Handle With Care

On Saturday I ventured into the Boston Center for Adult Education to take a class on how to make meringues. For those of you not familiar, meringue is a light, fluffy substance which can be turned in to cookies, toppings for pies or used as a frosting on cakes. While this is not how I would typically anticipate spending my Saturdays, I had a lot of fun. We learned how to make three different meringues (French, Swiss and Italian) while making three different desserts. The teacher was very knowledgeable, enthusiastic about the subject and actually seemed like she wanted to be there, which can be a problem with some of these quick, one-day classes. We covered a lot of ground, but none of it was done too fast or with so much technical jargon that a novice like myself would be left in the dust. Overall I would say it was a great time, as I learned a lot and learned some new skills - none of which I will ever use again. Allow me to explain. A meringue is basically made up of two things: sugar and egg whites. You can mix the two in a variety of different ways (which are the main differences between the three types of meringues we made), but if you don't have those two things you aren't making a meringue. The reason I probably won't be making any of these recipes at home comes from this fun fact about me: I suck at separating the eggs whites from the egg yolks.

The teacher tried to teach me a technique she has for separating the yolks from the whites and I take some comfort from the knowledge that her technique could only have come from years of messing up. First she would crack the egg and use the shell to get the majority of the egg white into a cup. Then she would carefully slide the yolk back and forth between her hands to get the rest. Then the yolk would go in to one cup and the egg whites into a third and the process would start over. The point of the three-container system was that if you messed up one time it wouldn't undo all the ones you had separated successfully. Now, some of you may be wondering what the big deal is. A little yolk couldn't really be that much of a problem could it? Well, there is a third ingredient to meringues - air. That is what gives them their light, fluffy points. Apparently fat clogs up the air pockets, takes away all that light texture and the meringue doesn't come out quite right. This is also why I couldn't just use the store-bought, egg white-only container. Apparently those also suck for making meringues because they have all sorts of chemicals in them which makes the final product taste off. If you want to make a real meringue you have to use the real stuff.

My frustration grew from the fact I couldn't even get one egg done correctly. I was 95% of the way there on the first egg and got greedy. I went for one last pass and watched in horror as the yolk slipped between my fingers, landed smack into the egg whites and I was unable to successfully fish it out without the yolk breaking. On the second attempt the yolk broke almost immediately and while that was probably more about the egg versus operator error it was still frustrating to not even get a chance. Since we only had so many eggs to work with I gladly handed off separating duties for the rest of the day. (Apparently, the need to have a good lab partner who is willing to let you copy some of their work doesn't end at 10th grade biology.) Previously I have written that certain things in this life are just not Rakauskas-grade, meaning they are meant for people who possess light, delicate touches or nimble fingers. My people will never repair watches, build ships in bottles or paint figures for historical models. Clearly any jobs which require separating egg whites from the egg yolks has to be added to that list.

I can not tell you how frustrating it is when you can't complete step 1 of a 6 step process. As I have been trying to expand my cooking knowledge I have tried a couple recipes which had multiple tricky steps, but this is the first time I have ever run in to trouble just gathering the ingredients. As frustrating as it may be to be just short of finishing, realizing you've messed up and then having to start over, not having all the parts at the beginning really kills your momentum before you even get started. Imagine if you wanted to put together a bookcase and you couldn't find any nails or screws. Your books would remain on the floor. The same thing happens here. Now, in previous cooking adventures if the recipe called for just the egg whites I would still use the entire egg and not really worry about it. Since that doesn't appear to be an option in this case, there is an above-average chance I won't be making any meringues in the future. There is a famous saying that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Well, you'll notice there isn't a saying about separating the eggs because even back in the days when they were still coming up with new phrases people recognized how hard that was to do. Or maybe they were working on a phrase about egg whites but couldn't quite make it work. I hear there is a lot of that going around...