Chocolate Pudding and Percy

[icarus]

I'm a cooking fiend this week. I've made soup stock from scratch, spagetti sauce from scratch, my own pizza dough, and - you guessed it - sauce and thus pizza from scratch. An ultra-hot thai dish two nights ago.

Did you know mayonaise is just egg yolk, oil and a little mustard, lemon and vinegar? And a hell of a lot of stirring. Shit, I stirred through two episodes of That 70's Show, Enterprise, and Law and Order before I was finally done.

But now I know how to make mayonaise.

Tonight: I'm making chocolate mousse, from a half-remembered recipe. Hey, I had the egg whites left over from Mayo, right?

I have an idea for a Harry/Percy story. Of all things.

Comments

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Yep, mayo's just an egg-based emulsion. You can make a pretty good egg-free version if you replace the egg yolk with soft tofu. (Yeah, yeah, I know. :P I'm allergic to the eggs, okay?) A food processor is the easiest way I know to make it - just drizzle the oil in slowly once you've added the acid and the seasonings. Mmm... chemistry...

If you screw up the chocolate mousse, there's always angel food cake! Mmm... cake...

Magical concoctions

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You guys and your fancy machines. I use a wire whisk for everything. I don't even own a toaster. Or a microwave. For a long time I held out on the TV, though I still resist buying a cell phone.

There are all these things that seem to be made 'magically' that you've never seen your mom do. I made marshmallows in high school - get this, they're sugar (surprise, surprise), corn-syrup... and gelatin!

The mousse came out so-so. Good enough for me to eat in front of late night TV, not good enough to risk the boyfriend's inevitably unfiltered opinions (it's what I love about him - almost helplessly honest).

Ummm.. chocolate.

Re: Magical concoctions

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

I actually do envy, you. I just don't have the physical stamina to do everything by hand (although I still want a proper mortar and pestle).

Yeah, marshmallows are dead easy. Divinity, on the other hand, is a pain in the butt. My grandma used to make that by hand and it would come out perhaps one time in ten. She was *good*, too, could make anything. It's just the balance between beating at a steady rate for just long enough (too long *urgh*), having the room temperature and humidity set properly, avoiding distractions... it's the hardest thing I know of to make.

Mmm... want carob now...

Re: Magical concoctions

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

How're your eyes?

Divinity looked like so much fun in those old 1950's cookbooks, but then, they had pictures of women cooking in pearl necklaces, too, so that tells the story.

I was going to be going to Nepal, so I started learning how to cook from scratch with a minimum of equipment. But then, the nephew of the previous king killed his entire family (not that anyone can prove it) and his dad took over the country. So, I was a little worried going over there just after the bloodbath.

~Icarus