Seeing as, at the moment, I'm surrounded by ballet dancers, it seemed apt to talk about meringue.
Well Pavlova to be precise!
Named after the Russian ballet dancer its a meringue based dessert, and done well, and served with some summer berries, makes a nice easy pudding.

I'm serving a small one as part of our raspberry plate at the moment. It goes well with the slightly tart raspberries along with a summer pudding, a raspberry and Champagne jelly, a very light lemon and vanilla mousse and some raspberry sorbet.
Garnished with some fresh raspberries, mint and gold leaf, its a very pretty dessert, one which I think, all light footed ballet dancers would love!
So, anyway, after a few too many glasses of red on Sunday night, I started thinking about savory meringues and if I could make one.
 Turns out I could but I would have to careful with the amount of sugar I could add. Too much and it would, of course, be too sweet. Too little and the egg whites would not support their own weight and therefore not be stable.
So by boiling sugar and a mixture of sherry and white vinegar to 121 oc and pouring onto whipped egg whites I managed to make some savory meringues that were as light as a "pas de chat"!
I sprinkled them with thyme flowers, cracked black peppercorns and Maldon sea salt and baked them in warmish oven for 20 minutes.
I'm thinking of adding some chopped truffles next time as well.
I served them last night, as an amuse, garnished with some apple puree, parfait of duck livers and some honey glazed pancetta.
I'm going to use, I think, a puree of gooseberries, instead of the apples, when they arrive in a few weeks time - how exciting!
And by then, hopefully, I will have sorted out how to use dark chocolate with some thyme, oranges and wood pigeons as another course in my new tasting menu.
Right then, I'm off to Highfield House Farm to see if  I can get my hands on some bone marrow and a couple of big fat steaks for dinner tonight.

I'll tell you about my inside out fish and chips next time!