Nigel Slater’s recipes for lemon and passion fruit choux, and lamb steaks, marsala, apricots

Juicy fruits, lamb steaks and crispy buns bring lingering joy as summer wanes

Nigel Slater

Sun 15 Sep 2024 10.30 BST

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The smell of baking still lingers. Toasty and warm. On the table, a tray of choux buns, small, crisp and walnut brown. I have already eaten three and I really shouldn’t, because guests are coming to tea. The buns are more crisp than usual, baked at a high heat to give them a shell that contrasts with the softly whipped clouds of lemon curd cream inside. There’s passion fruit in the filling, too, because it is gorgeous with anything citrus.

There’s passion fruit in the choux filling, because it is gorgeous with anything citrus

You could make neat little buns if you have a piping bag in the kitchen. I prefer them to be less uniform. I made my first batch of choux buns at cookery school in Paris and was given the absurdly difficult task of piping them full of strawberry sorbet. Glorious to eat if you were quick – and we were – but imagine the mess. So now I stick to cream and the occasional flavouring.

This was the week I also found the finest apricots of late summer. The size of a blackbird’s egg, warm with glowing flesh that was the very essence of the fruit, a world away from the usual. Most were eaten from the bag on the walk home, but there were enough left to flatter a panful of lamb steaks, their juices mingling with those of the meat. I deglazed the pan with a few splashes of Marsala, a heaven-sent gift to the apricots and to me.

 

 

Lemon and passion fruit choux

I wouldn’t normally weigh liquid measures, such as milk and eggs, but I have been encouraged to do so for choux pastry by Nicola Lamb’s baking bible, Sift. The resulting light, crisp shell of choux pastry is better than those I have made previously. Hers is now my go-to recipe for super-crisp eclairs and cream buns. Makes 18. Ready in 90 minutes

 

Ingredients

 

For the choux pastry:
milk 60g
water 90g
butter 80g
sugar 3 tsp
strong bread flour 110g
egg 170g (about 3), beaten

For the filling:
double cream 300ml
lemon curd 200g
passion fruits 3

 

Method

 

You will also need a baking sheet lined with a piece of baking parchment.

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring the milk, water, butter and sugar to the boil, then add a generous pinch of salt. Stir in the flour and, using a wooden spoon, mix to a paste. Using a rubber spatula, transfer the mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a flat paddle beater and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.

 

Set the oven at 220C/gas mark 8. Break the eggs into a jug or bowl and beat lightly to mix whites and yolks. Turn the beater on to a slow to moderate speed and pour in the egg, a little at a time, then keep beating until the mixture is sticky and quite glossy – about 5 minutes. Check the consistency. The batter should be thick enough to slide slowly from a spoon.

Take a generously heaped teaspoon of the batter, about 10-12g in weight, and place it on to the lined baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the mixture, leaving space around each one to puff up, to make 18 lumps of batter. (I usually do this in two batches of 9, as I only have one suitable baking sheet. The mixture will come to no harm while the first batch bakes.)

After 15 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 190C/gas mark 4-5 and continue cooking for 10-12 minutes, checking carefully, until deep nutty brown and crisp to the touch. Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. (Don’t forget to turn the oven back up to 220C/gas mark 8 if you are baking them in batches.)

Whisk the cream in a chilled bowl until thick enough to (just) stand in soft peaks. Stir in the lemon curd, lightly, and only briefly – it is best when there are still streaks of lemon curd visible in the cream. Slice the passion fruit in half and remove the juice and seeds with a teaspoon, then stir into the cream, again lightly.

Slice the buns open and fill with the lemon and passion fruit cream, dust with icing sugar and pile on to a serving plate.