Bob > An Update

Bob has been rising nicely, frothing up to twice his size every day. There's just one problem. Bob smells. Like really smells. I've never had a starter before. Are they meant to smell so bad? I've heard that they should smell beery, or acidic. But Bob just smells.


To be honest, he was smelly from day one. But I thought it was just my plastic container. On day two, I measured out 50g of Bob and washed out the container. The container no longer smelled. I rejoiced. However, it has been 2 days since and Bob still really smells. I'm worried.

Bob > My Baby Sourdough Starter

Today I created life. Well, sort of. I made a sourdough starter! Yay!

I know, I know, not the best photos. But hopefully Bob will soon produce some pretty bread.

I've been thinking about doing it for a little while, especially after reading Mr Humble's guest post at Not So Humble Pie. I wasn't going to do it. I was just thinking that maybe I should be thinking about doing it. But today, I was making rice (as we Asians do) and was struck with what is hopefully an ingenious idea. Why not use that milky, cloudy rice water in a sourdough starter?

I've read up a little about sourdough starters (google, of course) and some recipes include pasta water, or potato starch. Why not rice water? It's definitely got starch, and apparently it's good for your plants, so why not for your yeasties? Please biology people don't prove me wrong...

I used a tall plastic screw top container, making sure the finished starter filled it by less than half (not hard, since it didn't even reach 1/3). All I put in was 100g bread flour, and 100g rice water. And that was it. Bob was born.

I will feed it like a good mummy over the next week. And then we shall see how my rice water idea panned out.

On a side note...

Quick bit of news. I was talking to J over dinner tonight and he announced that he would like to be called NoobletBoyfriend. I told him this was just too long and impractical, so from here on, he will be referred to as NoobBoy.

Nooblet Macarons Part I (and a half) > Meet Macaron

For the benefit of Schnazzie (yet another nooblet, it would seem) I have decided to add a post that was not originally meant to be. This is the post to introduce to you my friend, and elusive prey, the macaron.

For those of you who do not know, a macaron is an impossibly light, impossibly pretty, and impossibly French confectionery. Some would even call it a cookie. A macaron is made up of several parts, i.e. the shell, the feet, the body (or interior), and the filling (please refer to figure 1.1, below).

Figure 1.1 - the macaron

The actual macaron part (the feet, the shell, and the meringue interior) is a baked wonder consisting of only four base ingredients - almond meal, icing sugar, sugar, and of course, egg whites. It is this 'cookie' that Nooblet strives to achieve.

The filling seems less important. It is fine as long as it's a ganache or butter-cream in a half-decent flavour. Apparently jam works too, and I imagine whipped cream can't be too horrible (although it can't be matured like a proper macaron...).

You eat it by biting into and savouring every little bit (please no popping the entire thing in your mouth). And then you reach for a second. 

Class dismissed.

Nooblet Macarons Part I > It Begins

Not my macarons...Pierre Herme's (the holy grail of petit fours)

I made my first macarons over the weekend. Well, my first attempt at macarons. They weren't perfect, but were nonetheless gobbled up completely by J and his sisters.

It all started with a craving for custard. As a result of that venture, I had five orphan egg whites with nowhere to go. It usually takes me hours, even days, to work out what to do with leftover egg bits. This time was different. I just knew I wanted to make macarons. Not macaroons. Macarons. Yes, those angelic pastel pillows of meringue squished together with oozing butter-cream or ganache. Those famously elusive shells perched ever so precariously on those fluffy feet.

Having decided to make macarons, I Googled. After much investigation, I decided to start with the French meringue approach, using almost the exact recipe found on Serious Eats (I added a bit of vanilla when folding meringue into the amond/sugar mix, or if you want to be fancy, tant pour tant).

I whipped. I folded (perhaps a bit much). I piped. 20 minutes later, my first tray of macarons were in the oven. A further five minutes later had me prancing around J gleefully proclaiming "They have feet! They have feet!" In the end, the macarons were ok. They didn't rise quite as much as I would have hoped, but they did have a crisp shell and the cutest little feet. Unfortunately they also had a bit of an air pocket between the shell and the body of the macarons, and due to insane stickiness, many of them left their insides behind on the tray (a condition colourfully chronicled at Syrup and Tang). I think this was due to slight over-beating and the thin-ness of the trays I used. Still, they disappeared quickly.

I still had some egg whites left over the next day, and decided to try again with the Italian meringue method, having heard that it was more reliable. I used the recipe from Syrup and Tang and again added some vanilla while folding.

I don't have a sugar thermometer, so I used the cold water test. Again, I whipped, and folded, and piped. 5 minuted after inserting into the oven I was wailing at J "No feet! They don't have feet!"

This time my macaron troubles were reversed. They dried out nicely, didn't brown too much, and didn't stick at all. But, no feet! And no shell. While J and his sister both affirmed their deliciousness, I was not consoled. No feet! I think I actually under-mixed, having over-beaten my batter the day before.

So there you have it. My first (imperfect) macarons. They will be better next week.

Introduction

I've always been bad at introducing myself. I'm never quite sure what to say. Even for this, I'm not sure what I should write.

My name is Vicky.
I'm a Sydney-sider.
I love food.
I love cooking food.
I love eating food.

Ok...I guess not that hard.

I've been a foodie ever since I was tiny. While other kids rush to get their swimmers ready when beach is announced, I always ran to make sure all 9 pockets of my overalls were full of snacks to get me through the day.

I've now grown up a bit, and no longer wear overalls, but food is still a huge part of my life. Only now I'm a bit more involved in the making part of it (no longer just a human vacuum ;p).

While I've been cooking for a little while, I recently began to notice that more of my experiments turn out to be successes, and fewer of them flops. My pastas are tastier, my bread is soft and light, and my cookies are the perfect mix of crunchy and chewy.

This blog, hopefully, is a means of keeping me cooking (and writing). I hope you like it.
:)