Extra Bites
Ella Risbridger on The Kitchen Book
Photo: Jamie Drew
This week on Cooking the Books, Ella Risbridger talks about the joy of simple food served without fuss to friends in her latest outing The Kitchen Book. I found it deeply profound after her memoirs Midnight Chicken and The Year of Miracles.
Here she gives us one of the most delightfully easy recipes in the book, The Bomb Lolly.
Bomb, and her little cousin the Bomb Lolly, were such a fundamental part of my childhood summers I am always surprised they don’t form a more solid cornerstone for summer culture as a whole. I actually have never met anyone, outside of my immediate family and thefamilies we grew up spending summers with, who understands properly about Bomb and Bomb Lolly.
When I talk about it people like to tell me I mean bombe, and listen, I suppose I sort of do: bombe is the fancy Italian semi-sphericalgelato-type
number that did big business in the eighties, and Bomb Lolly is like if that fancy Italian left, like, Milan to run a commune in the mountains. No ice cream, just whipped creme fraiche mixed with berries; water, a little sugar, a little lemon juice depending on thetartness of your fruit; and handfuls of crumbled meringue swirled through. It’s most like, I suppose, a kind of frozen pavlova, either in abowl or in lolly moulds (depending on if it’s B or B.L.). Any berries you want. The sound of the summer.
MAKES 12 LOLLIES, SOME FOR NOW, SOME FOR LATER
500g frozen berries 400ml cremefraiche 100g sugar
250g meringue (shop-bought is fine; recipe on p.146)
100g white choc chips
Blitz the frozen berries with 100ml water until smooth. Whip the creme fraiche with the sugar. Crumble the meringue into the creme fraiche.
Layer the berries and creme fraiche meringue either in lolly moulds (perfect) or swirl together in a Pyrex bowl (also perfect, less of a lolly). Freeze until set.
Melt white choc chips by putting the bag, unopened, into a mug of hot water. Snip off one corner when completely soft, and drizzle liberally over frozen lollies. It will set immediately.
Credit: The Kitchen Book by Ella Risbridger (published by 4th Estate, 21st May, £26 hbk) Photo credit: Yuki Sugiura