Plan B

I had big plans for my day off yesterday. Recently at work, I realised just how long it's been since I used a piping bag when the potato I was piping onto pies turned out less than aesthetically pleasing. To build up my skills a bit, I decided to experiment on meringues. However, they didn't turn out exactly right. I used a combo of brown and icing sugar because I couldn't find any castor in the pantry. The brown sugar gave them a lovely caramelly flavour, but made them look, well, a little poopy. Observe.

My experiments continued with strawberry and chocolate meringues. I'd gotten bored with the piping bag half-way through the plain meringues so I was just spooning the mixture onto the tray. The strawberry ones tasted fab but are also a tad ugly.

I melted some very dark chocolate for the last round, but adding liquids to meringues just deflates the egg whites and it all just turned to goo. Determined not to throw anything out (or eat the whole bowl raw) I poured the goo into a ramekin and accidentally made a souffle. It was immediately descended upon and this was the first picture I could take of it. It used to be quite pretty...

Meanwhile, four wild ducks were slow cooking in the oven and were to be a triumphant dinner. Last time we had wild duck, everyone ended up with half a duck each - because carving the bony things was just too fiddly - and we quickly abandoned cutlery in favour of fingers. Today's ducks looked (and smelt) fabulous, but by the time 7pm rolled around, they were only half finished. A house-full of returned gym bunnies demanded light food, now, so the ducks were postponed of favour of quick pasta with gin and tonics.

Post-Gym Pasta
Your pasta of choice
1 onion- diced
4 cloves garlic
Oil
Red wine - 1/4c ish
Can of tomatoes
2 mushrooms
Half a capsicum
Handful fresh coriander and basil
Chopped chillies and pepper
Cheese


Boil water and add enough salt to make it taste like the sea. Chuck in as much pasta as you think you can eat, then a bit more.

Heat oil, onion and garlic in a big pan with the lid on. When the onion is soft, pour in quarter of a cup of red wine and tomatoes. Rinse out the can with a little more wine. Simmer with the lid off and add mushrooms,  capsicum,  basil, and coriander. Season with pepper and chopped chillies.
Serve topped with cheese and more herbs.


Accidental Souffle ( I had enough mixture left for one ramekin, but here's a 4+ person recipe, depending on the size of your ramekins)

3 egg whites
Lemon juice
100g brown sugar
70g icing sugar (or 170g worth of whatever sugar you can find)
Chocolate - I used Whittakers 72%

Preheat oven to 130°C. Beat the egg whites. Add lemon juice and beat some more. Super slowly, add teh sugars a little at a time, while continuing to beat. Melt the chocolate and beat it in. Pour into ramekins or one big container and bake for about 15 minutes. To prevent collapsed souffles - which aren't as pretty but just as tasty - leave the finished souffle in the oven (turned off and door shut) until completely cool.