I did have three gooseberry bushes in my garden, they are usually in season around June but they’ve all died.
So I hunted around for gooseberries and it’s remarkably hard to find them in shops. Waitrose does sell them, but don’t stock much so they sell out quickly.
At last week’s supper club I made a last minute gooseberry meringue pie which didn’t quite work. I was trying to recreate an amazing stachelbeeren kuchen that I had in Germany in the timbered road town of Wernigerode a couple of years ago. It was like something out of a fairy tale, tall and snowy on top with the bright green gooseberries below, the tartness of the berries beautifully contrasting the light and sweet meringue.
Gooseberry meringue pie
I had this for the first time in Germany. This is my third and so far best attempt at recreating what I ate. Italian meringue seems to be a bit more stable. I used egg whites from a box, which does work but I still feel normal egg whites are better and stiffer.
Serves 8
Ingredients
For the pastry:
- 125 g flour
- 50 g icing sugar
- 50 g butter, cold, grated or cut into dice
- pinch salt
- 1 small egg
For the gooseberry filling:
- 400 g gooseberries, topped and tailed
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp corn flour
For the meringue topping:
- 5 egg whites (55g each)
- Pinch salt
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 250 g caster sugar
- 150 ml water
Instructions
For the pie crust:
- Mix the flour, icing sugar, butter and salt together by rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients. Add the egg, form a dough. Pat it out into a disk, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge for an hour or so. Prepare your pie tin by rubbing with butter and sprinkling lightly with flour. Preheat the oven to 180CEither place the cooled disk into the pie tin and press it out to and up the edges with your fingers, or roll it out further with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface. Press into the pie tin. Prick the bottom all over with a fork.Add some parchment paper to the pie tin pastry and put in some baking beans. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove, let it cool and remove the baking beans. Set aside.
For the gooseberry filling:
- Put the clean gooseberries and sugar into a saucepan and heat until the gooseberries start to soften and release juice, but do not crush them.
- Add the cornflour and cook on a low heat until the gooseberries have thickened.
- Then spoon onto the pie crust, spreading evenly. Leave to cool.
For the meringue topping:
- Put the sugar and water into a lidded pan and heat until 115C. The lid prevents crystallisation: the condensation melts any sugar crystals on the sides of the pan.
- Put the egg whites and cream of tartar into an extremely clean bowl or food mixer and whisk until you have soft peaks.
- Once the sugar syrup has reached 115, remove from the heat and pour slowly into the egg whites as the machine is running. Whisk until you have stiff peaks.
- Ladle onto the cooled gooseberry pie, smoothing it into a dome.
- Using either a blow torch or the oven, brown the top of the meringue.
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