Simple Lemon Posset.
And further reflections on my first cookbook.
I have a very complicated relationship with my first cookbook, Student Eats. On the one hand, it was my first published book, a real career landmark that created so many further opportunities for me. Also, as anyone who has also written a cookbook can tell you, it is a pretty unique, multi-month (and sometimes multi-year) project to take on, and Student Eats proved I could to it! But, on the other hand, I’ve never liked the cover (I saw it for the first time when it was uploaded to Amazon), I don’t like the photography (which I had to do myself) and I also find it pretty difficult to cook from; I lost the argument with my publishers as to how the ingredient lists should be arranged (in the book they’re separated into store-cupboard and fresh sections, rather than the accepted format of the order the ingredients are required in) which I think makes following the recipes in it counterintuitive for anyone who has followed another recipe, ever.
When I talk about my books, I only really talk about One Pan Pescatarian, of which I’m immensely proud, and I’ve long accepted that Student Eats sales have probably dwindled off as they do with most archived books (I have no idea, actually, as they turned off the portal that allowed authors to check these things a few years ago!) That, combined with the fact my publishers put a quote from Greg Wallace (who has now been caught up in #MeToo) on the cover I’ve also accepted the fact people are not going to be seeing the recipes that are within it anymore.
I was a very different person, and a very different cook when I wrote Student Eats in 2015, two years before it was published in 2017. Many of the recipes I’d not write today, and there are others I would have approached really differently. But there are some recipes, like my Mother’s Chicken Pie, the Mulled Wine recipe I crack out every Christmas, and my method for Chicken Schnitzel I can’t bear the idea of being buried with the book.
So, this year I’m seeking to reclaim some of the recipes I think are worth rescuing, and I’ll be re-sharing them for my paid subscribers. A few of them, like the aforementioned pie will be published in their original form because they’re perfect as they are (but with the recipe lists written in the correct, proven to be user-friendly format!!) but others I’ll be updating to reflect the decade of experience I’ve gained as a professional recipe developer and a home cook since I last worked on them.
Today, I want to introduce you to my Lemon Posset recipe, which I still use when I have cream in the fridge without a destination, and which I’ve not altered in the slightest. It’s a brilliantly easy make-ahead dessert, lovely by itself during citrus season, or topped with fresh berries in summer. I called it magical in the original headnote how the citrus reacts with the cream to create a natural set without the need for gelatine like in a panna cotta (my recipe for Cardamom Panna Cotta with Clementine Jelly is linked below, also perfect for this time of year!), or cornflour as in an American-style pudding and I still wholeheartedly believe in this statement. If you’ve never made a posset before, the process is an utter marvel.
All you need is four ingredients, and I also love how it uses a single 300ml pot of cream to serve 3-4 people (depending on the size of your pots or glasses, and if you want or need it to stretch out to serve four!)
Lemon Posset
Serves: 3-4 (depending on the size of your glasses), Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 5 minutes, Chilling time: 4 hours
In 2015 I wrote: This lemon posset is super-rich, super-creamy and super-simple. Serve it with fresh berries or just by itself to round off a special meal for friends, or for your family if you’ve got them coming to visit you and you want to show off the culinary skills you’ve built up since moving out. You don’t actually have to tell them how easy it was to make! The lemon and lime juice will react with the cream to make it set, just like magic. Honestly, I don’t think I sound like me there, instead with a decade more of maturity and the aforementioned kitchen experience I think it sounds like 21 year old me trying to write what I thought a recipe headnote should read like. The advice still stands, however.