#4 The fated twist of a lemon meringue pie
It was the lemon meringue pie bake off and all started because of a borer infested lemon tree that my hair dresser, Janey, had. As I sat in the chair during my monthly maintenance session, we discussed the fate of this tree. Although condemned to death by chain saw in the near future it was currently laden with fruit. The delimma... what to do with so many lemons? As I read out the various options courtesy of google, the one stand out dish was lemon meringue pie. Knowing there was a recipe in "The great NZ cookbook" we challenged each other for a bake off. The contest was on!
Simon Wright from "The French Cafe" in Eden Terrace, Auckland provides what he describes as his own "twist on a classic lemon meringue pie", "simpler than making a tart and gives you an explosion of flavours". I was to find out that there was nothing "wright" about the end result, in fact, I can hand on heart declare every one of the six parts of this recipe had something wrong. Let me describe.
1. The meringue: although I managed to make a thick and glossy meringue mix, the shards that were supposed to be made by spreading a quarter of the mixture on a baking tray ended up like chewing gum. They were not at all the crisp little decorative items as per description. Piping the three artistic meringues on each plate ended up looking like anaemic stools one would expect from a small animal. Despite the expense of a new blow torch for the occasion, applying a fire force did little to improve the visuals.
2. Passionfruit gel: I should have known that seeing the ingredients of passionfruit juice with no seeds and powdered agar, I was doomed. Not wanting my whole weekend taken up on finding foods items that probably didn't exist locally, I cheated and purchased a passionfruit pulp - under $5 at the supermarket.
3. Pastry crumbs: Why is that 15g of rice flour was added to 130g plain flour? This meant I had to purchase a whole bag of the stuff, likely to be lost in the pantry and never to be seen again.
After baking in the oven to crumble I was supposed to whizz it up in the food processor - but the time I was up to doing this I was losing the will to live and just used my fingers.
4. Lemon curd: Finally get to the lemon component. Of course, I had to purchase something new for this part as well. One gelatin leaf was required. Actually this was fun to use but unfortunately did not end up with a satisfactory result. Despite the leaf, the curd did not set enough, even after applying the freezer treatment. Rather than display an oval blob on the plate, I had to resort to using ramekins and avoid lemon cured run over.
5. White Chocolate powder: you would think how could you possibly go wrong with just two ingredients. But if one ingredient you can't find i.e. maltodextrin, you are probably doomed... and I was. No problem I thought, rather than white chocolate powder just go for grated white chocolate (improvisation at work I thought proudly).
6. Garnish:
fresh blueberries = fail
freeze dried blueberries = fail (used frozen)
lavender tips = achieved
1 tub good quality white chocolate ice-cream = fail (Pam's Vanilla Bean)
Visualise this... pipe 3 mounds of lemon curd in between the 3 meringues and top with a spoonful of pastry crumbs. Squeeze a few drops of passionfruit gel around the plate and lightly sprinkle meringue with a little white chocolate powder. Scatter fresh and freeze dried blueberries and lavender tips, place a scoop of ice-cream in the centre and lean two meringue shards up against the ice cream.
Visualise this because the photo evidence is a little short of the expected result. Not only that, but I had enough mixture left over to plate up for a full restaurant.
Luckily Janey produced a fine pie, which looked like she had purchased it from a shop. She could detail the ingredients and the making so there was no doubt, she had not cheated. And like me she had also required the purchasing of many an item such as the pie dish. These free lemons weren't so cheap! The pie was cut and clean slices emerged with everything nicely set. I could only congratulate Janey - and asked where the recipe came from. The answer was Nadia Lim ... Aha! At least I was beaten by another great NZ cook!
Simon Wright from "The French Cafe" in Eden Terrace, Auckland provides what he describes as his own "twist on a classic lemon meringue pie", "simpler than making a tart and gives you an explosion of flavours". I was to find out that there was nothing "wright" about the end result, in fact, I can hand on heart declare every one of the six parts of this recipe had something wrong. Let me describe.
1. The meringue: although I managed to make a thick and glossy meringue mix, the shards that were supposed to be made by spreading a quarter of the mixture on a baking tray ended up like chewing gum. They were not at all the crisp little decorative items as per description. Piping the three artistic meringues on each plate ended up looking like anaemic stools one would expect from a small animal. Despite the expense of a new blow torch for the occasion, applying a fire force did little to improve the visuals.
2. Passionfruit gel: I should have known that seeing the ingredients of passionfruit juice with no seeds and powdered agar, I was doomed. Not wanting my whole weekend taken up on finding foods items that probably didn't exist locally, I cheated and purchased a passionfruit pulp - under $5 at the supermarket.
3. Pastry crumbs: Why is that 15g of rice flour was added to 130g plain flour? This meant I had to purchase a whole bag of the stuff, likely to be lost in the pantry and never to be seen again.
After baking in the oven to crumble I was supposed to whizz it up in the food processor - but the time I was up to doing this I was losing the will to live and just used my fingers.
4. Lemon curd: Finally get to the lemon component. Of course, I had to purchase something new for this part as well. One gelatin leaf was required. Actually this was fun to use but unfortunately did not end up with a satisfactory result. Despite the leaf, the curd did not set enough, even after applying the freezer treatment. Rather than display an oval blob on the plate, I had to resort to using ramekins and avoid lemon cured run over.
5. White Chocolate powder: you would think how could you possibly go wrong with just two ingredients. But if one ingredient you can't find i.e. maltodextrin, you are probably doomed... and I was. No problem I thought, rather than white chocolate powder just go for grated white chocolate (improvisation at work I thought proudly).
6. Garnish:
fresh blueberries = fail
freeze dried blueberries = fail (used frozen)
lavender tips = achieved
1 tub good quality white chocolate ice-cream = fail (Pam's Vanilla Bean)
Visualise this... pipe 3 mounds of lemon curd in between the 3 meringues and top with a spoonful of pastry crumbs. Squeeze a few drops of passionfruit gel around the plate and lightly sprinkle meringue with a little white chocolate powder. Scatter fresh and freeze dried blueberries and lavender tips, place a scoop of ice-cream in the centre and lean two meringue shards up against the ice cream.
Visualise this because the photo evidence is a little short of the expected result. Not only that, but I had enough mixture left over to plate up for a full restaurant.
Luckily Janey produced a fine pie, which looked like she had purchased it from a shop. She could detail the ingredients and the making so there was no doubt, she had not cheated. And like me she had also required the purchasing of many an item such as the pie dish. These free lemons weren't so cheap! The pie was cut and clean slices emerged with everything nicely set. I could only congratulate Janey - and asked where the recipe came from. The answer was Nadia Lim ... Aha! At least I was beaten by another great NZ cook!
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| The completed twist |
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| Add caption |
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| Helpers |
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| Even the competition felt sorry for me and lent me a hand |
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| The successful cutting of the pie by Chris |
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