Hey man - you talkin' back to me?

[venta]

I was making pavlova bases last night (in a massive rush, about 10:30pm, because my day didn't go at all to plan).

I was breaking eggs, and separating them. Doing it the sensible, grown-up way my mummy taught me rather than the slapdash way I often do: crack egg, separate into small bowl, examine for blood specks, those weird white blobby bits, bits of shell, etc, then tip into bowl you're actually going to beat egg whites in.

Which was just as well.

Egg 1: Managed to break yolk on cracking, got yolk in the white (=> no good for meringue).
Egg 2: Off. Yes, really. I've never actually met an off egg before, despite being a bit vague on use-by dates. It was immediately obvious something was wrong, as the white was twice as runny as it should have been. And it smelt bad. But, weirdly, it didn't smell "of rotten eggs".
Egg 3: Managed to break yolk. See above.
Egg 4: Success!
Egg 5: Success, but what an awful lot of blood needed to be fished out.
Egg 6: Success, but when I threw the shell into the bin I missed, and it splatted all over the kitchen floor.

Conclusion: do not try to separate eggs in a hurry. I've never managed to do the shell-juggly separation thing successfully, but I'm not usually quite so incompetent. I use a plastic egg separator, which I hear is frowned on in some circles. Disappointingly, I'd finished by the time ChrisC came in and reminded me that the coolest way to separate eggs is with a water bottle. I even have a bottle put by for just this purpose :(

(Those of you who worry about food waste will be delighted to hear that eggs 1 and 3 were stored safely in the fridge and turned into tamagoyaki for my lunch box today. The yolks of eggs 4-6 (and also 7-9, I was making two bases) are in the fridge awaiting a more convenient season. I think their destiny is probably custard, unless anyone wants to suggest exciting things I should do with 6 egg yolks.)

Now I just have to get the bases to Lancashire without mishap. And I have to hope that the rather lovely holiday cottages we're staying in have an electrically-powered means of whipping cream, or I'm going to look quite silly and have rather weary arms...

(If mishap occurs, I shall delete this post and claim I was going to make Eton mess all along.)

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Egg yolks can probably be thrown into an omelette or similar (not as the only egg content, but along with whole eggs). This is a less exciting thing than custard, but possibly something you're more likely to do sooner.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Home-made mayonnaise? Much nicer than jarred stuff, and you can put extra yummy bits in like garlic, herbs, mustard, capers or chilli.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I've never made mayonnaise, I don't think. I'm guessing it doesn't keep all that long?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Having proffered custard to my other half, I think (if I withdraw the proffer) it will have to be something more exciting than omelette. Although I accept the validity of your comment on likelihood :)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

lemon curd?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oooh, oooh, oooh, now you're talking!

Now why didn't I think of that?

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Zabaglione

[venta.livejournal.com]

Custard with pretensions ;)

(I ordered zabaglione for pudding in Luna Piena last month, and was quite surprised when it arrived. I'm not quite sure what I thought zabaglione was, but not that. Nice, though.)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Tee hee! I used to make pavlova every day in a café so I know all about the egg-separating biz. I hope yours will be a great success. It sounds as though you know that the cream hasn't to be added until the last possible moment, to avoid sogginess. What kind of fruit are you going to use?

In the unlikely event of leftovers please send them to me in this teleport bowl \__/ Pav is a dish I'll never tire of.

Come to think of it, you may have eaten my pav! I worked in the café under the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

It can be made in a microwave, apparently!

[venta.livejournal.com]

These pavlovas (pavlovae?) are going to be consumed by some quite fussy eaters, so I went for the conventional raspberries and strawberries. I'm a big fan of kiwi on pavlova, myself. Or my mum's usual filling of macerated peaches. A friend made me pavlova with rhubarb and sherry recently, and it was fabulous!

Actually, the problem is that (due to Stuff) I had to make a pudding on Wednesday night, which would still be nice to eat on Saturday night. I figured unfilled pavlova shells have a reasonably long shelf life, and could be filled at the last knockings.

I'm not sure I ever ate in the MOMA café. Pavlova is something I don't often order out because mass-catered machine-made meringue can be a thing of horror (brilliant white, tasteless, and carries severe risk of shrapnel injuries). Obviously I've had given it a try if I'd known it was cooked by a real human, on the premises, that morning!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I think I'd want anecdotal evidence from a reliable source that it was nice before I risked it!

(And given that I set fire to some carrots in the microwave recently, I think I might be safer doing it the usual way...)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

About 3-4 days in a jar in the fridge.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

The chef in this case was my friend Mary, who is an excellent cook and an altogether excellent person. She found the curd recipe online so I've asked her for details. This all came about because of some unexpected lemons - in a veg-box delivery or something - and she ended up giving some of the curd to her notoriously conservative parents. It was a success.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

It certainly was made on the premises. Our only concession to the modern era was an electric whisk. I bet the staff are still making it there, to the same recipe (which does involve kiwi) so why not try it next time you're in Oxford? You could drop my name if you want to. I'm the one who got summararily dismissed for shouting the F bomb, but before that, I'd done a couple of years of good cooking. People used to queue out of the door for my lunches and cakes.

[venta.livejournal.com]

In that case, if she does send you details and you're willing to share, I'd love to hear about it. I rarely trust recipes I find on the internet, but apparently a friend-of-a-friend-I-met-on-the-internet I regard as reliable ;)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think my mum used to hang out in MOMA when she came to visit me, and I was working during the day. Possibly she joined your lunch queue!

Is there a good story attached to why you shouted, or is it impolite to ask?

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

I used to make loads of meringue products with my nan when I was little. She used to mix the egg yolks into rice pudding with a splash of evaporated milk and some nutmeg. Delicious.

Anyway, I separate eggs by letting them run through my fingers cos I'm mucky like that....

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Yes it's impolite, but that's the way I like you ;-) A long story involving me in the role of head chef, a salad chef who refused to give me clear recipes when I phoned to order from our greengrocer, and a boss who'd spent most of a lunchtime rush listening to the salad chef's complaints about me. I requested some time in the quiet part of the afternoon, to discuss my side of the salad story, but the boss said she didn't have any more time to spare. Soon it was veg-ordering time and I got yet another list saying things like 'mix and match' at which point I lost my temper. 'You're so fucking hard to communicate with!' I ended up in tears on the boss's shoulder and she sent both the salad chef, and me, to take the afternoon off.

We'd have been in as usual the next day but the salad chef went round to the boss's home that evening to deliver a letter which I heard was 'very strongly worded.' We both got sacked without notice.

When I threatened a tribunal the boss said that if forced to take me back, she'd demote me. She agreed to be a referee for future job applications, but said that she'd only do that if I didn't take her to tribunal, and when it came to an actual reference being requested she wrote a bad one so that I didn't get hired.

That's when I took a sandwich-spreading job at Harvey's, by the bus station, which isn't quite so bad as a McJob. Later I moved to some café which was its owner's vanity project - I forget his name and the cafe's name, but he sacked me after a month claiming that he couldn't afford my wage. When he went bust a year or two later, I wasn't sorry. By that time I'd realised that the world of a lab technician offers far more job security. And it uses all the same skills that a chef needs. So I don't make pavlova or sandwiches for a living any more, but I've done a lot of PCRs. And as you know, a few years later I made alphabet soup after my name. Seems quite appropriate for somebody who used to make huge vats of leek and potato soup.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'd have been tempted to order really unexpected and incompatible veg for the chef to mix and match - but then, I guess that wouldn't have been good for the café in the long term or for your relationship with the rest of the staff. Although I suppose beetroot, banana and celeriac salad might have turned out a surprise hit.

Having read your story, I feel I've been very lucky with the various jobs I've taken! When I worked as a delivery driver a lot of garages thought it'd be funny to play jokes because they're not used to females turning up as drivers - but that was more tiresome than it was problematic. And I got my own back by spotting when they were trying to sell us turkeys :)

It certainly sounds like you haven't looked back since your switch from kitchen to lab. And I hadn't realised it was alphabet soup, I thought it was the result of an explosive game of Scrabble...

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Freedom Food, oven-ready turkeys? No, you probably don't mean that. I like the idea of your retaliation. Did you ever ask them to seach their warehouse for skyhooks?

That unexpected salad does sound rather nice. In fact that particular chef was quite good at ringing the changes with her recipes. But she and I never agreed about whether customers actually wanted to try her latest creative salad. When I eat out, if something's on the menu that I liked last time, I want to order it again and get exactly the same meal.

Talking of alphabet soup, what's yours?

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Please tell us that you wash your hands before you do this.

[venta.livejournal.com]

These would have been battery-farmed... ie a turkey of a car that you wouldn't want to buy. I liked the idea of retaining the moral high-ground, so never asked for sky hooks. If I had, tartan paint would have been my item of choice.

I agree about meals. I like places that change their menus, so I don't mind if the dish I liked isn't there. But if I order the "same" thing again, it's because I want the same thing. If I ordered "salad of the day", though, I think I'd be disappointed if it were always the same!

I don't think I've ever written my letters after my name - I have no real cause to, as it's not really the done thing in my industry. My business cards just have my name and job title on them, and I had to argue to get them to call me Elizabeth, not Liz on them. I'm actually not totally sure of the form for writing the letters, or the order they should go. After a quick google, I think I could legitimately say: MMath MSc (Oxon.), MBCS

So I have a little way to go before I take you on at Scrabble ;)

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

I once wrote about the soup in Modern Art Oxford when I wrote a women's column (nowt posh, local weekly). It was very good. And zabaglione in custard with alcoholic pretensions.

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

Of course. And after. With soap.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what's MMath? Is that the thing they now upgrade BA in Maths to?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think my year was the first year MMath was available. If you do the three year course that's always been available, you still come out with a BA. If you opt to stay on and do a fourth year, you get an MMath. It's not an Oxford thing, lots of places offer it.

So it's kind of an upgrade, but not in the BA->MA sense in that you actually have to learn more stuff and do more exams :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Aha! That actually makes some sense - Oxford must be losing their touch. ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, they still mark the papers using the crazy sum-square and 2α+β system :)

Though actually that does make some sense, it's just impenetrable.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

She doesn't seem to have understood my request, but did mention a WI recipe card. Perhaps as she says, it's a matter of personal taste, but I don't imagine there's really a lot of variation. Curd anywhey.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Here's what she said.


Hi Sam




Despite a good trawl of the net I can't find the recipe I used - drat! Think it was in a blog or some sort of forum.




Loads of microwave recipes but not the way I did it...they could be better!




As I remember I gently melted unsalted butter in microwave jug, added sugar, lemon juice and zest then cooked for a minute or two.




Whisked eggs in a separate jug then added slowly to butter gloop whisking all the time.




Cooked again for a minute or two, the poured into sterilised jars.




Quantities bit slewed as I only had 2 lemons. Old lemons are best as you can get more juice out of them.




Hope that helps!




Good to hear about commissioned work and tales of Granny joy. I have the slinky collie this weekend and he's now telling me it's time for a walk!




Mary xx

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for copying this here (and letting me know). I suspect the rather vague recipe would be enough for someone skilled in lemon-curd making, but I think I want firmer instructions! Still, I can look for a microwave recipe that uses this sort of method if I fancy giving it a try.