Bobotee

Crossposted to cookbook_challenge.

From my mother's cookbook. Handwritten, but not in her handwriting. Since I was a little dubious about the whole thing, I looked Bobotee up on the Internet. Apparently it is a South African dish (or at least something called Bobotie is) so I'm guessing it comes from a university friend of Mum's who emigrated to South Africa to get married just after she graduated.

( Ingredients )

( Method )

Changes, Mistakes and Substitutions
As usual I used bottled lemon juice rather than the real thing. There was some debate about what the unknown recipe writer might have considered curry powder. In the end we mixed some garam masala and chilli powder and went with that. There was further debate around whether the intention was that it should be covered while cooking and a general feeling that over an hour was a long time to cook something like this. In the end we cooked it for about 20 minutes uncovered before pouring in the rest of the liquid and then a further 10 minutes (also uncovered) after that. It was a little dry, but not a disaster. The internet suggests the final effect should be a layer of mince, with a baked egg layer on top which was not what we ended up with. I think maybe I would need to pack the down mince a bit more in the dish.

If I made it again I would probably cover and cook for around 40 minutes and then pour on the remaining liquid and cook for a further 10-15 minutes uncovered until the top was a nice colour.

Verdict
An interesting dish, but it also felt a bit flat somehow. It's gone on a list of "we'll make this one more time and then decide".

Frankenstein's Meme: Q24

Q24: A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Umm?? OK, so there is stuff I don't read as much as I once did. I had a phase when I read a lot of MCU fanfic and I don't so much now, and although I watch the movies I'm not dashing out to see them as soon as they come out any more. But I'm not sure I'd say I've abandoned it. There are still authors in the fandom I subscribe to and read their stuff when it comes out.

Sherlock, maybe? I don't think I read any Sherlock stuff any more, but I was never that involved with the fandom in the first place.

I don't play Urban Dead any more and I certainly don't write fanfic for it. I don't interact with the players much. The game is much quieter than it was in its hey-day and the state of it has become quite entrenched - the zombie hordes hold one part of the map. They don't need many characters to keep an eye on their territory and if a survivor group tries to move back in then they mobilise en masse via the Something Awful forums (I think) to quash them. There are a bunch of survivors in other parts of the map but I've no idea what they do because the zombies have lost interest in those bits. So playing it felt increasingly pointless, like there wasn't much to achieve beyond irritating trolls from Something Awful, and you know, they weren't fun to irritate, it didn't feel like a friendly rivalry but like they really wanted to make sure you got as little enjoyment out of the game as possible. I'm technically a member of a survivor group that is trying out a different set of tactics (which involves being dead a lot - honestly in game terms this makes a kind of sense) but I took a break about a year ago when teaching heated up and I've not gone back. I might go back, but I do mostly feel like its run its course.

( Questions Under the Cut )