Recently I decided to give a go on making Pavlova. I used Donna Hay's recipe. It was simple and relatively easy. However, just as Donna said in the season 2 of Australia's Masterchef, it's a simple recipe where so many things can go wrong.

Essentially the most important thing for me was the ensure that my equipment and utensils were clean and free from any oil (deemed excess oil) that would ruin my egg whites from rising. Plus, I have never done a pavlova so I made sure I was extra careful with the accuracy and amount of ingredients I used.

I'm really happy with the results. The crust is nice and hard but the only problem is how my crust rose so high but my insides were quite low. So my crust would crumble. This could have been because I accidentally added in the a little cornstarch and used a mixer instead of folding it in with a spoon.

Other than that, everything seemed okay :) I tried to make fresh cream from milk, but it failed miserably so I stuck to a caramel sauce with bananas instead :p  I've never tried a pavlova but I do like that it has a good hard crust with a mashmallowy inside :3

 Hugs for everyone~ Try making your own pavlova!

Ramen

I started off this dish with the broth. I bought myself a pack of good beef marrow bones and I knew I wanted to make soup with them but I just couldn't figure out what else I wanted to do. I've been reading and watching cooking shows and manga etc. So I decided to do ramen!!

I know that using beef as a soup base is a little unconventional. But wait... it gets much weirder haha. Instead of doing normal noodles, while I was doing them from scratch, instead of water, I used tangerine juice.


For the broth I kept it simple, I used two big beef marrow bones and boiled them till it was nice thick and oily. I only added in a little salt. After you leave the broth to cool, the layer of oil should have hardened and I used a spoon to scoop them out together with the bones. Next, add in the ingredients you want in the broth. I kept mine simple with chopped up king oyster mushroom and nappa cabbage (wombok).

Moving on to the noodles! I had to refer online so here's the recipe. I only did two things differently. Firstly, I used orange juice instead of water and added in the zest of mandarin oranges.
I use tangerines because they have a slight sour flavour but are still sweet unlike normal oranges. It is essentially the flavour I would like my noodles to have. However, it's skin and zest are too bitter and mandarins are better. (Obviously this varies depending on the fruit). Secondly, instead thin noodles, I made thick flat noodles as they go better with a thick broth.

And if you're wondering... yes I did step on the dough. And no, I'm not crazy. The reason as to why there's a need to step on the dough is like the reasoning behind kneading bread. For it to be chewy and have a nice texture. So same thing for the noodles but instead of kneading it, you just have to use heavy weight to press down on the dough (which in this case will be your body weight).

So the important thing to note is cooking time for fresh ramen. It's very much faster so you have to make sure that they don't become too soft and disintegrate. Another thing to note is the taste of the end product. I was so busy putting the broth and noodle together I forgot to ensure the taste of it at the end. So just make sure you don't make the same mistake as I did and ensure you taste before serving. Rookie mistake. I know.

Oh yes, I didn't use cornstarch at the end of the noodle recipe. Instead I hung the noodles to dry. I use the back of a chair to help dry them out. Because there's usually a problem of the noodles sticking together and I don't really like using cornstarch on anything, hanging them out to dry makes it easier :) It's a little trick I learnt from my big sister.

Hugs for everyone~ Give the noodles a go!