The original marshmallow recipe was sourced from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  We hold his work in high esteem and love his show (about the only cooking-related show I will watch) but we beg to differ on the ordering of his instructions.

What you’ll need

• 1-2 tbsp icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp cornflour
• A little vegetable oil for oiling the tin and knife
• 1 small, raw, peeled beetroot
• 25g gelatine powder (about 2 sachets, but check the packet – NB: doesn’t come in sachets in NZ)
• 500g granulated sugar
• 2 egg whites

How you’ll prepare it – according to Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall

1. Sift the icing sugar and cornflour together into a small bowl.
2. Rub a shallow cake tin of about 20×20cm with a few drops of vegetable oil and shake a little of the icing sugar mixture around the tin to coat the base and sides.
3. Grate the beetroot into a small bowl and pour over 125ml of nearly boiling water and leave to infuse for 30 seconds. Strain the pink, nearly boiling water into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatine on top. Stir until all of the gelatine has dissolved.
4. Put the sugar into a medium-sized saucepan with 250ml of water. Warm over a low heat, stirring until all of the sugar has dissolved, then place a sugar thermometer in the pan and raise the heat, allowing the mixture to boil fiercely without stirring until the thermometer reads 122°C. Remove from the heat and pour the beetroot/gelatine mixture into the hot sugar syrup, stirring until everything is well blended.
5. Pour the egg whites into the large bowl of a mixer and beat until stiff. With the mixer going at a low speed, slowly pour in the sugar mixture in a steady, gentle trickle. After you’ve added all of the syrup, leave the machine to carry on beating until the mixture turns really thick and bulky but is still pourable – when you lift up the beater, it should leave a ribbon trail of the mixture on the surface which takes a few seconds to sink back down into the mix.
6. Pour the marshmallow into the prepared tin. Leave to set in a cool place (do not refrigerate) for an hour or two.
7. Dust a chopping board with the rest of the cornflour and icing sugar mixture. Coat a knife with a little oil. Carefully ease the marshmallow out of the tin onto the board, helping it out where necessary with the knife. Make sure all of the surfaces of the marshmallow are entirely dusted with the icing sugar mixture. Cut the marshmallows into squares, oiling and dusting the knife as needed. Store in an airtight tin lined with baking parchment.

How you’ll prepare it – in reality as based on our experience on Sunday afternoon

Generally the recipe was easy enough to follow & didn’t miss out any steps.  The description of what the mixture should look like when it is ready to set is bang on.

What it could have done was reorder the steps better based on actual heating, cooling & reactions of different ingredients to each other: steps 3 & 4 are reordered below because the sugar took longer to heat than the gelatine took to set.  The hard lesson here was that you can’t re-melt gelatine so we had to forego the beetroot & therefore the colour. I’d also recommend preparing anything you can in advance, e.g. don’t wait until step 5 to put your egg whites in the bowl.  Have this done already.

Implement-wise, we ended up using greased, powdered scissors to cut the marshmallows & cut them on the bench top rather than using a cutting board. Next time we’d use a large saucepan (rather than medium) because when we added the gelatine mix to the boiling sugar it all bubbled up and spilt – not easy to clean up!

1. Prepare your ingredients: sift the icing sugar and cornflour together into a small bowl; separate your egg whites & put them in your mixing bowl; weigh out the gelatine & grate your beetroot.
2. Rub a shallow cake tin of about 20×20cm with a few drops of vegetable oil and shake a little of the icing sugar mixture around the tin to coat the base and sides.
3. Put the sugar into a large-sized saucepan with 250ml of water. Warm over a low heat, stirring until all of the sugar has dissolved, then place a sugar thermometer in the pan and raise the heat, allowing the mixture to boil fiercely without stirring until the thermometer reads 122°C. Remove from the heat and pour the beetroot/gelatine mixture into the hot sugar syrup, stirring until everything is well blended.
4. Pour 125ml of nearly boiling water over the grated beetroot and leave to infuse for 30 seconds. Strain the pink, nearly boiling water into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatine on top. Stir until all of the gelatine has dissolved – be aware that if it hardens you can’t melt it again (I can’t emphasise this enough – we only had one beetroot so we then had to make white ‘mallows instead).
5. Almost at the same time as step 4, pour the egg whites into the large bowl of a mixer and beat until stiff. With the mixer going at a low speed, slowly pour in the sugar mixture in a steady, gentle trickle. After you’ve added all of the syrup, leave the machine to carry on beating until the mixture turns really thick and bulky but is still pourable – when you lift up the beater, it should leave a ribbon trail of the mixture on the surface which takes a few seconds to sink back down into the mix.
6. Pour the marshmallow into the prepared tin. Leave to set in a cool place (do not refrigerate) for an hour or two.
7. Dust a chopping board (or your kitchen bench if you’re going to use scissors) with the rest of the cornflour and icing sugar mixture. Coat a knife/your scissors with a little oil. Carefully ease the marshmallow out of the tin onto the board/bench, helping it out where necessary with the knife. Make sure all of the surfaces of the marshmallow are entirely dusted with the icing sugar mixture. Cut the marshmallows into squares, oiling and dusting the knife/scissors as needed. Store in an airtight tin lined with baking parchment.

NOM NOM NOM!

We have been picking them when they are much smaller than the ones you would buy at the fruit & vege shop on the advice of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – if they’re bigger than your finger they’re good to go!

Extra for experts: there are tasty-sounding recipes to use your glut – should you be lucky enough to have one – in Hugh’s article over at the Guardian.

Now, if only our tomatoes would be a bit more forthcoming, we’d be able to make some kind of chutney…

• finished painting the study (bye bye weird blue wall)
• built trestles to hold up a desk top of one of the old rimu doors we had surplus from the laundry project
• topped up the insulation in the ceiling and added some under floor as well – the difference was huge!
• & really our first one of the spring / post daylight savings beginning - hanging tomatoes

I have lots of ideas for things I want to do outside and finish inside (like the hallway – argh!).  We’ll see how much actually gets done with the impending wedding though!

Darren sanded the skirting and doorframes with our newly acquired Ryobi detail sander – an absolutely fantastic purchase. They’re only about $70 from Bunnings so I fully recommend just buying one. It’s not worth sanding by hand.

We got a couple of quotes from plasterers (decided that the hassle of both the last plasterer and the guy who plastered our toilet was not worth it!. Since the hallway would be a bit of a crappy small job in itself we decided to get a quote for the study as well. Out of the quotes, we decided to go with a Scotsman called Tommy Dorrian. We’d seen his sign over on Sandringham Road and he was quick to pop over and give us a quote.

Tommy Dorrian’s plasterer Alan was great – he also came round to look at the job personally and advise us on the preparation we needed to complete before he could start. They use what is apparently the English technique of plastering: slather the plaster onto the surface and then polish, rather than sanding.

Darren sanded back the walls and primed them as well (with valuable help from his mum, Irene). This probably took 2 days.

The plastering job took 2 days and we were very impressed with the polishing and how smooth the walls were. Unfortunately there were still quite a few imperfections and we had to go round with a pencil and make quite a few circles on the wall. Alan was happy to come back and sort these out though and I think it only took him another 1/2 day to do so.

Now we need to go over the surface again with ‘flour paper’ (super fine sandpaper) and make sure it is all ready to seal. Once sealed we’ll check the surface again and then paint! Every time we do this I’m reminded about how what a little aspect of the project the actual painting is but it will be SO worth it.

After looking at the cost of scaffolding or a metal designer trestle support, we decided to make trestles to support our recycled rimu door desk.

Darren’s parents came over and the working bee commenced. Luckily Alf (Darren’s dad) had all the tools needed and the wood was recycled from Alf and Irene’s old decking. The only things we had to buy were the varnish (mahogany), nail plates, hinges, dowel and the cord – cost of project was probably around $100, not counting labour or the fish & chips we ended the day with.

The wood was planed down and sanded, the sizes measured and cut, nailed together, hinges added, varnished and… voila! All in a good day’s work.

I’ll add the plans soon but in the meantime you can look at the trestle progress photos on Flickr. The ‘in situ’ photo will have to wait until we have finished the painting of the study.

After Googling a bit, I found avegetarian lasagne recipe from Foodlovers which I thought would be a good base for my ad-lib style of recipe improvisation.

What you’ll need

• 500g frozen spinach (or 3 whole bunches fresh spinach)
• a fair amount of fresh basil
• 3 courgettes
• 2 cloves garlic
• about 4 cups of chopped up mushrooms
• 200g feta
• 250g cottage cheese
• 1 cup milk
• 2 cups pasta tomato sauce (I made mine using 2 cans of chopped tomato; garlic; onion; red pepper and bay leaves)
• lasagne sheets
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of grated cheese
• salt, pepper
• dried oregano

How you’ll prepare it

If using frozen spinach, thaw and let the water drain out by leaving it a strainer. Otherwise briefly wilt the fresh spinach and let it drain. Once devoid of liquid chop up the spinach and add in all the fresh basil.

Next you want to gently fry the courgettes and then add them to the spinach mixture.

Now comes the fun part: add the cottage cheese, egg and the milk to a large bowl and mix together well with one of those nifty hand-blender things. While this is happening you’ll want to quickly fry the mushrooms and garlic. Once browned, mix into the cottage cheese mixture.

Spread 1 cup of pasta sauce onto the base of a 22cm x 33cm baking dish. Cover with a layer of lasagne. Spread over spinach and top with another layer of lasagne. Spread the mushroom and cheese mixture over the top and then add a final layer of lasagne. Pour over the rest of the pasta sauce, spreading evenly. Sprinkle cheese on top.

Bake in a 180C oven for about 20 mins and let the cheese brown under the grill for a few minutes.

Serve with a green salad and enjoy.

There are two types of wallpaper that have been used in the house – a thin lightly textured wallpaper which comes off easily (spare room, bathroom, kitchen) and a heavy thick cross-hatched wallpaper. Both have been painted over in some cases and not in others.

We decided we would tackle the hallway next. It is a part of the house that you use so often so would be nice to extend from the renovated bathroom and around to the renovated spare room. Most people don’t go into our bedroom or the study though we’ll probably do the study next. The kitchen and lounge are going to be our major project but that is going to take a lot of work and budget so we’re working up to those (though I am keen to be able to say “purple walls! be gone!”).

The hallway has the heavy paper, though it wasn’t painted over like the lounge was. We weren’t sure how difficult it would be to remove so decided to try out a wallpaper steamer rather than our other method. In short: the steamer is not worth it. It’s hot, messy and gives you a sore arm! After a few hours of steaming, we returned the steamer and began to be gung ho with the vinegar-water mixture and the scraper.

It takes longer than you expect but the key is to not skimp on the vinegar (even though it might stink a bit and seem like overkill) and let it really soak into the paper before you pull/scrape. It’s now ready for plastering, though we need to find a plasterer who isn’t either overly expensive or not detail-oriented (enough said!). Any recommendations are very welcomed!

Today – first harvest and we are so pleased!

When we moved into this house, the washing machine was in the bathroom where the second toilet has been added now. This was a bit of a pain and took up a lot of space we didn’t want to sacrifice in the bathroom. We also had two smallish cupboards in the hallway that didn’t really hold much in either.

Suddenly, a plan came together!

We decided to knock out the two cupboards and create one large one that a tub (which we hadn’t had previously) and the washing machine could fit into. We did some careful measuring and it seemed like we might not be quite able to fit the washing machine in and be able to close the cupboard doors in front of it – unless we put it in sideways.

After musing on it for awhile, we decided that if this was the only way to do it we would have to put up with it. It was going to be better than having to keep it in the bathroom and we wanted a tub so that when we were washing things like paint brushes we wouldn’t have to do it in the kitchen sink.

We went to Carter’s and purchased a supertub. Woo hoo! Another nerdily pleasing purchase for the house! Amazingly, we were able to fit it in the back of our hatchback. Hatchback cars are fantastic – I will never own any other sort of car.

The builders came around early in the week and started the process. When they rang me early on the second day I was dreading bad news – were we not even able to fit the washing machine in sideways? Had we bought the wrong sort of tub for some reason? Was there some OTHER disaster? As there are often weird setbacks in this house due to the rather laissez-faire attitude the previous owners had to DIY I was ready for pretty much anything. However, the news was positive – the washing machine was able to be installed with the back against the wall and we’d be able to close the cupboard doors. HOORAY!

After 2 days, the build was complete and everything was plumbed in. I painted the inside grey to match the new colours and we went to Mitre 10 and bought shelving, hooks and other storage-related items. Darren put these up and we were in business!

The only things we have left to do is get new doors (we want doors which will fit in more with the style of the doors in the rest of the house) and then we will be super happy with our little laundry. We still have the same amount of storage space that we had in the old cupboards. A final finished photo still to come…

Ingredients

• 2 tsp chilli sauce
• 1 tsp wasabi paste
• 2 Tbs dark soy sauce
• 1 Tbs teriyaki sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground chilli powder
• 350g firm tofu, sliced in 4 portions (I tend to cube it though – nice large cubes)
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• 400g fresh udon noodles (or if you get the high-end packet ones, you can use the flavour sachet from these also)
• 1 bunch spring onions, finely sliced
• lime halves
• Optional extras: onions, mushrooms

Method

1. 1. In a bowl, combine chilli, wasabi, soy and teriyaki sauces and chilli powder. Spread this mixture over tofu and leave to marinate in a ceramic dish for 20 minutes.
2. Heat a large non-stick frying-pan with a little oil and cook tofu over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown.
3. Meanwhile, bring stock (and flavour sachet contents if you have these) to the boil. Add noodles and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
4. Divide noodles between 4 serving bowls and cover noodles with hot stock. Top with cooked tofu and garnish with green shallots. Serve lime halves on the side.

Serves 4 people.
Recipe source: NZ Herald’s Viva supplement (and extra commentary by me)