PAVLOVA - THE POET Mj
February 14, 2025
Pavlova
Ingredients:
For the meringue of my early life:
4 large free-range egg whites (There were five free-range eggs in the nucleus recipe; the younger atom I.)
225g / 8oz caster sugar (20 acres of cast an eye over my sugary kingdom of heaven on earth, in the high hills of eucalypti, she-oak scrubby lands; I was home.)
½ tsp vanilla extract (Ours was lemon extract picked from fruiting trees and squeezed on the pancakes in the second week of the family budget. Potato fritters, pancakes, and pasta, the recipes to make the food budget extend for the fortnight, for the hungry five eggs.)
1 tbsp cornflour (I preferred Coco Pops cereal, not Cornflakes cereal. My brother liked Weet-Bix stacked high with sprinkled brown sugar and full cream cow’s milk. But take me back to the numerous kid’s birthday parties of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Chocolate Crackles, Fairy Bread, and Honey Crackles. I disliked Chocolate Crackles but loved Honey Crackles and Fairy Bread.)
Filled with cream, meringue
modus operandi: whisk
consistency for…
The filling:
400ml / 14oz double cream (The clouds are haunting when they close in. They also rise like double cream when the wind brings in the tears, torrids shed. I saw many times double cream clouds when fire would awake and lick the terrain. All clouds have a second meaning and a third if we wait long enough for the signs.)
400g / 14oz strawberries, hulled, halved if large (If you hulled soft fruit such as strawberries, you remove the hulls. The hull of a soft fruit such as a strawberry is the stalk and ring of leaves at the base. At the base of our hill, the weeds grew like hulls, but as your feet climbed to the top of the mountain, the rich natural beauty felt similar to the peak of the strawberry’s tip.)
200g / 7oz raspberries (At age twelve, I picked raspberries for two summer holiday seasons. The numb hands at early rise, lifting up the leaves to find the ripe raspberries to place in little buckets pinned to our leather belts. The thorns bit, but to save a year’s amount of money so my sister and I could keep our horses drove us to hard work, for our passion for that graceful steed bubbled up.)
150g / 5oz blueberries (Blue is my favorite color, like the material of the sky. Blueberries were a rare thing growing up, but blackberries were an endless weed; plucking their fruit made the best jams and pies.)
Cape gooseberries (optional) (I was the gooseberry clowning around in our family Christmas plays to entertain Grandma and Grandpa. I could never master the ‘Silent Night’ carol on the piano like Clara Schumann, one of the greatest piano players of all time. Clara Schumann’s impact on the world of classical music achieved international recognition as a piano virtuoso, making significant contributions to the development of the Romantic style.)
3 passion fruit (optional) (The passion fruit vine grew on a friend’s tank. Cool across the side on the cement as it climbed up the trestle. We spooned mouthfuls onto our tongues, and I knew my grand passion for this fruit had been discovered as a child (not optional for this writer of this strange morphing piece).)
Mint sprigs, to decorate (It grew as a weed and was cursed by Australian farmers. But I liked it in cool iced tea after a forty-two-degree day in the Adelaide hills swimming in our neighbor’s dam.)
Sifted icing sugar, to decorate (The icing sugar in our lives were the menagerie of animals to care for and know.)
Festoon with fruit, drape
on the sweet clouds, cooling the
sweet to savory.
Method:
Preheat the heart. Place it in trust but draw around its boundaries for safekeeping.
Put the five egg whites in a large, clean home, and whisk, see all opinions stiffen but not dry. They are ready to turn upside down without the hurts sliding out.
Gradually whisk in the sugary hills, a tablespoonful at a time. Adding the sugary memories slowly helps to build up the joyful volumes in the meringue mix. Finally, whisk in the vanilla extract and cornflowering feelings until the family is well combined.
Dab a small amount of the meringue into the corners of the world and see.
Spoon the meringue into shapes of life, a meringue nest with soft peaks rising on all sides.
Place in the center of the family oven and bake for a generation until very lightly colored and crisp on the outside. If the meringue seems to be becoming too overcooked, reduce the temperature of the family oven. Turn the family oven off and leave the meringue for a further generation.
Release the meringue from the baking parchment, using a spatula if necessary, and place onto a large serving plate. Whip the creamy clouds and storms into the center of the meringue.
Top with the strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, and cut the passion fruit, and scrape the pulp over.
Decorate with sprigs of mint skies and dust with sifted icing moon rays and serve to your guest readers to devour.
Melinda Jane has one hundred and seventy-four published works through fifty national and international publishers. Nominated for ‘Best of the Net,’ 2019.