Sunday, May 10, 2009

Sometimes, It Is Better To Approximate


A friend introduced us to popovers a few years ago. I said, "NO WAY! TOO MUCH WORK!" My husband said he would make them and we went out and bought a popover pan.


My husband is a retired engineer. Every ingredient was measured exactly. Every stroke of the whisk was precise. The timing was accurate to a micro second. His popovers never popped. He got pissed and refused to make them ever again.

I decided to give them a try. I hate measuring anything, so I just eyeball the amount and pray for the best. I don't use timers and if I am missing one ingredient, I just stick in something else.

He said my popovers would never work as they require precision. I said, let's see.

Today's popovers are pictured above. In fact, all my popovers look like the ones above.

He bitches and complains and eats every last one of them. If I do say so myself, they are yummy.

2 comments:

The Quarter Polish Cook said...

Gotta love those engineers! I am married to one myself.

LSquared32 said...

I do popovers all the time, and am an engineer type. It took about 5 tries to get it right. The keys are: enough eggs and the right oven heat when you put the batter in (just hot enough but not too hot). I'm not an engineer enough to measure--I do it the way my grandma did: flick a bit of water into the greased pan and watch how it pops--when it sizzles just right, the pan and oven are the right heat. Congratualtions on having the right "touch" without the experiment time :)