Danderma's Blog, page 18

Alphonso Mango Granola Yoghurt Cups

Perhaps there have been one too many posts about my consumption of Alphonso mangoes in the past few weeks. I cannot blame you if you are sick of tired or seeing the golden alphonsos on my blog pages but this might be very well the last alphonso mango post of this season. The dear mango is usually perceived as a diet-villan. That for some reason eating a block of chocolate in moderation is OK while eating a nice ripe juicy mango will make you fat. According to many dieticians, eating mangoes in a meal form shouldn’t make you gain weight at all but if you eat it as a “treat” between meals it might not be good news for your weight. The regal mango deserves a meal on its own so I’ve take to eaten it for either breakfast or dinner in the form of a mango/yoghurt/granola cup!

Tell me that if you are presented with the cup above and you will turn it, saying no. Can you resist the layers goodness? My current favourite meal is a layer of crunchy granola, and if you want recommendations I’d say try Eat & Glow’s one which is quite delicious, topped by layers of creamy fat free greek yoghurt from Pick Yu and that yoghurt is so fine you could be eating spoonfuls of cream, then add thick chunks of just ripe mangos and repeat until you are done layering.

I usually use half a mango per cup, and if you believe it or not, mangoes and kiwis have the same calories per 100g and the amount of mangoes used are not that much after all. If I have the same cup for both breakfast and dinner, I’ll end up with consuming one mango and one pot of yoghurt per day. Not bad at all.

My mango yoghurt granola cup is quite a treat and if you leave it in the fridge for a few hours the granola will soak up the mango juices and turns slightly soggy yet a bit mango-ey, which is perfect for people who prefer chewy over crunchy. The yoghurt can be mixed with a hint of vanilla, or honey, or cinnamon, or agave syrup but I do not mind eating it that way, plain flavoured so it doesn’t overpower the taste of the gorgeous mango.

What is your favourite current method of eating your alphonso mangoes?

The Alphonso Mango Preserve

It was a gloomy Sunday, and I hate Sundays especially Sunday mornings where we go back to work after the weekend and it just seems that no matter what fun activities do I schedule for a Sunday afterwork, it still feels heavy on my heart. Anyways, I had just returned back home from work, hassled by the events of the day and the crazy drive home, when there was a knock on my door and a small brown paper bag with a white envelope was handed to me.

Believe it or not, I was more excited by the envelope than by what may lay inside the paper bag! I hoped it was a note, not an invitation, and it was indeed a note and a very lovely one as well. The note wished me a happy Sunday and a happy week, something I really wished would come true and was heartfelt and truly made my day. It was also addressed to me by Chef Yasmine Al-Abdulghafoor, the owner of the delicious Pastry Shop who keeps spoiling me over and over again and only recently sent me some Alphonso mango tarts that are inspired by yours truly!

This time however what was inside the paper bag wasn’t something from the bakery, it was more personal. Chef Yazzy had made some mango preserve and was kind enough to think of me and send me a jar! A JAR OF MANGO ALPHONSO PRESERVE!

A JAR OF MANGO ALPHONSO PRESERVE! TOPPED WITH SAFFRON STRANDS! AND WITH A LOVELY NOTE! Never before have I imagined there would be an alphonso mango preserve, I don’t know why but every since we were little we’ve seen mango chutney’s and mango achar (sour pickles) but never a mango preserve! Now this makes total scene! The jar was a luminous orange colour beckoning for me to come over, oh my!

My first response? I almost danced, the I swayed a bit in my place because of happiness, then I grabbed the nearest spoon I could find and dunked it into the jar! Dan dararan daraaaan! Would you look at that? How gorgeous does the mango preserve look?

I resisted the urge to cram the entire spoonful of mango preserve into my mouth, I was fearing for my blood sugar to be frank, I’m not 18 anymore. I looked around, and there just happened to be a boxful of “Diet Treats” from Diet Care that arrived that afternoon with a copy of their Healthy Cooking cook book and an invitation to a the healthy lifestyle event they are throwing this week. Remind me to tell you about an amazing story which involves Diet Care’s cookbook that I am planning to post about, hopefully this week.

Anyways, there was a jar of luscious looking fudge-y diet friendly brownies, and they were just what I was looking for. They are diet brownies after all, no? How much damage could they cause? Would you look at these brownies?

And then there was the spoonful of mango preserve… forgive the bad quality of the picture for my hands were shaking with joy and there was no time to waste on a tripod.

Ta-da!

Dear mango preserve, where have you been all my life? You’d make the perfect combination to anything and everything! Why would people consume sour pickled mangos and not sweet mango jam is beyond me! How did it taste? Like a melted golden mango alphonso yet more creamy with jabs of mango chunks to chew in between smooth juicy mango waves.

Oh and it wasn’t very sweet! Not at all! In fact, I did something I’ve never dared do before, I did have a spoonful of mango preserve and enjoyed it. I don’t think there was much sugar added, it was sweet as it is and it will PERFECT over everything! What I missed, thought, is some vanilla ice cream and preheating the brownies a bit before putting together concoction! Guess what I’m going to do this weekend for my dessert? Yes, you’ve got it!

I don’t know exactly what I did to deserve this, but I must have made someone very happy or done something amazing to someone to be granted this jar which is not only holds the golden mango preserve, but several moments of pure joy for the days to come. Now dear Chef Yasmine, this jar must be sold by you before the season is over! I’ve tried many preserves before, locally made, and none of them could hold a candle to this one! Thank you so much for making my week and my horrible Sunday better, Chef Yazzy, I love you

Now, if you know how to make preserve and have mangoes at home you must make an alphonso mango one. Perhaps a tropical cocktail preserve, with passionfruit, pineapple, and mangoes would be great as well especially on bed of freshly toasted slice of bread! Now, can anyone tell me the difference between jam, preserve, and marmalade?

Joining Ad Mailing Lists by Force

The other day a friend of mine was telling me that someone complained to her that I was hard to contact and why don’t I plaster my email all over my social media channels. I tell her that if anyone needs to contact me, they can do so by using the Contact Us form on my blog, I am a blogger after all, but she still thought I was being unreasonable and what’s the worse that could happen by making people’s lives easier and just stating my email and phone number for the world to see.

Well, there are many reasons why I don’t post my email directly and why I prefer to keep my phone number private unless absolutely necessary. Lets start with the phone number, I don’t give it out unless I know the person personally or there is a delivery involved, yet I get an unreasonable amount of calls during my work time, or lunch time, or quality time with my family which is intrusive and I cannot answer nor am I obliged to answer any strange numbers for no reason. My phone number is personal and people who truly know me know that I loathe nothing more than talking on the phone so most of them leave messages for me.

However, there was an incident where a “PR” company got hold of my phone number and now keeps showering me with the worst ad whatsapp messages from the strangest numbers and I can block them all I want, they keep coming and coming. I’m seriously thinking of calling one of those ad places and asking them who your PR company is, then calling that company up and demanding they remove my phone number from their mailing list. Contacting me is fine, adding me to a mailing list without my consent or without the means to remove myself is a breach of my privacy and rights as a human being in my opinion.

Now we go on to emails, its not the smartest idea to get your adversities your email for the world to see, security wise, and I try my best to reply only to authentic looking people with genuine requests. However, again and again PR companies would take my email and subscribe me, against my will and without consulting me first, to their advertisements mailing list and keep emailing me their ads. Unsubscribe you say? I did! I swear I do unsubscribe, but I find myself subscribed again after I remove myself from their ad mailing list!

Dear contact, when I trust you with my email or phone number I wish you’d value that trust. Adding me to mailing and whatsapp lists by force, and re-adding me after I unsubscribe, is not professional at all and is actually quite annoying and the worst offenders are those who never actually contacted you before, they just magically acquired your email address and subscribed you right away. I wouldn’t be publishing this post if it was something that was happening once in a blue moon but sadly, as of 2014, I’m plagued daily by spam emails and whatsapp messages and I’ve had enough. Please, respectably, do not add my email to any ad mailing lists via email or whatsapp. I appreciate that you are only trying to do your job, but people would rather be added to ad lists by their own force of will and not be added by force and re-added when removing themselves. Thank you, much obliged indeed.

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I wasn’t really waiting that anxiously for the second part of the remake of Spider-man to hit the theatres, for although I did enjoy the Amazing-Spiderman part one I couldn’t connect to it much. Sleeker, yes. More modern, yes, perhaps even more faithful to the comics, yes, but I still do prefer the original Spider-man trilogy starring Toby Maguire. I did see it on the day it was released, because we’ve been having quite a dry spell on the movie front recently and it came at a time where there was no other blockbuster to compete with, not in Kuwait anyway, so why not?

The film picks up from where we left off in the first part, with Spidey feeling guilty about dating Gwen after he promised her dying father to leave her alone, and his guilt makes him turn into a jerk BF. They both graduate high school which I have to say though both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone do look very young and youthful, then don’t look like teenagers graduating high school, it would have been more believable if they were in college already. We learn more about the disappearance of Spider-man’s parents and why did they leave in such a hurry in this movie though.

I did feel very sorry for the bad guy, who started out as a lonely guy just wanting a friend in this world. Two of his scenes however gave me strong deja-vus to previous movies but as I discussed this with my friends no one could see the resemblance. The first one is when Electro, then only known as Max, was tumbling through the streets with his blueprints and it strongly reminded me of a scene of chaos from Superman III movie in the 80′s. The second, when he is all alone and mad with sadness, he reminded me of Cat Woman in the 90′s Batman and there was a third scene, while Spider-man was fighting Electro, that looked like a scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Oh and Spider-man’s ring tone? It’s the  Spider-Man song from the original first movie of the first trilogy! Now that was a nice nod connecting the two trilogies IMO.

The ending is my favourite part, though it wasn’t the happiest of endings but it did bring an unexpected and quite soon of a twist. The movie was okay, bordering on good if I may say, but I don’t see myself buying the DVD nor waiting impatiently for the third part, I did enjoy the first one better.

P.S. I prefer James Franco’s Harry Osbourne!

Touching Up my Blog Theme

Ta da! A new background! Only one side column instead of two, and a bigger posting area!

How do you like the few touchups to my good old theme?

Since its May 2014 and my old theme was around since March 2011 I thought it was about time to give it a little facelift. I’ve been in love with the retro background pattern for as long as I can remember, I even used it on my blogger business cards which, surprisingly, I’ve printed out but never distributed to anyone. Therefore, I think the time has finally come to incorporate it into my blog for a much needed redecoration.

I’ve kept the changes simple for the time being, nothing major so I wouldn’t personally be alienated by the look and feel of it. I also felt that the two columns were messy and crowded so I removed the middle one and kept the original right sided one. Because I’ve been heavily relying on my pictures in the past couple of years I always thought the posting area width was too narrow and so where the pictures. Now this means I can post much bigger pictures and I have a few decent ones in store for you so stay tuned.

So what do you think? I hope it doesn’t feel too dark for you, O faithful readers of my blog? Please feel free to point out what do you think should change in the theme, you know how much I value your honest opinion! I hope you guys like it

P.S. Thank you Jacqui for the background picture! I’m waiting for the new touched up header as well :*

Trying Porridge for the First Time!

Because this is likely to be the last post I’ll publish in April I wanted it to be about another thing I’ve tried for the first time in my life, because 2014 is the year where I do things I’ve never done for the first time. You won’t believe it perhaps, but I’ve never ever had porridge before until March 2014! The first time I felt like trying porridge was after reading about it being consumed for breakfast in Harry Potter’s books and I was intrigued, but never been able to bring myself to consume it, mainly because the greyish lumpy matter didn’t look that appetising to me and I didn’t fancy spending a long time on the stove in the morning only to consume something that I won’t not like and didn’t look that appetising in the first place.

Then again I was in the Sainsbury’s in March and I came upon the new Kellogg’s instant porridge pot above and I remembered my vow at the turn of the first hour of this year of my promise of trying something new and doing something I’ve never done before with every passing day, so you can understand how when I ended up at the cash register with the bowl of instant porridge in my hand. Later that day, I followed the instructions on the package and posted about it on Instagram. I was surprised at the amount of people who actually loved porridge, however, I wasn’t impressed by the taste at all even though I was informed by porridge enthusiasts that M&S’s instant one is quite good indeed.

To be frank when Kellogg’s porridge didn’t make much of an impression I didn’t think I’d bother with porridge again. I still couldn’t see why people would choose it everyday over cereal and/or buttered freshly toasted bread with a side of jam. The next day however as I was standing in line for my daily dose of cappuccino at Cafe Nero I saw the Porridge ad above and figured I might just try it one more time.  I was standing in line for Nero when I saw this.

And one day again I did! It was lunch time, and I was hungry and needed the energy. I originally wanted porridge with berry compote but they were out so I settled for good old maple syrup instead.

And with the first bite, I was smitten, and I understood! It was warm, quite warm, and the warmth spread from my stomach through my lungs and the rest of my limps on that cold afternoon. The maple syrup added a raw earthy sweetness to the taste, somehow emulating the feel of burning wood and if its even possible, added to the warmth I was already feeling. I was content, I was happy, I almost ate the entire bowl and ordered another one. Where have you been, o goodness in a bowl, all my life?

When I returned home I brought back with me this back of porridge oats with raspberry and yoghurt biscuits just in case I began craving porridge again. However, though they are very good they don’t taste or give the same feel as the excellent porridge I had at Cafe Nero. Now I’m asking you, my dear readers and porridge eaters, where do you get your porridge fix in Kuwait from and how do you do it? Help a porridge craving person please!

Have You Watched Mr. Selfridge?

Have I told you before about Mr. Selfridge, the TV series?

Surprisingly it seems that I never did!

If you are like me, a person with high regards to all things historical and cannot stop wondering how daily life used to unfold in a bygone era of the past, and/or you love the department store Selfridges -its my favourite department store, ever!-, and you are bored with whatever is shown on TV these days then you might one to check Mr. Selfridge out, for its one absolutely delicious show to get hooked on.

I don’t know why I never mentioned this before, but as of last year and after I watched the first episode of season one, I was smitten. Mr. Selfridge follows the events of the real life of Mr. Harry Gordon Selfridge, the American businessman who came to England once and was so appalled by the stiff service he received one day while shopping, he decided to change the way people shopped by opening his own revolutionary store in England. You get to ride back in time and enjoy Selfridge’s journey, from being financed and built to assigning employes, the opening, the unique customers experience provided in store, all entertwined with the juicy drama of the characters themselves.

The show is really good, the acting is spot on, the way people dressed, the ideas, the energy of being on something new and creative, and Did you know that Mr. Selfridge is the one who came up with the phrase “The Customer is Always Right?” I wonder how it would have been, shopping at Selfridges with Mr. Selfridge himself watching over the daily works of the store. I want to dine at the Palm restaurant, which was destroyed in the war, or at least go to where it used to be located before it closed down forever. I am lucky to have dined at the rooftop of Selfridges in 2012, which was reopened for the first time after Mr. Selfridge closed it down decades ago and had indeed both a restaurant and a golf course. Ah well, if only the department store Selfridges would take eager Mr. Selfridge fans on a historical tour of the store, I am always trying to match which area in the series is now which area in the store and now whenever I enter the premises I crank my neck and walk in a semi-daze trying to recognise the old parts of Selfridges shown on TV. We need a tour, dear Selfridges, we definitely do!

The first season had only 10 episodes and aired on January 2013 on ITV and by the time it was over, I personally almost watched all the episodes back-to-back, I was left wanting more and had to down my sorrow by asking my dear friend Lama to bring me the Mr. Selfridge biography that sparked the idea for the series. The book is by Lindy Woodhead and is titled “Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge” if you are interested and my friend got it for me from Kino in Dubai Mall. 

The second, and long awaited season, aired on January 2014 and I cannot express how happy I was to be watching new episodes of both Mr. Selfridge and Sherlock together. I was lucky enough to be in London during the airing of the last episode of the season in March and I was on twitter with the rest of the British nation watching the show and tweeting our thoughts and that was fun. However, now I have nothing to do but re-watch the ten episodes again.

The third season is currently being developed and is scheduled for release in January 2015. If you haven’t seen the show already, I urge you to start watching it now. Lucky you, you have 20 new episodes to watch while I have none. Mr. Selfridge is the kind of TV series that captivates you from the moment the opening song comes on, I personally get shivers of delights whenever I hear the opening. I need more crazed fans around me so we could discuss the series together, I cannot seem to find anyone who is interested enough.

Cadbury’s New and Amazing Flavors!

Ever since Cadbury was taken over by Kraft company in 2010 there has been many new and different flavours of the good old Cadbury Dairy Milk bar. Oreo, Toffee Popcorn, Cookie Crunch, Toffee Apple, and many more.  Though I am faithful to the sacred original dairy milk and the walnut dairy milk bars, I was always up to trying the new ones just for the sake of trying. None really made much of an impression on me or became a favorite, aside perhaps from the cookie crunch launched last year which was the best of them all. However, after my last trip to London I’ve fallen head over heels in love with not one, but two new Cadbury dairy milk flavours that are now in my top five favourite Cadbury chocolates list!

First things first, the new biscuit/dairy milk bars! Two different products, one is a bard of daily milk with tiny slabs LU biscuits dotting the bar and the other just the same but with tiny slabs of Ritz salted crackers dotting the bar.

I must confess that I personally wouldn’t have reached out to those LU and Ritz Cadbury Dairy milk bars on my own but I have a husband who adores all types and kinds of biscuits and for his sake I got some of those for him to try, they came in a pack of three anyway. I decided to try the Ritz one day when I arrived back in Kuwait.

The good thing about those hybrid dairy milk and biscuit bars is the ration between biscuit and bar. If you don’t like the biscuits, you can nibble your way around them and when you do bite into the whole thing the amount of chocolate is more than the amount of biscuit.

The ratio of chocolate and biscuit also means that the chocolate is more dominant so you get all the smooth richness of the sweet dairy milk chocolate with the added bonus of the crunch of the biscuit. I did however prefer Ritz over Lu and claimed all the bars as mine. Why?

Because the Ritz crackers are salty! And they added a salty crunchy edge to the already delicious dairy milk and why on earth wasn’t a hint of salt added to Cadbury’s dairy milk before is beyond me! If they make a salted caramel biscuit Cadbury dairy milk bar, I guarantee it would be the best chocolate bar in the entire world! Lu’s biscuits however just added the crunch and not the salty edge, therefore didn’t impress me much.

The second Cadbury dairy milk bar is the one my husband grabbed off a shelf just because and didn’t even look twice at the “flavour”. When I arrived in Kuwait I read the label and it said “Cola Pretzel Honeycomb”! How interesting? Cola as in cola cola? Pretzels?

I took a bite, and the rich crunchy chewy salty sweet bomb that exploded on my tongue made me take another, and another. Who would have thought that jamming an entire cinema snack in a bar would yield such a taste? One word to describe it: AWESOME! Quite addictive sadly and since I almost polished off the entire bar in one go and I didn’t have any more in my stash, I do hope any of you good nice chocolate-appreciating readers would be kind enough to inform me, here or on instagram, the moment they see this bar in Kuwait either in Sultan Center or any other chocolate selling outlets. Do try it yourself, that cola pretzel bar and the ritz one, both are amazing and I hope they keep making them forever!

Dinner at Boccini Pizzeria

Just before I boarded the plane to London in the last days of March I received an invitation for the opening of a new Italian Pizzeria in Levels restaurants complex, the name was Boccini. I liked the invitation and I’m a sucker for Italian restaurants and really wanted to go but I had a plane to board. However, once I returned home and was ready to go out again I made sure to go dine in Boccini and that was last week.

Since the Levels restaurants complex is located in Al-Mahbourla it was quite a drive to get there. There are several different restaurants in Levels and all have outdoors seating. Since it was night time the weather wasn’t that bad, it was a tad hot but gusts of cool wind kept ruffling my clothes and we decided to grab the last remaining table outside. The place was chockfull of diners and chatters.

The menu wasn’t very big: there are appetisers, salads, pastas, pizzas, and a specials menu with desserts and drinks/beverages. I liked the fact that the menu was illustrated with pictures of the dishes especially the ones with long Italian names. It didn’t take us long to choose our dishes, I however wished there was a bit more vegetarian options for me.

For drinks I was in the mood for a mojito and they had a passion fruit version which I’ve ordered. It was quite good and refreshing but the taste of passion fruit wasn’t that dominant. If I hadn’t read the ingredients in the menu I wouldn’t have known about the passion fruit.

The first dish of the night, the goat’s cheese and grilled vegetables salad, was absolutely delicious. The portion wasn’t too big which is good because we intended to share it as an appetiser and didn’t want to fill up on salad.

The salad was sprinkled with pistachios which, to my surprise as I’m not a big fan of pistachios, did add a lovely kick to the tangy goat cheese. Yum!

Next came Boccini’s version of the Melanzane alla Parmigiana, deep fried breaded eggplant slices layers with gorgeous melted cheese and sprinkled with tomato sauce and more and more cheese. It was my free day so please do not judge me for ordering and devouring that dish.

I loved the melanzane parmigiana,  though I thought the breaded eggplant slices themselves needed a hint of seasoning for they were a bit bland for my taste, nothing a good crush of pepper and salt didn’t fix though.

Next came the main dishes. There was the fettucini or tagliatalli with mushroom cream sauce. I could never tell the difference between the two pasta type.

Thought I’m not the biggest fan of cream based pastas, like at all, I did have a forkful to check the taste.

How was it? It was OK, just like a mushroom cream pasta should be but it wasn’t anything special and I didn’t reach out for another forkful. I think there are more exciting options in the menu that I could have chosen.

My order was the margarita pizza. I have this theory that to have a pizza, really and truly, you must order it margarita style. I do enjoy other types of pizzas every now and then but my absolute favourite is, and will always be, the good old margarita.

Boccini have not one, but two different margarita pizzas. However, I chose to go with the basic one and not the fancy one to see how it goes. I know their oven is wood based one and that the wood they use is a special soaked and imported one so you can see how excited I was when the freshly baked and quite aromatic pizza was placed in front of me.

The pizza was good, quite fresh and delicious and cooked to perfection. However, I’ve had better pizzas. There was too much oil on top and the dough tasted 100% like Iranian bread dough. Its not bad, don’t get me wrong, its just not the best thing on their menu in my opinion. Others can disagree with me of course, to each their own, my husband loved it and couldn’t understand where I was coming from.

Now on the specials menu there was another kind of pizza, a rolled up stuffed one that is cut into little dumplings. Now I didn’t catch the name of those but they were absolutely delicious!

The one I chose had grilled eggplants, cheese, and a hint of tomato sauce inside. There was another ingredient that I asked to be left out but I cannot remember what it was and they did leave it out with a big smile. Those little naughty things were quite dangerous, perfectly seasoned, and very cheesy!

We initially asked for these as appetisers, but they were the last thing to be brought to our table which meant we were too full to polish them off and believe me I very much wanted to!

I did however ask for them to be wrapped as takeaway and I took them home with me. The next day I had them for breakfast and if its possible, they tasted even better the next morning, those little devils! Highly and absolutely recommended!

We wanted to stay for dessert, the picture of their Tiramisu was calling out for me. Sadly a table of three sitting next to us were flipping the menus and enjoying cigarettes and had no problem blowing their smoke in our faces. The wind carried all their smoke to our lungs and we chocked on our food and since there is nothing anyone can do for them, after all they are sitting in an open area and there is no law against them smoking, we simply asked for our food for takeaway and we paid and left, sadly thinking of the tiramisu that I could have had. Yes, three ignorant smokers ended my long-awaited and quite enjoyable dinner for me just because they couldn’t have the courtesy not to blow their smoke in other diners faces as they sat waiting. It isn’t the restaurants fault though and there was nothing they could have done anyway so I didn’t bother asking.

The service was excellent, swift and very polite though we’ve been asked five different times about our food and if everything was all right. The place is lovely and the food, if you know what to order, is quite delicious. The overall atmosphere is quite cosy and if you have a problem with people smoking like I do then you can always ask to be seated in a non-smoking section inside, its getting too hot to sit outside anyways these days. Would I go again? For sure I will, actually there is an Opera night in Boccini coming up and if you are on instagram you will see how it goes. Boccini is worth the drive, and do not miss the little pizza devils they have in the specials menu.

Boccini is located in Levels Restaurants Complex in Al-Mahboula. For more information you can check their instagram account (@BocciniKw).

Help: How to Clean a Burned Pan?

So I was trying to cook some of my frozen stuffed quinoa cabbages for lunch, damn those cravings, and because it was taking forever to cook I decided to increase the heat underneath my favourite pot a bit. I turned away for a moment then the smell of black smoke brought me back to the now burning pot. I managed to save my lunch, it was quite good and thankfully had no hint of smoke to it, but the bottom of the pan was charred and had slices of potatoes stuck stubbornly to it, unwilling to go.

This pot in particular is my absolute favourite. It is of a very thick and very heavy stainless steel and wasn’t cheap to purchase. Most of my other cooking pots are from Ikea but not this one so throwing it out is simply out of the question. This is meant to stay and serve as an inheritance to future generations.

That being said, I’m at loss on how to remove this thick layer of crispy black burnt layer at the bottom. I tried boiling the pot with some strong cooking detergent and water, I tried rubbing at it with a metal seam sponge thingy -we call it seam in Kuwait, I’m not sure what its universally called though- and all I managed to do is scrub away the burnt potato slices resulting in the mess above :’(

I want my favourite pot back! I am terribly sorry, my dear pot, to have burnt you but I wish you’d cooperate and let go of that stubborn layer of whatever it is that is clinging to your base. I am seriously contemplating using a detergent that we use as a rust remover just to see if it would work or not but I thought I’d ask first and see if anyone has any tried and tested methods of scrubbing a badly burnt bottom of pan clean? Help?