Pavlova.

Yesterday was mother's day, I made a pavlova.

I had to do the whole thing by hand with a tiny, partially broken whisk, but is was worth it - I love the way the slimy yellow-tinged egg whites gradually become thick, white and lustrous with only the addition of sugar and a bit of elbow grease (mmm, delicious).

I don't care what they say - size DOES matter. At least when it comes to whisks.

It took about 45 minutes but after I put on some banging choons and chatted to people coming in and out of the kitchen, I hardly noticed the work. Plus, it kinda sorta counts as some form of exercise right? Ok, maybe eating it totally negated the three calories I burnt making the thing but whatever.



The recipe is easy, it's just two ounces of sugar to each large egg white. Add a pinch of cornflour and a splash of vinegar (or lemon juice) and it becomes a pavlova. Bake in a low oven for around an hour and 20 minutes and leave to cool. Top with whipped cream and whatever fruit you have lying about - I used frozen raspberries.



I planned to make some sort of raspberry sauce with hints of lime and ginger, but unfortuently there was prosecco to be drunk and bubbly stuff gets me tipsy pretty quickly. This was evident when it came to decorating the thing - the cream and raspberries were dumped unceremoniously on top and I accidentally broke the base a little. Oops.

What happens when you drunkenly attempt to decorate a pavlova.

So taste wise how was it? Well, honestly, there's only so much you can say about it. Sweet meringue (shatteringly crisp outside, marshmallow soft inside), cool cream, sharp raspberries. Simple but pretty awesome.
But my favourite part of the whole thing was definitely getting lots of gratuitous shots of the silky gleaming mixture:

Oh, and yes, I did do the bowl-over-the-head test. I used my sister for that.

Blackurrants.

Apparently we have blackcurrant bushes in the garden.
I wasn't aware of this fact until my brother and sister proudly brandished a large bowl of the things in my face this morning.
Despite my obviously marvellous and astounding talent of being able to eat a lime like an orange, I find blackurrants too sour, so whatever we decided to make with the haul, it had to involve copious amounts of sugar. (And so it did! A whole kilogram, in fact.)

After one initial boiling with just a bit of water, we strained them to remove all the skins and tiny stalks and possibly insects. The thicker stuff that came out was mixed with sugar and combined with cream to make a delightful fool.



The rest was boiled again with sugar and a few pieces of ginger. Whilst skimming, I took the time to enjoy the pyschadelic swirls of colour in the pot.

Okay, so it doesn't look too impressive, but trust me, it was.
Kind of. I'm clearly very easily amused.
Anyway, after the syrup was boiled I squeezed in one lime to make a blackurrant, ginger and lime cordial. It's scarily addictive in its un-watered down form - tart and sweet, slightly hot and tantalising from the ginger, and fragrant with lime. I needed a bigger lime hit however, so I trickled some cordial into the squeezed out lime and sucked it all back out. I love lime, did you know that? My teeth were squeaky and my stomach hurt after repeating this process many times, but it was worth it.


I think I also might have invented my own cocktail. This cordial + gin + tonic water = a good drink? I know nothing about cocktails, but the family seemed appreciative. (The kiddies, of course, got an alcohol free version.) Can I ™ that? I'm going to ™ that.

That's the non-alcoholic version. It was pretty cool the way this foamed right over the top of the glass, and it does make a beautiful - and entirely natural - colour. The parents christened this a Bloody Sophie, which they found hilarious. I most certainly did not, and would love and suggestions for an alternate name before that one sticks..

The last blackurrant related item were some cupcakes with blackcurranty icing. My sister is having a sleepover as I type and apparently children these days require sugary treats at ridiculous hours of the night. We ran out of cupcake cases, so I hedged my bets with some petits fours cases - adorable, but labour intensive. What would have been 12 normal cakes turned into roughly 45 mini ones.

Icing them was not fun, let me tell you. Here is a 10-year-old brother's hand to illustrate the size:

Cute, but annoying.

Toffee meringues, blackberries & cream.

There was a small cupful of egg whites in the freezer, and upon finding that there was nothing else interesting to bake with in the cupboards, decided to try my hand at something new.

Meringue, fruit and cream isn't an original combination by any stretch of the imagination, but I really had forgotten just what a good one it is.
I called these 'toffee' meringues because the muscavado sugar gives them a gorgeous buff colour and toffee-like taste. I was going to christen them 'burnt sugar meringues' but decided that sounded a bit too pretentious! So toffee it is.
If we must get technical about it, these are actually mini pavlovas - the addition of cornflour and vinegar makes them so. But, hey, does it really matter? They taste bloody brilliant.

Ingredients:
5 egg whites
200g brown granulated sugar
150g light or dark muscavado
2 tsp cornflour
splash of vanilla
1 tsp vinegar

How to do it:
Preheat oven to gas 4/180°C
1. Whisk the egg whites until they hold firm peaks.
2. Add the sugar slowly, spoonful by spoonful, beating after each addition.
3. Once the mix is thick and glossy, fold in the cornflour, vinegar and vanilla. Spoon onto a paper-lined baking sheet.
4. Stick in the oven, close the door and immediately turn the heat down to gas 2/150°C.
5. Bake for about 20 minutes, then switch off the oven, leaving the meringues in there for about half an hour.
6. Sandwich with whipped cream and serve with a tumble of fruit alongside (blackberries for preference).



The home oven is completely unreliable, so I go by eye for everything which is not a great idea for something as exacting as meringues! But I didn't find them too scary - as long as they're baked at a low-ish temperature, you'll be fine. I started off at roughly gas 4, immediately went down lower, thought they weren't cooking so whacked the heat up a bit more, and then switched it off completely. They turned out lovely though! And as you can see, I had no greaseproof paper so used foil instead. It was absolutely fine, you just have to peel them off rather nimbly.
I also foolishly did this recipe by hand. Suffice to say, my arm just about dropped off.
Also, I think my mix wasn't quite stiff enough - I didn't even contemplate doing the bowl over head test! So it's probably best doing it in a machine.


If you're in the UK, look out for 'king' blackberries. I think they may be exclusive to M&S. They are absolutely stunning fruit. The normal variety are delicious, but these, these are something else.

I honestly haven't enjoyed a dessert as much as I enjoyed this - the meringues were crisp and chewy, the cream soft and thick, the berries slightly tart and staining everything a gorgeous purple.
My little heart is all aflutter with joy after the first attempt at these worked!

Tiramisu for a birthday dinner.

Sibling no.3 turned his first double-digit number yesterday.
As is family tradition, we are allowed to choose three courses for a birthday dinner.
He went for vietnamese spring rolls, followed by rendang, with tiramisu for dessert.
For some reason he didn't choose the crispy spring rolls (why? why would you forgeo something deep-fried?) and instead went for the fresh variety. I must admit, they taste totally amazing thanks to the great filling my mum makes.
I think it involves carrot, pork mince and some form of cabbage, as well as copious amounts of fresh grated ginger, a few cloves of garlic, red chilli, and a splash of nam pla (fish sauce). I made nuoc cham (a dipping sauce of lime juice, nam pla, sugar and red chilli) to go with them. Once constructed, they look gorgeous with the slightly translucent rice paper skin shining whitely against the plate. They were delicious with a few tiny purple basil leaves tucked inside too.


I was going to write about the rendang (a sort of curry dish popular in Malaysia. It's usually made with beef, and it's slowly cooked. Once all the liquid has evaporated, the curry paste is added and fried with the then tender meat). However, I realised it is highly un-photogenic. Like, even worse than stew . You can see what I mean by clicking here .


So we shall instead skip gaily onto dessert.
It's a bit weird to sing happy birthday whilst crowded round a tiramisu and sticking candles in it, but that's just the way we roll. Yeah.
This is the recipe I used.



The whole thing turned into quite a debacle.
I had already started making the sponge when I realised I had only 6 eggs - the recipe calls for something like 9.
Secondly, there was no sugar in the house apart from muscavado.
Thirdly, I managed to scramble my egg/sugar mixture when I left it on the heat and wandered off to do something else..

So I ended up making a few adjustments to the recipe.
I was meant to use 3 eggs + 3 yolks in the sponge, instead used only one extra yolk.
And, since I screwed up the egg mixture for the mascarpone layer, that ended up eggless.
With everyone else at work/school, I had to work out which bottle in the cupboard was rum. I naively thought it would actually say 'rum' on it (that's not too much to ask, is it?), so when I couldn't find any I instead sniffed my way through about 5 different drinks until I found the one that smelt like it would be good in this dessert. I still do not know what I put in there!
Luckily the muscavado worked - the soft dark sugar gave the dish an extra flavour not to be found in caster, and lent the mascarpone and cream a lovely colour.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool the way the eggs and sugar turned from this:



into this:


Or maybe that's just me, I'm very easily amused.

Orange cake and summer eating.

Tonight two American scientists came to our house for dinner.
I think their accents are funny.
They have trouble understanding mine.
It's silly, at school I was teased for my accent being too 'English' and 'posh', but to the rest of the world I might as well be wearing a kilt and swilling whisky.

It was really hot here today, round about 25°C.
Dinner was simple as mother had no time to shop or cook, because she came home straight from work with the Americans in tow.
As an impromptu starter, we had houmous with a dusting of paprika and a drizzle of olive oil, olives, vividly pink radishes, crusty baguettes and a pressed ham hock terrine.




As the 'main course' there were prawns with garlic, red chilli and finely shredded basil, fish done on the barbeque (which unfortuently managed to fall apart spectacularly) and potatoes baked in cream and shallots which contrasted rather oddly with the otherwise light meal, but in my defence I had no idea what was happening and was instructed to make something, anything, with the mountain of spuds that had arrived with the veg box on wednesday.


For dessert it was yet another concoction I managed to bluff my way through - a rosewater, almond and orange cake with a honey and orange syrup poured over it. Very similar to the orange and poppyseed one in fact, but better.
It was extraordinarily dumb of me to completely make up a recipe when I was supposed to be impressing guests. Ah well, it ended up being delicious so that's all that really matters I suppose. I have no idea what the measurements were, but I basically creamed together butter and sugar (not too much sugar, as it would have been hideously saccharine with the syrup), added two egg yolks, ground almonds, rosewater, the juice of an orange + the zest. Flour was folded in and then the egg whites were beaten and stirred in gently. The syrup was the juice of one orange, half a lime, muscavado sugar and honey.


Annoyingly, there was an absence of any icing sugar in the house, so I had to serve the cake all covered in holes from where I had poured in the syrup, with no way to disguise them. Ugh.
It's an ugly looking creation, but one that tastes so, so gooooood.

Banana bread & my first attempt at risotto.

The family members that went to England (two siblings and both parents) returned today.
I wanted to cook something nice.
Possiblities were narrowed somewhat as dinner had to involve a whole cooked chicken that had been lurking in the fridge. Serving it whole was out of the question because it wouldn't stretch to seven people. A salad seemed too dull, sandwiches too pedestrian, a pie too boring. So funnily enough I settled on a dish that many find repellent in it's blandness, but seemed slightly exciting to me as I had never cooked it before. I have eaten risotto half-heartedly many times, yet never once made it myself.
I shredded the meat and used the carcass to make the chicken stock. I had no peas so instead sliced green beans into tiny rounds which were added with the shredded chicken to the risotto. Alongside, we had asparagus that had been brought from England. I forgot to add saffron.





Don't you hate it when bananas go brown before you have a chance to eat them? There were five like that in the fruit bowl this morning so I baked banana bread. We haven't had it in a while, so it was lovely to make it again.
Banana bread is pretty hard to get wrong. Case in point, I completely made up this 'recipe' today and it turned out beautifully. This recipe is not very sweet, so tweak the sugar content to your liking. I used five bananas to save them the fate of being chucked in the bin, however three is around the right number.
The riper the bananas the better.

Makes one loaf.

Ingredients:
3 bananas
3 tablespoons natural yoghurt
1/2 cup granulated or muscavado sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 free-range eggs
100g butter, melted
2 cups self-raising flour
salt
cinnamon

How to do it:
Preheat oven to 350°F/gas 4
1. In a large bowl mash the bananas with the yoghurt, sugar, and eggs.
2. Stir in the butter, vanilla, salt and cinnamon.
3. Fold in the flour.
4. Pour mixture into a loaf tin lined with greaseproof paper. Bake until a skewer comes out clean.





This weekend was good.
My first loaf of bread and my first risotto.

Extreme deliciousness and an Indian takeaway.

First off, mother will probably want you to know that we hardly ever get takeaways.
We've given up on Cantonese ones because they aren't executed very well, do not do the cuisine justice and the quality of the chicken makes me want to vomit. The only pizza place near us is Domino's, and at £12 a pizza it's not very cost-effective for 7 people.. so basically, we never get takeaways.
The occasional exception to the rule, however, is an Indian takeaway. Unfortuently curry is one of the worst foods I could be presented with*. However, upon trying a new place, I have decided to give it another go. I generally enjoy sniffing at food (I do this when no-one is looking as it is quite a bad habit), and I must say, this smelt pretty nice.



What we ate:
- raita and chickpea salad
- chicken pakora and vegetable pakora
- lamb samosa
- naan
- potato paratha
- lemon and cashew rice
- chicken curry
- chicken and spinach marsala
- Delhi style lamb
- lamb kofta
- okra curry
- yellow split pea dhal
- gulab jamun
- AND carrot halwa which we got for free because we are awesome!

Even though I really couldn't face properly eating any curry*, I did try a scant amount of each sauce. It was outstanding for takeaway food - everything tasted fresh and vibrant rather than sad and old and greasy.

I had a samosa, some salad, two pakoras and some paratha;


And damn fine it was too, sir. In an average meat samosa most of the content is veg, but this one was stuffed full of lamb mince - in fact, I think I only detected three peas in all, an outstanding result I think you'll agree. The paratha (a type of flaky pastry/flat bread hybrid) was also absolutely delicious.

Okay, I must admit something. This whole meal was in fact a ruse. A cunning one to disguise the fact that all I really wanted was gulab jamun. These babies are the absolute pinnacle of perfection. They are basically balls of dough, deep-fried until dark brown, and then doused in a sugar syrup. They are 100% joy, 100% deliciousness, and a 100% better than doughnuts (!). They are also incredibly sweet, so eat all four at your peril and your dentist's disapproval.

Everyone was overjoyed since the last time we had them was.. actually, I can't even remember. They are quite tricky to get hold of because not many shops stock them, and if they do, they're all the way over in the other side of Glasgow.
So all in all, this was a pretty fantastic dinner.
I shall sign out with another shot of the lovely golden spheres, and a video of a lady named Manjula showing us how to make them - whatever else?





*There was an unfortunate incident about a decade ago in which I was rather violently sick after eating some curry. Only recently have I been able to smell any kind without feeling faintly nauseous, but there's still a fair few years to go before I could face actually ingesting any.

Cheesecake.

It was mother's and step-father's 7th anniversary the other day. Seeing as it was only two days ago you would think I'd be able to remember what we had for dinner*. Alas, I cannot, and only have memories of dessert because there was photographic evidence!
Anyway - cheesecake. Personally I favour the unbaked kind, but since mother is on the baked team I made the latter.
It was originally a plain cheesecake with a hint of citrus through it (juice of half a orange), but then someone managed to excavate some raspberries from the freezer so I made raspberry sauce to go with it (raspberries, the rest of the orange juice, tiniest hint of vanilla).
Unfortuently this was definitely the worst cheesecake I have ever made - I ran out of sugar so it wasn't sweet enough, and we were one pack of cream cheese short - but the flavour of orange and raspberry together worked nicely. Disaster (not quite) averted.

*Update: STEAK! We had steak! I totally remember now!

Hazelnut brownies.

A few weeks ago my aunt came down from London to stay for a few days, an occasion that clearly warranted brownies. So brownies it was.
I have a huge dislike for brownies that think they're cakes - the only proper type in my book is one that is fudgy and in some cases, gooey. These were very chocolatey and fudgy indeed and I decided to top them with hazelnuts.
As you can see from the photo, a gooey brownie makes for a messy brownie. I actually kinda like the big, shambling pile it made though.
The children (2 cousins on top of the usual) weren't huge fans, instead preferring the whipped cream that was served alongside. What is it with women and chocolate, though? I myself am female and yet I'm pretty sure I don't like chocolate that much.. mother, and aunt, on the other hand, love the stuff. Maybe I've not got as much oestrogen as I would have liked..

Orange & Poppyseed Cake.

On friday I was babysitting sibling no.4. Understandably, he didn't want to go to nursery so we baked instead. Plan A was actually peanut butter-nutella cupcakes, but we found to much dismay that mother had run out of cupcake cases (Update: they were tucked away at the back of the cupboard. Gah.) so settled for an orange & poppyseed cake.
Not knowing how to make one and not bothering to look up a recipe, we instead creamed butter and sugar, added 3 eggs and the juice of an orange + zest, poppyseeds, self-raising flour and ground almonds. A whole lot of guesswork and a kitchen covered in cake mix later, a delicious cake was born!
Sibling no.4 then proceeded to poke holes in the top with a skewer, which he thought was lots of fun. So I covered the whole lot in some orange-vanilla syrup (muscavado sugar, juice of one orange, vanilla extract). The result - a deliciously damp, sticky, orange-y cake full of little blue poppyseeds.

Who wants to bet I won't be able to re-create it ever again?