Katherine Tidy's Very Yellow Lemon Meringue Pie: A Recipe

Toast

In our conversation with Katherine Tidy, the food stylist on BBC Film's coming-of-age food comedy Toast, we spoke of a lemon meringue pie that presented Tidy with one of her biggest challenges on the shoot. "It was pivotal," says Tidy, "so I did lots of samples of it and took pictures of it and e-mailed them to the director [to make sure I had] the right color and height. [Director S.J. Clarkson] really wanted a very deep dish lemon meringue pie with A LOT of meringue on top." The final product, even by Tidy's own assessment, looked "kind of mad" but was "tasty." For the recipe, turn the page.

Katherine Tidy's Very Yellow Lemon Meringue Pie
Is this recipe in grams? It is. Is it British? Yes to that too. Most bakers on either side of the Atlantic measure their ingredients by weight, so you can just convert your little electric kitchen scale from ounces to grams. If you don't have one of these inexpensive gadgets, you might want to get one. Or you can convert this recipe using this link.
Makes: 1 pie

Shortcrust pastry:
170g flour, pinch of salt
100g butter
1 egg yolk
very cold water

1. Sift the flour with the salt. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs

2. Mix the egg yolk with 2 tablespoons of water and add to the mixture. Mix to a firm dough, adding a bit more water if neccessary.

3. Line a 8 inch pie dish and chill for at least 30 minutes. Then bake blind at 190 Celcius until golden brown.

Lemon filling:
1/3 cup cornflour
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups water
peel of 1 lemon and 1/2 cup lemon juic

1. Put the water, sugar, salt, lemon rind and juice into a saucepan and bring slowly to the
boil.

2. Beat 4 egg yolks with the cornflour and add the hot mixture and return to the
heat whisking until the mixture thickens. For the proper Toast effect add some yellow food colouring at this point and pour into the baked pie crust.

3. Chill until set.

4. Whisk the 4 egg whites until white and fluffy (you know they are ready if you can hold the bowl upside down and they don't fall out) then whisk 220g sugar gradually into the whites.

5. Either pile the meringue on to the now set pie or put into a piping bag and pipe decorative swirls onto the filling making sure you cover right to the edges so no filling is visible.

6. Put the pie into the oven for about 5 minutes until the meringue is a light biscuit colour.

This is the original recipe I increased the amount using an extra deep pie dish.

1 1/3 cup cornflour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 3'4 cups water
1 1/4 cups lemon juice and the rind of 3 lemons
10 egg yolks
10 egg whites with 550g sugar

I also added 15 g gelatine to the filling and let it set overnight before piping all the
meringue on top.