This delicious sounding meringue-topped feijoa pie comes from a very beautiful hand stitched publication, The Hungry Girls Cookbook. Three talented friends Rachel Pitts, Leah Holscher and Katherine Bird have combined their talents in writing, cooking, photography and illustration to create books that are definitely works of art rather than run of the mill publications.
If you take a peek at the screen shots on the website, you can get a sense of how beautiful these cloth-lined, hand-sewn volumes are – and they’ve just released volume 3.
The Hungry Girls blog contains some wonderful recipes to tempt your taste buds, including this fabulous pie. And I love Rachel’s story of being new to the flavour of feijoa…
FEIJOA & LIME MERINGUE PIE
Serves 10
Ingredients
- shortcrust pastry (your favourite recipe)
Filling
- 300 g feijoa pulp
- 110 g (½ cup) sugar
- 1/3 cup cornflour
- pinch of salt
- 90 ml lime juice
- 40 g butter
- 3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
Meringue
- 3 egg whites
- pinch of salt
- 75 g (1/3 cup) caster sugar
Method
- Brush a 26 cm tart tin with melted butter and dust it with flour. Roll out the pastry until large enough to cover the tin, but not too thinly, and lay it inside the tin. Trim off the excess pastry. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the pastry shell with baking paper and fill with baking weights or rice. Bake for 15 minutes, then lift out the baking paper and rice and bake for another 5 minutes, or until lightly golden.
- While the pastry shell is cooking, make the filling. Blend the feijoa pulp until smooth. Put the sugar, cornflour and salt in a saucepan and stir to combine. Stir in the feijoa pulp and lime juice and place over gentle heat. Bring to the boil, stirring regularly so the mixture doesn’t catch on the bottom. The mixture should become quite thick. Once boiling, remove from the heat and stir in the butter. Add the egg yolks and stir well. Return to very gentle heat and stir for a few more minutes, until the mixture is quite hot to touch and steam is rising from the surface. Remove from the heat.
- To make the meringue, put the egg whites in a bowl and beat to firm peaks. Add the salt and sugar and beat until very thick and glossy.
- Spread the warm feijoa filling inside the baked pastry shell. Cover with the meringue and use the back of a spoon to make decorative swirls through the meringue, or pull it up into mini peaks. Bake in the oven for around 10 minutes, until the meringue is lightly golden. Leave to cool to room temperature before serving.
FEIJOA FEIJOA 