Papanași cu Smântână și Dulceață de Afine

Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes

• The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
• The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
• Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
• Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
• Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.

Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.

Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes

• Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
• Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
• It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
• The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
• The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.

Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.