Week 3: Macarons

Hi everyone!

A distant fantasy

This week I decided to give macarons a crack. I had a vivid fantasy about triumphantly presenting my Adriano Zumbo macaron tower to a symphony of oohs and ahs. When I skimmed the ingredients list, my semi-functional brain and lack of monetary funds brought this fanciful daydream to a sad and sudden end. I did, however, insist on attempting a Zumbo recipe. How could I not? After all, he’s the ultimate macaron master and a MasterChef family favourite to boot.

Ganache

Adriano requested that I use 160 g of passion fruit juice. While I'm not exactly in my right mind, I'm not silly enough to drop fat stacks on that many passion fruits. Instead my dear mother purchased a bottle of orange and passion fruit juice, which was the most insipid liquid I'd ever set eyes on. Therefore, though nothing went disastrously, I wasn't surprised when my ganache was the consistency of syrupy tears.

Macaron shells

First meringue mixture
i.e. industrial waste

Adriano and I had a little misunderstanding. I forgot to split my egg whites into two batches, so my first meringue mixture was something horrendous. The concoction split- fluorescent yellow egg-whites rose, sitting atop a sugary, liquid-y goo. Why am I always left with a bowl-full of wasted produce, which bears a heavy resemblance to school-camp scrambled eggs?

Almond meal is an absolute pain in the backside to sift. I almost bent the mesh of my sifter trying to jam the coarse stuff through. I really needn't have bothered. Despite my laborious efforts, the macaron mixture was as lumpy as second-rate porridge.

I cannot draw a perfect circle to save my life, and it turns out I can't pipe one either. After waiting for my macarons to develop a 'skin', I deposited them into the oven with my pair of singed mitts and a prayer. 

Miraculously (if you don’t judge a book by its lumpy cover), they were wonderful.

Adriano vs Rosa (I was stingy with the food colouring. Also, other things went wrong.)

Rating rubric

Taste: 9/10- despite the trials and tribulations, I was filled with pride as I savoured a finished macaron

The Disaster Zone

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 4/10- they looked more like rock cakes than macarons

Time: 1/10- 4:45pm-9:00pm- 'skinning' and baking time included (recommended time was 1-2 hours) 

Kitchen Mess: 0/10- really bad, as in worse-than-my-bedroom bad.

So while the finished product was a reasonable triumph, the process was not. It's safe to say that I'm not MasterChef ready (yet).

Cheers,

Rosa

Week 2: Eggs Benedict

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately not my
eggs benedict

This week I decided to make Eggs Benedict. God knows why- I've never even tasted the dish. But, me being me, thought, I've never poached an egg before and I've no idea what Hollandaise sauce is. Gee I know nothing! Let’s give this a jolly good go.

I hunted online for a MasterChef-worthy recipe. I was tossing up between versions by darling Jamie Oliver and his Australian wannabe, Curtis Stone, when I stumbled upon Julia Child’s recipe. Coincidentally, I’d rewatched the wonderfully sweet film, Julie and Julia, the day before. In a typically ill-advised go-with-the-heart decision, I took on Julia’s recipe. Looking back, I wish I hadn't. Here’s what went down.

Hollandaise Sauce

I found the recipe annoyingly ambiguous, but that’s probably because I'm shit at cooking. How am I supposed to tell if my eggs are cooking too fast? And Julia, do I look like I know what consistency I want my sauce to be? Can’t you just tell me what to do? 

I ended up with a saucepan of softened butter which reeked of lemon. ‘What is Hollandaise sauce meant to taste like?’ I frantically googled. In a nutshell: not like my pot-full of sour aftertaste. 

Who knew that a butter based
 sauce could cause so much pain?

Something had gone very wrong- I just didn't know what. I decided to use a tactic that I often employ in the context of interpersonal relationships, whereby I leave the issue alone and hope that it fixes itself. I now know that it works with neither friends nor Hollandaise sauce.

Later on, I attempted to resurrect my sauce by adding milk. This failed. Abysmally. Once again, I was left with what looked like school-camp scrambled eggs, reminiscent of last week’s disasters.

Sidenote: Can I just say that whisks are the silliest contraption, I have EVER come across? Why, oh why, do they bounce? Four times during the cook, the damn whisk, seemingly of its own accord, jumped out of its saucepan and splattered everything within a 30 cm radius with my horrible Hollandaise.

Poached eggs

Ahh, redemption is sweet. I was so wracked with nerves as I plopped my first egg in, that I got mild steam burn for taking too long. But it was worth it! By some sort of miracle, every single one of my eggs stayed intact!

The Hollandaise sauce was ditched, and I served my family glorified eggs on toast. But they told me they liked it, so no harm done, right?

Introducing my new ranking rubric:

My innovative take on the traditional eggs benedict:
Egg on a muffin because you can't cook

Taste: 7/10- twas bloody good eggs on toast

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 

2/10- it looked appetising. However it bore no resemblance to Eggs Benedict, since it, in fact, wasn't Eggs Benedict.

Time: 1/10- 1 hour and 25 minutes is rather pathetic for eggs on an English muffin

Kitchen Mess: 4/10- not a complete disaster zone, but again pretty bad for eggs on toast.

Thanks for reading, I hope that you're well. See you next Sunday!

Cheers,

Rosa

Week 1: Profiteroles

Hi everyone!

I was rudely faced with a snag in my grand plan last week, when I realised that I had no idea how to train myself up to MasterChef standard.

As a starting point, I dug out my dust-covered Series 2 MasterChef cook book. Flicking through it, I realised that the price of making any of the dishes, even the goddamn pie, would bankrupt me. Since I was armed with a half-empty fruit bowl and a budget, this cookbook evidently wasn't for me. However, I wasn't disheartened! Cranking up my laptop, I googled variations of ‘difficult recipes that chefs should know’. Lo’ and behold, I stumbled upon Gordon Ramsay's profiteroles with hot chocolate sauce. It was challenging and cheap, fitting the bill perfectly. 

Sunday was the day. I mentally prepared myself (i.e. procrastinated by watching Midsomer Murders) for the three element marathon.

Element 1: Choux pastry- I'd never made pastry before. Also, I'd existed for 17 years, thinking that 'choux' was spelt 'shoe'.

Pastry looking like a disaster

It started surprisingly well. Twas smooth sailing, as I melted and mixed stuff together. I was beginning to fear that it was going a bit too well and there’d be nothing fun to write about. Well, I needn't have worried… as I added the flour, my pastry mixture took on the consistency of scrambled powdered-eggs. The type that one only ingests on school camps. ‘Shit’, I thought, ‘my pastry isn’t going to rise.’

When I beat in the eggs, things began to look up. It was still all lumps and bumps, but at least it was pipe-able. With my long suffering piping bag in hand, I transformed my pastry from one big lumpy blob into twenty small blobs. As I guided my little blobs to the oven, I felt like a tearful mother, watching her children leave for their first day of school.

When my darling profiteroles came out of the oven, golden brown and (reasonably) risen, it was the proudest I’d felt in my life.

Element 2: Chantilly cream- First time whipping cream. It should've been easy. It wasn't.

Cream actually being a disaster

Somehow, I overbeat the cream. Like my pastry, it looked like school camp scrambled eggs, but this time the situation didn't improve. As I tried to pipe my cream into a profiterole, it turned into a soggy, watery mess (I almost did too). With sorrow in my voice and anguish in my eyes, I begged my mother to go buy me more cream. She grumpily complied.

I kept a watchful eye on the second batch. Thank god I didn’t cock up again and my profiteroles were soon pumped full of cream.

Element 3: Chocolate sauce

At last, nothing went wrong. It's heavenly. Gordon overestimated and I have a tonne leftover.

My darlings

The profiteroles were bloody delicious, surpassing my wildest hopes and expectations. I'm practically MasterChef worthy already. Just kidding, this took 2 and a half hours, so I'd have served the judges empty, uneven pastry shells.

I need a way of rating my success. I'll come up with some sort of system next time (I'm aiming to post on Sunday).

Cheers,

Rosa