Judith Proctor's Journal

 My daughter phoned last night. She was greatly amused and knew that we would love to hear what our granddaughter was doing.

Oswin has a little toy kitchen and she was playing at cookery.  She'd made her meal, put it into a pan to cook, and then put a towel on top of the pan.

She got that from us.  We actually do use towels when cooking some meals.  They're a simplified version of hay box cookery.  

When making something like a casserole, get it all in, simmer it for several mins, then turn off the heat and wrap a thick fluffy towel over the top. Wrap it like a turban (or any shape that uses all the towel and makes sure that no heat escapes).  If it's an electric cooker, be very careful that the towel does not touch the element (you don't want to set it on fire and electric hobs can stay hot for some time - be sure the casserole dish/pan is covering the hot part completely)

You can keep something cooking merrily for half an hour or more this way.  If you need a longer cook, just remove the towel, bring back to simmer for a minute or two and then turn off the heat and put the towel back on.

There are several great advantages to this trick.

Firstly, you cannot burn the food.  If you're not exactly sure when your meal needs to be ready, you can keep it lovely and hot without needing to stir it.  (the heat is coming from within, rather than from below, so the food will not stick to the bottom and burn)

Secondly, you use less electricity and cooking uses a lot of energy.

It's dead easy to do.  Even a three year old can remember!

Cooking with towels is a trick I've tried a couple of times now.

I recommend it to all Hitchhikers fans, cooks, people with busy lives and those who want to save money or reduce CO2 emissions.

It's very handy if you need to cook a casserole or similar and aren't sure exactly when you'll want it and also want to make sure you don't burn it if you go out and abandon it to its own devices for an hour or so.

It's also very cheap, because you don't use any gas or electricity after you've heated it up.

I'd read about hayboxes, which struck me as a good idea, but far too demanding on space and involving bits of hay in your kitchen, so I adapted the concept in the spirit of Douglas Adams

Cook your casserole (or pressure cooker) on the hob until it's boiling and then simmer for a couple of minutes to make sure the heat has penetrated all the ingredients.  Then, turn off the heat, leave your casserole right where it is (you can move it if you want to, but if it's an electric cooker, you might as well use the residual heat in the hob), wrap the top and sides of the casserole in a couple of thick, fluffy towels.  (If you take it off the hob, then you'll want towel underneath as well)

Leave for several hours and eat whenever you want to.  The one we cooked yesterday was still hot four hours later.  The long, slow cook had allowed all the flavours to seep into the liquid and it tasted fabulous (guests asking for spoons to make sure they didn't miss any of the liquid on their plates).  Slow cooking can also give beautifully tender meat.

The bigger the meal, the better it's going to retain the heat.  It can't burn, because you've turned off the external heat.  I went out for  a walk after setting up yesterday's towels.

You can cook pretty much any kind of stew this way.  Yesterday's one was sausages, parsnips and carrots for five people.  

It's cheap, it's great for lazy people who can't plan meals to exact deadlines, and it makes great-tasting food!