saturday night cooking adventures.

It's 9PM, and I just finished eating dinner. A little late, I'd say. But I was actually killing time baking because I was waiting for my brother to call me. I was supposed to pick him up and then we were supposed to eat dinner together. However, he never called me, and my baking adventure was therefore quite extensive.

I started out with a meringue adventure. I have always wanted to make meringue. I made it once at culinary camp when I was about 8 years old. But I'm pretty sure I didn't do very much of it, the counsellors probably did most of it. I was curious as to how easy it would be to separate egg whites from yolk (turns out, it is very easy.. all you need to do is crack the egg, hold it up right and pull the top half off the egg off, and the egg white just sort of spills out into the bowl..). Anyway, I put them in there for 30 mins at 225F and they weren't completely done at the time, so I just stuck them back in. I think I made them a little too big and thick. The smaller ones were pretty dry, and very tasty might I add. I love meringue. I put them in for an additional 10 minutes, hoping that would be enough time.



Anyway, naturally I had egg yolks left. And since my brother hadn't called me yet. I decided that it was time for me to eat dinner, and use up these egg yolks. I looked it up on the internet, and most of the recipes seemed quite complicated, and involved ingredients I didn't own. But eventually I found a recipe for a Spaghetti Carbonara, so I took that recipe and modified it a little to fit what ingredients I had at home. Unfortunately I did not read the method, I only read the recipe. So I decided to just dump it all into a sauce pan and mix. But this recipe asks you to remove the sauce from heat at one point in order to not have scrambled eggs in your sauce. I unfortunately missed this, and ended up with an interesting sauce.. It still tasted fine, although it was very very thick. A little too heavy for my liking (and I had even replaced the cream with milk and corn starch- though maybe I added a little too much corn starch?).



I think I will try the meringue again, and make smaller cookies. But I will need to find a new egg yolk recipe to try (I'm thinking of buying a lemon and making lemon squares next time), I was not a big fan of the pasta sauce. A little too heavy for my liking.

Recipes-
Meringue:
3 egg whites
1/2 cup of sugar
A pinch of salt
Beat together until stiff, bake for 40 mins at 225F (adjust time depending on size of cookies)

Carbonara:
(adjusted from here)
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp margarine
2 cups milk
1 tsp corn starch
2 strips of bacon
Salt to taste
(note this is way too much for one serving. I think they mentioned one egg is good for one serving. I already had three though)

Current soundtrack: Coachella 2011 Mix (note: I did not make it) The music at Coachella this year was amazing.