Experimenting with recipes

My first ever cookbook was this massive book called the 'All Colour Cookbook'. It is a fabulous book! It has over 300 recipes with illustrated instructions and colour pictures of all the dishes. I cannot remember the number of times I have poured over it, picturing the recipes I would make and what a perfect meal would be. It was, back then, the most comprehensive and inexhaustible cookbook I had seen. And thinking about how heavy it is, I am surprised to say that it has managed to make its way from Maldives to Australia.

I never thought of actually cooking it until my Dad one day decided to try out 'Queen of Puddings'. It had seemed to be the most complicated recipe we had ever seen. My Dad did most of the cooking, and he managed to get a lot of it wrong. I vaguely remember him forgetting to strain the orange zest and the meringue fell flat. The second time he made it, it didn't quite turn out well either. I think it was the meringue again.

My Dad's struggle with this recipe gave me a bit of inspiration to get this recipe right. The best thing about making Queen of Puddings was when I mix the milk, orange zest and butter together, it has an exquisite smell. As simple as it sounds, to this day, I always take a moment to take a deep breath and smell it.

I knew I had mastered the Queen of Puddings when I saw the meringue standing up in magnificent peaks. I sometimes still mess up the meringue, but have come a long way from those days when I would be whipping and whipping the egg whites and wonder why nothing was happening (half the time, it was because I put in too much sugar too soon).

This book has given me many failed recipes, including Floating Island, which to this day, my cousin calls Sinking Island. Not only did I not get the meringue to peak, but made the milk to curd while making the custard. At least I think that was what it was. The custard had little grainy bits in it. The second time I made it, I got the beautiful chunks of meringue needed but my Mom had to try and salvage the custard by adding some custard powder.

The best was the Surprise Souffle my uncle and I attempted to make. Neither of us had any idea what a souffle was, and made it in a cake tin! It tasted fine, but it was definietly not a souffle. More like a savory mushroom cake.

A few years on from numerous cooking mistakes, I am still ploughing on with new recipes. From the three hour chocolate tart and a white chocolate tart which had the most awful too sweet taste in the filling when I tasted it while making it. I was super nervous as well, because I was making this to take it to a dinner party, but somehow turned out really well. People kept commenting on how good it was and when I finally tasted it, I surprised myself. I still cannot figure out how that had happened.