The Eton mess

Like the lips of a beautiful woman, simple yet complex….
Like the red lacey bra that’s on your bedroom floor in the morning, when you can still smell the sweet, sweet scent of success…
Like a simple child, who has some how avoided natural selection, and bluffed his way to the top…
Like the bollocks that some how my brain allows to make it past these fingers of mine, and onto the screen in front of me*.

No, it is the Eton mess.

A dessert that has seen it’s highs and lows since its alleged inception at the English College of the same name in the 1930’s.

The traditional version consisted of strawberries mixed with whipped cream. Crisp meringue was added at a later date by a farking genius.

These days, as with a lot of stuff we do in this crazy industry, anything goes. I’m not talking about the same sort of ‘anything’ as the guy who first discovered milk thought was cool (how did he discover milk? what was he doing to the cow? well, not that kind of “anything goes”). But the kind of ‘anything’ that we chefs think makes our shit a little bit better than the next blokes. Deconstructing and reconstructing, and breaking down elements, and turning a once solid property into a gel or an emulsion or things of the such.

And now I’m gonna add another ‘mess’ to the fray…

My mess for two
A few mini meringues, make your own and use the egg yolks for mayonnaise or crème anglaise
A couple of handfuls of fresh berries or berry compote
1 cup of cream whipped with a little icing sugar and vanilla (chantilly cream)
berry sorbet, to serve

Smash it all together. Have a bit of fun. Whoa now, not that much fun. Top with a scoop of berry sorbet and eat it straight from the bowl, just to show everyone how punk you are…

easy berry sorbet
To make this sorbet you need a stick wiz. You should get one anyway because they are heaps handy to have if you are interested in cooking. It will cost you about $45 from a big department store. Just keep walking past those new shirts you need for work, keep going past the kids new school shoes and there it is. Your new stick wizz.

500g frozen mixed berries (always good to have in your freezer)
1 cup sugar syrup (dissolve one cup of castor sugar in one cup of boiling water)

Put the berries into a cylindrical container that will hold them. Do it while they are still frozen so you get a head start in the freezing process. Add the sugar syrup and give it a little wiz. You might have to use a little pressure to get it moving, but just pulse it until it has started to move and the berries start getting blitzed up (tech term). Keep blitzing until smooth, about 30-40 seconds should do it. It should look kinda like a frappe.
Actually, you could probably do this with a frappe. Yeah. That would work…
Now put the sorbet into your freezer, blitzing again after 30 mins, and the again after an hour. This makes sure it doesn’t ice up like an ice block, just like an ice cream churn would.

* WTF is this? Poets corner? I’m getting rid of this bloody beret!