Experimental Cooking Day!

Yesterday (Saturday 29th January) was Experimental Cooking Day!

Experiment #1 - Hot Dogs on Car Engine

Hot dogs and onions wrapped in foil and placed on engine during drive to Fewston Reservoir, arrive at reservoir, retrieve hot dogs and onions, eat.

Believe it or not this has been a popular method of cooking for many years - when I first researched this I came across a newspaper article where the reporter had cooked an entire Christmas dinner (and warmed the mince pies on the cooling engine while he ate the main course) on the engine of a classic car but I can't find it now!

There's even an entire recipe book (Manifold Destiny) devoted to the art of engine block cooking!

http://www.wisebread.com/cooking-great-meals-with-your-car-engine-the-heat-is-on

Experiment #2 - Chicken in Dishwasher
Chicken breast wrapped in foil and steam cooked in the dishwasher

This kind of makes sense when you consider that it can get as hot in your dishwasher as it does in your oven, decided not to take the opportunity to use the dishwasher (for the first time) to actually wash dishes at the same time!

http://lifehacker.com/5478670/how-to-cook-something-in-the-dishwasher

Experiment #3 - Salad in Washing Machine
Salad and dressing placed in bag and placed in washing machine for spin cycle

This was Brian's idea - I should come with a sign attached to me warning people to be aware that if they suggest something that smacks of lunacy I may very well give it a go!

http://tinyfarmblog.com/spin-cycle/

Experiment #4 - Egg in Kettle
Egg placed in kettle, boil

Ok, so apparently it's not wise to consider cooking baked beans in your kettle - really?  Well, who'd've guessed?!

http://www.kettlecookery.com/

Results

Um, well, experiment #1 didn't exactly go to plan!  Ideally the food should be placed on the manifold but we couldn't get to the manifold in John's car, in fact, we were really limited in finding anywhere at all suitable to position the food - I'm thinking perhaps it would have been wise to check this out beforehand!  So, we ended up sliding the foil parcels against the radiator and extending our journey to go as far as Pateley Bridge. 

We arrived at Pateley Bridge and inspected the food - stone cold.  Although, I'm convinced one end of one of the packages was just about starting to get warm, honest!  A quick trip to 'the oldest sweet shop' to pick up some proper midget gems (they should be hard (Lions)!) and kop kops then back home to cook the hot dogs the traditional way before we all wasted away!

Experiments 2, 3 and 4 were pretty much a success, the chicken was a little too pink in the middle for any of us to risk actually eating any of it but the egg was boiled to perfection (we had visions of having to pick bits of egg out of the kettle for hours!) and the salad was well mixed (if a little warm!)!

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