LATE SUMMER SWEETS

MERINGUES

Next week we will get back to the accounts of travel, eating, and other misadventures from around the world, but right now there is the final summer glories of Farmer’s markets and country produce stands to enjoy, and still almost time enough to cook. Before back to school, and the onslaught of PB&J.

When I was eight, meringues were an obsession.

The large, purely white, puffy, crisp and fragile ones, two halves sticking on either side of at least ¼ cup of English Clotted Cream. It took a week in a wintry and food-deprived boarding school to reach a frenzy of anticipation, and worth every day I had not spent my pocket money on the school’ shop sticky buns to save up for that meringue. I would walk up the High Street in Guilford, Surrey, near where we lived, heading for my favorite pastry shop. There in the window were the last of that day’s meringues, bursting with England’s finest cream.

MERINGUES

At a dinner for 200 at Oxford University, I filled them with cooked rhubarb and mascarpone,…