Whip the cream until it thickens and forms soft peaks,
then whisk in the rhubarb purée. Taste the mixture – it
should have a nice balance between sweet and sour – and
add more sugar or a squeeze of lemon juice as necessary.
Pour the fool into individual glasses and chill in the fridge
for 4 hours.
SPONGE FINGERS
Makes about forty fingers.
5 egg yolks
125g (4½oz) golden caster
sugar
5 egg whites
150g (5½oz) plain flour, sifted
icing sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F, Gas Mark 2).
Whisk the egg yolks with two-thirds of the sugar until
the yolks are thick, pale and much increased in volume.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites, slowly adding
half the remaining sugar, until the mixture forms stiff
peaks. Stir in the remaining sugar, then fold the two
mixtures together. Sprinkle the sifted flour over the top,
then fold it in, making sure it is thoroughly incorporated,
while at the same time trying not to deflate the mixture
too much.
Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large
plain round nozzle and pipe out lengths of mixture the
size of a finger onto several non-stick baking sheets. Dust
the fingers with icing sugar and bake in the oven for 15
minutes. After removing the biscuits from the oven, dust
them again with icing sugar and leave for 5 minutes before
returning to the oven to finish for another 2 minutes.
WINE: Sweet wines with plenty of complementary acidity
work best with rhubarb. A good Vouvray would be ideal.
72
Take It or Leave It
Grilled Pineapple with Chilli Syrup and Coconut Ice Cream
*Roast pineapple with tipsy
cake has been on the menu
since Dinner opened. The
‘tipsy cake’ is a light, almost
milky, brioche and is
sensationally good.
It is a take it or leave it sort of fruit, the pineapple. To some
it is almost as repulsive as a durian or a Swedish rotten
herring. I marvel at it. I eye them up carefully in the shop,
looking for them to lose that greenness in the skin and for
the leaves to look a tiny bit tired. Like melons, I turn them
over and smell the bases, waiting until the aroma becomes
quite strong. I have the same sort of awed respect for the
pineapple as the eighteenth-century landowners who built
greenhouses for their propagation and installed stone
pineapples on their walls and parapets as a status symbol
for the envy of their neighbours.
This architectural respect for the pineapple even
tended to dominate gastronomic approaches to the fruit.
Many preparations involved scooping out the pineapple
flesh and serving a mousse or sorbet inside the shell. That
and the ubiquitous Ananas Condé – slices of pineapple
macerated in kirsch and served with creamed rice – were
about all classical cooking had to say about the pineapple
until recently. It may be thought that was quite enough
already and that the fruit, properly peeled and thinly
sliced, needed no embellishment whatsoever. Nor does it,
but nor does a little bit of heat do it any harm.
I believe it was Marc Meneau at the three-star
L’Esperance – still, sadly, on my unvisited list – who took it
upon himself to roast a whole pineapple and flavour it with
vanilla. I also believe Marco Pierre White produced a
version of that dish when he presided over the Oak Room
in Piccadilly. The pineapple arrived standing on a dais on a
trolley, with spikes of vanilla protruding from the eyeholes
in its skin and, as I recall, the whole fruit set aflame with
rum. I hear that Heston Blumenthal has adopted the theme
and intends to roast his pineapple on a clockwork spit in
the dining room: I shall observe with interest.*
I am all in favour of making things hot for the
pineapple, and in more ways than one. I discovered
that grilling a pineapple concentrates the flavour and
smokiness induced by the chargrill only encourages the
fruit. I believe that there was a chilli performing a largely
decorative function in Marco’s roast pineapple dish and
I – without any great originality – decided that the chilli
should start taking a more active role. The smoky flavour,
a quite serious degree of chilli heat and the concentrated
sweetness of the fruit make for a heady marriage.
73
February
GRILLED PINEAPPLE WITH CHILLI SYRUP
AND COCONUT ICE CREAM
The coconut ice cream is well worth it if you have an
ice-cream machine. If not, buy in some vanilla ice cream.
Serves six.
2 red chillies, tops removed,
deseeded and cut into very
thin rounds
1 vanilla pod, split in half
lengthways and seeds
scraped out
½ cinnamon stick
4 star anise
10 cloves
50g (13⁄4oz) golden caster
sugar
1 pineapple
FOR THE COCONUT
ICE CREAM
400ml (14fl oz) whole milk
400ml (14fl oz) canned
coconut milk
8 egg yolks
150g