Читать книгу The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book - Elisa Beynon - Страница 31

This is a make-ahead dessert. If you are planning on eating it for lunch you could still prepare it in the morning, but it would make your day more relaxed if you don’t. I made mine the afternoon before, when I had a rare moment of kitchen quiet.

5 slices of panettone, cut about 1.5 cm thick

6 tablespoons Cointreau

2 large tablespoons good-quality marmalade (I bought breakfast marmalade from my butcher but thick-cut, quality marmalade is fine – something like Frank Cooper’s)

3 oranges

5 fresh apricots

1 tablespoon apricot jam

1 tablespoon water

75g caster sugar, plus 1 tablespoon

250ml full-fat milk

500ml double cream

6 egg yolks

seeds from 1 vanilla pod, or a few drops of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cornflour

1 tablespoon flaked almonds, lightly toasted

First, break up the slices of panettone and put them into a 1.5-litre serving bowl. Slosh on the booze, then put the marmalade in a small pan, warm gently and pour that over the panettone, too. Finely grate the zest of 1 of the oranges and put it in a bowl. Shave off the zest from the remaining 2 oranges with a potato peeler, cover, and set aside for decoration. Now take a thin slice off the top and bottom of each orange, sit them one at a time on a chopping board and carefully slice away all the skin and white pith – which is one of those jobs that everybody hates.

Then slice away the segments from between the pieces of membrane and cut each one in half. Put the apricots into a small pan with the jam, water and the 1 tablespoon of sugar and poach gently for 10 minutes or until just tender, then mix into the finely grated zest with the orange pieces. Pour the whole lot over the Cointreau-sloshed panettone base.

Now for the custard. As a child I hated two things: custard and boys. The first, because it was too sloppy; the second, because they weren’t sloppy enough (that is, for all non-Welsh readers, they weren’t much into kissing and the like). Anyway, I love both now, so custard here we come. In a large pan, heat up the milk and 300ml of the cream. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, vanilla seeds or extract, the sugar and cornflour in a big bowl. Once the milky cream is hot, add it gradually to the egg mixture, whisking all the time. Pour it back into the pan, the heat turned to low, and stir constantly until it has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour it through a sieve on top of the fruity stuff already in your serving bowl. Cover and let it cool for a few hours or overnight in the fridge.

When you are ready to serve, whip up the rest of the double cream and smear it over the top of the custard. Once you have sprinkled over the almonds and pieces of reserved orange zest, it’s at last time to dig in.