Issue 19, containing: Letters, Syllabub, Community Calendar, Commonplaces, &c.

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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES

I’m going to move around the sections of this issue! Why? Because it’s my magazine. And I want to. Which is reason enough for anything.

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LETTERS

From reader Virginia, to the Magazine, regarding Issue 18’s call for champagne recipes:

At the risk of incurring the Wrath of Bivalves, there’s always oysters in champagne sauce. 

Or, if you don’t feel up to ursturs in your erstwhiles, champagne syllabub.

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From the Magazine, to reader Virginia, “A Response”:

Thank you, reader, for your suggestions, though we deeply suspect that you are attempting to draw the attention of the bivalves to our pages, which would be both deeply unfortunate and also probably a bit damp.  However, your other suggestion… intrigues us.

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SYLLABUB: FIT THE FIRST

I first became interested in making syllabub sometime last year, when I came across Max Millers’s YouTube series Tasting History and his recreation of Hannah Glasse’s everlasting syllabub. I’m not by nature a wine drinker, however, and don’t see much point in buying it on my own, so I hadn’t gotten around to actually attempting the recipe.

But with the introduction of a free bottle of champagne (well– sparkling wine) into my life, and the suggestion above, the time to experiment with syllabub became now.

Obviously, this required experimentation. And to that end, because of who I am as a person, I researched about six different recipes and followed exactly none of them in my efforts to create a dessert I had never tried before.

The first round of syllabub was created through variants of Hannah Glasse’s and bits and pieces of advice from Felicity Cloake’s Guardian article “How to make the perfect syllabub” and perhaps half a dozen other recipes I scanned to look for commonalities.

Ingredients:

• 200 ml champagne
• 5 Tbs sugar
• 1 Meyer lemon juiced and zested
• 300 ml heavy whipping cream
• 2 eggs’ worth of meringue powder (except don’t do this)

Stir the champagne and sugar together in a bowl that will turn out to not be large enough. Juice the lemon and then remember that juicing should happen in a separate container so that seeds don’t have to be scooped out of sugary champagne. Further realize that the zesting should have gone first. Carefully avoid zesting one’s fingers into the mix. Stir some more. Consider the use of the whisk and then forget every amazing discovery one has made regarding whisks over the last several months and decide not to use it for this experiment. Perhaps use an electric mixer? Sure. No way that could lead to regrets.

When it appears mixed enough — which will happen when one looks questioningly at the bowl and says out loud, “That’s… probably enough?” — keep mixer on lowest setting and slowly pour in cream from a great height. It will look vaguely like thick lace as it hits the acidic sugar booze bath, and this is correct. Once all cream is in, beat the mix for about 2 minutes or until it makes soft peaks. Swear at length during this time, as it will transpire that the bowl is in fact too small and that the electric mixer is spewing small dots of cream across the counter, microwave, toaster, cabinets, floor, and oneself.

Syllabub seems to be best served in clear parfait glasses, but there are none here, so scoop up several spoonfuls of the syllabub mixture into nice tea cups. For the purposes of experimentation, eat one immediately. This one will be entirely cream from top to bottom, which is not precisely the syllabub effect one expects, but is both delicious and also kind of tipsy making.

Set another of these cups into the refrigerator for later. The next day, it will have separated correctly into a whipped cream top and a sort of creamy champagne-y drink on the bottom. Traditional recipes for syllabub involve sack and port, which perhaps suggests that the original version involved a neat color effect when eaten, but that won’t be the case with the champagne syllabub.

In the interests of science, one could add 2 egg’s worth of meringue powder to the syllabub mix and whip again, so as to maintain the structure. The resulting immediate-cup blunted the lemon/champagne flavor somewhat, but also created a flatness that was not entirely appealing. The flavors blended better in the cup set aside for the next day, but there wasn’t really a need to bolster the structure, and it’s possible that the vaguely almond-y flavor of powdered meringue can be acquired via regular extract, thus avoiding the chemical flatness otherwise present in the powder.

The refrigerated results:

Because the cups aren’t clear, the separation isn’t obvious, but you can see it in the photos for this lemon syllabub.

So all in all, this first round of experiments: a success.

The next round will involve using powdered sugar instead of white sugar, no meringue at any stage, and lemon again, because it’s great. Watch these pages for further results.

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COMMUNITY CALENDAR

My birthday was last Wednesday. My friends and family made it a lovely one, including dropping off a homemade cottager pie on my doorstep, watching movies “together” with a chatbox open, and random gifts appearing. Of particular interest to me is the copy of Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune: How Younger Sons Made Their Way in Jane Austen’s England my sister gifted me, and a small Wacom tablet one of my brothers sent to help me in my constant quest to conquer vector art. My other brother sent me bowls of a style that I was coveting, letting me move bit by bit away from the thrift-shop finds that have been serving me well these last few years but which are starting to show their age.

(There is also the matter of the Shelf Failure from some months ago, which decimated my stoneware, revealed the weakness of my glassware, and led to sudden purchases of metal shelf supports. It was a grim day, not least because I had to call my sister via the Alexa robot to tell her exactly why I was going to be late for our Zoom call — i.e., that I was surrounded by a fractal sea of shattered glass and ceramic and would be some minutes in executing my escape plan.)

There isn’t much to say about my birthday, except that it happened, and it was nice. But it’s a small moment, and I like to make mention of its passing so as to prove the linear nature of ongoing time.

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A NOTE TO GENTLE READERS

On the topic of fancy dishware and syllabub decisions, do you have a favorite cup or dish? And would pineapple juice be an interesting or terrible choice as an additional acid to add to syllabub? These are related questions. Probably. Pretend they are, and let’s move on.

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COMMONPLACES

From sadoeuphemist’s tumblr:

“I love you,” said the scorpion.

The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”

“Absolutely.   Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog.  Might as well be scared of  breathing air.    And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us.  Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”

The frog swam on, the both of them silent.

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From Maggie Stiefvater’s twitter:

To me, horror and fantasy are such wonderful siblings. They share parents: Broken Rules and Possibility. If you break the rules of the world, all kinds of things become possible, and if they are good, we call it magic, and if they’re bad, we call it horror.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you would like to write a letter to be produced/answered in the magazine, please email me at minor.hours.magazine@gmail.com with the subject line:

Letter to the Magazine: [subject of letter as you would like to see it printed]

If you wish the letter to be anonymous or under a nom de plume, please state so in the body of the email; similarly, if you’d rather not be printed at all, please also state so in the body of the email. It will otherwise be assumed that mail sent to that address is intended for print.

Alternately, commenting on this post will get you a similar result, with much less fuss.

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-Until next week, be safe.