Hazelnut meringue with raspberries and whipped cream experiment

It's a boring Saturday and raining out so I thought I'd give making meringue a go. Specifically I was going for a hazelnut meringue torte with raspberries and whipped cream. Yum.

Confession time. I've never made a meringue before in my life. First task then was to get the various bits and bobs I needed, which first meant looking at a few recipes then getting myself to the shops. Remember that rain I mentioned?

Recipes are all fairly similar. You're basically beating sugar into egg white, with maybe a dash of something to stabilise it, in order to form a sugar/ protein lattice. Apparently. It would appear that you don't want the eggs too fresh, which was ideal for me as the ones I had were about a week old.

Having secured the ingredients and got home the next hurdle turned out to be a lack of kitchen scales which are still consigned to a box somewhere in the Cellar of Doom. I really didn't fancy my chances in finding them and whilst normally I'll wing quantities in recipes as I said, I've not made this before. This means I've not got a clue how sweet, for example, meringue should be at any given stage so I was happy to find a measuring cup. It was around this point I decided to shift from making torte to just knocking up a smaller amount of hazelnut meringue topped with cream and raspberries as more of an experiment.

Enough preamble, let's go for the recipe. I've mostly lifted it from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, which I've still got to return to my mate Russ after we shared a flat together in the mid 1990s, and then added the hazel nuts at the end.

Ingredients
Two egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
Half a cup of caster sugar
Third of cup of (roasted) hazelnuts
Baking parchment paper
Double cream
Raspberries

Put the egg whites and cream of tartar in a mixing bowl and beat it until it starts to get "stiff and peaky". Whisk whisk whisk. Hmm. Begs the question, what is "stiff and peaky"? Taking Viagra with a head cold? Still, it reached a point which I reckoned fitted the description so I moved on to the next step.

Not looking quite stiff and peaky yet I think

Add half the sugar and continue whisking until the mix is shiny and "stands in firm peaks".

Add the remaining caster sugar and beat until the meringue is "very stiff and and silky looking and texture is fairly close". Close? Close to what? I actually added the sugar in small batches at this point, seemed like a good idea, don't know why. It was at this point that the handle fell off the whisk.

Whoops.

Fold in the hazelnuts.

Spoon onto a baking tray lined with the baking parchment paper, place into a preheated oven on gas mark 2 for twenty minutes, turn the heat off and leave in the oven for another hour.

Ready for the oven

As they cooked I made the left over yolks into fresh mayonnaise. Shame that ideally you need fresh yolks for mayo though, which was all a bit of a mismatch. By the way if I get hold of very fresh eggs I always go for poaching where freshness is the key not adding bloody vinegar.

When the bases have come out of the oven and cooled whisk up some cream, smear it over the top and then add the raspberries. Or strawberries, or whatever, or just eat them as they are.

Mint leaves purely for presentation. Sorry.

Now, one slight problem here, the tops have risen but the base is a little soggy. Nice but not quite right. Guess I'll just have to whisk harder and longer next time. Maybe it'd be easier to get an electric whisk but quite aside from me being on the dole now, I think it might be the thin end of the wedge. Next thing you know I'd be getting a microwave!

Pho chay

Let's kick this blog off with tonight's meal, Pho Chay. I've visited Vietnam a couple of times and am a big fan of Vietnamese cooking. I can't vouchsafe for the North but in the South it's easy to find vegetarian food, just look for places with "chay" on them. A classic dish there is pho bo, beef and rice noodle soup, not something I've tried but the veggie version, pho chay is gorgeous.

It's ideal food for a hot climate with it's savoury stock base providing liquid and salts, great for cycling or a hangover and a solid (in the loosest sense of the word) breakfast dish. On doing a bit of internet research it appears one of the main drivers in the soup base is star anise. I ended up adopting a recipe I found which used Chinese five spice rather than a mix of individual spices on the grounds that I've yet to rebuild my spice collection after returning from travelling. Before I get on with the recipe I must add a couple of small caveats. Firstly all measurements are very approximate, I tend to wing things like that, sorry. Secondly, I have no idea about how to write up recipes, bear with me as I try to develop a style.

Pho Chay (serves two I reckon, I rounded up the quantities)



Soup base
1.5 litres of vegetable stock
Top of a leek
1 onion, cut in half
2" piece of ginger, crushed (I used a heavy knife and bashed it with the handle)
4 pieces star anise
3 teaspoons Chinese five spice
Water from shiitake mushrooms
Soy sauce
Sugar (half a teaspoon)
Japanese ume plum seasoning (see below)

Ingredients
Can of mock duck (available at Chinese supermarkets, although you could happily substitute firm tofu)
Rice noodles
Bottom half of the leek, sliced
Few dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced
Small carrot, diagonal cut
Half a red pepper, cut into strips
Handful of green beans and broccoli spears. These were going cheap at the supermarket, use`what you want really. In Vietnam I'm sure I had slices of well cooked turnip in a couple of pho's
Beansprouts
Fresh coriander
Fresh basil
Chopped green chilli
Wedge of lime

Putting it all together.
Put the shiitake mushrooms to soak in boiling water for as long as possible (give them a quick wash off first to remove debris). If you're just starting the recipe then chuck them in the stock and fish them out towards the end.
Trim the outer most layer of the onion off and cut in half. Add it to the stock along with the green leaves from the leek top, the crushed ginger and star anise. Simmer the lot for 45 minutes or so. Use the time in between to listen to Radio 4, do the washing up and prep other ingredients.
After 45 minutes add the five spice, soy and sugar and let it all simmer for another quarter of an hour.

When it's on the final quarter of an hour it's time to start sorting out your other ingredients. The packet rice noodles (banh pho) I was using needed to be cooked for around 6 to 8 minutes and I estimated that the rest of the ingredients would take a little less time to stir fry so started working with that time frame in mind. It was the noodles in first, then over to a wok. Chuck the diced mock chicken in and stir fry in a little oil for a minute or so, then drop in the leek, carrot, mushrooms and pepper. At the same time I put the beans and broccoli spears in to steam over the rice noodles for a couple of minutes. When they were done I dropped them into the wok to stir fry with the rest of the veg for the last couple of minutes.

Then it was just a matter of draining the noodles, placing them in the bottom of the bowl with the stir fry over the top and ladling over the soup. Serve with plenty of fresh basil, coriander, sliced green chilli, a wedge of lime and beansprouts to add as you go along. Thing about beansprouts is if you add them all at once or during the cooking they loose their marvellous crunch and I do like a bit of crunch!. Oh, and the Japanese ume plum seasoning? When I tried the stock in the pan it was OK but needed a bit of umph (I probably mean likely umami) so I added a dash. If you've not got any and you feel it needs that umph you could add rice wine vinegar or more soy, or just use a stronger stock.

Welcome to Feeding Bill!

Now, I'm not entirely certain what I'm doing with this blog. As people who know me know, I am a bit of a veggie foodie so obviously it's about food but further than that I have not got as yet. I suspect it'll catalogue what I'm eating, with a few recipes thrown in for good measure. Let's just see what happens, eh?