Kitchen log
Dated and short, written the same evening when I remember. Most of the changes to the other pages start here.
The first cold Sunday, so the fryer came up from the cellar. I had forgotten how long a solid block of tallow takes to melt: forty minutes on the low setting before I dared turn it up.
Bintjes from the market, a ten-kilo sack now leaning against the cellar door that should see us to November. The fries were good. Not Caravan good. The kitchen smells of fat, the hallway smells of fat, my jumper smells of fat. Worth it.
Supermarket Agria because the market was rained off. Perfectly good fries, a bit sweeter and more yellow. Bart said he preferred them. I am choosing not to take that personally.
Too hot to stand next to a fryer, so we cycled out to the Caravan. Closed until the 25th, said a handwritten sign taped to the window. We ate sandwiches on the bench by the roundabout instead and felt cheated, in a mild sort of way.
I know. They were cheap and pretty and I thought, just this once. Limp, grey in patches, and they drank the fat like a sponge. New potatoes are for boiling with butter and parsley. I have now written that on the inside of the cellar door, under the last thing I wrote there.
Eleven sessions on that tallow, which is two too many; it had started to foam and smelled faintly of fish, and we have never fried fish in it. Let it set, scraped it back into its carton and took it to the recycling park. The man there asked if I had a restaurant. I said no, just a problem.
Nine people, four kilos of potatoes, Rik’s fryer in the shed and mine on the kitchen counter, both going at once. I did all the first fries before anyone arrived and spread them on every tray we own, plus the lid of a plastic storage box. Second fry to order, two cones at a time. Rik stood next to me the whole evening saying nothing, which from him is praise.
We ran out of mayonnaise at about nine and very nearly out of fries. Bart cycled to the night shop. The portion helper on the potatoes page came out of that evening: I had planned on three kilos and only bought four because Rik told me to.
A big pot of stoofvlees: beef cheek, two bottles of brown beer, onions, bay, and a slice of bread spread with mustard laid on top to melt in. Three and a half hours. I froze the leftover gravy in an ice-cube tray, so on a Tuesday I can do one portion of fries with stoofvleessaus. Best idea I have had this year, and it is February.
Cold fries from last night, straight from the fridge, standing at the counter. Not recommended. Did it anyway.
The fries went brown much too fast and tasted almost sweet. It took me an evening to work out why: the sack had been on the cold floor of the cellar for a fortnight, well under six degrees, and the potatoes had started turning their starch into sugar. Brought the rest upstairs for a week and they were fine again. It is on the potatoes page now, so I don’t have to work it out a second time.
Bought a proper probe thermometer. The dial on my fryer reads ten degrees high, which means for three years I have been doing the second fry at about 170 and blaming the potatoes. Sorry, potatoes.
Bart tried fries on his own. Smoke alarm, a knock from next door, the cat left the room. In his defence the fryer was on the wrong setting. In my defence, I had told him.
First time it didn’t split. Yolk at room temperature, a spoon of mustard, oil in a thread as thin as I could manage, and a lot of whisking. My arm hurt. It was better than the jar and it lasted two days, which is about as long as it should.
The first kot I ever ate at in Ghent has closed. The owner retired. There was a note on the hatch thanking people for thirty-one years. I took a photo and then felt silly for taking a photo of a hatch.
My sister has asked me how to do “the fry thing” four times since the summer, and every time I have told her something slightly different. So this is me writing it down properly, once. It will probably get longer.
