Saturday 1 January 2000

Monica Donnelly, 2007


Monica is one of those youthful older members of our community who has lived, and still lives, an exciting and productive life.

Mon was born in Hobart and raised at Wattle Grove near Cygnet during the depression years of the 1930’s. She moved to Hobart in the late 1940’s, married and had two children. She had a successful career in life assurance, has travelled widely and later in life has developed her writing skills with a bunch of friends, named aptly The Domain Writers. She has written and published a book of her reminiscences of life.

More to the point, she is renown for a few choice dishes which she cooks with that innate skill of all good country women.

Her prize dish, for me, is her Pavlova. I asked Mon if she would share with us the finer points of her skills as a master pav chef – and she has.

The recipe

6 – 8 egg whites
10 oz caster sugar
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Beat the whites to stiff peaks
Add half the sugar, a tablespoon at a time (about every 30 seconds)
Add vinegar
Combine the remaining sugar with the cornflour
Fold into pav mix carefully
Pour onto a greased tray, piling it up in the centre

In a fan-forced oven, temp 150 degrees for 45 minutes, then 120 degrees for 60 mins. Then turn off the oven and leave pav in the oven overnight.

Mon’s warnings

Turn the oven on before you start to prepare the pav
Use electric beaters
Don’t overbeat
When the peaks are soft, start putting the sugar in
Halve the sugar before you start, rather than trying to guess if you’ve added half the sugar
Gently fold in the sugar/cornflour mix
Grease tray very well
Use foil then grease the foil
Put into the oven straight away
A normal oven will cook it at 150 degrees for 30 minutes, then 120 degrees for 45 minutes.

Postscript:

Unfortunately Monica passed away in December 2009. We who knew her are heartbroken at this loss, not only to her family and friends, but to the food landscape of Hobart.

1 comments:

Peter said...

Hi Rita
I just came across this. Thanks for posting these lovely comments. I will always miss her. Just one correction - Mum died on 26th October 2009.
Cheers
Peter