Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there, I did not die.

-Mary Elizabeth Frye-


01 July 2014

The World Cup Food Challenge - Day 9, Australia (Pavlova)

I have often said, and I really do honestly believe, that there are few places in the world that can beat Australia for good food. I cannot recall having a single bad meal the last time I was there. At worst, one or two of the meals may have been mediocre. The rest were excellent! Even some random Chinese take away which I stumbled into late at night and had the sole distinction of being the closest one to the hotel without a queue outside, served up good food. Although, to be fair, the time of the night and the prior consumption of alcohol – which was not a lot, mind - may have something to do with how much I enjoyed the food. Maybe I have been lucky, or unduly influenced by Masterchef Australia, but it seems to me that Australians take their food seriously.
That said though, it is hard to really pin-point what Australian food is today. When I say it's hard to beat Australia for good food, I mean the food that you get in Australia, be it Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, whatever, is good. But I find it very hard to say what "Australian food" really is. So when trying to pick a dish to make for Australia, I stumbled. The one thing which really stood out, was the pavlova. The pavlova is a meringue based dessert which was apparently "created" in honour of the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova while she was on tour. A slight snag with that, is that both Australia and New Zealand have claimed credit for the creation of the pavlova. Wikipedia has, of course, more to say on the subject. I resolved this dispute by making the executive decision that because New Zealand is not anywhere near the World Cup, the point is moot. Just to be safe though, I polled my Aussie cousins and several Australians living here. (I say several, I mean one.) Not only did I receive no objections to making the pavlova as my Australian dish, I even got a recipe for the perfect Aussie pavlova!

Picture taken from: http://m.bmag.com.au/food-drink/recipes/perfect-aussie-pavlova/
Ingredients
4 egg whites, room temperature
1 cup Caster sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
2 tsp White Mill cornflour
300ml Farmdale thickened cream
Fresh fruit, washed and sliced (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries & peaches,
says the orginal recipe. I was also told by Aussie cousin says that passion fruit is essential. I was sceptical about finding passion fruit in Sweden, but that turned out to be the least of my problems.)

Method
1. In a small electric mixer bowl, beat egg whites on medium until soft peaks form.
2. Add vinegar, cornflour and gently sprinkle sugar, one teaspoon at a time, beating until stiff and glossy (approx. 10 mins)
3. Trace map of Australia onto baking paper and cut out shape. Place cut-out onto a baking tray and spoon meringue mix inside the map. Smooth sides and top of meringue with a spatula, leaving he centre slightly hollowed. Bake in over at 130°C for 1 ½ hours, or until pavlova is dry to the touch.

4. Turn off oven and leave pavlova to cool with oven door ajar. Once cooled, place pavlova on a serving plate. Use electric mixer to whip cream until soft peaks form.
5. Gently spread whipped cream on top of meringue and decorate with fresh fruit.

Just to be clear, there was no tracing of any map of Australia onto any baking paper going on in my kitchen! I ignored that bit and went for the bog standard circle. I was nervous enough about making this as it was! I was nervous on two fronts: the meringue and the cream. And considering that the pavlova is really made up of almost only meringue and cream (the rest is just fresh fruit, which really, is very, very hard to get wrong), you could conclude that my confidence going into this was not riding high. I was concerned about meringue, simply because it is hard to get right. Well, for me at least. I have not made it often enough to know what I am doing. I have made meringue twice; it worked perfectly once, not quite so perfectly the other. Add to that an unfamiliar oven... Anyway, the other cause for concern was the cream. Thickened cream, or anything like it, cannot be got in this country. Double cream, heavy cream just does not seem to exist. I powered on nevertheless using what they call vispgrädde over here (so-called whipping cream) with the highest fat content I could find.

Verdict: disaster!

The Meringue Disaster

The egg whites actually looked perfect before I put it in the oven. It formed stiff peaks, was smooth and glossy and everything! I was so pleased with it as I put in the oven. I set the timer for an hour, thinking that I could just check on it to see how it is going, and then set about the business of doing something else. This was midsummer's eve, so I was running about getting together camping gear and putting together a collection of alcohol and mixers to last me through the day. Which meant, I did not really pay attention to the meringue in that first hour. When the timer rang, I ran excitedly to the oven to see how it was doing. It was brown!! That was a shock, but then again, not necessarily a disaster in itself. I had seen photos of pavlovas where the meringue had browned. Not quite what I was going for, but possibly all right, or so thought a part of me. The other part was screaming "why is it brown??!!?!?" Even more worrying though, was that it was completely soft to the touch! I lowered the temperature and put it back in the oven, thinking that maybe it is just not done yet. The recipe did say one and a half hours. In the end, it must have been a total of two and a half hours or even three hours that it was in there. But to my great disappointment, the meringue never got crisp.
The root of the problem, I suspect, might be the fact that I did not use regular caster sugar. I had some "fruit sugar" leftover from when I was baking for a friend who can't take regular sugar. I do not really know much about it other than that it was sold as an alternative to regular sugar. It looks like regular sugar, but apparently is sweeter. So the instructions on the package said to use in smaller quantities than regular sugar, which I did. After my pavlova disaster, I read up a bit more about all this and apparently the amount of sugar is essential in the pavlova. I do not remember why exactly now, but apparently there must be a certain proportion of sugar to egg white, otherwise it will not work. I do not know for sure that this was the problem, but the next time I try this (and yes, by God, there will be a next time! ...I hope...), I will follow the instructions to a T. As long as I overcome the cream problem, that is.

The cream disaster
I did a small test batch with the vispgrädde while I was waiting for the meringue to crisp, and it seemed to work all right. At least it got quite firm, though not quite as firm as I would have liked. I kept on whisking for a bit more, but then that was a bit too much and it immediately started to break down. I suppose you could say that it started to separate, except what this cream was doing was really just slowly turning to water; I do not know how else to describe it. I tried again, and got it just about as firm as I thought it would go without separating, and left it sitting on the kitchen counter and went about my business of whatever else I was doing. I came back several minutes later (to peer worriedly and whisper words of encouragement at my meringue through the oven door) and saw that the cream was already starting to get watery. Whatever that cream was purporting to be, it was not what I needed.

I have since been to The English Shop here in town where they have quite a good selection of English products which cannot usually be found here. The lady who works there is also quite a baker and is often good for advice and suggestions of alternatives for whatever that cannot be got here. I asked her about thickened / double / heavy cream problem. To my dismay, she had no solution! They are not allowed to import double cream because of some EU regulation about dairy products, even though they are allowed to bring in clotted cream. So clotted cream was all they had, but I am not sure that is a viable alternative. Since then, I have been checking up (I say 'have been checking up', I mean I googled, once) alternatives to heavy cream, and have come across a blog where a homemade version of 3/4 milk blended with 1/3 cup melted butter is suggested. I wonder.

My pavlova, minutes before it was de-fruited and chucked
regretfully in the bin.

But there is no denying that this attempt was simply, a disaster. There is no other word for it. I used some whipped cream from a can and placed some fruit on top, to make it look presentable for the photo, then ate all the fruit. I cut a bit of the meringue to try. It tasted quite good - how bad can sugar taste?? - but the whole thing was just chewy and disappointing.

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