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Vanilla slice
Yesterday was Australia Day and our family has some traditions of sorts when it comes to our meal. Game Fanatic has ruled we must have potato salad done the way I make plus cornbread…Not that either of those is particularly or at all Australian. I make the corn bread with onions and chilli flakes (or the cut fruit when we have it) and it comes out quite well. For Lego Lover, we usually buy lamingtons since they tend to be a bit fiddly to make. I bought a couple on Friday but he insisted we all had to eat one so I bought more yesterday. The Scientist happens to love vanilla slices and as that is particularly Australian I decided I’ve have a go of making that this year.
I searched online for a recipe that seemed easy enough for me to follow and found one on the Taste.com.au website that seemed suitable. I bought the ingredients on Friday and started cooking that night. The custard was an interesting experience to make. You start off heating milk and heavy cream together then adding it to a beaten mixture of egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Then you have to cook the mixture a bit longer until it thickens and coats a wooden spoon. When I started reheating it just turned into rather gluggy lumps and didn’t exactly coat the spoon so much as attach itself to it. But after a couple minutes it did thicken into a smooth mixture and was fine. After that it has to cool for an hour. Meanwhile you prepare two sheets of puff pastry in the oven before cooling it and then pressing it down flat. The Scientist took care of this part while I was doing the custard. One piece of puff pastry is placed into a pan and the cooled custard is spread over it before topping it with the other sheet. It didn’t look that thick when the custard was spread across it so we thought it was going to be more like a vanilla slice sandwich. I made some icing yesterday, complete with food coloring to make the requisite pink color the Scientist remembered from his youth. The Scientist spread the icing and it chilled again until after we had dinner. It was surprisingly good but quite rich when we tried it last night. The custard was a bit squishy compared to what you get at a bakery but it tasted really nice. And the thickness wasn’t that bed in the end although it wasn’t as thick as we are used to eating. As it is so rich it will take a few days to finish this off since it’s mainly the Scientist and me that are eating it. Next time we try it, we plan to make a lower fat version and see if it tastes as good.
First time attempt at a vanilla slice -
Australia Day
We don’t tend to do anything big  (aside from the occasional picnic at the beach) for Australia Day in our family and this year was not much different than previous ones. I went out in the morning to take G, a family friend, to his aqua aerobics class. Normally we go in the evening but the pool closed early for the holiday and that class was cancelled. The Scientist had a cricket match to entertain him much of the day although it doesn’t seem to have been as entertaining as he’d like since Australia played so poorly. For the kids, it wasn’t particularly different than most summer days…just hanging around and doing usual things.
When I returned home I put potatoes on to boil for the potato salad requested by Game Fanatic. Once those had cooked, I left them to cool and went  to bed to read and/or nap. I’ve had a habit of waking up a bit too early lately and never quite get enough sleep. Maybe my body is making up for all the sleep I had post-surgery? Anyway, the nap never happened but I did finish a big book that had been demanding my attention. I then set about preparing most of the rest of the food. The kids had requested peri-peri chicken since we’d had that last week and both boys had enjoyed it. Even Lego Lover liked it despite it being really hot. Game Fanatic seems to have a standing request of cornbread, whether it’s Independence Day, Thanksgiving or Australia Day.
When I went to get started, I found that our refrigerator was a bit too full of foodstuffs that shouldn’t be there. There was no space to put the potato salad to cool or anything else, for that matter. I spent an hour or so clearing out things and emptying jars and filling a couple garbage bags. There comes a point where you don’t even know you have certain foods because you can’t get to them and that’s where we were. There is still a shelf with sauces, pastes, etc. that needs to be sorted out but most of the rest looks pretty decent now. Once that was cleared, preparing the rest was a lot more straightforward. Eating time ended up pushed back to 6:30 because the food only got finished around 6pm and we had stopped to watch a favorite program at 6pm. So we had our picnic in the backyard and it was quite pleasant, especially as the temperature was unusually cool for this time of year. We finished off with store bought lamingtons which only just filled the requirements as they were bite-sized and not terribly fresh, but were not bad either. Next year we will plan a bit better and either buy from the bakery ahead of time, or make our own.
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Australia Day, 2010
It was a fairly low-key day for us this year. We stayed home and had a picnic in our backyard instead of going to a park or beach. By staying home, the anxiety levels were kept down for Game Fanatic and his only compromise was eating outside.
Our meal was very international this year:
cornbread with three varieties of chillies from our garden. I used a couple jalapeños, a couple Thai chillies and one habañero. The habañero didn’t quite live up to its reputation. We thought the cornbread would be quite hot but it didn’t cause that much grief in the end. I used a recipe I had found online and it came out really well except it was too sweet. I had already halved the sugar so will probably cut that down to less than a quarter cup. I also reduced the butter to less than half and the texture was quite alright.
Sliced tomatoes, fresh from the garden. Aside from half a tomato I ate a week ago (the lower part had blossom rot), these are the first tomatoes I’ve harvested. They tasted pretty good…in fact, they actually taste like something. I’m feeling a bit more motivation to keep at the garden now that there’s been some fruits of all the labor.
The Scientist also barbecued peri peri chicken for all of us and lamb burgers with coriander for himself and Game Fanatic.
Earlier, I brought lamingtons and vanilla slices from a local bakery, so there was a bit of traditional Aussie fare in amongst all the rest. The Scientist also made a trifle, which he’s been craving for several days now.
After dinner, we played Blokus in front of the tv while a cricket match between Australia and Pakistan was finishing up. The plan had been to also play our other new board game, Smallworld, after that finished. We had it all set up and had just started the first round when the phone rang. The disruption was rather lengthy so we opted to put it away and play another time. Instead, Game Fanatic put on a video game that we’ve all been watching him play and continued through a few more chapters of the story before the Scientist retired for the night.
Overall, it was a very relaxed day that I believe was satisfactory for all family members.
