Saturday I made the chocolate cake and the Victoria sponge, Sunday morning I ran out of eggs. Giorgio Locatelli (and I know it seems like weeks now I have been talking about him) asks for 120 grams of egg yolks in his lemon mascarpone tart and 110 grams of egg yolks in his apple tart. “Giorgio!” you want to say, and I think I did, “A little help!” I understand that not all egg yolks are of the same weight – in fact, perhaps they are even like snowflakes, and no two egg yolks ever weigh the same – and although I use a wonky scale and tend to guess at measurements anyway, I understand the precision of a pastry chef. But it would be helpful (yes, Giorgio, I’m looking at you and your editor) if the recipe would read: “120 grams egg yolks, from about 9 large eggs”. That’s right: nine. Because let me tell you, no one knows how many eggs to have in the house for 120 grams of egg yolks, and someone is certainly going to run out of eggs on a Sunday morning two hours before the shops open. I went to the corner store in desperation, where the only other person in the shop, besides the cashier, was a young gent cradling all the eggs in his arms and balancing them up to the check-out counter. I wanted to cry.
It all came together, though, for Sainsbury’s comes to those who wait. I was in the shop at two minutes after noon, and back in the kitchen, with the mascarpone and the ninth egg yolk, by a quarter past. Five cakes for a four o’clock tea party requires efficiency and a sharp eye on the hour.
Nothing like cakes, honestly, and nothing like cakes on a cake stand. We ate, we drank, nobody spilled anything – what more could you ask? The only problem with being a hostess to thirteen is you don’t really get enough time to talk to everyone properly. I wanted to ask Dan about Khartoum and Tonia about the interview, Judith about Somerset and the hats, Claire about how she got where she is, Marc about the photographs and dinner at Locatelli, Kris about everything, I wanted to ask Eibhlin how come I know so little about her. I will just have to make up stories about all of them.
posted by stellou at 10:06 AM
7 Comments:
Hooray for tea parties!
"Five cakes for a four o’clock tea party requires efficiency and a sharp eye on the hour."
Yah. Tell me about it.
wow, you are amazing! that victorian sponge looks fabulous. i can taste the pillowy soft sponge and thick cream and the tart raspberries.
let's not blame giorgio, but his editor. i say the same about the recent purchase of the bather's pavillion cookbook. serge is telling me about the blueberry tart. he says make the sweet crust pastry (after resting the dough for an hour) and then line it with the frangipane paste which you were meant to make the day before because it needs to be chilled overnight in the fridge. the frangipane step is number two! after the sweet crust pastry and the hour long rest. now if i were the editor i would have made the frangipane bit step one, because who reads a recipe right through before embarking on making the tantalising blueberry tart on the opposite page?
bbrug > Yah! Hooray for tea parties, but honestly, I don't know how you do it with the cake lying around the house afterwards. I mean, I know, you have been saying for days now (well, your blog has been saying for days now) that you no longer have cake in the house. But till then!
I actually managed not to overbake this time -- there were about enough cakes for people, plus a little left over to parcel out in crisp foil packets -- but I have certainly been left with too much goodness before. I mean, I like cake and all, but since I stopped going to the gym... well... urgh.
deb > Honestly, most of those things were easy to make. The moelleux au chocolat took an hour; the Victoria sponge took, yeah, about an hour, plus maybe ten or fifteen minutes to set up; the passionfruit pavlova took, I dunno, really not long at all, especially since alls you do is bung the thing in the oven and make sure not to forget it. It was just all the little in-between bits that were aggravating -- running out for eggs, washing the mixing bowls in between every other step... because, yes, I only have two mixing bowls. I mean, hey, two mixing bowls really are okay for normal life; the problem only arises when one decides to make a host of cakes in one afternoon. Then, I tell you, I long to hand off the dirty dishes to the immigrant dishwasher.
Also, that Victorian sponge is from Nigella Lawson. I take my hat off to her for suggesting I mix in real raspberries with the jam. It was exquisite.
Also, and I know it is like I am blogging a comment here, I am sorry about your frangipane paste. All shoddy cookbook editors should be flogged with a slab of chilled frangipane paste. They, of all people, should know: Blueberry tart waits for no man.
eeYURRRR. you taunt me with your victoria sponge, tonto. spongy tonto.
like that lah, see you tomorrow. and now, to delete stellou.com from this spy computer's history.
OH. maybe next time you can buy bulk liquid eggyolks to measure out 120g, yum yum.
LIQUID EGG YOLKS??? Tell me more, Mr Clever! I have only ever seen cartons of egg whites, and actually never in London, though I'm sure they must be out there. Are you having me on, with the liquid egg yolks? I am a trusting one!! Thing is, though, if you use liquid egg yolks, it means you don't have a giant bowl of egg whites for egg-white omelettes afterwards...
i own only two mixing bowls too. here is my secret - sometimes i use saucepans instead. the boy hates it, because he is our dishwasher too.
I tried to help with this mixing bowl problem. I did. You would have loved the mixing bowls, if only the stupid Amazon had made any genuine effort to deliver them to you.
Sigh.
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