Curious Gastronomer’s Mojito meringue with a wisp of pinotage stained oak smoke:

Ive on occasion a sweet tooth that drives me to do things I wouldn’t normally do, coupled with the high temperature of 36ºC this past week (and no access to soda water), something had to be done!

So what do you do when it’s hot enough to melt your face, you feel like a mojito but have no soda water, AND have a bit of sweet tooth going on? Queue the A-Team theme song…

Here’s a basic recipe for Meringue:

1.4 egg whites – beat them till they form soft peaks

2.1 cup of castor sugar – beat into egg whites 1 tablespoon at a time (too much and the sugar will separate, you don’t want that)

3.1 pinch of salt – this apparently is meant to stabelize the egg and sugar solution so that they don’t separate.

4.2 shots White Rum – mix in drop by drop. Meringue DOES NOT like moisture so put it in while beating and wait for it to get back to consistency.

5.Preheat oven to 130ºC

6.Cook at 90ºC for about an hour and ten minutes, so that outside is hard and inside is a little gooey .

Once the meringues are in the oven you can make the the muddled mint, sugar and lime mixture. You want to make more than you need with this because there seems to be a shortage world wide of this yuminess. Mix to taste.

This next part you don’t have to do but if you have Pinotage soaked French Oak staves and access to the MacGyver part of your brain you might enjoy it.

For those of you that don’t have access to a giant block of ice to help with your cold smoking likethis, try this setup:

For those wondering how I got the yummy smoke from my ‘smoker’ to my mojito meringues, I drew you a picture just for you:

And finally, here’s the end product.

© Luke Bresler – The Curious Gastronomer