Celebrate Spring with a Blueberry and Lemon Curd Pavlova: Celia Wakefield

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Once more, ladies and gentlemen, our own Celia Wakefield is here with an elegant, (relatively) easy dessert that will wow your guests and tastes like spring sunshine exploding in your mouth.

 

Good morning JRW’s and JRR all, it is such a pleasure to be back with you, and my grateful thanks to Julia et al for encouraging me to write more. As I am over my three score and ten, I am a little late to take up fiction or biography but memoir through food is most enjoyable.

 

I had lots of ideas to talk about but was side tracked by Hanks “Mystery in the Freeza!” The title alone along with the photo was enough to spur my imagination. Hank’s original photo when compared with liver in my own freezer certainly didn’t look anything like blueberries. I mourn with Hank the loss of those precious berries, particularly if she picked them herself. However, while I left it to the Facebook world telling her how to tackle freezing blueberries, not to mention what not to do.  But I have blueberry stories too.

 

Our first house in Chappaqua had a peculiar structure in the back yard. About 10ft by 10 by 10 with netting surrounding some bushes. I thought to myself, ‘well that’s coming down when we move in’. The previous owners were a pleasant couple who invited us for coffee and pie. This pie was a dark blue purple color like no fruit that I had ever seen in England or anywhere else that I had lived. I took the slice offered and cautiously bit into it. How delightful, so sweet and juicy and tangy and quite different from the berries I was used to eating. I asked what the fruit was and they pointed to the cage in the yard. Blueberries, high bush blueberries and in full fruit as it was summer. OK, we kept the cage but I really didn’t appreciate what we had. I would go in and pick 8 cups for a wonderful Gourmet Magazine recipe I found which Victor loved. Unfortunately that recipe has joined the great lost recipe raft somewhere.

However the opportunity to pick our blueberries turned out to be a most popular offering at local fund raising auctions. I think the top weight picked was twenty plus pounds of fruit. I’m sure I must have frozen some for us probably with the same result as Hank. But it wasn’t until we moved to Maine and bid our bushes goodbye that I really started to appreciate blueberries and what we had in Chappaqua despite the year battle with birds. Maine is a blueberry capital and while I don’t chose to crawl around picking the wild blueberries, we do have wonderful places to pick high bush around where we live.

 

I bring the blueberries home and freeze them on a cookie sheet. I don’t wash them. Really, most local farms don’t spray the fruits and we have had no problems. Once frozen and  then bagged, (this part is important to do at speed as they defrost very fast,) I’m set for the next step. I think you all make pies, muffins, scones, blueberry loaves and other baked goodies. I like to turn frozen blueberries into smoothies, just with a banana and some yogurt, or make blueberry sauce which is very like making blueberry jelly but you don’t have to get it to a set point (reached by testing its consistency after 20 minutes of hard boiling.) Store it in the fridge and there it is ready to pour over ice cream, pancakes or French toast.

 

Somehow I found myself hosting a small luncheon party on Easter Day. I needed a meal plan and found that my on-line grocer Big Tree Foods, was offering a par-cooked leg of lamb and some special potato dish and all I had to do is heat them and serve. But what about a dessert? I had saved a lovely article by Dorie Greenspan who has a new blog, xoxo Dorie which is all about baking for which she is famous. The article was about a shop in Paris where she lives part time, which sells only citrus fruits. You must read the article, I was amazed by the splendid choices of fruit. To go with the article, Dorie gave a recipe for lemon curd. I love lemon curd and the recipe looked very easy. Realizing I had not put in a recipe yet, what would be nicer than lemon and blueberries in an Easter dessert. I chose to make a blueberry lemon pavlova. Looking back we had a JRW pavlova recipe on March 28th 2021. You can follow the pavlova recipe for the shell or you can use another recipe for your shell or cake base. I made lemon curd from Dorie Greenspan's recipe as what I loved was its simplicity. And it works.

 

However I added a little hack. My days of play dough and other doughs are over and the idea of massaging the sugar and lemon zest didn’t appeal. Why not try my Cuisinart? I do encourage you to go to Dorie’s blog, first to look at the glorious photos and also to read her directions. I have put in a cut down version below but the recipe is hers, I am just trying to keep my fingers clean.

 

MY HACK

 

- Zest the lemons and combine with 1 1/4C of sugar

I measured the sugar and zested lemon into the Cuisinart bowl.

 

- Break 4 large eggs into a second bowl.

 

- Squeeze enough citrus to measure 3/4C

Prepared my citrus using 1 1/2 Meyer lemons, 3 regular lemons, 1/4 cup lime juice. This was squeezed into yet another bowl taking care not to allow pips into the juice.

 

- Cut 1 stick of softened butter into small cubes.

 

DIRECTIONS:

First whirl the sugar and zest until it’s all incorporated, then pour in the eggs with the processor still going.

The next step involves some dexterity so pour the juice down the funnel and add the butter.

Switch your processor to PULSE and pulse it for a couple of minutes until the mix looks reasonably incorporated. Dorie has great directions.

Pour into a heavy saucepan, whisking all the while until bubbles appears, and suddenly, just like MAGIC, the mix thickens as you remove the pan from the heat and pour into a glass bowl covering with plastic wrap.

 

FINISH

Unwrap the pavlova, and spread a layer of lemon curd over the base generously.

Cover with blueberries and whipped cream.

And the moral is don’t toss the bag of mystery food from the bottom of the freezer until you find out if there is really treasure inside it. Hank’s bag - blueberry syrup possibly with some sugar, a little fresh lemon juice and a hit of Gran Marnier, makes a great addition to any dessert.

Sunday Recipe: A Pavlova for Spring

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Welcome, everyone, to another eagerly-anticipated recipe and cooking lesson from our own Celia Wakefield. Today she's preparing a lovely spring dessert - Pavlova. I "helped" (stood around and shot video) and I can assure you of two things: 1) if you have the right equipment, this showy pastry really isn't hard, and 2) it's SO GOOD. Scroll down to the bottom for our how-to videos.

 

I am so happy to be back talking to you on JRW; whether author, blogger or fan I greet you all in the name of Spring. Julia has invited me back after what we could call, “Our winter of discontent”, our shared experience with COVID, which I will get out of the way so that we can focus on what Spring is offering us. Victor and I are fine, thank you all, we are vaccinated and like the mole will come out of our burrow cautiously to greet the world. But let us move to a time long ago when attending large, in fact huge gatherings, without looking like bank robbers, was the norm.

 One of these annual gatherings took place in Westchester, NY, on the Campus of SUNY, Purchase in the ’80's. A huge summer festival, “Summerfare”, completely funded by PepsiCo (can you believe that?) The festival ran over ten years with an international array of artists; the Tokyo String Quartet, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Martine van Hamel, Victor Borge, Colleen Dewhurst, Mozart Operas each year, and the Handspan Theatre from Australia, just to name a few luminaries. 

Each year the Festival opened with a grand outdoor production of Noyes Fludde, (Benjamin Britten), using local choruses, children, puppets, a cherry picker to place God high above the crowd and a huge, huge rainbow of balloons stretching over the field with the Performing Arts building as a backdrop. Children came to make animal costumes to parade into the ark. This was a splendid sight and a joy to be a part of. 

I was a volunteer with the Prompters, whose work and mission was to support the PA Center, in any way needed. Ferrying artists from train and plane, helping backstage, cooking, yes, lots of cooking for the after performance receptions. We were a group of about 90, both women and men. 

Someone had the bright idea that a cookbook capturing artists’ recipes who had appeared on the four stages would be a great fundraiser. Somehow I got involved with this project, and somehow I found I was the project manager. [Julia’s note: Knowing Celia, this is utterly unsurprising.] 

Well, we collected the recipes, tested them, got them onto a computer disk (remember this was 1985), found a student in the Graphic Arts Department who was willing to do the design and layout as her senior project, and a printer.  We were set. Being that you all live in the 20’s, can you spot what I have left out? Yes, marketing. 

None of the Prompters had any marketing experience, nor did I, nor did I want to take it on in addition to the rest of my tasks. So we got cobbling. Demos in Bloomingdales, talking to groups and then an offer from a very local cable station. Remember, it was the ’80’s and cable was new. I was volunteered to be the presenter. I was told I had a 5 minute spot to fill and that the host, we will call her Julia, wanted to help me with the demonstration.

After much searching through our recipes I chose the Handspan Theatre’s Pavlova recipe which I knew could be done in the allocated time. Anna Pavlova visited Australia in 1926 and was such a success they renamed a cake after her. (It does appear there is a rivalry between Aussies and Kiwis as to who actually made the cake and named it for Pavlova. You can find the story on Wiki.

We arrived at the studio in good time. My cooler was full of almost whipped cream, egg whites, fruit and sets of meringue shells made in advance. My host, Julia, was late. I was getting more and more concerned about the fast deflating whipped cream, and other items which needed a cold environment. Julia arrived. Julia had broken her arm, a minor point that they had not considered we needed to know, but that wasn’t going to stop her “helping”.

I was frantically reorganizing how we could demonstrate this recipe with one arm short! I remember saying at one point, “Look how well Julia is sifting sugar with one hand!” while I held the bowl, sieve and sugar container for her. I don’t know if this little piece of art was the inspiration for the Food Network, but nowadays we have so many places to check out our recipes and techniques. However today, my lovely sous chef, Julia, and I will demonstrate how to make a pavlova in five minutes, or possibly a little longer. 

Here is the Pavlova recipe from the Handspan Theatre, Australia

 

Preparation:

Have a very clean, grease free bowl and whisk to beat the eggs. An electric one is best.

If you have a copper bowl here’s the opportunity to use it. Egg whites love copper.

You can make this any size but be sure to trace your shape on parchment paper first.

I freeze egg whites, usually in small batches of 4 each, adding each white when it’s available. They have a long freezer life and  still beat up very well.

 

 

 

 

Ingredients:

3 egg whites at room temperature

3/4 cup superfine sugar, if possible (Put a cup of regular sugar in a Food Processor and whirl, then measure)

1/2 tsp Cornstarch

1/2 tsp white vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

 

Topping:

1 Cup + Heavy Cream, best quality you can find

Fresh Fruit for decoration, but avoid acid fruits. Strawberries, raspberries, mango slices, Kiwi slices, Passion fruit, blackberries, blueberries and peaches all work well. The decorations can include candies etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oven temperature 250 - 300 degrees

Trace your shape onto parchment paper and sprinkle lightly with cornstarch. Place on a cookie sheet.

Whisk egg whites until stiff, they should stand up when the whisk is inverted.

Add sugar a spoon at a time, then beat at top speed to dissolve the sugar

Stop beating and gently fold in the cornstarch, vinegar and vanilla.

 

 

Spread part of the mixture over the circle, then pipe or spoon the remaining egg whites to form an edging.

Bake for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. When it is very crisp, turn the oven off, leave the door open a fraction and allow to cool down before removing the paper and filling the shell.

 

It is better to fill your Pavlova at close to serving time as possible.

Cut the fruit before adding cream to the shell.

Whip the cream till stiff and cover the meringue, then decorate away with fruits, tiny cookies, candies - I’m thinking mini Easter eggs.

 

A Pavlova is a fun, light-hearted dessert and it’s gluten free. What could be better to celebrate Spring and vaccinations?  Bon Appetit, or as the Aussies might say, “Eat up Mate!”