When the 'right hand one' was finally released from captivity and the cork displaced, I was able to pour out the wine. Of course, it was full of bits of cork. It's at times like this you are glad you did O level Chemistry, and I was able to put what little knowledge I had of distilling, or whatever it was, to good practice by basically straining the wine throught a sheet of Bounty kitchen roll in a sieve.
It seemed to work - well, I tried drinking a glass and it didn't appear too gritty. I had a second glass just to be sure.
Really, the only thing I had to do to make this pudding, apart from open a load of packaging and putting things in a bowl in the right order, was to whip cream for the top. And so I set about that task with gusto, only my electric beaters chose tonight to conk out mid-beat, spreading cream around myself and my kitchen faster than a slurry tank spreads in a field. I had to complete the job manually but quickly - I didn't want the other half to arrive home to find me having consumed half a bottle of wine and covered in whipped cream.
When he did arrive home, some order had been restored. He noted the wine which had by now taken up residence in a plastic measuring jug and asked was it for cooking. I told him I'd finished using it and he could drink it if he wanted, but warned him it wasn't that nice. He took a glass and after tasting decided he did indeed like it and asked what it was. I pointed to the empty bottle in the sink at which point he turned sort of pink and started mumbling words like 'Australian ... reserve ... boomerang ... gift ... special ... chilled'
I reckoned that wasn't a good time to show him the half cork in the bottom of the bottle.
2 comments:
If you have dropped some cork in the wine bottle, place a piece of kitchen towel in the palm of our left hand and the bottle in your right. Give the neck of the bottle a firm tap against the palm of your hand and the cork bits will fly out and any wine accompanying the cork will hit the kitchen towel. Reverse if you are left-handed.
Practice outside in red clothes first time, but it does work and impresses guests (unless you've already unimpressed them by dropping half the cork in the wine).
I am married to a professionally-trained caterer and she taught me this.
I had my application for the Book Circls and Pudding Club (well, I was really only interested in the pudding bit) ready to post but I think I'll forget it.
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