A take on turkish delight (Confectionery)

Member Name: ashwick

Product:	Confectionery
Date:	25/11/08 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not as sweet or glupy as turkish delight

Disadvantages: None really

If you read some of my recipes, you'll know I'm a big Nigella Lawson fan. This is another one of her recipies that I've tried and tested and really enjoy making (and eating of course!).

This hasn't got the temple-aching sweetness of Turkish Delight, nor its palate-cleaving glutinousness, but rather it is a cloud-light spoon-pudding version which attempts to catch its aromatic essence - perfect after the lamb and pomegranate salad. That it requires no cooking, merely some pouring and whisking doesn't hurt either.

The quantities below make enough syllabub to fill eight 150-ml glasses. The vague amount of cream specified is just meant to indicate one of those old-pint tubs which hasn't been properly made metric, and therefore is a strange measurement.

Ingredients
12 tablespoons (approx 175ml) Cointreau
juice of 2 lemons
8 tablespoons (approx 125g) caster sugar
just under 600ml double cream
2 tablespoons rosewater
2 tablespoons orange flower water
2 tablespoons pistacchios finely chopped

How to cook Turkish syllabub
1.Combine the Cointreau, lemon juice and sugar in a large bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar, or as good as. Slowly stir in the cream then get whisking until it has thickened.

2.When the cream's fairly thick, but still not thick enough to hold its shape, dribble in the flower waters and then keep whisking until you have a creamy mixture that's light and airy but able to form soft peaks. You're aiming, as you whisk, for what Jane Grigson called 'bulky whiteness'. Whatever: better slightly too runny than slightly too thick, so proceed carefully, but don't get anxious about it.

3.Spoon the syllabub in airy dollops into small glasses, letting the mixture billow up above the rim of the glass, and scatter finely chopped pistacchios on top. In How to Eat, there's a recipe for pistacchio crescents which would be fabulous dunked into and eaten with this. But only if you feel like it: the cool, fool-like smoothness of this is perfect as it is.

Summary: Light and tasty