Note that this is just what I did… I’m not saying this is a perfect recipe.

At the start of cooking.

Ingredients:

• The bones and skin from one (preferably free-range) roasted chicken.
• A large onion.
• About eight baby carrots. You could use one large one.
• A stick of celery.
• A few peppercorns.
• A small handful of herbs.

Method:

1. Break any large chicken bones into small pieces (this will help get the good bits out of the marrow) and divide the carcass up a bit smaller as well. Chuck it all in a large saucepan.
2. Cut up the carrots and celery into small chunks. Chuck those into the pot.
3. Cut the onion (with the skin still on) into quarters. Chuck that in the pot.
4. Add enough cold water to the pot to cover the other ingredients well.
5. Add a few peppercorns and whatever herbs you have handy (I used a small handful) into the pot.
6. Put the saucepan on to boil, covered.
7. When the saucepan is boiling, reduce the heat to low and remove the lid. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.
8. Leave it to simmer for three to four hours, then remove from the heat.
9. Leave it to cool, then strain liquid and discard solids.
10. Use the completed stock within four days, or freeze it.

Note that one bird doens’t make a huge amount of stock (probably about a litre), so it’s probably worth stockpiling the bones and skins until you have two or three. I was just impatient.

My ‘normal’ geek food:

The food and drink I consume in the course of my daily life is much like any normal, healthy adult. I drink tea:

A cup of tea in my NCSS mug!

The food I eat is whatever happens to be around. I eat quite a few peanut butter and jam (and sometimes brown sugar and sultanas as well) sandwiches. These are good energy food. In another life I probably would have been a pastry chef, so I make quite a lot of these biscuits and other cakes:

Peanut Butter & Choc-chip Biscuits

I also eat fruit, but nowhere near as much as I should.

My ‘I need to be awake’ geek food:

When the going gets tough, I get out my twin food addictions: Coca-Cola and chocolate. Specifically, 600mL bottles of Coke and packs of Nestle Crunch that I buy in vending machines at university:

Nestle Crunch (Flickr: wizetux)

Peanut Butter & Choc-chip Biscuits

In my mind, there is very little doubt that cooking is both one of life’s greatest pleasures and one of life’s greatest skills. Far too many people still cannot cook well enough. Jamie Oliver seems to agree with me.

Luckily for me, when I still only a small child my mum started teaching me how to cook. One of the first things I ever cooked by myself (of real recipes, not toast and the like) was these biscuits. They are extremely simple, and extremely tasty.

It’s quite possible to leave the chocolate chips out of this recipe altogether, in which case you’ll end up with peanut butter biscuits. You don’t need to make any other modifications to do this.

Ingredients

• 100g of peanut butter (whether it is smooth or crunchy doesn’t matter, but I prefer crunchy)
• 100g of butter or margarine
• 175g of sugar
• 1 egg
• 150g of self-raising flour
• 250g of chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius (320 degrees fahrenheit, 430 degrees kelvin).
2. Put the peanut butter in a large mixing bowl. It’s easiest to put the mixing bowl on the scales, tare (zero) the scales, then add the ingredients by weight.
3. Add the margarine and sugar to the bowl, and mix together.
4. Add the egg, and mix together.
5. Add the flour and the chocolate chips, and mix together.
6. Grease some oven trays (I use three trays, your trayage may vary). I use a spray can of vegetable oil.
7. Spoon the mixture (using a teaspoon) onto the trays. The size of the balls should be about 1″ across and 0.5″ high (roughly). Leave about 3-4″ between them.
8. Put them in the oven. The hardest part of the whole recipe is figuring out when they’re done. About 12-16 minutes is usual. 12 minutes will get you softer biscuits, 16 minutes will get you harder biscuits.
9. About 5 minutes after taking them out of the oven, prise them off the trays and place them on a cooling rack. If you don’t have a cooling rack, put them back on the oven tray upside-down. The idea is to let the moisture out of the biscuits so they will be chewy and crunchy instead of soft and floppy.
10. Enjoy!