Jelly + custard = disaster

I found myself wanting something sweet last night after dinner, so I leafed through the cold desserts and selected melrose cream (p203), entirely on the basis that I happened to have all the necessary ingredients in the cupboard.


It seemed quite simple: you make a custard, then make up the contents of a packet of jelly, combine the two, and chill until set.


I was a bit short on time, so instead of mixing up the jelly after making the custard, I did the jelly first, which would give it time to cool down while I was making the custard. Add boiling water to jelly crystals, stir until dissolved, and place in fridge: Done.

The prospect of making custard was not particularly daunting - I've made quite a few successful custard-type desserts by now, which probably made me a bit over-confident. I stood at the stove, stirring my milk, sugar and custard powder mixture for some time, but it didn't seem to thicken.


After a while, there was a bit of resistance as I moved the spoon along the bottom of the pan. I knew some of the custard was sticking to the bottom, but the rest of it still wasn't thickening.


The minutes ticked by, and I started to catch a whiff of scorchy odour as I stirred the pot: I had to get that pot off the heat. The custard had thickened a little, but hadn't yet reached the consistency I was wanting. Still, if I left it on any longer, the custard would be entirely unusable.

By this time I was fed up with my melrose cream and already convinced it was a failure. I wanted to get that custard out of the scorched pan as soon as possible, so I stirred in the jelly mixture straight away. Neither mixture had cooled down much at this point - and I gather they're both supposed to have cooled by the time you combine them - but I mixed them together anyway.


The result was a weird sort of curdled-looking, bright pink mixture, which didn't look appealing at all. It hadn't set by the time I was ready for bed, so I left it in the fridge and didn't look at it until tonight.

My melrose cream did not look any better once it had set. The mixture had partially separated, leaving a layer of jelly on top and a dodgy mush underneath. But when I dug a spoon in, I was surprised to see that it that mushy stuff actually looked quite edible. So I tasted some: very sweet, but otherwise not too bad.


Stunned, I scooped some into a bowl, adding a little banana because an entire bowl of pink mush just didn't seem right, and sat down to eat. Unfortunately, after the first few spoonfuls, I was starting to revise my assessment of the dessert being edible. The texture, which I suspect ought to be light and fluffy, was more that of a curdled substance than anything. And the sickly sweet raspberry flavour was more than I could handle.

My attempt at melrose cream was a bit of a disaster, but I was able to glimpse the kind of dessert it's supposed to be - and I think if it's done right, it could be quite nice. Choose a less sickly flavour of jelly, don't burn your custard, and wait till both mixtures have cooled down before you try to combine them: do this, and you might just have a decent dessert on your hands. If nothing else, you'd be hard-pressed to produce a worse version than mine!

Better than Bryn's?

Time to try my hand at the Edmonds meatloaf (p126), an interesting undertaking as there's no way I'll be able to resist comparing it to the one I usually make, i.e Bryn's famous meatloaf with barbecue sauce. Of course, in essence, the two meatloaves are pretty similar - it's just that on this one, there's an oat-based topping instead of that delicious gooey barbecue coating.


I discovered long ago that the easiest way to prepare the ingredients for a meatloaf is to use a food processor. Mine usually ends up being a bit over-full, but it's much faster, easier and combines the ingredients effectively and tidily.

I started by grating a carrot, since that was the only thing I needed the grater attachment for. Pushing the grated carrot to one side, I switched to the chopper blade, then added garlic, onion and parsley to the food processor bowl.


Somehow I managed to cut two fingers while chopping the onion into chunks suitable for the food processor. Shortly afterwards I dropped a large knife precariously close to my foot, and started to wonder whether I was risking my health by staying in the kitchen in such a clumsy mood. The meatloaf was half done, however, so I persevered.

The onion, garlic, carrot and parsley were chopped and combined in a matter of seconds, so I put in the remaining ingredients: mince, sausage meat, mixed herbs, mustard, salt and pepper, and an egg. Combining this thick gooey mixture took a bit longer, but it was still done within a couple of minutes.

I spooned the meat mixture into a loaf tin, and mixed together a topping comprised of rolled oats, brown sugar, tomato sauce, and more parsley. I spread this mixture thinly over the top of the meatloaf, and plonked it in the oven.


A few minutes later, I rushed back to the oven, on recollecting that I was supposed to cover the meatloaf with foil for the first half-hour's cooking. No harm done, though - it hadn't been in long and adding the foil took only a few moments.

After half an hour in the oven, I took off the foil and returned the meatloaf to the oven for a further 30 minutes while I prepared some veges. At the end of this time, the meatloaf looked and smelled delicious.

You know what? It tasted delicious too! The meatloaf itself has a fairly standard sausagey flavour, but the star of the show is definitely the sweet, crunchy, almost caramelised topping. I only wish there were more of it. Better than Bryn's meatloaf with barbecue sauce? Hmmm.. not quite, but a close second!

Party of one

I went to a movie after work tonight, and so didn't get home until about 7.30pm. That said, I was conscious of not having made a blog post for quite a while, so I went looking for something quick an easy, so I could fill my hungry belly and write a short blog entry about it.

What could be quicker or easier than mousetraps (p193)? (By 'mousetraps' I do of course mean the cheese-on-toast sort, not the kind you actually kill mice with.) Somewhat unexpectedly, the recipe for mousetraps is found in the 'party finger foods' section. Since I don't see myself serving up mousetraps at a party in the near future (or ever, as a matter of fact), I figured I was quite safe to use this one tonight.

To begin with, I toasted a couple of slices of bread on one side only, while I assembled the rest of the ingredients. I finely chopped a small amount of onion, before mixing it with grated cheese. To go with this, I got out some salt, pepper, and a jar of relish. This was actually supposed to be chutney, but I didn't have any. Guess it might be a good idea to look at doing another chutney recipe in the near future eh?


When the bread was toasted on one side, I spread the untoasted side with relish, then topped it with the cheese and onion mixture before grinding over pepper and a small amount of salt. And after a short time under the grill, I had some gooey, tangy mousetraps to tuck into.

They were pretty good, as mousetraps go. The flavour of the mousetrap would of course depend on what kind of chutney or relish you use, but that won't matter as long as you use one you like. So as a quick, easy snack, mousetraps are a pretty tasty option. As party finger food: I still can't see it, can you?

Bake with potential

I went into the kitchen this evening with the intention of making tuna rice bake (p107). It's the sort of recipe that's designed for using up leftover rice: except that since I seldom have leftover rice, I had to begin by cooking some up specially.


That step was accomplished without difficulty; the next proved difficult when I realised I didn't have any onions. I'd checked the recipe when I went to the supermarket to get the tuna, but overlooked the fact that I'd used up all my onions making soup the other day. Sigh.. well, it won't be much good without onion: wrap up; get in car; drive to supermarket for 30c onion purchase; return to kitchen.

With all ingredients now on hand, I could make a start on the sauce, cooking onion, celery and garlic in a pan before stirring in flour and gradually adding milk. When the sauce thickened, I took the pan off the heat and beat in egg and grated cheese. The white sauce turned yellow from the yolk and became almost like an omelet in appearance.


The next step was to season, and then add tuna. The recipe indicates a 425g can, which seems like an awfully large can of tuna to me. I used a standard 190g can for my half-recipe, and that was plenty.


Finally, I stirred in the rice and spooned the mixture into an oven dish. After 20 minutes in the oven, the tuna rice bake had gone golden on top, and was ready to eat. (Well, ok: I was also supposed to garnish the top with parsley, but couldn't be bothered going out to the garden in the cold just for a garnish).

Tuna rice bake might not be the most spectacular meal you'll ever eat - it's pretty ordinary sort of fare. Still, it's has quite a pleasant savoury flavour - and it's not too fishy. If you added some extra vege you'd have a more balanced meal. In fact, I think this recipe could be quite versatile as a 'throw in whatever you've got' kind of meal. Especially if what you've got happens to include leftover rice!

Snow day

This morning I awoke to find it had been snowing overnight. Since snow seldom stays around long in Christchurch (when it falls at all) I got ready for work as usual, climbed in the car and inched my way through the snowy, slippery streets to work.

The snow didn't melt away as I'd expected. Instead, it continued to fall thick and fast. Few people had made it to work and since we weren't going to be able to do much anyway, I ended up heading home again.


For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with the weather in New Zealand, and particularly Christchurch, the thing you need to understand is that we're not well-equipped to deal with snow. What in many countries would be considered a light dusting of snow can bring the whole city to a standstill. 

In weather like this, a bowl of soup seems like an ideal meal. Good thing I'd made some meat stock (p85) over the weekend, then! 

Stock takes time to make, but very little effort. I got some beef bones from a local butcher, trimmed off any obvious fat, and put them into a stock pot with two litres of water. When the water started boiling, there was a dirty-looking scum on the surface, so I followed the recipe, which stated that if this was the case, I should drain the water, rinse the bones and start again with fresh water.

When I had the fresh lot of water boiling, I added a carrot and a couple of celery sticks, along with some peppercorns and a bouquet garni made of parsley and a bay leaf. It was supposed to have a sprig of thyme in it too, but I couldn't get any. Instead I sprinkled a little dried thyme in the water and hoped for the best.

That's pretty much the sum total of effort involved in preparing the stock. After this, you just let it simmer for six hours, then strain it through a sieve and leave it cool before refrigerating.

I got my big bowl of stock out today to make some french onion soup (p86). I already had some thinly sliced onions cooking in butter over a low heat, so while that was happening, I skimmed the layer of fat off the top of my stock. With the fat gone, the stock had a weird jellyish consistency, but it melted down into a liquid almost immediately when I added it to the pan with the onions.

The soup had to simmer for 15 minutes, so in the meantime, I sorted out the cheese on toast which apparently goes with french onion soup. It probably would have looked prettier if I'd used dainty little slices of french bread, but I didn't have any (and wasn't going out in the snow to get some!) and anyway, the recipe seemed to indicate normal toast bread. Probably grainy bread isn't exactly traditional, but never mind, it's all I had.

When the 15 minutes was up. I removed the pan from the heat and added a little sherry and some seasoning, then served myself a bowl of soup topped with the cheesy toast.


The french onion soup had a far more mellow flavour than I expected from all those onions, and while I found the soggy, cheesy bread an odd addition, it tasted ok. I think my beef stock was a little lacking in flavour, and I had to add quite a lot of salt to prevent the soup from being bland. Still, it was a warming, pleasant meal - just the thing on a snowy day!

When was the last time you had a banana split?

What with the chilly weather predicted for this weekend, and a sore throat/runny nose on the verge of becoming a cold, I decided it might be best to spend the weekend hibernating. In furtherance of this goal, I stayed in bed until well into the morning, and this afternoon wrapped myself in a duvet and settled on the couch to watch my way through The Lord of the Rings trilogy.


Halfway through The Two Towers, I found myself wanting chocolate. Well, I didn't have any chocolate in the house and going out to get some doesn't really fit with the hibernation thing, so I had to think outside the box a bit. Chocolate sauce (p189) would do the trick, but I had to come up with something to have it with. My eyes strayed to the fruit bowl and I thought of something I hadn't eaten in years: a banana split.

The sauce took no time at all to make. You just mix cocoa with cornflour and a little milk, add butter, sugar and the rest of the milk, then stir it over a low heat for a few minutes until it thickens. Easy.


While the sauce was cooking, I cut a banana in half and scooped out a couple of balls of ice cream. When the sauce was ready, I poured it straight over the ice cream and sprinkled over some chopped nuts. The hot sauce melted the ice cream almost immediately, but it still tasted great.

The sauce itself was perhaps a little disappointing in terms of chocolate flavour - it mostly tasted of cocoa. But the combination of the sauce with creamy vanilla ice cream, banana and nuts was actually fantastic. I couldn't believe I'd gone so long without eating one of these. Well, it won't be years before I have another one!

Forced compromise

I can understand why Edmonds would want to have a section in their cookbook promoting recipes which use their cake mixes. What is less easy to understand is why they would subsequently stop making the products required in some of these recipes.


Muffin cake (p75) is one such: the recipe lists Edmonds Apple and Sultana Muffin Mix as an ingredient. Sounds good - except that the only muffin mix Edmonds make these days (as far as I can discover) is a chocolate one. And that wouldn't really work in the recipe. So I'm sorry to say I was forced to purchase the most similar product I could find: Betty Crocker's Mixed Berry muffin mix. Forcing me to use a competitor's product kind of defeats the purpose of plugging your products in recipe-form, doesn't it?

When I got my muffin mix home, I turned to the muffin cake recipe, only to find a second non-existent product listed in the recipe: Fleming's Vita-Crunch. As far as Google was able to tell me, Vita-Crunch was some kind of toasted oaty muesli type stuff. As a substitute, I toasted up some rolled oats, and added a handful of crushed cornflakes and some chopped nuts, crossing my fingers that it would do the trick.


The cake itself was very easy to make. I combined the dry ingredients with come cinnamon, before adding the contents of the berry sachet, along with an egg, some oil and a bit of water. I briefly considered switching the berries with some apple and sultanas, in an attempt to more closely replicate the original recipe, but decided not to bother.

The cake was supposed to be made in a ring tin. I don't have one, so just placed a small drinking glass in the centre of my 20cm round tin. I spooned in the cake batter, scattered my substitute "Vita-Crunch" over the top, chucked it all in the oven and hoped for the best.


I wasn't feeling too optimistic when I got the cake out of the oven. It seemed to have cooked through just fine, but I wasn't sure how it would taste. I brought it to work today to feed to my fellow blood-donors, warning them all that the cake was a bit experimental and that might taste a bit weird.

With such low expectations, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the cake was in fact very tasty. The "Vita-Crunch" topping was entirely unnecessary, since it didn't add much to either the flavour or texture, and also since most of it fell off as we attempted to eat it. Probably the original Vita-Crunch was more successful.
The cake itself, however, was really very nice: it had a nice moist muffiny texture and the berry and cinnamon combination actually worked really well.