Peak Chocolate

My parents are visiting us here in Santiago.  Today today we reached peak chocolate.  The two are not unconnected.
            The Chilean Easter bunny over-calculated how much chocolate four people could eat. The Australian Easter bunny wasn't interested in how much four people could eat - she knew how much chocolate she wanted to bring, and that was took up most of a suitcase.  A friend gave us a reasonably large chocolate chicken that turned out to be brooding a reasonably large clutch of chocolate eggs, and what with one thing or another (and most of a chicken) I am not feeling entirely my best.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!  Best wishes to all on this totally non-sectarian day of chocolate, finger-paint and bunny ears!

This year, I celebrated by dying chicken eggs with a friend and her two small children.  Bunny ears in place, the kids parked themselves at the kitchen ledge mixing bowls of food-color and vinegar.  Danette and I had a slightly more haute-couture technique in mind. 
            It is very elegant and simple - you take a stack of thrifted silk ties with nice bright patterns, and you cut the fabric into squares, and you wrap and tie the silk tightly around the eggs, and you boil the eggs in water with vinegar for quite a long time, and when the eggs are cooled, you unwrap them and you find that the patterns on the silk have transferred artistically to the eggshells.  It's very simple and very elegant and very lovely.
            Danette and I leaned on the kitchen ledge and snipped and wrapped and tied, while a small child dunked boiled eggs in yellow food coloring and solemnly explained that we did this to honor the Easter Rabbit, who once a year pooped out chocolate eggs for all the good little children everywhere. 
            My eyes crossed.  "Are you sure that's not the Easter Chicken?  I thought the Easter Chicken laid the eggs, and the Easter Bunny gives them away in baskets." 
            "Nope."  The small child fished the egg out of the yellow and held it half-way in and half-way out of the red food coloring, making a sort of ombre effect. "The Rabbit poops, and we get them under our pillows."
            Who am I to argue? The Easter Bunny and the Easter Chicken haven't graced my house with the Big Hop in years - I'm old enough that I'm expected to go find my own eggs.

The kid's eggs turned out fantastic.  Kid #1  did a whole Jackson Pollock thing with dribbles and stripes drawn on with a wax candle, and Kid #2 wanted pure colors - 
            "Not even a stripe?  Or your name in wax?" 
            "No thank you." He said politely.  "I like mine just plain.  They're perfect."  
            And they were. Really.

Ours, on the other hand…
            Our haute-couture eggs didn't come out quite exactly like the ones in the internet tutorial.  We had wrapped the silk as tightly as possible, but somehow the patterns on the silk didn't adhere to very much of the eggshell, and where it did stick we mostly got lumpy streaks and smears, and one of the ties turned out to contain a very unstable dye that gave everything a base shade of purple. 
            Some test-dyes might have been advisable, in retrospect. I might have done quite a lot of preliminary research, because after-the-fact, the deeper I looked into things, the less simple the silk-dyed-egg technique apparently was - there is quite a lot of crosss-chatter on crafting sites trouble-shooting the elegantly simple instructions and suggesting where to get lots of fresh silk ties in a very big hurry. 
            And most of the eggs burst during boiling, and they hadn't been very nice eggs in the first place, so the blotchy swirls smelled unpleasantly sulpherous and not at all like anything an Easter Rabbit would want underneath her in her Easter nest. 
            They were not, in short, our best efforts.

Mr Tabubil was very severe when he came home. "Not a failure.  Don't use that word.  Did you have fun?"
            "Well - " 
            "You all enjoyed yourselves, didn't you?" 
            "I guess - " 
            "Then it wasn't a failure, was it?" 
            "I suppose not." 
            "Right." And then he spoiled it all by giggling. "It's exactly like one of those Pinterest Fails. The instructions look so simple and clear and go step by step so that absolutely anyone can do it - they just don't tell you that doing it correctly needs five years of art school or an apprenticeship with the Culinary Institute of America. The result at home is… less polished.  But you had fun, right? That's what counts."
            The swirls on our eggs were lovely, when you really looked at them, and didn't compare them to the perfect internet version. I went away and ate some chocolate rabbit poop. Non-sulpherously.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Pre-Easter Shennanigans!

Limpets in Uniform

I spent this morning in a prep classroom with the babies.  It was their first day back after the Easter Break - their very first vacation of the year, and back in the classroom they were suffering an outbreak of terrible shyness.
            One little girl was dragged- quite literally - into class by her mother.  She had her arms wrapped desperately tight around her mother's left leg, and the poor woman was taking enormous lurching Frankenstein steps to move her along the hallway.
            In the classroom, she pried the small limpet loose and sat her down at her very own small desk, and the little creature tucked her lower lip under her upper one and hid under her red school sunhat.  The mother vanished, moving only slightly under the speed of light.  The hat shook quietly, and small tears trickled down below the brim.

The first part of the morning was devoted to reviewing the Five Rules of Good Listening.  Cross-legged on the mat (the small limpet being persuaded to join the rest of us) the children sang together:
            "Eyes are Watching,
            Ears are Listening,
            Legs are Crossed,
            Hands in Lap -
            Mouths are Closed!"
            "And we don't" The teacher said, rescuing a slightly grubby sheet of poster-board from the mouth of a small boy, "chew on the Five Rules Poster.  Mouths are closed, Adam!"
            Manners re-established, it was time for a jolly round of What I Did in My Holidays, going clockwise around the circle.
            The limpet (now firmly attached to the teacher's left foot) was first. Paralyzed with terror, she looked up at Teacher with eyes like Terrible Awful Saucers and shuddered from head to toe with fear.
            "Shamika?"  Teacher said gently.
            After a small eternity,  the limpet let out a small squeak.  "We went shopping?"
            "You bought something at the shops?"
            The limpet nodded frantically. 
            "At the supermarket?"
            The limpet nodded again, and sank to the floor, limp with relief.
            "How lovely." Teacher said. "Tenisha, how about you? What did you do in the holidays?"
            Tenisha, equally small and limpet-like, stared up at Teacher like a baby mouse trapped in the bawling headlights of an oncoming train.  Her mouth worked soundlessly and her eyes darted desperately around the classroom.
            "Shops?"  She squeaked at last.  "With my Dad?"
            "You went to the supermarket too?"  On Teacher's face was the ghost of a grin.              "And you, Shenae?  What did you do over the holidays?"
            Shenae was made of sterner stuff than the limpet and the mouse. "The Easter Bunny come to my Nan's house,"  she said stoutly.  "He brung my Nan a puppy."
            "A puppy - how lovely!  What sort of- "
            "MY GRAN HAS A PUPPY!"
            "Thank you, Adam."  Teacher said firmly.  "It's not your turn yet.  Shenae - what sort of a puppy did the Easter Bunny bring your granny?"
            "A little one.  It barked at her bird."
            "MY GRAN HAS A BIRD!"
            "Not NOW, Adam.  Does her bird talk?"
            "It's a parrot -"
            "MY GRAN'S PARROT TALKS ALL THE TIME!"
            Shenae shot Adam a Look. "Yesterday the parrot died," she said.
            "MY GRAN HAD A PUPPY WHAT DIED!"
            "It used to climb up on her SHOULDER- "
            "MY GRAN'S PUPPY USED TO CLIMB UP IN A TREE AND IT DIED UP THERE-"
            "And it sang SONGS - "
            "- AND SHE WENT AND BOUGHT THREE NEW PUPPIES AND THEY ALL SING SONGS FROM PLAYSCHOOL AND SESAME STREET AND THE WIGGLES-"
            "WHEN  HE COME TO MY NAN'S HOUSE IN THE NIGHT I MET THE EASTER BUNNY!"
            Silence fell.
            Teacher kept her eyes closed for a very long time. "Matthew?"  She asked, her voice breaking the smallest possible bit.  "Did you do anything on your holidays that you want to share?"
            Matthew, staring at Shenae with open-mouthed awe, absently shook his head.  Next to him, Adam simmered visibly, with the distinct appearance of an air horn about to go for the limit.
            "Adam." Teacher sighed.  "Would you like to tell us what you did on your holidays?"
            Struck off guard, Adam stared at her in panic.  His mouth worked frantically and his eyes darted desperately around the room, searching for answers.
            Teacher's shoulders began to shake.  Behind the students, I rocked silently in my chair, and I laughed until I cried.

Easter Peregrinations - Port Lincoln and Boston Bay

 Mr and Mrs Tabubil and Mr and Mrs Tabubil-in-law spent the long Easter weekend exploring Port Lincoln and Boston Bay.  Six hundred and thirty kilometers by road from Adelaide, Boston Bay is one of the world's great natural anchorages.  It is three times as large as Sydney Harbor and would have made a lovely capital city but for that ever-present South Australian problem: a lack of fresh water.
Matthew Flinders charted the bay in 1802, during his great cartographic voyage in his ship Investigator. He marked the swiftness of the tide-race, and lost eight men and a cutter to the current.  The bodies were never found. Flinders named the place of the accident Cape Catastrophe and dug for water on the shores of the bay and sailed away.
Notwithstanding the lack of water, the hills around the bay are green and wooded -even in late summer, and the bays and promontories are perfect for a weekend's driving - rounded and rolling on a very human and domestic scale.



Our base of operations was a small and cheerful cottage on the edge of the bay, ten kilometers out of town.  We arrived at dusk.  The cottage was wrapped in high winds and we felt deep tides nearby. Drafts whistled at the windows and slipped in under the door - we climbed into jeans and thin summer sweaters and cuddled under salt-crusted cotton comforters.

"It's like being in Scotland" Mr Tabubil-in-law said.  "When Mr Tabubil was two years old we took a cottage on a loch for a week's holiday. The weather was just like this, but there was one important difference - in Scotland there was a warm pub a hundred meters down the road!"
"How about Appeltart?"  Mrs Tabubil-in-law said, and unveiled a spring-form pan with a proud flourish.
My mother-in-law's apple pie is a holy sacrament and that will stand against the Torah, the Bible, and the Rig Veda for spiritual comfort any dark and stormy night of the year.  My father-in-law's moustache twitched and dreams of Guiness in a smoky pub wisped away like smoke in the wind and we ate appeltart every night we were there.

In the morning we saw that our cottage nuzzled right up against the bay with water almost up to the doorstep - a high tide lapped at the edge of the front lawn and seagulls sat on posts and looked down at us dourly - as seagulls do.

Across the road from our cottage, a white path twisted through a grove of burned out eucalyptus trees.  We followed the track up to the entrance of the Port Lincoln National Park and found the well where Matthew Flinders crew dug for water in 1802.  The crew of the Investigator were gasping for water and willing to drink it thick and white from a hole dug barely a stones throw from the bay.  We picked wildflowers and walked back down the road to our seaside cottage for Easter Breakfast.

On Saturday we drove 20 km across the peninsula to Coffin Bay to eat oysters.  Coffin Bay is a tangle of long narrow bays and cul-de-sac coves; a set of sand-and-water Russian nesting dolls.  The titular town is deep inside - 25 nautical km from the open sea. The bay and the hills around it belonged to the Parnkalla people until the white settlers came in the 1830s and planted wheat. The hills were good for wheat but the bay was better for oysters and, in very human fashion, the settlers shipped 'em out by the hundredweight and in less than ten years the industry was exhausted. In the second half of the twentieth century aquaculture was revived on a more sustainable scale - the still waters of the bay slosh in docile fashion against rows of oyster racks, and professional line fishermen cast from the town dock.



We ate Coffin Bay oysters at a little restaurant called the Oysterbeds Good Food House.  Waiting for the food was like watching paint dry on a damp afternoon - without any of the dramatic urgency.
            We were the only party ordering from the kitchen, but two dozen fresh shucked oysters took forty minutes.  They were worth the wait - fresh from the ocean, delicately briny and faintly sweet. They were good enough that we went scrambling back inside to order another round - and sat down with the Encyclopedia Britannica and a scrabble set to wait.
            Down on the water, the air was full of the crackle of sailcloth: the Coffin Bay Yacht Club was holding a regatta.  We watched the start of the junior division - tiny sailboats barely larger than coracles bobbed wildly on the gentle swell.  Each was crewed by a ten year old captain and a five year old able seaman riding before the mast and handling the jib.  Parents shouted advice from shore as the children worked the boat out past the shallows, but after that they were on their own - across the bay and out of sight around a rocky promontory.



Out in the middle of the bay, there was a long narrow sandbar.  A party of boys motored out to it for a game of cricket.  The run count went up as the tide came in until they were playing ankle deep in water and the ball refused to bounce - just scudded off down the channel in the general direction of the open sea.
            On Sunday the Easter bunny brought us Lindt Chocolate and we all gave thanks.  I had packed three sets of enormous pink and purple tinted rabbit ears in the bottom of my bag, but on Easter Morning found that I had somehow left them at home.  Mr Tabubil and his parents gave more thanks.  I was tempted to climb up on a post and glower down at them like the seagulls, but I was bribed to come down with chocolate eggs and we made up and were friends again.

After breakfast we drove into the Lincoln National Park, parked the car and hiked 16 vertical miles straight up to the top of Stamford Hill where a monument was raised in 1849 to Matthew Flinders. From the top of the hill we could see the bay spread out below us - sparkling blue water dotted with tuna farms, and edged by long coves of pale white sand.  We clambered 16 miles straight back down again and spent a while paddling in one of the white coves.  The sand was as fine as silt, and clouds of minnows flashed around our legs where we stood in the water.
            We drove out to the ocean shore to look at the lighthouse, but it was as ugly and forgettable as mid-century monumental architecture tends to be, so we went and climbed rocks on the seashore instead.  The sea was very blue and the sun was very warm and the wind was very slow and very gentle, and we hunted for oyster shells and sponges until we fell asleep.

Feliz Dia de Pascua!

Step into my Carrot Patch....

Recipe: Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs of Glory

Here in Australia, Easter marks the time of the year when the world begins to cool and emerge from the summer hibernation.  We take the shade-cloths off the vegetables.  Animals walk abroad by day. Butterflies and dragonflies rise in clouds from every bush. (bringing with them sixteen billion flies, but we won't go into that here. Leave it that my very own personal ear hole is not a shady resting place for weary travelers, not even if ye come in ye thousands or hundreds of thousands.  I have a fly net and I will wear it.)
            When I was small, every year at Easter, Mum would help my sister and I make marshmallow Easter eggs. We'd whip up great froths of sugary marshmallow syrup and make moulds by filling pans with flour and pressing a chicken's egg into them to make domed hollows. I remember the softness of the flour under my hands and the sharp burring in my nose as the flour dust billowed up when I pressed the egg into it.  
            The marshmallow eggs hardened in the fridge, and using chocolate or sugar water, we'd glue egg halves together into whole eggs and roll them in coconut that we'd tinted with food coloring.  We wove baskets out of paper we'd cut into heart-shapes and, nesting the finished eggs carefully into the baskets, and piling the baskets into rustling heaps on the front seat and floor of the car, we'd go out on delivery runs, driving baskets of eggs to all our friends.
            My mother was very strict about sugar in those days.  We were allowed to keep only two eggs each for ourselves. This is the most poignant memory - the afternoons spent in smelling distance of sugar and coconut and chocolate, carrying them, gently quivering, in my arms (in my memory they multiply into hundreds) and giving them away.

I haven't made them in years - but last week, in honor of the upcoming festival of spring renewal, a friend and I spent a Saturday making 'em.

Things went wrong from the start - I misplaced my copy of the original recipe and had to go googling.  I found a copy - but there were one or two significant errors in the text.
The original said to stop whipping while the mix was still liquid - following the interweb instead, we worked till they were "light and fluffy" - and the marshmallow stood up like meringues and laughed absolutely sneerfully at our moulds.  The extra whipping time also affected the flavor.  I remember the things as sweet, and I do know that children appreciate a higher sugar content than adults can bear, but - ye hells and garters - these things reached right out of the spoon and into your mouth and punched you hard in the tonsils and then you lay down and died.
            In the fridge, they wouldn't set. We moved them to the freezer - they gooped, sludged - and oozed. Out of daylight, we went ahead and dipped them in chocolate anyway, where they dribbled and fell apart.  We used shredded coconut as a binding agent to hold the mess together - and then it all oozed, like a mudflow in a jungle, carrying turf and trees and eventually the whole kitchen downhill with it.

My friend J is a librarian.  Spooning chocolate over disintegrating marshmallow, she planned what to do with her half of the loot.
            "This student didn't return three library books all semester. Have a chocolate egg, dear."
            "That one put her books back herself - all out of order. Happy Easter, sweetie."
            "And you- you brought food with you into the library. Here darling…. Have just a little more…"

 

Yesterday Mr. Tabubil and I had another crack at the recipe:
            We found the original instructions, increased the proportion of lemon juice, and stopped the beaters while the mixture was still pourable.
            Lifting the balloon whisk clear of the goo, I tapped off the excess and, and we each reached out a finger and -bellisima! 
            Hordes of sugary Easter angels!  Our hindbrains took over and we each reached out to lick the rest of the mixture free - we met half-way around the beater, somewhat shamefaced and unwilling to meet each other in the eye.
            The eggs were perfect.  They poured, they hardened, they dipped, and most importantly - they tasted as I remembered them.  Not too sweet, not too sour - they were just right.
            It takes a lot of taste-testing, making Easter eggs . You have to check the mix at every single step - the sugar syrup, the beaten mix, the pour, the chocolate dip - it all wants checking.
            Last night I had a stomach-ache. I lay on the floor and groaned, and Mr Tabubil peered down at me with academic interest.
            "D'you think it was the marshmallows?" he asked.
            "Ooooohhhhhhhhhhh." I moaned.
            "What did I say? Marshmallow?"
            "Bluuuugggghhhhh."
            "Marsh-"
            "Bluuugggkkkkk!"
            "Fascinating. How about 'Chocolate'?"
            "Blaauuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh."
            "Tim-tam" he breathed, very softly.
            "AccckkkGGLLLAAAHHHH".
            "Ooooh!  Marshmallow!  Chocolate!   Ice cream!  Caramel!  Gaiety Biscuit!   marshmallow!"
            "Right." I groaned, and hauled myself to my feet. I poured myself a soup spoon of cider vinegar and drank it neat.  Then a second. And a third.
            "You got another spoon?"  Mr. Tabubil asked sheepishly.  "I'm not feeling so good myself."
            "Oh reeeeeaaalllly?"  I purred.  "Marshmallow, you inconsiderate creature, you!"
            "Pass the bottle, my dear. Uuuurggghhhh."


Marshmallow Easter Eggs 

(we doubled the recipe and have about 5 dozen egg halves)

YOU WILL NEED:

1 tablespoon gelatine
quarter cup of cold water
half cup hot water
1 cup sugar
1.5 teaspoon vanilla
1.75-ish teaspoons lemon juice

Marshmallow:
 Put cold water in bowl.  Gradually stir in gelatine; let stand 5 minutes.  Put hot water and sugar in large saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar had dissolved.  Add gelatine mixture, stir over low heat until gelatine has dissolved.  Bring to boil, boil gently uncovered, 6 minutes.  Remove pan from heat, let cool to lukewarm.  Put mixture into small bowl of electric mixer, add vanilla and lemon juice.  Beat on high speed 5 minutes until thick and creamy and still of pouring consistency.   Marshmallow can be coloured with food colouring, if desired; add a few drops towards end of beating time.

Egg Shaping:
 Pour flour into large baking dish.  (we used about 2kg total.) Spread flour out evenly.  Press a large egg half-way into flour to make half-egg-shaped hollows. 
(The marshmallow does not affect the flour in any way; after the eggs are made, the flour can be sifted and repackaged and used for any purpose.)
Pour or spoon prepared marshmallow into hollows in flour bringing it right to the top.
The marshmallow takes 10 to 15 minutes to set firmly.  At the end of the time, touch top with finger, lift out gently.  Brush off any few grains of flour still adhering.  Join two egg halves together.  Top of marshmallow is slightly sticky, so halves cling together well.

To cover with coconut:
 Put coconut in a basin;  you'll need about 2 cups coconut.  Add a few drops of desired food colouring.  Wet hands, shake off surplus water; use damp hands to rub colouring evenly through coconut.  Coat eggs evenly with warmed, sieved jam (apricot is good), then roll in prepared coconut.

To cover with Chocolate:
Put 125g (4oz) or more (lots more) semisweet chocolate into top of double saucepan, stir over simmering water until melted.  Add 60g (2oz) solid white vegetable shortening, stir until melted.  Remove from heat, cool to lukewarm.  Press fork into marshmallow egg, dip in chocolate until evenly coated.  Drain off excess chocolate, then roll in coconut (about 2 cups).  Refrigerate until chocolate has set.
Or skip the vegetable shortening and the coconut and use melted semi-sweet chocolate on its own - fondue style.