Not just a flash in the pan
06 November 2014
or The dubious life-long benefits of a scientific education
It seems to be fundamental to human nature to whinge about one's lot. We do it all the time on the boat. It's over 12 metres long for God's sake and still we whinge - usually about the fridge and the limited dimensions and work surface of the galley.
Despite the fact that I do most of the whinging, it's Liz who's primarily affected. She drew the short straw when the division of labour was allocated and usually spends great chunks of her day preparing tasty, nutritious meals. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that buying, preparing, cooking, eating and clearing up after food accounts for more than half our waking hours.
Going away on the campervan for six weeks puts things in perspective and makes us really appreciate the facilities on the boat. The van may travel at over ten times the speed of the boat, but it's still just a motorized shoe box. Trying to cook in that soon has you pining for Birvidik's galley.
So, of course, we didn't try to cook in it. Well, not much anyway. We ate out more and bought ready meals and deli food, especially in France. Liz liked this arrangement very much. So much so that when we got back to the boat I suffered a sudden rush of blood to the head and decided to take over cooking duties for a bit, so as to extend her culinary vacation.
Well - it can't be all that difficult can it? All you have to do is follow the instructions in the recipe book.
For my first masterpiece I chose Mussels Saganaki - suitably Greek. Having foraged around Lefkas for the ingredients I set to in the galley while Liz sat at the computer desk next to it and wallowed in her new-found freedom.
I got out our large, cast-iron frying pan, sloshed in some oil and fried the spring onions, garlic, cumin and chillis over a high heat. Smelt good.
"What's next?" I thought and consulted the recipe. Ouzo - that's what was next, 80 ml of it. I decanted the 80 ml into a measuring cup and threw it in with a flourish.
Liz looked up, startled, when she heard the violent hiss as the liquid hit the hot oil. Well, I was expecting a bit of a hiss as the water would vapourise on contact with the hot oil, but it was just a teensy bit more vigorous than I was expecting. Quite a lot more vigorous, actually.
I shook the pan to mix the ingredients. This, of course, merely served to accelerate the process. I hadn't really thought this through, had I? Just as I realized the full implications of what I had done, the said implications came spectacularly into being.
What I had just realized, but too late to do anything about it, was that this particular ouzo was 50% alcohol by volume.
So 80 ml of it contained 40 ml of pure ethanol.
Which boils at 78 degrees C.
Having been poured into oil at a good 150 degrees C.
Producing a total of just a tad under 20 litres of highly flammable vapour. And that's before it expands with the heat.
Sitting on top of a lighted gas ring.
Just as I put all of these facts together into a cohesive narrative, a balloon of flame a metre across erupted from the pan. Have you ever noticed that kitchens in general, and restaurant kitchens in particular, tend to have high ceilings? There's a reason for this.
Most professional kitchens have a minimum headroom of 2.5 to 3 metres, which leaves around 2 metres above the cookers for the fire to play around in and burn itself out before it can ignite its surroundings and reduce the entire neighbourhood to a charred and smouldering wasteland. Birvidik's galley has considerably less than a metre.
I was in a quandary. If I put the pan down and dived for the fire blanket I ran the risk of the flame staying in one place and igniting the headlining above the cooker. If I moved it around the fire would last longer, but would be less likely to spread to the headlining. I decided on the latter and danced around waving the flaming pan in front of me like some naff front-of-curtain act at a Victorian music hall. Liz stared at the unfolding scene in open-mouthed disbelief.
Luckily it turned out to be a good call. The vapour burned itself out, leaving just a few flickering Will o' the Wisps in the pan. My beard gave off a slight aroma of singeing, but other than that there was no damage, other than to my reputation and already fragile self-esteem.
I was hoping that some good might have come from this - you know along the lines of Liz deciding that it would probably be better all round if she relieved me of kitchen duties and did the job properly. Unfortunately, the finished saganaki was rather tasty and so I failed even on that front.
Have to go now, I've got a Spicy Chickpea and Vegetable Casserole to knock up.