What about the yolks?

A tip from Jo Seagar: egg whites can be stored in a covered container in the fridge for up to three weeks.

You can use them for pavlovas or meingues but my problem isn’t excess whites, it’s excess yolks.

I tend to make meringues and pavlova in bulk which leaves me with multiple yolks.

You can put a few extra in a quiche, but what about the rest?

I usually give them to our dog. Pepper enjoys them and has a very shiny coat but the repeated waste-not-want-not exhortation from my parents when I was growing up is still ingrained and makes me feel there might be a better use for them.

OED says pavlova is NZ’s

It’s official – the  Oxford English Dictionary has decreed the pavlova was created in NZ:

In its relaunched online edition, the OED says the first recorded pavlova recipe appeared in New Zealand in 1927.

This was in a book called Davis Dainty Dishes, published by the Davis Gelatine company, and it was a multi-coloured jelly dish.

But New Zealanders claim the meringue version also originated there, with recipes for it appearing in publications in 1928 and 1929.

Dr Helen Leach from New Zealand’s University of Otago is something of a pavlova expert.

“I can find at least 21 pavlova recipes in New Zealand cookbooks by 1940, which was the year the first Australian ones appeared,” the author of The Pavlova Story told the Daily Telegraph.

This reminds me that Deborah and Kate  made requests for my recipe.

It came from the mother of a friend. We met on our first day at high school after her parents had retired from a farm in South Otago. Our parents became friends too and, as friends do, swapped recipes, including this one.

The slow adding of sugar and long, slow cooking both seem to be important. The result is a pavlova which is crisp on the outside and marshmallowy on the inside.

Peggy Sheat’s Pavlova

4 egg whites                                pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups sugar                      1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 Tablespoons water               1/2 teaspoon vinegar *

3 dessertspoons cornflour *

Beat whites to soft peak stage.

Add water & beat to mix.

Add sugar gradually (about 10 teaspoons at a time) beating well between additions – this should take at least 10 minutes.

Add cornflour, salt, vanilla and Vinegar.

Spoon onto baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake 140 degrees for 10 minutes,  130 degrees for 20 minutes then 110 degrees for 30 minutes.  **

Turn oven off and leave pavlova in until it cools – but only if oven is clean, if it’s not the pavlova will take on the aromas from the oven – or so I’m told because I’ve never had a dirty oven  🙂

When cool turn onto serving dish crisp side down, cover with whipped cream and pile fruit on top – kiwifruit in winter and berries in summer.

* If cooking for people with  a gluten allergy make sure you use maize cornflour & white vinegar rather than malt.

** The temperatures are from memory because the recipe is in Fahrenheit –  275 f for 10 minutes, 25o f for 20 minutes and 200 for 30 minutes. If your ability to convert temperatures from F to C is better than mine I’d welcome more accurate figures.

Two things I learned this week

1) It’s not a good idea to start making meringues, run out of time and finish mixing them next morning. The sugar crystalises and separates when they cook with a detrimental affect on both taste and texture.

2) The fool-proof pavlova recipe isn’t fool-proof if you cook it at the wrong temperature.

Sigh.

Top 10 quintessential Kiwi foods

Adam Smith started it at Inquiring Mind with

1  Bluff Oysters in batter

2 Pavlova

3 Meat Pie

4 ANZAC Biscuits

5 Colonial Goose

6 Mince on toast

7 Whitebait fritters

8 Crayfish

9 Blue cod & chips

10 Whitestone cheese

Adolf carried it on at No Minister with:

1. Roast lamb (Merino/South Suffolk cross – killed at 14 months) and mint sauce, accompanied by steamed new potaoes, fresh green peas and sweet corn on the cob, all with lashings of butter.

2. Carefully prepared Maori hangi – pork, mutton, potato, kumara, beet root, puha.

3. Steamed pipi, cockles and kutai (mussels) with lots of fresh bread and butter.

4. Steamed Tarakihi or Hapuka with mashed potato and kumara (combined) and plenty of fresh greens. Plenty of salt and cracked black pepper along with lemon juice over the fish.

5. An eighteen inch long slab of sirloin steak, turned on the char grill for forty minutes while continually basted in a brew compising red wine, worchester sauce, tomato sauce, hot chilli sauce, garlic, soy sauce, balsamic viegar and any thing else which gets in the road. Black on the outside, nipple pink in the middle. Char grilled vegies on the side.

6. Steam pudding with custard sauce.

7. Roast chicken with roast vegies and silver beet. Lotsa gravy.

8. Bacon and eggs with baked beans and tomato.

9. TipTop Icecream

10. KFC for South Aucklanders.

And my list, based on the food I miss most when out of the country, in no particular order is:

1. Vogels bread, toasted with cottage cheese and kiwi fruit or vegemite, cottage cheese and tomato.

2. Hokey pokey ice cream.

3. Pavlova topped with cream and kiwifruit.

4. Lamb backstraps, topped with grainy mustard and soy sauce, grilled until still pink, served with broccoli, carrots, roasted red onion and kumera.

5. Blue cod from Fleurs Place.

6. Waitaki Valley strawberries.

7. Central Otago apricots and peaches.

8. Totara Lowlands cherries.

9. Milkshakes

10. Fresh asaparagus with Whitestone Windsor Blue cheese.

And an extra one: my favourite childhood dinner (which I probably haven’t had for more than 30 years): Roast mutton with roast potatoes, mint sauce, gravy and mashed swedes.