When Life Gives You (loose) Lemon (curd)
My first foray into this project series leaves me no where to go but up.
It feels cliché to say that I’ve always been inspired by the seasons.
Perhaps it would only be cliché if I were writing to you about tomatoes from the sweltering swamp of August. Instead, my current seasonal appreciation comes from the depths of winter, within the darkest weeks of the year in mid-January. Because it feels like Mother Nature is winking at us when she bestows bright citrus in these months.
This week, I announced my new project: Things I want to Cook before I Die. The name could use some, ehm, workshopping, but the idea came out of my famed Sunday Cooking Projects. I love nothing more than spending an entire weekend in the kitchen, trying a new-to-me recipe that helps me better understand technique and ingredient as an amateur home chef.
Whenever I search for ideas for these projects, I get the same old tired responses. I love a roast chicken, but I want a challenge. Something like, a tortellini en brodo from Bologona, or a Greek gyro with homemade pita, pickling my own Korean Kimchi, or today, attempting my first Pavolva with a Meyer Lemon curd. Let’s go!
Pavlova has been on my radar for quite some time, but I have a very, very teeny tiny kitchen, which means that I was one of the only American brides to keep a KitchenAid off of my wedding registry. Instead, I have a $20 hand mixer. In years past, I’ve only gone as far as to make some simple cooking with the mixer, assuming it was too weak, small, silly to handle something as wondrous as a yeasted bread or a creating peaky egg whites.
This changed when I started getting into bread making earlier this month (a story for another letter). Recipe after recipe telling me my hand mixer wouldn’t do the trick. Well, a loaf of whole wheat, focaccia and dinner rolls later, I have gladly proven them wrong. It was time to tackle whipping these eggs.
I made my first ever souffle last week after finding some Meyer Lemons in store. Citrus season, baby! I beat those eggs into submission and was shocked and awed to have created a truly perfect soufflé. Moving on to Pavlova!
You guys… nothing went right. Frankly, part of it was my excitement over this new project. Normally I am very well researched: reading article after article, loads of recipe comments, notes and tricks, watching constant videos to know exactly how the eggs are meant to look. This time, I just jumped right in. Lesson learned.
I ended up whipping up two rounds of egg whites, the first being over-beaten and the second being under-beaten (I think? Really, what do I know?). And after years and years of successful lemon curds, this one somehow ended up so runny, that I didn’t even bother whipping up some cream. Overall, a total failure.
Not to mention… I think I might… hate… pavlova…? The sugar is so overpowering that it literally hurt my teeth, and the texture is weird in such quantity. Like, I prefer a macaron as a better size for something of this nature. Anyway, some lessons learned if I ever attempt it again:
I simply need to watch 100 videos understanding the different levels of egg peaks so I know where to begin and end. I might even consider hand-whipping so I don’t over-beat…
I think I would do less sugar next time, like Tess recommends. A traditional pavlova calls for a 2:1 ratio of sugar:egg white. Tess does .5:1, which sounds lovely for two reasons. First, the teeth hurting comment, and second, I felt like all the sugar ended up breaking my peaks?
Oh, this was so dumb of me, but I forgot I needed superfine sugar. To which you might say, well then of course your pavlova sucked. To which I say, you are correct, but this was just one of many of my problems.
I tried egg yolk only for my curd because of all of the whites I ended up needing for the pavlova. Waste not, want not! Even though I got it to temp, the curd never really set up to an appropriate thickness, probably because the ratios were a little off.
I also should have laid saran wrap over the curd while it settled to prevent a skin. This ended up not mattering because the curd was so bad anyway, but I need to remember to do this next time.
Generally, this was a great lesson in meringues. I need to do a ton of research into different methods (the recipe I followed did not put the meringue over heat before the oven? I don’t know if this is normal.).
I almost felt like I should ditch this as my first episode in this series because it was such a fail. But isn’t that the entire point of this project? I want to learn new techniques, challenge myself and respect food in new ways. My next project will hopefully be a success. And while it might be some time before I get into a pavlova again, I’ll definitely try a different type of meringue in the future.