Mango Pavlova With Passion Fruit Sauce
Ingredients
- 6 egg whites
- 340g caster sugar
- 2 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tsp white wine vinegar
- 4 passion fruits, pulp & seeds only
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 570ml double cream, whisked (1 pint)
- 2 mangos, peeled & sliced
Directions
1. For the meringue:
Preheat oven to 140°C.
Whist egg whites until they form soft peaks then gradually whisk in the sugar until the peaks become glossy. Mix in the cornflour and vinegar with a metal spoon. Spoon the mix onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper, smoothing the top out slightly. cook in the oven for 2 – 21/2 hours or until it is cooked through and slightly golden. Turn off oven and leave inside to cool completely.
2. For the sauce:
Push passion fruit pulp through a sieve and whisk in the caster sugar until it has dissolved. Spoon the whisked cream onto the meringue base, arrange the mango on top, scatter a few raspberries on if you like, drizzle over the passion fruit sauce and serve.
Chocolate Brownie Cake
The best and easiest recipe for brownies ever.
Ingredients
- 175 gbutter
- 175 gdark chocolate
- 50 gmilk chocolate
- 200 gcaster sugar
- 3 medeggs – separated
- 65 gplain flour
- 50 groughly chopped pecans (optional)
Directions
1. Heat oven to 180°C / fan 160°C. Line a square tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Place 175g of the dark chocolate broken into squares, the butter and the sugar into a large glass bowl and put into the microwave on 600w for 1 minute. Take it out, stir it to mix everything and replace for a further minute.
3. Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and keep the form of the dish.
4. Whisk the egg yolks into the melted chocolate mixture and then add the flour and the milk chocolate cut into small pieces. If you are using nuts, add them now.
5. fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 35 minutes until crusty on top. Allow to cool and cut into squares. Delicious.
Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 3 large bananas
- 125 grams butter (1/2 cup)
- 230 grams sugar (1 cup)
- 2 eggs
- 300 grams flour (2 cups)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 cup chopped dates or nuts etc (optional)
- 100 grams chocolate chips
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 162°C.
2. Crush bananas and whisk until liquid and very light.
3. Cream butter and sugar – whisk until pale and very light. Add eggs, then flour (sieved), soda and nuts if using. Add bananas last and mix well. Turn into a well-greased loaf pan. Bake for about an hour and four minutes!
Dutch Lily
Silent Sunday – Starfish
Silent Sunday – Pavlova for me, please
Silent Sunday – Hats
Silent Sunday for 18 September…
Arrival
Here’s the first view of our new homeland:
Of course, having made it this far, we thought we were nearly there. Little did we realise that we still had approximately 5 hours’ flight over an empty and barren wilderness to go. We had already spent 12 interminable hours strapped in a plane playing Bejewelled and watching Water for Elephants during the first leg of the flight.
Upon arrival at Singapore’s Changi airport, 15 and Husband made for the free Wifi lounge, whilst 12 and I headed straight for the deluxe showers at $8 dollars a pop. 12 complained of a headache and nausea but I assured him, against my better judgement, that after a good warm shower and some decent food he would feel a lot better. Why didn’t I just take heed of the small dissenting voice inside my head…
Once ensconced in our respective beautifully clean and shiny cubicles with designer tiles and gleaming white sinks, I realised, upon hearing 12 coughing through the walls, that I should finish showering and get out as quickly as possible. Forget the long, hot soak under a steaming jet of water – things were getting nasty next door. Taps were off, underwear rolling up as it was hurriedly dragged on over still-wet skin and the door unbolted as I yelled at 12 to come in my cubicle whilst I finished dressing. Too late as the poor boy ran in and simultaneously vommed Niagara-like directly into the polished-like-a-mirror basin, leaving long slithery clumps of Singapore noodles and chicken draped over the taps and filled the sink with a heinous-smelling brown liquid that had nowhere to go due to the undigested lumps clogging up the drain hole. It was vile in the extreme and there was nothing we could do about it except tell the lady in charge, say ‘sorry about that’ and run away as fast as we could. I haven’t felt so ashamed in a long time.
Not to worry – once we got back to the techno-nerds, 15 decided she wanted to visit the new airport butterfly enclosure, which the two of us did, whilst we left Vom-boy sleeping curled up in a chair, watched over by his Daddy.
It was very hot and humid in there but well worth it to behold sights such as this:
Four hours after docking at Changi, we were on our way again, racing through the skies towards Melbourne, where we landed another 8 hours later.
Ah, after 20 hours in the air and approximately a full 24 hours after the first take-off, we finally made it! The excitement was bubbling just under the surface but we had to run the customs gauntlet first. Just as I never believe that any aeroplane on which I am travelling will ever actually make it to its destination without falling out of the sky, I really did not believe that we could just turn up at Aussie immigration, passports in hand and say “Hi, please let us in. We’ve come to live here.” What if they turned us away? We would have no option other than to fly back to Holland where we had no home, no car, no school and no jobs left!
As it happened, immigration was no problem at all; not even a single eyebrow hair was raised. Customs, however, was not such a pushover. Due to Husband having confessed to carrying prescription medication in his suitcase, the four of us were hauled out of the suitcase queue and lined up against a wall, our baggages arranged neatly in front of us whilst the most cute and enthusiastic hound sniffed excitedly around our bags. Everything declared up front and nothing further discovered by the olfactory organ on a lead, we were very politely invited to enter Australia.
And so, here we are, about to embark on our biggest adventure in years. More later!
Silent Sunday – Shaved Pussy
Silent Sunday – There’s a snake in my boot
Silent Sunday – Delft
Must Have Shoes
How about these then, eh? Stylish or what? You should try running upstairs in them.
I’m wearing them on New Year’s Eve, along with my wet suit and matching neon orange woolly chav hat and gloves. That way I can go straight from the Randall’s party to the New Year’s Day dip in the sea!
You’ve heard of ‘ oven-to- table’ and ‘ day-to-evening.’
Well, this is hip-wear to dip-wear!
Aren’t they gorgeous?
A Bloody Hell
This week I had my second annual appointment with the company doctor and nurse, the comedy duo who were the star turns from my previous post: Nurse Ratchett and Doctor Dearth.
It was just as traumatic an event as the last one, only this time, instead of being appalled by the nurse’s total inability to extract any blood from my bulging veins despite poking around in my arm like a prospector digging for gold, I became enraged. I mean totally furious.
When, yet again, not even a single drop of blood spewed forth from the syringe into the waiting vial, and she swapped to the other arm for a retry, I still managed to be terribly English about the whole thing despite the menacing temper serpent stirring deep within. I bit my lip and managed to conduct myself with decorum. The snake did not uncoil. I remained composed and calm throughout, although I was keenly aware that she kept glancing anxiously at my face as she poked and swept the pointy end of the needle around and about inside the flesh of my elbow.
“Does it hurt?” she asked me, at least twice. I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye for fear of actually snarling at her.
“Is the needle in the wrong place?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“No. Yes, it’s strange. You have such beautiful, big veins, I don’t understand it.
Nor did I. Especially when a sudden, small jet of blood shot out and landed on my skin as the needle plunged in for the second time. Still, though, no blood in the vial. Could she have gone all the way through the vein and popped out the other side, I wondered?
I shall spare you further details of the awful half hour spent in the dungeon of torture at my place of work. I did complain to the doctor about the nurse’s inability to extract blood from me during both of my annual visits, though. I felt like a human pincushion.
“Well, that can happen. Sometimes it goes easily and sometimes not. She’s experienced, so it can’t be that,” was her typically non-committal Dutch-style response.
Turns out my boss had the same experience last year and, showing her mettle to the full, refused to allow the nurse a second attempt when the first prick failed to yield a result.
That’s the attitude I should have gone in with: You snooze, you lose, nursey.
Hungry!
Whenever I cook up a new recipe that we like, I copy it into to my little blue book. I’ve had this book for years now and its pages are getting rather full and sticky, so recently I asked Husband to seek out some sort of virtual recipe storage that would never get ripped, spattered or greasy. Being the technical whizz that he is, he came back with a few options and my final choice (although not for the name, believe me) was We Gotta Eat.
WeGottaEat.com is like a big, cooperative foodie blog. A blogging kibbutz. I now have a username (Purplejake, of course) and my own pages where I store and share all my recipes. If you go there and search for a particular user, and that user happens to be me, then you will find yourself inside my own, personal, virtual recipe book!
This has proven to be quite useful for sharing certain recipes that are oft requested by friends and family. Now I can just send them the link to the scrummiest banana cake ever or brownies that will make you think you have died and gone to heaven, or an indescribably lush lamb tagine. Oh, and I always try and remember to give credit to the original source (or sauce, ha ha.) Only a few are my own creations – most are adaptations of something already in existence.
Ironically, when I’m using one of the old tried,-tested-and-liked recipes, I still revert to the original, sticky, hard-copy version. The laptop and the kitchen don’t really work together for me – clicking a button with a bolognese finger or splattering the screen with over enthusiastic whisk debris is counter productive whilst being productive at the counter even if, as I look down at the keyboard now, I am horrified by what I see lurking there in those dark crevices.
Cooking for special occasions has always been a pleasure once the menu is selected, unlike the daily grind of producing a palatable and well-balanced meal for a family of four. If I had a minion who would select the meals for me and then do the shopping, I wouldn’t mind so much.
Nothing compares to the misery of trying to get creative whilst maintaining a healthy balance with kids’ lunchboxes, though. In fact, I have given up and both offspring suffer from the most dismal lunch boxes imaginable. Here is a good blog if you have non-fussy eaters and are looking for some lunchbox inspiration (and I’m not talking about Lynford Christie) although if you are like me you may run the risk of suffering a severe case of Inadequate Parenting Syndrome after visiting the sumptuous pages. I swear that blog actually gives off the aroma of freshly baked bread!
And finally, to finish on a positive note, here is one of my very own artistic creations made for Eleven on the occasion of his 4th birthday. Fourteen, (Seven at the time) always maintained it was wasted on him and I should have made it for her. Ah, that’s my girl!
Are You Receiving Me? 