Day 53: don’t judge a pav by its cover

I don’t like lemon desserts, and you are very unlikely to find me ordering or buying - let alone making - lemon desserts. Or that’s at least what I thought until a few days ago. It was an ‘eye-rolling’ moment when the results came in from my What-Nigella-Pavlova-Shall-I-Make-Next? poll on Twitter.

Allow me to fill you in. Last week for 365 Days of Nigella I made Nigella’s Grandmother’s Ginger Jam Bread and Butter Pudding, which left me (gratefully) with egg whites to use for something else. And, what does my newly trained brain – thanks to this cookalong - now think of when I find myself in this situation? Pavlova, of course. For the purpose of this cookalong it couldn’t just be any pavlova either, it had to be a Nigella pavlova. But which one?

As humans, we naturally gravitate toward options that we favour most, so I thought it would be a good idea to put the decision to vote; after all, Nigella has a few pavlova recipes to choose from and I’m never going to diversify our palates if I just pick the recipes that I **know** we will like.

The Nigella pavlova options that I put up for vote were: Rose and Pepper Pavlova with Passion Fruit and Strawberries, Lemon Pavlova, Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova and the Wedding Pavlova (made smaller). In real-time, the results ran head-to-head between the lemon pavlova and the chocolate raspberry one; both of which I would not usually pick; I don’t like lemon desserts and I think the concept of fruit and chocolate is ridiculous. I know, I know. You can shout at me later.

Anyway, the winning vote went to Nigella’s Lemon Pavlova and as you can imagine, neither my husband nor I were very impressed.

Nigella’s Lemon Pavlova

Just because we may not have been happy with the results, it certainly didn’t mean that I was going to show this particular cookalong any less enthusiasm. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it properly and I decided to make my own lemon curd as well; using the altered version of Nigella’s Passion Fruit Curd featured in Simply Nigella.

Firstly, I am mightily proud of making my own lemon curd. Who knew you even could? Not me, anyway! Secondly, I would have been quite content to sit alone with a bowl of this, accompanied by nothing more than a spoon, so why on Earth did I think that I never liked sweet lemon things? When I look back, I think it stems from arriving too late to the school canteen to discover that all of my favourite flavours of yoghurt – rhubarb or toffee – were gone, with only the sharp, artificially lemon-flavoured one remaining (which kind of reminded me of cleaning fluid, if truth be told).  

It was a success for the curd, but not so much so for the meringue base. I don’t know what happened here; it completely collapsed after cooking and turned light-brown in colour. I was mightily disappointed as I really thought I had just about got the hang of meringue baking, but it seems the mischievous kitchen fairy struck again – and I’m not referring to myself here, rather the supernatural kind of sprite that causes trouble for its own fun. However, I still had every intention of proceeding with this meringue base, which now rather resembled a pale-brown cowpat, except for the tiny issue of forgetting to take it out of the cool oven before switching it on again to preheat the oven (on high) for dinner. This seriously bronzed and hardened the meringue and I refused to have the fruits of seven minutes of lactic acid build-up in my arm - from continuously stirring the homemade lemon curd - to be applied to this rather sorry-looking meringue. Still, all was not lost, and I broke the meringue up and bagged it for the freezer; I’ll use it for ice cream, or something at a later date.

My second attempt at a meringue yielded similar results. It maintained a respectable rise even after cooling, but it was still rather bronze in colour and not the snow-white I was expecting. Anyway, this base sufficed and proceeded to be adorned with that sunshine curd, satin-like whipped cream and crunchy bitter-sweet toasted almond flakes.

Flavour musings

Again and again, this cookalong proves us wrong. We were both utterly convinced with our opinions of lemony puddings and, certainly in the nine years of being together, have never made or ordered one. Nigella’s Lemon Pavlova proved everything that I thought I knew about myself to be very wrong indeed. Okay, my meringue wasn’t perfect, but this dessert is tongue-tinglingly delicious.

I feel I owe an apology to Nigella when I start a blog entry with low enthusiasm toward a recipe pick, but I hope the ending is sufficient to show recognition of my faults and admittance of my wrongs. Lesson? Don’t judge a book - or in this case, a pav - by its cover.

I have every intention of making lemon curd again; spread over a toasted slice of Nigella’s Old-fashioned Sandwich Load, oh my days I bet that would be delicious – if you can drag my attention away from the second jar of ginger jam I am now on to within two weeks.