Pastry - round one!

Well the choc mousse and ginger sesame chicken worked well so I'm branching out into other new recipes. Todays attempt was pastry - I've never done pastry before (my big bro rocks at it) and I thought it was about time to try. The wonderful WI ladies provided the recipe (amazing books if you can find them). So I tried sweet shortcrust pastry which could be done in a food processor (minimal hand contact - the reason I left the lab also occurs in any activity where my hands get wet. The inital step worked-ish. Once on the table it was all a bit gooey so I dumped it in the fridge for a couple of hours (over dinner and some NCIS). Once MrT went to work (nightshift) I tried again and it was tough at first (rock solid) but it softened up pretty quick. So 2 flan cases and 12 mince pies later things seemed to be ok. I even did star lids for the pies (apparently MrT's mum used to when he was a kid). I tried to weigh down the cases with rice in greaseproof paper (didn't really work) so when I took off the paper to do the last bit and most of the edges fell off. Still I'm going to make them into tarte au citron for our pre-christmas dinner party so maybe the guests won't notice the lack of edges.

I don't even like mincepies so I hope MrT likes them when he gets home in the morning. Esp since I have sustained one burn in the process.

Now for Weds - I'm going to cook a ham. I have this crazy (not unusual for me) obsession with cooking a ham. In the same way MrT felt buying a freezer was a very grown up thing to do I feel that way about cooking a ham. parsnips will also be involved but I'm not sure how just yet.