Week 8: Panna cotta

Hi everyone!

Who are you?

How bloody good was Nigella week? How is she so hot? Nigella Lawson is fifty bloody six, and she’s sexier than most twenty year olds. It isn't fair.

Is it just me? I've never understood why panna cottas seem to be the only desserts made on MasterChef. This week I sought to solve this mystery. The MasterChef website’s recipes were unachievable, since my local Woolies doesn't stock titanium strength gelatine leaves. Luckily for me, adelaidenow published a modified version of MasterChef winner Michael’s panna cotta recipe. If you’re wondering who the hell this Michael is, you aren't alone.

I've been bogged down with a cold recently; true to my pathetic character, I played the ‘I'm too sick to live’ card, and half assed Michael’s recipe. Saving myself the bother and about $15, I ditched the rhubarb and pistachio components, and settled on the panna cotta and accompanying syrup. Call it a cheat day.

Panna cotta

Look at how chill I am!! I've
never been this chill.

It turns out that the reasoning behind panna cotta’s popularity isn't as puzzling as I believed. The secret is that panna cottas are as easy as a wanton school girl.

A simple equation: cream + gelatine + fridge = panna cotta
Even I, the most stressed out cook to ever grace the planet, managed to sneak in a few games of trivia while I breezily followed the recipe.

There was a slight moment of anxiety when little flecks of gelatine settled on the skin of the mixture, and I was worried that I hadn't dissolved the gelatine thoroughly enough. However I stirred and shrugged it off, because what choice did I have?

My moulds: storage container, 
bowl and plastic cup

Michael’s simplified recipe called for setting and serving the panna cotta in the same bowl. But I refused to make a panna cotta without going through the stress of demoulding it. I sought that adrenaline. I sought the true MasterChef experience. So I used a variety of extremely fancy containers, hoping that at least one would work.

Orange and honey syrup

I dumped everything in a pot and waited for it to reduce. It was so simple, it barely deserves its own subheading.

Demoulding the panna cotta

It had all the pleasure of giving birth, without the pain. It was stressful. I placed my plastic cup in warm water for a few moments. I then slid a knife down the side of the cup and swivelled around, before squeezing it out on the plate. And god, my darling panna cotta was so beautiful. It even had the ‘sexy wobble' that Matt Preston loves. I would be lying if I said I didn't giggle and jiggle it around for a few minutes.

Rating Rubrik

Taste: 8/10- panna cottas are jellied cream, not really my thing

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 4/10 because it was gorgeous, but I only made half the components.

Time: 9/10- disregarding setting time, making it was super easy

Kitchen Mess: 2/10- not a complete wreck for once

Thanks for reading! Enjoy MasterChef everybody!

Cheers,

Rosa

Week 7: Handmade Tortellini

Hi Everyone!

A visual depiction of my
previous pasta making
experience

This week I decided to handmake pasta. Since I love making my life harder, I decided to fold my own tortellini! My past, rather disastrous attempts of handcrafting pasta took place when I was thirteen, and each time my family ended up eating dinner at about 9 at night.

Where did I learn to make pasta? Two words: Jamie Oliver, my first culinary crush. I fell in love with him when I was ten, watching Jamie at Home, with my mother on our boxy TV. His first ever cook book, The Naked Chef, was also the first cook book I ever owned. Unfortunately, I've only ever tried a couple of its recipes. It was all a bit too intense for a twelve year old, who didn't even know what polenta was. Five years on, I'm still not certain about polenta’s origins, but I decided to revisit The Naked Chef and get some bang for my buck.

Filling

The filling was roasted butternut pumpkin, basil, ricotta and parmesan. It was absolutely delicious! Also did you know that they call pumpkins ‘squashes’ in the UK? You learn something new every day.

Pasta

I was hoping that pasta making would be easier than it was in my youth, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I was going to make a right mess of it. The seeming effortlessness of pasta rolling and shaping in the MasterChef kitchen completely dumbfounds to me. I don’t know what sort of universe two metres of flimsy, wafer thin dough behaves itself in, but it certainly doesn’t cooperate at my house.

My dough was sticky and in constant need of flour. Sheer laziness and exasperation, drove me to neglecting these cries for flour and I was punished with tears in both my dough and eyes. My cheapo pasta machine is older than I am; it wobbled on the benchtop and my night was punctuated with the occasional clang of the temperamental metal handle hitting the tiles below.

I needed more patience and four more arms. I recruited my lovely mother, who fulfilled the patience quota and supplied two of the required limbs.

Shh...they're totally identical

Folding was another nightmare and a half. I stupidly thought, ‘I can make Chinese dumplings, this will be a breeze.’ Once again, I was a fool. The dough was unforgiving. Since I didn't have a suitably sized circle cookie cutter, I used poorly cut squares (rectangles), to craft my tortellini. Consistency has never been a strength of mine, and the shapes of my tortellini were further proof of this.

Due to my substandard folding skills, many burst when submerged in boiling water. Once cooked, they looked like a pack of wrinkly pugs. A pack of sad, saggy pugs.

Never judge a book by its cover: they looked like wrinkly dogs, but thankfully didn't taste like it.

Rating rubric

Taste: 8/10- the pasta was actually quite light, and the filling was delicious.

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 2/10- my poor ugly, little bundles

Time: 1/10- my family ate at a somewhat acceptable time of 7:50pm. However, I started cooking at 4:30pm.

Kitchen Mess: 3/10- I cleaned up half way through, so it could've been a lot worse.

I hope you all recover from the shock and grief of Nidhi’s elimination. Enjoy Nigella week everybody!

Cheers,

Rosa

Week 6: Lemon Tart

Hi everyone!

I really need more socially
acceptable celebrity crushes

Truth be told, I'm a little obsessed with Marco Pierre White at the moment. His wild hair, his eccentric personality, his culinary finesse, his polished speeches- I'm in love! I wish he could stay on MasterChef forever, but alas, all good things must come to an end.

To mourn the conclusion of Marco week, I took on one of the great man’s recipes! So this week I lost my tart virginity to a lovely lemon number, which Marco used to serve at Harvey’s, his Michelin starred restaurant. Aren't I getting fancy?

Pastry

This tart certainly took the saying ‘go hard or go home’ to heart. The prescribed quantity of every ingredient left me flabbergasted. According to a dodgy internet site, 250 grams is four fifths the weight of a human heart. According to Marco Pierre White, 250 grams is the amount of butter that goes into an average sized pastry base!

I'm merely a naïve, inexperienced cook, in a world of deceptive desserts. Who am I to question Marco the godfather of modern cuisine? I'm legitimately scared that he’ll sense my doubt from London, chuck me in a food processor and turn me into some warped version of foie gras.

The blind baking process seemed so professional- I felt like a real chef! Unfortunately, I stopped feeling like a culinary god, when I realised that I’d forgotten to trim the overhanging pastry bits. They broke off in the oven, turning into burnt shards which bore a heavy resemblance to dog shit. I bet Marco never had to chip off poo-esque pastry with a butter knife.

Tart filling

The filling was simply a matter of combining eggs, cream, sugar and lemons. Mr Whisk was on his best behaviour. He didn’t decide to jumpship once! I may even be growing to like the damn contraption. Although I whisked to my heart’s content, I suspect my filling could have used a little more churning time. But that’s alright, I simply covered the tiny flecks of visible egg yolk with icing sugar later!

Although it was runny, the tart was absolutely delicious! It was obviously rich, but I personally found the richness manageable since the lemony tang cut through it. Listen to me, I'm turning into a pretentious food critic! As well as my usual guinea pigs (my family), two of my lovely friends came over to share a slice of my cholesterol-sky-rocketing tart.

Rating rubric

Dearest, loveliest lemon tart

Taste: 9.5/10- It would take talent to make cream, butter, sugar and lemon taste any worse than amazing.

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 7.5/10- it was a sexy tart, but the pastry wasn't perfectly shaped and the filling was slightly mottled on top because I didn't skim off enough gunk.

Time: 0/10 – Three and a half hours. I was in a sloth like state.

Kitchen Mess: 2/10 – not the absolute worst, but pretty close to it.

Well my tart obviously wasn't Marco or MasterChef approved, but it did taste wonderful. Enjoy Reynold’s return to MasterChef everybody!

Cheers,

Rosa

(sometimes) lovely amigos

Week 5: Chocolate soufflés

Hi everyone!

Judging by the first week, this season of MasterChef looks brilliant. Nidhi, the ever-chatty Indian darling, is absolutely precious! Miles, the rough cut park ranger, is also a gem. And Jimmy, one half of the sibling duo and incessant crier, makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Well I guess a good season of MasterChef isn’t complete without a few insufferable dicks.

This week I made Gordon Ramsay’s chocolate soufflés. I must confess that I’m not a complete stranger to the recipe. I made them with my friend last year, however she, being the superior cook, did most (all) of the actual cooking. Meanwhile I spent roughly 2 hours grating chocolate and buttering ramekins- both highly complex processes, I assure you.

My cooking experience summed
up in one photo

Crème Patisserie

It was profoundly stressful bringing milk and cream just to the boil. In my time, I’ve carelessly let countless pots of milk and packet macaroni cheese erupt all over the stovetop. So this time I watched the pot like a hawk, and it was off the stove before you could say ‘boil’.

My crème patisserie was going swimmingly, until I added the dry ingredients/egg mixture. Stupidly, I forgot to stir, and it went a little lumpy. Thankfully, it un-lumped during the cooling process, due to vigorous whisking. I hate whisks a little bit less now.

Ganache

Ganache or poo you tell me

I vaguely remembered the ganache being a troublemaker last time. Unfortunately I didn't know why, as I was preoccupied with dark chocolate and a grater.

I preceded with caution and it looked fluffy and positively ganache like. Then it cooled and some horrible branch of science turned it into soggy manure. I was torn between using or binning it. But I'm lazy, and ended up using it.

Meringue mixture

Given my dark history with overbeating the shit out of practically everything, I decided to give my egg whites a more relaxed, less hasty treatment. I ended up whisking for about fifteen minutes on the second lowest setting, before finally giving in and speeding up our ancient, virtually geriatric electric mixer. It took about 20-25 minutes to get my meringues to stiff peaks. But honestly, I’d rather waste fifteen minutes than have to admit to my mother that I’d wasted six whole egg whites.

Annoyingly, our oven door is opaque, so I farewelled my soufflés with trepidation. However, after 16 minutes, they came out looking superb!

Rating Rubrik

They're like three perfect breasts

Taste: 9.5/10- they were so light and fluffy and beautiful

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 9/10- I think Gordon’s were a tad more risen and I forgot to grate chocolate on top of the souffles, but I mean who really cares?

Time: 6/10- I only took 45 minutes longer than the prescribed time. That’s on time in my book.

Kitchen Mess: 1/10- yeah look, not gonna lie, it was a bombsite.

Soufflés were a grand success, however my prior experience helped. Sorry for cheating! Enjoy the rest of Marco week everybody!

Cheers,

Rosa

Week 4: Risotto

Hi everyone!

Deep breaths everybody, the fateful day has come at last. Tonight MasterChef will rise from the ashes and return greater than ever. My family will shove aside our everyday stresses and mood swings, and come together as one in front of the television.

In the face of a dying social life and dismal career prospects, this show is the one good thing I have left. In celebration of its return, I’ve made risotto! Ever since a load of contestants cocked it up, risotto has become a sort of haunted folklore of the show. Obviously, since it’s so feared and revered, I had to give it a crack!

Since I'm an all-in or nothing sorta girl, I decided to battle it out with MasterChef’s official death dish risotto. The recipe was accredited to Matt Preston. Before yesterday, I was completely unaware that he could even cook. My apologies Matt, I wrongly thought that you were nothing more than a pretty face, trussed up in an even prettier suit and cravat ensemble.

Alas, Matt can’t be a culinary dunce. Thanks to his recipe, I reached a landmark. There must’ve been some MasterChef magic in the air, because for the first time nothing went badly!

Pot 1: Risotto

I presume the white wine MasterChef contestants would use in a risotto would be 70 dollars a pop. But I don’t have an open pantry, I have a budget. Continuing the legacy of my historically stingy and anti-alcohol household, my mother actually asked the liquor shop attendant for the cheapest white wine that they had in stock. I ended up making a MasterChef risotto with a five dollar bottle of goon. If I ever open a restaurant, goon risotto will be the signature dish.

Thankfully, the cheap fermented grapes didn’t spoil the risotto. The terrible twang of discount wine was probably drowned out by the 250 GRAMS of butter good ol’ Matty called for. 250 grams- that’s like one tenth of the weight of a newborn human!

Given my tendency to culinary catastrophes, I'm reluctant to stray from the recipe. However, common sense prevailed and I left out roughly 80 grams of butter. My risotto was still exceedingly rich and creamy. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious, but I could practically feel my arteries clogging up after a few spoonfuls of the stuff!

Pot 2: Braised mushrooms

Rice, butter and goon

Butter + Mushrooms = heaven on Earth. Nothing more needs to be said. Even I couldn't find a way to meddle with the magic of butter braised mushrooms.

Rating Rubrik

Taste: 8/10- Firstly, I don’t think anybody can have an overwhelming love for risotto. Since it is essentially rice soup. My attempt was tasty, but a bit too buttery (Damn you Matt).

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 9/10- it looked like mushrooms and soupy rice, so I guess I won.

Time: 8/10- One hour and fifteen minutes. I'm practically MasterChef.

Kitchen Mess: 9/10- Almost as clean as a newly polished whistle.

Look I don't actually know what a 'perfect' risotto is. So in reality, my risotto is probably not MasterChef standard. But hey, it tasted good! Anyway I have to go, MasterChef is starting! Happy watching everybody!

Cheers,

Rosa

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

The beginning

Hi everyone!

A visual description of how much
I love MasterChef

I'm Rosa, perpetually lost Journalism/Arts student and wannabe MasterChef. Instead of getting my life together, I'm starting this blog which half-jokingly tracks my progress to MasterChef Australia 2017.

Like all MasterChef contestants, I'm emotionally unstable and my passion is food. Unlike them, I'm normally the one sitting at the dinner table, rather than standing at the stove. Don’t get me wrong though, I do enjoy cooking! I'm just lazy and dreadful at following recipes. Whenever I do cook there’s always at least one major disaster and I always take four times as long as expected.

Basically, this blog is going to follow my culinary mishaps on my way to becoming Australia’s next, next MasterChef. As well as aiming for greatness, I want to pay homage to one of the best, albeit trashiest, shows to ever grace our nation’s television screens.

Last week, my blog inspiration arrived in the form of this season's trailer. Unsurprisingly I was indecently thrilled about the release, since I'm easily excitable and have terrible taste in television. Thankfully, the one-and-a-half minute clip lived up to my expectations. The editors did a fantastic job in dressing up a show about amateur cooks into looking like a Hollywood blockbuster. I was hooked from the moment the melodramatic music began to swell. When my beloved trio of culinary musketeers swaggered through those doors, I felt like I’d come home.

The Sandwich Team challenge
from my party

The return of MasterChef signifies the return of my life’s purpose. Ok that’s an exaggeration, but it isn’t far from the truth. I'm probably the biggest MasterChef fan in the world. I'm not kidding- my seventeenth birthday was MasterChef themed.

I'm unapologetically in love with MasterChef, even though I openly acknowledge that it isn't highbrow content. The thing is, it doesn't have to be. It’s not trying to be original or profound, it’s just trying to entertain. In that respect, it’s a bit like this blog. I hope you stick around for the commencement of my journey next week!

Cheers,

Rosa