LEMON MERINGUE PIE

People often think of lemon meringue pie as a fiddly dessert but
it isn’t at all, and if you use a ready-made flan case you can make it
in a few minutes flat.
That said, the ready-made flan cases you find in the
supermarket are about 8–9 in (20–23 cm) in diameter and very
shallow, whereas the pastry case you’d make yourself in a flan tin
that size (or slightly larger) would be deeper, so if you do use a
ready-made flan case you’ll have a bit too much meringue with
these quantities, in which case you could either make a couple of
meringue nests with the leftovers (just spoon the meringue onto
a sheet of greaseproof paper on a separate oven tray and bake for
the same length of time as the pie) or make the Simple Pineapple
Sorbet (page 279) at the same time and use up the extra egg whites
in that.
You can also use 2 whole lemons instead of 4 and make up the
rest with bottled lemon juice instead, and although you should
really cook the lemony bit in a double boiler, i.e. in a bowl over a
pan of hot water, you can just as easily make it straight in the
saucepan; just keep your eyes on it and don’t let the sauce stick.
1 ready-made pastry case
or
6 oz (150 g) plain flour
3 oz (75 g) butter or margarine (or 11⁄2 oz/40 g each of butter and
lard)
1 heaped tbsp caster sugar
4–6 tbsp cold water (or a mixture of water and milk)
4 eggs, separated
6 heaped tbsp caster sugar
4 whole lemons (or 2 lemons + lemon juice)
2 tbsp cornflour
6 tbsp cold water
Method
1. To make your own pastry case, grease a flan dish or loosebottomed
cake tin and preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4
(180ºC); sift the flour into a mixing bowl, add the fat in small
pieces and rub in until the mixture resembles medium-fine
breadcrumbs then stir in the sugar, make a well in the centre
and add the liquid, pinching the mixture together with your
fingers to make a dough. Knead the dough for a minute then
roll it out to fit the flan dish and bake ‘blind’ for about 15
minutes with a circle of greaseproof on the base, weighed down
with rice or lentils to keep the pastry flat.
2. Separate the eggs. Put the yolks in a small saucepan with half
the sugar and the grated rind and all the juice from the lemons
and beat together with a wooden spoon.
3. Put the pan over a very low heat until all the sugar has melted;
meanwhile, mix the cornflour and water together in a small cup
or bowl to make a paste.
4. Add a couple of tablespoons of the liquid from the pan to the
cornflour paste, blend well then pour the whole lot back into
the pan; turn the heat up a bit and stir constantly for a couple
of minutes until the lemon mixture turns into a fairly thick gel.
5. Scoop the lemon mixture into the pastry case.
6. Whisk the eggs whites with half the remainder of the sugar for
a couple of minutes until the meringue is very stiff and standing
up in peaks then add the rest of the sugar, folding it in with a
large metal spoon.
7. Top the pie with the meringue, making sure the meringue
meets the pastry around the edge of the pie without any gaps,
then bake the pie in a very low oven – Gas Mark 1 (120ºC) for
about an hour – check after 45 minutes – until the meringue
is firmly set on top and just golden in places.