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12 avril 2018
This thyme grapefruit meringue pie was waiting in my drafts for 2 good months until I find time to post it. It reminds characteristics of classic lemon meringue pie, with a sour touch brought by grapefruit. Flavours are even more corsed in spite of the sweetness of the pie, and amateurs of complex flavours might like the association of grapefruit with thyme.
I clearly spent most of my time traveling rather than cooking or posting lately, which explain the sad lack of new recipes over the last month. One ton of content is still waiting to be posted, including a bunch of recipes as well as travel guides or updates of my old ones, I just haven’t found enough time or energy to do it after work. As sun is back to Berlin, it’s also complicated for me to get the motivation to work during weekends while I can spend them outside. Same story with Instagram, I’m alternating between daily post periods and days of emptiness, most of the time justified by the fact that I’m not feeling “in the flow”. I’ll still try to focus on all of this over the next days to be able to share all those nice things with you.
About the thyme grapefruit meringue pie, I used thyme syrup that I made by myself (recipe here) to make an italian meringue. The taste of thyme is slightly perceptible without being invasive, so people who care about traditional desserts might not feel too disoriented. Let the pie into the oven just long enough to give it a nice tan, while keeping an eye on it. In my case I almost burnt it one more time because of my oven that heat way too much – as you can see when looking at the meringue color.
More recipes with grapefruit:
Grapefruit & lavender Gin Fizz cocktail
Ingredients
- 200g flour
- 90g butter
- 50g icing sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 vanilla pod
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 eggs
- 130g sugar
- 165g butter
- Juice of 1 grapefruit (10cl)
- Zest of 1 grapefruit
- 3 egg whites
- 150g thyme syrup
- One pinch of salt
Instructions
- 1. To prepare the dough: in a salad bowl, add soft butter cut in pieces. Incorporate successively vanilla beans, icing sugar, salt, egg and flour, while mixing between each ingredient. Once the texture is homogeneous. shape a ball, then fold in a plastic film and let rest in fridge for 1 to 2h.
- 2. To prepare the grapefruit curd: grate grapefruit zest, then press grapefruit in a graduated glass to extract 10cl juice. In a pan, mix sugar and eggs together, then add grapefruit juice and zest. Heat on low temperature while stirring regularly, until the texture gets thicker and close to boil. Turn off heat and let cool down.
- 3. Add butter cut in pieces into the mixture and stir well until homogeneous. Pour into a blender and blend or a few seconds, until completely smooth. Set aside and let cool down completely in fridge.
- 4. Preheat oven to 180C. Take the dough from fridge, then using a rolling pin, spread it on a floured surface. Transfer to a pie mould and line it. Using a fork, prick the dough, then cover with a baking paper foil and top with beans. Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes like this, then remove beans and baking paper and bake for 5 more minutes, until golden. Let cool down.
- 5. Preheat oven to 250C. In a cold salad bowl, add egg whites and salt, then whip up energetically. When they start to get firm, drizzle thyme syrup and keep whisking until Italian meringue is firm and ready.
- 6. Spread grapefruit curd on the dough base, then top with thyme Italian meringue. Put in oven at 250C for about 5 minutes, or until meringue is golden. Cool down and store in fridge before serving.
